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43 - Why Your Wife Doesn't Want to Have Sex · Masculine Containment

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Masculine Containment Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm Alex Sharfman, and this is a tough episode to record because there's so much in it, and there's so much of my personal experience in it.
• 0:10
  But today, I want to share with you why your wife doesn't want to have sex with you, or maybe why you don't feel like you're getting as much sex as you want, or why sex and intimacy is challenged in your relationships.
• 0:22
  And I start with, I want to just start with like, here's the common story.
• 0:26
  One partner wants more sex.
• 0:27
  Most of the time it's the man.
• 0:29
  It's not always that way.
• 0:31
  One partner wants it less.
• 0:33
  A lot of the time that's the woman.
• 0:34
  It's not always that way.
• 0:36
  And usually they start treating this as a sex drive or a libido problem.
• 0:41
  The higher desire partner feels rejected.
• 0:43
  The lower desire partner feels pressured.
• 0:46
  And the couple starts asking, how do we get her libido back?
• 0:49
  How do we fix this?
• 0:50
  How do we make this better?
• 0:52
  And in this podcast, here's my challenge to that.
• 0:56
  What if her libido isn't broken?
• 0:58
  What if her body is responding intelligently to the relationship she's living in or to the environment she's living in?
• 1:07
  If you listen to this podcast, you know a little about my personal story.
• 1:10
  You know, this was the situation that Katie and I lived in for a long time.
• 1:14
  Not at the beginning of our relationship, but after we had kids.
• 1:16
  And there was a point where I started wanting more sex and she wanted less.
• 1:22
  And there was this libido imbalance, like so many people refer to it.
• 1:26
  And it felt like it was one of the biggest issues in our relationship.
• 1:30
  It was super challenging.
• 1:32
  I'm going to personalize this a little bit for the men that are listening who are in this situation.
• 1:38
  I remember a few years ago, or years ago, maybe it was five or six years ago, I was talking to a friend who had been a client and who was in a similar situation where he had a really high sex drive.
• 1:49
  I used to communicate the same way, I have a really high sex drive.
• 1:55
  his wife didn't.
• 1:57
  And they had this libido mismatch and we were talking and he said something like, you know, well, when I initiate and she doesn't want to have sex, it's really frustrating for me.
• 2:07
  And I stopped him and I was like, dude, is it really frustrating for you?
• 2:09
  And he goes, what do you mean?
• 2:11
  And I'm like, is it just frustrating?
• 2:12
  He's like,
• 2:14
  No, Alex, you know, it's horrible.
• 2:16
  It sends me into a spiral.
• 2:18
  It hurts my feelings.
• 2:19
  It makes me shut down.
• 2:21
  He's like, sometimes when it happens two or three times in a row, it's like, I never want to ask her again.
• 2:26
  I don't even want to approach her.
• 2:27
  I don't want to initiate.
• 2:28
  It feels so terrible.
• 2:29
  And so if you're a man listening and you've been through that, I just want you to know I have been there.
• 2:37
  I've been there where you initiate and you're turned down and it affects, it affected me.
• 2:43
  I'm going to personalize this.
• 2:44
  Like I know I've talked to tons of men who have this same experience, but for me, it affected me in a way where it affected my confidence.
• 2:51
  Um, it affected my ability to go get stuff done.
• 2:54
  It made me procrastinate more.
• 2:56
  It made me kind of beat myself up.
• 2:57
  It created some like self loathing, self hatred types thoughts.
• 3:01
  Like, man, you suck and your wife doesn't even want to have sex with you.
• 3:04
  And,
• 3:06
  It was a spiral.
• 3:07
  It put me into a spiral.
• 3:09
  And I know there's people who are going to listen to this, especially this introduction.
• 3:13
  And they're going to say things like, oh, you know, you're making too big a deal out of it or you put too much pressure on it or you're making it too much of your life.
• 3:22
  And you know what?
• 3:23
  I hear you.
• 3:24
  But this is my reality.
• 3:26
  That's how it felt.
• 3:27
  And for years, it was devastating.
• 3:29
  It was challenging.
• 3:30
  It was frustrating.
• 3:30
  It was like one of the biggest issues in our relationship.
• 3:33
  But for me, it felt like also one of the biggest issues in my life because I love my wife.
• 3:36
  I wasn't going anywhere.
• 3:38
  But this imbalance of intimacy and not having it and it not being there was super frustrating for me.
• 3:46
  And.
• 3:49
  In 2024, or actually before that, Katie and I started studying sex and intimacy.
• 3:54
  We had tons of conversations.
• 3:56
  I started understanding this.
• 3:57
  And in 2024, earlier in the year, we went on sabbatical.
• 4:01
  And my goal on sabbatical was to study sex, intimacy, and relationships in that order.
• 4:07
  Like, I really wanted to understand this sex issue because it was such a big issue for me.
• 4:11
  And I wanted to understand that.
• 4:12
  I wanted to get past this and understand why it happened in my relationship, why it happens in so many relationships.
• 4:18
  Yeah.
• 4:18
  And so I studied like crazy.
• 4:20
  I read books by women written for women.
• 4:23
  I read books about sex.
• 4:25
  I joined tantric programs, a bunch of them, Taoist programs.
• 4:30
  I read tons of articles and papers.
• 4:32
  And I was in group experiences where I could listen to other people, hear other people.
• 4:36
  And some of them were with Katie.
• 4:37
  Some of them were for us as a couple.
• 4:40
  Some of them were just me on my own.
• 4:42
  Here's what I came to learn and what I want to share in this podcast is some insights around what I understand now and how things have shifted for us.
• 4:53
  And just so you know, like today, I have a relationship that...
• 4:59
  that I couldn't have dreamt of.
• 5:01
  I used to say I have the relationship of my dreams, but it's better than that.
• 5:04
  Like what I expected, what I thought I wanted, I have so much more and it's so much better now than what I ever thought I could have.
• 5:13
  And I didn't even know that it could be this good.
• 5:16
  And when it comes to sex and intimacy, I feel fulfilled.
• 5:20
  I feel satisfied.
• 5:21
  I feel like I get what I want.
• 5:23
  I feel like the sex and the intimacy between Katie and I is one of the strongest pillars of our relationship.
• 5:32
  And that, honestly, I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but for me as a man, that has been life-changing.
• 5:40
  All the things that I just said earlier about how it felt challenging and frustrating and sent me into a spiral and affected my confidence on the other side of that coin.
• 5:50
  Now that we're in a totally different place, I mean, it feels exciting.
• 5:55
  And every day is an adventure.
• 5:57
  And I feel confident.
• 5:59
  And like, you know, I used to tell people that.
• 6:03
  You know, not tell people, I've heard for years people say, you know, if you had FU money, you have this confidence in the world, you know.
• 6:10
  Well, I've had FU money for a while.
• 6:12
  My wife and I don't have to work.
• 6:14
  But having an FU relationship where like I know my relationship's solid and the intimacy between us is exciting and intriguing and fun and every week is a new adventure, that gives you the type of confidence that people around you feel.
• 6:30
  I just had a guy this week say something about my podcast where he said not only did he listen to it, but he felt the transmission behind it and the energy was changing him.
• 6:41
  And when I read that, I think that is what I'm trying to do.
• 6:46
  The fact that somebody's validated it is extraordinary.
• 6:50
  And I think the reason that he said that and the reason that it was validated –
• 6:55
  is because my energy has completely and totally shifted to a place of, I feel like I can do just about anything.
• 7:02
  And I get, you know, I have the life that I really want.
• 7:06
  And I'm in a place where like I'm in my body and I'm present and I'm here right now because I'm excited about life and I'm excited about what's coming next.
• 7:14
  I'm excited about what I'm doing with the brotherhood, the men that I'm helping.
• 7:18
  And I'm excited for every single day with Katie.
• 7:21
  And so in this podcast, I want to share with you some of the things that I know now were getting in the way.
• 7:28
  And some of the things that I know now were literally making it near impossible for her to meet my desires.
• 7:36
  But honestly, that were also clouding and overwhelming and overwhelming.
• 7:42
  I'm mutating my desires into a place where it was never going to be okay.
• 7:47
  It was never going to be enough.
• 7:48
  It was never going to be the relationship that I really wanted.
• 7:51
  And I want to share that with you in the most transparent and vulnerable way that I can.
• 7:55
  And I really want to help you if you're in this situation, whether you're the guy who's on the side of wanting more sex or you're the woman who doesn't want as much, I hope this podcast is.
• 8:06
  And this information helps you relate to your situation in a different way and you don't just label yourself as broken.
• 8:13
  Because here's what happens far too often.
• 8:15
  In so many relationships, there's a label of there's a libido problem and there's an issue and it starts getting treated like a medical issue and hormones come in and interventions come in and there's creams that are used and all types of stuff that is brought into the relationship that may create temporary fixes and may create some movement in the right direction.
• 8:36
  But foundationally, sex and intimacy are two different things.
• 8:41
  Sex created by real grounded intimacy in a relationship or sex within real grounded intimacy in a relationship is a totally different story and it changes everything.
• 8:53
  So first, I want to introduce a concept that I learned in multiple disciplines.
• 8:57
  It comes up in Taoist traditions.
• 8:59
  It comes up in women, writing for women.
• 9:03
  It comes up in Tantra.
• 9:06
  And that is that desire doesn't exist in a vacuum.
• 9:10
  So oftentimes, we look at a woman and say, she doesn't have a high libido.
• 9:14
  And so she has a desire problem, a libido problem.
• 9:17
  There must be something wrong with her.
• 9:19
  Well, if we back away, like so many other things that we diagnose with humans, like somebody's depressed, there must be something wrong with them.
• 9:25
  Somebody can't focus, there must be something wrong with them.
• 9:27
  Somebody isn't motivated, there must be something wrong with them.
• 9:30
  Well, if we back away and we say, what does the environment look like?
• 9:33
  For many women, for almost all women, desire doesn't exist in a vacuum.
• 9:39
  It's affected by much more than hormones or attraction.
• 9:42
  And desire.
• 9:44
  if we slow things down and we take a look at what are the things that can affect desire, but first understand what intimacy is like for a woman and how it's different for a man.
• 9:53
  And this is not all women and not all men, but in the situation that I described earlier, this does relate.
• 9:59
  And so for women, sex is an act of opening, of softening, of surrendering, of in so many ways submitting to allowing a man to be with her, to...
• 10:12
  hold her to let's be real to penetrate her and that requires opening and relaxation and comfort and you know I had a shaman tell me once that when it comes to intimacy first you need safety then comfort and then comes excitement and it stuck with me I'm like man that really resonates
• 10:32
  And so for many women, desire is influenced by things by emotional safety.
• 10:37
  Does she feel safe?
• 10:38
  Does she feel secure in her relationship?
• 10:41
  If you're in the pattern I've talked about so many times of trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then some attempt at repair, chances are she's not going to be feeling very safe.
• 10:50
  Her nervous system state, her mental load, unresolved conflict in the relationship or unresolved conflict in her life, resentment, feeling unseen, unheard.
• 11:00
  Whether sex feels like connection and intimacy or just another demand, all of these things have a massive effect on a woman's desire to have sex.
• 11:11
  We call it libido, but it's really her desire to have sex and her want to have sex, her motivation to be intimate.
• 11:24
  A nervous system, especially a woman's, that is vigilant or resentful or disconnected, does not easily move into a place of erotic openness, of sexual openness.
• 11:35
  It takes a lot to get there when you're in a place of overload or vigilance or resentment.
• 11:40
  And so here's some of the places that...
• 11:44
  it helps to understand when it comes to this imbalance, when it comes to this libido issue.
• 11:48
  So first one is the tactical overload problem.
• 11:51
  Like this is just a simple one.
• 11:53
  If a woman is tactically overloaded and carrying too many responsibilities like kids, schedules, meals, appointments, household management, emotional management, remembering everything, all of that tactical overload is going to cause her to be in a central nervous system activated state.
• 12:14
  You know, this came up in an interesting way in our relationship years ago.
• 12:19
  Katie and I were reading a book or we were using a card deck.
• 12:21
  I can't remember which one it was.
• 12:23
  But we spent a lot of time on sex and intimacy and had a lot of communication around this.
• 12:28
  And I think it was a card deck.
• 12:30
  And the card deck said...
• 12:33
  what, what has something like, what needs to happen first in order for you to want to have sex with me?
• 12:40
  Or what, what can we do first in order to make you more open to having sex or something like that?
• 12:45
  And, you know, I expected a massage or candles or a hot bath or something like that.
• 12:51
  And my wife immediately answered, what?
• 12:54
  if we already know what we're doing for dinner.
• 12:56
  And I started laughing.
• 12:59
  And she's like, don't laugh at me.
• 13:02
  That's really true.
• 13:02
  Like if we know what we're having for dinner, I feel so much more relaxed.
• 13:06
  But if we go upstairs and we're gonna have sex and it's gonna take a while and I don't know what we're having for dinner, I'm just thinking about what we're having for dinner.
• 13:12
  So tactical overload is a big thing when it comes to sex and intimacy.
• 13:17
  And if you're a man and you're listening to this and you're like, well, I've never felt that way.
• 13:21
  Welcome to the club, neither have I.
• 13:23
  Not once when I had the opportunity to have sex with my wife was I thinking, oh, man, do we have something for dinner?
• 13:30
  But that's because, like, we're different.
• 13:32
  We're different.
• 13:33
  There's a difference for, and now I'm sure there's men out there who's like, wait, I feel that way too.
• 13:37
  But it wasn't that way for me.
• 13:40
  And so, you know, one of the things that I stopped doing, one of the things I started doing was making sure we had dinner and we had a plan for dinner a lot of the time.
• 13:49
  Like, I got involved with that and started helping Katie with it.
• 13:52
  And one of the other things is like if you just look at the simple things we do as men, sometimes we are such massive contributors to the tactical overload problem.
• 14:00
  Like I'll just share one thing.
• 14:02
  I can't tell you how many times in my relationship I said things to Katie like, hey, Katie, can you help me remember or can you remind me to or can you make sure that we...
• 14:10
  And all I'm doing is offloading my tactical task, my remembering or making sure we needed to do something to her.
• 14:16
  And I did it over and over again in our relationship so many times.
• 14:19
  And the day that I realized I was doing it, I sat down, spent some time on my own, and got really clear that I am not doing that anymore.
• 14:29
  Like, why is what I need to remember, I need to do, suddenly her responsibility, it doesn't make sense.
• 14:35
  And so...
• 14:37
  Understanding tactical overload and not contributing to the problem and not being part of the problem changes things.
• 14:43
  Because if her nervous system is in like manage, solve, remember, anticipate, protect, it's not in receive, soften, feel, desire.
• 14:53
  And so tactical overload is a huge part of a woman wanting to have sex.
• 14:59
  Now, another thing for us to understand is men.
• 15:02
  is that safety is so much more than I would never hurt her.
• 15:07
  Masculine containment is a game changer in this regard because...
• 15:12
  You know, I'm doing interviews right now for our fourth container of the brotherhood.
• 15:15
  And I've heard men say things like, you know, I'm not violent, I provide, I love her, I protect her.
• 15:21
  But relational safety can also mean things like, can she express something without you becoming defensive?
• 15:27
  Can she be emotional without needing to manage your reaction to her emotions?
• 15:32
  Can conflict happen without escalation, withdraw, punishment, or collapse?
• 15:36
  Does she experience you as regulated and in your body and present?
• 15:40
  And this is a big one.
• 15:41
  Does she feel emotionally held or does she feel like she has to hold both of you?
• 15:48
  Desire has a difficult time showing up where hypervigilance is required.
• 15:53
  And so for us as men, when we learn to contain ourselves, not to stuff our emotions down, not to suppress our emotions, not to pretend like they're not there, but when we learn to feel our feelings in the moment and stay present and stay regulated and stop reacting to every trigger and hear her and lead with curiosity over judgment and ask questions and understand what's going on for her, things in our relationship will change.
• 16:18
  I'm going to read from a Facebook comment that a woman made on one of my posts because her husband is in the brotherhood.
• 16:27
  She said, as the wife of one of the men in your last container, I want to express my most sincere gratitude.
• 16:33
  For the tools you teach our men, I can always see clearly in the comments of men and their partners who have worked with you.
• 16:39
  It's just a vibe.
• 16:40
  My personal experience has been nothing short of a miracle.
• 16:43
  Now pay attention to this part.
• 16:44
  My husband and I have been together for 20 years.
• 16:47
  The past few years have been the worst of our 20 year battle.
• 16:50
  And I already made the decision.
• 16:51
  I was done when I joined your container.
• 16:53
  Too little, too late.
• 16:54
  My walls were Fort Knox and I was just done.
• 16:56
  My walls were Fort Knox means I'm closed off to you.
• 16:59
  By about the third week, I noticed a shift in him.
• 17:02
  More grounded, not jumping into the sea of raging waters of emotion with me, but rather leading me back to solid ground.
• 17:07
  Safety, and probably the biggest of all, his words were matching his energy.
• 17:13
  This is me.
• 17:13
  He was actually present.
• 17:15
  That's what I read in this.
• 17:16
  What she goes on to say is, that was huge for my nervous system that had been hyper-tuned to read him for inconsistencies.
• 17:23
  And somewhere along the way, I soften.
• 17:27
  It's been three months since he joined your last container.
• 17:29
  It's been three months since he joined your last container.
• 17:32
  And for the first time in my life in our marriage,
• 17:34
  I no longer need an exit plan.
• 17:36
  Many women will understand this.
• 17:38
  Divorce is off the table.
• 17:40
  And divorce is off the table.
• 17:42
  I spent years trying to achieve in my marriage what you did in weeks.
• 17:45
  We're truly looking forward to your next container.
• 17:47
  Her husband's going to be in it again.
• 17:49
  Here's what I read in that comment.
• 17:52
  is that when our energy matches our words and we create real emotional safety and security, the walls of Fort Knox come down.
• 18:01
  And as you read here, sometimes it takes a while, sometimes you're gonna really work at this, but sometimes in weeks, in weeks, if we as men move in the right direction,
• 18:10
  And we're in a relationship where the woman wants us to move in that direction and feels us moving in that direction.
• 18:17
  Even though divorce was on the table, we can make a 180 in our relationship by creating safety, then comfort, and then, of course, excitement.
• 18:27
  Now, here's a big one.
• 18:29
  Sexual leakage changes the relationship.
• 18:33
  This is so important for us to understand as men.
• 18:37
  So many of us as men, myself included, feel like our relationship with objectification and pornography is separate from our relationship.
• 18:44
  And I felt like this for years.
• 18:46
  For most of my relationship, unfortunately, I used pornography.
• 18:50
  I objectified women.
• 18:50
  It was like programmed into me from when I was a child.
• 18:53
  I first encountered porn when I was way too young.
• 18:57
  I'm 53 years old, but I saw hardcore pornography on VHS tapes when I was eight or nine years old, way too young.
• 19:05
  And that opened a loop of objectification and the use of pornography.
• 19:10
  for years.
• 19:11
  And here's what we don't know as men.
• 19:14
  Like I believe my wife, I believe Katie's nervous system knew.
• 19:18
  She told me, she knew, she knew there was something.
• 19:20
  She didn't know what it was, but she knew there was something.
• 19:23
  And pornography and compulsive fantasy and chronic objectification makes it so that we're not in our bodies, so that we're not present.
• 19:33
  And it affects where our attention goes.
• 19:36
  It affects how we look at our partners.
• 19:37
  It affects how present we are when we're actually having sex, what stimulates us, what we expect from sex, the quality of our erotic attention.
• 19:46
  How do we actually respond when we're in intimacy?
• 19:49
  Here's what I can tell you personally for me.
• 19:54
  In seeing the contrast of being completely porn and objectification-free now for a long time, here's the contrast that I know.
• 20:02
  When I was using porn, when I was objectifying, when we were having sex, part of the reason that it was never satisfying, it was never enough, I wanted to do it again, I wanted more, was because I was disassociated.
• 20:13
  I wasn't really there.
• 20:15
  I wasn't present and in the moment.
• 20:17
  I wasn't with Katie.
• 20:19
  I was with all these fantasies and noise and all this other stuff in my head.
• 20:23
  And when I let go of porn, when I let go of objectification, when I stopped all of that happening outside of my relationship, and really, let's be honest, the infidelity that that created in my relationship.
• 20:38
  You know, infidelity is always looked at as cheating, but infidelity is like not having fidelity, not having that quality of resonance in the relationship.
• 20:47
  It changed the resonance in my relationship when I changed my habits.
• 20:52
  And I was present with my wife.
• 20:54
  And not only did we go from me always wanting more sex to Katie joking sometimes that I don't initiate enough, but...
• 21:04
  But the sex that we have is the most satisfying and exciting and amazing and extraordinary sex I've ever had in my life.
• 21:13
  And it's because I'm there.
• 21:15
  I'm present with her.
• 21:17
  It's so much fun.
• 21:18
  And we're so connected.
• 21:21
  And again, it gives me this confidence and this excitement and this energy and capacity that I carry into the rest of my life.
• 21:30
  And so if you understand these things, you know, if you understand that there's a tactical overload problem and that you have to create real safety for your partner and you have to stop leaking sex and sexual energy and just spraying it out all over the place, like by using porn and objectification, you are literally losing your sexual energy.
• 21:51
  Sexual energy is life force energy.
• 21:57
  I assure you she feels it, but you feel it too.
• 22:01
  And the more we stop doing that, the more we learn different habits and rewire our behaviors like we do with men in the brotherhood, the more capacity we get, the more we can get done, the more we feel like we can achieve, the more we feel like we can accomplish.
• 22:14
  And so here's the issue that happens that we really have to understand when we're in this place where there's tactile overwhelm, where she doesn't feel safe, where we aren't present during sex because of objectification.
• 22:29
  It creates this like libido spiral.
• 22:32
  I don't know what else to call it.
• 22:34
  Here's what it looks like.
• 22:35
  He initiates.
• 22:37
  He feels rejected.
• 22:39
  He pushes harder.
• 22:40
  She feels pressure.
• 22:41
  Her desire decreases from pressure.
• 22:43
  She feels pressure and it drives her even further away.
• 22:46
  He becomes resentful, turns towards pornography, objectification.
• 22:49
  She feels even more disconnected.
• 22:51
  He experiences more rejection.
• 22:53
  He tries to initiate again.
• 22:54
  She feels something is off.
• 22:56
  He feels more rejection and more frustration.
• 23:00
  And this spiral downwards...
• 23:03
  creates this belief, oh, we have incompatible libidos.
• 23:07
  But what you're actually having is this reinforcement of a relational pattern that is moving you in the wrong direction.
• 23:15
  Now, I want to make sure that everybody understands something like that was the pattern in my relationship.
• 23:23
  So in this podcast, I'm not blaming men.
• 23:32
  I'm not saying it's all our fault.
• 23:33
  I'm saying we have an opportunity here.
• 23:35
  I'm saying we have an opportunity that is often obscured from us that we don't see because we don't understand it.
• 23:41
  I know there's women that have their own conditioning and their own responsibility and hormones and menopause and stress and trauma and illness and sleep and many other factors affect libido.
• 23:51
  And some couples might just have a different baseline of desire.
• 23:55
  But here's what I learned in the masterminds that I was in.
• 23:58
  Here's what I learned in talking to women.
• 24:00
  Here's what I learned in talking to couples is that
• 24:04
  When a woman feels safe and secure and she's not overwhelmed and she's in her body and she's present, she often has a higher sex drive than men.
• 24:12
  In the tantric world, that's a belief.
• 24:14
  In the Taoist world, that's a belief.
• 24:16
  That women actually have higher sex drives than men and when they're in the condition that they feel present and safe.
• 24:25
  And so I think before we label a relationship as sexually incompatible, we have to examine the environment in which desire is being asked to show up and exist.
• 24:35
  So here's what changes when a man contains his energy and practices masculine containment.
• 24:43
  And...
• 24:44
  not just masculine containment and not blowing up, not exploding or not imploding, but sexual containment and self-containment and responsive containment, responding to his partner when she's activated without her having to manage her own emotions and his active containment, pulling her into conversations where you actually understand what's going on with her and actively containing and asking questions and leading with curiosity.
• 25:08
  What happens for the man is that we start regulating instead of escalating.
• 25:14
  And listening instead of defending and carrying more responsibility without being managed.
• 25:19
  Doing what we say we're going to do is so crucially important.
• 25:23
  When we close our sexual container and reduce pornography or objectification or eliminate it, you know, like I have, like every once in a while something will creep up.
• 25:31
  I stop, like I've said in another podcast, and I say, I'm here and I'm safe.
• 25:36
  I break the pattern so it doesn't happen again.
• 25:39
  When we contain, we become more present.
• 25:41
  We remove pressure around sex.
• 25:43
  Because if you're having amazing sex, you know what?
• 25:46
  There's not so much pressure to do it over and over and over again.
• 25:49
  And when you're having amazing sex and your wife feels safe and she's in her body and she's not tactically overwhelmed, trust me, you're going to have...
• 25:59
  intimacy that is fulfilling and satisfying.
• 26:03
  And I mean, I, I think, you know, Katie and I have more sex today than we have at any point in our entire relationship.
• 26:10
  And she's perimenopausal and I'm 53 years old.
• 26:12
  We should both be having issues with this and we don't because when we create space for her manager, her nervous system to stop managing us, it's,
• 26:24
  The reality is you create conditions where authentic desire has a chance to return.
• 26:31
  And you see what reality is, not what reality is clouded through all these other things.
• 26:36
  And so I want you to really think about what I've shared today.
• 26:42
  Because if you're a man who's in a situation where you don't feel like you're getting enough sex and you don't feel like there's enough intimacy in your relationship...
• 26:53
  and you can feel her slipping away, this is an opportunity.
• 26:58
  I'm not blaming, I'm not telling you, you've done things wrong, you were doing the best you can up until now, what you've known is what you're doing as best you can.
• 27:08
  But now that you understand this, if you can help with tactical overwhelm and you can get into a place where she really does feel safe and you can help her by closing your sexual container and when you find yourself wanting to reach for porn or wanting to objectify, hold yourself and say, I'm here and I'm safe.
• 27:31
  And believe me, I know this is hard.
• 27:35
  so hard.
• 27:36
  Because the other spiral is, you know, I described it in detail, or I described the spiral, but the spiral really is, you initiate, she turns you down, and this is what it was for me, then you turn to porn.
• 27:50
  And it feels like it's justified.
• 27:52
  And it feels like
• 27:54
  It's the thing you should do.
• 27:55
  And it feels like you now, I used to joke, not joke.
• 27:58
  I used to convince myself that I was putting less pressure on Katie by using porn.
• 28:03
  And that it was okay and it was righteous and it was justified.
• 28:07
  What I was really doing was putting myself in the position of like a cuckold and watching other men do what I wanted to do and watching other men have experiences that I'm now fantasizing about.
• 28:17
  And when I turned all of that off, my nervous system completely shifted.
• 28:22
  And here's one of the most massive payoffs.
• 28:27
  This is so crucial.
• 28:28
  I almost forgot to share it.
• 28:31
  Is that when I shut all that stuff down...
• 28:34
  And I started taking responsibility.
• 28:37
  And I put time and energy into understanding where Katie might be tactically overwhelmed and understanding where she might be doing too much.
• 28:46
  And I stopped handing all my stuff over to her.
• 28:49
  And most importantly, I stopped objectifying it.
• 28:51
  I stopped using pornography.
• 28:53
  My attraction for my wife was,
• 28:57
  went through the roof.
• 28:59
  I mean, I've always thought she was gorgeous, and I've always been really excited by her.
• 29:04
  But today, like sometimes she just has to walk through the room, and I get like fluttery butterflies, and I'm excited.
• 29:10
  And I really believe that is because I've done this work.
• 29:14
  I've closed my container.
• 29:16
  I put time and energy into her.
• 29:18
  I protect her, not just from the outside world.
• 29:21
  I provide for her, not just in money.
• 29:23
  I protect her by creating emotional safety and security for her.
• 29:27
  I listen to her.
• 29:27
  I don't challenge her emotions when she has them.
• 29:31
  I get curious.
• 29:33
  I understand them.
• 29:34
  I lead those situations to a successful conclusion.
• 29:37
  And my belief is, because I did the work on myself,
• 29:42
  and I put energy into her, that's why my attraction has gone through the roof.
• 29:48
  Because I care.
• 29:50
  And I'm connected.
• 29:51
  And I'm grounded.
• 29:52
  And I'm here.
• 29:53
  And I'm with her.
• 29:55
  And so, in closing, if your wife doesn't want sex, I want you to be really careful with the question, what's wrong with her libido?
• 30:08
  I have a friend who...
• 30:12
  has this challenge.
• 30:13
  And he is so frustrated by his wife and he puts so much pressure on her.
• 30:18
  And I keep trying to share this with him and he's just not getting it.
• 30:21
  And he keeps saying there's something wrong with her.
• 30:23
  And I keep telling him he needs to do the work for himself and that'll take the pressure off of her.
• 30:27
  And that's really how this works.
• 30:29
  and I've seen it in the brotherhood over and over again where men are literally shocked when they start doing this work and there's sexual and libido changes in their wives.
• 30:38
  Men have shared stories of holding containment and coming back and their wife doesn't have any clothes on or holding containment and really connecting with their wives and they end up, like one guy shared in our group an anecdote about his wife being really frustrated by spilling stuff on her clothes and he held containment for her and when they got home,
• 30:58
  He was like, man, I did it.
• 30:59
  You know, I really like led that situation.
• 31:01
  I talked to her.
• 31:02
  I asked questions.
• 31:02
  I led with curiosity instead of judgment.
• 31:06
  And he said she went into the bedroom and came out and he was standing in the kitchen and they had sex in the kitchen.
• 31:11
  And in the group, he said something like, gosh, you don't understand.
• 31:15
  We don't ever have sex in the kitchen.
• 31:17
  I'm like, yeah, women have higher sex drives than men when they feel safe and comfortable and secure and they're not overwhelmed.
• 31:24
  And when we move in this direction, everything in our lives can change, especially sex and intimacy.
• 31:31
  And so if your wife doesn't want sex, the first question should not be what's wrong with her libido.
• 31:37
  The question should be what is her body responding to?
• 31:41
  And...
• 31:43
  What is closing her down or shutting her down, overwhelming her?
• 31:46
  Because if you create the environment where she will open, where she has the opportunity to open, where she can open, where she has the choice to open and surrender and...
• 32:01
  allow.
• 32:02
  Everything in your relationship has an opportunity to change.
• 32:05
  So ask, what would have to change in my relationship for her body to experience enough safety, space, and connection for her desire to become possible again, for it to show up at the highest level?
• 32:21
  I've done this work personally, and I can tell you it is absolutely life-changing.
• 32:26
  And if you're a man listening to this podcast, or if you're a woman who has a husband that you think needs to hear it, please share it with him.
• 32:33
  We are in open interviews right now for the next Brotherhood Container, where we teach masculine containment, and we will help you through this.
• 32:40
  We will help you through understanding how to create safety for your partner, how to help her with tactical overwhelm, and most importantly, how to get past objectification and pornography.
• 32:52
  So many men in the Brotherhood have moved away from these things and have seen massive capacity in their life come back.
• 32:59
  You do not have to walk this path alone.
• 33:01
  You don't have to do this alone.
• 33:02
  The Brotherhood is an international society of men where we do this together.
• 33:06
  Go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com and sign up for one of our interviews.
• 33:12
  I would love to meet you personally.
• 33:14
  You can jump on, understand everything there is to know about the Brotherhood, ask any question you have, and you will have an option to join the next container once the interview is over.
• 33:25
  Uh, thanks for being here today.
• 33:26
  I hope this lands.
• 33:28
  I hope this helps you I know i'm gonna probably take some heat for something that I said in this because this is such a sensitive topic And that tends to happen, but that's okay Uh, I appreciate you listening go to the brotherhood society.com.
• 33:41
  I look forward to meeting you live on one of our interviews.
• 33:43
  Thanks again