Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / What Does Ovulation Feel Like For Women?

Transcript

What Does Ovulation Feel Like For Women? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Doctor Psych
• 0:08
  Mom Show. Today we're going to talk about
• 0:11
  what ovulation feels like for women, and this is a hugely
• 0:15
  important epiphany for men, and we will get into that right
• 0:19
  after I tell you to subscribe. My most recent subscriber
• 0:22
  episode was on how you can find deep meaning in unconditionally
• 0:25
  loving your wife. And this is something that many
• 0:29
  people struggle with, is the relational aspect of what their
• 0:34
  life's purpose is, particularly after their children are older.
• 0:37
  And I talk about this and who feels this way and what it means
• 0:40
  to feel this way in my subscriber episode.
• 0:43
  And you get almost 140 other subscriber episodes for 899 if
• 0:48
  you subscribe. That is a lot of listening to
• 0:50
  me. So if you like listening to me,
• 0:53
  then you ought to be a subscriber anyway.
• 0:56
  So what does ovulation feel like for women?
• 0:58
  Well, I talk a lot about ovulation because it's super,
• 1:00
  super important for men to understand and for women to
• 1:04
  understand, and I'll get to that in a second.
• 1:06
  But for men to understand their wife's cycle, because you're
• 1:09
  really bashing your head into the wall if you're trying to
• 1:12
  make her excited at a time where her body is not excitable.
• 1:17
  So you know, I mean, it's just stupid, right?
• 1:20
  You have a whole half a cycle when it can work for you, and
• 1:24
  then like, you're trying the same shit the second-half of the
• 1:26
  cycle, it's not going to work. And a lot of guys don't
• 1:29
  understand this. And now I'll get to what women
• 1:32
  think. Women don't understand it either
• 1:34
  until they start tracking it. So it's not like there's a big
• 1:37
  conspiracy where women are aware of this stuff and then like,
• 1:41
  they just don't tell the guy. I sat in my daughter's middle
• 1:44
  school sex Ed class, 'cause they had an open house at the school
• 1:48
  and you can go to see all the classes.
• 1:50
  They were talking about the menstrual cycle.
• 1:52
  How many times do you think they mentioned sex drive?
• 1:54
  Never, ever. Because we are a puritanical
• 1:58
  culture vis A vis sex and libido.
• 2:00
  So women are not taught this. Your mother doesn't tell you.
• 2:03
  I mean, I certainly tell my girls, but but but most people
• 2:08
  don't. So they're like most people are
• 2:11
  not doctor, psych mom who are telling their daughters, Oh
• 2:14
  well, you know when you ovulate that studies show that you even
• 2:18
  look more attractive and your voice gets higher and you want
• 2:21
  to be close to your partner and you want to hug and kiss them
• 2:24
  and whatever, whatever you know. And then before you menstruate,
• 2:26
  you want to kill them. You know, Like most people are
• 2:29
  not advising that to their daughter.
• 2:30
  Or if they are, they're only saying the PMS part because they
• 2:34
  don't know in the 1st place because women are completely
• 2:37
  disconnected from their bodies. Because when I was a 20 year old
• 2:41
  and now I'm twice that age, but when I was in my 20s, you were
• 2:46
  never supposed to talk about PMS.
• 2:48
  That was like super anti feminist.
• 2:50
  To ever say that a woman could have a mood change because of
• 2:53
  PMS that was like super old fashioned.
• 2:56
  And we were supposed to be just the same as guys and never ever
• 3:00
  have a mood change due to hormones, which is bullshit
• 3:03
  'cause our moods change over the course of the entire month.
• 3:06
  And there's a great book, Moody Bitches, that's written by an MD
• 3:10
  that you can read about this and many other books as well, I'm
• 3:13
  sure. But the point is you don't have
• 3:15
  to read those books because I am telling you that in the the
• 3:19
  menstrual cycle is 28 days on average, Day 14 on average.
• 3:25
  All of this differs on the individual woman you ovulate.
• 3:29
  When you ovulate, the egg lives for 24 hours.
• 3:32
  Sperm live for three to a Max of like 5 days.
• 3:35
  So right before ovulation. And you know this, if you ever
• 3:39
  tried to conceive and your wife was like assiduous about how and
• 3:43
  when you should have sex with her, you know, you know that
• 3:46
  before the egg drops is when you're supposed to, you know,
• 3:51
  have your sperm in there waiting to go.
• 3:54
  And so that's when she wants to have sex.
• 3:56
  The other way to tell, besides peeing on a stick, the other way
• 4:00
  to tell if you're about to ovulate is you know they didn't
• 4:04
  used to have sticks you could pee on ovulation tests is by
• 4:07
  your cervical mucus becoming a different consistency and more
• 4:11
  like egg white and more stretchy, meaning she feels
• 4:15
  wetter, which is supposed to hasten the sperm you know,
• 4:18
  swimming to the egg. Everything is about biology,
• 4:22
  everything is about evolution and the perpetuation of our
• 4:27
  species. So our biological changes over
• 4:32
  the month are superimposed on what is supposed to be.
• 4:35
  We're supposed to act like the same all the time.
• 4:37
  Women are supposed to act consistent over the month, like
• 4:41
  in our job and in our parenting. But we are not consistent.
• 4:44
  We feel very, very different at different times of the month.
• 4:48
  Not after menopause because you're not ovulating anymore at
• 4:50
  menopause, and not on hormonal birth control because you're not
• 4:53
  ovulating with hormonal birth control.
• 4:55
  But for people that are not in menopause and who are not on
• 5:00
  hormonal birth control, you feel a hell of a lot different in the
• 5:03
  days leading up to ovulation and even the first two weeks of the
• 5:07
  cycle versus the ones after. I asked in my Facebook group
• 5:11
  about this and you should join my Facebook group on Facebook on
• 5:14
  the Doctor Psych Mom Facebook page.
• 5:16
  It's the blue subscribe button for 99 a month.
• 5:19
  We have lots of interesting discussions that bear fruit in
• 5:22
  terms in in, in these podcasts, right?
• 5:25
  And give me lots of interesting things that I know that people
• 5:27
  are interested in from what we discussed in the group.
• 5:30
  But I said it was a thread that I started and I said explain for
• 5:35
  the men in the group, if you're a woman, how much your libido
• 5:38
  changes with ovulation and from before ovulation to after
• 5:41
  ovulation. And people said things like
• 5:42
  5000% different. You know, you're totally
• 5:46
  uninterested after ovulation. And guys don't understand this.
• 5:49
  And of course the women that follow me understand this
• 5:51
  because I talk about this every three seconds.
• 5:54
  But women that are just out in the world and do not really
• 5:58
  follow much about their biology or their hormones and got
• 6:01
  pregnant fairly easily without family planning or via IVF where
• 6:05
  they didn't have to track their own stuff at all.
• 6:08
  They don't know and they're trained not to even think that
• 6:10
  they're hormonally impacted because that's thought to be
• 6:13
  shameful as especially in years past.
• 6:16
  It's very different now. Like, everybody talks about
• 6:19
  their period on like, you know, commercials and then like
• 6:23
  sitcoms and stuff. Nobody ever mentioned like your
• 6:26
  period except if it was like a shameful way to like condescend
• 6:29
  to a woman like, oh, she's PMS ING, you know, nobody used to
• 6:33
  mention bleeding like anything. That wasn't the most shameful
• 6:38
  possible thing. There was a scene in fact
• 6:41
  recently in Fair Play, Not the fair play book that I dislike
• 6:46
  that I have a podcast about, but a movie Fair Play that Y'all
• 6:49
  should watch was really good in the first scene.
• 6:51
  It was like going down on her and she got her period and he
• 6:55
  was like covered with blood. Like that would never have been
• 6:57
  in a movie years ago. It just wouldn't have.
• 7:00
  That was like periods were thought to be super shameful.
• 7:02
  Nothing was talked to women about their cycle.
• 7:05
  So the majority of you listening or, you know, in your 40s around
• 7:09
  I would imagine the median age is my own age, you know?
• 7:12
  And so women were not raised in a culture where they were
• 7:15
  supposed to even be aware of this.
• 7:17
  Your period was really shameful. It it was just totally
• 7:21
  different, right. And hopefully it's getting to a
• 7:23
  place where women will be totally aware of the way that
• 7:26
  their mood and their sex drive changes.
• 7:28
  But we are not there yet for older women at least, who are
• 7:32
  raised at a different time. So.
• 7:34
  So that you know your wife. If you're going to schedule date
• 7:38
  night, you should totally do it in the week leading up to
• 7:40
  ovulation, hopefully the day before ovulation.
• 7:43
  What does it feel like to a woman?
• 7:45
  Then she feels turned on. She feels happy.
• 7:48
  Her mood is up, She's at her highest possible mood.
• 7:51
  She feels more attractive, and studies show she's objectively
• 7:54
  rated as more attractive by men. Her voice gets higher.
• 7:58
  Her clothes get sexier. She feels good.
• 8:01
  She's attracted to the guy. He seems handsome.
• 8:04
  All of a sudden, he seems like maybe he's not so bad.
• 8:07
  And the marriage is pretty good after all.
• 8:09
  I I mention this all the time, but I have, you know, many
• 8:13
  clients that I see every two weeks.
• 8:15
  And if I see a woman before ovulation and then before
• 8:17
  menstruation and on that regular, you know, pattern like
• 8:22
  half, half of the session she's into him, half the session she's
• 8:25
  not. And of course, they have
• 8:27
  whatever issues they're dealing with writ large, you know, that
• 8:32
  are underlying everything. But you know what?
• 8:35
  Half of the session she doesn't think he's that bad and they
• 8:37
  have stuff to work on, and he's kind of funny and he's kind of
• 8:40
  cute. And half the session she just
• 8:41
  wants a divorce because she she's about to get her period.
• 8:46
  And so when you're about to get your period, you feel like
• 8:48
  you're going to jump out of your skin if somebody touches you,
• 8:50
  you want to murder them. And you just feel completely
• 8:53
  irritable, anxious, angry, tired, depressed, ugly, bloated
• 8:59
  fat, all of those things. And when you're ovulating, you
• 9:02
  feel like you're on top of the world and in the couple of days
• 9:05
  leading up to ovulation. So that's why many guys who
• 9:08
  don't track this or just totally, you know, feel like
• 9:12
  whiplash because they try something sexual, let's say, on
• 9:15
  day ten of the cycle, and it goes over like gangbusters, and
• 9:18
  she's all over it. And then they try the same thing
• 9:21
  at day 20. And she looks at him like he has
• 9:22
  three heads. And she's like, gross.
• 9:25
  Yuck. No, don't touch me.
• 9:28
  Because that's how she feels. So it's like imagine, like my my
• 9:32
  best analogy always is imagine that you were being fed when you
• 9:36
  weren't hungry. And so for half the month you're
• 9:39
  not hungry and half the month you're hungry and a couple of
• 9:43
  days you're ravenous. And so your wife cooks a dinner
• 9:46
  for you all the days of the month, and she's shocked some of
• 9:49
  the days. You love her food.
• 9:51
  You think it's awesome. You're you're you can't get
• 9:53
  enough of it. And then other days you're like,
• 9:55
  picking at it. Or you push it away and you say,
• 9:57
  gross, What is this shit? Right.
• 9:59
  Wouldn't she feel hurt if she didn't know what was going on?
• 10:03
  Yeah. This is actually a problem that
• 10:05
  a lot of people have when they don't know the side effects of
• 10:08
  ADHD meds, stimulants with their children.
• 10:11
  The kid is like, not eating all of a sudden, and they're like,
• 10:13
  what the Hell's going on? They're not eating.
• 10:15
  What's wrong with them? Are they anorexic?
• 10:16
  And of course, the stimulant is reducing their appetite.
• 10:19
  They can't eat. They eat later in the day many
• 10:21
  times. That's how people solve this.
• 10:23
  Once the medication wears off, they eat like late night, but
• 10:26
  the kid doesn't eat on the same schedule.
• 10:28
  You can't eat when you're not hungry.
• 10:30
  You can, but it's very, very aversive.
• 10:33
  So it's very similar. You can't fuck when you're not
• 10:36
  hungry, you know? I mean, it's the same thing.
• 10:38
  Like, you cannot have sex with the same enthusiasm when you
• 10:43
  have desire versus when you don't.
• 10:45
  So then many people, oh, and by the way, this of course, like
• 10:48
  everything gets worse as you age.
• 10:49
  Women in their 40s and perimenopause experience these
• 10:52
  highs and lows much, much, much more intensely than a woman in
• 10:58
  her 20s or 30s that has kind of a resting high libido.
• 11:02
  You know, like her libido's pretty high.
• 11:04
  Everything's pretty easy. Not a lot of stress hormones are
• 11:07
  up. All of the sex hormones are at
• 11:09
  nice, high levels. And she's young.
• 11:11
  She doesn't have a care in the world.
• 11:13
  So it's kind of like, you know, do you really notice if you're
• 11:17
  in Day 20, sure, you could be more crying, more tearful,
• 11:21
  you're a little bit less excited.
• 11:23
  But pretty much, you know, you're always really excited to
• 11:26
  be alive, you know, And sex is part of that.
• 11:29
  So a younger woman is not going to experience these highs and
• 11:31
  lows as dramatically as an older woman where the sex hormones are
• 11:35
  pretty much in the gutter. And then every so often you get
• 11:38
  like a lift, you know? And some women want to have sex
• 11:40
  the day before their period, too.
• 11:42
  There's something with the testosterone levels are higher.
• 11:45
  And I feel like I just recorded this.
• 11:48
  No, I think I just did this as a video.
• 11:49
  I'm getting like, so much deja vu.
• 11:51
  But sometimes I do these same topics as a Facebook reel first,
• 11:55
  which is why you should follow me on Facebook or TikTok or
• 11:57
  anywhere else. But anyway, I don't think I said
• 11:59
  this very recently in a podcast. If I did.
• 12:02
  It's a free podcast, man. So I mean, whatever, Just stop
• 12:06
  listening. But point being that most women
• 12:10
  really, really want to have sex, particularly as they get older
• 12:14
  right before ovulation. Which is why birth control, by
• 12:17
  the way, is so terrible for so many women.
• 12:20
  Hormonal birth control. Because if you're on hormonal
• 12:23
  birth control from like the time you're 16 for your skin or for
• 12:26
  your mood, or because your mom is scared, you're going to get
• 12:27
  pregnant until literally until you get off it to conceive a
• 12:32
  baby, you your sex drive has been blunted that whole time.
• 12:36
  You've never experienced ovulation, Unfettered, you know
• 12:39
  you, you've never experienced ovulation, period.
• 12:42
  You know, because birth control stops you from ovulating.
• 12:45
  So therefore you have no idea what your what your actual
• 12:49
  hormonal levels are. You have no idea what it's
• 12:52
  actually like to feel that jump of drive before ovulation
• 12:56
  because you've not ovulated. And so and also you don't
• 13:00
  menstruate either because you just stop taking the hormones.
• 13:03
  And so it's called withdrawal bleeding when you stop taking
• 13:06
  the hormones, when you have your placebo week, your your placebo
• 13:10
  pill week as part of your birth control pack, that's so that it
• 13:16
  basically approximates a period. So it doesn't weird women out to
• 13:19
  never get their period, but you can just skip that week and you
• 13:24
  can go, you know, you can never get your period, which is what
• 13:26
  some people do. More and more people now that I
• 13:29
  hear about don't just don't do it, just never get their period
• 13:33
  because they just keep taking the same levels of hormones all
• 13:35
  the time. Originally they thought that
• 13:38
  would weird women out to be on the pill and never get a period.
• 13:41
  So then they, you know, made a fake period, which is really
• 13:44
  just withdrawal, bleeding from stopping taking the hormones.
• 13:48
  So anyway, the, the the point being if you've never ovulated
• 13:50
  and you've never menstruated, you've never really had a cycle,
• 13:54
  you know what, hormonal cycle. And so then to conceive your
• 13:58
  baby. A lot of women in their 30s or
• 14:00
  their late 20s or something, they get off birth control and
• 14:02
  they're all of a sudden they have a sex drive and they were
• 14:05
  like, what the fuck? Like this is crazy, you know,
• 14:08
  like I finally have a sex drive. Also, birth control can have bad
• 14:11
  impact on mood. So I'll and of course talk to
• 14:14
  your provider about all of your options.
• 14:17
  You know, at all times, I'm not an MD.
• 14:19
  I'm reporting to you what I see in my practice, right.
• 14:23
  And of course, the actual side effects of the pill include, you
• 14:26
  know, depression and and mood, mood effects.
• 14:30
  And that's why a lot of women have to try different pills with
• 14:33
  different levels of estrogen, progesterone, et cetera.
• 14:36
  It makes a lot of women crazy, you know?
• 14:38
  That was like another thread in my In my group recently, a woman
• 14:41
  was like, does estrogen make anybody else feel crazy Because,
• 14:45
  like, I'm on it and blah, blah, blah.
• 14:47
  And many women were like, yeah, totally.
• 14:49
  And many women in my practice the same thing the birth control
• 14:52
  pill was making them feel depressed the whole time.
• 14:54
  And then they get off it and it's like, whoa, like, they feel
• 14:57
  like so much different. Their drive goes up and their
• 15:00
  depression goes down. And of course, this isn't
• 15:03
  everybody. Some people do better on the
• 15:04
  pill because they have massive PMDD premenstrual dysphoric
• 15:08
  disorder, which is like a real bad version of PMS.
• 15:11
  So if you if you don't menstruate, then you don't get
• 15:13
  PMDD. So really, every woman is
• 15:15
  different. But for a lot of women, they
• 15:17
  don't even know what their sex drive can be during this entire
• 15:21
  time that they're trying to find a mate.
• 15:23
  So you can imagine that when they go off it, sometimes
• 15:26
  they're like, wow, you know, I wish I would have had my drive
• 15:29
  when I was young. I would have had a lot more fun.
• 15:31
  And you know what? I'm not really attracted to this
• 15:33
  guy, which is the truth is that when women are on the pill,
• 15:37
  that's actual. Studies show that when the women
• 15:39
  are on the pill, they are attracted to different men than
• 15:43
  when they're not on the pill because their drive is is
• 15:46
  higher. Or when they're not on the pill,
• 15:48
  so they're attracted to you. Also, women are attracted to
• 15:50
  different men at different times in their cycle.
• 15:53
  And all this stuff is stuff you could look up and research if
• 15:55
  you want. But anyhow, the TLDR here is
• 15:59
  that when women ovulate, they feel on top of the world, they
• 16:01
  feel totally uninhibited. They feel as drunk on on
• 16:06
  relationship as they could be given that they're not in the
• 16:09
  honeymoon stage anymore. And it's a real good time to
• 16:12
  schedule date night after they ovulate.
• 16:15
  Many women have approximately 0 interest in sex, so you can't
• 16:18
  take that personally, you know? And while certainly they could
• 16:22
  still have sex that week, and they could still experience
• 16:25
  responsive desire, if you massage them and you do foreplay
• 16:29
  and whatever, you know, they can still certainly experience
• 16:32
  responsive desire. But it's not the same.
• 16:34
  It's not the same feeling. The music isn't there.
• 16:38
  That's there before ovulation. So if you've been a guy who
• 16:42
  takes every encounter on your wife, how she feels about it
• 16:45
  very personally, why don't you start tracking her cycle and
• 16:48
  seeing the reality of how she experiences sex and, like, you
• 16:52
  know, rate it, Basically rate it in your head.
• 16:55
  You know, sex. There was an 8.
• 16:57
  OK, well, I bet you're getting a lot more eights, nines and 10s
• 17:00
  right before ovulation. And I bet you're getting a lot
• 17:02
  more of fours and fives after ovulation because she's not in
• 17:06
  it. She's not hungry, she's not
• 17:07
  hungry to eat. So she's not going to like the
• 17:09
  food. And this doesn't mean you can't
• 17:11
  get better in bed and all these things, but you being the best
• 17:14
  in bed is not going to make her from a post ovulation person
• 17:18
  into a pre ovulation person. It's just not so couples,
• 17:21
  healthy couples that understand this can be like, oh, we're
• 17:24
  going to have most of our adventurous sex in the days
• 17:27
  leading up to ovulation. After that it's kind of like
• 17:29
  maintenance sex. I'm not going to take anything
• 17:31
  personally that she has her period.
• 17:33
  And then we start again, you know, and that's just kind of
• 17:36
  how it is be the same as if you were on, you know, ADHD meds and
• 17:41
  she was taking it personally that you didn't eat her dinner.
• 17:43
  You know, sometimes you got to eat her dinner when you don't
• 17:45
  want to and just to be a nice guy.
• 17:48
  But most of the time you'd be like, hey, you know, I got to
• 17:50
  eat at a different time or I'm not going to be that hungry
• 17:52
  anymore or something, and you would have to figure it out
• 17:56
  accordingly. So you cannot take your wife's
• 17:59
  sex drive personally over the course of the month.
• 18:02
  You have to understand that on ovulation, she's like a tiny
• 18:05
  little version of the honeymoon stage.
• 18:07
  There's nothing you can do to replicate that when she's not
• 18:09
  ovulating. You know, you could be super hot
• 18:12
  and everything and go to the gym and whatever.
• 18:15
  And, you know, she's still biologically, her body knows she
• 18:19
  can't make a baby. So she's not going to be as into
• 18:21
  you. I mean, doesn't it make sense if
• 18:23
  you just literally look at it like that?
• 18:25
  Of course it does. You know, we are hormonal
• 18:27
  entities. Our our bodies and our our
• 18:30
  brains are made for being a cave person and perpetuating our
• 18:35
  species. It's not meant for long term
• 18:37
  monogamy for like 60 years. You know, it's just not.
• 18:40
  And oh, and also, OK, so you could say, what about if it was
• 18:43
  a new relationship in a new relationship?
• 18:46
  It kind of feels like you're ovulating all the time.
• 18:48
  But even still, ovulation is going to hit.
• 18:51
  So a person in the honeymoon stage, the first, you know, few
• 18:55
  years of the relationship, that person during ovulation is going
• 18:59
  to be a Wildcat, right? And then if you're comparing
• 19:02
  that to like the woman, like 20 years later, post ovulation in
• 19:05
  perimenopause, it's two different women.
• 19:08
  It's like 2 completely two different women.
• 19:10
  They have nothing to do with each other.
• 19:11
  They wouldn't recognize each other on the street.
• 19:13
  So again, all of this is very good for not taking things
• 19:18
  personally and understanding that there's a super huge
• 19:21
  hormonal impact on your wife's libido based upon where she is
• 19:26
  in her cycle. And you guys could discuss this
• 19:28
  and it should be something that that you're able to talk about
• 19:32
  freely in your relationship. And I hope you enjoyed this
• 19:34
  podcast and I will talk to everybody soon.
• 19:36
  Have a great day guys.