Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / The "Sex Is Special" Philosophy Really Bites Married Couples In The Ass

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The "Sex Is Special" Philosophy Really Bites Married Couples In The Ass · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom Show.
• 0:08
  Today we're going to be talking about the sex is special
• 0:11
  philosophy that many people learn through you know, popular
• 0:15
  media, religion, etcetera. And how I've really seen that
• 0:19
  bite married couples in the ass. And before we get to that, of
• 0:22
  course, as usual, you should subscribe because I have over
• 0:26
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  And then of course you can listen to those on any platform.
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• 0:59
  Then you get all those extra episodes, the most recent one of
• 1:01
  which was is your partner a romantic or are you a romantic,
• 1:05
  which is like a sexual except for romance?
• 1:07
  And all those different orientations can be very, very
• 1:10
  useful in explaining things that you never really understood
• 1:13
  about yourself or your partner. All right.
• 1:16
  So moving on. So today we're going to talk
• 1:20
  about this idea that sex is supposed to be so special and
• 1:23
  sacred. And I I hear this a lot, I've
• 1:27
  obviously, I'll give you guys a little background.
• 1:29
  There is something called CYPAC, it's the reciprocity agreement.
• 1:34
  And so basically therapists can work with people in other states
• 1:38
  in recent years and this was hastened by COVID, right, that
• 1:42
  that we can work with more people because telehealth was so
• 1:45
  obviously necessary during the pandemic.
• 1:48
  It pushed along laws that were going to, you know, get pushed
• 1:51
  along eventually anyway, but it hastened the acceptance of the
• 1:55
  whole telehealth idea and the laws that make it possible.
• 1:59
  So I've been working in, you know, the past since the
• 2:02
  pandemic with a lot more people from everywhere, you know.
• 2:08
  And so I've seen that in specifically very religious
• 2:11
  communities, which I didn't really have anybody that I was
• 2:13
  working with that had been raised evangelical or anything
• 2:16
  before that, you know, because they would have had to basically
• 2:19
  move to in the DC area where I am, And most of them don't.
• 2:23
  They stay where they, you know, grew up.
• 2:26
  And so basically I've learned a lot about being raised very
• 2:31
  religious and very Christian and purity culture and all of this.
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  And there's this idea that, you know, sex is extremely special
• 2:39
  and should only be with the person that you're going to
• 2:42
  marry. And it's the sacred thing.
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  And of course, I knew about that idea in general.
• 2:47
  And if you're raised as a woman, then you know, at some point
• 2:49
  somebody tells you not to have sex until marriage and you do or
• 2:53
  you don't, you know. But if you're not raised very
• 2:55
  religious, then you usually do. And sex can be special with the
• 2:59
  person, with a lot of different people, you know, and it can be
• 3:01
  used for a lot of different things.
• 3:03
  It's part of like having a fun 20s is like having boyfriends
• 3:07
  and you know, flings and what have you, and then it's part of
• 3:10
  being in a relationship. And that's just kind of how it
• 3:13
  is. And then you get married and you
• 3:14
  have sex with that person too. And since you know about sex,
• 3:17
  then you usually are marrying somebody with whom you feel
• 3:20
  sexual compatible ability. This is not so.
• 3:22
  When you're not supposed to have sex before marriage, you have no
• 3:25
  idea about sexual compatibility because you are basically told
• 3:28
  that this sex is a special, sacred thing.
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  And if you love somebody enough to marry them, then you will,
• 3:34
  you know, marry them and have sex with them.
• 3:37
  And it's going to be great and it's going to be this amazing,
• 3:41
  wonderful thing. Now, I've worked with lots and
• 3:43
  lots of people that that really didn't work for because, like,
• 3:47
  it's like saying if you get married to somebody, then
• 3:49
  playing tennis with them is going to be a magical thing.
• 3:51
  But yet neither of you has played tennis before and you
• 3:54
  might be real shit at tennis and you have no idea.
• 3:56
  You might not like tennis at all.
• 3:58
  So the idea that sex is supposed to be this special, sacred thing
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  that you only do when you're in love with somebody really has
• 4:05
  hurt a hell of a lot of people and their marriages.
• 4:09
  Also, and this is something that a lot of people don't realize,
• 4:12
  if you're taught that sex is supposed to be a special, sacred
• 4:15
  thing that's just with one person, and it's this wonderful
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  communion of souls, etcetera, then it's obvious that every
• 4:22
  encounter the woman will think needs to be that way.
• 4:26
  So if sex is supposed to be special, then sex is supposed to
• 4:28
  be special. So if she's not feeling it at
• 4:31
  any given moment, which of course she never is after the
• 4:34
  honeymoon stage, pretty much, you know, except when she
• 4:37
  ovulates or sees, you know, some hot guy or something.
• 4:40
  I mean, you know, then. And even when she sees a hot
• 4:44
  guy, if she's not ovulating, she doesn't seem, it's just seems
• 4:47
  like a pretty painting. But if she's not in the mood,
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  and she's rarely in the mood, as you know from Responsive Desire,
• 4:54
  I've taught you about that the woman needs to start doing it in
• 4:56
  order to feel in the mood to do it, then she's not going to want
• 4:59
  to do it. Because if it's supposed to be a
• 5:00
  special, sacred thing, a special sacred thing does not really
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  start out with He has to rub my back and then we're going to be
• 5:07
  kissing. And then eventually I feel like
• 5:09
  I want to do it within like 10 minutes.
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  No, no, no. That's not how it works in the
• 5:13
  movies. That's not how she thinks that
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  it's supposed to work either. It's a sacred, special, magical
• 5:19
  communion of souls ordained. And if it is, then it's supposed
• 5:22
  to be that every time. So that's why the women that are
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  raised with this idea really are the least responsive to the
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  idea, the least mentally responsive to the idea of
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  responsive desire because it has been hammered into them that it
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  is so special, this total emotional connection you only
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  have with one person. And then every time they think
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  supposed to be great and it's not.
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  And how could it be? Because you have to practice at
• 5:52
  something for it to be good. Right.
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  And so you didn't practice before marriage.
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  You didn't practice when it was low stakes, now that you are
• 6:00
  married. And of course, a lot of women
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  that are religious, et cetera, get pregnant really quick, and
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  that does a number on your hormones.
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  And then you have a baby and then you're breastfeeding, which
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  kills your libido, et cetera, et cetera.
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  So basically, the honeymoon isn't great because of course
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  nobody knows what they're doing, and so she feels totally
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  blindsided by that, that there's no transformative sexual
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  awakening. How could there be?
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  The guy doesn't know shit. Sometimes the guy, even in these
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  religious communities, has had more sex than her.
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  He's not always a virgin, but it's always, you know, these
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  fumbling things with similar girls.
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  Even if it's not, even if somehow is this religious girl
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  marrying this guy that had this longterm relationship where he
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  learned a lot about sex. Every woman is not similar.
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  I mean, they're kind of similar, you know, but they're not the
• 6:43
  same. So he may be doing a bunch of
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  stuff that she doesn't like. So the point is, she has no idea
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  what she would like. She's trained not to masturbate,
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  to be very sex negative. And that sex is only for this
• 6:53
  special guy. And then if he can't, you know,
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  make fireworks happen, which of course, as you're as I'm telling
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  you, how could he having no practice or no practice with
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  her, her having all these expectations, both of them
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  thinking that it's just supposed to be linked somehow to love.
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  And if they love each other, then then sex magically is good,
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  then you know it's not going to be that good.
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  So then she gets turned off of the whole thing and she feels
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  that, you know, he's just not the right person or something.
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  It's so funny when I hear us like there's these various
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  bastions of males on the Internet that feel that women
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  all should be virgins until they get married.
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  And I did not actually even know that like there were as many
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  guys as think this until I started to get bigger on the
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  Internet and then all these guys come out of the woodwork.
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  I mean to again I mean I was raised pretty secular, you know
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  so and I went to a liberal college and is this just wasn't
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  a thing in my milieu at all. You know that you were supposed
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  to wait until marriage, but apparently a lot of guys think
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  so. And one of the big reasons they
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  say she won't be comparing you to other people.
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  This is monstrously stupid, you know, because she compares.
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  Other people are just normal human beings that can fuck up.
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  Some of them are good at this. Some of them are good at that.
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  They're all just men. But if you're comparing the guy
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  to, like, what you are thinking in your imagination that sex is
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  supposed to be, then he's got no shot because you're sitting
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  there thinking, Oh my God, like this was supposed to be this
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  transformative, amazing experience.
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  But instead I have this bumbling fuck, you know?
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  And he can't do anything right. And he must be bad at this.
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  He must just be so bad at this. Because what I've known is that
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  if you love somebody and if this is a sacred, wonderful thing,
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  then it's going to be this transformative, mystical,
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  wonderful experience. So I guess he's just broken.
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  I guess he, he just can't do it right.
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  And she compares it to like romance movie scenes or just
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  this idea from love songs, etcetera, that when you are with
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  the right person, somehow they unlock you like a key into a
• 8:52
  lock. And that's just that can't
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  happen. And if you've not had any other
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  experience, then frequently these women, when they come in,
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  they tell me, I feel so bad, you know, that I never was able to
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  explore my body. I never was able to have
• 9:06
  experiences with anybody else. We don't have a good sex life.
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  And that's really, you know, something I was trained to fear
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  is to explore in any way. And I feel like I missed the the
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  boat because now I'm married. Well, guess what happens to some
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  of those women that get divorced, right.
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  Because they they want to explore, they want to have, you
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  know these experiences and they're comparing the guy that
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  they're with to this ideal because they don't actually have
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  other men to compare them to or have any way that they think
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  that they could teach him how to do anything because they have 0
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  experience. So you know it's it's pretty
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  interesting when you think about it because the the, yes, on the
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  one hand like it would be good to have no comparison point.
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  I guess, you know, like if you have like a prisoner, you know,
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  then then your prisoner thinks you're a good prison guard
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  because they haven't had any other prison guards, you know.
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  But like, so they could think you're very beneficent.
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  But but in in reality like that that's what it turns out to be.
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  You know, it's just one person kind of who is if things don't
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  go well, feels pretty trapped with you, you know.
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  And they don't know any better. But they can certainly fantasize
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  about something that's better. You know, something that has no
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  bounds, something that is outside of what a man can
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  humanly accomplish because they they don't know, like what
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  actual sex is. So they think that if it was the
• 10:29
  right guy, some other guy, maybe some other guy that they saw
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  across, you know, the hall in high school or something, then
• 10:35
  that man would create this other kind of experience for them.
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  You know, this one that they thought they were supposed to
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  get this special, sacred, unique thing that is only between a man
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  and a woman who deeply love each other.
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  But apparently it doesn't work in their marriage.
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  They don't have any idea how to get to a place where it would
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  because they don't have any idea about their body, about their
• 10:55
  sexual potential. They've never had sex before,
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  etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So somebody not being able to
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  compare you to other people is like, you know, it's kind of
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  like The Collector by John Fowles, you know, or you with
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  Joe. Like it's it's a common male
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  fantasy to get a woman who has no other options.
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  Not common male. It is a a a fantasy of insecure
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  young men usually to have a woman who had no other options.
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  So she has nobody to compare you to, but she still has a brain,
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  right? She could still, she still knows
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  if she feels good or she doesn't.
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  She still thinks, thinks like it's like feeding somebody gruel
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  every day. And then, you know, they don't,
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  they don't know what other food is, right?
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  But like, they see food on TV, you know that.
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  And so they think that food is transformative and wonderful and
• 11:42
  magical. Like, they know they're not
• 11:43
  getting that even if they've not ever experienced eating food.
• 11:48
  So anyway, what should you do about it if you're in this
• 11:50
  situation? Well, I mean, you got to go to a
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  sex therapist. And my my next, my next podcast
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  is going to be about why therapy often does not help sexless
• 11:59
  marriages. And the reason, One of the
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  reasons is that it doesn't directly address sex.
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  Ever. So if you are in this situation
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  where you know, you, you know, like there was a sacred cow of
• 12:10
  how wonderful sex is supposed to be, and it's never really been
• 12:12
  that for you guys. Due in part to a lack of
• 12:15
  experience or a lack of selfawareness or not
• 12:17
  understanding how how you know how or why you didn't connect.
• 12:22
  Not understanding your erotic blueprints or your preferences
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  or even what erotic blueprints are.
• 12:27
  Of course I have a podcast about that.
• 12:29
  But then you should go to somebody who's a sex therapist,
• 12:32
  you know, or a sex intimacy coach like Heather, who works at
• 12:36
  my practice, or a therapist like myself who also works with
• 12:40
  sexual issues. There is you.
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  You cannot just go to a regular couples counselor and expect
• 12:45
  that somehow your sex life is going to be addressed,
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  especially if the two of you do not have a lot of prior
• 12:50
  experience. For example, like, she probably
• 12:54
  a woman in this situation is unlikely to ever, you know, tell
• 12:57
  you like, feedback about how you could be better.
• 13:00
  Because remember, she doesn't know how you can be better.
• 13:04
  She doesn't know. And a lot of these women feel
• 13:06
  too ashamed to read erotic stories or to even read steamy
• 13:10
  romance novels, you know, Or if they do, they're scared to tell
• 13:12
  the guy, or if they tell the guy.
• 13:14
  Sometimes in these situations, with these people who have been
• 13:16
  raised to think that sex is so special, then the guy thinks
• 13:19
  it's basically a form of pornography.
• 13:20
  So then he, he gets upset. So the basic thing you need to
• 13:24
  do is open your mind to the fact that sex is a human activity and
• 13:28
  it's a life activity, and it can mean love, and it can also mean
• 13:32
  comfort and fun and adventure and exploration and play a
• 13:38
  million things, right? And so if you just think that
• 13:41
  it's supposed to be this romantic, transcendental union
• 13:43
  of souls, you're going to be pretty disappointed by, you
• 13:46
  know, the fact that it isn't that every time.
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  And it certainly ain't going to be that the first time, because
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  there's almost no way, you know, for for that to happen.
• 13:54
  Just like the first time you ever got onto a tennis court,
• 13:56
  You didn't play an awesome game of tennis, right?
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  So everybody has to learn everything.
• 14:00
  And the reality of practice being necessary for activities
• 14:04
  of any sort is antithetical to this sacred cow of sex as this
• 14:08
  special thing where two blessed souls come together as one.
• 14:12
  And that's like, crazy because you don't actually know how to
• 14:15
  do that. You know, like the odds of a
• 14:17
  woman having an orgasm in her first sexual encounter are
• 14:19
  pretty much nil, obviously. You could see why that would be,
• 14:23
  right? You know?
• 14:24
  And it was interesting, the Facebook stuff, super
• 14:27
  interesting because I get like a lot of good feedback.
• 14:29
  That helps me understand things. I had never really thought about
• 14:31
  it from this perspective. It's very simple.
• 14:34
  But a guy said in his comment that when he was young, he felt
• 14:37
  that if he was enjoying himself in that moment, so was she.
• 14:42
  It's like a complete lack of theory of mind, you know,
• 14:46
  complete lack of empathy. But like, it's so common, you
• 14:50
  know, it's and from both genders too.
• 14:52
  It's like the woman is at the Pumpkin Festival.
• 14:54
  I always use the Pumpkin festival as my funny female
• 14:58
  centric activity. She's at the Pumpkin Festival.
• 15:00
  The sun is shining, the kids are so cute.
• 15:03
  The pumpkins are out. You know, she just had a cup of
• 15:06
  coffee. She's feeling so fall vibes and
• 15:09
  so she looks over at him and it's totally normal human thing
• 15:13
  to think he must be feeling the same way.
• 15:16
  Meanwhile, he's like, get me the fuck out of this, wasting my
• 15:19
  goddamn day. I got to get up tomorrow for
• 15:21
  work. All I wanted to do is relax,
• 15:23
  right? But if he smiles back at her,
• 15:25
  which he totally should to be a pal, you know, people need to
• 15:28
  sacrifice for one another in a relationship, then she thinks
• 15:31
  that they're feeling the same thing.
• 15:34
  They're not, you know, So this young guy in the Facebook
• 15:39
  comment who's the representative for probably all young teenage
• 15:42
  boys thought, oh, I'm feeling that this is amazing.
• 15:46
  Like having intercourse with her is the best thing that ever
• 15:48
  happened to me. This is awesome.
• 15:50
  She must be feeling something similar.
• 15:53
  She's not. You know, in nine out of 10
• 15:56
  cases with a young guy, if he doesn't know what he's doing,
• 15:59
  right. So, So it's it's totally normal
• 16:03
  for people not to be able to zip into each other's minds and if
• 16:06
  they've, especially if they've never talked about a topic.
• 16:09
  But this is what therapy can do. Therapy can open up the
• 16:11
  conversation that these two people are having incredibly
• 16:14
  different experiences in bed. They need incredibly different
• 16:17
  things. They may not have the same
• 16:19
  erotic preferences, Blueprints, fantasies, ideas, ways they want
• 16:23
  to be touched, etcetera, etcetera.
• 16:25
  And you got to talk about that stuff to understand.
• 16:29
  So I, I really, I learn every single day, you know, And
• 16:34
  something that I have learned very recently is that, you know,
• 16:38
  I and I would talk about this before.
• 16:39
  I just didn't realize how prevalent it was.
• 16:41
  But that guys don't really understand.
• 16:44
  Many guys don't understand that foreplay is like necessary for
• 16:48
  many women. Like, absolutely necessary.
• 16:51
  Essential. You need that, you know, because
• 16:54
  they don't. So and then this isn't
• 16:56
  everybody, and there's plenty of guys who love foreplay, and it's
• 16:59
  a huge myth that guys don't like foreplay.
• 17:01
  But for a guy, foreplay is awesome.
• 17:03
  It's an awesome addon. It makes sex awesome.
• 17:06
  And as they get older and they have more erectile issues than
• 17:08
  foreplay may be necessary, but for a young guy, they could just
• 17:12
  do it. They just literally have
• 17:14
  intercourse. And the woman?
• 17:15
  Just usually. Unless she's extremely unusual
• 17:19
  because only 25% of women can have an orgasm from intercourse
• 17:22
  alone without clitoral stimulation, then she can't
• 17:25
  enjoy it. She just can't.
• 17:27
  That's not how her body is shaped like.
• 17:30
  She just can't. So this in and of itself, I
• 17:33
  thought this was like a minority kind of guys who didn't know
• 17:35
  about foreplay. It isn't.
• 17:37
  And particularly guys who are raised in cultures where you're
• 17:40
  not supposed to talk about sex. Masturbation is shameful.
• 17:43
  Porn doesn't talk about four. Porn doesn't show you foreplay.
• 17:46
  So it's kind of these are the women who are saying all over
• 17:49
  the Internet the guys are bad in bed these that.
• 17:52
  That's why. Because the guys don't
• 17:54
  understand that like how a woman's body works.
• 17:57
  You know, we offer a lot of the stuff in my practice, by the
• 18:00
  way, all about how a woman's body works.
• 18:02
  There's some anatomy of a vulva course coming up from Heather.
• 18:06
  The intimacy coach should always go on Best Life Behavioral
• 18:08
  health.com. I put this in my description.
• 18:12
  There are very I have podcasts about it.
• 18:15
  I have oral sex on women. I have ones about blowjobs.
• 18:18
  I have ones about foreplay. Everyone's on female arousal.
• 18:22
  Do you know what it looks like? Because a lot of men don't.
• 18:25
  Literally. She's a young woman.
• 18:27
  They the inside of her is literally wet because it is a
• 18:31
  mucous membrane. So they assume that that's what
• 18:33
  they're talking about. I'm so wet, et cetera.
• 18:36
  And porn. They don't know She gets
• 18:37
  wetterer when she's turned on because they've never seen a
• 18:39
  woman turned on because they just have sex with her right
• 18:41
  away. There's just so much to learn,
• 18:43
  people. There's just so much to learn
• 18:46
  and all of this can be taught, you know and all of this can be
• 18:49
  understood, but not if somebody doesn't know because they've
• 18:52
  been trained to think that when you're in love, sex will follow.
• 18:55
  When you're in love sex, good sex, sex can follow, but not
• 18:58
  good sex. You know because you have to
• 19:00
  practice at anything. All right well I hope that this
• 19:02
  was useful and eye opening to any of you that were raised in
• 19:06
  any sort of anti sex culture or a culture that said that sex
• 19:12
  would just be something that magically happened for you when
• 19:15
  you found the right person and you were in love and married a
• 19:18
  lot of you And and if if only you get this, you're not the
• 19:22
  only one who struggles with this.
• 19:23
  If you were raised in that kind of culture, there's loads of you
• 19:25
  struggling with your sex lives and you should reach out for
• 19:28
  help, you know. And a lot of what I do is to
• 19:31
  normalize feeling bad. You know, when people feel bad,
• 19:34
  they often feel like they're the only freak that feels bad that
• 19:37
  can't get their sex life to work or their love life or whatever
• 19:40
  they're upset about to work with themselves or their partner.
• 19:43
  And so they're a freak. You're not a freak.
• 19:45
  You're just somebody who didn't practice.
• 19:46
  You're somebody who doesn't have knowledge.
• 19:48
  You're somebody who did never, never got certain things taught
• 19:51
  to you. We're told that those things
• 19:52
  were not needed to be taught or you don't even know what what
• 19:55
  can be taught, etcetera, etcetera.
• 19:57
  So I hope this was useful to you guys and I'll talk to Y'all
• 20:00
  soon. Have a great day.