Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / "Everything Is Fine In Our Marriage Except Sex"

Transcript

"Everything Is Fine In Our Marriage Except Sex" · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:04
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the doctor.
• 0:08
  Psych mom show today, I'm going to be tackling the idea of
• 0:12
  whether it can be really true. When people say everything is
• 0:15
  fine in our marriage except sex before we get into that, please
• 0:20
  do subscribe. My most recent subscriber
• 0:22
  episode was on why your wife may be a far more involved.
• 0:25
  Grandmother one day than you are expecting.
• 0:28
  I also have one child centered marriages work and there's no
• 0:31
  way to be a loving husband while not doing chores, oral Exxon
• 0:35
  women, when your rigidity is harming your relationship with
• 0:37
  your husband and kids, oh, shit, I got a lot of them.
• 0:40
  And why am I advise to have sex with your husband differs from
• 0:43
  religious advice, most men don't criticize their wives in bed and
• 0:46
  what leads to a dynamic where this happens.
• 0:48
  When your wife want your wife to change how she dresses?
• 0:51
  I mean, I got a lot of subscriber episodes out.
• 0:53
  Of course, you know, oh, I mentioned that already oral sex
• 0:57
  on women. That's always a big hit.
• 0:59
  Okay, so everything is fine in our marriage except our sex
• 1:03
  life, you know. And sometimes And people come in
• 1:05
  and say this and you know, it never turns out to be the case.
• 1:08
  Because as I said, in yesterday's podcast, which I did
• 1:13
  do two days in a row just because I felt bad.
• 1:15
  I had said, I will tell you this in tomorrow's episode, but then
• 1:19
  I said, maybe not because I've been doing them every other day.
• 1:21
  But then I said, why the hell not all schedule.
• 1:23
  This one to come out the day after the last one, just for a
• 1:26
  special treat. So as I said, like, there can be
• 1:31
  issues with an individual aspect of the sex life such as You
• 1:34
  know, I gave the example. My wife won't do anal, you know.
• 1:37
  Okay, fine, you want to do, I know your wife won't do anal.
• 1:40
  I mean, all right, you know, maybe she has a bad experience
• 1:43
  with one thing but when it gets Beyond one thing, you know like
• 1:47
  what it gets to like multiple things and an entire feeling
• 1:53
  that just isn't there, then this really goes beyond just the sex
• 1:57
  life, you know. So what it usually means is I is
• 2:00
  the person who has a higher libido Fields constrained and It
• 2:05
  and just kind of demoralized in general in the marriage you
• 2:11
  know, and it could be the woman as well.
• 2:14
  And in this there are women who want their husbands to be more
• 2:17
  adventurous. There were some women rarely
• 2:19
  because over 90% of men enjoy giving oral sex but that's not
• 2:22
  100%. It is like over 95% of her
• 2:26
  something. I looked up the statistic but
• 2:28
  it's not hundred percent. So there are some women
• 2:30
  particularly women who get involved with more self-absorbed
• 2:33
  guys. Where the I won't do that and
• 2:35
  they always want that or where the guy just isn't very creative
• 2:39
  or imaginative in general and bed and they want something more
• 2:42
  creative or adventurous I have poster written about that or
• 2:45
  women that want the guy to be more dominant.
• 2:47
  So like all right so let's take that one that's like an easy one
• 2:50
  to extrapolate from so when women want the guy to be more
• 2:53
  dominant in bed which is like a real common thing to the point
• 2:57
  that I've written a post about it, they don't just want that,
• 3:01
  they want the guy to be more dominant.
• 3:03
  They want him to be more assertive.
• 3:04
  They want him to be more with it, an alpha and on the ball,
• 3:08
  you know, they want him to be proactive, they want this
• 3:11
  everywhere, they don't just wanted him bet.
• 3:13
  You know, I've never heard or seen or can conceive of a woman
• 3:17
  who is like, you know, I just really want him to be like, kind
• 3:19
  of those Couch Potato, the rest of the time.
• 3:21
  But then when it hits 9 p.m. I want him to carry me up the
• 3:23
  stairs. And fuck me that like isn't
• 3:25
  reality. Generally people yearn for the
• 3:29
  person to be different in bed because they want that person to
• 3:31
  be different out of bed as well. They want the dynamic different.
• 3:34
  In bed because they wanted Dynamic different outside of
• 3:37
  bed, but it's too threatening and scary to say that you're
• 3:40
  very unhappy with the entirety of the dynamic.
• 3:44
  That means that maybe you might actually have to think about
• 3:47
  whether you should be together and people don't want to think
• 3:49
  about that, they want to push that under the rug because it's
• 3:51
  scary, you know, and instead they say everything's fine,
• 3:55
  we're very close except the sex life yet, I've not seen that
• 3:59
  hap. So, even in a situation, where
• 4:02
  let's say it's the woman is Right post having a Be right.
• 4:05
  And so she they're not having any sex, they're not even
• 4:08
  outside of their six-week window.
• 4:09
  They can't have any sex and let's say that the baby is
• 4:12
  colicky and and whatever and she just like way off the rails with
• 4:16
  like PPD and she's like not even acting like her old self.
• 4:21
  That's not a sex issue. Like the guy isn't having sex at
• 4:24
  all. But that that's not even that's
• 4:26
  not even in usually what he's thinking about.
• 4:29
  It's like holy shit, like our lives have just been upended.
• 4:31
  How is she doing? Like why is she acting like a
• 4:34
  stranger? ER, etc.
• 4:35
  Etc. So that's a situation where
• 4:37
  they're completely celibate for six weeks.
• 4:39
  And most guys aren't really thinking about it.
• 4:41
  They're just kind of jerking off on the side, you know, I like
• 4:43
  assuming that this is what it is because of a baby and she's and
• 4:47
  worried about their wife if she's like postpartum, you know?
• 4:50
  So if she has postpartum depression, or anxiety or
• 4:53
  anything, right? And so it's sex is never just
• 4:57
  about sex and I have a podcast about that or like let's say the
• 4:59
  woman is where what are? So let's go to a, man, let's say
• 5:03
  that the man Has erectile dysfunction.
• 5:06
  If he has erectile dysfunction, then she's going to be upset
• 5:09
  about that. But it's like, you know, there
• 5:12
  are things to do about that, like, go to a doctor and if a
• 5:15
  man is going to a doctor to treat it, then the woman is
• 5:18
  usually not as upset at all. So if it's a guy that won't go
• 5:22
  to the doctor though, then she may say everything is fine in
• 5:25
  our marriage except our sex life, meaning the erectile
• 5:27
  dysfunction, but in reality, which he means is, everything is
• 5:30
  not fine because my husband is the sort of person who is trying
• 5:33
  to ignore this problem and is Not going to a doctor, that's
• 5:36
  what she's really upset about. And then she's like, you know
• 5:38
  what, this is like everything else.
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  He just lets lets problems lay there and he doesn't deal with
• 5:43
  them and he's not proactive and he doesn't, you know, empathize
• 5:46
  with my experience. And it's not important enough
• 5:49
  for him to get Beyond his embarrassment for the sake of
• 5:51
  the marriage, to go talk to somebody.
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  So that's the real issue. And The Adventurous thing is
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  about feeling like you're not allowed to have the life that
• 6:00
  you want and you're not allowed to grab Life by the horns
• 6:03
  because Thing is a problem and everything is wrong and
• 6:06
  everything needs to go a different way.
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  So just like, you're not allowed to do different positions in
• 6:10
  bed, and you're not allowed to talk in bed, and you're not
• 6:13
  allowed to do this. You're not allowed to do that.
• 6:15
  People who feel like that. Also feel that the person the
• 6:17
  partner is anxious and rigid and many other ways as well and
• 6:21
  they're not allowed to travel in certain ways or they're not
• 6:23
  allowed to take different jobs or they're not allowed to do any
• 6:26
  different with their money or with the house or even in a
• 6:29
  daily schedule or whatever. So, if you think that your
• 6:32
  partner's rigid in bed and we'll only do certain things.
• 6:34
  Things. Then they're usually rigid out
• 6:36
  of bed. If you think that your partner
• 6:38
  is unimaginative in bed, you're usually upset that their
• 6:41
  unimaginative out of bed. So in bed it's kind of a
• 6:45
  microcosm it's as a Proving Ground for other aspects in the
• 6:50
  relationship that you're not happy with because otherwise you
• 6:53
  would just be unhappy with like one thing, you know.
• 6:55
  So there are plenty of people who are unhappy wishing that.
• 6:59
  A partner was better at like one thing, you know that like maybe
• 7:02
  the guy lasted a little bit longer or the Man was a little
• 7:05
  bit better at blow jobs or something, you know?
• 7:08
  But like if you globally say, I am dissatisfied with the
• 7:13
  intimacy in our relationship, usually that means that you are
• 7:16
  dissatisfied with the aspect of your partner's personality that
• 7:19
  is manifesting in the bedroom. And you're also unhappy with how
• 7:22
  that manifests outside of the bedroom but you don't really
• 7:25
  feel like you could talk about it openly because if you did,
• 7:27
  then that would indicate a great problem in the marriage, a
• 7:31
  global problem that you do not want to have to be forced.
• 7:34
  To reckon with because it's scary and intimidating and
• 7:37
  potentially marriage destroying, but that doesn't mean that you
• 7:40
  shouldn't reckon with it. Right?
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  Because otherwise, what happens, you shove problems under the rug
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  and then they come back out at some point and, you know, things
• 7:49
  are worse than they would have been, had you address them
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  earlier on. So the biggest ones that I see
• 7:54
  that couples can productively discuss and work on and couples
• 7:58
  counseling, are the ones that come from anxiety, and the ones
• 8:02
  that come from passivity and anxiety, and passivity, or
• 8:04
  Inked. I frequently see an anxious
• 8:06
  woman partnered with a passive man and she's so anxious that
• 8:11
  she isn't, she acts very controlling about everything
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  because she feels. She does that in part because he
• 8:17
  is so passive. But he feels that he is so
• 8:20
  passive in large part because he is never allowed to try anything
• 8:24
  or do anything. That is not exactly the way she
• 8:26
  wants him to. So, their life in bed, is a
• 8:29
  microcosm of their life outside of bed.
• 8:32
  She is the one who says, what they Can do when they could do
• 8:35
  how they could do it. And still seems disappointed
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  with how he performs and that is how they go outside of bed too.
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  So she says, what they could do with the kids, with parenting
• 8:45
  with the house with travel, with holidays with work, he tries to
• 8:50
  execute, he never gets it. Exactly right.
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  And she's always disappointed and feels that, that's further
• 8:55
  evidence of why she needs to be in charge of everything.
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  Whereas he is fantasizing about a world in which there are
• 9:00
  fewer. Constrictions fewer things that
• 9:03
  he does wrong less disappointed. White man, and where he can feel
• 9:06
  like he could try things and, and see how it goes versus
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  having to, you know, do things the right way.
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  Only her way right from go. So, these kinds of people
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  usually find each other and exacerbate each other's issues
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  in this way. Another common pairing is like a
• 9:24
  woman who is very avoidant, and so she's very avoided in bed.
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  She doesn't like much intimacy. Doesn't like kissing.
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  Doesn't like play doesn't like touching my Much just wants to
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  get down to business and have quick, quick intercourse and
• 9:39
  outside of bed, she's avoided as well.
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  She's very emotionally avoidant and I have a podcast on avoidant
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  wives and he wants more romance, more love, more connection were
• 9:49
  joking more touching but it's not on the table just as it is
• 9:54
  in the bedroom. So it's easier for him to say
• 9:57
  things are bad in the bedroom. Then for him to say, overall, I
• 10:00
  am very dissatisfied with how close we are.
• 10:03
  We're not close. And I like brings us to the, to
• 10:07
  the main issue, which is I when people don't feel closed in the
• 10:11
  bedroom, they just don't feel close generally, you know, I
• 10:14
  mean, they could feel like they're a good team they and,
• 10:18
  you know, what, this has nothing to do with how much sex they're
• 10:19
  having, ironically. So like there are people who
• 10:22
  could feel really close and connected during like a weekly
• 10:25
  sex session or even a biweekly sex session depending on their
• 10:30
  agents stage. I mean every other week because
• 10:33
  bi-weekly can mean either They could feel closer that couple
• 10:37
  could feel closer than a couple who has every other day.
• 10:40
  Five minutes, sex. And there are couples like that
• 10:43
  and that are not happy because it is not about the orgasm, you
• 10:48
  know, it isn't like it isn't just about having the quickie
• 10:50
  and masturbating with another human's body as I discussed, so
• 10:54
  frequently. So if you are only allowed
• 10:56
  basically, to have every type of five minutes sex, but your wife
• 11:01
  thinks that she's doing a good job because it's every other day
• 11:04
  and but she will. Never touch your body, she won't
• 11:06
  let you really touch her body much.
• 11:08
  There is no you know, excitement building.
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  There is no play. There's no, you know, real
• 11:16
  closeness. It's just kind of like a chore
• 11:19
  that you guys do. You know every other day, you
• 11:22
  know, that that leaves something to be desired and you met long
• 11:26
  for more luxurious and counters where you're actually exploring
• 11:30
  one another's bodies but those are never, never able to be
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  found and the people that do Do the quickies are frequently
• 11:36
  very, you know, avoidant of deeper emotion.
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  They don't like to be vulnerable, they don't like to
• 11:43
  put themselves out there, they don't like to put themselves out
• 11:46
  there in any regard though. Is the point, not just in bed.
• 11:50
  Nothing is just in bed. Your sexual style is is
• 11:54
  representative of who you are as a person is the same thing as
• 11:57
  Kinks Kings. Don't come out of nowhere, you
• 12:00
  know. It's not like so a woman likes
• 12:02
  to be like a submissive or a man likes to be a Than that has no
• 12:06
  corollary with any other aspect of their personality.
• 12:10
  It is only solely in the domain of sex, of course not.
• 12:14
  You know? I mean what turns you on is what
• 12:17
  lights your brain up and that's in in other ways as well, in
• 12:21
  many other ways and its core aspect of your of your
• 12:24
  personhood is your sexuality and it has tendrils into every other
• 12:29
  aspect of who you are as a person so sex to sum it up sex
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  life. Problems are not usually
• 12:37
  indicative of of just sex life problems.
• 12:41
  They are life problems, they are relationship problems.
• 12:43
  And if they're thought to be that, then people will get in
• 12:46
  for help at a point where maybe the needle can be moved because
• 12:51
  if you wait too long. Obviously then it's very hard to
• 12:54
  work on problems that have built up resentment for years and
• 12:57
  years. It's a lot harder to work on
• 12:59
  that then things that have just started.
• 13:01
  So if you notice that there are sex life issues and Don't say oh
• 13:06
  there's just sex life issues, everything else is fine and it
• 13:09
  said you think like what are my real issues in this
• 13:12
  relationship. So let's say that like the sex
• 13:15
  was good. What do I feel?
• 13:17
  What would that feel like you know, for the sex to be good.
• 13:20
  So for most people thinking they would say okay, so in bed then I
• 13:23
  would feel free or clothes or understood or accepted or like
• 13:31
  we were connected and then think do you feel Like that outside
• 13:35
  because it's really, I mean, it would I have never truly now
• 13:39
  thinking about it. I've never heard a man say yes,
• 13:42
  I deeply feel that my wife accepts me and approves of me
• 13:46
  everywhere, except in the bedroom.
• 13:49
  No, that's not how it goes. If you can't be your full self
• 13:52
  in the bedroom, you can't say what you need.
• 13:54
  You can't express your fantasies or your desires.
• 13:57
  Then you're also kind of image managing outside the bedroom,
• 14:01
  you know? Because this is not a
• 14:03
  relationship and it takes Right to be in this kind of
• 14:05
  relationship where it's closed off and you're scared to say the
• 14:09
  wrong thing or do the wrong thing.
• 14:11
  So, the guy let's say that won't tell his wife that he has a
• 14:14
  secret fantasy of, you know, whatever the for her to go down
• 14:20
  on him more, right? So he won't tell her that but he
• 14:25
  also doesn't tell her for example when he's anxious about
• 14:28
  money or when he's anxious that he's not a good father or when
• 14:32
  he is worried about the overall meaning of his Life or when he
• 14:36
  thinks that she is struggling with depression or when he
• 14:40
  thinks that she yells at the kids too much.
• 14:42
  Like there isn't a world in which people can talk about
• 14:45
  everything openly and emotionally, except in the
• 14:49
  bedroom. Because if they were really
• 14:50
  talking, if they really had a close and connected an open
• 14:53
  relationship, it would go into the bedroom.
• 14:55
  It would just be without without a doubt, you know, like there it
• 15:00
  doesn't. It wouldn't stop at the door of
• 15:01
  the bedroom. A truly open and close and
• 15:04
  honest relationship. And Chip and communication,
• 15:06
  Dynamic does not stop at the door to the bedroom.
• 15:09
  There would be no reason for it, you know?
• 15:11
  And so generally when people cannot communicate openly in the
• 15:14
  bedroom, it's because they're also not communicating openly
• 15:16
  outside the bedroom and that, honestly, maybe a lot more
• 15:19
  palatable for the low libido partner to work on.
• 15:22
  Is if you say we have communication issues and I don't
• 15:24
  feel like we're close enough versus.
• 15:26
  If you say I want to work on our sex life because then the low
• 15:29
  libido partner may say but everything's fine except our sex
• 15:31
  life and so that'll just come back.
• 15:33
  When you know, the kids are older Or, you know, when we have
• 15:36
  more time or when the kids sleep through the night, or whatever
• 15:40
  the case may be, which you know, is just kicking the can down the
• 15:43
  road. But if you said that there's
• 15:44
  overall closeness issues, which again, I've rarely seen it.
• 15:48
  Not be the case. Then your partner maybe much
• 15:52
  likelier to come into counseling and it is actually true.
• 15:56
  So, I always say like, okay, you can't just work on communication
• 16:00
  and then not work on and I think that that's going to carry
• 16:03
  through into the bedroom. It's not But if you work on
• 16:05
  communication about everything. So what a lot of people do as a
• 16:08
  mistake in couples counseling, is they work on?
• 16:11
  I statements and all of this thing but they never ever talk
• 16:14
  about stuff in the bedroom. So they're still faking because
• 16:17
  the guy is learning to say all these other types of ways of I
• 16:20
  feel statements and so was the woman and whatever, but then
• 16:23
  they never ever talk about the bedroom.
• 16:26
  So there, it's still fake because the guy is still
• 16:29
  thinking but we could still never do this in bed.
• 16:32
  Or we could still never talk about these things.
• 16:34
  I also have a relevant podcast when people don't fully open up
• 16:38
  or when there's rules about what they could say in couples
• 16:40
  counseling, which is really relevant.
• 16:42
  So sometimes the rules are not just what you could say, in
• 16:45
  couples counseling, it's what you could say to each other in
• 16:47
  general. So, like a man could be allowed
• 16:50
  to say to his wife. I don't feel like we have enough
• 16:52
  time together but he's not allowed to say.
• 16:55
  I feel like you're very distant from me in bed or I feel like
• 17:00
  you condescend to my parenting or I feel like you Don't want
• 17:07
  to, you know, touch me or like whatever the case may be.
• 17:11
  There's rules about what people are allowed to complain about
• 17:13
  and what they're not allowed to complain about.
• 17:16
  So in that case, it is, there's a closed-off feeling that
• 17:20
  usually pervades. What goes on in the bedroom as
• 17:22
  well? All right.
• 17:24
  Well, if this was I hope this resonated with you guys or I
• 17:27
  don't hope you're in the situation where this resonates,
• 17:29
  but if you are in the situation where this resonate, and I hope
• 17:32
  that it was useful as a Spective shifter.
• 17:36
  And as always, you know, couples counseling can really help with
• 17:39
  these kinds of issues with getting shit out on the table
• 17:42
  and talking about it more openly, which then can, you
• 17:45
  know, allow you to connect better in the bedroom and
• 17:48
  outside the bedroom. And on that note, I will leave
• 17:51
  and I will talk to you guys soon.
• 17:53
  Bye, bye.