Latest / Libido Lounge / Can You Heal From Betrayal with Dr. Bruce Chalmer

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Can You Heal From Betrayal with Dr. Bruce Chalmer · Libido Lounge

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It is a practice of faith where you recognize there must be some meaning here.
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There's something important about this.
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When you can actually have that deep sense that, god, this is painful, but you can learn
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from it.
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You can you can grow from it.
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And it it takes time.
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Like any sort of recovery from trauma, inevitably, we blame ourselves when something
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bad happens, even if there's no moral sense we should be blaming ourselves.
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Forgiveness is a really important first step, and I lay out three steps to forgiveness.
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The first step is The second step is And the third step, I have a funny name for, and you
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don't have to be religious to appreciate this step.
0:39
I call it Good sex.
0:42
I simply mean, simply, good sex is when it's not just sex.
0:46
It's we have three levels.
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I have plain old sex, good sex, and sacred sex.
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Plain old sex simply requires couples need those moments of intimacy as much as they need
0:55
stability.
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Sacred sex, to get from good sex to sacred, it's really more about the vast majority of
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couples I work with.
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They're not having stability issues.
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More often, they're having intimacy issues.
1:06
It's not something you can engineer.
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It's something you can lay the groundwork for.
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Hey, everybody.
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Now back to our show.
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Hey, everybody.
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This is doctor Diane, your host of the Libido Lounge.
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I'm so excited about today's guest, doctor Bruce Chalmer.
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We are getting into so many important topics today.
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One of the most important topics we're gonna talk about is forgiveness.
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And it's really cool to have doctor Bruce on the show with me because I know this is
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something that I have even spent a decent amount of time myself looking up on Wikipedia
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and other types of platforms like that.
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Like, is forgiveness and how do we define it?
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And I think so many times, we get in our way of forgiveness, and we hold this energy, and we
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hold this frequency, and the anger, and all these things, simply because we don't
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understand it.
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And it not only damages ourselves, but it damages the re- the relationship.
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I know there's been things in my past that forgiveness has been a real challenge and a lot
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of personal energy working to, to actually forgive people in my life.
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So and I'm really, really excited to go into this conversation today.
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So, Bruce, thank you so much for being here with me.
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Well, I'm delighted.
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Thanks for having me on.
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Yeah.
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I'd I'd it's funny to say I love to talk about forgiveness because it's it's a topic that
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involves all kinds of pain.
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You only need to forgive when you're in a lot of pain, but I do find it's an important thing
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to talk about.
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And let's define it.
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And I think, like, defining, like, what is forgiveness, like Gay said, like, like, it's a
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challenging thing, and I think due to society, due to upbringing, due to religion, we have a
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lot Like, one of the things when I've researched this is there's a lot of different
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definitions out there of what people actually think forgiveness is.
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Yeah.
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So let's start with what is forgiveness?
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How are you defining it?
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So, you know, if you boil them all down, I'm sure I'm oversimplifying, but if you boil them
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all down, there's basically two ways to define forgiveness, and there's the way I like and the
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way I don't.
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So I'll start with the way I don't.
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I say I don't like it, but it's a very common way of defining forgiveness.
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A lot of times when people say they'll forgive someone who's hurt them badly, what they mean
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is they'll restore the relationship.
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If I forgive someone who's hurt me, okay, I can perhaps trust them again.
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We'll go back to where we were.
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You know, it's kind of like when people use the term forgiving a financial debt.
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To forgive the debt is saying, You know what?
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You don't owe me the money anymore.
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Let's just move on.
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That's one way of defining forgiveness.
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I don't like that way, And let me tell you the way I like.
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The way I like is where forgivenessand I did not coin this phrase, but I love itforgiveness
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is an inside job, which is to say, I can forgive someone I don't trust at all.
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I can forgive someone I have absolutely no intention of restoring a relationship with.
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I can forgive somebody that I'm still going to sue or divorce or prosecute in court.
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I can forgive all kinds of people that don't, in any sort of moral sense, deserve
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forgiveness.
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I can forgive people who have no remorse, who have no understanding of what they did.
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In that sense, forgiveness is all about that internal sense.
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I can get past the essential trauma.
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I cannot be obsessed with it.
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I can think about it, have some perspective on it, recognize, yeah, well, that happened.
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I wish it hadn't.
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Maybe I understand why it did, and maybe I didn't.
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Maybe I had a part of it, and maybe I didn't.
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But all of that I can have perspective on so I'm not freaking out.
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And that's what I mean by forgiveness.
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And the reason I like that better than the other one is it's empowering because you
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recognize you're no longer at the mercy of someone else's attitudes or, you know, someone
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whether or not they apologize or whatever.
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You're not carrying around the hurt.
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And I would be remiss if I didn't quote Anne Lamott that so many people quote around
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forgiveness because it's a lovely quote.
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I'm sure I won't put the words exactly right.
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But she said essentially, to not forgive is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the
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rat to die.
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And as I like to point out, yeah, once you get the poison out of you, then you can worry about
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the rat.
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You know, the rat might still be there or it might still be a rat.
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But if you got the poison out of you, you can think more clearly.
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You're not, you know, distracted by panic.
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Yeah.
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I like that definition a lot because I think where people get stuck, and I know when I've
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looked this definition up where I was getting stuck, was thinking that it almost like says,
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okay, that behavior or that thing was okay.
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Right?
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And what you're saying is like, we're not, we're not saying that, Hey, whatever somebody
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did was maybe okay.
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Like, you could've been wrong, you could've been hurt, you could've been all these things.
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And it's not saying their behavior is okay, it's saying you're changing your nervous system
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response to it so that you can live a healthier life and still deal or still say say navigate
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if you need to, if you need to keep a relationship with that person, still navigate
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in a way that your nervous system can, say, handle better.
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Correct?
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Yes.
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Yes, exactly.
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Yeah.
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That's the sense, you know, if you think of it in terms of, processing trauma, to use this
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sort of trauma language, you know?
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Yeah.
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It's like when you process the trauma, you're no longer freaking out whenever you think of
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it.
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Your brain has learned that the memory of the events is safe.
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The events weren't, but the memory is safe.
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And so you're not distracted by it if you get reminded of it, which of course you get
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reminded of things all the time, consciously or not.
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So in that sense, yes, that is exactly how I like to think about forgiveness.
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And it gives you, as I mentioned earlier, it empowers you.
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It gives you the sense that, Okay, I could actually do something about this.
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Then you can figure out if you can rebuild trust with someone, if you want to maintain or
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if you need to maintain a relationship with someone.
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And that's a whole different set of issues.
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That's not an inside job.
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That involves both people.
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The forgiveness is a really important first step.
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And I lay out in that book you mentioned, I lay out three steps to forgiveness.
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And of course, anytime anybody lays out three steps, you know it's partly baloney because
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that's not how life works.
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But having said that, yes, I have my three steps.
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And I'll just briefly say what they are.
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The first step is to forgive yourself because inevitably, we blame ourselves when something
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bad happens, even if there's no moral sense we should be blaming ourselves.
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It's a that's part of the survival mechanism.
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It's like, okay, gives me a sense I have some control even if I don't.
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So I'm at to blame myself, so I need to forgive myself.
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The second step is forgive whoever hurts you.
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And that I claim is a fairly short step from forgiving myself, because if I've forgiven
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myself genuinely, if I've really gotten to the point of saying, you know what, I didn't know
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what I didn't know.
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I knew what I knew.
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I didn't know what I didn't know.
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I guess I was doing the best I could.
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I'm not evil or stupid or crazy.
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I just kind of blew it, but that's what happens when you don't know enough, you know.
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I could apply that to the person who hurt me too.
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Again, I'm not trying to say there's no moral culpability.
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I'm just saying, well, I guess that's what they came up with.
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You know, bummer that they did, but that's what they came up with.
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They were doing the best they could do.
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I don't want be angry about it.
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Now I can figure out what do I want to do.
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And the third step I have a funny name for, and you don't have to be religious to appreciate
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this step.
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I call it forgiving God.
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And what I simply mean by that is how could we live in this world where we have this this
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tantalizing sense that we're in control of things, which is largely an illusion?
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You know, we think we're controlling some stuff.
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We do have influence, but shit happens, and we get hurt by it, and we need to forgive the fact
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that that's the case, sort of forgiving the universe for that.
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And I think that's a really important step too because then it's it it leads to a mindset that
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says, wow, this whole reality business is actually good to be what it is even if it's
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painful sometimes.
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And that's I call that mindset faith.
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Again, not necessarily religious.
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That's what heals.
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That's what gets people to be able to deal with you know, to see the meaning in it and not just
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freak out and say, oh, we just wanna go back to how it was because how it was won't work.
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How it was is what got you into trouble.
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Yeah.
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It's really helpful.
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And I think that I like the step three oftentimes too because it's so easy from a
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standpoint of losing, say, power within oneself to start, say, projecting and say, well, this
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is that fault of of God, the universe, that energy, whatever it is that that we that
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anybody believes in.
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And in doing that, we can lose some sense of power.
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So even by saying, like, forgiving on that level, like, energetically, the universe, God,
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at large, we begin to, like, put that power, I think, back into ourselves.
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So I think it's a really important step that a lot of people haven't, talked about in this
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realm.
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So you bring up trust, and I think trust is a really important place to go next because,
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especially since you a lot of your work is with couples and relationships and that sort of
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thing and that is what we talk about on this show.
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But many times, if we're dealing with forgiveness and we're talking about
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forgiveness, there is a fundamental trust that probably has been broken and
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Oh, yeah.
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Right?
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And that leads to so much feeling for so many people of not feeling safe in their
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relationships, maybe not feeling safe in themselves.
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And I don't think, like, it's news to anybody that this can be a big pivotal The loss of
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trust can be a big pivotal turning point that if people do wanna reconcile their relationship
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and this is not addressed, oftentimes it's a slippery slope downhill from here.
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Oh, yeah.
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So where do people go?
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Right?
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So it's like, okay, taking the time to forgive oneself, forgive their partner, and it sounds
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like this is done through a lot of like self talk or like what is can actually before I go
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to the trust thing, let's take a step back.
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And like from the standpoint of forgiveness, how what is that process?
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I understand the three steps, but, like, if somebody's trying to take that first step to
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forgive themselves, what exactly are they doing there?
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Yeah.
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You know?
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So here is my gross oversimplification of that, I'm sure, you know?
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Yeah.
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How do you how do you lead someone there?
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I don't have a simple formula that says, oh, you know, self talk.
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You know?
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Say these affirmations and everything will be fine.
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I I don't tend to think that's true.
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You know?
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I think the affirmation it's not that affirmations are bad, but the affirmations
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often follow from feeling better rather than the affirmations making you feel better.
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You know, it's something of a bootstrap process, I suppose.
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I boil it back down to that one word faith that if you can actually practice, and it is a
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practice.
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It's not a knowledge you can learn.
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It's not something that, you know, it's not something you can simply repeat to yourself.
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It is a practice of faith where you recognize there must be some meaning here.
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There's something important about this.
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That's how you can get to that place of forgiveness.
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You know, Viktor Frankl, his book on Man's Search for Meaning, where he here is he
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survived Auschwitz, One of very few people in the group of people he went with who did, and
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found meaning in that, in pure evil.
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It's not that he's he doesn't deny it's pure evil, but he was able to find meaning in that
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suffering.
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That's the sense of faith I'm talking about, that when you can actually have that deep sense
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that, god, this is painful, but you can learn from it, you can grow from it, That's how you
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can get to that place of forgiveness.
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And it it takes time, like any sort of recovery from trauma.
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Now back to our show.
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Takes time.
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One of my I was trained.
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I did a lot of work before I did before I got sort of almost exclusively into couples many
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years ago.
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I did quite a bit of work working with trauma survivors.
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I'm trained in EMDR, and I'm trained in hypnosis.
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And the work there, all the various therapies that work with trauma basically invites you to
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go there in your mind without freaking out.
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If you can actually go there without freaking the fuck out, that's basically what'll work.
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Yeah.
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Then you have a shot at your brain learning, oh, these memories are safe and you can recover
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from it.
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So the forgiveness process is certainly, from a therapy standpoint, is a lot about going to
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those places and what the therapist is providing.
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I think more than any of our fancy techniques, what we're providing is faith.
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We're saying, wow, this whole thing is, it can be meaningful.
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You can learn from this.
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Know, I've had many people go through that sort of process.
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I've never had anybody say to their partner, hey, thanks for cheating.
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Haven't heard that one yet.
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I've heard lots of people say, in effect, thanks for precipitating that crisis, because
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we're so much better off now.
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Yeah.
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And that's what I mean by that sense of faith.
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If you go in with that sense that, boy, this is painful, but I'll bet we can we can grow from
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it, that's what lets you get to that place of forgiveness, I think.
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Yeah.
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Go ahead.
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I was just gonna say it's so so well said.
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I mean, I think in oversimplifying things, it's really finding the silver lining.
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-ASHLEY: -Right?
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Which, like you said, through trauma, it's like finding a silver lining is it's a daily
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practice and a daily work when there's so much pain and there's so much hurt.
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So, I I like that a lot.
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It's not as simple like, I love EMDR and some of those other therapy, know, types of
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therapies you mentioned.
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At the same time, like like you said, it's like all they're doing is they're bringing that
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processing to the prefrontal cortex where we have reasoning we can actually think and
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process these things without emotion.
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So we're still in many ways doing the same thing.
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We're just it's just a different way of helping our brain find that that silver lining so we
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can begin to let go of the trauma.
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Mhmm.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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Absolutely.
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And, you know, rebuilding trust then is, first of all, it works a lot better if you can think
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clearly to see if you even want to try that with a partner.
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And if you do, if you have good reason to want to do that, and of course, simply being a, say,
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a married couple or people who've been together a long time, especially if they have kids, they
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have enormous reason to wanna do that.
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Even if they decide to divorce, they have enormous reason to wanna be able to work
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together as parents.
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So that building of trust is a lot I'll put it in the contrapositive terms.
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Is that is that the nerdy word?
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It can't happen if you haven't had some level of forgiveness because you're too distracted by
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panic.
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Even if you've forgiven, rebuilding trust then is about reaching a level of understanding
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sufficient to be able to say, wow, I can imagine a person that I rebuild trust with
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having done something that they did.
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I understand it enough.
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I see where it came from, and I also see from them, and so to say this involves both people,
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I also see from them that they understand it enough that they have reason to be able to
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reassure me they wouldn't do it again, not because it's just, oh, no.
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We'll go back to how it was.
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That's nonsense, but because they've learned what they needed to learn.
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And they also often the trusting works both ways.
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It's really surprising.
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You know, the the person who was cheated on, let's say, if it was kind of, you know,
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infidelity sort of situation, the person who's cheated on is often feeling, how can I trust
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this person not to cheat?
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The person who did the cheating, if they have gotten to that place of forgiving themselves,
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forgiving their partner, they need to trust their partner too.
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Among other things, they need to trust that their partner won't keep hating them or won't
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keep you know, they most folks don't wanna be in a permanent, you know, permanent villain
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role or, you know, permanent probationer role where their partner is then their probation
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officer.
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That's not usually how people wanna live, and so to get past that requires that both parties
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have this real sense of of, you know, that they're they're made whole again, and they can
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appreciate what they went through to get there.
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Do you have in your process, like, anything because I I'm thinking about a situation,
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right, where somebody's cheated on, and I think a common thing that goes through in infidelity
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or in anything that's a major trauma is this a question of, well, do we actually want to
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continue together?
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Right?
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Mhmm.
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When because it's like there is a ton of work that goes into everything we're talking about
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here.
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Like, where the the reparation on both sides, it can be pretty major and, you know, it can
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take weeks, months, and years even to to fully repair from this some of this stuff sometimes.
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So do you have a part of your process at all that helps individuals within the context of a
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couple actually go through and ask themselves questions or just do any sort of processing
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around what is the right step after this?
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Like, do I actually want to continue with this or do I wanna do something else?
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How do you how do you guide people that way?
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Yeah.
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You know, there there are, of course, zillions of different approaches on this.
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Yeah.
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My favorite way, I don't tend to make that a binary question, certainly not early on.
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It's an implicit question right from the get go.
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They're wondering, well, okay, how's this gonna turn out?
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You know, what are we gonna decide to do?
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And I absolutely respect that from day one and also recognize that that is not it's often not
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a simple decision.
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It's not a simple, well, obviously, we have to split up or, obviously, we, we're going to stay
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together.
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And so you have to one of my favorite little phrases my wife and I, you mentioned we do a
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podcast, and we've said, if people did a drinking game, every time I said the phrase
19:46
tolerate the anxiety, they would be drunk by the end of the podcast.
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I say that a lot.
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It's about tolerating the anxiety.
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Yeah.
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That sense that if you can sit with not knowing for a while and, you know, and I have such
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sympathy for people who can't they can't stand it, and I'm not I don't I'm not judgmental
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about that.
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I can well understand that.
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You know, the the only certainty you have available to you early on in in this or anytime
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in the process, the only thing you can be certain about is you can file for divorce in in
20:16
all the states in in our country now.
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I think it's true.
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Either party can file for divorce, and they don't have I I think they're pretty much all no
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fault now as far as I know.
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Maybe there is exceptions.
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But which is to say you don't have to concoct some sort of scheme proving a particular sort
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of, you know, abuse or infidelity or something like that.
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You can simply say, I want out, and you get to get out.
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And that at least gives you some sense of power.
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Well, okay.
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You can end it.
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But if you don't wanna end it, you're gonna be stuck with some uncertainty for a as you go
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through the healing process.
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So I don't have a sort of black and white approach.
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Now, having said that, I want to mention with respect, there are folks who do, and I'm
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forgetting the particular buzzword that they use to describe this, But there are folks who
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will say, we're gonna meet for six weeks or whatever it is, and the focus will be solely on
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do you wanna continue the work, or do you wanna split up?
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That will be the sole focus.
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And I, you know, I respect that.
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That doesn't I don't wanna work that way because it feels to me like it's making things
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too black and white when they need to be fuzzy for a while.
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But I don't know.
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That's not exactly a scientific argument, is it?
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So I respect that approach because that's not how I like to work.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And that's I mean, I think there's different lots of different types and ways for different
21:36
couples, and that's what's amazing about the work of many in the world is that we get to
21:40
choose the right thing for us, and the right approach for us in any, you know, any situation
21:45
in life, or in relationship.
21:46
And, you know, this thing you're you're talking about around in talk, like, or tolerating the
21:51
anxiety, I think is so important because I think it's it's like a rare thing in life that
21:57
we're actually taught, like, especially like at a young age to tolerate discomfort.
22:03
Yeah.
22:03
And in a world where comfort is the thing that drives, is one of the key, I think,
22:08
motivational drivers for people.
22:11
This thing of like being uncomfortable and being pain and being anxious is just there's so
22:15
much of this tendency to just like, what do I have to do to get rid of it as fast as
22:19
possible?
22:20
Yeah.
22:21
And that's natural.
22:21
That's normal.
22:22
I mean, I feel that too.
22:24
But from a standpoint of fixing things and of choosing things and of having time to process
22:30
things and making up decisions and not making decisions in that intense nervous system state,
22:35
which is not always the best decision.
22:37
Yeah.
22:37
You know, tolerating that is is really important.
22:40
I wanna move us on since we, only have a certain amount of time today, although I feel
22:45
like we could talk forever, to talk about one of the things you talk about also in your work
22:50
is the difference between good sex and sacred sex.
22:54
Yeah.
22:54
So I wanted to talk about a little bit about that, especially since libido and sex is one of
22:58
the things that comes up, you know, most from our listeners as well as far as what they wanna
23:02
hear.
23:03
So can you differentiate though between both?
23:05
Actually, I have three levels.
23:07
I have plain old sex, good sex, and sacred sex.
23:09
But what was the first one?
23:10
Plain old sex.
23:11
Oh, plain old.
23:12
I think the title of the chapter was in my book, reigniting this far.
23:15
The title of the chapter was sex, good sex, and sacred sex.
23:18
But the sex, I mean plain old sex.
23:20
What do I mean by plain old sex?
23:21
Well, anything you think it is.
23:22
Yeah.
23:23
So if you think it's sex, it's sex.
23:25
Yeah.
23:25
I'm not being really fussy about how I define that.
23:29
It's whatever you think sex is.
23:30
So obviously not just intercourse, not even just general stuff.
23:34
I mean, it's whatever you think of sex, broadly or narrowly.
23:38
Plain old sex simply requires that you more or less not be freaking out at the very prospect.
23:43
Now, people who've gone through sexual trauma, which is, of course, unfortunately, very many
23:46
people, that's an issue.
23:48
They need to recover from that to even be able to have plain old sex without it being
23:51
horrible.
23:52
So that's for plain old sex.
23:53
You just need basically to not be in a state of panic.
23:56
For that, it also helps to have some basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology, You know,
24:01
what's where and what does what.
24:03
That's basically anatomy and physiology.
24:05
And for many people, and I'm sure not to mansplain to the woman in the conversation, but
24:11
I guess for a lot of women, that's a particular issue.
24:13
It's like, what's down there, how's my body work?
24:15
You know, usually men aren't unsure about what's down there and more or less how it
24:19
works.
24:20
Though I have to say, I wanna put in a plug for you.
24:23
I think as we're recording this at your most recent one that dropped, which was with Matt
24:29
Sturm.
24:29
Yeah.
24:30
Yeah.
24:30
About, yeah, non ejaculatory orgasm, which I have often talked about with folks as well, and
24:36
an incredibly important thing if men can manage to learn that.
24:40
Anyway, all about that's plain old sex.
24:43
Good sex, I simply mean simply, good sex is when it's not just sex, it's intimate.
24:49
And by intimate, I don't mean necessarily that it's quiet and romantic.
24:53
It could be loud and, you know, very I'm shying away from the word violent, but, you know,
24:58
rough or whatever, whatever people want.
25:01
But it means you're present, when you're actually present in your body.
25:05
I define intimacy pretty broadly as when you are present and honest with yourself and each
25:10
other.
25:10
And to be that way and nobody's that way 20 fourseven.
25:14
I am not always present with myself all the time.
25:16
I'm distracted a lot.
25:17
Damn, smartphones.
25:18
You know?
25:19
Whatever.
25:21
There's all kinds of way life.
25:22
Exactly.
25:23
Yes.
25:23
But those moments and one of the things I claim is that couples need those moments of intimacy
25:28
as much as they need stability.
25:30
That's another issue.
25:31
But what were you so for good sex, you need to be actually present.
25:36
And that's remember, we were talking about tolerating the anxiety.
25:39
That's a lot about that.
25:40
That's a lot about being willing to say things to your partner that you're worried your
25:44
partner is going to think weird, or fantasies, or to be able to talk about stuff, whether it's
25:50
politically correct or not, and say, oh, this is a fantasy even if we don't actually enact
25:56
it, that this turns me on, that kind of stuff conversation.
25:59
So that's intimate sex, or good sex.
26:01
I call that good sex.
26:03
Sacred sex, to get from good sex to sacred, it's really more about the sacred than it is
26:07
about the sex.
26:09
Now I I think you you had mentioned in that in that podcast that you heard about tantra.
26:13
You know, you've you have probably more familiarity than I do.
26:15
I mean, I've read what I've read.
26:16
We've interviewed quite several people on our podcast who are really tantra folks.
26:21
I love it.
26:22
And it's all about that sense that the whatever the sex is, it isn't just about the couple
26:28
anymore.
26:29
It's joining forces that are much bigger.
26:32
And so that is something, as I say, much more about the sacred per se than it is about sex.
26:37
Sex is just a good example.
26:39
I think I mentioned in the book, you know, why sacred sex as opposed to, you know, sacred dish
26:45
doing?
26:46
And of course, some people would say, well, there is such a thing as sacred dish doing if
26:50
you are present in that sense of sacred.
26:52
It can be, but the forces of sex are so amenable.
26:57
They're so awesome, literally.
26:59
They're awe inspiring.
27:01
The first time anybody's had an orgasm, perhaps, if wasn't unpleasant, and I know there
27:06
are trauma situations where that happens.
27:08
But often, the first time someone has an orgasm, it's awe inspiring.
27:12
It's like, oh my god.
27:13
Where did this force come from?
27:15
And that is very amenable to that sense of being joined with the universe in some much
27:22
larger ways than just the two people involved or however many people involved.
27:26
Yeah.
27:26
I love it.
27:27
Thank you for explaining that.
27:28
I I love how we can take concepts.
27:30
Like, of my favorite things is like, what happens in the bedroom or wherever we're
27:34
intimate is actually a reflection in many ways of what happens outside of the bedroom.
27:39
And, you know, it's like we can take basic things that there's a lot of research on, like
27:43
meditation and mindfulness and these sorts of things that also in some sense, and in many
27:48
sense when people get deeper and deeper with practices like that, are ways of connecting to
27:53
the divine, ways of connecting to the feeling of awe and all that.
27:57
And I say this because I've done like, I've done thirty six day meditation retreats.
28:00
I've like gone very, very deep into the meditation world.
28:04
And one of my favorite things to say is like, I think sex is better than meditation.
28:08
Right?
28:08
When we're really in that sacred sex like type of thing you're talking about and we're
28:12
connected to that all as something greater, and something cosmic, and beautiful, and we're a %
28:18
present.
28:19
Mhmm.
28:19
You know, we're a % present in our body, and it's a it's a real big practice there.
28:24
So, do you, in your work, do you help?
28:27
And is this in your, your book on this?
28:29
Do you help couples or individuals, like, learn how to tap into these, you know, different
28:35
types of sex and how to actually start exploring them?
28:39
Yeah.
28:39
You know, I suppose if I were gonna talk about what have I written about and what do I talk
28:43
with folks about, I talk about the distinction.
28:46
I don't, you know, I don't lead, like, workshops on how to how to get to that level of
28:51
sacred sex.
28:52
I mostly talk about more about the intimate part.
28:56
Yeah.
28:56
So a lot of the work I do with couples yeah, the considerable majority, I was gonna say
29:02
vast, I think that's true.
29:03
The vast majority of couples I work with, they're not having stability issues.
29:07
More often, they're having intimacy issues, And intimacy is all about that.
29:11
So good sex is all about that.
29:12
And we're often talking about both sex and intimacy more generally.
29:16
And so I do talk a lot about ways to get there.
29:21
Again, all about tolerating the anxiety.
29:23
I don't talk a lot about, okay, here are some practices that can invite you into that sacred
29:29
mode other than the fact of saying, hey, read up on that stuff, or, you know but the more you
29:35
get into I I do have a a sense, and I think this is true of peak experience in general,
29:40
it's not something you can engineer.
29:42
It's something you can lay the groundwork for so that you engage in practices.
29:47
This is no different from daily prayer practices people have or daily meditation
29:52
practices.
29:53
You might have the occasional experience of this astonishing unity with the divine or
29:57
whatever you wanna say, but you can't make that happen in any given circumstance.
30:02
You can simply get good at it, and then it can happen.
30:04
And I think that's true of sacred sex as well.
30:06
So it's know, I don't I don't, have I don't have workshops on tantra and stuff like that,
30:11
but I I mention it to people.
30:13
Beautiful.
30:13
I love it.
30:14
Well, I know we're about out of time today.
30:16
I wanna make sure we know that people know how to get ahold of you.
30:20
I wanna make sure people know how to get your book and any other offerings, and your books, I
30:25
should say.
30:25
I just know there's, you know, your betrayal and forgiveness is the new one.
30:29
And then, of course, I want everybody to know that we are also offering part two of this
30:34
interview with doctor Bruce here.
30:36
And so part two, we're talking about stability and intimacy.
30:40
These two forces that are almost almost seem kinda like, contradictory to people where it's
30:46
like, okay, how can I feel safe?
30:48
How can I feel stable in a partnership?
30:50
And still how can I do all these things that cultivate that intimacy?
30:54
And sometimes they almost feel like they're opposite things that are needed.
30:56
Sometimes they're the same.
30:57
At least that's my experience.
30:59
So I'm gonna talk to doctor Bruce about that more here in part two, so make sure you look in
31:04
the show notes and then, so you can understand how to access that, coming out here soon.
31:09
Okay.
31:09
So let's, now tell us, doctor Bruce, tell us please how do people get ahold of you, do
31:14
people get your book, All of those good.
31:15
Yeah.
31:15
Well, best bet is if you just go to BruceChalmer.com, b r u c e c h a l m e r,
31:22
Bruce Chalmer Com, that has sort of links to whatever you might need.
31:27
That links to my practice if people are interested in actually working with me.
31:30
I do all telehealth, so that's doable.
31:33
I have also links there to my books.
31:36
My books are widely available pretty much anywhere you can get I, you know, almost hate
31:41
to do it, but I'll put in a plug for Amazon because that's the more people get on Amazon,
31:44
the more people find out about it, and that's just kind of how it works these days.
31:47
So if you go to Amazon.com, if you search for Doctor.
31:50
Bruce Chalmer, your Doctor.
31:52
Bruce Chalmer, you will find all of my books there, including the book I wrote in 1986 on
31:58
statistics, which is still available, which is kind of hilarious.
32:02
That's another story.
32:05
So you'll find links to that.
32:06
And then, the podcast that my wife and I do, Couples Therapy in Seven Words, available on
32:10
all the podcast platforms.
32:12
You can search for that, or you can go to our podcast website, which is CTinseven.
32:17
That's the numeral seven.
32:18
CT in 7 Com.
32:20
So how to find it.
32:21
And we'll have all of those links, everybody.
32:23
We'll have all of that in the show notes from today's episode.
32:26
So thank you everybody so much for tuning into this episode.
32:30
Please, please, please do me a favor.
32:32
Share this with your friends and family.
32:34
This topic on forgiveness, like, it's just such a big, big conversation that honestly, I think
32:41
we've been figuring and trying to figure out as humans for centuries, for eons, how to do this,
32:46
what it means, and I just think we can't get this information in enough people.
32:50
So if you would please do me a favor and share this with friends and family and anybody you
32:53
think that could could benefit from this information.
32:57
And thank you so much, Bruce, for being here with me today.
33:00
Well, thanks for having me on.
33:02
Everybody, we'll see you real soon for another episode on The Lounge.
33:05
Take care.
33:11
Thank you for listening to the Libido Lounge.
33:13
Please don't keep me a secret.
33:15
Please share this with your friends.
33:16
You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as how to work with me at MyLibidoDoc.com