Latest / Libido Lounge / Why Mediocre Relationships Don’t Work | Honest Talk with Matt and Sheri Salis

Transcript

Why Mediocre Relationships Don’t Work | Honest Talk with Matt and Sheri Salis · Libido Lounge

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  We're gonna talk about mediocrity, and we're gonna talk about how many people go through
• 0:05
  their lives, tell their graves in these mediocre kind of relationships just accepting
• 0:10
  that as normal.
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  Really educating ourselves about the fact that desire discrepancy is normal and fine and
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  nobody's broken.
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  Matt Salis is a behavioral health researcher and writer with a master's in sexual health,
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  and Sherry Salis is the star of Intoxicated podcast.
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  Together, they have recovered individually and grown their relationship from Matt's ten years
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  of out acts of alcoholism.
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  Sherry loves her cats and her cats more than Matt, but Matt is gaining on the cats.
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  Emotional safety.
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  It's not just that my direct interactions with Sherry are calm and peaceful and predictable.
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  That's another huge one.
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  But it's also that she witnesses me interacting with the outside world in a calm, predictable,
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  reasonable way as well.
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  There had to be, like, some playfulness and fun that had to also be thrown in there.
• 1:02
  When we're trying to get over that awkwardness of getting back kind of in sync with one one
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  another.
• 1:08
  Doing the work is beneficial, not just to folks that are in recovery, but to to anyone.
• 1:14
  Actually understanding that if if you're not satisfied, the ability to become more than just
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  that direct link.
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  So wanttowantit.com, the name of my book.
• 2:26
  Now back to our show.
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  Hey, everybody.
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  Welcome to another episode on the libido lounge.
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  I'm your host, board certified sexologist, doctor Diane.
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  And today we are gonna talk about a really important thing.
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  We're gonna talk about mediocrity.
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  And we're gonna talk about how many people go through their lives, tell their graves in these
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  mediocre kind of relationships just accepting as normal.
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  Pathologist Doctor Diane and today we are gonna talk about a really important thing.
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  We're gonna talk about mediocrity and we're gonna talk about how many people go through
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  their lives, tell their graves in these mediocre kind of relationships just accepting
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  that as normal.
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  And a lot of what I'm gonna interview and talk to our guests about today is the concept of
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  emotional safety is how to get out of the mediocrity of relationships.
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  We're gonna hear a little bit about their story with alcoholism.
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  And as you're listening to that, I really encourage you to listen to this not just from
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  that lens, but to listen to this from whatever lens if you are in a relationship that you
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  would define as mediocre or even as just like good but could be better, you really wanna
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  listen to this from that lens of how you can apply these techniques, whether, you know,
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  whether it's learned from something major like alcoholism or trauma or something else, and
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  that these techniques are really universal no matter what the cause of any sorts of, you
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  know, dysregulated emotions or emotional, insafety or mediocrity.
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  So we're gonna talk about that.
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  It's gonna be a super fun interview.
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  Welcome to my guests, Sherry and Matt Salees.
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  Thank you for being here.
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  Thanks for having us, doctor Diane.
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  We're happy to be here.
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  Did I get your name right?
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  Did I say that correct in the intro?
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  Do you need
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  It's to correct me at Salis.
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  It's you you were pretty darn close.
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  It's okay.
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  I make sure our listeners hear hear that correctly.
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  So welcome, welcome, welcome.
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  So let's just start.
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  I know some of the the trauma for your guys' relationship was around alcoholism.
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  So can you just tell us a little bit about, like, your background, like, how you got into
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  this work of supporting people here, how what happened when alcoholism was part of the
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  relationship and, you know, just the level of breakdown that you guys had?
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  Sure.
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  I think it I think it started like it does, for many relationships.
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  We met in college in our twenties.
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  Drinking was just a huge part of the culture.
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  It was a part of, you know, just weekends and weekdays and and coping with the stress of
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  school, but more than that, just having fun.
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  We went into early adulthood, and the drinking culture morphed as it does.
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  Young adults in careers, you know, now we've got disposable income, and and we're going out
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  more.
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  And and but I think one of the big red flags that you saw for Sherry was that, I was
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  drinking through the week, and it wasn't social.
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  It was just me in our apartment.
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  Yeah.
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  And that kind of shocked me, I guess, when we when we were in college, drinking was the norm.
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  But I thought once we progressed into our young adult professional lives that the drinking
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  would slow down.
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  And it made me really uncomfortable, and it made me nervous.
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  And I just felt like that you weren't maturing, that you weren't fulfilling this potential that
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  I thought you could have as being a good partner and a good listener, and it led to lots
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  of bickering and arguments.
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  Somewhere along the line, it turned medicinal for me.
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  It turned anxiety and stress relief.
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  And I'd say I had about a ten year period of active alcoholism, and I I note the beginning
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  and the end of that as the first from the first time that I tried to quit and was unsuccessful
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  until I made it to long term sobriety, almost ten years ago now.
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  And the impact that it had on a relationship was just devastating.
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  Trust was broken.
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  I I wasn't so much a a lying sneak drinker, but I was just, you know, prioritizing alcohol over
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  my wife and kids, and that had disastrous consequences.
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  And so finally recognized I needed to get sober.
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  I did that through a variety of methods.
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  I was not a not a 12 step person, not an AA person, but a lot of reading and a lot of
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  writing.
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  I began to publish my writing, And through that, we started to work with people who had
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  similar stories.
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  We started a podcast that's been going for, gosh, what, five, six years now.
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  And, yeah, just just continuing to connect with people.
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  A big part of the dysfunction in our relationship was around sex and intimacy.
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  And so that is where just working with people, asking questions, and people telling their
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  stories, you hit a roadblock at sex and intimacy.
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  People will openly talk about a lot of things, but that's some something where people tend to
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  to to keep that hold that private.
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  So I decided to go back to school and did get a a master's in, sexual health so that I could
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  further explore the intimacy component.
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  And that is an area, that we continue to not only, pursue re in a research from a research
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  perspective, but also in working with other people and helping them get their intimacy back
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  on track after like you said, in our case, it's alcoholism, but it doesn't have to be any kind
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  of major roadblock, any kind of trauma.
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  There's a lot of trust broken and a lot of work that needs to be done.
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  So if you would, share a little bit about where you were at intimately and with your sex life
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  when you guys were going through the alcoholism and as it kind of progressed, like because one
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  of the one of the reasons I asked this, because I know so often for our listeners, one thing
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  that happens is either they've gotten for many different reasons to a point where sex is
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  something that either does not happen or happens so infrequently.
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  And one of the things that I think it'd be great to talk about today is, like, okay.
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  Well, how do we begin to, repair the emotions, but also kind of repair the fact that it can be
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  awkward and strange to, you know, start having this sexual intimacy again.
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  So did you guys get to a point in your relationship where sexual intimacy was, you
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  know, very rare or even not at all?
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  No.
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  Actually, ours was the other problem.
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  There
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  Okay.
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  Our that's a really great question that leads right into some of the research that we've
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  done.
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  We found that in an alcoholic relationship, almost forty percent of partnerships, result in
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  either sexlessness or near sexlessness, which contrasts with some research that I found on
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  general population relationships that say that number is closer to sixteen percent.
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  So almost two and a half times as often when there's alcohol involved, it results in
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  sexlessness and near sexlessness.
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  The other side of that coin is relationships, that continue to pursue, physical intimacy and
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  it becomes really toxic, and that was our case.
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  In addition to getting that dopamine hit from alcohol and trying to use it as stress relief
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  and anxiety relief, I was also turning to sex in that same way.
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  And at the same time as I'm requiring, not requiring, but really needing and wanting that
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  sexual contact because it was the it was a form of relief for me.
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  I was completely despicable to you, Sherry.
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  Why don't you talk a little bit about your experience when our our sex continued, maybe it
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  shouldn't have?
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  Yeah.
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  It's
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  gonna be my exact question for you, Sherry.
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  So thank you for leaving that back.
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  Yeah.
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  It became a chore, a burden.
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  Resent I was resentful about it.
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  But I felt like just appeasing was gonna avoid fights and conflict in the relationship.
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  I would kind of, like, zone out.
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  I didn't really care about having it.
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  I didn't enjoy it.
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  And in the beginning of the relationship, you know, you are young and in college, and and
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  almost just like just a couple years in after we moved away from the college and into that
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  young professional life, I started pulling back because I think it was like self esteem and,
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  you know, or this sense of arrogance that you felt like you knew what I needed for my body
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  better.
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  So we had oftentimes during intimacy, there would be situations where I would want
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  something and you would be dismissive about it.
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  So it kind of made me start questioning my own ability to enjoy sex.
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  Mansplaining is so romantic in those moments.
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  Exactly.
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  So early on, it had kind of, I started to take this path of, oh, this is just for him.
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  And there would be you know, it wasn't altogether awful every time.
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  I mean, we have four children, so we did have sex frequent enough for that for sure.
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  But but that just was something that kind of continued where I felt more shut down in the
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  bedroom, and I could see that his ego was taking a hit.
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  You weren't really feeling it because I wasn't, like, giving you the sense that I was enjoying
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  it so you could pick up on my displeasure, but we still continued to have sex throughout the
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  relationship and throughout the addiction just because I there is a big libido discrepancy
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  between us two.
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  And, you know, we have to do a lot of educating ourselves once that relationship repair and
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  recovery work we were doing was necessary.
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  Yeah.
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  It's I mean, a couple of things that you say I think are so important for everybody to hear.
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  And one is, like, it sounds like there was almost this, like, obligatory type of sex that
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  was happening where it's, well, this is, you know, this is what I'm supposed to do.
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  And and another thing that you said when you're saying like you're almost like checked out,
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  like it sounds almost like dissociative.
• 12:44
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• 13:38
  Now let's get back to our episode.
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  To me.
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  Where the body, like, we can't as humans, since for people that don't know the word, it's like
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  where we can't as humans almost feel.
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  We're not, like, in our bodies.
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  We're not feeling the sensation or we're not, like, in tune to the pleasure, the touch, the
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  experience because our brain is so dissociated.
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  It's like checked out from actually being there.
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  So the next question for for both of you is, you know, like, once I'm sure there was a, you
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  know, very you know, I'm sure there was a process with really kind of accepting that this
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  was a problem and it needed to change and it was impactful.
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  Where was, like, the the beginning point of seeing, okay, there was repair happening, and
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  what were some of those initial steps that you were doing to really repair that?
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  Was it a lot of individual work?
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  Was it a lot of couple work?
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  Was it a combination?
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  Can you just walk us through that process?
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  Yeah.
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  There's a lot there for sure.
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  The the one of the things I wanna highlight is the rejection that's inherent in consent when
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  it's obligatory like you talked about.
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  So not only was that tough for Sherry, but especially as I got sober and I started to be
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  more aware of my surroundings, that was really hard on me.
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  I knew she wasn't into it and so even when we would have sex, it it just it felt bad and
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  dirty and wrong.
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  And that really, in a way, that was a blessing because it caused us to really dig in and not
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  to just accept the status quo because the status quo was hurting us both.
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  So, you know, one of the really important initial steps that we had to take, Sherry
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  mentioned that our sexual desire discrepancy is you know, it's a pretty wide disparity.
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  That's super common, and I had to learn that.
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  I had to learn that sexual desire discrepancy is basically universal in relationships.
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  And in long term relationships, it changes over time, maybe for both sides.
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  I know one of the things that happened for us was after Sherry had our kids, her desire went
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  down even further.
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  Her libido went down even further and, mine didn't change.
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  And so we're navigating all of that.
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  It's it's really difficult.
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  One of the first things we had to do was acknowledge that neither of us were sexually
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  broken, that there's nothing wrong with the degree to which I wanna have sex, and there's
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  nothing wrong with the degree to which Sherry is losing interest.
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  And that just respect that we gained for each other, that was huge.
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  Because prior to that, really educating ourselves about the fact that desire
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  discrepancy is normal and fine and nobody's broken, that was huge.
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  And then, you know, we had to create in our relationship level of emotional safety that had
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  not been there before.
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  I had to learn that the way I interact throughout the day impacts how Sherry's gonna
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  feel when we go to bed at night, whereas I'm much more of a compartmentalizer.
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  And and we can argue or I can yell at one of the kids because they did something wrong or I
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  can, you know, be frustrated about politics and be screaming at the TV screen and causing all
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  this anxiety in the house.
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  I can do all of that, and then I'm ready to go.
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  And Sherry wears all that and brings it into the bedroom and thinks, you know, I, you know,
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  I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but your anxiety was high, and I was unattractive
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  because if I'm a compartmentalizer, how would you describe yourself?
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  I describe myself as a compiler.
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  All those little incidences throughout the day would wear on me and then coming to bed.
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  Then, you know, after taking care of kids and even when they're teenagers, there's still a
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  lot of, you know, taking care of you have to do, and then coming to bed and then trying to
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  fill his needs.
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  When we realized that, you know, that we had respect for one another's discrepancies, that
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  made it a lot easier, I think, for me to to then move forward because I was feeling the
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  trust and the respect and the appreciation for where I was.
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  So I feel like I could say, no.
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  I'm not interested in having sex, and that would be heard and and it would be nothing
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  other than, okay, and then we would go to sleep.
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  Whereas before, during addiction, and before we learned this, there would be more
• 18:00
  confrontation, more cajoling.
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  So then I think that it allowed me to open up and kind of you had mentioned this awkwardness
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  when you do stop sex.
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  Even when you're not stopping sex, it's still awkward to get back into, like, finding the
• 18:14
  pleasure for yourself and enjoying it again.
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  So when I was feeling more respected and I had more emotional safety, it was a huge challenge
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  to try to learn more about the things that I would like to have in bed and have you know,
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  because it's just with the when you've disassociated yourself from it, you don't
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  really know what you like anymore.
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  You don't really know what's gonna feel good.
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  So Other than liking for
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  it to be over.
• 18:43
  Yeah.
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  But we like Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  What about, like, the emotional side of things?
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  What was that process like as far as restoring, like, the actual trust, and do you have some,
• 18:55
  like, foundational principles you recommend around, like, oh, like, with the work you've
• 19:00
  done as well as your own experience, like, this is so important to really begin to rebuild that
• 19:06
  trust?
• 19:08
  Yeah.
• 19:09
  I think we do.
• 19:10
  You know?
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  And and the first thing I wanna say is we came across this in a really muddled, non
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  sequential, not helpful way.
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  Like, it took us four or five years to figure this stuff out, and it was ugly.
• 19:25
  Right?
• 19:26
  But now we can see it, and we can present it to others in a pretty concise, not easy by any
• 19:31
  means and not fast either.
• 19:33
  Time is a huge component, but in a linear fashion.
• 19:37
  You know, I mentioned earlier that I'm more of a compartmentalizer, and I can have a rough day
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  and things can go bad and I'm still ready for physical intimacy.
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  That I think is not the case certainly with my partner in in a lot with a lot of couples we
• 19:51
  work with, the the partner, needs something different.
• 19:57
  They need a sequence, and it all comes down to trust, the first four components.
• 20:01
  So that first one is emotional safety.
• 20:03
  And when I talk about emotional safety, it's not just that my direct interactions with
• 20:09
  Sherry are calm and peaceful and predictable.
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  That's another huge one.
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  But it's also that she witnesses me interacting with the outside world in a calm, predictable,
• 20:21
  reasonable way as well.
• 20:23
  Huge, can't overemphasize this, are my interactions with our kids.
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  You know, she needs to see me respecting them and treating them well.
• 20:34
  It doesn't mean I can't discipline our kids, but it needs to be measured and needs to make
• 20:39
  sense.
• 20:40
  And, you know, I need to make time for them.
• 20:43
  It it sounds kinda crazy, but the my interactions with our kids is probably the most
• 20:49
  important thing to Sherry feeling sexual desire for me.
• 20:53
  And so one of the big things we had to learn, Diane, that was tough was Sherry loves our kids
• 20:59
  and and puts her weight and energy into them more than I do.
• 21:04
  That's hard for me to admit.
• 21:05
  That's embarrassing.
• 21:06
  That's, I don't like that.
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  But I put a lot of that same energy into her.
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  And as long as we understand that triangle, we can navigate it successfully.
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  And what what we found is we're not alone.
• 21:16
  That's that's fairly common.
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  So that emotional safety is huge.
• 21:20
  And, again, it goes it it includes yelling at the TV screen because my my football team lost
• 21:25
  a game.
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  I I can't create that level of just unease in the house and then expect Sherry to feel
• 21:31
  attracted to me.
• 21:32
  So emotional safety is big.
• 21:34
  The second step is emotional intimacy.
• 21:37
  Before Sherry is eager for physical intimacy, we have to connect on an emotional level.
• 21:44
  I have to be a good listener.
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  I have to be a listener who isn't trying to solve all her problems for her and then move on
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  to the next thing.
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  I have to take the time to to listen and and provide whatever kind of support she might
• 21:55
  want, and at the same time, I have to be willing to be open and communicative and and
• 22:02
  not just dumping on her.
• 22:04
  This is a tricky one because for men in our society, we really have very few outlets that
• 22:10
  are emotionally safe.
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  Most of us interact with other men by joking and teasing and making fun of each other, and
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  then we use our partners as our one and only safe emotional space.
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  And so it's really easy to turn our partners into a dumping ground.
• 22:24
  One of the things that Esther Perel says that I love so much is that you can't be a mother and
• 22:29
  a lover at the same time.
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  And so if I'm turning to Sherry to to to nurture me and to heal all my wounds, it's
• 22:37
  really hard for her to be attracted to me.
• 22:39
  So there's a lot of pieces within that emotional intimacy piece.
• 22:43
  There's also a really strong need for non sexual physical intimacy.
• 22:48
  When I walk past Sherry, if she's working on something standing in the kitchen, for
• 22:52
  instance, a a touch on the shoulder and a little rub goes a lot further than a butt slap,
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  especially, you know, once we've been married for a long time.
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  And so being physically intimate in a nonsexual way, that's a component that we had to learn
• 23:08
  and figure out how to add to the relationship, and it goes a long way.
• 23:12
  And all three of those first pieces, emotional safety, emotional intimacy, and non sexual
• 23:16
  physical intimacy, those are all about trust.
• 23:20
  And those can result once Sherry starts to feel a higher level of trust in mutually
• 23:25
  satisfactory, mutually beneficial sexual intimacy.
• 23:30
  And so that's kind of the and it's sequential.
• 23:32
  I don't need the sequence.
• 23:33
  I can jump right to the physical sexual intimacy.
• 23:36
  I have to understand how important the sequence is for my partner for it to be mutually
• 23:40
  beneficial.
• 23:42
  And I think that we also had to learn that we needed to start having fun together.
• 23:47
  When you have something traumatic like an addiction, the fun is gone.
• 23:52
  But that happens, I think, I mean, I see it in some of our friends' relationships that there
• 23:58
  hasn't been an addiction that we know of or just the abuse of, you know, some sort of
• 24:05
  addictive substance.
• 24:08
  So I think there had to be, like, some playfulness and fun that had to also be thrown
• 24:13
  in there because, like, when we have when we got we're ugh, I guess.
• 24:19
  When we're trying to get over that awkwardness of getting back kind of in sync with one
• 24:25
  another, there has to be this, like, Matt was talking about the level of respect and the
• 24:30
  consistency and that emotional intimacy and and being comfortable with that nonphysical touch.
• 24:37
  But then when you're in it and, you know, things don't always go perfect in the bedroom
• 24:42
  when you're trying to be romantic, you have to be able to find find the ability to laugh a
• 24:46
  little bit and and be okay with that and feel that comfort.
• 24:50
  So we also had to find some of that fun things that we could do together outside in bedroom.
• 24:58
  Yeah.
• 24:58
  I love that.
• 24:59
  I a friend and colleague of mine who's a sex therapist, Allie Eisman, she told me she uses
• 25:04
  the word a lot for, like, the sex giggles of, like, getting to that point where it's, like,
• 25:09
  it doesn't have to be serious, you know, all the time inside of the bedroom or outside of
• 25:13
  that bedroom and bringing in silliness and bringing in playfulness and laughter in the
• 25:17
  middle of a sexual experience all the way to, you know, bringing more of that in outside of
• 25:22
  the bedroom too.
• 25:23
  And I wanna make sure that everybody also knows, like, one of the things in thinking
• 25:29
  about this emotional standpoint.
• 25:31
  Remembering you guys, you can go to libidocode.com to take my quiz because there I
• 25:36
  break down the five biggest turn ons for people and understanding your partner's turn ons.
• 25:41
  Just like they're talking, like Matt and Sherry are talking about here about, like, that
• 25:44
  emotional component of things, what I have found is, like, that is some people have a
• 25:49
  higher propensity for that to be a, you know, bigger part of their sexual experience.
• 25:55
  So if you wanna learn this about your partner and yourself and your biggest turn ons,
• 25:59
  definitely go to libidoco.com.
• 26:01
  And we're gonna wrap up this episode here.
• 26:04
  I'm going to bring Sherry and Matt back, and we are going to talk in part two about desire
• 26:10
  mismatch, what they've done more to help with that.
• 26:12
  We're gonna talk about things like what Sherry's done from a dissociative standpoint to
• 26:17
  get back into her body to enjoy sex more, what's Matt has done to help recover from the,
• 26:23
  you know, ego perspective and help to really, you know, really get back into being able to
• 26:30
  provide more fully in the way that he wants and that they both want.
• 26:34
  So we're gonna talk about all of that and more in our con continued conversation.
• 26:39
  So look down in the show notes for part two below.
• 26:42
  And then also as we wrap up, Sherry and Matt, we want to also mention the the podcast they
• 26:51
  have.
• 26:51
  So and Matt's podcast is the Untoxicated podcast, so we'll put that in the show notes as
• 26:58
  well.
• 26:59
  And in the Untoxicated podcast, you can find all of their work and more.
• 27:04
  So Sherry and Matt, I was just saying, to everybody, the Untoxicated podcast is, you
• 27:09
  know, your podcast.
• 27:10
  Are there any final words you want to leave us about that?
• 27:14
  I just want folks to know how thankful we feel to have had something big happen in our lives
• 27:20
  that forced us, more or less, to look at our relationship because, you know, it's it's
• 27:26
  pretty, it's hard to say that alcoholism was a blessing, and I know that that sounds just
• 27:32
  awful to a lot of people.
• 27:34
  But the recovery portion of alcoholism has been a huge blessing because I think without it, we
• 27:41
  would've as you as you said right off the top, we would've had a mediocre sex life, and now
• 27:46
  what we have is better than anything I could have ever imagined, even back when I was a
• 27:51
  horny little teen and 20 year old.
• 27:54
  And so, doing the work is beneficial, not just to folks that are in recovery, but to to
• 28:00
  anyone.
• 28:00
  Actually, that if if you're not satisfied, the ability to become more than just satisfied is
• 28:08
  out there for everybody.
• 28:10
  Yeah.
• 28:10
  Thank you for that.
• 28:11
  It's such a great reminder and really appreciate you being here.
• 28:14
  And everybody will have the libido code, how to get part two, and a link for Sherry and Matt's
• 28:19
  podcast in the show notes below.
• 28:21
  So thanks everybody for being here with me, and thank you, Sherry and Matt, and we'll see you
• 28:25
  all real soon.
• 28:26
  Ciao for now.
• 28:29
  Thank you for listening to the libido lounge.
• 28:32
  Please don't keep me a secret.
• 28:33
  Please share this with your friends.
• 28:35
  You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as how to work with me at mylibidodoc.com.