Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Your Partner's Energy Level Changes After Marriage

Transcript

When Your Partner's Energy Level Changes After Marriage · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom Show.
• 0:08
  Today we're going to be talking about when your partner's energy
• 0:11
  level goes down over time and after, you know, after the
• 0:17
  marriage, or after the honeymoon stage ends, or later on after
• 0:21
  kids or what have you. This mismatch in energy is
• 0:25
  something that I see a lot as an issue and it's most really goes
• 0:30
  with men not understanding women's drop.
• 0:33
  But sometimes it's the opposite. And we will discuss that today
• 0:36
  right after I tell you to subscribe because of course I
• 0:40
  have over 130 subscriber episodes.
• 0:43
  The most recent one was on sexual empathic ruptures,
• 0:47
  specific empathic ruptures in the area of sex.
• 0:50
  For example, not having sex on your honeymoon or other special
• 0:54
  occasions, birthday, whatever and how to understand these
• 0:58
  better. So if you want to hear about
• 1:00
  that and all my other ones, including oral sex on women,
• 1:04
  please do subscribe. It's 899 a month about an
• 1:07
  audible book and you get so much listening.
• 1:11
  OK, So what does it look like when somebody's energy goes
• 1:15
  down? So like lots of couples, they
• 1:16
  meet, they engage in a lot of fun activities, Maybe they're
• 1:19
  doing athletic things together, going to the gym, you know,
• 1:22
  they're going on hikes. All this stuff that, you know,
• 1:25
  people do when they're young, young, healthy mammals, and
• 1:30
  they, you know, they're more playful.
• 1:32
  They, they engage in more physical stuff in general, you
• 1:35
  know, and of course, a lot more sex and guys frequently, By the
• 1:40
  way, this is not all about sex. Guys really underestimate the
• 1:44
  amount of energy that women need for sex, especially because they
• 1:47
  think you're just laying there and that's what some guys
• 1:49
  actually say, and you still need energy for it.
• 1:53
  You still need to be in a headspace where you can relax
• 1:58
  and be focused and you're not just totally wiped out, even if
• 2:03
  you're literally just trying to lay there and think sexual
• 2:06
  thoughts. That does take energy, because
• 2:09
  remember, there's a time of night for men where they
• 2:12
  couldn't, for example, do Sudoku or really understand something
• 2:15
  that they were trying to learn for work, right?
• 2:18
  There's a time of night where you cannot do something that
• 2:21
  isn't in your wheelhouse, that you don't find enjoyable, that
• 2:24
  requires sustained effort, such as reading a for work or making
• 2:28
  a presentation for work or doing your finances.
• 2:32
  There's a point at which your mental energy is gone, right?
• 2:36
  So that's how to think about it too.
• 2:38
  So we're not just talking about physical energy, we're talking
• 2:42
  about mental energy. Focus, concentration.
• 2:45
  You know you need those things, even if your body is completely
• 2:48
  inert, which of course I do not encourage.
• 2:50
  But even if a woman is just laying there trying to think
• 2:53
  sexy thoughts and get in the mood and and be present or have
• 2:57
  some kind of fantasy going, that helps her, you know, be
• 3:00
  responsive, which you know, great, you know, try whatever
• 3:04
  you can, man, you know that's wonderful.
• 3:07
  And of course have a podcast about why it shouldn't bother
• 3:09
  you if your wife fantasizes about other men because at least
• 3:12
  she's trying to get in the mood for sex, you know.
• 3:15
  But anyway, so there's mental energy.
• 3:19
  There's emotional energy. So like a woman that loved to
• 3:22
  have conversations about how much you guys love each other,
• 3:25
  you know, like that shit is tapped out.
• 3:28
  So you know, that is a profound decrement for many women is in
• 3:33
  the emotional energy sphere, especially when she has children
• 3:37
  because she's engaging with them emotionally all the time.
• 3:40
  Remember when you were dating, she was just saying I love you
• 3:43
  to you. Now she's saying I love you to
• 3:44
  all of you all the time. And that's a lot of emotional
• 3:48
  energy. So.
• 3:51
  So before we get into like the various types, why do people
• 3:54
  have a decrease in energy overall?
• 3:56
  One that's for both genders is depression.
• 3:59
  Depression really leads to a lot of fatigue, loss of
• 4:02
  concentration, loss of physical energy.
• 4:04
  In fact, exercise, intolerance is a symptom of of depression
• 4:09
  and lead in paralysis. So like you people always say,
• 4:12
  Oh yeah, exercise, that helps depression.
• 4:14
  What about when you can't get up?
• 4:15
  Depression is like the flu, you know, especially when it's not
• 4:18
  just mild and it's more moderate or severe.
• 4:20
  It really feels like you can't get up.
• 4:22
  Like you're so exhausted. You get up.
• 4:24
  Like you even go to the gym and you like, you can't do anything.
• 4:27
  It's like you're kind of walking around in a fog.
• 4:29
  There's something called psycho motor slowing, you know, and
• 4:33
  it's observable to others. You just seem like you're
• 4:35
  walking, talking, and you are internally thinking and slower.
• 4:40
  Everything is slower and there's just a complete lack of energy.
• 4:44
  Antidepressants can sometimes help with this for people who
• 4:47
  are treatment resistant, you know, they kind of waited out.
• 4:50
  Unfortunately, therapy can help, but there's a huge biological
• 4:55
  component to depression. That's why thankfully, you know,
• 4:58
  many people do respond to some sort of medication, you know,
• 5:02
  but energy decrease is a huge symptom of depression in both
• 5:07
  genders. So this can happen.
• 5:09
  Also, when a woman says why does he just lay on, you know, the
• 5:12
  couch all the time watching TV? Could be that could be low T but
• 5:16
  whatever it is when a man is just laying around, particularly
• 5:18
  because the men have more testosterone and they do have
• 5:21
  higher energy levels than women. Which is why after this I'll
• 5:24
  turn to the more usual situation where the woman has the energy
• 5:27
  decrease. If a man is just laying around,
• 5:29
  he's probably depressed or has low T and low T leads to
• 5:32
  depression. So overall he's not doing well.
• 5:35
  That's like not a good thing for a guy, you know that is.
• 5:38
  That is a bad sign. So even just that by itself, if
• 5:42
  he's just going to work, then laying around, not really
• 5:45
  playing with the kids, not really, you know, doing
• 5:48
  anything, then I'll you should conclude that there's a problem
• 5:51
  and want him to get evaluated by a psychologist or psychiatrist
• 5:56
  or even just his GP, if that's where you could get him in.
• 5:59
  Because there's probably something else going on
• 6:01
  biologically or psychologically, such again as depression, low T,
• 6:06
  some sort of illness, who knows, because it is very unusual Now
• 6:10
  with women it's not as unusual. So over the course of the month
• 6:15
  there's like, you know, the whole post ovulation phase,
• 6:19
  women feel worse. And I've tried to, you know,
• 6:21
  explain this to you guys that women are super dependent on
• 6:24
  where they are in their cycle. Their mood is very dependent on
• 6:27
  whether they are preovulation or post ovulation on the first two
• 6:31
  weeks of the cycle. If this is, if they're not on
• 6:33
  hormonal birth control, which kind of messes up the cycle, you
• 6:37
  don't have a cycle anymore. You still get your period.
• 6:41
  But that's just because you stop taking the pills with the
• 6:43
  hormones and then you take the basically the placebo pills for
• 6:46
  a week. So you could kind of have like a
• 6:48
  fake period, but it isn't. It has nothing to you don't
• 6:50
  ovulate. That's the whole point, you
• 6:52
  know. So for women that are not on
• 6:55
  hormonal birth control, they go up, their energy goes up until
• 6:58
  ovulation. Those are, you know, right
• 7:00
  before ovulation. They want to have sex on
• 7:02
  ovulation, day, etc. And then after that they feel
• 7:05
  worse. And for many women they feel a
• 7:07
  lot worse, especially in the week or the days leading up to
• 7:10
  the period. And their energy just goes to
• 7:13
  zero. And they feel irritable, and
• 7:15
  they do lay around and they want to eat more and they're more
• 7:18
  bloated and they're more tired. And this is normal, you know, at
• 7:23
  various levels, Some women have PMDD, which is premenstrual
• 7:26
  dysphoric disorder, which means that this is amplified.
• 7:29
  And they are super depressed, angry, irritable.
• 7:33
  And for those women, usually an antidepressant is prescribed for
• 7:36
  the second-half of the cycle. And so definitely talk to your
• 7:39
  doctor if that sounds like you or if it sounds like your wife,
• 7:43
  that the days before the period are just intolerable.
• 7:45
  It's normal to have mood variation, you know.
• 7:48
  But if if it's something we're like she can't go to work, or
• 7:51
  like she can't engage normally with you and the kids at all,
• 7:54
  then then hopefully something could be done.
• 7:57
  You know, maybe she needs to be on hormonal birth control.
• 8:00
  Maybe she needs to be on an antidepressant, you know, who
• 8:03
  knows? But something could happen that
• 8:05
  could fix it, right? Or help in some way.
• 8:08
  Don't just assume that that's how it's supposed to be.
• 8:12
  But anyway, even within women who have a more normative
• 8:16
  response to the post ovulation phase, they're still going to
• 8:19
  have less energy, you know, in the second-half of the of the
• 8:22
  month and especially the day before or the days or the week
• 8:25
  before their period. And so that's when they do lay
• 8:29
  around, you know, more. And also, women have less energy
• 8:32
  overall. You know, they're smaller.
• 8:34
  They have less testosterone. Testosterone leads to
• 8:37
  aggressiveness, energy risk taking.
• 8:39
  They don't have as much of that as they age.
• 8:41
  They have less and less, you know, and as women get into
• 8:43
  their 40s, you know, that's when perimenopause starts.
• 8:47
  And I have a whole podcast on how women's bodies and brains
• 8:50
  change in their 40s and fatigue becomes worse.
• 8:54
  And so they don't have the energy or the drive to do
• 8:57
  certain things that they used to do, even if they're not
• 8:59
  depressed. So this used to be considered
• 9:02
  more normative. But as I always discuss, we have
• 9:05
  a very youth obsessed culture where people think that they can
• 9:07
  just stay young forever. I have my whole podcast.
• 9:11
  Age is just a number or something.
• 9:14
  Or basically saying that the age is not age isn't just a number
• 9:19
  or whatever is bullshit. Like, yes, the chronological age
• 9:22
  you are obviously, you know, has a lot of validity to it.
• 9:29
  You know, people and say, yeah, you know, my daughter's 12, but
• 9:34
  you know, she's like a young 12 emotionally, so I don't think
• 9:37
  she's going to get her period till she's 19.
• 9:39
  No, everybody gets their period around the same age.
• 9:42
  If they don't, then you take them to the doctor, right?
• 9:46
  Like everybody's kid grows, you know, a lot in puberty and
• 9:50
  changes a lot how they look. You know, everybody does that at
• 9:52
  the same time. Like there's a class of 6th
• 9:54
  graders and then in 7th grade they look a lot different.
• 9:57
  And in 8th grade they look really different.
• 9:59
  And then in high school, you ever see those boys coming in
• 10:02
  9th grade, they still look like they're seven.
• 10:05
  And then in 12th grade they look like a strapping man.
• 10:08
  You know, that's like, that's just how life goes.
• 10:11
  Like there is a time at which our bodies change, but because
• 10:16
  our culture is super focused on everybody staying young and
• 10:19
  immortal forever and all of the things that you could buy to
• 10:22
  help you do that. You know, there's a whole like
• 10:26
  system in place where you could buy Infinity technological and
• 10:31
  and biological sorts of things to take and to do and whatever
• 10:37
  with the goal of keeping you young forever.
• 10:39
  So it's our thriving industry and you get your social media
• 10:42
  ads for all of these things. And basically it tricks people
• 10:46
  into thinking that there isn't just a stage at which things
• 10:50
  change. And of course there is, because
• 10:52
  then on the you just like how most women have monarch at the
• 10:55
  same time, like the first period, they have menopause at
• 10:59
  the same time pretty much, you know, And because men don't
• 11:02
  either get or not get their period, then they think that
• 11:05
  somehow once they turn into a man, which of course everybody
• 11:08
  started looking like a man at the same time somehow, they're
• 11:11
  not all going to get old at the same time or lose their hair at
• 11:14
  the same time. There's some individual
• 11:15
  variation, but mostly there's a common human trajectory of aging
• 11:20
  and that used to be more acceptable and now it isn't.
• 11:24
  So you know, women in there, the 50s are supposed to look like
• 11:28
  women in their 30s and that's just not sustainable or
• 11:31
  possible. And one of the things of age is
• 11:33
  that you get older and more tired and even just literally
• 11:39
  thinking of it like, oh, of course my wife is going to get
• 11:42
  more tired overtime. Let me go back and think about
• 11:45
  my own mother. This can help many men because,
• 11:48
  like, they want their wife to be, let's say, going out and
• 11:51
  playing, you know, a sport with them or playing golf with them
• 11:54
  and then going out at night and hanging out with their friends
• 11:57
  And, you know, also then waking up early the next morning, no
• 12:00
  problem, drive the kids to swim. And, you know, then
• 12:03
  everything's, you know, then they have sex too, in the
• 12:05
  afternoon. And the woman will be destroyed
• 12:08
  by that. You know, she is so tired on the
• 12:11
  weekend. She works during the week.
• 12:13
  You know, she's looking forward to relaxing.
• 12:14
  She's tired. She isn't like she was when she
• 12:16
  was in her 20s. And then I say to some men, I
• 12:19
  say where, like, what was your wife like?
• 12:22
  You know, what was your mother like when she was, let's say,
• 12:25
  47? Like your wife?
• 12:27
  Oh, yeah. You know, she didn't really do
• 12:29
  very much in my bed. Like, you know, she, she had
• 12:32
  been social when I was really young.
• 12:34
  But by that time, I guess I was a teenager.
• 12:37
  Yeah. You know, she watched TVA lot.
• 12:39
  You know, she go for a walk sometimes with her friends in
• 12:41
  the neighborhood. She always did go to work pretty
• 12:43
  sedentary sometimes. You know, we would, you know,
• 12:46
  play a board game. Like what the hell do you expect
• 12:48
  your wife to be having some punishing social schedule that
• 12:52
  would be fit for like you know, reality TV * Then you know, like
• 12:56
  what are we even talking about about things happen.
• 12:59
  You know she's not going to be the same woman as she was when
• 13:01
  she was 25 and you guys were out all night partying.
• 13:04
  But anyway, so yes, there are natural age-related changes.
• 13:09
  Other things obviously include, you know, as I said, first of
• 13:14
  all there's depression, then there's natural age-related
• 13:16
  changes, but also people's priority shift.
• 13:19
  So what you perceive as an energy level change may just be
• 13:24
  that your wife doesn't value, you know, going to the gym
• 13:27
  anymore. Like she really doesn't like she
• 13:29
  only has so many hours in the day and she doesn't value
• 13:33
  spending them go to the gym. A lot of women have that
• 13:35
  epiphany and they're like, you know, or or they don't go to the
• 13:40
  gym in the same way. Or they decide instead they're
• 13:42
  going to like walk outside or they're going to do yoga or
• 13:45
  something. And the guy is still expecting
• 13:47
  that she's going to, you know, be doing the same sorts of
• 13:51
  workouts with the same result that she was when she was
• 13:54
  younger. And she just doesn't care
• 13:55
  anymore. She doesn't want to do that
• 13:56
  anymore and she doesn't find it fun.
• 13:59
  She's been doing it for years. She probably was never doing it
• 14:02
  for fun. She was always doing that sort
• 14:04
  of thing because she hated her body.
• 14:06
  And she was, it was, you know, pushing back against her,
• 14:09
  thinking that she was fat, if she exercised X amount, that she
• 14:12
  felt better, you know? And it wasn't ever really a fun
• 14:15
  thing for her. It was more of a, you know,
• 14:17
  keeping herself looking the right way.
• 14:20
  And then as she gets older, she's like, fuck that.
• 14:22
  I only have one life. I don't want to spend it in spin
• 14:25
  class if I hate spin class. So there could also be a values
• 14:29
  shift just like guys. It's.
• 14:31
  I always say the same thing. It's like asking a guy who's
• 14:34
  like 65 to be as excited about his career as he was when he was
• 14:38
  35, why His values have changed. He's done his time.
• 14:42
  Most of it was out of anxiety and you know that that he would
• 14:46
  somehow be on the street homeless, you know, more than
• 14:49
  the woman thinks. So a woman is like, oh, why is
• 14:51
  he retiring? He always loved his career.
• 14:54
  A sure, but things change. B.
• 14:56
  Maybe he didn't love it as much as you think and see.
• 14:59
  Maybe there's different ways that he wants to spend the rest
• 15:01
  of his life when it's become salient to him that he only has
• 15:05
  so much time. And it's the same thing with
• 15:07
  women and whatever sort of thing.
• 15:09
  And it isn't just, by the way, exercise.
• 15:12
  It's like partying or socializing.
• 15:14
  If a woman was always more of an introvert but was socializing
• 15:18
  for the sake of the children, to have, you know, a social life
• 15:21
  and family, friends and whatever, then a lot of times
• 15:23
  when the kids leave the house, she's kind of done hanging out
• 15:26
  with people. She doesn't want to hang out
• 15:27
  with. She doesn't feel that she has
• 15:29
  the social energy, she doesn't have the impetus and she doesn't
• 15:32
  have the motivation. And this happens a lot.
• 15:35
  By the way, is that women who are introverts can can, can act
• 15:40
  extroverted when they need to, which in my post I call the
• 15:43
  extroverted introvert. And then when they don't need to
• 15:46
  anymore because the kids aren't around anymore, they're not just
• 15:49
  going to go have, you know, dinners with endless amount of
• 15:51
  the guys, friends and their wives because they don't want
• 15:54
  to. That was always kind of aversive
• 15:56
  and shitty and in this phase of their life they kind of want to
• 15:59
  do what they want. Now, of course, people should
• 16:01
  still compromise. So this is just to explain why
• 16:04
  your wife may say more that she's tired and say no to more
• 16:08
  things than you expect. And then there comes sex, right?
• 16:13
  So sex requires energy, as I said before.
• 16:15
  It also requires mental energy. It requires physical energy,
• 16:19
  certainly. And so most people aren't doing
• 16:21
  the same amount of, like, you know, 15 position switches that
• 16:24
  they were in their 20s. Obviously that takes a lot of
• 16:27
  energy and flexibility and all sorts of things.
• 16:29
  But also there's emotional energy and there's mental
• 16:33
  energy. And both of those, you need a
• 16:35
  lot of that, Particularly if your libido is low, you really
• 16:38
  need to get yourself in the zone and think about, you know, sexy
• 16:42
  thoughts and all of that. And it's not just, you know,
• 16:45
  laying there and letting pleasure wash over you.
• 16:47
  Because if you just lay there and didn't do anything mental to
• 16:50
  help yourself get excited, pleasure would not wash over
• 16:53
  you. And the older you get, pain
• 16:55
  washes over you because you're not aroused.
• 16:57
  So guys frequently don't understand the mental energy
• 17:02
  required to for a person who has no drive to do something to get
• 17:06
  themselves in the mood to do something.
• 17:07
  And of course, I always to make the analogy, if you're not
• 17:09
  hungry, it's very hard to eat. You could tell yourself that
• 17:12
  you're eating to be polite. You could tell yourself this is
• 17:14
  very important to do, to eat, but it's real hard to eat if
• 17:18
  you're not hungry. And that's of course how women
• 17:20
  feel increasingly as they're older is they're just their
• 17:23
  hormonal Dr. just goes down. And with it you then need a lot
• 17:26
  more energy. And that is not to say that the
• 17:29
  woman should not put in this energy when she can't.
• 17:32
  So then of course it brings us to like, what can you do about
• 17:35
  in this mismatch, the 1st order of business always is empathy.
• 17:40
  So even just listening to this podcast could help a lot of
• 17:42
  people understand their lower energy partner and say, wow,
• 17:47
  honestly, if they feel in these ways, it's a wonder that they do
• 17:51
  all the things that they do, you know?
• 17:53
  And actually I could think about it differently, that they are
• 17:55
  making a big effort if they really do feel bad and low
• 17:58
  energy in all of these ways. And maybe that's more natural
• 18:01
  than I assumed and maybe more women are like that than I
• 18:05
  thought, you know, so that empathy is really the basis of
• 18:10
  every relationship growing deeper and closer.
• 18:13
  And when men can turn to their wives and say, you know what?
• 18:16
  I never really thought about it, but it's really not fair that I
• 18:19
  asked you to go out as late or to go go to the gym as much or
• 18:23
  to have sex as much or whatever as you did when you were younger
• 18:26
  because you're not younger because we all go, we all get
• 18:28
  older. Like, it'll be like you asking
• 18:30
  me to, like, grow more hair. I can't do that.
• 18:32
  You know, have a better erection quality, you know, can't do
• 18:35
  that. For those of you, there's always
• 18:37
  the guys on the agenda that are like, oh, well, I pop Viagra.
• 18:40
  You know, like, it's my job. There are side effects to
• 18:43
  things, you know, and and sometimes there are other men,
• 18:48
  for example, who say, no, of course, I would not take Viagra
• 18:50
  like every day, you know, because there are side effects
• 18:54
  that I have discussed and this and that and whatever with my
• 18:57
  provider. And so it would be like that.
• 18:59
  It would be like if she wanted you to be on something that
• 19:02
  could potentially be bad for your health every single day so
• 19:04
  that you could replicate what it was like to be a 25 year old
• 19:07
  man. You know, you might find that
• 19:08
  offensive because you're not a 25 year old man.
• 19:12
  But also you could understand that within the context of a
• 19:16
  loving marriage. And I have a whole podcast on
• 19:18
  choreplay. And when it does work, when it
• 19:20
  does work, is within a loving marriage.
• 19:22
  Within a loving marriage, if I'm saying like without empathic
• 19:26
  ruptures and disconnection with the when a woman is not avoiding
• 19:29
  attachment so you're more usual situation of a loving couple
• 19:32
  that is really just trying to work with the vicissitudes of
• 19:35
  aging. The more shit you do for her the
• 19:39
  more energy she going to have. Because like even something so
• 19:42
  stupid as the grocery shopping, that really takes a lot out of
• 19:45
  you if you're a low energy person.
• 19:48
  So if you do the grocery shopping instead of her, do the
• 19:51
  grocery shopping. Then within a loving marriage
• 19:54
  where you guys have talked about this and everybody getting their
• 19:57
  needs met and try to empathize with each other, if you do the
• 20:00
  grocery shopping, she's gonna she's a lot more willing to be
• 20:04
  intimate that night or to go out to dinner or whatever it is that
• 20:08
  you want her to do. Because a lot of men think that
• 20:11
  these, because they're very high energy, they think that little
• 20:14
  chores and stuff around the house should be no big deal.
• 20:17
  But if you are a low energy person, if you struggle with
• 20:19
  depression, if you're if you're premenstrual, if you're feeling
• 20:22
  just, you know, age-related energy drop, going to the
• 20:26
  grocery store is fucking hard. You know it.
• 20:29
  It really takes your energy out. You got to go back to spoon
• 20:32
  theory. You could Google spoon theory,
• 20:33
  which they use for people with chronic pain.
• 20:36
  You only have so many spoons of energy in a day if you have
• 20:39
  chronic pain or chronic fatigue, and you are all the time making
• 20:43
  a calculus. This is an analogy.
• 20:45
  Obviously there's no real spoons of energy, but you're always
• 20:48
  making a calculus in your mind. OK, it takes like 3 spoons to
• 20:52
  shower and six spoons to make a phone call and 18 spoons to go
• 20:58
  to the grocery store. So how should I use my spoons
• 21:01
  right now? And it's kind of this little
• 21:03
  calculus of how am I going to allot my energy for my time
• 21:07
  knowing and feeling deeply that I have finite energy.
• 21:12
  And this is something it's hard to understand if you feel that
• 21:14
  you have infinite energy, you know, like a real healthy guy
• 21:19
  who has high energy cannot really not understand the sorts
• 21:23
  of trade-offs that somebody with lower energy would have to make.
• 21:26
  So if you talk to your wife about, Gee, if I take over X
• 21:28
  amount of the housework, are you going to feel more, you know,
• 21:33
  energetic and alive and helped and affirmed and empathized with
• 21:38
  and validated and better about me and all of these good things?
• 21:42
  Usually she'll say yes, you know, but she could feel
• 21:45
  embarrassed saying to you that grocery shopping is such a big
• 21:47
  deal for her. If you act like it's like ain't
• 21:50
  no thing and she should, you know, what else does she have to
• 21:53
  do? Because her job has less hours
• 21:55
  than yours and blah blah blah. So a couple that's working
• 21:58
  together. And of course you could do this
• 22:00
  in couples counseling. If these if these conversations
• 22:02
  don't go well on your own, which they don't for many, then you
• 22:06
  could be talking about this. Like, how can I in fact take
• 22:09
  things off of her plate now, within the context of a of a
• 22:12
  workhorse type of preoccupied attachment man trying to
• 22:16
  unilaterally secretly take things off of his wife's plate
• 22:19
  in the hopes that she turns to him with a big smile and wants
• 22:22
  to have sex, that shit doesn't work.
• 22:24
  But within the context of a loving and strong marriage,
• 22:27
  which of course you could get to with couples counseling, or you
• 22:30
  know, other ways, such as maybe DIY couples counseling,
• 22:35
  listening to enough of my podcast.
• 22:37
  But I mean, that's really this is no replacement for couples
• 22:40
  counseling. This is, you know, an
• 22:42
  enhancement. This is interesting, but don't
• 22:44
  tell yourself this is couples counseling, because it's
• 22:46
  obviously not. But the point is, if you're
• 22:50
  getting to a place where you trust each other and you're
• 22:52
  happy and you're have a strong connection, then you can really
• 22:55
  have conversations. Like, all right, you do the
• 22:58
  grocery shopping, I'm going to take a bath and then when you
• 23:00
  come home, I'm ready, you know, to have sex and she can get
• 23:03
  ready to have sex because she doesn't have to do the fucking
• 23:05
  grocery shopping. And unless you've been a low
• 23:09
  energy, slash depressed slash aging female, you don't know how
• 23:13
  bad the grocery shopping is. And if you condescend to how bad
• 23:18
  the grocery shopping is, then you don't know shit and nobody
• 23:20
  should be having sex with somebody condescending of either
• 23:22
  gender anyway. So anyway, a lot of what I work
• 23:25
  with men on honestly, is understanding their wives and
• 23:27
  it's like a big deal to them to have this epiphany.
• 23:30
  Holy shit, Something I don't even think about.
• 23:32
  Oh, I guess I'll pick some shit up at the store.
• 23:34
  Yeah, OK, cool to her. It's like, OK, I got to go into
• 23:37
  the store. I got.
• 23:39
  That means I got to get dressed. That means I got to get into the
• 23:41
  car. That means I got to drive to the
• 23:43
  car. This whole thing's going to be
• 23:44
  an hour and a half. I'm going to be tired.
• 23:46
  I don't like night driving particularly.
• 23:48
  Then by the time I come back, then I got to help the kids with
• 23:51
  the homework. How am I going to have the
• 23:52
  energy to help the kids with the homework?
• 23:54
  I still got to put away the groceries.
• 23:55
  This sounds stupid, but for somebody who struggles with
• 23:58
  depression, who struggles with low energy, who struggles with
• 24:01
  chronic pain, this is how they think.
• 24:04
  Okay. This is how I thought, and I've
• 24:06
  been clear, I've struggled with depression and I've oh, and one
• 24:09
  big one that I forgot to mention is when a woman is nursing or
• 24:12
  pregnant, which I was for many moons having three children,
• 24:16
  then their energy is also in the garbage.
• 24:19
  You know, it's in the toilet. And if you have young kids and
• 24:22
  you're picking them up all day, your energy is also in the
• 24:24
  toilet. So there's a whole phase before
• 24:26
  aging of being a young mother when you're also exhausted all
• 24:28
  the time. So I mean, you know, women don't
• 24:31
  catch a break. You know, their biology makes it
• 24:33
  very hard for them to be the person who is the primary
• 24:37
  caretaker because in our, yes, they love the kids super much
• 24:42
  and evolutionarily, they want to be the primary caretaker.
• 24:45
  But there always used to be an extended kid networks, you could
• 24:47
  give the baby off to your sister, your mother, whoever who
• 24:50
  was right there when you were exhausted.
• 24:52
  But now you can't catch a break. Especially in the more classic
• 24:55
  situation where the man's working all the time and the
• 24:57
  woman's at home. She has no break, she has nobody
• 25:00
  to help. So in that situation, she's
• 25:02
  tired all the fucking time. Especially if she's a lower
• 25:05
  energy woman or one who struggles with depression.
• 25:07
  Anyway, I hope that this increased your empathy.
• 25:09
  I went a little bit long, really long.
• 25:11
  For me 25 minutes. Because this is such a big
• 25:14
  topic. And please do subscribe.
• 25:16
  Then you'll get the sexual empathic ruptures. 1 and 130
• 25:20
  others and I'll talk to Y'all soon.