Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Responsive Desire In Women: If You're Never In The Mood, That's Normal

Transcript

Responsive Desire In Women: If You're Never In The Mood, That's Normal · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:06
  Hi, everyone, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:08
  Psych mom show. I think this is my tenth
• 0:12
  episode, which is great since I just started this a week ago,
• 0:17
  but I do everything at full steam ahead and these are only
• 0:22
  20 minutes with no guests, so let's not get that excited about
• 0:26
  that achievement. Anyway, I'm enjoying doing it
• 0:29
  and I hope everybody's enjoying listening as well.
• 0:33
  So today what I was going to talk about is one of my favorite
• 0:37
  topics responsive desire. So what responsive desire means
• 0:43
  is that well. Okay, let's let's first start
• 0:47
  with spontaneous desire spontaneous.
• 0:50
  Desire is when somebody feels turned on and wants to have sex
• 0:56
  before having sex just by looking at somebody or thinking
• 0:59
  about something, they feel turned on.
• 1:01
  If you're you feel Geologically aroused, you feel?
• 1:05
  Mentally aroused. You want to have sex?
• 1:07
  Okay, cool, everybody knows what that is, responsive desire is
• 1:11
  something that most people do not know about and it is the
• 1:14
  opposite. It is desire.
• 1:16
  That happens in response to touching or to stimulation or
• 1:21
  two starting to have sex in general.
• 1:24
  So unfortunately men, unfortunately for people in
• 1:28
  heterosexual relationships, men and women frequently have
• 1:31
  different forms of Desire, With in monogamy.
• 1:35
  Now, with in monogamy, is key with in a long-term
• 1:38
  relationship. Once you're out of the
• 1:41
  honeymoon, phase which usually lasts about 18 months to years.
• 1:45
  The woman's sex drive will drop and the man sex drive still
• 1:50
  keeps chugging along. Maybe he's not as into it as he
• 1:52
  was at the very beginning but it's really a small decrease
• 1:55
  compared to the woman which just drops down really quick.
• 2:00
  And so what happens is that the beginning of the relationship
• 2:03
  Chip the woman and the man both had spontaneous desire.
• 2:07
  They would look at each other and want to have sex, especially
• 2:10
  if they had similar libidos, then once monogamy sets in and
• 2:15
  the honeymoon, stage is over the woman's desire switches to
• 2:18
  responsive. So this means that she will need
• 2:22
  to start touching in order to get aroused, but if she doesn't
• 2:25
  know this and she and the man doesn't know it and they're both
• 2:29
  waiting for her spontaneous desire to kick in then they They
• 2:33
  are going to be, you know, fucked because this is not a
• 2:38
  good situation. The woman is going to think that
• 2:41
  she is no longer in to him into the man, because she is not as
• 2:44
  attracted to him immediately. And doesn't think about sex when
• 2:47
  he walks in the room. And the man is going to
• 2:50
  sometimes in a worst-case scenario, feel like there is a
• 2:53
  bait and switch, she acted. Like she was into sex before but
• 2:57
  now that we're really together, she's not Now, I am here to tell
• 3:01
  you this is not a bait and switch.
• 3:03
  I have never heard of a woman at least in the current generation
• 3:06
  of women that I work with. Maybe this is something done a
• 3:09
  long time ago. When women had to get married in
• 3:12
  order to have any sort of a life at all or money or Freedom or
• 3:16
  anything. But nowadays, women do not try
• 3:19
  to trap men with sex or they don't try to act different about
• 3:23
  sex before marriage, then they do after marriage.
• 3:26
  This isn't anything conscious. This is Isn't a thing that a
• 3:32
  woman has done in order to be malevolent in some way, she's
• 3:37
  waiting for her spontaneous desire to kick in.
• 3:39
  Also, but it doesn't after the honeymoon phase at that point,
• 3:43
  she transforms to responsive desire, which means that it
• 3:47
  takes her a while to warm up and only after starting to have sex,
• 3:51
  does she really want sex? Unless sometimes when she's
• 3:54
  ovulating then she thinks about sex before and thinks that would
• 3:57
  be nice to have sex but usually she Is it with the same old guy?
• 4:02
  Monogamy, she does not feel spontaneous desire.
• 4:05
  Almost ever, this has absolutely no bearing on whether she's
• 4:08
  going to enjoy sex at all when she has it.
• 4:11
  So that is where couples get into trouble to.
• 4:14
  The first is assuming that the woman's going to have
• 4:17
  spontaneous desire forever, the way the man does, and that the
• 4:21
  lack thereof is indicate something terrible about her
• 4:26
  feelings about him, and the second one is that, At women
• 4:30
  then since they feel like that, they feel like they should not
• 4:34
  have sex when they're not in the mood.
• 4:37
  And then guess what happens? How often do you think that a
• 4:40
  woman with responsive desire had sex when she's waiting to get
• 4:44
  into the mood before sex? Well, the answer is 0.
• 4:47
  Never she never will have sex if she's waiting to be in the mood
• 4:50
  before she has sex. So, what does this look like?
• 4:56
  This looks like a couple where the woman is mad at something
• 5:02
  just because you know you get mad at something.
• 5:04
  You're in a monogamous relationship, he isn't being as
• 5:08
  nice as he used to be. He hasn't gotten her flowers in
• 5:10
  a while. He is not at the disciplinary
• 5:14
  and that she wishes that he was whatever it is.
• 5:16
  Anyway, so she takes these things, by the way, he's
• 5:19
  irritated about stuff with her. Also, obviously should be
• 5:23
  obvious for anybody that's been in a Relationship, that the
• 5:26
  annoyance goes both ways. Anyway.
• 5:28
  So the annoyance goes both ways, but the sex drive doesn't go
• 5:32
  both ways. So he is annoyed that she's, you
• 5:35
  know, OCD about the dishes. Dishwasher, let's say colloquial
• 5:41
  OCD there or clinical OCD depends on the couple and but he
• 5:46
  still wants to have sex with her.
• 5:48
  He still looks at her and things I want to have sex with her
• 5:51
  fine, she looks at him, you know.
• 5:55
  Being slothful or Messi or arrogant or you know, whatever
• 6:00
  whatever she thinks about him. That is less than wonderful and
• 6:04
  she thinks, and that's why I don't want to have sex with him.
• 6:08
  Then they go into couples counseling, they were call on
• 6:10
  him, being messy or slovenly or arrogant or whatever.
• 6:13
  I mean, great, that's cool. Everybody needs some self work.
• 6:17
  But unless we discuss the physiology and the biology of
• 6:22
  responsive desire within monogamy and women, We are if we
• 6:26
  try to make him so perfect that she again experiences
• 6:30
  spontaneous desire, then we are barking up the wrong tree.
• 6:35
  This is never going to happen and when it doesn't happen, she
• 6:38
  may conclude she's in the wrong relationship.
• 6:40
  Unfortunately, just seeing patterns going to happen in the
• 6:44
  next relationship and every relationship there after for the
• 6:47
  majority of women that experience, responsive desire.
• 6:51
  Now, there are very high libido women that still Look at I mean
• 6:57
  I don't really meet them but I mean I'm just trying to be you
• 6:59
  know, not not. I'm trying to to say that
• 7:02
  there's all kinds of people in the world and that some of them
• 7:05
  must include women that go around 24/7 thinking about sex
• 7:08
  with their husbands. I mean this really I can't I
• 7:11
  can't imagine that I mean but then again you know there's all
• 7:15
  kinds of people I haven't met all of them.
• 7:17
  The majority of the women that I know either friends or clients
• 7:23
  or even novel Coronavirus Actors.
• 7:25
  I mean like anybody that's a female.
• 7:27
  I also, of course, Adam a female with in an intimate
• 7:31
  relationship. Your sex drive goes down.
• 7:35
  But if you're still attracted to your partner and you start to
• 7:38
  have sex with them, look what happens.
• 7:40
  You can still have wonderful, fulfilling sex that you deeply
• 7:44
  enjoy. Even though two minutes before
• 7:46
  you weren't thinking about sex at all.
• 7:48
  Now, if you understand responsive desire, and that
• 7:52
  you're not expected as a woman to have Aeneas desire anymore
• 7:57
  within monogamy. Then you can try to set yourself
• 8:01
  up for Success so you can start to say I'm going to have sex.
• 8:06
  So let's say every, you know, every morning, let's say you
• 8:12
  want to have try to have sex every morning or every other
• 8:15
  morning to leave space to get turned on and to enjoy yourself.
• 8:21
  You're going to mentally say every morning and I say morning
• 8:24
  because most And hate night. So this is another big problem
• 8:28
  that I'll do a podcast about women's testosterone is
• 8:32
  everybody's testosterone is low as that night, but for men, they
• 8:34
  have testosterone to spare women, especially, as you age.
• 8:38
  We don't have testosterone to spare, so you really feeling
• 8:41
  like super, not sexy at night. Usually, of course, some women
• 8:46
  also say in the morning, they feel not sexy because they're
• 8:48
  thinking about getting up getting moving, whatever a lot
• 8:51
  of women like the afternoon. But this hypothetical woman that
• 8:54
  I'm saying that just Listen to my podcast and had a Eureka
• 8:57
  moment about responsive desire and wants to be a good partner
• 9:01
  and really bring her a game to the relationship.
• 9:03
  Let's say she says every morning, you know, sometimes the
• 9:08
  kids come into the room, sometimes, you're sick,
• 9:10
  whatever. But as a default, I am going to
• 9:13
  turn over and start kissing my husband or he's going to turn
• 9:16
  over. And I'm going to tell him that
• 9:17
  the mornings are back in play. Probably haven't been on the
• 9:21
  table for like 15 years. But what the hell?
• 9:23
  I listen to this awesome podcast.
• 9:25
  And now they're back in play. So the morning I am going to
• 9:29
  make mental space for the idea that I could get turned on.
• 9:34
  So we're going to start kissing and touching etcetera and I'm
• 9:37
  going to see, I'm going to see if I get in the mood.
• 9:38
  You know what, if your marriage is okay, we're great, not if
• 9:43
  it's terrible if it's terrible you need to work on it certainly
• 9:47
  but if it isn't terrible and you're still attracted
• 9:50
  physically to your spouse, even at all, even to the point that
• 9:54
  hypothetically you could. See how somebody else wouldn't
• 9:56
  kick them out of bed, and do not a high bar, if you're even
• 10:00
  remotely attracted to your spouse and you start kissing
• 10:03
  them and touching them, then you're you just kick on.
• 10:07
  It's like the switch flips for women.
• 10:10
  With responsive desire, may take 5 minutes may take 10 minutes,
• 10:13
  may take 20 minutes, this is why I'm a fan of longer encounters.
• 10:18
  When people tell me that they have these very short sexual
• 10:20
  encounters, a woman, hasn't decided for the first 10
• 10:24
  minutes. Whether she's even Into this.
• 10:26
  If the whole encounter last 10 minutes that she knows, she
• 10:31
  cannot possibly have enjoyed herself, most women, there's
• 10:35
  some other women that really like cookies and these are women
• 10:38
  with a more sexual erotic blueprint.
• 10:43
  So there's five erotic blueprints, one of them sexual,
• 10:45
  those are the people that are just turned on by penetration,
• 10:49
  God bless them, I mean that's real easy.
• 10:51
  But for the majority of women who have other erotic
• 10:54
  blueprints, you Just Google erotic blueprint and I also have
• 10:57
  post about it on dr. Psych mom.
• 11:00
  But anyway, for people who have, for example, a sensual, erotic
• 11:04
  blueprint that like massage and touch, and words and whispering,
• 11:09
  and nice setup, and the room to be nice and all of these sorts
• 11:13
  of sensual, things, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, you're still in the
• 11:18
  very, very early stages of what could end up being a good sexual
• 11:22
  encounter, if it doesn't end. Maturely so anyhow.
• 11:27
  So if you really want to explore whether erotic erotic responsive
• 11:34
  desire, works for you, then you have to get yourself into the
• 11:38
  headspace where you're going to try.
• 11:40
  You can't say no no, I know when I'm in the mood and when I'm
• 11:42
  not, I look at my husband, I feel nothing.
• 11:45
  Well you know you look at probably a hot guy on the street
• 11:49
  and you feel nothing if you're a woman in your like after your
• 11:52
  20s. Like you know, unless you're
• 11:55
  Ovulating, you're stressed out, you got your kids to think about
• 11:58
  got your job to think about like, I mean, most women aren't
• 12:02
  really going around thinking about sex, that much, if you
• 12:05
  are, you don't need to listen to my podcast.
• 12:07
  Then this is wonderful. You are a wonderful rare unicorn
• 12:11
  and you should tell your husband that.
• 12:13
  I said that, he's a super lucky man, but for the women that go
• 12:17
  around all day, do not really think about sex.
• 12:20
  Don't let that make you think that you cannot have a good
• 12:24
  sexual. Still a very good sexual
• 12:27
  experience as good as you used to when you felt spontaneous
• 12:31
  desire, it's not going to be the same.
• 12:32
  I mean you know the person there's not that same excitement
• 12:35
  of oh my God are we gonna be boyfriend-girlfriend or you know
• 12:39
  whatever you think in your 20s but it's not going to be like
• 12:41
  that but it can be even better physically because you've got to
• 12:46
  know what each other likes and doesn't like and you feel
• 12:49
  closer. There's that deep attachment
• 12:51
  bomb. So if you really think Think
• 12:55
  that you may have misjudged. Your spontaneous desire vs.
• 13:00
  Responsive desire whole rigmarole that I'm describing
• 13:04
  and you want to test it then you have to get yourself in the head
• 13:09
  space to test it even when you're looking at your husband
• 13:12
  and you're like, now I don't care.
• 13:13
  I'm not thinking about sex, you're not alone.
• 13:16
  That's how most women feel. Even if your husband looks
• 13:19
  handsome, that's the interesting part.
• 13:21
  I have all these women and couples counseling that are like
• 13:24
  oh yeah, my husband. He's a Looking guy.
• 13:26
  Yeah sure. It's good shape.
• 13:27
  I like him. It's good looking guy.
• 13:29
  Handsome. Do you want to have sex with him
• 13:31
  now? I don't want to have sex with
• 13:32
  him at all. Is he bad in bed?
• 13:34
  No, he's good in bed. When we have sex these, they
• 13:36
  say, I like it. But I just really don't think
• 13:40
  about it. I'm not in the mood and I don't
• 13:44
  think about sex. Don't want to have sex with him
• 13:45
  at all. But these women do not know.
• 13:49
  Of course, I tell them, they're my clients.
• 13:52
  I about responsive desire, they think that because they don't
• 13:56
  look at their husband and want to have sex with him, right?
• 13:59
  Then that that means that there is no attraction anymore.
• 14:03
  They can admire that he is handsome.
• 14:05
  They could they're not blind. They see that he's good-looking
• 14:08
  but it does nothing for them. And the real problem comes when
• 14:12
  they decide a that that means that they shouldn't have sex
• 14:14
  with him because somehow this is All and it's acquainted is so
• 14:19
  interesting to non-consensual in today's climate, isn't that
• 14:22
  non-consensual to not be in the mood for sex, which is basically
• 14:28
  biologically impossible for the majority of Women Within
• 14:31
  monogamy as I'm describing and to decide to try to have sex.
• 14:35
  This is not non-consensual. That is a decision that a woman
• 14:38
  is making, she's consenting and I am encouraging her to initiate
• 14:44
  in fact, a sexual encounter, When she herself is not yearning
• 14:49
  deeply for sex. What is she yearning for in that
• 14:52
  moment connection to see if the sex could actually be good after
• 14:58
  all and maybe I'm right the happiness on her husband's face,
• 15:02
  the rekindling of the Romantic flame.
• 15:05
  I mean, she could have multiple desires there, but if none of
• 15:08
  them are for sex, that should not impede her from trying still
• 15:13
  to have sex and see if responsive desire works.
• 15:16
  Now if you Start your 10 minutes into it.
• 15:18
  And you're like, oh my God, this is horrible.
• 15:20
  Well, that probably indicates an issue.
• 15:22
  It indicates an issue with how you feel about your husband or
• 15:26
  with how you guys have sex or with the how you're feeling
• 15:31
  about yourself your body, there's a million reasons, but
• 15:36
  for some women, just very knowing that this is normal.
• 15:40
  And this is how women operate in the majority of monogamous
• 15:43
  women. Never feel in the mood.
• 15:46
  Before they actually start to have sex with some, once a month
• 15:50
  changes of that when you ovulate, then women can see
• 15:55
  their husband and say I want to have sex, but that is basically
• 15:58
  your body saying, I want a baby. Even if your mind does not want
• 16:01
  a baby very much, doesn't your body still does once a month for
• 16:06
  a few days? Then still what we're saying is
• 16:10
  you can still have a fulfilling sex life even if you didn't want
• 16:14
  to have sex that. In the first place.
• 16:18
  So a is not it's not non-consensual or Force to try
• 16:21
  to get in the mood to have sex with somebody that you love and
• 16:25
  be it doesn't mean anything about the relationship or the
• 16:29
  attraction. It is not better to have
• 16:32
  spontaneous arousal. Then to have responsive desire,
• 16:36
  that's not better. These things are not pitted
• 16:38
  against one. Another, when you are in a new
• 16:41
  relationship, you have spontaneous desire.
• 16:44
  Some women never do actually. Men always have responsive
• 16:47
  desire, even at the beginning, they never literally never,
• 16:51
  there are lower libido, person have looked at their husband and
• 16:54
  said I want to have sex with him and their head or real loud.
• 16:58
  But when they start to have sex with him from the very first
• 17:01
  time during dating or, you know, during dating.
• 17:05
  I mean some people wedding night, not yet most of my
• 17:07
  listeners but still from the very first time they didn't feel
• 17:12
  spontaneous desire ever. They only feel responsive desire
• 17:15
  and that's okay. But we're what I'm talking
• 17:18
  about. Is the people that only, that
• 17:22
  think that spontaneous desire is, the only thing that means
• 17:26
  that you are meant to be together that you're sexually
• 17:29
  compatible, and that everything is right with the world.
• 17:32
  This is an impossible standard for the physiology of most human
• 17:38
  females. Now, in the post that I write
• 17:42
  about this topic, I give a little formula that may help.
• 17:46
  Men that feel kind of before they get in the mood.
• 17:49
  So remember, takes you like, who knows?
• 17:51
  Let's say, let's see. Takes you 10 minutes for your
• 17:53
  body to warm up and responsive desire to kick it?
• 17:56
  So during those 10 minutes, if the man is focused on the woman
• 18:00
  trying to be a good lover, trying to be do everything.
• 18:03
  He's always been told make the woman come first, right?
• 18:06
  So let's say, he's like, really unless it's been a while since
• 18:09
  your last encounter. So the man is really trying to
• 18:12
  focus on the woman. He's excited, he's touching her
• 18:15
  everywhere. He wants to start going down on
• 18:17
  her quick. He wants to talk.
• 18:18
  Take her shirt off, do all this stuff, right?
• 18:21
  Hey I talked in the highly sensitive woman, making your
• 18:24
  highly sensitive wife wants sex a lot more podcast and post.
• 18:28
  I discussed this all that stuff where it's like the clothes come
• 18:33
  off, the lights are on, he staring at you, this stuff can
• 18:37
  like really kill it for a highly sensitive woman, but even a
• 18:41
  regular woman if she's not aroused yet, which we're kind of
• 18:46
  assuming The default, remember, this is this is what is in most
• 18:49
  women is responsive desire. So we're assuming this is the
• 18:52
  default for your wife or for you, the wife, if you're
• 18:55
  listening to me, if this is the default.
• 18:59
  So there's 10 minutes, right? Let's say of your sexual
• 19:02
  encounter during which you don't like feel that excited.
• 19:06
  So if he's focusing on you, it starts to feel kind of awkward.
• 19:10
  It's like weird. You gotta act like you're into
• 19:12
  it but you're not into it yet. So it's kind of like just feels
• 19:16
  Newest can really turn you off to the whole responsive desire,
• 19:20
  trying sex out thing. So what I say in my post and
• 19:24
  which is a form is a Formula at a time when the woman is
• 19:29
  relaxed, the man can start by being sweet, loving saying, nice
• 19:34
  things, giving a massage, that's really very useful.
• 19:38
  And then the encounter can switch to the man.
• 19:42
  So the woman can touch the man during this time that she is
• 19:46
  getting Aroused. A lot of women are aroused by
• 19:49
  their male Partners arousal, but they never get to see it.
• 19:53
  Because the order of operations is always switched.
• 19:56
  So, like he is working on her first.
• 20:00
  So she feels awkward, she's not turned on yet, and that's when
• 20:03
  everything is happening. Then he's so excited after that,
• 20:06
  that basically they have intercourse, he comes in with
• 20:08
  their done. This is not fun.
• 20:11
  It's not even fun for the man. A lot of the men that I talked
• 20:14
  to was that encounters were longer.
• 20:16
  So if while the woman is still feeling like she herself is not
• 20:21
  physiologically aroused, meaning in a Woman by the way you can't
• 20:26
  really touch her erogenous zones until she is aroused.
• 20:29
  So for most men this is a fine pickle, right?
• 20:32
  You want to turn her on but you can't turn her on.
• 20:35
  You can't touch her to turn around, until she's turned on.
• 20:37
  That sounds like a recipe for celibacy, or some crazy
• 20:40
  gaslighting, neither of, which is the case.
• 20:43
  So in what I suggest, the Stage of sex should be foreplay
• 20:48
  focused on the man so that the woman is touching and stroking,
• 20:52
  the man he's going to get more excited as he gets excited this.
• 20:57
  She warms up this takes up her 10 minutes, then he can start to
• 21:02
  touch her erogenous zones to turn her on and then they can
• 21:06
  really go to town with intercourse, or whatever, sort
• 21:09
  of orgasm inducing activity they do.
• 21:13
  So remember, also, By the way, I mean, this could be subject for
• 21:18
  like 20 more podcasts, but this whole order of operations thing
• 21:22
  really gets messed up with a lot of people because they go just
• 21:27
  like One Direction. So we do like little bit of
• 21:29
  foreplay than intercourse and we're done.
• 21:32
  But why by then the woman is, as you're learning, just getting
• 21:36
  warmed up. So why is it over?
• 21:38
  So you can always stop intercourse and go back to
• 21:42
  foreplay. You can do that as many times as
• 21:44
  you want to do the more the better.
• 21:46
  Are, you know, the encounter supposed to last longer than
• 21:51
  this podcast or than a few of my podcast strung together because
• 21:54
  they're only 20 minutes. So if you've been listening to
• 21:58
  this podcast while you're having a sexual encounter, I'm just
• 22:01
  kidding. Never do that.
• 22:02
  That's not going to be an aphrodisiac, don't listen to it
• 22:05
  during sex but listen to it long before sex because it is very
• 22:10
  useful and it can help you guys. Figure out what you are going to
• 22:15
  do to make Use of your newfound, knowledge about responsive
• 22:19
  desire and ensure that the entire way that you can see of
• 22:24
  of whether your wife is attracted to you, or you are
• 22:28
  attracted to your husband is not predicated on going against
• 22:32
  basic biology of a monogamous female.
• 22:34
  Okay? So this is super important and
• 22:37
  it is one of the ways that you guys can be on a team, trying to
• 22:42
  enhance your sex life versus me against you, which is what See a
• 22:46
  lot of things devolve into when it is lower libido versus higher
• 22:50
  libido. And we're both in our corner and
• 22:52
  we're advocating for our position know.
• 22:54
  The couple needs to be on the same side, working on the sex
• 22:59
  life, both Partners together and learning information that can
• 23:03
  help you understand why things are not going perfectly and come
• 23:08
  up with brainstorming Solutions such as changing.
• 23:12
  How you think about it as well as what you actually do in the
• 23:15
  encounter. Doing things like that can bring
• 23:17
  you closer or not just in the bedroom, but in every which way.
• 23:22
  Okay, so I hope that you found this enlightening and that I
• 23:26
  left you with something to at least, think about or try.
• 23:29
  Hopefully both and I will continue discussing responsive
• 23:34
  desire in the context of monogamy in later podcast,
• 23:38
  although it won't be so Central. But this is a primary topic
• 23:43
  because it can really transform how you view what you think of
• 23:48
  as your attraction levels and your sex life in general, all
• 23:53
  right? And I will, I will talk to you
• 23:56
  guys soon. Bye, bye.