Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Your Sex Drive Isn't Dependent On Your Wife, So Why Would Hers Be Dependent On Anything You Are Or Do?

Transcript

Your Sex Drive Isn't Dependent On Your Wife, So Why Would Hers Be Dependent On Anything You Are Or Do? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom Show.
• 0:09
  Today we're going to talk about a common misconception that men
• 0:12
  have about sex drives, and specifically their wife's sex
• 0:15
  drive. And that's always a winning, a
• 0:19
  winning hook so that you will want to engage in listening to
• 0:23
  the episode. So before that, though, I must
• 0:26
  tell you again, as always, subscribe.
• 0:28
  I have so much more content than you realize if you're not a
• 0:31
  subscriber. And a lot of it is really
• 0:34
  awesome, and I'm sure some of it is not, but but I try.
• 0:39
  So anyway, subscribe. It's 899 a month, and if you
• 0:43
  like listening to me for free, then you're going to like having
• 0:45
  about 1/4 more content. All right, so, oh, and the most
• 0:50
  recent episode was on how remarriage, divorce and
• 0:52
  remarriage changes. How you view the idea that being
• 0:56
  a Good Wife also makes you a good being.
• 0:58
  A good mother or father somehow also makes you a good spouse.
• 1:01
  It really, really disconnects those variables.
• 1:04
  And even without divorcing, just listening to me talk about this
• 1:08
  epiphany that people have post divorce, it can really help you
• 1:11
  gain a different perspective on implicit assumptions that you
• 1:17
  may have had about the overlap between those variables of, you
• 1:21
  know, spousehood and parenthood. OK, so today we're going to talk
• 1:26
  about when men say, and the manosphere, you know, implicates
• 1:32
  the role of the man in the woman's sex drive too much.
• 1:35
  And so it it amplifies this message.
• 1:38
  And men think that if they are just better somehow than their
• 1:41
  wife will have a higher sex drive.
• 1:43
  And they also think that therefore if their wife does not
• 1:47
  have a high sex drive, then it is their fault and or it means
• 1:50
  she's not attracted or it means she's cheating.
• 1:53
  Despite that, 87% of women don't cheat and 80% of men don't
• 1:56
  cheat. But she there's something wrong.
• 1:59
  And I talked about this in my sex freeze tag analogy about,
• 2:03
  like, you know, if you go back and listen to that podcast about
• 2:05
  the man whose son asks him to play freeze tag, and when he
• 2:10
  doesn't want to because he's a fucking adult and he's tired,
• 2:14
  the son says you must be playing freeze tag with someone else.
• 2:18
  And that is as absurd as when the man says to his low libido
• 2:21
  wife you must be fucking somebody else.
• 2:24
  She's not in again, 87% of cases.
• 2:29
  But but anyway, and those are from the Institute for Family
• 2:32
  Studies, the only, the most recent and only data I could
• 2:35
  really get that goes about cheating and and whatever, don't
• 2:40
  wait if you were going to like, write in.
• 2:42
  Actually, my podcast listeners are are much more intellectual,
• 2:47
  let's say, than my Facebook main page followers.
• 2:51
  So I do not think you will do this.
• 2:53
  But do not e-mail me with the New York Post article whose
• 2:56
  headline is Women Cheat as Often as Men.
• 2:59
  Because in that whole damn thing you cannot find any data that
• 3:03
  back that up at all. Except for polls that say that
• 3:07
  like basically women are attracted to other guys or
• 3:10
  something. Or like, you know, within the
• 3:13
  subset of people who have affairs.
• 3:15
  You know, like it just isn't any data that ever, No one can find
• 3:19
  data that shows that women cheat more than men because they
• 3:22
  don't, because they don't have high sex drives, because they're
• 3:25
  having babies, you know, because they don't have testosterone,
• 3:28
  etc, etc, etc. Any who.
• 3:32
  So anyway, let me put it to you like this.
• 3:35
  Does your wife having a lower libido make you have a lower
• 3:38
  libido? No, it doesn't.
• 3:40
  You know, it just fucking doesn't.
• 3:43
  It doesn't. You have the same drive pretty
• 3:46
  much no matter what. Do you want to have sex with her
• 3:49
  as much? No, she's not that fun.
• 3:51
  You know, I mean, she kind of hates sex, but that probably
• 3:54
  means that you jerk off a lot to porn despite me telling you not
• 3:57
  to. And despite me saying that if
• 3:58
  you didn't do that, you could bring all of that energy and
• 4:02
  even that anger, which is a motivating variable, into your
• 4:06
  marriage and finally get into the couple's counseling that you
• 4:08
  need to actually rectify the situation.
• 4:11
  But that's another aside. But it doesn't impact your
• 4:13
  drive. Isn't that just because she
• 4:15
  doesn't want to have sex with you, that you don't look at the
• 4:18
  Starbucks barista and want to have sex with her or wanna, you
• 4:21
  know, use Pornhub for hours? Of course it doesn't.
• 4:25
  That seems absurd, doesn't it? That her sex drive would somehow
• 4:29
  make your sex drive into the same sex drive as her?
• 4:33
  That she would somehow impact you like osmosis in this way?
• 4:38
  Doesn't that seem preposterous? That she would have some impact,
• 4:42
  anything that she did? So let's put it like this.
• 4:45
  So what if you put on like a nice outfit and she said I don't
• 4:49
  like that shirt and your feelings were hurt?
• 4:52
  If you're a preoccupied attachment guy, your feelings
• 4:54
  may well be hurt. Does that impact how much you
• 4:57
  want to have sex? If she then were to drop off the
• 5:00
  face of the earth tomorrow, would you be celibate because
• 5:03
  you had received an insult from her and now you don't just don't
• 5:06
  want to have sex anymore because it put you in a bad mood?
• 5:09
  No, no, no, no, no, no. Your sex drive is its own thing.
• 5:14
  So thus, possibly you now see where I'm going with this.
• 5:18
  Her sex drive is her own thing. It has to do with her.
• 5:21
  The amount of sex that she wants in a week is a variable that
• 5:24
  predates you. It has nothing to do with you.
• 5:27
  It certainly also doesn't have much to do with, although it
• 5:29
  does like kind of analogously, it does with the honeymoon
• 5:34
  stage, such that women with a low libido probably wanted sex
• 5:36
  in the honeymoon stage once or twice a week, and women with a
• 5:39
  high libido now wanted sex in the honeymoon stage once or
• 5:42
  twice a day. But but nobody remains the same
• 5:47
  after the honeymoon phase. So everybody drops and they drop
• 5:49
  analogously to however they were in the honeymoon phase.
• 5:52
  Not that anybody knows that, and not that it's your fault that
• 5:55
  you didn't know it because she didn't know it and nobody knows
• 5:57
  it because that's not the sort of thing that you know, really
• 6:01
  makes people, you know, buy tickets to romance, to ROM coms,
• 6:06
  because nobody wants to know about that.
• 6:08
  Because people delude themselves, and that's totally
• 6:10
  normal part of being a human. But anyway, back to the point.
• 6:14
  Her sex drive is her sex drive. It doesn't have to do with how
• 6:16
  hot you are. It doesn't have to do with how
• 6:19
  cool you are. It doesn't have to do with you,
• 6:21
  like inspiring dread, which I have a podcast about.
• 6:25
  Oh, it's so ridiculous. Or being a man of mystery or
• 6:28
  like any of this bullshit. Her sex drive is her sex drive.
• 6:33
  Her sex drive is her sex drive. The only difference is when
• 6:37
  there is a real somewhat of a biological renaissance of the
• 6:41
  honeymoon phase. Such as if you were to start
• 6:44
  cheating, right? So before she gets all her shit
• 6:47
  together to dump you, then she might have more sex with you.
• 6:51
  That's hysterical bonding and it usually goes on for a couple of
• 6:54
  weeks and then the woman wakes up and she's like, what in the
• 6:56
  hell am I doing, you know? And then you go to couples
• 6:59
  counseling and then she leaves. Or if she's real fucked up, then
• 7:02
  she, you know, like takes longer ambiguously to leave.
• 7:07
  Or maybe she forgives you when you turn into like a better
• 7:09
  person and your marriage is great, but guess what?
• 7:12
  Her sex drive in that great marriage is going to be whatever
• 7:15
  her sex drive was before. So then you say, well then what
• 7:19
  is the point in being a nice guy and then doing the chores and
• 7:22
  then, you know, whatever, whatever.
• 7:23
  I mean, some not everybody's an asshole, not everybody's looking
• 7:26
  to do tit for tat. But I'm saying, I do say, you
• 7:29
  know, in my choreplay thing, choreplay works for certain
• 7:32
  women, which women? Women that are still into the
• 7:34
  marriage and that have at least a normal libido and a positive
• 7:38
  attitude towards sex. So here is what can be impacted.
• 7:43
  Her natural drive cannot be impacted right much unless her
• 7:47
  drive is is artificially low because trauma history, you
• 7:50
  know, or something like that. But that isn't really drive,
• 7:52
  that's like something else. So let's assume just that
• 7:55
  there's no trauma history because if she does have a
• 7:57
  trauma history, then you want to get her into therapy that
• 8:00
  addresses sexual trauma, right? Because then she kind of doesn't
• 8:03
  really know what her drive is, right?
• 8:06
  But anyway, so let's say that it's a situation where she's
• 8:09
  not. So she has pretty healthy
• 8:11
  attitude towards sex in general, you know, and but she wants sex
• 8:15
  twice a week pretty much. That's like her natural thing.
• 8:17
  It doesn't matter how hot you are, she's going to want sex
• 8:19
  twice a week. But it doesn't matter how much
• 8:22
  chores you do or whatever. Her body's going to want sex
• 8:24
  twice a week. However, I've taught you about
• 8:27
  responsive desire and if she feels good about the
• 8:30
  relationship, she may decide to get herself in the mood on other
• 8:34
  days. How would she do this?
• 8:36
  By hanging out with you and being close to you and deciding
• 8:40
  that she's going to shower at a different time and get stuff
• 8:42
  done with the kids at a different time?
• 8:44
  Because in her mind, she's thinking that things have been
• 8:46
  going so well. I know that I like sex when I
• 8:49
  start. I've been listening to Doctor
• 8:50
  Psych Mom and I'm going to get in the mood tonight too.
• 8:53
  Things are just going great between us.
• 8:55
  This still doesn't mean her body wants to have sex more than
• 8:57
  twice a week. Like, it doesn't matter.
• 9:00
  You know it doesn't matter. Also, she her, her body wants to
• 9:03
  have sex twice a week, even if you're like a total douchebag.
• 9:06
  And then she doesn't want to have sex with you, Right?
• 9:08
  But like, if you acted better, then instead of using the
• 9:11
  vibrator twice a week, then she'd be having sex with you
• 9:14
  twice a week. But her body still wants to have
• 9:16
  sex twice a week. This is what guys don't
• 9:18
  understand. So let's say they want to have
• 9:19
  sex every day. Is that impacted by anything
• 9:22
  your wife does? No, no, no, no, no.
• 9:26
  You know, I mean, if if it's very difficult between you, then
• 9:29
  as I have a podcast about that you, you know, your husband may
• 9:33
  not want to have sex because you are hot, but you're also quite
• 9:35
  difficult. So there are certainly
• 9:37
  situations where the man doesn't want to have sex because he's
• 9:39
  not attracted. But there's also situations
• 9:42
  where when you're asleep, he's attracted to you.
• 9:43
  But when you're awake, you guys fight so much that he couldn't
• 9:46
  possibly be attracted to you. So in those cases, he doesn't
• 9:49
  want to have sex with you. But wait, he still does want to
• 9:52
  have sex, however much his body wants to have sex.
• 9:56
  So guys have to understand. Like many guys, especially
• 9:59
  preoccupied attachment guys, take their wife's sex drive
• 10:02
  personally, as though the woman's drive somehow responds
• 10:06
  differently to them. No.
• 10:07
  When she ovulates, it's kind of, it doesn't matter, you know,
• 10:11
  like if it if you're like cute or not cute or like acting nice
• 10:16
  or not acting nice, you know, then she just kind of wants to
• 10:18
  have sex. If you really act like an
• 10:21
  asshole, then she doesn't want to have sex with you.
• 10:23
  But her body still wants to have sex.
• 10:25
  You cannot change somebody's innate Dr. They can decide to
• 10:30
  try to get in the mood more frequently than their drive
• 10:33
  allows, and certainly they should for the sake of the
• 10:36
  marriage. If they are a person who, let's
• 10:38
  say, wants it once a week, and you're a person who wants it
• 10:40
  every day, then yeah, you should get somewhere in the middle.
• 10:44
  And she's a hell of a lot likelier to do that if she feels
• 10:47
  happy overall and if she's talking to a therapist that
• 10:51
  talks about sex, you know? So again, as I mentioned many
• 10:55
  times, if you're in couples counseling where there's this
• 10:59
  superstition that as things improve emotionally somehow her
• 11:03
  drive is going to increase, well, that's bullshit, you know?
• 11:07
  And so she has to be educated about responsive desire.
• 11:11
  As I discussed 50 million times, there's no great conspiracy
• 11:14
  where women decide that after the honeymoon stage, they're
• 11:17
  going to turn off their drive. They are shocked and they
• 11:19
  assume, as most people do before looking at an internal
• 11:23
  attribution or a biological attribution, we look to an
• 11:26
  external attribution. Oh my God, it must.
• 11:28
  Because he's an asshole, you know?
• 11:30
  And you know he was an asshole last week.
• 11:32
  I remember. He was.
• 11:33
  So must be that, you know, and that's what they think.
• 11:36
  That's what they genuinely think.
• 11:37
  That's what the guy thinks too, the guy.
• 11:38
  But he doesn't think because I'm an asshole.
• 11:40
  He thinks I'm not hot enough, I'm not muscular enough, I'm not
• 11:43
  exciting enough, I'm not like her old college boyfriend that
• 11:46
  she told me they were so in, you know, exploratory.
• 11:50
  So he does the overly personal attribution.
• 11:54
  She does an overly personal attribution.
• 11:57
  The person they're both blaming is him, and he thinks that if he
• 12:00
  were different, her drive would be higher and she thinks if he
• 12:03
  were different, her drive would be higher.
• 12:05
  And I'm here to tell you that's a load of bullshit.
• 12:07
  Just like if she liked you more, her drive to eat doesn't change,
• 12:11
  you know, it is a natural biological thing.
• 12:16
  She remains at a set point in her weight.
• 12:18
  Usually, unless she's pregnant or, you know, there she's
• 12:21
  depressed or something. But generally she remains.
• 12:25
  If she started out at 150 pounds, she kind of stays at 150
• 12:29
  pounds pretty much, you know, and she eats enough.
• 12:32
  Her body knows how much do I eat to maintain being at this
• 12:36
  weight? And if I eat less one day, then
• 12:38
  I want to eat more the next day. That's how homeostasis works,
• 12:41
  right? And it's why people have set
• 12:43
  points with their weight, and she has a set point with her
• 12:46
  libido as well, and it does not have to do with you.
• 12:50
  Where you can, though, move the needle is whether or not she
• 12:55
  wants to try to have sex more than her natural drive would
• 13:00
  allow, such as in the week before her period where she
• 13:04
  feels kind of like shit and doesn't want to even talk to
• 13:06
  you. Then if you were perceived to be
• 13:09
  working on the marriage and knew all the things she wanted to be
• 13:12
  a really great guy and she also understood about responsive
• 13:15
  desire, then she could initiate sex anyway and or respond to
• 13:20
  your initiation because she is trying to put in a good faith
• 13:24
  effort. She understands the biological
• 13:26
  nature of responsive desire, which if you are a somehow
• 13:29
  recent listener that doesn't understand about responsive
• 13:31
  desire. I have a whole podcast on
• 13:33
  Responsive Desire. It's important.
• 13:36
  Or multiple podcasts I believe. And a post as well on doctor
• 13:40
  Psych mom.com. So the point is if she's
• 13:43
  educated about these variables and she may well try to get in
• 13:46
  the mood more and she may enjoy the sex that she's having more.
• 13:50
  And of course you getting better at sex helps.
• 13:53
  Which is why I have my podcasts on like Oral Sex on Women for
• 13:56
  example, and and Top Ten Ways to Make Your Highly Sensitive Wife
• 14:01
  Like Sex a Lot More And a lot of other things, bucket list
• 14:05
  experiences, etc. So certainly you can get
• 14:08
  technically better and massage and foreplay and all of these
• 14:12
  things that I've written and talked about.
• 14:14
  So if you get better at sex, then it also helps responsive
• 14:17
  desire, because then she knows. All right, I'm not in the mood.
• 14:20
  Again, my setpoint is my setpoint.
• 14:22
  If I was married to Brad Pitt, it would be my setpoint.
• 14:24
  If I was married to a bridge troll, it would be my setpoint.
• 14:27
  That's my setpoint for wanting sex.
• 14:29
  But I now know that I can in fact, enjoy sex at other times
• 14:33
  as well. And I'm willing to do that
• 14:35
  because my husband's a real good guy and I feel emotionally close
• 14:39
  to him. And you know what?
• 14:40
  He's somehow getting a lot better at sex, you know, after
• 14:43
  he started listening to the Doctor Psych Mom podcast.
• 14:46
  And so, you know, I know I'm going to enjoy myself in the
• 14:48
  long run, but that does not mean that there is any still any
• 14:53
  impact on her drive from you being hot, not hot, anything
• 15:00
  really. You are just not involved.
• 15:02
  So it's so funny because guys don't really ever make the
• 15:05
  connection with themselves. Your sex drive is a unique
• 15:08
  animal that's inherent to you. But then somehow they think that
• 15:11
  their wife's sex drive is also dependent on them and what they
• 15:14
  do, whereas their own sex drive they assume to just be a natural
• 15:17
  biological part of who they are. So it has to be the same thing,
• 15:21
  right? You got to be consistent
• 15:22
  whenever you think about one gender in a way that makes the
• 15:25
  other gender seem just totally just so different and no
• 15:29
  overlap. And you really have to
• 15:31
  interrogate that, you know, because the reality is that
• 15:35
  people have their biological predilections and those are
• 15:40
  inherent and innate and really completely an independent factor
• 15:45
  that does not relate to anything else in the known world,
• 15:49
  including a mate. So think about it.
• 15:53
  Really think about it. And what it can do is it can
• 15:55
  make you stop blaming your wife, which is a lot of what I do in
• 15:58
  this podcast is I'm like, listen it.
• 16:01
  There's no conspiracy, there's no bait and switch.
• 16:05
  The libido goes down. She had the same sex drive
• 16:08
  before as she does now. Here were all the red flags that
• 16:12
  you missed that she was never going to like sex, you know?
• 16:15
  And so why do you stop blaming her and start thinking about how
• 16:19
  you guys can proactively work on this?
• 16:21
  Which of course includes being the best person that you can be
• 16:26
  facilitating the education component.
• 16:29
  G Bringing her to a sex therapist or a couple therapist
• 16:32
  that talks about sex. Sort of listening to my stuff.
• 16:35
  Remember, do not do that if she hates my stuff or other people
• 16:40
  that she may hate less, you know?
• 16:42
  Or reading a book, come as you are or like whatever the fuck
• 16:45
  you do, you know, I talk about constantly options or just
• 16:49
  bringing it up. I heard about responsive desire,
• 16:51
  blah blah blah blah blah. And you know, trying.
• 16:54
  You just got to try. But when you blame somebody it
• 16:57
  stops you from even trying. Then you start doing all these
• 17:00
  things to like hack them, such as like being a man of mystery
• 17:04
  or working out all the time. You know what?
• 17:06
  Working out all the time as I have a whole podcast about this.
• 17:09
  But that leads to less sex for so many people because the
• 17:12
  woman's like God damn I thought he was a narcissist before.
• 17:15
  Holy shit since he started going to the gym he is in fucking
• 17:19
  tolerable. I don't want to touch it with a
• 17:20
  10 foot pole. All it does is look in the
• 17:22
  mirror, you know, only just look in the mirror and tell me if I
• 17:26
  noticed that the lady at Starbucks looked at his arms.
• 17:28
  No, she did not. She was looking at the wall
• 17:30
  behind him. What a dipshit, you know?
• 17:32
  So like that is not going to help unless you are very
• 17:38
  overweight and she does not like that.
• 17:40
  In which case, obviously, yes, going to the gym, eating
• 17:42
  differently, certainly. But when these guys decide that,
• 17:46
  you know what they really need to do to change their wife's sex
• 17:49
  drive is to, you know, start working out six hours a day.
• 17:53
  I really, I've not seen that work yet.
• 17:56
  I have though, had women tell me an individual therapy, the way
• 17:59
  that it works is I kind of have to tell him that I really like
• 18:01
  him going to the gym. Otherwise he gets very sad.
• 18:04
  So so yes, if your wife is a nice person, you know, or she
• 18:08
  has a particular fetish for bodybuilders, then then yes,
• 18:12
  then maybe it can help. But but for the general woman,
• 18:15
  you are actually listening to things that she values in the
• 18:19
  marriage. You being more open minded about
• 18:21
  things outside of the bedroom. Well, the you go into couples
• 18:24
  counseling and you pushing the need for genuine deep
• 18:29
  understanding about the biology behind female sexual desire.
• 18:33
  All of that will be a hell of a lot more expedient than working
• 18:38
  out constantly and sometimes just leaving the house for no
• 18:41
  reason and not telling her where you're going, which women with
• 18:43
  any self esteem are not going to tolerate for three days before
• 18:47
  they have a real problem with you.
• 18:50
  All right. I will talk to y'all soon and
• 18:53
  have a great day and thanks for listening.