Mismatched Desire, Menopause & Intimacy—Let’s Talk About It (feat. Dr. Lori Davis, FNP)

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I've seen and talked to some people who have waited to have sex till marriage. And then there was issue, especially on the feminine side, because the reason that they had waited was the religious factor. And so like all of this shame and things had been built into that. So then when it was time to actually be intimate, they literally couldn't be intimate because there was weren't able to have penetration because there's that block there mentally, so your vagina's like, uh no way, but you're not coming in here.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

Yeah. You know, it's like they you you don't have a relationship with that part of your body.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Every journey has a story, and every story has the power to heal. My story hasn't been ordinary. I was adopted, I'm a survivor of abuse and trauma, and I have more than a dozen siblings. That's just the beginning of my story. Life has taken me on a long and winding road of healing and personal growth. A journey that ultimately led me back to myself and the path I was meant to walk. Along the way, I discovered that stories have power. The power to connect us, to help us grow, and even to help us heal. This is Travel Time Stories with Shannon. Real journeys, real stories, and real healing. Why do most people find it so hard to talk about intimacy?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

When it's something almost everyone struggles with at some point.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Exactly. We'll talk about work, stress, even our deepest life challenges.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

When it comes to desire, connection, or what's happening in our relationships.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

We just go quiet. Why is that? I think there's some things that we're taught not to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yes, and intimacy is one of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yes. So when something changes or feels off, we don't ask questions. We just usually carry it quietly. But what if we don't have to? I'm your host Shannon, and this is Travel Time Stories. Real journeys, real stories, and real healing.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

And I'm your co-host Ann from Missouri. And today's conversation is one that so many people experience, but don't always feel comfortable talking about.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

We're joined today by Dr. Lori Davis, a board-certified family nurse practitioner and certified sex counselor who specializes in helping individuals and couples navigate intimacy, desire, and connection.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

She's been featured in the New York Times, Oprah Daily and Women's Health. And she teaches sexuality counseling at the University of Michigan.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Dr. Laurie, we're so grateful to have you here. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

We are happy to have you. I think this is a conversation that needs to be out there, but a lot of people just are they embarrassed or just afraid to talk about it?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

So everybody grab your favorite beverage and let's get into the conversation here. So, Dr. Laurie, why is it still so hard for people to talk about intimacy and desire? Uh it's a great place to start, right?

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Um this is the such a this is really the biggest barrier, I think. I think if we could talk, if we could do it slowly, if we could have patience, understanding, compassion for each other and for ourselves, we wouldn't feel so stuck around sexuality. I think there's some sense in which that works itself out with the proper kind of holding. But yeah, we we don't feel that way. We do feel really shut down. I think that has a lot to do with, I mean, of course, there's our cultural landscape. You know, we are we are bathed in a sense that like we should know how to do sex and it's really important in some sort of way out in the marketplace, kind of. But then in our own homes, there's no support, there's no education. A lot of times people are actively shamed. And this sort of sense of I should know, but I don't know. No one's really helping me to understand what I'm feeling in my own body. I'm expected to do it and not not really give the be uh be given the support to make that happen. And so we kind of run on autopilot, you know, and our goal is like let's run on autopilot and not stop to talk about this. And that works fine until autopilot doesn't work anymore. And that's when we've got to bring in communication and new experiences and new perspectives and really kind of go back to the beginning to reconsider what this whole thing is about for me, for you, and what do we want to create together?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

So you kind of touched on this. Uh there is often a lot of shame or confusion around it. What do you see people struggling with most?

SPEAKER_04 5:20

I think that uh desire issues are what I see most in my practice. So the most common way that we'll present is one person wants to have sex or intimacy more. I'll just use sex, right? I think intimacy is a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:34

So we'll say one person wants to have sex more and one person wants to have it less. And so we get this sort of dynamic set up where someone is upset and pursuing and asking and wanting and feeling rejected, and another person is feeling over time more pressured, a sense of obligation to do this, their own desire is getting kind of muddled and hidden within a lot of really painful negative feelings. And then that just goes round and round. So you kind of put those two things together: someone who wants it more, someone who wants it less. And because of the pattern of relating to each other about it, it just gets more and more and more painful and people are more and more polarized. I think the issue for me is that's the way it shows up. But when I think about what is the problem underneath that, so many things, but one of them is like, how are we understanding what desire is in the first place, you know, and when we have sort of skewed, lopsided versions of what we think that's all about that we haven't really reflected on, that's a lot of the source of why we start to do weird things in relationship around having desire and sharing it with our partner.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah. You you hit the nail on the head. I was gonna say it's usually the mismatch desire is wrapped up in emotional, physical, hormonal. It's like a combination of different things uh that causes that to happen with couples. And the other thing I think too is that women feel like this shame around or that we're not supposed to have desire or pleasure necessarily from sex, that if we do, that that's you know, can be seen as bad or whatever, especially when it's tied to if you're from a very religious uh background.

SPEAKER_04 7:23

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there's so many permutations of this, right? But there's definitely an experience that people have that, you know, it's this split. It's like on the one hand, I'm pressured to not express desire or need anything or feel pleasure and just keep going. And on the other hand, I receive these messages about how I'm supposed to know how to do it and I'm supposed to know how to orgasm, and that's all supposed to be really easy for me. Um, and so I think we get trapped in between all of these mixed messages. But so much of it, I think for women in particular comes down to uh, you know, just an orientation to our partners in our world where it's like, I'm supposed to do, I'm supposed to take care of, I need to people please. What do you need? You know, this sort of this outward focus, and then just getting buried underneath the weight of responsibility and stress and overwhelm and parenting and uh and the and their partners' wants, needs, desires, and poor behaviors around those wants, needs, desires at times. And so I think, yeah, it's not that they have low desire, it's that it's buried underneath a ton of stuff and in a in a complex relationship with like, is it okay for me to have pleasure? Or am I bad, am I bad because I can't figure it out? You know, it's it's like damned if you do, damned if you don't, you know?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Exactly. So when you when you have that one partner having the higher desire than the other, how as a couple do you navigate that without resentment coming into play?

SPEAKER_04 8:53

Yeah. I think the first thing that I like I think about it like, okay, everybody's a little bit different. How what are the main things that need to happen? One of the first things that I think needs to happen is that we need to move out of a blame game and a power struggle. And we need to move into an idea that the two of us created this dynamic, right? Neither of us knows what we're doing. That's that's the kind of role I want each partner to play. Like, oh, maybe I don't know anything about sex at all, you know, me, and I certainly don't know anything about sex with you, you know, and I don't know anything about sex in a long-term relationship. I don't know how to make sex after 20 years of being with someone, right? Or after cancer or after whatever. So the idea of coming in with a beginner's mind and realizing that the two of you created whatever dynamic you have going on. There is no such thing as low desire, high. It's like a lower high desire. We created each other. And in one person's body that lives like, I don't want it, and in another person's body, it lives like I can't stop thinking about it, you know? But you create each other, and it's not until we can do that that we can have the quote unquote lower desire partner not feel broken, not feel like it's their fault, not feel guilty, because all of that is gonna inhibit the ability to engage with it very well, to engage what what needs to happen. And on the other side, for the higher desire partner, they need to move out of the idea that they function properly and they are normal, and that is what it should feel like. And evolutionarily speaking, this is how bodies work, you know, to let go of some of these like one-up kind of ideas about how their desire functions. Because my guess is that for most people, the higher desire partner is just as dysregulated, just as disordered, just has just as much mental health things lying behind their experience, you know, and that each body is just doing that, holding that differently. So when we can become same as two people working together on an erotic team, now we're cooking with something to be able to change this.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

So what would you say to someone who feels like they're the problem in that relationship?

SPEAKER_04 11:05

Yeah. I think to the lower desire partner, this is a lot of where my messaging is trying to hit that feeling that you're broken, you know. What I want to say is that whatever you're experiencing in your body as your partner approaches you is there for a reason. You know, I think a lot of what lower desire partners feel is they feel broken because they used to feel differently and now they feel like this, and the way they feel is terrible. They feel sad, mad, angry, resentful, guilty, ashamed. I know I want to and I should want to, but I don't right now, and my body's tight. It's usually something a little bit in more in that direction. And I think that it's easy to feel broken when your body feels so like not in your control, you know? Right. But I would say to them, that's not broken. You know, that's a body, I a body's gonna do what it needs to do to protect you, to feel safe, to create boundaries. And that might be confusing to to be with and to understand, but it's not broken. And what it's really signaling is like that's exactly where you it's just a signal that that's where you need to what you need to be with. Not only what you need to be with, whatever those feelings are, but also what your partner needs to be with, whatever the feelings are, you know. I'm it could be I, you know, I it's the kids, it's this, it's work, it's my frustration around the division of labor in the home, it's something that happened to me a long time ago, you know. I don't understand it, but when you approach me like this, it makes me feel shut down, you know. Don't grab my butt when I'm making spaghetti, whatever the is, you know, that we that to be able, it's a signal to turn towards, not a signal of dysfunction. You're not broken, your body is doing what it needs to do, and the likelihood is just that it it just needs something different than your higher desire partner needs. And you're not broken, they're not broken, but you both need to do some really important work to be able to find your own authentic yes and your own authentic no, and really importantly, to be able to hold that no between you without freaking out, you know. Yeah, yeah, that that all that doesn't mean a system's broken, it just means that there's like work to do. And so I I really encourage folks just to to own that the body uh won't waste energy on something it doesn't need, you know? Like if if this feels this way for you, that it's it's the right thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Well, you didn't touch on the lower desire partner, the guilt that eats them up.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Because the higher desire partner is just always just you know, they're wanting, and you're like, we just did it three days ago, you're fine.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

That's exactly right, and we just did it three days ago, you're fine.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah, I mean I'm just gonna put it out there.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

You know, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

No, I I've been that person, so I know.

SPEAKER_04 14:09

I call that the sex clock. You know, it's like we just finished doing it and now we're already, you know, reset the clock, and it's like, is it 72 hours, 24 hours, 12 hours before you start acting emotionally dysregulated because you don't get you're not getting what you want.

SPEAKER_05 14:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 14:25

Each partner, you know, you're as the lower desire partner, maybe you're dreading it, you know, and the higher desire partner is on edge, like maybe I'll never get it again. You know what I mean? There's all this urgency on their part. Yep. But nothing about a sex clock, nothing about tracking how long it's been since you had sex is hot. It's not hot. You know, it just makes you dread, right? It just makes you feel like you're obliged to do this thing, supposedly for you, but it's really for them in order to keep it.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Amen, sister. In order to keep it. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 14:59

That is not a that is not a recipe for desire. So a low desire partner that can name that dynamic like you did, Anne, that's not broken. Like, there's nothing to feel guilty about there. That I mean, we said it here, it makes so much sense, you know? In moments like that, it's like, I do want to turn the it the attention over to the higher desired partner. You know, what's going on with you when you what's this desire you're feeling? What's it about? What's that desire for? Do you believe that it's just because you have high testosterone or you have this or that that's gonna that that makes it necessary or is it a need? Do you feel pressured by it? And is it just to manage your anxiety? You know, is it just to make you feel okay? Is it just to make you feel better about yourself? Well, whose responsibility is that? That's yours, you know. Break out. Exactly. The idea that like your what I think about higher desired partners is the problem is they've got this feeling in their bodies. I think desire is more like an emotion. So just think about that for a second. Yeah. They get feeling in their body and it kind of whooshes in, and then we have to learn a skill of dealing with our emotions. Anger, sadness, fear, love, joy, all of them, we have to learn those skills. They just haven't learned the skill of dealing with their desire. The emotional process of having a desire, and how do you express it in the world? I call it having relational desire. You know, congratulations, you have a feeling in your body. How are you going to show up in a partnership with somebody else that allows you to work with them to create something, you know? So that's why I think a lot of my work, as much as it is about supporting the low desire partner to come up and to feel less shame and to feel heard, it's also about getting that higher desire partner to really take a look at themselves. You know?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah. Because when your partner comes at you with the calendar and says, Look, I marked the last time that we had sex and you know, this is unacceptable. It's been four months. Yeah. That's that's not making your partner want to have sex with you. That's actually pushing them even further away.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Further away.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah. It's like, get over here and love me now.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

You know, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

You know. So sometimes it's not just about desire though. It's about feeling disconnected. What causes that disconnection over time?

SPEAKER_04 17:25

You know, it makes me come back to the word intimacy. You know, we we what does that mean? You know, how do we feel like we can share our what's inside of me? That first of all, I can know what's inside of me. That's sometimes hard for us for a whole bunch of reasons. Maybe nobody ever really cared what was inside of me, you know. So I have to learn to what is inside of me, and then I have to learn to value that enough to let it come up and out and into the world, and then tolerate what happens, how my partner reacts to that without collapsing, you know. And on the same side, my partner has to hear me and then do a thing internally and share with, you know, so there's this back and forth of feeling myself and feeling you. And I think that's just a lot more complicated than it sounds. And I think people, well, it's not complicated, I guess, but I guess we just don't have this, we haven't ever developed the skill, you know. So we don't that's it's a challenge, right? We have to learn no matter how much we did get out of our families, even if it was fantastic, we're never gonna have enough skills to make it through adulthood. You know, we gotta keep coming back to the drawing board and learning how to be a full adult. And when we don't have those skills, we go into a bunch of adaptations to to avoid connection. That's literally what we're trying to do. We're saying we want connection, but we're literally trying to avoid it. How do we do that? With drawing, controlling, manipulating, uh, passive aggressiveness, you know, pounding, nagging, you know, whatever the various ways that we we try to get our needs met, but without the actual skills to connect with each other, you know? So it's like a skill problem. And I think a lot of people are they don't have emotional skills, you know. I think that when we think about the male and female dichotomy in our society, right? Male characteristics, female characteristics, we teach the male characteristics, the male versions to don't have emotions. Maybe you could just you could have arousal and you can that's pretty much anger, you know. Right. But what happens to all these other emotions? And so we have half of the population or half of ourselves, if we have male, you know, half of a half of a human condition that is taught to to ignore all of that and has no skill around it, well then we put these two things together and it's a disaster. On the other side, the feminine is taught to to just take care and do for the other, you know, to just give and give and give, and what do you need? And yeah, those two things are gonna clash, you know, and this is where the work of the long-term relationship is about growing up, growing up together. And the sex, I think, becomes the place where the the need is the greatest. You know what I mean? It's like a hot heat crucible, basically. Where it's like, we're gonna have to do a lot of that if we're gonna make this work, because that's the most vulnerable thing we do. Right. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, I think especially males default to the fact that that's what will make anything better. As long as you're having sex and as much sex as you can, that that's just gonna that's the fix for everything. Yep. And that is so far from the truth.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Yeah. Sex is connecting, but we need connection for you know, it's sort of like this the classic dichotomy is right, is like, well, I need sex to feel connected to you, and then the female says, Well, I need the connection to feel connect, I need sex uh connection first to want to have sex, you know? And I just think pitiful, sad polarization, something that is much more fluid. Sometimes it is sex makes me sex does make me feel a lot more connected to you, and need connection too, you know. We all need that, you know, and it's like we've gotten split in half, you know, and that's what we're trying to like reunite as like, oh, it's it all feeds each other, you know, and I don't have to hold on to my flag of like connection. You hold on to your flag of like, no, sex first, you know, and we like go to battle. Yeah, we are full humans and all of that matters, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

So, how do couples begin to rebuild that connection?

SPEAKER_04 21:35

Yeah, I think someone's gotta take someone's gotta like make a stand, you know. Someone has to say, we need to do something about this. They have to get their partner's attention and they need to do it in a way that I would what we call like leading with soft power, like leading from love and not angry, you know, victimhood or whatever it is. We just want to lead from a place of like we can do better. I want Us to do better. I want us to have the kind of like connection that is worth worth doing in the first place. Right. Yeah. Someone's got to lead. And then we've got to get our partners on board with the team work that's going to be required. You know, it isn't, you know, it's usually one partner thinks they're just going to lean back and not do much about this. And it's not until we get both partners engaged enough. And sometimes that requires making one of the partners a little more uncomfortable to get the motivation there. I think, of course, it's about starting to have conversations. You know, a lot of times when we're the one who really wants to make the change, our partners are a little bit behind us, you know, and on this topic, and being able to be patient enough to have the kind of soft, loving communication that's going to pull someone forward with enough edge that they can't get away from it is what we're talking about. You know, I think a lot of times when these dynamics get so entrenched, you know, over years and years, and that's just the way we've always related to it, that it needs a little external support. That's why I do the work I do. I experienced this own stuff in my life, and I feel like so privileged to be able to come and work with other people and learn more myself and share what I've learned with them. I think there are books, there are podcasts, there's this podcast that can begin to offer, you know, I think of it as like a knot or, you know, this closed system that can offer a little bit of air, a little bit of new space that can slowly unwind that thing. I do believe that it it kind of quote unquote wants to unwind. You know, it there's it it doesn't work well to be like this. And so it might not take as much as we think it will if we can turn towards it. It'll it can unfold and you can create something really different. I think that hopefulness might actually be the lead there, you know, where it's like, can I can I find the hope in myself and the belief in something different even when I can't fully imagine it, that I'll pour energy into it and pour energy into bringing my partner with me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Yeah. And I think too, we gotta break the stigma in society about reaching out and getting help, like counseling, whether it's regular couples counseling or also including like sex therapy counseling, there should be no shame around that in reaching out and getting help. And especially like, you know, men need to realize, and some women too, that there's nothing wrong with needing help from a sex therapist. That doesn't mean that you're broken, you're broken, or that you you don't know how to have sex because yeah, you know, most everybody knows how it works, but there's other factors around it, and you need to get educated on the other factors around it to improve your sex life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

I love myself enough to do that for myself. I love my partner enough to do that for them. I love my family enough to make to put in the energy and effort to make my relationship work and to make myself uncomfortable. You know, that's the thing. To do this work, I've got to be willing to make myself uncomfortable. I've got to be willing to get awkward. And for some that for some reason can just feel like a mountain when I just want to say, it's just a little tiny hill. You're gonna live, you know, get your sneakers off. We got this. You know, we go on YouTube to learn how to fix the sink and how to, you know, do our garden and you know, fly to the moon. I don't know. Like it's all these ways in which we're constantly learning. It's just the same thing. You know, there's nothing shameful about looking for help. None of us have the skills we need to make relationships work. If you did, your relationship would be working. Well, it looks like it's not working on this side, so looks like you need some new skills. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

No big deal, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Exactly. So let's talk about something that I don't think gets enough attention, and that's menopause. So many women feel like this is the point where intimacy is just over.

SPEAKER_04 26:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

So why does it feel that way?

SPEAKER_04 26:16

Yeah. So many reasons. The first thing I'd want to say is that menopause isn't the end of a sex life. There's all this great data out there and the research that would suggest that women, so many women are even having better sex after menopause. So I want to kind of lead with that positive message at the same time. One of the big things that women experience will be pain. So when estrogen leaves, the vulva and vagina can get very painful. That can feel like a signal that this is over, um, but it's not. The the pain that's experienced after menopause because of loss of estrogen is easily treatable. It's safe, it's effective. See your doctor. If they say no, see another doctor, because that doesn't that's ridiculous. Yep. So treatment for pain, uh so pain gets in the way. The other thing is sometimes testosterone changes. Women have testosterone too, and that testosterone is important for desire. And when testosterone changes, women can feel like really night and day, you know, like, oh, we're I don't feel it at all. And maybe my orgasm is really hard to get to and feels kind of meh, you know, kind of, you know. And so for many women, testosterone supplementation can be super helpful for that. In addition to like the, you know, that's not even speaking to ha flashes, I can't sleep, my mood is significantly affected. Brain fog, you know, just uh, you know, women in menopause are going through a complete neurobiological transformation. Like, think about what happened to you at puberty, you know? What did that do to change you as a human being? You know, we're we're going through a similar kind of thing. I think it's a good thing. I think that there's something that we are like meant to learn and to develop through it, that we're meant to have zero less F's to give, if that's okay to say, you know, I love it. You know, that's good. And uh and yet the symptoms of all of that can make it really hard to do much of anything. Work kids, much less turn towards sex. So when our resources are limited and we're feeling less resilient, sex is the first thing to go out the window. That's that's just evolution, you know. We don't have the resources to put over towards that. So it becomes a matter of a full, a full body health support to allow someone to have enough, quote unquote, left over to be able to give and share with another person. At the same time, I would say pleasure and intimacy are always possible. Like no matter where you're, you know, and for frack's sake, sounds like and menopause might be exactly the kind of time when we need more pleasure. You know, pleasure heals in a 15, 20 different ways, like physiologically. And so when we're feeling wiped out, overwhelmed, you know, beaten down by menopause or whatever it is, I just offer this little nudge that like pleasure could help, you know. And the question would be, what kind of pleasure? You know, what might you want? I'm not talking about penis and vagina sex or orgasms per se, but like moving towards and allowing pleasure in is something that can is extremely healing. It's just that our systems get so shut down to that because they're they're on guard for all the reasons we just said. Yeah, but the treatments for menopause and the support through that with like a qualified professional who's trained, like someone from the menopause society, for example, you know, the the data around hormones and the data around how to treat menopause is and the the the um guidelines around that have changed. So get the support you need, and it doesn't mean the end of your sex life, but you just might need to to to move towards it and get the support you need in a different way.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Right, because there's so much happening in your body during that time that it does impact desire, it so many things. So sometimes just a little help.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Just a little help. Maybe sex is you know, it's not a bad time to set sex aside if you've been doing it out of obligation for a long time. You know, I hear a lot of women say, Yep, I'm in menopause on I can't have sex anymore, and that's that, I'm done. Because they've been having sex they didn't want for a really long time. Yeah. So for a lot of women, menopause is about oh, like finding their no for sex and whatever else it is for the first time. And so I think that's really good. I think that's something that is that menopause allows us to do, you know, to kind of boundary, limit, clarity. And the question is, what happens next? You know, where do we want to go in terms of pleasure and connection with voice?

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Is menopause giving them I don't want to say it like this, an excuse to say I I don't want to anymore? I'm done.

SPEAKER_04 31:04

So basically I think it I think it is in a way, because the excuse is it's uh it's like get out of jail free card. That's a terrible analogy. No, but it's true. It's like I can s put down the menopause marker and you on the opposite side, you got nothing to argue with. And no, I don't want to see my gynecologist for any kind of treatment. And I, you know, you it's it's a it's a it can put put down a barrier that they might have had a hard time, a boundary putting down before. You know, I don't want to use it as an excuse that's not quite I mean it is I you know I agree with what you're saying, but also it's really just a a a way of getting access to something they couldn't get access to before. But I also think just menopause and the changes that the lack the change in hormones do to your brain kind of make you, you know, allow you to kind of come forward with clarity and we let go a little bit of the defense mechanisms of people pleasing and fawning and you know, and it's just like take it or leave it, basically. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Here it is. And that's menopause to challenge us at that point.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Because it's such a moot subject, you know.

SPEAKER_04 32:16

Yeah. Um I think you know, it r that gets hard. I I mean some cla cases I'll see are where men, you know, well, you you put that on the table, and men, you know, we're talking about heterosexual relationships a lot, but you know, men will say, I read five books about menopause and and I listened to 15 podcasts and I learned all about how to treat menopause, you know. And the the woman's like, absolutely not. You are not gonna force me to treat this, you know. Uh so it becomes these like really interesting kind of conundrums for people and really difficult, like stuck spots. But I think that it's like we gotta live through her no. We gotta live through it because it's been missing. And let's see what's on the other side. And the question is, how long's that gonna take? And what kind of authentic, compassionate, curious presence can their partner give them, which is what's been missing to move through no into what happens next, you know, and to be really open-ended about that one. Uh-huh. Because uh a lot of times women have been doing this for twenty years. You know, thirty years. And that no's been hidden. And so, you know, a a year without sex after a no has been hidden for twenty years, you know, no one's gonna die. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Little vacation for them.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Right. And I and I think menopause gives women permission, is how I would say it. It gives them it finally gives them the permission to set their boundaries that they never could before because they feel like they have that reason that they can use now and before they didn't.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Not to mention you you feel horrible uh a lot of times while you're going through it. So it's easy just to say Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Yeah. I don't want to say the way it goes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think uh at that point in time, intimacy needs to be redefined. Is the way I would put it, redefined, because it's not just about like what you were saying, you know, it's not just about penis vagina penetration. You know, there needs to be a redefinition of sex and intimacy at that point because there's plenty of other ways to get pleasure and have intimacy versus just penetration. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Shocking, right? Shocking. Yeah. I think it's like fine wine. You know, we we have a palette. If I drink wine, I don't know anything about wine. I'm like, tastes kind of like wine. It's kind of a red taste to it, you know, and and that's sort of the palette that I have for wine. And it's sort of like I want to help people, both sides of the coin, but including higher desire partners, develop a finer palette, you know, a finer palette for the poetry of touch and closeness and intimacy and all the various ways. I mean, it's an infinite pool, is what I would say. And we've like picked one tone and we just put our finger on that key of the piano our whole lives, and it's like great, you know, awesome. I like that key, but you know, maybe we could play a whole symphony here, you know. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

I have a question, Dr. Laurie. What can you do if you have a partner that can no longer perform sexually due to medical issues?

SPEAKER_04 35:33

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that it happens on both sides. We've been talking a lot about lower desire changes for the female side. Men are going through their own things with erections and other kinds of health issues. And what I would say is the first step is usually there's a lot of grief. You know, there's like grief for something that was lost. There's shame. You know, we gotta work with the the hurt feelings and I and the painful emotions, which are just real. That's life. You know, we're all letting go. We're all gaining and losing, right? We're gaining a lot, we're losing, you know, and we're losing. And we're having to let go. And so being able to work with that's a place that I have to work with letting go. And can I make that not my fault? You know, can I make this loss not my fault? And a lot of times this is just a place to reorganize the whole system of the relationship in a new way, you know, sex served a certain purpose. What is that purpose? And w how else can we find that together? I I know I keep coming back to this idea that pleasure and intimacy are always possible. Like if I have a flesh, if I have a body, if I have some sensory capacities, maybe I've lost one of them, you know, but if I have that, there's always a way in which we can access and share in pleasure, which I think is fundamentally the thing we're trying to do that's a little bit different in sex. And that that becomes a place that is a place that is both joyful and filled with sorrow. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie Inside Out, that Pixar movie.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

Yeah. Yes. And you remember she goes and she learns, right? Because she's growing up, she learns that when they, I think it was hockey that she's playing, that it was both sad and joyful. And you put the blue and the yellow together, and that's like the message of the movie, you know? Right. That's what sex, I think, at its fundamental yumminess is about. It's it's the sorrow and the grief and the tears, and it's the joy and the celebration and the pleasure, and we put the blue and the yellow together, which we're kind of forced to do after tragedy has befallen us or our bodies are functioned differently. And that's when I think something different starts to really be able to happen for us. You know, that sex isn't a party that we hang from the chandeliers doing, and if we're not ready with our party clothes, we can't come to it, that sex is really a place where we, you know, we put that blue and yellow together and our hearts really open up and our joy and our bodies open up like, ooh, doggy, you know. I'm not saying look on the bright side of of you know, disease and trouble and cancer and all those kinds of things. I do feel like it doesn't get us in the way fundamentally of us trying to get to that place where we can go to together, where we can share in that kind of thing, no matter our limitations. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

I agree with that. And I think we when we talk to our partners about sex and intimacy and our needs and wants and desires and that kind of thing, I think it's very important in the way of how we talk to them about it, because like your partner coming to you or or after sex saying to you, Well, you didn't even give me an orgasm or you didn't even get me off. That is detrimental to the other partner.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Now you can approach it in the in a better, much better way that to reframe the wording of that and to say, Hey, you know what? That was wonderful, but I didn't receive this during the act. So are there some ideals or ways that you think that we could, you know, change something that might would help me achieve this or do feel this way or whatever? That's a much better way to come at your partner than to just be, you know, brutal with them by saying, Well, you didn't even get me off.

SPEAKER_04 39:28

Yeah. And you know, I think that when we think about when we I call it getting incontinent, you know, we don't have enough sphincter, you know, capacity to and not say these kinds of mean things.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:41

That they it's a real problem because right there where our we're most tender, if you shoot an arrow into where I'm most tender like that's I'm not gonna forget about that, you know. Yeah. And so thinking about how I mean, I hear people all the time that they'll say 20 years ago, you said yes, you didn't like the way my vagina smelled, or you didn't like the, you know, whatever it is, and uh sets the whole course for their whole relationship, you know, and another, you know, the person, why can't you get over it? But it's because it's so tender here. So please be careful with your words. I couldn't agree with you more, Shannon, that you're bringing this with some compliments, some positivity, you're bringing in some gentle requesting, you know. And then after a while you request and request, and the person's it's falls on deaf ears, you gotta go get help. You gotta kind of demand different, you know. But a lot of this is leading with softness. The other thing I would say is trying to set it up because you're you you might have a nice soft message, but if you're looking across the way and that person is like, you know, like this is really pressing their buttons to even say, hey, could we talk about sex? You know, yeah, really slow down because not only does my nervous system need to be like as regulated as I could get it, you know, that I'm I'm calm enough that I can do this, I also gotta like help my partners set set themselves up to be as calm as possible. So, you know, contract, hey babe, love to talk with you for a little while, you know, about sex. You know, ooh, that's tough, but I think it's important. How when might be a good time for you? So you give them time to get themselves ready and then say, like, let's talk, why don't we just talk about it for like 15 or 20 minutes? You know, you put a little boundary around it so people can feel like they're like, oh my God, we're not gonna talk about this for three hours and I might literally die, you know, if if yeah, you know, that's how it feels, right? That's how it feels. Yeah, exactly. So put a time limit around it, uh, do a little exploration and realize that this isn't a one-off. Too many people realize think and feel like it's like, well, I told her 15 years ago that one time that I wanted this one thing, and she kind of gave me an eyebrow shift. The left corner of the left eyebrow moved. So now I know that she would never want to do that, and that's that, you know. And so we really want to realize that this is this is a practice. It's not a one and done. Take it as a practice, hold your arrows, have some like intestinal fortitude, contain yourself to lead with lead with compassion and patience and cure curiosity. I can't say enough about cura and curiosity, Anna Chan, and I just could not it's that is a that is fundamentally what we're after here. Curiosity. What does curiosity take? Love, generosity, pay all the things I'm saying, you know. So that might be like a one word to kind of like hold as you walk away from this is curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

You know?

unknown 42:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Yeah, that's that's the next thing I was gonna say is ask you how important would you say it is for someone to know their bodies and explore what they like sexually, whether they're in a relationship or not?

SPEAKER_04 42:49

It's so important, you know. We are creatures and our the way our society is sort of situated and the way that we just live from the head up, you know, and it's there's so much that our experience is an embodied experience. We are a mind-body phenomena. And so this work about sexuality isn't about pornographic, you know, stuff and like uh you know, getting to orgasm and all this kind of stuff. That can be part of it, you know. I'm not I'm not down on it, but it's really about like hello, you know, look down. I have a body here. What's going on in there? You know, what's going on in there? What's in there? Emotions, feelings, memories, and you know, there's a whole the whole thing is like inside of there, including our capacity to feel pleasure, you know. And again, pleasure is the word pleasure, I think, can in and of itself just be a little bit like, you know. I don't know, pleasure, you know, and so being able to even to work with receiving when receiving is me giving to myself, but to work with receiving, we talked a lot about how women's classically they're they're at They're outwardly focused, they're they're you and what do you need, and how can I take care of you? And the ability to work with myself by myself to to receive, you know, is a huge piece of the work. Can I receive pleasure? Where do I feel the resistance? Right. We have resistance to pleasure. I don't know. I think that's so fascinating. If I was like, here you go, Ann, would you like some pleasure? You know, it's sort of like easy that we're like, no, you know. No, definitely not. You know, and so it's like working with that edge of like what feels shut down around pleasure is a is a life process, not just a a sex for to have it with another person process. But I also think orgasms are yummy. I think all that's super yummy, and being able to understand how your body works, where your clitoris is, you know, what the shape of all that is, to understand the functionality is just like liberating and empowering, you know, because it's like I I I begin to fully inhabit all that I am.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

Well, and it it helps you share that with your partner. Oh, yeah. This is what I like. I mean, I've I've figured it out, and let me show you because this is what I want you to do.

SPEAKER_04 45:15

Yeah, this is what I want you to do, and what I love is this is what I'm gonna do with you next to me.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

Right.

SPEAKER_04 45:20

You know, I think it is hard, it's hard to bring that knowledge into the bedroom sometimes. I just want to like note that a lot of people will be able to do things by themselves. That's another permutation, but then they get into the bedroom and it's hard. They feel really uncomfortable about sharing their own way that they need and what they want. Yeah. Right. You know, I'm just like, get that orgasm in the room with your partner. Like, what do we gotta do? We're gonna, you know, set them outside the door, you know, put them in a chair on the other side of the room with blindfolds on, tone all the lights out. Like, what are the ways that you can begin to get your orgasm in the room? Because I think for so many women, that's like a like when get over that hump.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

That's huge.

SPEAKER_04 46:01

We we've got we've got like a whole nother uh experience to work with together. You know, if the if orgasm isn't in the room, like what what are we doing? You know, what are we doing?

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Yeah, I'm just gonna say that when you share and are more open with your partner, your sex life is better. Bottom line.

SPEAKER_04 46:21

Bottom line.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

Yeah. So I'm seeing a lot of couples waiting. Uh I've been reading a lot of this. I love the internet. They're waiting till marriage to have sex now. You know, back in my day, we didn't wait until marriage to have sex, you know. It that generation was over, but I'm seeing that it's coming back. So what would you say to someone who is actually going to wait until marriage to have sex?

SPEAKER_04 46:50

Yeah. I like I'm I'm down, you know, if that's what works for you. If there's something I think of it as like a moral or like an integrity, something there's some sort of integrity that they're that they're looking to to express. And I think that I love mixing in sex and integrity, you know, however you want to put that together, the ethics of it all are really important. And what I would say is that, you know, sex is not an automatic function. Like it's I know we think like we are animals, right? We are, you know, it's like this is evolution or something like that. And, you know, there is there's truth in all of that. I use those metaphors and and and ways of explanation all the time. But when it comes to sex now in 2026, like it is a complex inner relationship between a complex consciousness and a body and a history and all these things. And so if you want to do it well, I would say, you know, learn about it. Not just, you know, what part goes where, but like really take your time to explore it because a lot of times people who wait have trouble, you know, because they don't have a ton of experience, they don't have experience with the other, and there's a lot of pressure for it to be a certain way.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 47:59

Women have pain, men have erectile dysfunction. A lot of people will feel like, what was the big deal? Like, I thought this was supposed to be amazing. You know, there's just all these like hiccups in that, and that's not everyone's case, but um it wouldn't surprise me at all that something like a sexual dysfunction emerges out of waiting till marriage. It's not uh it's not caused by that, but it's just that it needs more support, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

And I've I've seen and seen and talked to some people who have waited to have sex till marriage. Yes. And then there was an issue, especially on the feminine side, because the reason that they had waited was the religious factor.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

And so like all of this shame and things had been built into that. So then when it was time to actually be intimate, they literally couldn't be intimate because like there was weren't able to have penetration because there's that block there mentally, so your vagina's like, no way, buddy.

SPEAKER_05 49:06

You're not coming in here.

unknown 49:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:10

Yeah. And you know, it's like they you you you don't have a relationship with that part of your body. You're like totally it, you know, you're yeah, so yeah, a hundred percent. And that pain aspect, I think, is huge for people who, especially with the religious what I would call religious sexual trauma, where you know, they might cause that.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

But yeah, so that that's why I say in what we were just talking about about knowing your body and what pleasures you and that kind of thing. Wait for sexual marriage, no problem with that at all whatsoever. If that's what you want to do, awesome. I support you 100%. But while you're doing that, take the time to get to know your body ahead of time and learn what pleasure is, what you like, that kind of thing. That way your body is ready for it when it's time to actually consummate with someone else, and then less likely to experience that religious trauma or something like that, where your vagina is just like, no way, uh-uh.

SPEAKER_03 50:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:13

Yep. And I appreciate that before marriage, you know, there's so much shame in those settings around bodies, and and so I can really appreciate why it's so hard. Like I think you're a thousand percent right, Shannon. Like, learn yourself, and yet, like, even just touching yourself in any kind of way, or like is is there's so much like shame that comes up around it. So I really want people to hear that, like, I get it, you know, I get why it was hard to hard to know, you know, with sort of this injunction, like know yourself. And I think the whole system is saying, don't know yourself. So it's hard, it's really hard. It's really hard. I think people, again, they feel such pressure, like don't do anything and make sure that you're, you know, and know how to be multi-orgasmic and that you know, like it's just such mixed messaging and people just feel stuck in shame in every direction, you know. And yeah, it's really hard. But I think that and you know, it's really hard, but also there's hope. You know, I think I think that's just the same message is just like back up, back up, back up, back up, back up. Let's, you know, I'm like a dump truck, like beep, beep. Yeah, exactly. You know, penetration on your wedding night, like let okay, let's back that up. You know, let's just focus on touch. What might how might you like me to touch you right now? Do you remember how nice it is to have your hair brushed and how yummy and all the goosebumps that ran down your the thigh or whatever it is when someone would brush your hair? Let me do that. You know, oh you've always wondered what it might feel like to have someone touch your foot in a caressing way, or you know, whatever it is, you know, it's like way back up and just finds the simple like functioning of pleasure receiving and and sensations happening internally. Like you just had no access to that really. Yeah. With another human being, you know. Exactly. That that's the building blocks, you know. It's like you're rushing to a it's not a finish line, but that's what it feels like. You know, we're rushing to the finish line. Right.

SPEAKER_05 52:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 52:13

When we don't have a system that has the skill to to run the programming or run the run the energy. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

So what are your thoughts on toys?

SPEAKER_04 52:25

Toys are fantastic. I love toys. You know, the the clitoris specifically has special nerve endings, which right now the name of those are escaping me, but there's special nerve endings on the clitoris that are sp activated by vibration. You know, they're just uniquely activated by vibration. I I can make stories up about why that might be so, but I that's why vibration toys and specifically have can offer women access to pleasure that they can't find in other ways. I think that's true after menopause, you know, that the changes can make us need more stimulation, and that's one really great way to get that. So vibration is a great one. They're like suction toys out now. Um, I think a lot of people have fears that if I do that, then maybe I'll break my vagina, you know, like maybe, you know. And I don't think there are any documented medical cases of people breaking their vaginas or their clitorises with any kind of stimulation they're providing. And so, you know, you do you. You know, I think a lot of people have people sometimes part of the problem is they know what feels good, but they're too embarrassed about it, right? They're too worried about it. And I just want people to feel like if that's your way to get there, if you're standing on your head with your left toe, you know, crinkled and you have to, you know, you know that's okay. Yeah. Proceed. And a lot of people want to not have that be true, whatever it is. And I like being like, our first step is full, awesome acceptance that whatever you however it was you discovered your way into this, like love it completely. And when we can love it completely, we can get some flexibility around the edges, you know, because people want to be able to do these things in different kinds of ways. But I love toys, any kind of toy, you know what I mean? Anything can be a toy, ultimately. You know? Yeah. Lots of things laying around your house can bring in lots of different kinds of sensations, and that's all we mean is like, what are ways that I can bring in new and different sensations that I can mix and mingle together in a way that, you know, takes me to this place, you know. What's this place? This place that feels kind of trance like or spacious, that feels open, that feels joyful. I don't know, like what how you describe where you go, but like that's what we're after, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

So for someone who feels like intimacy and their life is over, what would you want them to hear, Dr. Glory?

SPEAKER_04 54:46

Yeah. Um I would say that again, it's pleasure's always possible. You know, it's always possible. Like you your system is built for it. You know, it's it is built to receive pleasure as a uh as a navigating mechanism through life, you know. And so that is authentic to who you are. And uh feeling like you can share that with another person is is a part of the skills that we're developing. It can feel really hard when certain aspects of the way we've gotten that in the past go away. And I don't I'm not trying to I'm not trying to gloss over that, you know, when some things I really liked I can't do anymore. And again, that's that's the life that we lead, you know, things come and go. I believe that intimacy is never over. You know, intimacy is our is another, you know, I say God given, but you know what I mean? It's sort of sort of like inherent to the to us, you know. Yes. So intimacy with another person, intimacy with my partner. Maybe that's hard. What about intimacy with my friends, intimacy with nature, intimacy with myself, you know, so this way of feeling like I can be enveloped in like connection, seen by other people and see other people is is all around us. I do know sometimes it can feel like, you know, me and you, me and my partner, you know, there can be limitations to that, you know.

unknown 56:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:15

You can go to couples work, you can do sex, you can read a million books, and sometimes there's limitations there. And you know, we I think that but there's always a place where we can find the kind of intimacy that we're longing for, as long as our vision is wide and our hearts are open.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_02 56:33

Yeah, I do too.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

Dr. Lori, I think this conversation is an important reminder that intimacy isn't something that we lose. It's something that we can rediscover and maybe in a completely new way.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

Yes. And Dr. Lori, where can listeners find you? Because I think they're going to be looking.

SPEAKER_04 56:52

Oh, I hope so. I hope so. I love hearing from people, even if they're just reading and and finding me here. So feel free to reach out for just to say hi. You can go to mismatcheddesire.com. So there you will find, you can sign up for like a little six series of six email series uh where I'm just sending out some information. You know, here's a new perspective, here's a new perspective. I don't send out a bunch of emails because goodness gracious, I'm not that organized. But you can you can you can get that kind of information. What I like about it is like it's just digestible, you know, and you can read it yourself, take in a little bit of a perspective, but it's also a nice way to start a conversation with your partner, you know, like, oh God, this makes me feel so seen. This is helping me tell you what I've been feeling all along. That's one way I'd say, and you can always go to my website and it's just dr laurydavis.com dr dash l-o-r-i-d-a-v-i-s, laurydavis.com. Um, I have a blog. I talk about this stuff all on there. You can come and see me for coaching. I'm accessible to folks for individual and couples coaching, and I'd love to hear from them.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Thank you. Wonderful. Yeah, thank you so much for helping us bring this topic into the light today. And we hope today's episode will help you be brave and know you don't have to be afraid to talk about intimacy and your desires. And uh, this is how we invoke change. And so share this with someone else who might need to hear it. And if you have questions, we are always here to help you. So please send us a message because these are the conversations that help us feel less alone and more connected to each other. Yes. And we will also have Dr. Laurie's information in our show notes and on our website, traveltimestories.com, where every guest has a dedicated page for you to learn more about them and to listen to their episodes. So we hope you will consider becoming a member of our community so we can connect with you, support you, and guide you on your journey. Membership is available on our website.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

And until next time, keep traveling your story and keep making memories for life.