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George Faller [00:00:27]:
For children we got a mailbag this week, Laurie. We’re going to talk about a withdrawal, sexual withdrawal who’s also the emotional withdrawal.

Laurie Watson [00:00:38]:
Let’s help this woman.

Laurie Watson [00:00:43]:
Welcome to foreplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.

George Faller [00:00:47]:
And I’m George Faller, your couples therapist.

Laurie Watson [00:00:50]:
We are here to talk about sex.

George Faller [00:00:52]:
Our mission is to help couples talk about sex in ways that incorporate their body, their mind, and their hearts.

Laurie Watson [00:01:00]:
And we have a little bit of fun doing it.

Laurie Watson [00:01:01]:
Right?

George Faller [00:01:02]:
G listen, and let’s change some relationships.

Laurie Watson [00:01:05]:
Okay, so we’ve got a woman who’s written in about her husband who is withdrawing in both cycles, right? She says, my husband is withdraw, and I’m the opposite. And we have a mismatched sex drive. She’s been listening to podcasts, including ours, and she says, how do I get my withdrawing husband to set the mood and time and start initiating sex? I’m an erotic explorer. I love sexual release. I’m a passionate romantic, and I’m a giver. And nine times out of ten, my husband says he’s too tired or doesn’t feel good when I’m trying to have sex and intimacy. And this has been going on for 16 years. Sometimes he gives me a little foreplay, and then he falls asleep before we get to have sex.

Laurie Watson [00:01:51]:
And she talks about all the blocks. She says, our child is 13 years old but is in a bedroom far away from ours. I keep the house calm and clean. I’m doing everything I can to get him in the mood. And still nothing. And he maybe allows us to talk about it sometimes during the week, but then he gets tired of talking about it. And really, how do I have sex more than like once every four months? She says, I’d like to have sex once a week. I’m the sexual pursuer all of the time.

Laurie Watson [00:02:23]:
I’m the initiator all the time. I’m just at a loss what to do. And she says, I love your podcast. I love the role plays that you guys do. It helps me play to my husband’s needs. Thank you so much. We got to help this woman.

George Faller [00:02:37]:
Yeah, she’s in a tough spot. I could feel my heart as she’s saying. He starts a little foreplay and then falls asleep. And that’s the good encounters. Not talking about all the encounters where she’s just being outright rejected.

Laurie Watson [00:02:53]:
Right, exactly.

George Faller [00:02:54]:
And as we’re all trying to get our empathy for her, I also want to kind of plug into. It feels really horrible to be the person who’s not sexual, to be the person who’s always letting your partner down. He’s not winning in this scenario. They’re both losing. This is a negative cycle that’s starting.

Laurie Watson [00:03:13]:
To win, I think, for both of them, given that it’s stereotypically reversed for him. He must feel sometimes like if anybody knew or knew what was happening, he wouldn’t feel like much of a man. And I think for her, if anybody knew, she might feel like, what’s wrong with me? All these other stories that I hear from my girlfriends, their husband can’t keep their hands off of them. Why not me? I’m really grateful that she doesn’t go into that much. She doesn’t seem to have taken this into her heart as something’s wrong with her. Like, she’s not attractive or something’s wrong with her. She actually has a very positive sexual self image. I’m erotic.

Laurie Watson [00:03:56]:
I’m passionate. I’m a giver. I’m trying to make this good for him. She doesn’t seem very selfish here. She seems very giving, and she doesn’t seem like she’s suffering in self esteem. Although I think you do take a hit, right. If your partner doesn’t want you, there’s only two options.

George Faller [00:04:14]:
You either blame your partner for sucking or blame yourself. Right? So pick your poison here. We all probably do some of both, but I agree. I think she’s been able to hold on to some of her self confidence. That’s saying, like, I like myself sexually, I think I bring a lot to the table. That’s fun and good, and it’s hard that my partner won’t respond to it. I need your help trying to figure out how to do that. Right.

George Faller [00:04:35]:
She’s willing to do the work, and really, I’m trying to explore what’s blocking him. If he’s the emotional withdrawer who doesn’t get a lot of vulnerability and connection that way. Most emotional withdrawers then overcompensate sexually because that becomes the direct way that they do get touched. So if that is also blocked, that’s a bit of a warning sign for me. That’s saying. So in both areas, this person is not engaging. They’re not getting the benefits of connection. The dopamine releases the oxytocin.

George Faller [00:05:11]:
It’s not happening. So what’s blocking that? That’s the first thing my brain goes to.

Laurie Watson [00:05:18]:
Yeah, I like that. And this we see in heterosexual couples mostly, right. If a male is blocked emotionally, he does have that testosterone that pushes him sexually. So he’s getting connection somewhere. And that’s kind of the second chance in life, right? If you grow up and you’re avoidantly attached. Thank God for testosterone, because it gives you this second opportunity to feel intimate, deep, secure attachment sexually. Sometimes women, not so much, but we’re talking about a guy here, so we’ll keep it on topic.

George Faller [00:05:52]:
But just to add to that, Laurie, that, again, that drive for testosterone is so much more than just the orgasm or the physicality. I mean, it is how they become emotional. It’s afterwards where they want to hug, or they just are more calm and relaxed. It’s so important. So that, too, is shut down by design. Testosterone, it’s given us a look at the degree of the block. It’s more of a severe block than what would be typical.

Laurie Watson [00:06:21]:
Right. And you’re talking about the design that sexually, oxytocin is released and then releases a man emotionally, oftentimes because he feels that bondedness somehow or another, this guy has a bigger block inside to connection. That’s the tough place that she’s in, is like, oh, okay, I’m not getting it emotionally, and now I’m not getting it sexually.

George Faller [00:06:47]:
So that would be our next step. Like, how do we make explicit that block? Is that block that there’s just low t. There isn’t this drive. They’re not attracted to their partner. Is that it? Or they have sexual energy. It’s just redirected elsewhere. Right. They’re masturbating to pornography.

George Faller [00:07:07]:
There is an affair partner. There’s somewhere else that they’re going that that energy is expressing itself. I’m not sure what could be blocking that expression.

Laurie Watson [00:07:17]:
Okay, so let’s talk about all three of those things, because I think they’re good theories. One low t. I probably would ask my husband at this point, could you go to a urologist and get your testosterone checked? Especially since this is long and enduring sort of lack of sexual drive that it’s been going on for 16 years. I would say, okay, I need to know if there’s a hormonal issue here, and would he consider doing that? And I think sometimes for men, there’s a lot of relief when they find out they’re low.

George Faller [00:07:47]:
T. You’re also talking about the morning erections, right?

Laurie Watson [00:07:51]:
Right. And that’s sort of a clinical way just to check. Like, if he has morning erections when he wakes up in the morning before he goes to the bathroom, that probably means he has adequate testosterone. So that’s a quick way to check or even to ask him. But then you’re talking about, is he not attracted? And there’s many reasons for not being attracted. Some of it might be he has a specific thing in mind. Sometimes that’s shaped by porn. Sometimes all kinds of things go on.

Laurie Watson [00:08:22]:
Maybe it is. He could be gay. I mean, there are differences in terms of sexual attraction. We don’t want to imply that she’s not attractive because she sounds very attractive, especially with her sexual energy.

George Faller [00:08:36]:
Maybe their partner does put on a lot of weight or doesn’t. Who knows what could be? But is it an attraction thing that’s being blocked?

Laurie Watson [00:08:44]:
Yeah, exactly. Or is there a redirection of his sexual energy? And you mentioned, could it be an affair? Maybe it’s porn. Maybe he sublimates all his energy into work, but he takes this life force and rather than bringing it into the relationship or giving it to her, it’s elsewhere. And so, like, a lot of sexual withdrawals. One of the things I’ve learned over time is that they are masturbating so that even if they don’t have a lot of sexual desire, I mean, we know orgasms make you feel good. And so maybe just to self soothe at night, they’ll masturbate. Maybe it’s overuse of porn. It’s like, I don’t want to be intimate.

Laurie Watson [00:09:25]:
And porn is so easy. There’s no risk. There’s no risk of rejection, there’s no risk of failure. Nobody’s going to judge you if it doesn’t work. So it’s easy peasy. So sometimes men who are more avoidant emotionally and sexually are still using porn, which at least they have sexual energy.

George Faller [00:09:46]:
Well, and that’s why it’s important to assess for that. Right. It’s a pressure thing. If you’re masturbating to pornography and it’s easy and there’s no pressure and your body’s relaxed and you’re turned on and you’re erotic and everything works and it feels good, and then you go back to the bedroom where you don’t know what’s going to work and are you going to do it right or is it going to. That pressure accumulates over time and it suffocates. And if you just keep giving yourself an outlet that has no pressure and the pressure keeps growing in the bedroom, before you know it, you don’t want to have sex in the bedroom.

Laurie Watson [00:10:22]:
Exactly. I like that. If we keep doing something that if we don’t face our anxiety, then the anxiety is going to grow. And if we’re giving ourselves release in some other way, some escape, we’re going to have a problem when we have to face up to whatever is before us. I do really like that. So one of the pressures another block could be, is he fearful that it won’t work? Is he fearful that he’s not good in bed? Is he fearful that his penis won’t work? He’ll have premature ejaculation? Or ed, especially this idea of I’m not big enough. Right? I mean, sometimes men have this idea that intercourse alone should make her come. And we know that that’s not true, but maybe he doesn’t know that.

Laurie Watson [00:11:09]:
And so because she doesn’t come with intercourse and we don’t know that she doesn’t, but just imagining that she doesn’t, he’s told himself, I’m a failure, and so he doesn’t want to do it. I mean, there could be all kinds of sexual misinformation that have caused him to say it’s not working. And his fear of failing creates this huge pressure, so he’s stopping himself before he can fail.

George Faller [00:11:33]:
And this is the overlap of those cycles, because when they get the huge emotional pressure of fail, I’m going to be rejected, I’m going to be not a man. Then that emotional protection kicks in that says, I need to get away from this, I need to kind of move, I need to take space, right? So this is where the emotional then takes over the sexual cycle. And it is all about pressure. The pressure is the driving force that’s turning them towards withdrawal, which isn’t so different for a female withdrawal, right? It’s like, I don’t want to feel like my body’s broken. I don’t want to be reminded I have low desire. I don’t want to know that I’m not going to have an orgasm. So rolling over and not having sex is a great way of protecting yourself and avoiding those bad feelings. Right? It’s not so different.

George Faller [00:12:23]:
But in this case, now, this person is doing it. In both cycles, they’re not having a lot of success with emotions. Every time they feel anxiety, they’re running away from the feeling, which means they never get the help that they need with that feeling. And their only move, that short term strategy to get a break and have a release or have a drink or have masturbate, just keeps digging a hole deeper. So let’s talk about how we could help reduce that pressure and what we can do to help her kind of make more sense of this.

Laurie Watson [00:12:55]:
Okay, when we come back from the break, we’ll try to help you. Girl.

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Laurie Watson [00:15:36]:
Okay, so I just want to know, first of all, I have a lot of empathy for you. Certainly this is something my husband and I struggled with and worked really hard on. And so I know the frustration, and this is a difficult one. I’m just with you is what I’m trying to tell you. George, what do you think she should do?

George Faller [00:15:55]:
I think she’s already done so much, right? She’s initiating, she’s reading books. She’s listening to podcasts. I mean, she’s overworking here, which is usually what pursuers do, and she wants to do it gracefully. She knows pushing him is not leading to change. So she’s kind of desperate and wanted some help. So I think we can try to come up with creative ideas. She’s got to figure out how to reduce some of this pressure. And more importantly, not just reduce the negative, but introduce more of the positive.

George Faller [00:16:25]:
There’s got to be more fun. What’s the opposite of pressure, right? Feeling relaxed, joking around, enjoying each other, those positive emotions. Right? We got to figure out how to kind of get there. But I think the first thing that I would encourage her to do is she has a right to her voice. She’s not a nag. She gets set up to be that way. But that’s that righteous kind of anger that I think is healthy in relationships, that’s trying to create change. It’s okay for him not to want bad sex, but it’s not okay for him to not talk about what’s blocking him from changing that.

George Faller [00:16:59]:
To me. That’s where I think she needs to say, hey, listen, we need help. We need to talk to somebody. We need to get on the same page and figure out what we need to do. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. Blame the cycle. But at the end of the day, you got to talk to me about this.

George Faller [00:17:15]:
You got to let me in. You got to let yourself into this pressure to what’s blocking you from having what would be better for both of us and be better for our son. Right? It’s just the world’s a better place when we could have the security in the bedroom that we don’t have. That’s the reality. There’s nothing wrong with her frustration at saying, you’re not getting what you need to feel safer in the world. So I just want to give it a right to push, to say, like, there’s nothing wrong. You should be saying something about this.

Laurie Watson [00:17:42]:
Yeah, and I know you were talking about his fear of having bad sex or being bad in bed when you said that, but I think that your point here is probably she needs to push for help, like a third party, a therapist. And of course, we highly recommend eFT therapists who have training in the emotional connection, the sexual connection, so that they can see the cycle interaction here and help you so that he doesn’t come out of that therapy session feeling like he’s the bad one, ironically. Right. We kind of want our therapist to be on our side, but if our therapist is too much on our side, then they slam our partner, and our partner doesn’t feel bought into the process. So we need somebody who can honor both truths, and in this case, four truths, that he feels emotionally withdrawn, sexually withdrawn, and she feels the need for emotional connection and sexual connection.

George Faller [00:18:40]:
Yeah. And I was surprised that what you’re saying is confirming what the research is saying is that it’s actually men in sexless couples who stop having sex. Right. That they’re overriding their own testosterone because there’s something that the pressure does to them that they would rather avoid those negative feelings than get that amazing kind of release or dopamine hit or oxytocin release that sex gives us. Right. It’s so needed and healthy, and yet it’s men who pull the plug and say, no more.

Laurie Watson [00:19:15]:
I know. Such a surprise. Isn’t that. Yeah, men shut it down more thoroughly. And, I mean, there’s something physiologically to that, right? If a man doesn’t want sex and he can’t have an erection, he’s not going to want to engage at all. Whereas if a woman doesn’t want sex, but she could become willing and her body could still perform, so she may still be a willing participant. We’re not talking about coercion, but, yeah, it’s sad. And he is definitely the one who has shut it down.

Laurie Watson [00:19:48]:
So we say a go get help. Get yourself to a therapist who understands cycle work. You can go to iseth website, which is iceft.com, and there’s actually a search function to find a therapist. So wherever you’re located in the whole world, now you can find a therapist who understands the push and pull, the pursue withdraw dynamic. And we’re not saying that you’re pushing him and that’s why he’s withdrawn. I mean, it sounds like you actually just feel confident sexually. And maybe he has internal blocks as well, but he needs to start dealing with those.

George Faller [00:20:30]:
Well, there is an interdependency. Right. You’re pushing. Even though it sounds soft to pushing, it still adds to the pressure. And pressure is what’s suffocating this man. So we got to find ways of reducing some of the pressure. Right? And I think having a conversation, and I’m sure she’s tried a lot of this, to say, hey, it’s okay. Whatever your fears are, if it doesn’t work, that’s okay.

George Faller [00:20:52]:
If I don’t have an orgasm, it’s okay. Trying to get Kim to see the value of willingness, that the success doesn’t mean double orgasm. It just means that we get to connect. We’re naked with each other. What is the goal? Trying to get them more aligned with that. Trying to get him to name his pressure. We don’t really know what it is. And to me, that’s what I’m trying to get her to push for.

George Faller [00:21:15]:
I need to know more what the problem is. I need him to not do it for her to stand up for himself, to say, hey, listen, I don’t want to live with this pressure. I want a break from this pressure. He deserves a break from this pressure. I wouldn’t want sex with that pressure either. Right. So the more that we could confront it, the more he could start to buy in and say, you know what? You’re right. I don’t like this.

George Faller [00:21:38]:
I don’t like how it feels to walk on eggshells, to never know these hints of what my wife’s want. And I feel guilty and ashamed that I’m letting her down. I’m not a man. I mean, he’s carrying so much here. This load is so heavy, that we need to lighten it.

Laurie Watson [00:21:54]:
And I hope you’re hearing George, dear Listener, because I think oftentimes what George is saying is very true, but withdrawers don’t voice that. So it may look to you like he doesn’t care at all. Whereas what George is saying, I think, is really a truth of what a withdrawal is going through on the inside. They do have these fears and these feelings, but because they’re not very articulate emotionally either, they’re not saying can’t. They can’t talk about it sexually, and then they can’t sort of describe their sexual frustration emotionally. So they’re really dead in the water. But when this dynamic has been going on, like you said, 16 years, we are guaranteeing you that there are lots of feelings that he has about it. And I think George is trying to give voice to them so that you can hear the inner world of what he might be going through.

George Faller [00:22:45]:
Yeah. So many of these withdrawers underneath feel massive helplessness. It’s like they feel this pressure. They want to find ways of letting it go, but they just don’t know how to do it. And every time they put themselves in that bed, they feel more helpless and more pressure and feel worse about themselves. So taking space is the only way they get some agency, some sense of control over these bad feelings. And it’s a short term solution that just continues to dig that hole deeper.

Laurie Watson [00:23:17]:
Right. And I think a therapist probably knows how to work with a withdrawal to tease out a little bit by little bit of what the pressure is about. Is it inside him? Is it from his childhood? Were there things the way he grew up that he just couldn’t feel free to explore erotically? Was it messages he got? Was it maybe trauma? Sometimes sexual trauma. Men have almost huge numbers of men are sexually traumatized in childhood, which is terrible. Getting closer to what we know has been happening to women, and it’s been happening to men, too. So it might be something that he’s never been able to talk about. I think men, one of the problems with male sexual trauma is there’s shame associated with that. I mean, there’s shame for women, too.

Laurie Watson [00:24:10]:
Sexual trauma is a shaming event, but especially for men, when the perpetrator is a male, sometimes they feel shame about that, as if it makes them a homosexual. And that’s not true, but they can’t talk about it at all, so we don’t know what it is. I will say, and most of you know that I, too, have struggled with a partner who is a sexual withdrawal and an emotional withdrawal. And we’ve done a lot, a lot of work about this. And one of the things he learned in therapy is, like, in his childhood, exuberance was kind of squelched. And so it was systematically squelched. And to be a good sexual partner, you have to be able to let go. You have to trust that your partner wants to see this exuberant part of you.

Laurie Watson [00:24:58]:
And it never felt safe to him in the beginning. And so we had to work a lot at how that could be safe. Goofiness was okay, saying something, approaching me in some funny way that just came to him. It was going to be okay. It’s like he needed to know it was going to be a win every time, really. And that it was okay to do that, but that was not in his nature because of the way he had been raised.

George Faller [00:25:23]:
Yeah, I think it’s so important. I love that you use your example in your relationship to educate and to help our listeners. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing. And I know Derek is involved in this process, and he’s committed to the same values, and I have his permission.

Laurie Watson [00:25:42]:
To talk about this.

George Faller [00:25:44]:
And that word not feeling safe. I mean, a lot of male sexual withdrawers really do need emotional safety to bring their erotic energy online. When they don’t feel connected, when they feel criticized, it just puts the doors up, and then they shut down, and they go back to that emotional, withdrawn side. And I love that as you’re talking about it, they’ve learned lessons early on that suppress their positive energy. So when you suppress positive energy, you place it with pressure. It overrides testosterone. So, again, it lets us know what’s missing. What’s missing is to try to tap into what’s the opposite of pressure.

George Faller [00:26:30]:
Lightness, playfulness. Like these things that get squished out of them. They’re still there. We just need to help withdrawers, try to re access them to get back to having fun. That creativity, that spontaneity, like these positive emotions that have just been suppressed over time. It’s trying to avoid the pressure of step one. I mean, step one is naming the pressure and dealing with it. Put it on the table.

George Faller [00:26:55]:
Step two is we got to reduce the pressure, but step three is now we got to fill that void with the positive stuff, the life force that they can access so they can have the enjoyment that they deserve and their partner deserves.

Laurie Watson [00:27:08]:
Exactly. And we’re not saying, girlfriend, that you’re not providing fun and light hearted activities, because I remember I thought of all sorts of fun things to do, and I was very creative and tried to make it really fun, and he just wasn’t yet healed enough to take advantage of that. So we’re not blaming you that you need to just be, somehow or another, sexier and more fun, but we’re talking about the dynamic also inside him, that these things might not be accessible for him because of places that are not healed. So I think your therapist is your best bet at this point to go for that, and you need to push for that, because the marriage is really at risk. You’ve been married for 16 years and sounds like you’re a sexual dynamo, and you’re doing all these good things, and I just think you need to have a sexual marriage. It’s okay to say, my marriage needs to be sexual for me to be happy.

George Faller [00:28:10]:
And she can say to him, it’s not his fault some of this got squished out of him. It’s not her fault. She’s been frustrated by it. They were set up for that. But she needs to inspire him to access his courage that says, I want this to change. I want to face this pressure with you instead of hiding it and keeping it. Because as long as he hides it and she gets chases after it and they’re just going to spin their wheels and it’s only going to get worse over time. So I’m agreeing with you to kind of strengthen her push.

George Faller [00:28:42]:
She has a right to say it’s okay not to have sex. It’s not okay that we’re not talking about this. We’re not talking about the pressure that we need to deal with together, because that’s where the solution is. And the good news, this is fixable. That if you could identify the pressure, you definitely could come up with ways of reducing it. But she can’t do that on her own. She needs his participation.

Laurie Watson [00:29:02]:
She does. And I think that this is the time to really go for it and to keep pushing. We’re so often helping pursuers not push, but this time I think we’re saying, no, this is a rightful, righteous place to push. Anybody having sex three times a year, that’s got to shift. That’s got to change.

George Faller [00:29:28]:
She’s going to push with respect towards him and kind of recognizing this isn’t his fault either. He’s not winning in this. He’s not feeling so great. He needs help. There’s nothing wrong with her pushing to get the help. If he had some kind of illness, she’d be pushing him to get help.

Laurie Watson [00:29:44]:
Here we are.

George Faller [00:29:45]:
This is an emotional illness. Let’s get some help with it.

Laurie Watson [00:29:47]:
Exactly. So true. Okay. We just encourage you. We’re empathic with you. We care about what’s happening. We’re so glad you wrote us and thank you for writing in. We encourage all of you out there to write us your dilemmas, and we try to deal with them about once a month, maybe every six weeks.

Laurie Watson [00:30:05]:
So thanks for listening.

George Faller [00:30:07]:
Keep on fighting for that love you deserve.

Laurie Watson [00:30:10]:
Okay, so tell us about your cutting edge training that you’re doing on success and vulnerability, Laurie.

George Faller [00:30:16]:
We just keep pushing it. Coming up with a new module on the playbook of a pursuer, playbook of a witch, or really practical moment by moment moves of what a therapist can use. We’re so focused on what’s happening in session enough. There’s talk about theories and these global things I think most therapists are looking for. What do I do in this moment? Give me a tool, George. So that’s what we’re trying to do.

Laurie Watson [00:30:42]:
That’s awesome. I am so glad you guys are doing this work. I think it helps us be organized to see you do it. You do demos, you do explanations, teaching. It really is interactive, and I think that so many trainings that we sit through don’t give us an opportunity for that. So what you’re doing is really important.

George Faller [00:31:01]:
No, we try to emphasize the teach it, show it, do it model of learning. You need to have some ideas, so we try to teach those, and then we try to show what it looks like implementing those ideas. But most importantly, you now got to practice it. That’s how they become yours. And that’s what we want our listeners and watchers to do, is become their own moves.

Laurie Watson [00:31:20]:
Find George and his [email protected] call in.

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