Joe Davis – Announcer [00:00:00]:

The following content is not suitable for children.

George Faller [00:00:02]:

I hear the genitals speaking. Laurie, what are they saying?

Laurie Watson [00:00:06]:

What are they saying? Welcome to foreplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.

George Faller [00:00:15]:

And I’m George Faller, a couple’s therapist.

Laurie Watson [00:00:18]:

We are here to talk about sex.

George Faller [00:00:20]:

Our mission is to help couples talk about sex in ways that incorporate rate, their body, their mind and their hearts.

Laurie Watson [00:00:28]:

And we have a little bit of fun doing it right.

George Faller [00:00:30]:

G listen and let’s change some relationships.

Laurie Watson [00:00:33]:

Don’t forget to check out Uberlube.com with the coupon foreplay. It really helps us to support the podcast and keep delivering free content. Thanks so much. What is chronic migraine? It’s 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more. Botox Anabachulinum toxinate prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It’s not approved for adults with migraine who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Ask your doctor about Botox.

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Laurie Watson [00:01:37]:

Talk to your doctor and visit Botox Chronicmigraine.com or call 1804 Four Botox to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Special K. However hectic life gets, the fuel you choose matters. So Special K has made two new irresistible varieties. Special K, high protein with real almonds, a rich chocolate flavor, and 20 grams of protein. And Special K with 0 gram of sugar packed with cinnamon flavor, 20 grams of protein and two net carbs. Visit Specialk.com to find a retailer near you. George, I read this book and it’s recently out and maybe we should have Daniel on our show. But Daniel Water, he’s a sex therapist and he wrote a book called The Existential Importance of the Penis and he talks.

George Faller [00:02:26]:

It should be a bestseller, just a title.

Laurie Watson [00:02:30]:

Well, maybe if he named it what is the Penis Know? It’s like so many men would want to know. I think that for me, I extrapolated what he was saying, that it applied to women as well, that sometimes sexual dysfunction is not just about body mechanics. Right. So Waters is talking about sexual dysfunction, that it’s not just rooted in anxiety, it’s not just your body not working, but it’s like a whole person, like so when a man gets ed, it’s not necessarily he’s just feeling anxious. He’s probably feeling something already about this particular partner or this particular experience. And then after he has Ed, he gets so anxious about that that of course, every time he has sex again, now he’s worried. So the anxiety kind of does maintain the problem. But his point is we need to look a little further. We need to listen to our genitals and try to understand why they’re not working, that it’s not necessarily just broken. Sometimes it’s smart. I had a patient quite a while back and she had vaginismus, which means she could not be penetrated. Her vagina contracts and will not let the penis in. And it turns out she was married to a guy who was an alcoholic and it was not a good partnership. And her vagina was kind of smarter than she was. Her vagina was saying, don’t join with this guy. Don’t let him in. It’s not smart, it’s not safe. And indeed, she eventually left him and repartnered with somebody else. Did not have the symptom, did not have vaginismus. She was able to receive her new partner vaginally. It was fine. It was like her vagina was saying something super critical to her and warning her, this is not a good relationship.

George Faller [00:04:28]:

Listen to the vagina. I like mean, first of all, Laurie, again, I don’t think our listeners understand how many books you actually read on know. So it’s fun working with you, knowing every time there’s going to be another book with another idea. And your appetite for continuously learning in this area is quite inspiring.

Laurie Watson [00:04:51]:

Thank you. I do get excited about new books I love.

George Faller [00:04:56]:

I don’t have to read the book either. I get the Cliff Notes from you and then I just keep learning these great ideas. And you know me, I get jazzed up about the function of something like, we have good reasons our bodies are so damn wise and they’re doing things our conscious mind or our cognitive brain can’t even understand. And I think I see something similar to this with men that aren’t ready for intimacy. Right. They don’t really know how to merge with somebody else. They’re kind of so used to being separate. This is a really vulnerable moment, right. So in those moments that have premature ejaculation kind of works, it keeps you protected. You don’t have to kind of lose yourself or you’re not ready for it. Your body’s just giving you what you’re ready for. If you spend your whole life solo and now you’re married and you’re with this stranger and you’re making love to them, it’s like, how do I even make love? My body don’t know how do that? So that kind of premature ejaculation would serve a function.

Laurie Watson [00:05:54]:

Exactly. And it’s as if you did read the book, because he talks about that very thing that in these moments, like the premature ejaculation or ed happens for a man, it’s like his penis is communicating a really important message about what he’s feeling overall, this sense of like you said, I’m not ready to merge. I am fearful. And he brings it to attachment as well that sometimes when we get married, kind of what gets triggered in us is or we move in with somebody, what gets triggered in us is all the ways that being dependent on somebody else and leaning on them or merging with them, we’ve been let down in the past. Or maybe the fear is that if I really merge with you, you’ll be able to control me. I’ll lose myself entirely. I’ll lose my will, I’ll lose my autonomy. And so that sense of being able to give in sexually, which is one of the goals of great sex, is right to actually merge and to feel as one and to go into that ecstatic sexual ecstasy is counterintuitive to the part of them that is saying, no, don’t do that. It’s dangerous to do that. They’re going to either let you down or take advantage of you.

George Faller [00:07:18]:

I love the reframe. What is it about this disorder that might actually serve a purpose on another level just to even explore that with yourself? Because we’re so judgmental of our own dysfunction that we never could say developmentally, when did this start? Could there be something about it that might actually work at a certain level? I travel a lot around the world when working with countries. A lot of arranged marriages still out there in the world. You’re in an arranged marriage and all of a sudden you got to be naked and intimate with somebody you barely know. Wouldn’t it make sense that your body does something to kind of slow that process down?

Laurie Watson [00:07:59]:

Exactly. There’s arranged marriages here in the States too. I actually work with a lot of them. I have been privileged to do that. It’s been an interesting experience. But you’re right. Suddenly they barely know each other. They’re supposed to be naked and make love and their body doesn’t work so well. It’s like right. Because their body is telling them this is an intimate moment and I don’t have intimacy with you yet.

George Faller [00:08:23]:

So if I can’t get aroused, it might not be that I have a desire problem. It might be that this is just the body’s protection saying, slow down here. We’re not where we’re supposed to be. You’re moving too fast.

Laurie Watson [00:08:34]:

Yeah. So many times I’ve heard women talk about this or their partners talk about it that actually at the wedding, they suddenly shut down. Maybe they were sexual before the wedding, but at the wedding itself, they kind of lose desire. And I think that’s a very frequent problem for women is that they don’t have that push of testosterone that overcomes some of these attachment problems that men do, but they do without that push. Like kind of the anxiety of being attached to somebody and being connected just slams their desire shut. And I’ve heard this over and over men who said, i, like, lifted her veil and what came out was the non sexual person. And I don’t know what to do. But I so many times see this in young women. And I also work with women who are, for faith reasons, actual virgins at their wedding. And so suddenly their body, too, is thrown into the very first event. Maybe the first time they’ve been intimately touched. Maybe they’ve kissed and stuff. But they’re literally having a first experience and they freeze. And they do have something, the vaginismus or it’s so painful and their body is cramping up and clamping it down and just saying no when their heart wants to open up, but their body doesn’t respond. And it’s like, no kidding. Because it’s your first moment. You should not go from zero to 100 in one night.

George Faller [00:10:11]:

I have a new name for you, Dr. Laurie Watson, the Genital Whisperer.

Laurie Watson [00:10:18]:

I like it. I think we should get a lot of press on.

George Faller [00:10:27]:

A nice it’s a nice different perspective that we’re just inviting out. This isn’t explaining everything, obviously, but I see this a lot with young men that are used to one night stands and they’re used to pornography and they’re used to masturbation. And it’s like sex is a release. It’s driven by lust. And they don’t have much experience with real intimacy or vulnerability. So then when they find themselves with the first time with a serious girlfriend, all of a sudden, Ed, they can’t get hard. And it’s like, what’s going on? Let me get some pills for this. Wait a second. I like this. The body saying you don’t really know how to do this thing, this shift, this person that you really have strong feelings for. You’re not really sure how to make love to that person because you’ve never done that before. You’ve had a different type of sex. That’s very different than what you’re facing here right now. So again, it’s like the body putting a pause on this. If it could invite if we could teach people to say, listen to why your penis might not be working. The solution to this and this is what I think we’re trying to help our listeners to if you could listen to the problem we’ve did a different recent podcast on this. What’s the longing in that? What’s the body looking for in the problem that would actually make you a more whole having great sex, right?

Laurie Watson [00:11:47]:

How do they get safe so that they combine their heart and their body making love? And they haven’t done that. They’ve only used their body, the sought pleasure. And now suddenly it’s important and it’s meaningful and they maybe want it to be meaningful, even for themselves. And it’s like, this doesn’t go together.

George Faller [00:12:10]:

If you’ve had it your whole lifetime not doing something even though your brain loves this person, it wants to do it. Your body has no damn experience doing that. That’s a big risk to kind of let your body go in that way. So again, it would make sense why the timing of this is perfect.

Laurie Watson [00:12:26]:

Yeah, I see this in Soldiers George, that sometimes they’re virile young men and they come home from being deployed and their partner, their wife, is waiting for them, expecting a sexual reunion, and they don’t want to have sex. But then it comes out later that they had an affair with a prostitute or an escort or just some woman that they met in some port and all hell explodes because of the betrayal. But they don’t understand that this trauma that they’ve gone through has kind of split apart their heart and their body. They used to be able to have heart body sex, but now they see themselves as dirty and they see their experience kind of colors, their sexual lens as well. And they see their needs, their sexual urges as dirty and as part of belonging somewhere else. And they actually can’t bring that to their loving partner. It’s like, no, I will sully them, I will dirty them up. And so they have no desire at home, even though they do feel sexual desire. It’s so complicated. So they feel shut down at home, whereas they still have testosterone and they have sexual drive. And all of that gets confusing to, of course, their partner. And I’m not legitimizing an affair. But I think if we can understand it in a more holistic way, we can help people and they can not feel so ashamed and start to understand themselves about what is happening.

George Faller [00:14:04]:

So trauma is another thing we might be looking for when there’s some kind of dysfunction, that there might be some trauma lurking there and there’s some protection for that. All right, let’s come back.

Laurie Watson [00:14:19]:

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George Faller [00:15:42]:

So I love this idea, Laurie, of developmentally seeing where this person is at when one of these dysfunction kicks in. And there’s probably a good reason why it’s jumping in at that point in time because the person is not ready for where they’re moving towards. It would be cool to do research on this to really kind of developmentally start from the earliest of development sexually. Say you’re preteen into maturity and chart along this kind of development going from not knowing anything to great sex. Right. That would be our continuum. Where are they on this continuum? And where do these issues kind of show themselves? I bet you there would be some really compelling markers around the consistency of some of this.

Laurie Watson [00:16:36]:

I was thinking that same thing when I was reading this book of wouldn’t it be great to get some sort of attachment researcher that we might know to do some work here to help us figure out where the developmental places crises are, how it impacts that trajectory, and how do we manage through perhaps moving in together. The first child, empty nesting first child, bam.

George Faller [00:17:01]:

Stay with that one. I mean, children are going to be huge developmental thing that’s going to how many times do you hear the sex life just changed after the birth of the first child?

Laurie Watson [00:17:12]:

Yeah. And I think that developmentally, it’s really hard because suddenly you’re splitting your attention and your energy with this third needy person. And maybe as a mother, you feel tapped out. As a father, you feel left out. I mean, all of these things could be happening. And if people don’t know how to manage that developmental crises, there can be all kinds of problems that happen. It’s a ripe time for affairs, and it’s not necessarily I’m not getting enough at home, so I go out and have an affair. It’s partly due to this they can’t manage the developmental stage of figuring out how to be a family, how to keep sex alive, how to stay intimate as a partner, how to include that third party. It’s more than just frustration. It is a developmental crises.

George Faller [00:18:04]:

Again, there’s brilliance in this. And they’re talking about something that’s not conscious for most people. It’s like the body makes a decision in your best interest without telling your brain what it’s doing.

Laurie Watson [00:18:15]:

Oh, I like that. I like that so much.

George Faller [00:18:18]:

All right.

Laurie Watson [00:18:18]:

So true.

George Faller [00:18:20]:

If you think about a mom who has now a life, you’re responsible. You have to take care of this new baby. And that baby needs to get your energy and your focus and your attention. Losing some desire sexually is probably a good investment of your energy. Sucks for your husband. Right. But again, how many wives hate themselves or their body because they can’t do what they did? But you know what? Maybe that body is saying that, well, that’s because priorities right now that is less important than the immediacy of what we’re focusing on here. And it recalibrates without telling the mind what it’s doing.

Laurie Watson [00:18:54]:

Yeah. I mean, survival of the species. Right. I am literally giving milk my essence to this child to keep them alive. And suddenly libido is way down the.

George Faller [00:19:09]:

So let’s let’s seize this moment, Laurie, where developmentally, the body doesn’t have the resources in, say, the wife to be as sexual, and it’s going to decrease desire. That’s a pretty common thing which frustrates the husband for really good reasons, and it sets into motion this negative cycle. If couples know this going in, this was just like your eyes wide open. Wait a second. Desire is going to go down because we’re putting our resources elsewhere. How can that couple work on that as a team instead of fighting and turning against each other?

Laurie Watson [00:19:43]:

Yeah. And also hormonally for the woman. Her desire goes down. She’s making milk. There’s a hormone called prolactin, which is the milk making hormone that also lowers libido. I mean, that’s a physiological issue, and it also makes her vagina dry. So two things are working against her here. It’s not going to feel as good, and she’s just going to have that flame kind of stamped out a little bit.

George Faller [00:20:13]:

But if that’s the math, then a couple can deal with the math together. Right. And I also think this is a great area to develop when we talk about the best sex talk, just to not focus on just the physical. This is an area where now we’re going to focus more on the emotional, feeling connected. You just created this baby. I mean, you’re able to support each other in your vulnerability. Your wife might feel not so attractive or feel like her body’s betraying her and have her husband’s support in that place. Might be a huge turn on. Right?

Laurie Watson [00:20:45]:

Yeah, exactly. You come out of pregnancy, you’ve gained weight, you have stretch marks, and your breasts are different. Everything is different in your body. And there’s so much pressure. And I hear this from young women all day long, like, okay, how fast can I lose the baby weight? What is my husband thinking when he looks at me? Does he even want me? And I’m dripping milk? I mean, they have kind of self disgust, and that doesn’t give any room at all for their sexual desire.

George Faller [00:21:18]:

Yeah, exactly. And for the men to be told that it’s okay that you haven’t given birth to a baby, your body hasn’t changed. You still want to have sex with your wife. Even though things have changed, you still are attracted. That’s a good thing. And maybe your partner is not in a place, but maybe you can just get a blowjob, or maybe you could just masturbate, or you could do simple things. That, again, keeps the couple’s bond kind of moving along instead of it just kind of abruptly being disrupted.

Laurie Watson [00:21:47]:

Yeah. And I think they can know, the message from me to young couples is, we know sex keeps you connected. It keeps you bonded. It’s another oxytocin release that binds the two of you together. So it’s okay to keep wanting. It’s also okay to not feel like having sex during those years. But what do you do so that you do keep the attachment, the sexual attachment going? How do you figure it out together? That’s the role. And I think the problem with young women often is they feel like they’re failing. I don’t have anything left in me. I don’t have any energy left. I’m tired all the time. I’m a bad partner. I’m not giving him what he wants. There’s fear. Maybe he’ll go elsewhere. I think for the man, it’s like, how long is this going to last? When am I going to get my playmate back? I don’t know. There’s no end in sight. I mean, that can be really frustrating.

George Faller [00:22:43]:

Yeah. This should be when they hand the baby to you to go home from the hospital, there should be a little manual around. Hey, make sure you have a conversation about your sex life because it’s about to change. And if you could deal with it together, you’re going to come out of it much stronger than turning against each other. And most couples just are making this up as they go. I mean, that’s why we’re doing this podcast, to spread good information that says things are going to change. That’s a fact. If you can talk about it, you got a chance to make the best of the situation instead of letting that negative cycle take over. This is one of those key developmental spots where it could take over.

Laurie Watson [00:23:18]:

It is. It’s a critical juncture, for sure.

George Faller [00:23:21]:

Yeah.

Laurie Watson [00:23:22]:

So what would we say to the young man who is still feeling the same in his body, wanting, maybe has not had sex at the end of the third trimester? As much as he’s wanted to hear.

George Faller [00:23:37]:

Like, try not to take this personal, this is what is supposed to happen. Her desire going down has nothing to do with you and everything to do with being a new mom and needing to resource herself and have the energy for the baby, because that baby will die without that support right now. So if you take it less personal, you just got to get more creative with how you can kind of get your relief and get your moments of connection. How patient can you be? When do you need a little bit of attention? And that’s okay to ask for that, but I love what you’re saying. Just try not to take to not being in a mood personal. That’s where she’s supposed to be during this time.

Laurie Watson [00:24:17]:

And some women who are just tapped out, nursing, not sleeping, not able to exercise, because they literally don’t have with the baby, they can barely get a shower. Their autonomy is severely restricted. And then their partner wants to make love. And we know that merging has to come from a place of I feel like I’m me, that I have something just myself to want to now combine with you. And she didn’t have that. So I would suggest to the young mother, is there any way that you can get 2 hours away from baby and family? Just 2 hours. Leave the baby with your partner.

George Faller [00:25:00]:

That might be foreplay, though. Dad takes the kid for a couple of hours and says, go work out, take a shower. Have a good time. And again, that appreciation starts to feed that emotional bond. The more the wife feels appreciated and loved and taken care of, it’s a lot easier to look at her man and say, you know what? You’re looking pretty good there.

Laurie Watson [00:25:23]:

Exactly. When I’m cleaned up, you look a little better. So good.

George Faller [00:25:28]:

Well, let’s zoom out again just to appreciate this book, right? To just open up this dialogue that says developmentally, when problems start, there might be something to that that you need to explore and to talk about or to anticipate as a couple. When there are changes in life usually is when some of these things happen. And there might be some real wisdom in that that a lot of us are missing because we’re in a rush to throw medicine at things and see the problem only physiologically instead of seeing emotionally or spiritually or something else going on in a deeper place.

Laurie Watson [00:26:02]:

Yeah. So also, if you’re a clinician, pick up Dan Water’s book, the Existential Importance of the Penis. It really talks a lot about the issues that sexual dysfunction represents, and us broadening our thinking about that, so it’s not just mechanical. Thanks for listening.

George Faller [00:26:22]:

Keep it hot, y’all.

Joe Davis – Announcer [00:26:24]:

Call in your questions to the Foreplay Question voicemail dial eight three three my. Foreplay. That’s eight three three my. The number four play, and we’ll use the questions for our mailbag episodes. All content is for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for therapy by a licensed clinician or as medical advice from a doctor. This podcast is copyrighted by Foreplay Media.

Laurie Watson [00:26:49]:

Hi, I’m Sarah May, and I’m the host of your new favorite show, help Me, Be Me. It’s a self help podcast for people who hate self help. Help Me, Be Me is full of practical tools to help you overcome a variety of emotional challenges delivered in a way that’s caring but frank. So if that sounds up your alley, I would invite you to check out Help Me, Be Me on the Iheart app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks.