Joe Davis – Announcer [00:00:00]:

The following content is not suitable for children.

Laurie Watson [00:00:02]:

George we got A-Q-A-A mailbag episode from a sexual withdrawer. So let’s see how the other side lives and hear what she’s saying.

George Faller [00:00:11]:

Sexual withdrawals reaching out. I love that. Laurie we get so much from these sexual pursuers that, again, they’re trying to healthily change their relationship, confront it, get the tools that they need. But it’s not so often we get the sexual withdrawals and out saying help. So I like this. I’m eager to hear what she has to say.

Speaker Ads [00:00:30]:

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.

Laurie Watson [00:01:00]:

Welcome to foreplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.

George Faller [00:01:04]:

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

Laurie Watson [00:01:07]:

We are here to talk about sex.

George Faller [00:01:09]:

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

Laurie Watson [00:01:17]:

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

George Faller [00:01:19]:

G listen and let’s change some relationships.

Laurie Watson [00:01:23]:

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. So before we get started, George, I really want to thank our patrons, because every month I get a reminder of the patrons who are new and who are sending us support and who are on mission with us and who believe in, I think, you know, the engagement with the people who are listening either in support like this or just the letter that we’ve gotten from this woman. It’s so encouraging. I read all of them. I’m so grateful for them. And I just want to say to the patrons, thank you. Thank you for believing in us and thank you for sending us financial support so that we can do more of this work. George and I do a lot of thinking together and a lot of work in teaching and developing these ideas and these you know, it really helps us to have a little bit of leeway. It pays for our editing and it helps pay for our social media outreach. So thank you so much and keep.

George Faller [00:02:25]:

Spreading the word, because if we can get more and more, it’s better. We want to turn this into a TV show. We want to have a bigger imprint and impact on the world. So, please, if you’re a billionaire listening and you want to kind of throw money this way to make something happen, this is bigger than all of us. But healthy messages around sex has never been needed more than it is today in this world that is going crazy and so often feels like it’s kind of losing its way to kind of have good messages out there that recenter people and get them to prioritize why we’re here in the first place. To be in relationship, to be in connection. I mean, we need to be showering this from the rooftops and it is all this kind of support that really can make this happen. So we feel blessed and have a lot of gratitude. Thank you.

Laurie Watson [00:03:09]:

Thank you. So let’s get to this sexual withdrawal. This woman says, I just started listening to your podcast and I love it. Thank you so much. It has hit on the topics that are holding me and my husband back. When we try to engage in conversations regarding intimacy or sex, it ends up with us shutting down. Exactly. We know that that’s why we’re doing this podcast. I’m a withdrawing person and when pressed by my husband to open up, I feel like I’m empty and I have nothing to say. I know my husband deeply desires to be close and I feel broken. I feel like I have hurt him and I don’t know where to begin. So my question is, how does one figure out what hurt or fear is holding them back from opening up? How does a couple sit in the hurt and then move forward? I feel like there is a wall that has been built up for 20 years and I can see the other side looks fun, but the wall in front of us is so huge. Oh my gosh, I just love this letter, George. There are so many beautiful things that she’s saying, so much responsibility that she’s taking and so much vulnerability in how she put it.

George Faller [00:04:17]:

Exactly. And there’s also a lot of pain. She’s saying, I know I’m hurting my partner even though I don’t know why and there’s a lot going on for me, but I feel empty. So she’s in a tough spot.

Laurie Watson [00:04:32]:

She is. I love the line where she says the other side looks fun, but there’s this wall in front of us, it’s like between them and she has to climb that wall too. And it’s so hard and she can kind of see what would it be like to have all that desire and that energy and that would be more fun. And like you said, she’s facing hurt between them that she feels like in part she’s responsible for and she’s fearful on the inside. I want to be able to help this woman because I really feel like as a withdrawer, she’s at a precipice, a place where she might take the risk of figuring this out for what’s inside herself and then how to get past the wall between them.

George Faller [00:05:20]:

Right. And chances are she might be both the sexual mature and the emotional mature. When there’s a lack of being able to describe the inner world, it’s because oftentimes it’s not on a radar screen. A lot of withdrawals are focused externally. She’s really aware of her husband’s hurt and what’s happening for him. But if you’re always focusing on pleasing people and performing and sacrificing yourself to take care of others, there’s not a lot of awareness left over for your own inner world. So that she’s already looking at feeling empty is her trying to notice herself in this equation, which is a huge first step, right. To be able to name empty is a great, great first step.

Laurie Watson [00:06:07]:

It is. And you can imagine what happens between the two of them when he says, Tell me what you like. Tell me what you’re experiencing, and she just goes, nothing just goes to blank because that’s not what she’s easy with. She doesn’t do that. She doesn’t think about her needs, she doesn’t think about her body. Never had space to do that. And that’s not his fault. But maybe from childhood on, there are so many reasons people are emotional withdrawals and sexual withdrawals that come from early places on the inside. It’s not your partner’s fault, but that needs healing and that needs exploration.

George Faller [00:06:46]:

Right. So that first step at noticing the safety in not paying attention to yourself and only focus going on the external allows that new move to start saying, right, who am I? Where I don’t know myself and I feel empty. How do you tolerate that space of not knowing, of the discomfort of feeling invisible? There’s not a lot here. Right. A lot of times the doorway in is that withdrawal, feeling like they’re failing. And it’s a very counterintuitive thing to do, which is to actually hit the gas pedal and try to go deeper into that place because their whole strategy is to avoid it. So getting their buy in to say, if we keep avoiding it, we’re never really going to know you in that place. Something happens in you that not knowing is safer than knowing, which means you’re never getting help with what’s happening in that place underneath. So it’s really leaning into the fears. Exactly. What does it make you that you disappoint your partner all the time that you don’t know yourself? What might some of those fears be?

Laurie Watson [00:07:55]:

Laurie yeah, I mean, they’re afraid of failing. They’re afraid of disappointing their partner. And I think that the fears go really deep and they often run their whole life, maybe for whatever reasons, they grew up feeling that they disappointed their parents or they were the cause of their parents divorce. They were such a disappointment. They weren’t the success that their parents wanted them to be. There’s so many messages that we get in childhood, and some of them are inadvertent. Our parents don’t mean to send those messages, but we interpret it that way as children. And so we shut down. We tell ourselves we’re not good enough, and then we withdraw our gift to the world and then think about it in the body. So many things can go wrong in the body in a family. Many times partners tell me, I think my partner was just molested, and that’s why they’re so shut down. But really, I mean, that can happen. And it does happen with the frequency that is ungodly. But on the other hand, there’s just patterns in families that we don’t stay in touch with our bodies. Our bodies are not good or viewed as good. There’s many things that happen in families and as children that we grow up with that we have to examine.

George Faller [00:09:10]:

I’ll never forget in my session one time, a mom and her daughter were walking in, and the girl was like eight years old, and she had an ice cream cone. She was just finishing it. So the mom was like, I just finish it outside. And she came into the office to start the session, and we’re both looking out the window and watching her, and all of a sudden this other lady comes over with a dog, a big dog, and it jumps on this girl and starts licking her face. And the smile on this girl’s face, I could still remember it. I mean, she was just like just this pure ecstasy of just connecting with this dog and the love between. It was just a great moment. Both of us had this big smile on our face. And I remember the daughter then walking into the session, almost skipping, like when I closed the door. And she goes to sit down and her mom says to her, look, you ruined the dress. Look at those paws on your dress. Why’d you let that dog jump on you like that? And you can just see this jolt to the brain. It’s like the brain has to learn how to turn off all that kind of dopamine and fun stuff and now get into the place of, what did I do wrong? And it does a lot to the brain not blaming parents. People need to be neat and all those things. But a lot of times when you go into the history, you see this with witcherors. They don’t get people in their lives that help them put words to their inner world. They’re left alone. And when you’re left alone, you don’t develop the words. The feelings are still there. You just don’t have the words for those feelings. And I think that’s why this lady talking about feeling empty. That is how most people feel. They say they don’t know. You’re not trying to be difficult. You really don’t know. You haven’t had that person to help you put words to those feelings.

Laurie Watson [00:10:59]:

Yeah, exactly. I love what you’re talking about. I mean, for you, this was sort of a nutshell of what happens in the family for this girl and their mother. And again, I’m a parent, and I often feel like I don’t do it right. Most of the time, feel like I don’t do it right. And so we have a lot of mercy on parents. But the reality is sometimes those moments do hit us in our childlike brain and send a powerful message that we determine is how we ought to be. And so also, don’t be messy, don’t be dirty. Think about this as a girl child who gets the message from mother don’t be messy, don’t be dirty. Don’t enjoy this kind of moment of play. And maybe that gets translated over and over throughout the years and there’s layerings of those messages. And then you try to grow up and be a sexual woman who is supposed to be dirty and messy and sweaty and it’s like, oh, I don’t have any permission for that. I can’t do that. And now you want me to talk about what it feels like? Well, I’m going to only tell you that it feels bad when you’re sweaty and we’re dirty and you want me to talk dirty. It’s like I can only tell you that that feels bad and that’s not going to make you happy. All of these things go on in their brains, and it really comes from earlier experiences. And I think that’s the first thing that I would say to this woman is, do your own work first. Like, examine your sexual formation. What were those implicit and explicit messages in childhood about sex, particularly? We’ve said this so many times but an attached secure childhood covers a multitude of sins it’s like we can have bad moments with our children and with our parents. I think responsiveness only needs to be what about 30% for us to have a good childhood. But if you have parents who celebrate your body, celebrate your puberty like celebrate the way you identify all of those things a good childhood lays a foundation for later sexual capacity. If you have affectionate parents that is such a blessing. I will say the number one thing I think that happens in women is parents who are not affectionate they don’t have an affectionate mother that is an enormous block. It’s a huge block. Even if their father was affectionate and genuine in it, not having a mother who is an affectionate woman to you is just like it’s really hard to be in touch with your sexual capacity. I think men get over it because their testosterone drives them past that so they will be sexual, they will be affectionate but women really hard blocks. So let’s come back, talk about more that this woman can do it is springtime and the weather is beautiful. We are falling in love and I want you to have a great experience in bed I want you to have the best orgasm that you have ever had. I want you to be euphoric when I say euphoric, think for you. This is a product that basically helps you have the best orgasm you can ever have. They use CBD oil and there are several products one that you can put inside your vagina that kind of melts and absorbs and gives you that great feeling and that great orgasm. They also have Sex Oil and Awaken Oil, which Awaken is like this juicy warm up that gets you turned on. It increases your pleasure and it deepens your orgasm. So listen, you have my permission to try it. I fully endorse fourIA products. Treat yourself to deeper, fuller pleasure whenever you can. fourIA offers a special deal for our foreplay FAM. Get 20% off your first order by visiting Fouriawellness.com foreplay. Or just use the code Foreplay at checkout that’s foria Wellness.com. Foreplay for 20% off your first order. Listen, get euphoric. It’s springtime. I recommend awaken arousal oil and sex oil. You’ll thank me later.

George Faller [00:15:26]:

So here’s the good news, Laurie. Even if we never get what it is we need, it’s never too late to add the missing ingredient. If you could identify, if you could explore, if you could tolerate the discomfort, you could figure out what it is you didn’t get and still get it and get your body back towards that pathway, towards security. We don’t get a choice. Our experiences, the families we’re put into, everybody’s trying to do the best they can, but that’s what growth is. Growth is about being able to kind of get curious and trying to figure out what you can do differently. We’re always working towards those new moves. So again, she’s already taken a step in that direction by reaching out. Normally, withdrawers, don’t reach out. Right? They don’t want to expose themselves. They don’t want to be seen. They don’t want other people to see them as failing. So they keep that all to themselves. To name that empty feeling empty is a safer feeling. If you’re going to feel really distressed and nobody’s going to help you with it, you’re better off not feeling. So that’s typical withdrawals. I don’t feel anything. I don’t know. I feel empty. Right, because that’s the body protecting you. It doesn’t want to give you clear signals of how bad it feels because it’s only going to make things worse. It’s going to take your focus away from everyone else and put it on you. What’s the point of doing that unless you start to see the value in doing it? Get the withdrawal to buy in to themselves, to start standing up for themselves, to say, it’s not my fault, I don’t have words. But guess what? I want to start listening to my body. Getting plaque plugged back into your body. Critically important.

Laurie Watson [00:17:00]:

I love that you are always full of hope and what you’re telling us. I kind of just feel the hope in me as I work with people and for myself. It’s never too late to fill in the holes that we’re missing from childhood. That’s what makes us human, is we’re adaptable. We’re not stuck in the past. We’re not stuck in those places of the way we grew up. We can heal. We can change. Our brain can form again and grow and we can have different patterns with our partners.

George Faller [00:17:31]:

Exactly. And all it takes is that willingness to take that first step to listen to the good reasons you’re empty. When you honor the protection, when you honor the wall, that wall is just trying to protect you. It’s trying to protect you from all the hurt and things that you haven’t gotten. But when you can start to honor that, then the real work begins about trying to focus on you, leaning into what does it mean about you that you disappoint people? Like if I can’t help a withdraw start to have success with their feelings. They need success in co regulation. Look, she’s trying to give her husband success and she sees his struggle and wants to help him with that. Yet who sees her in this place of struggle? She’s always using self regulation, trying to deal with it on her own. So the root of the problem is a failure in co regulation. The solution is going to be somebody seeing that failure and helping her in that place.

Laurie Watson [00:18:33]:

Right, exactly. So I want to give her another direction to go as well. I really want her to become knowledgeable about her body and about the sexual technique that would work for her. And I mean this is so difficult, I think for sexually withdrawn women, there’s a lot of messages, especially around masturbation for young girls. Parents get really much more anxious about finding a girl masturbating than finding a boy masturbating. They’re all that vulnerability of like, oh, is she going to be super sexual? And that’s scary for parents. And so little girls, when they reach for their genitals get shut down, they get their hands slapped away. They get told don’t do that, all these kinds of things. And that is really the way women become knowledgeable about their pleasure is usually through masturbation. And many women who are sexual with jars have never masturbated or they don’t masturbate regularly or they do it in secret and they don’t feel like they can tell their partner about it. That’s another big yeah, yeah. I wrote an article called Name that yawning. And basically I think women, they don’t even know what they look like, George. They’ve never held up a mirror to their know. They don’t know the names of all the parts. They don’t even know the names of the clitoris and the urethra and the vagina. They can’t distinguish that. They don’t know what to call themselves. I think men are so playful with their genitals. They actually name them playful names sometimes and they’re touching them all the time. They have to touch them to go to the bathroom. And women don’t I mean, think about it. A woman can go years without touching her genitals. She may wash herself with a washcloth. She wipes herself with tissue paper. She never ever touches herself. It’s just not part of her day, she can’t see herself. And so it’s this foreign territory. It’s almost like it’s a blank spot. Her genitals are a blank spot. And so she doesn’t see it, she doesn’t name it. She doesn’t own it. And that’s so problematic for the sexual. Female withdrawer, like, I got to own my genitals and own that pleasure is my right, that my body should give.

George Faller [00:20:50]:

Me pleasure for a lot of withdrawals. I like that imagery of a foreign territory. Their body is a foreign territory. If you’re focusing on others and performing and pleasing, you’re not really noticing your own body. So really getting back in touch with your body and recognizing it’s okay not to know. I tell withdrawals all the time. You’re not supposed to know. This hasn’t been on your radar screen. It’s okay. But now it is. So let’s start listening. Let’s start trying to plug in. And so, yes, you’re looking in the mirror. You’re looking at your body. You’re touching your body. When you feel criticized, when you get a message you’re doing something wrong, check in with your body. There is always a physiological response to a threat. That is the way we are made. We might not tune into that frequency and listen to it, but it’s always there. If you keep encouraging people to listen to their body, the body is incredibly wise. There are always emotional signals trying to give us information about where we are in the world, what’s working and what’s not working. And as people get practiced, they get better and better at that. Right? So when she says, I feel empty, that’s a start. She’s trying to feel the nothingness. We need to keep checking and checking, and you’re going to see over time, you start getting more and more clearer, more and more specific.

Laurie Watson [00:22:08]:

Yeah, exactly. And some women say, but I don’t know sexual technique. I don’t know what works. I don’t know. And maybe for some people, for other reasons, they cannot or will not masturbate. Some people, they think it’s a sin to masturbate, but we can help them. We can get them through that. There are books that they can read on sexual technique. I like Michael Casselman’s. Great sex. It’s really written more for men. But I think women could read the chapters on sexual technique and say, you know, I think that would work for me. I mean, if it’s permissible to use. Ohmygodyes.com, those are films on sexual technique on women, and it is very explicit. I mean, it is as explicit as porn. However, I think it’s artful, and I think it is intentional about teaching sexual technique. And maybe you could watch it with your partner and try them, maybe have your partner try them on you as you go, and sort of do an intentional look and walk through of all these different techniques and start to say, this one works better for me. I like the way this arouses me. And remember, no technique that is focused on the clitoris is going to work well until she’s actually aroused. So just starting off cold and saying, do this to me, well, that doesn’t work. It’s like right, it doesn’t work because you’re not yet sexually aroused. So all of these things have to be done in the context of arousal or you won’t even know. And you have to be patient with yourself.

George Faller [00:23:45]:

Yeah. When we’re training therapists, we’re always trying to get them to pay attention to body in, body out. Listen to your body. If something’s not working, there’s a reason it’s not working. You’re not turned on yet. You’re not lubricated. When it is working, there’s a reason why it’s working. So the more we pay attention to the story of the body, what feels good or what feels bad, it’s going to give us everything that we need. And so often, most of us have been trained not to do this. So listen to where you feel like a failure, what’s not working, and if you could share that and your partner could respond and something changes and all of a sudden your body feels good. It’s showing the trajectory going from disconnection or struggle towards connection and that hope of what’s working.

Laurie Watson [00:24:32]:

Yes. And I had a girlfriend the other day, close to my age, who said, I just used a vibrator for the first time, like about a couple of years ago. I’m like what? And she said, yeah, and she’s not shut down all that much sexually, but she said it was a game changer. So I would also advise this woman try a vibrator so that you can get sexually aroused easily and then maybe develop more about teaching your partner how to touch you, discovering the touches that you like. A vibrator is good for masturbation for women, too, because they can experiment, they can have quick orgasms, they can have easier orgasms, they can have arousal that then they touch themselves and all of that touch feels good. So they can explore different techniques on their own body, that then they can communicate. And I say that really easily. Sometimes sexual withdrawals are like, are you kidding me? I’m supposed to tell my partner how to touch me? That is insane. I could never do that. So there’s a lot of growth steps in between there. We know we’re kind of painting an ideal picture of what we want you to do here. But I love that your spirit is saying, how can I get better? How can I explore myself? And I think these are just some practical ways that we’d like you to.

George Faller [00:25:50]:

Try to look for things that might relax your body. When people are feeling empty, it’s usually a sign there’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of tense that’s that external focus. If you can start noticing things that can relax you, you will start to get back into your body. Maybe it is taking a hot shower beforehand. Maybe it’s sitting by the fireplace. Maybe it’s getting a massage. What is it that can get you back into your body?

Laurie Watson [00:26:19]:

I’m going to do all those things today. I’m going to go take a hot bath, sit by the fire and get a massage. Exactly. That gets us into our body and warms us up. Literally.

George Faller [00:26:31]:

A lot of times we want our body to go too fast. No wonder why it says, I don’t feel anything yet because you haven’t done anything for me yet. So really trying to spoil a body to trying to get it back online to relax. Great lovers are relaxed, so I’m always looking for that. Do people even notice how relaxed they are?

Laurie Watson [00:26:52]:

Yeah. And I think she said the last thing that I would have instructed anybody to say, which is look at sex, apart from the negative cycle and how much pleasure you’re personally missing. And she said it. I mean, she said it in her letter. I’m looking at the other side of the wall going, he’s having so much fun. It looks like fun over there. And so, yes, this fun is what you’re missing and what you can have. So I would say to you, you’re already there on my step three. You’ve already seen it. And just let that longing for the fun bubble up inside you. Let it motivate you. Let it push you past your inhibitions to get yourself that fun because you deserve to have fun, too.

George Faller [00:27:37]:

She’s much further along than she realizes. She’s reaching out for help. She’s already identified her blocks in the wall, and she could tap into some longing that wants something differently. When you could tap into the longing, you’re usually good to go. So we have high hopes for you.

Laurie Watson [00:27:54]:

We do. So thanks for listening.

George Faller [00:27:57]:

Keep it hot, y’all.

Joe Davis – Announcer [00:27:59]:

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.

Speaker Ads [00:28:23]:

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.