Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Finding and Keeping Passion in Long-term Relationships

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Is it possible to be monogamous for life? In this episode of "The Language of Love," Dr. Berman talks about whether or not monogamy is truly sustainable.  Next, Dr. Berman helps a caller who says her husband wants her to talk dirty, but she doesn't know how to get started. How can a 'good girl' tap into her naughty side without feeling inauthentic or as though she is playing a porn star role?  Dr. Berman then helps a woman who says she and her longtime partner struggle to "get past the silliness" in their relationship in order to get to the sexiness. How can lovers continue to find passion and excitement when they are also best friends who love to clown around with each other?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Dr. Laura Berman, a sex and relationship therapist. And for the past three decades, I've been helping people learn how to love and be loved better. That's just what I'm doing here on The Language of Love, where I get to answer your calls and emails and your most important questions. Because my goal here is to help you discover more meaningful emotional and physical intimacy and to also help you build more awareness of how precious and sacred your sexual life really is.

So be sure to email or reach out with your very own love, sex, and relationship questions. And I might just answer them live on the air. Whether you're single, married, gay, straight, cis, transgender, I am here for you. And this is a safe space to ask all the questions you've always wanted to ask your doctor or your friends, but maybe have just been too embarrassed to bring up.

It's time we all become fluent in the language of life. Welcome to the show. This is a big topic that I find comes up in pretty much every long-term relationship. How do you find that passion? How do you keep that passion in a long-term relationship? The truth is that, you know, what our evolutionary history teaches us and what anthropologists and archaeologists will often discuss scientifically, is that we didn't evolve to be monogamous for life. We actually, in our caveman and woman days,

we had serially monogamous relationships. We would make these pair bonds with each other. If we're talking about heterosexual relationships, which the female would say, okay, look, I'm making to promise not to have sex with anyone else so that you know that these genes, you know, this baby is yours that we're going to have and you're not helping out, you know, to protect someone else's genes from moving forward, right? That biological imperative to pass your genes on. And the male was saying, look, I'll hunt for you while you're in the later stages of your pregnancy and can't really fend for yourself.

And when the baby's small, I'll protect you from the predators and I won't invest my resources or protection in anyone else but you and this baby. And they would keep that agreement until the baby was about three years old and could hop on its mom's back. And she could then go about her life hunting and gathering and all the other things she was doing for herself with the baby until the next pair bond. So it was really a serially monogamous thing that we started with.

And then once farming started, we kind of made this decision that we wanted to have families stay together and grow and kids all in the same place to work the fields. And it became kind of a religious institution, of course. And back then when monogamy for life was created, you know, monogamy for life was until you, you know, if you were in your early 50s, you were ancient, right?

Most of us didn't live well past our reproductive years. Now the expected lifespan is 100, right? So if you get married in your mid to late 20s, monogamy for life is a really long time. And that's why you see divorce rates spiking when the youngest child is about three. It's in our DNA. It's not easy.

Certainly not impossible to stay monogamous for life, but it isn't easy. And I would say it's not even particularly natural. Doesn't mean it's not desirable. It could be, it is for many people. It is for me, but it's not necessarily natural. So with that in mind, let's dive into this topic. I have some emails and a voicemail I wanna get to.

Sherry has an email for me. She says, Dr. Berman, every time my husband and I have sex, he always says, talk dirty to me. Well, my response is, I don't know how, because the truth is I don't. So I say to him, F me harder or faster, and that just sends him over the moon. How can I learn to talk dirty to him without all out cussing and saying things I don't like to say? I'm a Christian, and I don't even like to say the F-bomb, but I do because he loves

it when we're having sex. So this is a great example, Sherry, of this idea of finding passion and keeping passion in long-term relationships, right? So what your husband is looking for is some excitement and taboo because that sort of keeps things exciting for him. It's part of his fantasy life. It's part of finding and keeping passion in a longer term relationships. It's easy to stay in passion in the beginning stages of love when everything comes naturally

and we can't get enough of each other. That's called the excitement, you know, the infatuation stage of the relationship. But anywhere between three months to three years, depending on how quickly you have kids and settle down and get used to each other, you move into the attachment phase, which is where you are. And then you have to create passion and everybody's different about what turns them on.

So for your husband, it's great news because he knows what turns him on. He knows what excites him and he's sharing it with you. I love that. I'm thrilled about that. And I think if you talked, I mean, I know you're probably not gonna ask your pastor about this,

But I've spoken to endless numbers of preachers, pastors, rabbis, you name it, all sorts of religious leaders and the common denominator, assuming that they aren't really restrictive and in my humble opinion, misusing the teachings of the Bible or the Quran or whatever it is they're teaching, that almost every religion and every religious leader will tell you that if you are investing in a monogamous relationship and keeping that sexual connection strong that you are doing the right thing and my guess is if you had you know if you were willing to ask your pastor listen my husband really wants me to talk dirty to him and I feel like I'm sitting when I drop a bad word or you know a dirty word or whatever he would say to you in the confines

of a loving relationship in service to your loving connection and your monogamous sexual connection, really, and if it's consensual, really anything goes. And so I say, drop the F-bomb as much as you want and don't feel like it's a sin. Think of it as a little bubble that the two of you are in that really isn't about your day-to-day life. And what is Christian about what you are doing is culturing and nurturing your sexual connection with your husband, which is a godly thing to do. Now, how to talk dirty, I find that the easiest way is, you know, you can certainly say those things, right? But for, you know, like, F me harder or faster or whatever, obviously that works for him. You can also, you know, as he's doing different things to you, say, I love it when

you touch my, you know, use the word or it turns me on so much or you're so hot or, you know, give him compliments about his penis or whatever else. The other thing you can do is to get some erotica for women. There's all sorts of erotica out there, written erotica, erotic stories. I've written blogs about it. You can find lots of resources on my website at drlauraberman.com and read it even out loud to yourself. Practice saying some of the terms and the phrases in there. You can even read it to him if you want to. But I find that that really helps women who are trying to figure this out, not only get a vocabulary and a language to use, but also to give them some ideas and get them comfortable saying those things out loud. So hopefully that gives you a starting point,

my friend. Let's go to a voicemail. Here's one. Hello, Dr. Berman. Thank you so much for this. I'm going to try and get this down as quickly as possible. So I hope this makes sense. So I've been with my husband for eight and a half years married for four and a half of them. And I just want to say that at the beginning of our relationship, I was sick with mental health issues, but especially an eating disorder. And that really affected us. But we got married and everything was always just it was really good. And over the years, we eventually grew apart, our communication was really, really lacking. So we saw a therapist and we grew we're feeling so much closer, we're feeling really good but we just can't get back to being intimate again. So I read a sex

therapy book I guess that he also plans to read and it helped me realize something that I recently told him which is that I really liked I or I need to feel pursued and wanted to feel sexy and to want sex and he was really happy to hear that so he felt like he knew what to do but nothing has really changed. He can get turned on at the flip of a switch but I wouldn't know it since he pretty much keeps it to himself. We can't seem to get past the silliness in our relationship to get to that romantic, sexy side. And we both agreed in therapy earlier that we weren't sure we ever really felt true passion in our relationship. And I do feel like something might be holding me back from when I was feeling resentful earlier, though I don't feel like I'm resentful anymore. I just

can't bring myself to change anything. Should we see a sex therapist? Should I? Do we have hope? thank you yes Jen you totally have hope and this kind of thing happens all the time and you know when you haven't had even it gets harder when you haven't had sex in a long time then it really feels awkward and it feels like there's this big valley between the two of you that you have to cross you know I see this happen so often you know women definitely want so do men but women want to feel desired and pursued my guess is that's especially important to you because you have felt so rejected in the past, either in this relationship, but my guess is in other earlier relationships, maybe very early in your life, felt rejected or unimportant or

not wanted or discardable, you know, fill in your word there, but that some of that has come up in this relationship. And it also sounds like your husband, even though he's gotten the green light and been waved in to initiate with you, and even though he has the desire, translating that desire to the risk of initiating sex is difficult for him. And that's exactly what you need. So therein lies the stuck place. And absolutely a sex therapist can help you with that

because basically what a sex therapist will do is to start with take sex, or at least what I do, but I think most sex therapists do this, is to take sex off the table completely for the time being. So that pressure expectation, are we, aren't we, is he, isn't he, is off the table for a while. and then just getting to know each other's bodies again through touch, through connection, not intended to create sexual arousal even at first, just really connecting intimately,

emotionally, sensually. And the other thing that would eventually happen, and you certainly may want to try this on your own because I think it would really help this dynamic between the two of you, is to start scheduling sex so that the guesswork is taken out of it. So, you know, it could be every Saturday at 3 p.m., you know, it could be any, it could be different times every week, but at least once a week, you guys have on the calendar a specific time that you are going to be sexual with each other. And then the guesswork and the expectations and the waiting for it, is it going to happen or not is taken off the table. And it becomes something that at first, I guarantee you will be awkward, not only because it's scheduled, but because, you know, you haven't

had sex in a while and because it's kind of a loaded issue for you. But as you stick with it, you're going to, you know, and you just kind of surrender and you let it be a little silly and a little awkward. That's okay. It's going to be at first, but you stay present with it and you keep doing it on a weekly basis. And then what starts to happen is you start to look forward to that. And also the guesswork is taken out. So the rest of the week, you literally are not having sex and you know it's not going to happen. So you can be more playful.

You can hold each other's hands. You can give each other's kisses because you're not worried about being rejected or being misconstrued. So it takes a lot of the guesswork out. But I think given what you're struggling with, a great idea is to get into some sex therapy. And since you've already done so much work on your relationship and you're both so willing and he really wants this and so do you, then sex therapy should probably not take very long.

But you keep me posted and let me know if you have any other questions. Here is an email from Jodi who says, thank you so much, Dr. Berman, for being there for those of us who have questions but are afraid to ask. My husband and I have been together for almost 41 years, married 36 of those years.

We love each other dearly. We have difficulty finding the excitement and passion we once had. I think he feels that's just how things go, but I'm not happy with that answer. I want to make love more often than once every few months. Is this just how it goes, or can we get the passion back? Yeah, you can get the passion back. There's no reason you shouldn't have passion your entire lives.

As long as both of you can walk up two flights of stairs without chest pains, you know, or shortness of breath, you're in good enough condition to have sex. However, if you've been together 41 years and, you know, let's say you got together conservatively when you were 15, all right, he's now 56 and a guy in his 50s starts to experience lower and lower levels of testosterone. So do women, by the way, but men have a lot more of it and a lot, you know, and lose it just like we do. The way it translates to men is with less and less desire, sexual desire.

So the fact that he's only wanting it once every few months is probably more hormonal than psychological. And so in that sense, physiologically, he's right that this is how it goes, but it doesn't have to be how it goes. If he is willing to go see a doctor, ideally a urologist, U-R-O-L-O-G-I-S-T, urologist who specializes in sexual medicine. And I think you can go to sexhealthinfo.org and find those people.

But even if you just Google urologist sexual health in my area, they can do a full assessment on him. And there are so many FDA approved testosterone treatments for men and the symptoms of low testosterone in men and women is low sexual desire. So thoughts, fantasies, motivation to be sexual is much lower, low general energy, sometimes difficult to get an erection or get, you know, getting aroused and a loss of some muscle tone, difficulty building and maintaining muscle tone.

And sometimes even just like a blah feeling, I wouldn't say depressed, but just kind of like your joie de vivre, your excitement for life is just not really there as much. Those are all symptoms of low testosterone in men and women. And so I think that if you could tackle the testosterone issue with him, if he is, let's just say 50 years or older, then that's probably going to be a huge part of it, especially since, as you say, you love each other dearly and you once had the passion and excitement. So he just needs a libido to match his heart, you know, his love for you. Let me know how that goes, okay? And you let me know too, if you have a question about sex, love, relationships, keeping the passion alive, building passion, you know, it's not easy. I think

there are some general ways that apply to all of these individuals that, you know, that can help keep the spice alive. And it's something that I get asked almost every time I speak somewhere or speak to a group, you know, they always say, how do you keep the spice alive? And my answer to that is I could give you 365 role plays, positions, props, you know, things to use that would be new and exciting. And then in a year to a year and a half, because maybe you do a couple of them twice, they wouldn't be new and exciting anymore. And then you'd be looking for more. And so the intensity that we all want, that we feel so hugely in the beginning stages of love when we can't get enough of each other. You know, our bodies aren't intended to stay there. Society wouldn't function if we all

walked around living in the infatuation stage where we're doing it all the time and can't think of anything other than each other. I mean, even when they look at our brains, when we're in that infatuation stage, the addiction center of the brain is on fire. That's part of what bonds us to each other. It's a biological process, but it's not intended to be sustained. But that doesn't mean that moving to the attachment phase has to be a loss. It's a much deeper and sweeter kind of love. And what we're really looking for when we're looking to spice it up is intensity. So yes, you can try new outfits, a new role place. I love even having couples like these, you know, do what I call a fantasy box where each of you write down all the fantasies you'd like to act out or play

out with each other. And that could be a role play, a position, a tool, an outfit, whatever. But you agree on a whole bunch of them. And then you put, and you don't judge each other. You each make your list and you share your list without judgment, but you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. So you come up with a common list. You put them on little pieces of paper, put them in a box and like once a month, take one out and try it. And the one whose fantasy it was, you know, kind of leads the charge, right? And sets it up. There are simple things like that, that you can do. But when it comes to the intensity that we're looking for, that's really about what I like to call quantum sex. And I'm going to be doing an episode coming up soon of

Language of Love where I'm going to be diving into quantum sex. I talk about it in my book, Quantum Love. But that is really about creating energetic intensity between the two of you and recognizing that sexual arousal, not just orgasm, but sexual sensation and arousal is energy. And when you start to play with that energy and move it in your body and share it in a circular way with your partner, that's when you really start to experience deep intensity and often seven chakra orgasms, which are fantastic. So stay tuned for that. I'm going to do an episode on quantum sex but in the meantime you can read about it in quantum love and you can think about it the next time you're intimate with your partner what does it feel like don't just let the sensations

localize in your genitals where most of us feel them see if you can imagine just energetically pulling that sensation up to your belly or up to your heart imagine sharing energy back and forth through your heart with your partner you know there's lots of ways to play with this and we'll be getting into that in future episodes. But in the meantime, if you have any questions about anything to do with love, relationships, sex, I'm here for you. Just reach out to me. Go to the website, drlauraberman.com, and you'll see right there on the homepage a way to email me questions or leave a voicemail. And you can go directly to speakpipe.com backslash languageoflove if you want to do it that way to leave a voicemail or email me at languageoflovepod at gmail.com of course

follow me on social media on all platforms at drlauraberman.com and I will see you next time for the language of love