Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - How to Have More (and Better) Orgasms

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

On today’s episode of “The Language of Love,” Dr. Laura Berman discusses one of the most common issues she sees in her sex therapy practice: Mismatched libidos. “Whenever one partner has more desire than the other partner, you’re looking at a powder keg,” says Dr. Berman. “It may not seem so at first. But as one partner keeps saying ‘no’ and the other partner keeps dealing with that rejection, over time it can really become an explosive situation.” Dr. Berman says one of the main reasons mismatched libido can lead to divorce is because lack of sex often leads to lack of physical intimacy and then lack of emotional intimacy as well. “When sex falls by the wayside, what often happens is that cuddling, kissing, hand-holding, and snuggling often go away too,” says Dr. Berman. “A woman may reject being cuddled or getting massaged because she fears it is going to lead to sex, and if she’s not in the mood, she may just want to shut down any physical intimacy altogether.” Dr. Berman says that when cuddling and physical touch disappear, then romance tends to follow suit. “Then, the pet names disappear and the little signs of affection, like bringing home flowers or going on date nights or making her a special dinner just to surprise her,” says Dr. Berman. “His needs are getting met in the bedroom so he can’t meet her needs outside the bedroom. It becomes a vicious circle.” Dr. Berman says it’s not just women who suffer from low libido, but men as well. “When men have low desire, it presents differently from women,” says the sex therapist. “Oftentimes, stress or shame or fear of performance issues can lead a man to avoid sex. If he is struggling with erectile dysfunction, he may try to avoid sex because it is humiliating for him. Or if he is out of work or not able to provide for his family, I find that this kind of stress also leads men to shut down in the bedroom. When men feel stressed or emasculated, they often cope by turning to porn and masturbation instead of wanting to connect with their actual partner in the bedroom.” So what can couples do to address mismatched libidos and ensure that both sex and romance stay alive in their relationship? Listen to this very important episode of “The Language of Love” to find out! 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 what we're doing here on The Language of Love, where I get to answer calls and emails from people just like you. My goal with The Language of Love is to help you discover more meaningful emotional and physical intimacy and to help you build more awareness of how precious and sacred your sexuality really is. Be sure to email me or reach out with your very own love sex relationship

questions and I might just answer them live on the air. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Welcome everybody. I'm so excited to talk to you about really anything to do with sex, love, and relationships, but in particular, this whole idea of spicing it up. I've been working as a sex, love, and relationship therapist for over 25 years. And I would say that that is probably the most common question I get asked from people who are in relationships is, how do I keep it spicy? Or after all this time, how do I spice it up? So I really wanted to spend some time even just talking about what that means, but also diving into your questions or concerns or challenges around sexual boredom, around difficulty taking things to the next level,

around struggles with vulnerability, which often stand in the way of our ability to have our sexual needs met or speak our sexual needs or ask for what we really want. Sexual shame plays a role in our ability to spice it up. I think porn plays a little bit of a skewed role in our ability or our desires to spice it up. So there's so many directions we can go in this conversation, and I'm definitely going to depend on your guidance about what you want to talk about. I think what's been interesting to me over the course of my career is that, like I said, this is a question I get all the time, how do I spice it up? And what I realized pretty early in my trajectory as a sex, love, and relationship therapist is that I could give you 365 tools,

toys, positions, role plays, fun, cute, cosmo-friendly ideas. And in a year or maybe a year and a half, if you did a few of them more than once, you would be back to me saying, okay, now how do I spice it up? Because the one thing working against committed relationships, I mean, maybe lots of things, but as we're talking about today is novelty, right? Once you really get to know someone and you're not chasing after them and the relationship becomes more stable and you're both committed. And ironically, especially if the relationship is healthy and there's like a deep trust there, trust and connection works against novelty, right? The novelty comes as you're discovering each other. And so what I see people really getting

caught up in is imagining that the only thing that's going to create that spice that they're looking for, that excitement that they're looking for is novelty because that's the only thing that they've ever learned or had modeled for them on television and movies and all of that. That's the only thing they imagine can create excitement is novelty. And obviously, once you get to know everybody, somebody else warts and all, everything about them and their dirty socks are on the floor and you're totally committed, the novelty isn't there. And that's why a lot of people become what I call these infatuation junkies

where they imagine they're falling out of love every time the novelty starts to wane and they start to get into a deeper commitment. That's what scientists call the attachment phase. You move from the infatuation phase where it's all about the novelty to the attachment phase, which is much more sustainable. So I'm really here to tell you

that certainly novelty is like an easy low-hanging fruit for creating more excitement in your sex life. But it is certainly not the only one. And in a longer-term relationship where there's some trust and connection between the two of you, you have an even greater opportunity to create intensity that goes beyond novelty.

So what I have found is that novelty, newness can certainly create intensity and that's what we're really looking for when we're looking to quote-unquote spice things up we want that intensity that excitement but when you're in a long-term relationship you have an opportunity if you're both willing to be vulnerable and you're willing to try some new things and I don't just mean new positions role plays and toys but like new levels of self-disclosure, then you can actually create a much more intensive sexual experience. And I wrote about this in my latest book, Quantum Love. There is a chapter on quantum sex. And a lot of what I put in there is gleaned from the Kama Sutra, from Tantra,

from lots of different Eastern philosophies, which quantum love in general was about how to all of this fascinating science that has been developed over the past, you know, 50 to 75 years of how to harness your body's frequency. You know, our bodies have this energetic frequency, how to harness that in service to your relationship. With quantum sex, you're actually becoming aware of your own sexual energy and sexual frequency because for most of us, sexual energy, including orgasm, is genitally focused, right? It's between the legs. It's like in that region. And when I'm talking about quantum sex, and I'll continue to talk about this throughout our time, I want to make sure to get to your questions too, but when I'm talking about

quantum sex, I'm actually talking about really attuning to the sensations starting often in your genital region, but then learning to pull those up and move them through your different energy centers in your body and share them circularly with your partner. And it becomes really beautiful and literally mind-blowing, you know, where the energy almost can come out the top of your head when you start to play with this. So we will definitely get into that. I want to make sure that I get to your questions. I have a question. What's your question? My question is, you talked about this idea of novelty creates intensity in a relationship. And then in a sense, it's low hanging fruit. When something's new or novel, it does create that excitement. In some ways,

it's in direct conflict with the trust and comfort that we build. You mentioned dirty socks on the ground. Let's face it. Sometimes the door's open, you're going to the bathroom, like all sorts of things happen. But if novelty is the low hanging fruit and maybe it's not the only approach we should take? What are some other examples of ways in which we can spice up the relationship? Yeah. Well, let's talk about some of the ways and beyond starting fresh with a brand new partner that you're going to have novelty with, right? The next kind of quote unquote novelty is to inject something or introduce something into your sex life together that you've never done before, right? Or that you haven't done a lot before or that you've always fantasized about. So that's

in the category of toys, costumes, role plays. You know, one of the things that I often have couples do who are looking for sort of more tangible, practical ways to, you know, create more energy between the two of them is that I have them create what's called what I call a fantasy box. So each of you write down all the sexual fantasies you have that you would want to act out together. I don't mean like every random sexual fantasy that you wouldn't really in real life, if given the chance, want to do, but it's really fun and exciting to think about, right? But I mean the things that you would actually want to do together. And you each write them down and you make a promise. We're not going to judge each other. Nobody's going to run freaking out.

We're going to each hear, because these are just fantasies, we're going to each hear each other's fantasies, and then we're going to come up with a common list. You may need to negotiate. If one of you has always had a fantasy about having sex in a public place and the other is scared to death of that and could never do that, maybe the fantasy becomes having sex in the backyard or on a roof of some building at night where nobody, you know, is really around to see you, right? But you could theoretically get caught versus in the middle of a park, you know, at noon, right? Or a playground. So you can find ways to amend those fantasies so that they match both of you, or you can meet in the middle. And then once you have that list, you write them on little pieces of paper,

put them in a little shoe box, and once a month, you know, pull one out. And not that you're only having sex once a month. Ideally, you're having sex once a week, but maybe once a month or even once every three months. It doesn't have to be every time. You pull out one of those little fantasies, and the one who's had the idea first and whose fantasy it really is kind of sets the stage and takes responsibility for making that happen. That's been a way that I find that couples in long-term relationships can kind of create more intensity. Another is by doing anything that stimulates the dopamine centers of the brain. And that's what they see

when couples are in that initial novelty and fatuation phase where they can't get enough of each other. The dopamine centers of their brain are fired like crazy. They've done brain studies where they've, you know, when they're thinking about their new beloved,

the dopamine centers, which are the addiction center of the brain, the same part that lights up with cocaine, lights up when you think about your new love. And obviously with familiarity, that novelty diminishes and the dopamine centers are firing less. So there has been some interesting research done that when couples do something that is dopamine enhancing together, like really something practically it would be something adventurous together, something out of their comfort zone together. And that doesn't have to be sexual. Then that actually stimulates the dopamine centers.

There was a really cool study that came out years ago where they had couples. They had different groups of couples. One group went on like a romantic picnic in the park. One Netflixed and chilled. And one group went on like roller coasters and all of the, you know, to an amusement park doing all these scary rides. And they found that the couples that did the more scary stuff, even more than the romantic picnic in the park stuff, actually had higher desire afterwards than anyone else. And it makes sense. So, if you do, you know, go rock wall climbing, go to an amusement park, do something, you know, go whitewater rafting, just do something that is kind of out of your comfort zone. For some couples, that could even be taking a cooking class, you know. It could

be anything, just out of your comfort zone together will stimulate your bonding and your dopamine. So, you know, those are really practical ways to kind of, you know, obviously there are the toys and the role plays and the things that you can get into. And a lot of those would fall into the category of the fantasy box, right? Thank you for sharing all this information. I coach couples as well. And sex is one of my favorite topics. And I'm often asked, what is the average amount of time for couples to have sex? And I know it varies by the number of years they've been married. And I'm talking about married couples. So do you have any, and then the other question was, what is considered a sexless marriage? Okay. So I think if I understand your question correctly,

You're asking not how long most people's sexual encounters last who are in married relationships, but how often they are having sex? Correct. So here's how I answer that question. And that's the second most common question I get. The first is how to spice it up. The second is how often should we be doing it? And my answer is like this.

You are asking me that question so that you can then turn to your partner and say, see, we should be having more sex, or C, we don't have to have as much sex as you say, right? We're all looking for this norm or this expectation. In my experience, working with as many couples as I have, not only clinically, but just hearing from thousands and thousands of people every day on my show and online and everything else, my clinical opinion is that if you're in a monogamous long-term relationship, ideally, you are having sex at least once a week. Now, does that mean that it's swinging from the chandeliers, a three-hour extravaganza once a week? No. Maybe that happens once a month, especially if you have busy lives and not a lot

of privacy and a lot going on in your lives. But ideally, you should be doing it once a week and not going more than two weeks unless there's real illness or issues in the relationship. And that, in my experience, is really what sustains the sexual connection. It doesn't mean that you can't be connected if you have less sex, certainly if you have more sex. And it doesn't mean that you can't reconnect if you haven't had sex for a while. But when you move into the sexless category, I mean, there's lots of definitions for the quote-unquote sexless marriage, but it's considered having sex one to three times a year or less. And there is a startling amount of people that are living in sexless marriages and in sexless relationships,

especially because so many people struggle with low desire and difficulty sexually responding, and they don't know how to talk about it, and then they start avoiding it. And when sex is working in a relationship, it's just one small part of the working relationship. But when it's not working, it really starts to fray the fiber of the connection. And so you feel like this big valley has built between the two of you. And even if you have the desire, it can feel awkward and difficult to cross, which is why someone like you or me or whoever that works with you to help you kind of recharge your sex life can be so helpful.

But it is really, really common. And certainly one piece of the puzzle is that it's gotten boring, you know, and they need to spice it up. But I find that when men are struggling with a partner with low desire who doesn't want to have sex, they immediately think she's, you know, and especially if it's a woman, they immediately think she's bored. And that's why she doesn't want to have sex. And that's the last reason she doesn't want to have sex. On the list of reasons she probably doesn't want to have sex. But what he does is, oh, I'll spice it up. I'll get this fantasy box going. I'll get her some sexy lingerie. Meanwhile, she has low desire. She doesn't want that, but he's thinking like a guy,

right? When a guy withdraws from sex, it's more often than not because he's either bored and it's more fun to just do it by himself and fantasize or watch porn, or he's struggling with sexual function issues, so he's avoiding it from a sense of failure. When women aren't interested, there's usually a lot of other things going on that often are affecting her sexual desire, you know, but not directly related to it. Does that answer your question, Bernita? Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. So let's talk about quantum sex, which is one of my favorite topics, beginning with, and we've talked in past shows about quantum love, right? And that's the title

of the book in which quantum sex is a chapter. I could actually write a whole book on quantum sex and probably will one day. But when we're talking about quantum sex and quantum love, it's about harnessing your body's frequency. Our bodies are pure everything, not only our bodies, everything in our environment, everything everywhere is atom. It's atomic energy. We physically are vibrating atoms that are vibrating at a specific frequency and speed. And we actually match each other's frequency unconsciously. That's a big piece of the quantum love and what it teaches is how you as an individual can use your body's energetic frequency to actually change things in your relationship, in your current relationship, and have your partner show up differently in the

way that you want, but also how you can use that to call love in if you're looking for love. So, it really is kind of the science behind what we hear of as manifesting or the law of attraction or like attracts like. It's not just saying what you want and those positive affirmations you may give to yourself. It's really about the energetic frequency and how that interacts with the quantum field that we're all part of. Now, when we're talking about quantum sex, that is really spicy because what's happening is, as I was saying earlier, for most of us, the sexual experience is genitally localized. The sensations, the arousal, the orgasm is localized at least to the pelvic region, right? And so for the man, a male, or someone with a penis, doesn't have to be a male, but someone who has a penis, their arousal process is, you know, there's increase in blood flow, there's muscle tension, ejaculation happens when, you know, there's contractions in the pelvic floor and also fluid from the prostate and the seminal vesicles and the testes, you know, the sperm from the testes. it all mixes together and propels out the penis. When women have an orgasm, it's intense contraction and release of muscle tension. Some women do ejaculate as well. I could get into all of that with you as well, but I won't yet. Let me know if you have some questions on

that. But it's all localized to the pelvic floor, as are the sensations. What you're doing when you're having quantum sex is you're actually pulling those sensations up. So most importantly, to learn this or to even experiment with this, it's best to do it by yourself through self-stimulation first. Because once you're trying to do it with someone else, if you don't really have a good handle on it sensorily and cognitively, it's really hard to translate that with a partner. Also, you're distracted. You're focused on your partner's needs. You're focused on a lot of other things when you're with someone else. And so, I think it's really important to practice this on your own during self-stimulation. I do find that for women in particular, and some

men as well, using vibratory stimulation, so using a vibrator to practice this, really enhances the sensation enough that you can really practice moving the energy along. What you do is, this is in my book as well, more specifically, if you get quantum love, but there's lots of different kinds of techniques and they all have different names. But basically, I'm going to give you a quick summary of some of them. What you're doing is you're imagining even, you know, this is before orgasm or anything else. As soon as you feel genital sensation, you are practicing squeezing and releasing your Kegel muscles, which are those muscles that you use to stop the flow of urine, You know, midstream, if you were to stop it, it's the same muscles.

And so you literally are squeezing that muscle and you're breathing in deeply, almost like a straw. And you're imagining sucking that sensation up to, you know, right below your belly button and then relaxing, breathing out and then squeezing again and sucking up to the next energy center, which would be right above your belly button. and then to the center of your chest and then to your throat and then to the space between your eyes. And you're sort of practicing. At first, you may only be able to feel the sensation pulling up one stop on this kind of elevator of energy you can pull up. And then you just practice that and

maybe even circle the energy around. So as you breathe in, you imagine the sensation pulling up to maybe your belly button region. And as you breathe out, you relax those muscles and imagine it settling back into your pelvic floor. And then you breathe in, squeeze, you pull it up to that same place, and then you relax and imagine it pulling right in the base of your pelvis. So you can just stay there for a while and then from there, move on and move on. And these are just examples. But another great one is sort of creating a circle because when we're talking about the masculine and the feminine, and this could be male or female, to have sexual tension in a relationship. It doesn't matter what your genders are or how you identify. One of you is

more in their masculine energy and one is more in their feminine energy. And the feminine energy is more flowing, more emotionally expressive, more creative. The masculine is more containing, more directive, more forceful in a good way, not in a I-force-you sort of way. And we all have masculine and feminine within us, obviously. We're all of those things, but we tend toward one end or the other. So, when I say masculine or feminine, I'm talking about that, right? So, the one of you who tends to be more in their masculine, or males in many cases, although they could be more in their feminine in the relationship, you receive sexual energy through your genitals and share it through your heart. And the feminine receives sexual energy

through her heart and shares it through her genitals. And this is really interesting because we see the same thing happen in relationships. When I've done national surveys on what the most sexually satisfied women have in common and the women who have the highest libidos, it's that they feel that heart-to-heart connection, that emotional connection with the person they're having sex with. Those women who are most sexually satisfied have that sensation. And in long-term relationships, sexual desire is really sourced from that feeling of deep emotional connection. That's going to inspire a woman more sexually than physical attraction even. So, and for men, men achieve a sense of emotional closeness and connection often in these long-term

relationships through the act of sex. So, when they're with a female partner or any partner who withdraws from them sexually, they don't have that means to feel the heart-to-heart connection. So, it sort of is reflected in this very ancient tantric circle that was taught thousands of years ago, which is, let's pretend you're having intercourse, right? If you're the female or the one who is in there feminine, you imagine sharing energy through your genitals and receiving energy through your heart. And if you are the one more in your masculine or male, you actually are sharing energy through your heart and receiving it through your genitals. So you can start breathing with

that and you almost start to create a circle. And it's actually not hard to do because of what I was saying earlier, that that genital sensation is so strong during sex. So if you focus your consciousness on that genital sensation, and if you're the male, right, you imagine pulling that up to your heart as you breathe in. And as you breathe out, imagine it going from your heart into your partner's heart, and she's imagining it coming into her heart, dropping down to her genitals, and then sharing it with him through her genitals. Or we also teach couples to breathe in that energy even through the top of their head or from the center of the earth and share it that way just to get it started. My question is, when you teach something like this and you share,

you said esoteric. These are concepts that maybe some have difficulty really processing. How can you, for somebody that maybe is having a bit of challenge, really trying to understand this, what are the, I guess, either the misconceptions or the things that people don't quite understand? And if you could demystify it or break it down in a way that will be as easy to process as possible, that'd be helpful. Well, just to operationalize this, you know, once you practice this, what I'm talking about, you will immediately feel it. And all of us who have had, you don't have to have had an orgasm before even, but all of us who have had sexual genital sensation before, either by themselves or with someone else, can work with this. And it's really about creating

a body awareness because you can have full body orgasms. We're just taught to keep it all localized to the genital region. So if you just start by allowing that to happen, you know, have sex or self-stimulate the way you normally would, right? But just become extremely aware while you're doing that of the physical sensation of that energy, because what that sexual sensation is, is a kind of energy. If you are aware of the sensation and the vibration of that sensation, and that's all you do the first several times, that's doing a lot. Then that gives you an awareness of it so that you can start playing with that. I like to encourage people to imagine it as a ball of energy that's building and growing in your genital region, and you can actually pull it up or even

blow it out through your genitals into the earth, which I don't see why you would unless you were trying to dispel some, you know, get rid of some sexual energy. But if you're trying to build it and build arousal, you would pull it up. And so you just start playing with that, just noticing the sensations and the intensity of the sensations and imagining it like a brilliant vibrating ball of energy. And then you imagine just pulling that up a little bit and dropping back down And as soon as you try it, it'll make total sense because this is actually something that comes really naturally to us, but not something that most of us in the modern world have been taught to do. And a lot of indigenous societies, they're taught to do this. In ancient societies, even in Egyptian societies, they were taught to do this.

But in modern society, we are not. Erica, do you have a question? I do. So my question, you kind of touched on it, but I feel like I'm blessed and I have no problem orgasming. And that's not an issue, but my orgasms are very weak, I guess, if that's a term. And I think the techniques you just described sound like a great place to start. But I was just curious if you have any other thoughts on strength of orgasm in women. Like it seems some women have stronger, more like explosive orgasms than other people. It's more like a, you know, like a gentle, lovely sort of sensation. And is that something you can cultivate or should you just accept that's how your body

experiences pleasure? No, I think you absolutely can cultivate it. And so many things go into orgasmic intensity, but most significantly would be muscle tone and hormones, especially if they were more intense before and now after babies or perimenopause or medications you started or whatever else that, you know, certainly if you were on any SSRIs like Zoloft or Prozac antidepressants that can affect orgasmic intensity as well. But, you know, so there are those medical reasons, right? And also even inhibitions that some people have that kind of squelch their experience of the arousal. But it really, on a physical level, comes down to muscle. You know, what an orgasm essentially is, is an intense contraction and release of muscle tension that feels very pleasurable because of the nerves and blood vessels that are being stimulated. And so anything, if you want to have better orgasms in general, and this goes for men

too, especially when it comes to staying power, you want to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. So the pelvic floor is what contracts during orgasms. And it is kind of like a hammock of muscles that hold up, you know, for a woman, all of her reproductive organs. And the way that you strengthen those is not only through the Kegels that I alluded to, where you squeeze those muscles that you would squeeze to stop midstream when you're peeing or something. That's the best way to identify them. So exercising those, not while you're peeing, but at other times, several hundred times a day, really squeezing and releasing and strengthening

those muscles, but also exercising what we call the transverse abdominal muscles. Those are those deep abdominal muscles that surround the entire torso. That is also part of your pelvic floor. so the more you're, you know, what we know of as core exercise, right? So the more you exercise your core and your Kegels and strengthen those, the better your orgasms will be. And certainly if there are any medications or medical conditions that are impairing nerve function or blood flow or anything like that, you would want to attend to that. And then beyond that, it's really practice. And you're right that practicing what I'm talking about, like in your case, since the sensation is a little weak or diffuse to start, I would encourage you just to practice

building it. So what I would want you to do is focus on the pelvic region and provide some stimulation, probably, you know, I would say some vibratory sensation. So use a little vibrator or something and don't let yourself reach orgasm too quickly and really practice. So you let yourself get to, you know, if 10 is orgasm, you let yourself get to like a four or a five. And as you're doing that, you're breathing in the, and up the sensation you're having and just breathe it to your belly button while you squeeze those Kegels. And then you open your Kegels wide as you breathe out and you imagine that sensation settling in your pelvic floor and, you know, keep doing that so you'll kind of get you'll be going between like a five and a seven up and down

up and down between a five and a seven even if you have to pull away the sensation for a minute but allow the sensation to build allow yourself to experience the pulling it up and the dropping it down and you'll notice that that ball of energy i'm talking about starts to feel really dense and full and congested in that region. And you can practice pulling it up more from there. But what I would want for you, since your orgasms could be stronger, is to just stay there at first and have an orgasm that way. And my guess is it's going to be a lot more intense and powerful just doing that. And then you can practice pulling it up more and more until it comes out the top of your head. Okay. Great advice. And then in terms of the hormones, you mentioned if I was going to

get hormones tested, which one should I look at or look to measure? Yeah. Well, prefacing this with I'm a PhD, not an MD. Okay. So I can't give medical advice, but I certainly have ushered thousands of people through this process. And we know that testosterone plays a huge role in sensation and muscle tone, including orgasmic muscle tone. And estrogen plays a role in sort of engorgement and blood flow that leads to lubrication and a lot of the sensation. And those are the two, I mean, there's progesterone as well, but estrogen and testosterone are the main players in sexual response. And so to get those checked, in my opinion, and where I usually refer people is to someone

who really understands hormones and works with what are called bioidentical hormones. So bioidentical hormones are compounded in a laboratory, but they are made from natural sources and they can be customized. So you're getting the lowest possible dose of exactly what you're missing. And so people who work with bioidentical hormones do specific kind of testing to usually urine and saliva, sometimes blood as well, and a symptom checklist and whatever. And it can take three to six months because they slowly titrate up until they get rid of any symptoms that are present that are related to the hormone levels. So I think the first step, if you are the women who seem to be most at risk, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen to you if you're not at risk.

But the women who seem to be most at risk are women in their mid to late 30s or older, women who have had a couple of kids. There's something called postpartum androgen deficiency syndrome, which typically happens after the second kid, sometimes after the first. Women who are on antidepressants or who have diabetes or who have any kind of cardiovascular disease and women who are on those SSRIs. I don't know if I mentioned that. So those tend to be, if you're not in any of those categories, I wouldn't necessarily

think that first, that this is a hormonal issue, but if any of that sounds familiar, it's definitely worth getting it checked out and make sure that they measure your testosterone, your free circulating testosterone, as well as your total testosterone, because you could have plenty of total testosterone, but just not a lot of free circulating testosterone because of something else going on. And you might as well not have it if it's not free and circulating, you know, if it's bound up. Awesome. Super helpful. And do you know offhand, I know you're not an MD, but what those numbers should kind of look like, because I think I did get some hormonal testing done. I don't know if it was the free, but I could check. Yeah. Check

for the free. If I remember, and don't quote me on this, but I think it's 0.9 nanograms per deciliter, I think. I wouldn't hold me to that. But I will say this, what the lab says is the normal range, their threshold is too low. So in other words, they would say, let's say the number was 0.9, right, for free circulating testosterone. They would say anything lower than 0.5 is fine, right? But if you are in the lowest third of your testosterone levels, in the lowest third of normal according to that lab, and you're having symptoms, then I would say to see someone who specializes and bioidentical hormones. Okay, thank you so much for sharing your expertise.

And I love your podcast as well. Thank you, thank you for listening. All right, so someone is asking, what are some things you can do to be more exciting? Now, to me, I distinguish that from to make sex more exciting, right? To be more exciting. That's an interesting question because it could mean,

and maybe they can clarify more, but because this was a written question, But it could mean to be more exciting to my partner, or it could be that they're trying to say, how can I get more excited for sex, right? So if it's about being more exciting for your partner, then you are probably with a partner. One of two things. I talk to a lot of women who are like so focused on being sexually exciting that they're not even focused on their own pleasure.

They're more focused on getting the guy, keeping the guy, making sure that he doesn't stray. I've got to be like the quintessential porn star to keep this guy. And I think we do ourselves a disservice. Obviously, if you enjoy those things and it's fun for you and it turns you on, then you should do it. But I think when you really focus on how can I make it crazy enough so that he won't stray, that isn't sustainable over if you're talking about a long-term monogamous relationship i mean not that you shouldn't always try to put an effort into your sex life and that you shouldn't you know

make an effort to be sexually attractive and to be engaged sexually with your partner but i think there is i do see a population of women who you know are really i'll take every pole dancing class and every you know they're just like i gotta be like a porn star to get the guy and you know i would disagree with you. I think it's good to have those skills if they turn you on and are fun for you or something fun to do. But to put that pressure on yourself isn't sustainable and isn't about maintaining a healthy, mutual, committed relationship if that's what you're looking for and wanting and enjoying. Now, if you're asking, how can I be more exciting because your partner isn't interested in sex? You know, that's a much broader question. And when someone is not as

interested in sex with you anymore or at all, the question is why. And there are always emotional reasons, relationship reasons, and even physical reasons happening simultaneously. I always say it's like a puzzle picture with all these different pieces of the puzzle. So I would need more information, but I would tell you in general, very, very general terms. if you are you know if you are finding that you're with a woman with low desire pay attention you know maybe check out her hormones like i was talking earlier about some of the medical physical causes medications your own medical conditions if none of that is at play then it is probably because she's not really feeling the emotional connection with you and if you could build more

of that emotional connection, take some of the pressure off sexually, focus more on sensual connection, even take sex off the table for a while and just focus on making out, cuddling, kissing, sharing, take the pressure off for a little bit. I find that very often when women start to feel that non-pressured, non-sexual, emotional, and even romantic physical connection without someone pushing at them when they're not really in the mood to have sex, they very often want to have sex. That's the irony of it.

So, you know, if you're trying to get a female more engaged, I would say you're more exciting when you're really focusing on her main sexual organ, which is her brain and her heart, right? Like really connecting there. If we're talking about a male with low sexual desire, very often the two main categories I see there are either medical hormonal or stress, specifically stress. I find most kinds of stress don't really

negatively impact a man's libido as much as financial or work related stress. So once again, to answer the question, why the lack of interest is there? Is it that you really aren't into it and you're not putting any effort in and you're not trying to be exciting or is there something else going on. So hopefully that gives you a start. If you want to give me more specifics, I'm happy to get more into it. We have Johnny ready to make a comment or ask a question. What's on your mind, Johnny? So the question is that, you know, I'm a very hot guy and I feel like why do not girls hit on me? Okay. Do you ever hit on them? No. So you just want them to hit on you yeah okay why are you scared of being rejected maybe maybe yeah well so are women you know i have

to approach a girl and why doesn't a girl approach me yeah that well it depends it depends on what culture you're in and where do you live in the world are you in a culture or in an environment where it's okay and acceptable for women to come on to guys? If I were in your place, would you hit on me? I wouldn't hit on you because I'm married, first of all. And if I were single, I don't know. But what I would say to you is no one wants to feel like there are games being played.

And so one of two things, if you are indeed an attractive, visually attractive guy, either what is happening is that you are accidentally giving off cues that you're not really open and interested. You're not smiling at anyone or catching anyone's eyes or standing in a way that shows that your body language is open. Or you aren't getting the cues from the women around who are looking at you, smiling at you, trying to wave you in, and you're not really getting the message, right? So, sometimes women come on to you by not necessarily marching up to you and

being like, hey, baby, you want to get out of here, you know? They are just sort of smiling at you, looking at you again and again out of the corner of their eye, you know, turning towards you and waiting for you to come over. So, the worst that can happen is she'll say no. Give it a try. If you're as hot as you say, you should be very successful. I think you should try to make the first move. Or at the very least, make a conscious effort to smile and let a woman know, send her a drink, whatever it is, let her know that you're interested, even if it's not very obvious or marching up to her. Hopefully that gives you a little direction. I thank all of you for being here and those of you who ask questions especially, but all of you for joining me talking about

how to spice things up. I think, you know, the main thing is that for each of us, that means something different. But in the end, sex and sexual pleasure and joy and connection, even with oneself, that it brings is really our birthright. And every one of us is entitled to a beautiful sex life. And so if you have any questions, you can always join me here on the language of love you could also always go and ask questions at languageoflovepod.com where you can find all the places you can listen to the podcast and there's a way to leave voicemail questions and email questions and i will be back here next week at the same time to talk more about sex love and relationships so that there's any topic you want to cover just let me know there's

No question off limits. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Language of Love. I love all these questions from you. And you remember that you can keep them coming. You just go to drlauraberman.com right there on the homepage. You can either leave a voicemail question or an email question. You can also go to speakpipe.com backslash languageoflove.

directly and leave a voicemail question as well. But it's sometimes easier just to click on the link. I will meet you back here. A brand new podcast is coming out next Wednesday. So look for that. Make sure to subscribe if you like it. And I'll see you next time on the Language of Love. We're some see heroes and others see egos.

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