Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Ready, Willing, but Unable

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Sex … it gets easy with marriage, right? In a perfect world, this is how things work, but our world is far from perfect, and those imperfections often follow us into the bedroom. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, when you “put a ring on it” you won’t necessarily spontaneously release any predisposed inhibitions you have around sex. This week, our Language of Love Session dives into this topic with a listener who is ready, willing, but unable to enjoy sex with her husband due to core inhibitions she didn’t realize she was still carrying. I help her get to the root of her aversion to being sexual and share insights and tools that will get her and her sex life back on track.  In today’s episode you will learn: How to find the missing piece of your sex life.  How to come back to your body and stay there for true intimacy and pleasure. When and how outside help can make all the difference Ways to make intimacy feel safe. How to build a better sex life without making sex feel like work.  Sex is one of the most pleasurable experiences life has to offer. If you find yourself stranded at a bedroom impasse, the good news is that help is available.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Lily, what's on your mind? How can I help my friend?

Well, I am what I would consider a married asexual woman. And that has, as you can imagine, a whole slew of problems attached with it. I absolutely adore my husband. He is a wonderful man. We've been together for a couple of decades, but this is an issue that obviously is going to come up. Yeah. And so when you say you have a sexless marriage, basically, I wouldn't say that because I make such a concerted effort. So it's not sexless, but for my purposes and for my perspective there's no drive there's nothing driving me other than knowing how important it is to him okay okay so that's what i'm trying to get it it's you who's not interested it's me okay and how long has that been going on for how long have the two of you been together first of all we've

been together for over two decades okay and how many of those decades would you say you have low desire oh always my whole life uh-huh and do you have any history of sexual trauma or abuse no okay and any kind of and no one ever touching you in a way you didn't want to be touched or forcing you to be any kind of sexual when you didn't want to be well you know nothing nothing earth shattering there was the occasional you know somebody coming on to me kissing me when I wasn't interested, things like that. But nothing, you know, nothing illegal or I would consider very forceful. I'm somebody that would not allow that to happen. And any kind of religious kind of sexual guilt or anything like that, that you were raised with? I was raised Catholic. And of course,

there's the save yourself until you're married business. My mother told me probably about 15, 20 years ago, oh, I always enjoyed my sex life. And I can remember, this is going to sound kind of silly. I can remember being a little kid and getting in a drawer once and seeing the red and black lacy underpants. So it's not like it was something that they considered, oh no, never do this sort of a thing. But you waited until you were married. That was the message. That was the message that's not yeah yeah yeah yeah okay and when you have had sex and do you enjoy it are you able to respond I do uh sometimes it's just there's nothing if it didn't occur to him to do it it wouldn't ever occur to me to do it yeah yeah and that was always the case even because I don't

know I mean how old are you now I'm a little bit I I'm about 60 okay so you've been together since you were 40. We've been together longer than that. We've been married for a couple of decades. Okay. And when you were younger, even in your 20s, did you notice that you had thoughts, fantasies, motivation to be sexual, or has it always been kind of, you don't think about it, you're not into it? Always been, I don't think about it. But I can remember a previous boyfriend kind of joking around about me saying, oh, no, it's my birthday, it's Christmas. all the excuses that he heard but yeah okay and and so you can reach orgasm with your partner you can respond when you do have sex okay sometimes yeah probably I would say maybe 60 percent of the

time yeah well that's pretty normal I mean I don't think most women reach reach orgasm every time I mean it's nice you can you know I have to what I would consider saying get kind of lathered up before any encounter. I have to either look, read something, you know, sexual or graphic or something in order to get myself prepared to do this. It's not something that comes naturally to me at all. Yeah. Well, the tricky thing is whether we like it or not, I don't know if you're on any kind of hormone therapy, but you are. And do you take testosterone as well as, okay. What, do you take it? Cream. It's a bioidentical hormone treatment cream. Okay. And you haven't noticed any kind of boost of interest or response. And have you had your levels checked? Right. I just did,

in fact, in January. And also make sure, because a lot of doctors, unless they're an expert in this, and my hope is that if they're giving you bioidentical hormones, they're an expert in this, but the range of normal is really wide. And if you're on the lower end of the range of normal, that still can be too low. Yes, she has mentioned that to me. And she is an MD doctor as well as an integrative medicine practitioner.

Okay, so what has she said? She has said that those levels were a little bit low, but within the norm. And the fact that she thought the fact that I feel really good, my weight is right on target. I have a tremendous amount of endless energy, which is which is great. Yeah. But just this is the main downside here. What I see happening with the hormonal changes, and I know this isn't what initially caused the low libido, but it certainly, you know, low libido by that.

I mean, lack of thoughts, fantasies, motivation to be sex. Right. So every woman basically starts to if she's in the same relationship, she's in a brand new relationship where she's got novelty and excitement, you know, or she's having a lot of different relationships. she won't necessarily notice it the same way. But in a committed relationship, most women starting in their mid to late 30s into 40s, their testosterone is getting low enough. One of the last things to go and the last things to come back is desire, right? So you've talked about the other things that have come back with the testosterone, energy, general sense of well-being. And I wouldn't even say that it has come back. I've always had just boundless energy Oh, so you haven't gotten that from the testosterone. You're just good on that. So I thought you were crediting the testosterone. So my guess is you might need a little more testosterone if your doctor is telling you that the levels are on the lower end of normal and you're not getting the libido benefits of it, you know, because testosterone plays a huge role in physiologic desire and obviously it's not going to bypass your emotional brain if you're inhibited or scared or have a trauma history or whatever.

But that would be one place you might go if you can bump it up under her supervision. You may see see a boost in interest. But the tricky thing is that after in a 20 year marriage and at age 60, even if we pumps you full of testosterone, the bottom line is that your source of motivation really does come for all of us. me too, and I'm married, comes from, and I'm not 60 yet, but comes from a place of wanting to connect, wanting to express love in a way that's going to really land, wanting to nurture the relationship, wanting to connect on a soulful, heart-based, physical, connected level. It doesn't necessarily come from, I got it laid. That energy just doesn't really happen in a long-term relationship, especially, you know, over 45 years old, it typically, you know, that you can have

moments of that. And if you were, and I don't want you to leave your husband, but if you were suddenly to leave your husband and get into a relationship with like, you know, a really hot 40 year old guy, you might find that your libido, and we do find that women's libido, you know, boosts up a little bit when they're in a brand new relationship because you have the novelty and the dopamine to support you. But that's not what we're talking about here, right? We're talking about a long-term relationship well it's not been the case in any relationship no new years or anything it's just never been there is there's never been a drive when I was in you know senior in high school and other girls be talking about their exploits and things and I think I I really don't

know what they're talking about I you know I can remember one friend saying to me oh I don't know how you can stand it I don't know how you can stand to be a virgin and I I just didn't get where she was coming from because it's never been a a drive it's never been a thing did you ever self-stimulate or explore on your own? Yeah, I do. And oddly, I do sometimes use it or lose it. Yeah. No, it's good for you. Yeah. Yeah. Something has to strike me to remind me of it. You know, I know this sounds, I know it's only like one or 2% of the population that identifies as asexual, but, and I'm hoping somebody listening will resonate with them. Yeah. Well, like asexual can mean so many things for some people. Asexual means I am holding my sexuality to myself. I made this decision for some other reason and I don't really have the drive or the need. And also, so I'm just like containing myself. Right. Some people are asexual because of wounds or damage or anxieties or other things. And some people, you know, we have to be careful. I'm always careful with titles or labels.

But I think what you in your case, what you call asexual just means that the way that your brain works, you're not particularly physically driven. You understand and experience the emotional benefits of sex. Right. I kind of want to talk to you about that, too, because I feel there's a disconnect with the emotions. And, you know, he and I get along so well in every other aspect. Best friends talk all the time. No problem there. I have a disconnect with with the emotional and, you know, I hear about it, soulmates and a soulful experience. I don't have that with sex. So what what happens when you have sex? What do you experience? Well, this is going to sound terrible. Kind of a countdown, like when this is done, then I have another week.

I have another couple of weeks and I don't want that doesn't sound terrible. That sounds normal for someone who doesn't have interest. I mean, that's yeah. So don't feel bad about that. And God bless you that you're nurturing your relationship like this, because a lot of women and men who have low desire, you know, just totally check out and are like, screw you. Like, I don't want to. Right. I would never do that. And I get so much valuable information from your podcast and things about how men feel about sex. And I use that because I don't know. Clearly, I don't know that. Yeah. And I have used a lot of things that you have said and really take them to heart to try to mend this bridge that we have.

My husband is very well aware of how this is. Do you stay in your body when you're having sex or do you go somewhere else? That's a really good question. I try to, but yes, you're right. I do find myself, I wouldn't say I'm counting the tiles on the ceiling or anything, but yeah, I find myself, like I say, kind of waiting. This will be over soon. And have you ever explored anything with a sex therapist together? Have you ever tried sex therapy? I live in a very small area and I found a therapist that was 175 miles away that was highly recommended. I went down and spoke to her. She felt she could help me. I went down for my second appointment. I got about 80 miles in. I got a call saying she had to pick her daughter up from

school. And I just thought this is a lot of effort for me. There's no one really in our area that I know much about. I have gone to counselors just for my own personal benefit. But when I brought this, it is, it's very different. And when I brought it up, they didn't feel qualified. And I appreciate them telling me that they didn't feel qualified. Yeah. I mean, to me, if I were seeing you in my office, let's say, I mean, this is how I think about things, right? What would I do with you because that's where I get my advice. I sort of put that, I know this is repetition for you, but I'm saying this for everyone who's relating to this situation. And there are many of them. So one, you want to make sure your hormones physiologically, you have the physiologic

underpinning to want to have sex. So you have to, it can't, if it's painful, if you're having dryness, if you're having difficulty responding, if you have definitely make sure your hormones are where they should be, you're doing that right. You got to see, that's exactly what I want you to do is go see someone who specializes in bioidentical hormones and make sure physiologically there's nothing standing in the way, right? Because we have to rule that out or else we're banging our head against a wall. And then we have to look at, so there's always medical aspects, emotional aspects, and relational aspects, all interacting with one another in a very nonlinear way, right? So you have the medical aspects, which I just talked about. Then there are the

emotional aspects where that's why i was asking those questions if there's a history of trauma or abuse or abandonment or shame around sex or inhibitions around sex that's going to cause a disconnect a lack of desire and even a disassociation and at the same time you can have emotional issues that are an outgrowth of the problem and i think that's part of what's happening for you is that because for a long time you've been having sex it's not that i want you to stop having sex. So I'm just put this caveat before I say that, because you've been having sex from a place that isn't sourced from your own desire to even have sex, much less sexual desire, you have been disassociating, leaving your body because you don't really want to be doing it.

And it's not feeling an integrity for you, right? It's not feeling in alignment. Right. Anytime we do something that our bodies don't really want. That's why I'm always talking about the full body. Yes. Right. Anytime we're doing something that our bodies don't really want to do, we sort of leave it. That's what just, you know, that's what disassociation is. We're not home anymore. We're counting the tiles. We're thinking about our to-do list. We're off somewhere else. And sometimes that's a trauma reaction. Certainly people with sexual trauma just by nature have, because it was the key to their survival was to not be in the building while it was happening, you know, emotionally in their minds or off somewhere else. So they don't have

to be thinking about what's happening to them. And that, that becomes a habit. And I think disassociation is secondary to your low desire, right? If you're saying you didn't have sexual trauma or abuse, so it's not a result with that. You didn't have major, you know, you were told not to have sexually marriage, but you weren't told you're a sinner. It's bad, dirty, wrong. So you don't have that disassociate from. So I do believe just in this brief conversation to whatever extent and following my gut and having gone through this with thousands of people, I do think it's disassociation secondary to the low desire. Okay. Disassociation is disassociation. We've got to deal with that. And to me, that's one of the key components of, because what I would want,

what I want for you is I'm not trying to make you some horned dog, you know, full of, you know, full of desire. Right. I think that's an unrealistic expectation, but what we want is for you to be able to take full ownership, right. Where you're not just having sex for him because it may, you know, cause he needs it. I mean, that's part of it, but also where you can have a full experience from it that is pleasurable and, and not just physically pleasurable, but that is emotionally and intellectually pleasurable. That's really key. And I appreciate you going down this road because I know I understand exactly what you're saying. Yeah. Once again, back to what I would be doing with you is that I would be like, as a sex in my

sex therapist role, I would be taking sex off the table for a while. Okay. Just take all the pressure and the 800 pound gorilla that's always in the room with you out. Okay. And then slowly rebuilding your physical connection with deep emotional dynamics built in like communication and connection and slowly building your sex life back up, incorporating the emotional connection, the eye gazing the slowness of it the i mean do you like being cuddled yes or hand holding or nurturing right so all the seeds are there it's just been disassociated from sex for some reason it's just it's just never been you know it's just never been the thing and i'm very interested to hear how i would go about doing this i mean what what do you suggest what

we would want. And you can work with a sex therapist remotely. I mean, they don't have to live in your town, right? But you can work with them. And I would want you to work with them as a couple. And they would take you through the process week by week, giving you homework assignments where you start by just doing sensual, non-sexual, non-sexually arousing, no breasts or genitals involved, sensual touch and communicating around that and making it into a romantic, communicative, loving exercise in the same way cuddling would be right or anything else. The intention is not to get aroused or be sexual. Right. And then you slowly move forward. You know, then the next phase is maybe the genital and the breast brush by. Right. But I already know that

your tendency is going to be, and this is where the work will be in the therapy, is that you're going to come back to the therapist and you'll be talking about how you left the building even then, right? And then you work on that because my body tells me a lot about people and my body is telling me that there is something, and I don't even know that it's conscious because I think you've done a lot of conscious work on yourself. I have, I have. I feel like it's almost unconscious and it maybe started at a pre-conscious age for you. So it would have maybe been some sort of dynamics or something that happened even, you know, as early as three, but something happened where deep physical and emotional intimacy feels unsafe. Okay. And it doesn't make sense. And I know it

doesn't make sense to you. Like it's not rational and it doesn't, but there is some way in which you leave the building with that level of like, I would even be curious what would happen in this. I'm just going to full disclosure here because I try to normalize things by using myself because if I'm if I'm fucked up, we can all be fucked up. Right. Okay. Right. So there was a time many, many years ago on here I am, this famous sex therapist, you know, and I have a great sex life and a great relationship with my husband. But there was this one time I don't even know why this came up. I think I was telling him that I wanted him to take a Tantra class with me. Okay. And he said, well, what are you doing a Tantra class? And I said, you know, well,

you do soul gazing, you stare and he's like, okay, let's do some soul gazing, you know, look into my, let's do it. And I tried it with him and I started freaking out. I could not stare into my husband's eyes for a full minute without touching him or trying to sit. And he kept saying, nope, nope. Like I could stare at someone's eyes as I'm, you know, as into his eyes as I'm stimulating him or being stimulated, you know, I can have that level of intimacy, but just to have full on look into my soul and I look into yours, I got so self-conscious in front of my husband. Wow. And it was a real wake up call to me that like there was a level on which I was unwilling to be fully open and vulnerable and seen. Okay. And in that full level of intimacy, right? So even

just staring into each other's eyes for a minute straight will flip you out, right? Or combining that with a physical experience of closeness, you know, I think you would start seeing in those lower stakes, less sexual scenarios that you are leaving the building, even that there's a part of you that is resistant, even though you intellectually and emotionally want it, there is a part of you that is in resistance to having it, it doesn't feel safe having it. And that is the part of you that would be coming up as you now have taken away the noise and are slowly incrementally building your sex life again. It would be really obvious and then it can be addressed and processed and dealt with. Okay. So that's one route, right? Like that would be my first recommendation is

that you find. And you can go to ASECT.org, the American Association. Yeah. And find someone even in your state. OK. That does remote sessions, because now since since COVID, everybody does sessions. Everyone's gotten really comfortable with it. Listen, regardless of your sexual orientation or your gender or your relationship status, every single one of us has struggled at one point or another with a lackluster or disconnected sex life or difficulty finding the partner that we most desire. So I have designed an amazing program for you, seven days to better sex. Each day, you're going to get a video and an information packet all designed to help you jumpstart your love life. Just go to www.drlauraberman.com. And the other is to explore

a Tantra class. Would you consider yourself a kind of spiritual person, intuitive person into that kind of stuff? I would say I'm an intuitive person. I don't feel like I'm a terribly spiritual person. Yeah. Okay. Because Tantra is really interesting because it cultivates sex as a spiritual communication. Okay. Between the energies of both of you. Okay. And it's not about, yes, it is sex and it's very pleasurable and it's in fact more intense and pleasurable than your average sex, but it's really about energetically attuning to one another in the deepest of levels. And it sounds to me like you really, really love your husband. I really do. You feel super close to him in so many ways, but there is this one part that for whatever reason,

you can't be as close to him as you are when you're not having sex. Like you put up a wall, not meaning to yes yes and so we've got to bring that wall down so my first instinct is that it's sex therapy but the if you don't want to do that or you can't do that then you could probably start at least attending to this through exploring tantra okay and their tantra classes online and things like that but i would quite frankly rather you do a sex therapy and do it together okay and you will see, say to the therapist, what I've said, like, listen back to this and say, or even send it to them and say, use this as a way to jumpstart. So there's less spelunking for what's wrong. So just use this. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. It does make sense. I, you know, you

mentioned about sex being fun and enjoyable and pleasurable and whatnot. That's not how I feel about it. It's not fun for me. It's a job. It's a task. It's a dread. It's like cleaning the toilet. Yeah. I mean, you got to do it. You got to do it. It's that stupid wifely duty nonsense from decades ago. And I hate feeling this way. And I also want to throw in to you that I'm wondering if there may be a bit of a physiological component for me. Are you familiar with dr ronald hoffman in new york no he has written a book about mitral valve prolapse and that in it being more of a wiring issue than an actual heart issue and i have a i read his book i have a lot of uh the things that he discusses in that book uh from a pectus excavatum in the chest

to uh phobias and all kinds of things i don't know if that has anything to do with this or not I thought I'd throw it in there just so you had, it might, it might, but, but that all of this can be counteracted, right? Like that's almost why I would say, I don't want you to take sex off the table on your own because then it's never going to come back. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that's helpful, but I think in the context of therapy, stopping the cycle where you are consistently acting against your instincts. Right. You hit it right on the head. That's exactly what's happening. That is not helping. I mean, it's sustaining the connection between you a little bit, but it's also doing more harm to the problem. You know what I mean? It's making

the problem worse because it's making it less and less safe. Yes. Right. So I don't think it would help your relationship unless you're getting into sex therapy. Like I want you to stop having sex in the context of sex therapy and have the sex therapist help you get back to it on a platform of empowered, body-centered, individual and mutual connection. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. Because otherwise, while I love the intention and I do think it's so important, When I give that advice to people that you heard me give, which is men who have a healthy libido acquire that sense of emotional closeness through sex that we typically get women through talking, kissing, cuddling, that kind of thing. They get through sex. So when you withhold sex from them, it's like them refusing to hold your hand or share with you.

So it feels like a real disconnect for them. So I love that you listen to that. But at the same time, if it is something that is re-traumatizing you in a way again and again, right? Because what typically we would want to happen and what typically happens when I say to people, even if you'd rather be doing something else, have sex, is that at some point, maybe not in the very beginning, they're thinking, oh, shit, I wish I could watch the next episode of Tiny Beautiful Things or whatever's new on Netflix, right? Or doing something else on my to-do list. Once we get started, you get into it, you feel really good about it, you have a great time. And then at the end of it, you're like, oh, we should do this more often. Those are the people for whom just do it is a positive up cycle, right for someone like you just do it accidentally keeps telling your body this you don't know bye

bye i don't want to be here this i'm making i'm feeling forced right it's feeling forced even though i'm the one forcing myself it's exactly forced yep you've again hit the nail on the head yeah so good news is you can resolve this okay okay and i think you're going to resolve it emotionally and energetically, I think that's, I mean, it may be a mitral valve thing, but I think in terms of the physiological factors of sex itself, blood flow, lubrication, hormones, supporting desire and response, you've got that covered, right? And you can respond. This is more in my mind, a disassociation thing. Yes, I agree. I think it is. Is there anything that can be attended to? Yeah. Is there anything in the interim that I can do on my own before I as I'm

searching for someone to help us? Yeah. I don't want you to put too many roadblocks in the way of getting the help. OK, so I want you to do that quickly and you should be able to find someone look for someone who's you know certified and ideally not you know a sex therapist and a couple's therapist although the good news is that you guys have a real you know we the often you have to like get the couple on the same page even emotionally before you can get you know because they're furious at each other and not supporting each other yeah yeah so we don't have that which is great we don't have that but in the meantime i would say i don't want to tell you to stop having sex, but I would say you could slow it down, right? Like you could maybe do it twice a month

rather than every week if he's going to be, you know, if that's not going to cause a huge relationship crisis. Before you have sex, that you're not just focusing on getting yourself aroused. This might be a really helpful experiment for you. Like even think about it, since we're not going to snap our fingers and get you not disassociating, let's work with the disassociation, OK, OK, let's see what happens if you make sex a little bit of an experiment. OK, right. So before you have sex, I want you to do the grounding meditation on my website. If you go to Dr. Laura Berman dot com and you click on the quantum love page.

OK, and you look under meditations, find the grounding meditation. And it's a really quick but beautiful for bringing you into your body. OK, because as soon as you think about having sex, you're gone. You're right. So see what happens and make the commitment. I'm not focusing on responding. I'm not focusing on having a certain kind of experience. My goal with this sexual encounter is to ground beforehand, get back into my body and do my best to stay there and be that is my agenda during this sexual experience. okay stay in my body okay there's no judgment when you don't but now you're starting to build conscious awareness of what's happening during sex and when it's happening and how you're leaving and what it feels like once you're in your body to leave your body and can you bring yourself back in in the middle of it right so just start playing with that a little bit okay first step would be just to see if you can stay in your body during sex for the whole encounter can you expand upon

that just a little bit by what you mean by staying within your body. I know we're talking about disassociation. Yeah, that's what disassociation is, is leaving your body. You're no longer aware of really of what you're feeling, of what you're... All right, let's just do it real quick right now. Okay. Okay. Close your eyes. I'm going to tell you first what's going to happen. You're going to take some really deep breaths. And as you breathe deeply in through your nose, imagine a beautiful light it can be any color actually no I want it to be red imagine a beautiful red light shining in through the top of your head pouring into the top of your head as you breathe in and as you hold your breath for just a beat it fills every cell in your body with

sparkling red light and as you breathe out through your mouth it shoots out your tailbone deep deep deep into the earth anchoring you there so just take a like two really deep breaths like that just for an experiment in comes the light through the top of your head filling every cell in your body breathing out out your tailbone deep deep deep into the earth one more like that okay and then with your eyes closed just stay where you are and notice do you feel anything different in your body do you feel a settling or a heaviness or a presence of yourself in your body i i wouldn't say a heaviness i i feel a settling like you said yeah that's what it feels like to be in your body okay okay okay i get you right so when we are in our thoughts for 50 years

canadians have wondered what the names of ikea furniture mean like natopa the guardrail for children's beds natopa means giving your favorite person room to grow it means their safety and your piece of now in swedish not oppa means night monkey mom he's back ikea 50 years of swedishness at home look he's wearing little pajamas so cute and you're gonna notice it's like meditation you know when you try to meditate and all of a sudden you realize you've been thinking about work for the past five minutes oh you know i'm terrible at it i'm terrible at it i know you're not terrible at it. You're just a disassociator. Oh, you're right. You're right. I've never heard that expression before. This is so interesting to me. Yeah. And I, you know, I get that way too,

especially when old trauma comes up, you know, or is being triggered. I get really, really disassociated too. We all do that. And I think our society almost encourages it, but we have to learn what it feels like not to be disassociated in order not to disassociate, Right. Gotcha. And to be fully in your body also means that you're going to notice all the sudden that you've been thinking about the tiles of this, you know, or something else during sex. Right. Right. No judgment. Just coming back to awareness. And you're just putting all of your conscious attention. How does it feel where he's touching me right now? How does it physically feel to have his penis inside me? How does the heaviness of his chest feel on mine or whatever position you're on? like really attuning to your senses with no agenda, not like, oh, am I aroused? Am I getting close? Am I having orgasm? Whatever. It's not about this exercise. It's not about that. This is about like staying present with yourself, with the sensations in your body and not leaving it and going off to the cloud somewhere. Okay. Okay. Yep. Because that's been your default position

and it'll give you a lot of really, without judgment, there's nothing wrong, bad, or there's no expectation, but it will help you start becoming aware of how much you're not in the building when you're having sex, right? I would just do that to start to get curious. And then the other thing you can also play with is if you read my book, and I have a course coming out relatively soon on quantum sex, but if you read my book, Quantum Love, and you check out the quantum sex chapter okay are a lot of really cool exercises in there that are that do a lot of grounding just by nature of them but also help you physiologically start attuning to the energy of arousal inside yourself right so even like just as an example when you are having

sex with your husband let me just ask you like what's your typical position for sex oh a typical Well, not really, although when there were days when there was less lubrication or something, him behind me would be a more comfortable position. We mix it up a little bit, so I wouldn't say there's a typical, but often it goes to that. Okay, so the next time you're face-to-face or in missionary, whatever position you're in, if you're face-to-face, just play with this in your awareness. Once again, it's a way to bridge from disassociation to being present. So this bridge would be being aware of the fact that for the masculine, and this isn't

just men, but let's just say in your case for a man, they receive sexual energy through their genitals and share it through their hearts. And the feminine, or in your case, a woman, receives energy through their heart and shares it through their genitals. Okay. So the next time you are facing him in any kind of position, imagine, because we're attention goes energy flows imagine sending him all sorts of love and you can i even you can even imagine it as like a beautiful pink sparkly light of love and connection that you are sending into

his genitals from yours and you imagine it going up to his chest to his heart center and then coming out his heart into yours and dropping down into your genitals and going back into his and going up into his heart and out his heart into yours and visualize that energy circling right now this is the reason i say it's a way to bridge the disassociation is that you are to a certain extent disassociating right because now you're not thinking about the moment you're thinking about the energy but you are also very in your body as you are doing this which is what i want you to be right so that's another thing you can try grounding and i feel like you're not in your body a lot, not just during sex, right? So I would ground a lot. I would put little sticky

notes around and just do it. I mean, I do that too all the time. I'm constantly grounding myself because our default is to be up in our intellect or up in our heads and not really home in our body. So if you just get in the habit of taking a few deep breaths like that and coming back into yourself it will get easier and easier and then before sex definitely do it and see what happens and you can combine both of those right just kind of instead of just leaving the building experiment a little bit okay you know and that's that's an interim bridge between disassociating and being you know fully in it okay that makes sense it all makes sense it all makes sense. And I'm looking forward to doing the reading that you're suggesting and finding

a good therapist for us. So I'm really looking forward to that. Again, it's a great relationship that we have. We're not going anywhere. But I want this to be better. I want to heal this and make it a total, well-rounded relationship. That's beautiful. Well, I applaud you for being willing to ask the question that millions of people have and i know you're helping many others along with getting the help for yourself so thank you for coming on and that's what i wanted to do good keep us posted on how it goes okay what happens on your journey okay we want to hear i i will thank you so very much dr burman i really appreciate the time you're very welcome The doctor said I'm crazy for your love

Wrote me a prescription But there is no cure for a crush All I wanna do, I wanna do is take you home with me I wanna make a move, I wanna make a move But I'm too shy I can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love Baby, you're my rock star

Smashing all my guitars One day I will charge you For breaking my heart You're just like my sport car Driving fast, you go far When I'm sitting by you, we get high This song is about you