The Menstruality Podcast - How to Approach Sex in Menopause (Dr Sonia Wright)

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Dr Sonia Wright - aka The Midlife Sex Coach for Women - combines her natural ability to talk about uncomfortable topics with her medical knowledge, sexual counseling skills and life coaching tools to create a unique brand of sex coaching. In this conversation about sex in midlife and during menopause, we discuss sensitive issues with humour and heart. We explore:The sex challenges that can arise in menopause, such as changing libido, the surfacing of body image issues and vaginal dryness and pain. Redefining what fulfillment means when it comes to sexual intimacy, why orgasm isn’t the goal, and how this changes the game around sex. How to invite our partners into loving, generative dialogue around sex challenges, and the importance of having these brave conversations, especially since we may have 30-50+ years of good sex ahead of us. You can now pre-order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com---Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolDr Sonia Wright : @drsoniawright - https://www.instagram.com/drsoniawright

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. It's so good to be here with you today. I'm really looking forward to sharing this conversation with Dr. Sonia, mostly because I haven't laughed that much in ages. We had so many good belly laughs because of the way

Dr. Sonia explores sex with so much curiosity, openness, playfulness. And although we focus on some specific menopause and midlife questions, I think this conversation is actually relevant for anyone who has sex. So practical, so informative, so supportive. I got to ask some questions for a friend, like how much sex should I actually be having? And the answer was a massive relief to me. And is it okay to schedule sex? The conversation went all over from what kind of lubrication to use to how the patriarchy has created some very confusing messages around sex. So specifically we looked at the sex challenges that can arise in the run-up to and in menopause, like changing libido, the surfacing of body image issues, vaginal dryness, vaginal pain.

She has some really good supportive advice. We redefined what fulfillment means when it comes to sexual intimacy. Dr Sonia has her sexual triad I think she calls it, we'll get to it in the middle. She speaks about why orgasm isn't the goal and how this changes the whole game around sex and she also speaks about how to invite our partners into loving generative dialogue around sex challenges and the importance of having these brave conversations in midlife especially since we might have 30 to 50 years of really good sex ahead of us. I actually had this conversation with Dr Sonia for our recent Wise Power Retreat, it's one of the bonuses on the retreat and I just really look forward to

hearing what you think. You can always email me at sophie at redschool.net. All right let's get started with this conversation with Dr Sonia Wright, the midlife sex coach for women. So Dr. Sonia, welcome. It's fantastic to be in conversation with you today, talking about such an important topic. And I just want to name that I'm not in midlife yet. I'm not menopausal yet. I'm 40. So today I'm going to be doing my best to channel my menopausal friends and all of the menopausal people in our Red School community who speak a lot about sex and challenges about sex in this phase of life. So I'm bringing their questions through me. And Dr. Sonia, I want to start by saying I love your approach to sex and sexuality, your openness, your curiosity, your humor. And I also love that. So you're a medical doctor, you're a radiologist, you're a

sex counselor, a life coach, but you also used to work in a sex toy store. I love that. Exactly. I bring all those things together. What inspired you to make this a focus of your life and your work to be the midlife sex coach for women? Well, I think because of my own personal journey, right? I'm 56. I just turned 56 recently. So I've been postmenopausal for six years. And even long before that, I was having sexual difficulties in my own relationship. I was actually in a sexless marriage for about 10 years. And during that period of time, I kept saying to myself, I should be able to fix this. I should be able to sort this out. I'm a medical doctor. I should be able to juggle my responsibilities in my job, take care of my children and to have an intimate, loving relationship in my marriage as well. And so it took me a long time. I was really in a place of like shame and sadness and not realizing I could talk to anybody about it. And finally I went and I found a sex therapist and we went as a couple to the sex therapist.

Unfortunately, the marriage didn't survive. By this time, I was also doing life coaching work. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm not I'm not afraid of the difficult conversations. I'm not afraid of having discussions around sex. And I continued to do that work, even though I had ended the relationship, because I knew that I was still me. And I would bring all the stuff that comes with being in a sexless marriage for 10 years, I would bring that into my next relationship. And so I didn't want to do that. So I ended up with a very loving, amazing sexual intimacy relationship.

So that worked out well. And then I also decided that I wanted to, there was more women out there that would be dealing with these issues and they need, they would need somebody to talk to about it. So I actually went and trained for a year as a sexual counselor and then brought that into my practice of life coaching. And so, yes, now I'm the midlife sex coach for women. Let's talk about some of the challenges that people can face, especially as perimenopause starts to begin, like the years running up to menopause and all the hormonal shifts that happen so that we can just name them and normalize

them. Because as you said, I think so many people feel alone in this, like they're the only people experiencing it, which unfortunately, unfortunately isn't true. These are really widespread. It's definitely not true, but it's not something in terms of being alone, but we also don't normalize it. We don't talk about it, right? I don't know how many women that have said, why didn't somebody tell me this? Why didn't somebody tell me that these are the experiences I would have in my body or just in my life? So menopause is, I think, a beautiful and wonderful time in a woman's life, but it can also be a lonely time where things are shifting hormonally. Your body is changing. It's like a whole, I think of it as like a second puberty. Like the first one, the hormones come in and the

second one, the hormones go out, your body changes and you have to get used to this whole new body. But at the same time, your life is often changing in terms of if you had children at home, a lot of them were leaving the nest at this point in time, You might be reevaluating your life just in general and any relationships that you're in. So it's not just a physical change that's happening. It's kind of the whole constructs. It's a social change as well, right? So we have a time where maybe it coincides with, we were told this story of women of

happy ever after type of stuff. Like you get into a relationship. If you're the good woman, the good wife, the good girl, you know, then you follow all the rules and you get to this place in your life and you're, you're like, I followed all the rules, but I didn't get that happy ever after. And then you realize you have to make the happy ever after. So you're in that part of your life. While at the same time, your body is doing some amazing shifting things that are happening and it is impacting your sexuality.

So it's like all aspects of your sleep might be being disturbed. Like there's so many things that are happening at once, right? So if we can normalize this, say nothing's gone wrong. It's a different phase in a woman's life, but we do need to be aware of all the shifting things. Now, if we're talking about physically, and I do have to say, I am a doctor, but I'm not specifically anyone's medical doctor that may be listening to this podcast, but there are some changes that happen. So yes, we lose the estrogen and actually the androgens, like testosterone is also a hormone that we have as

women in our body. And that has markedly decreases during the time of menopause. And it can have effects on us. One, our libido can be affected and our desire, our interest in sex that can shift over this period of time. And then also specifically the impact it has on our vulva and our vagina is also not something to be, to be like hidden away and left as a secret. We need to talk about general urinary syndrome of menopause. Like, so GSM, so we have, and please look this up, all women, please look this up. But basically for the vagina itself, it can shorten in length and it can also, circumference can also decrease.

So there may be issues with penetration. We, in terms of the vulva, the tissue of the vulva atrophies, it becomes thinner, might be more likely to get little tears and things in it. So predisposed to infection. A big component of this, whether you're having sex or not, is that the tissue overall in the vulva region will atrophy and get thinner. And your urethra, which is just a little area, it's the opening to the tube between

your bladder and the outside, that can protrude more. So there's a higher incidence of urinary tract infections as well. And so this impacts your health overall, whether or not you're engaging in sexual intimacy, we do need to know about these things. We have decreased estrogen and androgen. So it might be the opening to the vagina region can be painful. And that is another, we lose lubrication. So that's another area. And our clitoris also shrinks because that is part of our vulva region. And also the nerve endings to the vulva region, the pleasure nerve endings also decrease as well. So it may take more to have more stimulation required, or your orgasms may not be as strong as they were before. So there's so much that's happening on there. And as I'm talking about this, check in

with your gynecologist about estrogen replacement, even if it's a localized one, because that can help with atrophy. And they're finding that possibly some androgens are needed in that area as well. So there's, there's, this information needs to get out. We need to be aware of that. Thank you for naming all of those different challenges. One thing that people often talk about, women in our community often talk about is the vaginal dryness. So do you suggest bringing lubrication into the mix? 100% because anything that's going to cause discomfort associated with sex and sexual intimacy is a wide range of intimate type of activities that you may engage in. Our society has a tendency to think of it as penetrative sex. It does not

need to be, but if penetrative sex is involved here, we want to make sure that there's no pain with sex. So lubrication and lubricants can definitely help with that. I know this, like I have like tons of lubes all over my desk here where I can talk to people because I do believe that it's very important. They can look at silicone-based lubricants often help, or sometimes it's a combination of having moisturizers and then on top of that also use additional lubricants. And you're going to want to use lubrication, lubricants, but you're also going to want to use more than you think that you need and apply it more often than you think you need just so that you're comfortable and we're not attaching discomfort with sex. If we start attaching pain with sex and having

painful sex, then that's another layer that gets added on to this whole situation, right? So now we're not just dealing with all the other aspects that I mentioned, now we're adding pain in there. And then the odds are, you're going to be like, I'm good. I don't need to do this. Right. So, so the sex goes out the window and then we're at this place of a sexless intimate, you know, lack of intimacy in our relationships. Yeah. Yeah. Another question that comes up often is around how our bodies change as we're getting into midlife and menopause and how to manage just changing issues around body image and sexuality and intimacy. Yeah. So our society tends to have one concept of what body type is okay to engage in sexual intimacy. I am very clear that every body type can engage in sexual intimacy. I don very clear that every body type can engage in sexual

intimacy. I don't know if you can see this, but this is a model of a clitoris. Any woman that has a clitoris, the only function of this structure is for your pleasure. It does not say if you are a size two or a size four, or if you're five foot eight, then you can utilize this clitoris. And if you're not, you cannot. That's rubbish. All body types are beautiful. And it's about us giving ourselves permission to realize the beauty of our body, not to listen to an industry that has a reason to say that only certain body types are the perfect body type, which leads us to buy more products and things like that to try to get to this body type. There's a reason why that is perpetuated in the media and in our society. But we need to recognize as women that we have amazing bodies, beautiful bodies,

our bodies, every day, like we wake up, we utilize our body. It brings us from one place to another. We digest food. Like so many, if you are a parent and you happen to have, carry a pregnancy, how amazing is your body in so many ways? And we need to give our body the respect that it deserves. And not only if it is a certain size, but recognize that every size is beautiful. And that our body, I really,

I believe our body is sacred and it is a temple. And if you choose to share your body with another person, they need to recognize and honor that sharing. And so, and often our partners do. Often it's us and our thoughts in our own mind that our body's not good enough or beautiful enough, or it has to look the way it looked 30 years ago or something like that. Our body is always changing from the day we pop out

until the day we pass. Our body is always changing and that's okay. And for us to have this limited focus where like what our body looks like in our twenties and early thirties was a good body and everything else is a problem. It's very short-sighted and just not fair to our body which does so many amazing things has it been part of your journey have you had body image challenges and and had to overcome them how is your relationship with your body being as you've moved through this process yeah that's a great question yeah at four At four foot 11 and I, my family comes from like stocky West Indian Caribbean background, right? I am like my body. I look at my body and I see pictures of my grandmothers and Jamaica and Barbados and my body looks like

them. My body is beautiful and amazing. Right. But if I overlay somebody else's concepts and ideas of what my body should look like, then I start thinking, oh, at four foot 11, that's not tall enough. I need to be five foot something, you know, I, or I'll'm like, I am perfect and beautiful, just the way I am. And I was made beautifully and I don't have to be anything else. And beauty and confidence is so tied together, right? It's like how you think about yourself and how you think about your body. It does not matter what size, what color, what shape, any, nothing that matters. If you believe you're sexy and beautiful you are it's just something that exudes from you and that is really where we get to be in that I'm a life coach so I'll bring it back to our thoughts our thoughts about ourselves and our body truly make us who we are I've been listening to some interviews with you and you bring so many creative, exciting, fun, rich ideas forth in terms of how to create sexual fulfillment. You know, you spoke earlier about how libido changes as the hormones change and as this new negotiation is happening in midlife.

You talk about this Dr. Sonia's sexual triad, which I really liked. Can you introduce us to this concept? Yeah. So I think for me, it comes back to how do we want to define sexual intimacy, right? There's a very limited heterosexual focus, which is like penis and vagina penetrative sex. That's the only thing that counts as sex. And as if we may be in a relationship that does not have that similar structure, or we are at a time in our life where our body's functioning differently, sex does not need to be limited to such a narrow view, right? And so if we can open that up and say that sexual intimacy can be anything. And so I put my triad, Dr. Sonia's triad of sexual intimacy. Is there pleasure? Is there pleasure? Is there satisfaction?

Is there connection? Whatever it is, if those three factors are in there, it's beautiful sexual intimacy, right? So often we have criteria, and I'm actually going to be talking about this, like, can we have unconditional sex or unconditional sexual intimacy where it's not defined, like it's not sex and it's not good sex unless there's penetration or unless there's orgasms and things like that? Could we have unconditional sexual intimacy where we don't label it? And it doesn't have to be such a narrow definition, but where we could just be like, did I have connection with myself or with somebody else? Did I have pleasure?

Was there satisfaction here? If those things are there, then this is unconditional sexual intimacy and I get to enjoy it. It's not like, did my partner come? Whether or not I did, a lot of focus for women is on what their partner gets because our society has trained women to be sexual objects and to focus on the pleasure of somebody else and not their own pleasure. So I'm going to bring it back to, did I get pleasure? Did the women get pleasure? That's got to be a focus. Is there a connection? And is there the satisfaction? Like those are the areas that define if it was good sexual intimacy. If you have that as part of your definition and you're at 90,

you will be engaging in sexual intimacy. But if you're in your menopause phase, and this is a crucial phase where we get to define what sexual intimacy is for us. And if we're defining that as it has to have penis and vagina sex, and there has to be orgasms and things like that has to happen, then we start limiting our definition. And then we kind of get away from sexual intimacy and all the wonderful things that it could be. And we may decide to opt out of sex at this point in time, because it may not look like what it looked like before. Yeah. I love this because it, it feels like it makes sexual intimacy into a spectrum instead of something that has to be achieved. That's like another pressure that we have to put on the

to-do list you know like how many times have I had sex this year or this month and instead making it more like what you know does sexual connection today look like us holding hands and then having a kiss and then maybe like some stroking and then we go to sleep and that was sex for today is that it's so much more there's so much more, there's so much more possibility in that. Yeah. I love that. So much more possibility. So good. So much more possibility. Yes. And that, you know, it's really about our thoughts about this. Now, if we have that scenario, one person could be thinking that's not good enough sex. That's not sex. That doesn't count as sex. Right. And if you have that thought, you're probably going to have feelings of shame and guilt, frustration or things like that.

And it's ultimately going to lead to a situation where you have less and less sexual intimacy, less and less interaction. Whereas if you have that same scenario and another person says, that was beautiful sexual intimacy, then you're going to maybe think what else could be sexual intimacy how can we continue to have this respect and love and appreciation and connection and then your mind will start down another path and then you create amazing sexual intimacy for yourself can we talk about orgasm and pleasure I I love the pleasure part of the triad. You talk about stopping making orgasm the goal. And I'm curious about, and people ask about how pleasure and orgasm and orgasmic potential or opportunity changes as our bodies change? Yeah. So as our body changes, there's nothing to say that it has to be getting worse. Like we have this concept in our mind as we get older, that our orgasms are going to get worse. Actually, I don't necessarily think that's

the case, right? They may change. They may be different. You may have to come at it a different way. You may need to learn more about your body and things that stimulated you in the past may not stimulate you now. And you may need deeper stimulation or stronger stimulation or a different type of stimulation, but there's nothing specifically that says that you can't have amazing orgasms and continue to have amazing orgasms. I don't like to put the focus on orgasms just because I do like to put the focus on pleasure because there's some people that feel like if they don't have the orgasm or if their partner doesn't have the orgasm, it didn't count. And so then they get into this place where they're frustrated and upset and berating themselves, the anxiety kicks in. And if you would like to have pleasure in an orgasm,

try to do it when you're feeling frustrated and angry and resentful or whatever, right? That that's just not going to happen. So if you take the focus away and, and say like it's pleasure. And also because there's a certain percentage of women that feel that they have not had an orgasm. And part of that is because we define an orgasm as this mind blowing activity, right? That where your body is twitching from head to foot and your toes are curled and you're screaming and all this stuff. And that may be some people's experience of an orgasm, but that's not every person's experience of an orgasm. And so also if we can open up that definition of what an orgasm, it may

be like a gentle sensation that goes through your whole body. It may be a weak sensation that goes down to your knees. It may be a warm sensation that goes to your buttocks. So everybody has a different way of experiencing an orgasm. But if we say that it has to occur and it has to be a certain way, we are once again, limiting occur and it has to be a certain way, we are once again, limiting ourselves and limiting people and leading to frustration. And people may not decide to explore their sexuality even further and find that on the other side, there's amazing sex, amazing sexual intimacy. And may I say that if you're in a heterosexual relationship and as you get older,

and maybe you have a partner that has erectile dysfunction issues that start to play a factor in all of this as well, that's also another reason why sexual intimacy can often end in a relationship, but it doesn't have to be. I find that men that have erectile dysfunction issues can be some of the best lovers in the world because then they really focus. The focus is not on the penetration as much as it is on the pleasure, right? You do not need an erection to have an orgasm if you have a penis, if you're a penis owner. And then also the focus shifts a lot to a woman's pleasure and where it may not have been there before. Things might be slower.

It might. So what seems initially like it may be a problem, maybe like one of the best experiences and change in sexual intimacy as well. And of course, there are, you can go see a urologist if your partner's having erectile dysfunction issues and get that checked out. And then of course, cardiovascular, it's usually associated with cardiovascular issues like the canary in the coal mine. So also get cardiovascular, heart, blood vessels, blood pressure, that type of thing, get that checked out as well. That's really helpful. Thank you you Sonia um I want to talk about relating to partners

in a minute there's just a couple more questions because I feel like so much of what we're talking about is pointing to okay there's two people or more people involved in this how do we talk and communicate so we're going to get there let's have a couple of other questions around creating a fulfilling sex life. So you mentioned shame at one point. And I think it's important to talk about it because because of so many reasons, there's so much shame around sex. sexual pleasure and desire changes a lot at this phase of life either libido dropping or just different things seem interesting and start to start to turn people on so could you speak a bit about how well how desires can change at this phase of life and also how to manage any shame that's coming up around that yeah so um desires shift. And as I was saying before your interest shifts, like so much of libido and desire is in our mind, right? Our mind is like our biggest sexual organ. And so often it's like what turns on the mind and things that stimulated and turned on the mind in

the past may shift a little bit. And you find that your interests may change over time. And that's fine. As long as it's with consenting adults and those discussions ahead of time, and you see what it is that you like, and you're not harming yourself or harming others, then you get to explore these areas, right? So there's nothing specifically wrong with engaging in any activities and exploring, but at the same time, shame can come up, right? And talk about a libido killer. Shame is such a libido killer, right? And so something that might make you go down a path and explore something that interests you because shame and judgment and guilt and anxiety are there blocking the way, then you don't necessarily get that opportunity. So if you're feeling shame, then very often we want to kind of jump over the negative emotions and go straight

to positive and say like, I don't want to feel shame. I want to feel pride. So let me switch and come and look at pride. Right. But we need to sit in the uncomfortable emotions. We need to spend a little time in that area, find out what's going on. Where's the shame coming from? What thoughts are leading to the shame in our lives? You know, what are the thoughts that are actually leading to us feeling guilty or shameful or whatever? And, and don't beat yourself up. Don't add a layer of judgment on top of whatever else is going on. Right. But just sit in that space, look at your thoughts, do some journaling, write it out, and then decide, are these thoughts serving me?

Is this what I want for my future? Am I willing to release these thoughts is there a place for new thoughts that might lead to the new feelings that I actually want so those are kind of some of the questions to ask let's just break that down again because that sounded so good can you break down those those questions that we can ask ourselves again oh right let's see if can I even remember them again? Right. We'll find, we'll find some new ones. If not, it comes in and flows out and that is okay. Right. So,

so basically if you're looking at your feelings of shame, look and see where those feelings are coming from. What thoughts are there? Yeah. Be comfortable and okay with being with the discomfort of those thoughts. Ask your thoughts of those yourself. Are those the thoughts that you'd like to keep? And if you choose and ask yourself also, are those thoughts serving you? If that's not what you want for your future, recognize you have the power to change that by changing your thoughts. And so shift it to the thoughts you'd like to have or the feeling. I usually start with the feeling. So if you're in a feeling of shame and you'd like to feel

like proud or curious, curious is one of my favorite emotions in terms of feelings. Like, okay, so maybe you'd like to engage in a little bit of like, I don't know, a little bit of tapping on the bottom or something like that. And you're like, I'm not sure if this is acceptable. What is, you know, if that's the case and you're coming from a place of shame, good girls don't do that or something like that, you know, then just look, how would you like to feel about this as you explore this? Right. So maybe you might want to feel curious. What would you need to think in order to feel curious and to get away from that place of shame? But before you leave the shame, ask yourself, what exactly are the thoughts? Is it like, good girls don't do this? Why am I interested in this now? You know, those types of questions.

Look at those thoughts that are there and just write on it a little while and decide what you'd like to do in that instance. At Red School, we want to create a world where everyone is respected and experiences dignity as they go through their menopause process. That's one of the core reasons why Alexandra and Sharni wrote their new book, Wise Power, Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose, and Belonging. And it's also why we host our annual live online menopause course, which is called Menopause the Great Awakener. I love the story of how this course developed. Through sitting with hundreds of menopausal women and people, Alexandra and Sharni were able to understand a clear map to menopause, five distinct phases that everyone in menopause passes through in their own unique way. And these phases make meaning of the challenges and they really honour the initiatory nature of this profound

transition. They explore these five phases in depth in the book, we also have a great podcast episode about it, and that the course is an opportunity to actually walk alongside others in menopause in real time, see where you're at in the phases and dignify your experience of menopause however it is and find the meaning inside it for you and another cool thing about the course is you have lifetime access so you can come back each year as you move through the phases we've actually had people coming back three years in a row now it's been amazing so you can join menopause the great Awakener at redschoolmenopause.com and we start on November the 2nd.

We'd love to have you with us. I'm imagining, and I have heard actually from people in our community, that as this great negotiation is happening around menopause and like you know you pointed about to all the different ways that our lives might be changing but there's also so much i hear so much psychologically going on that's shifting so much emotionally that's shifting and roles are being sort of re-recrafted and where's my question here I'm I was going somewhere like this I'm going to stay with it we can find it as everything's shifting shame yes that sometimes it's like we can be sifting through the past and old traumas can come up to the surface that can resurface in a painful way at menopause and in the years running up to

menopause. And if there has been sexual trauma or just unwanted sexual experiences that has left residual trauma, how can we work with that and hold ourselves through that? Thank you for this question, because I think it's such an important question. When I do intake with my private clients, I will ask them, is there a history of trauma? Is there some type of sexual experience that you've had? And very often women will be like, I'm not sure'm like, yes, definitely. That sounds like sexual trauma. Now, it's not for me to define it for them. But at the same time, you'd be surprised at the percentage of women that have had some type of experience and don't know what to do with that and are keeping it in a place of guilt and shame.

And like, I must have done that for some reason for that to happen. It is not your fault in any way. And if these experiences start coming up during this time, then definitely get the help that you may need, a place where you can discuss it and go see a therapist or a counselor and make sure that you're safe at all times. Because sometimes you're in a vulnerable place when these thoughts start coming up, but they can come up. And if you're working on that with a counselor or therapist, then you also get to explore how that may have impacted your sexuality in the past. And do you possibly want that to continue to impact it now? And it has broad reaching ramifications around body image, around sexuality and permission. There's

so many different areas that it can impact that if it's coming up at this time, acknowledge it, acknowledge that something happened, make sure you get the help that you need. And then also look and see what you would like to, if it hasn your sexuality? Would you like to change or express or do something specifically about that? But trauma is real. And we don't have, it's not for somebody else to tell you if that was little trauma or big trauma or good enough trauma or what, if you are feeling emotions, if you're feeling any type of things around something that happened to you, it is valid. And it's something that you can go and talk to somebody and get the help that you need. And, and so often women, we judge ourselves, we question. And if it's coming up, just know that

it is true for you and you get to, to process and deal with it. And now is the time that you may be feeling comfortable enough to deal with it. And maybe as we get into our menopausal age, it may be the first time that we have a moment of downtime in our lives. And so that may be why some of these things are coming out now. And then it could be because as you say, things are shifting emotionally in our lives as well. And so it comes up as well. There's many reasons why it may be coming up at this time, but honor that, honor that hurt, that pain and get the healing that you deserve. Thank you for that permission. I've got one more question before we start talking about communication and sex,

because I know people are thinking this I've definitely thought it which is is it okay to schedule sex in because of a busy life and another question I hear people say is how much should we be having sex like how much is enough am I having enough sex you know all of these questions I mean you might just want to throw them all out and say, no, don't be asking those questions. But what would you say to someone who was asking those? Yeah, yeah. So I would start with, this does not have to be a problem. If it's not a problem for you, if it's not a problem for your partner, whatever the frequency of it, if you're not having a problem, don't make it a problem. Right? So it's not like for somebody outside of your relationship or outside of your life to say you need more sex or you need less sex, you get to

have the amount of sex that you want. Now, if you feel that it's a problem, the frequency is not there the way you'd want it. And you'd like to do something about it. Yes, I definitely say schedule sex. You know, I always find this quite amusing because what was happening when we were dating, like, and we were not living with our partner, right? We were scheduling sex, but we called it a date. Like, oh, Friday night, I'm going to go see Johnny or I'm going to go see Jessica. Right. And so we knew that Friday night was coming. We maybe put our body in that place where it was ready for sexual intimacy. We got our mind in gear. We like dressed up. We got into this place where we felt sexy. We went out to dinner. We went to a movie or whatever else it is.

And we had it on the schedule weeks in advance. And then we had some fun, right? And there was no problem with that. But suddenly, Dr. Sonia is on the podcast telling you to schedule sex. And you're like, hell no, this is not spontaneous. This is not, you know, the way it should be. We can't schedule sex. I'm like, okay, all righty. If you don't want to schedule sex and you just want it to be spontaneous, good luck with that. And I don't mean it in a bad way, but there's like a group of people that will always tell me I will not schedule sex and it needs to be spontaneous. And I'm like, okay, great. So how much sex are you having? They're like,

none. So like we're in your spontaneous world of sexuality. If you actually were scheduling sex, if you like spent time looking at what you need for you for your downtime, what you need for work, what time you need for your other responsibilities. And then you could see what free time was in your schedule. And you circled that and you had a conversation with your partner or partners and you decided that this is where you would like to engage in sex. The odds may be better that you might actually get something, right? Then if you're waiting for this bond today, because today our schedules are pretty complex, right? And so if we don't kind of look at, and I usually talk about a month at a time, kind of looking at the schedule over a month,

right? And if you're're some people are like, how many times do I need to have sex per week? Well, you know, just average it over the month, whatever works for you. There's not one amount that has to be like, some people will be like once a month, two times a month works for me. I'm like, perfect. If it works for you and it works for your partner, that's perfect. Other people are like three times a week is what would be ideal for me. Then you have your number, but it's not for Dr. Sonia to sit over here and give you a number or a frequency. But it is for me to challenge your mindset around the possibility.

And I'm not saying you have to schedule every ounce of sexual intimacy you're going to have, but maybe a baseline. I talk about like a bare minimum that feels good to you. You'd like to have sex at least once a week. Okay. Schedule one session and know your spontaneity can kick in and other places. And notice, did it kick in the spontaneity or is it something you might want to schedule more of it works if the scheduling of one works for you. And if it doesn't work, that's fine because we've gotten some information. And what are your thoughts that are there for you? What are you making this mean?

Great life coach question. What are you making this mean? Yeah, we are meaning making machines. You have an episode on your podcast, the Midlife Sex Coach for women podcast which is great and a brilliant resource um with someone called christy i think christy and and javine oh yes yeah yeah so it's a great one that i listened to and you would yeah she's great and you were talking about how um the patriarchy has affected the way that women approach sexual intimacy, particularly women in heterosexual relationships.

If you've got a male partner or partners, could you say a little about this, like the bigger picture of how the patriarchy has affected our sexual intimacy? yeah like I'm sitting here trying to figure out the important things to say because I could take an hour two hours five hours 20 hours and I would still be at it right I do talk about sexual myths for women and um and I do focus on things now when I talk about the patriarchy I am not bashing men I love men and it's not about this but our society has had a focus that has been skewed towards the benefit of men for a long time, right? And in that skewing, there as a place where women have not been allowed to access their sexuality in the same way that a man has been able to access their sexuality. And when we focus on what women have been taught around sex and sexuality and what men may have been taught, it differs. So when we're looking at that, we kind of have to look, there's these concepts that there's good girls, there's bad girls. There's very much a focus on being a sexual object and looking the part and looking pleasing and being pleasing for others, typically men and partners,

right, where the focus is on your partner's pleasure. And there's something that they talk about in terms of the pleasure gap, where they've actually done studies and they found that in heterosexual sexual encounters, that men are having pleasure in the 80s and 90s percentile, whereas women are only having pleasure 60 something percent of the time, maybe 63% of the time. And there's a number of reasons behind it. But often it the focus is, if it's good enough sex, it means did the man have pleasure, and not specifically did the women have pleasure. And when I do this, when I'm coaching my own clients that they don't necessarily have a belief that their pleasure is utmost importance, or at least equal importance to their male

partners that they happen to be having sex with men, right? So we have this area where women may have learned that they can't express their sexuality. If they do that, they may be considered a bad woman. And let me just tell you, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast or not, but there are so many names for a woman that enjoys sex, like a whore, a slut, a bit like there's so many, like you could list it for days. Right. And then there's also a whole few names for women that are not engaging in sex and are not enjoying themselves. Like they're frigid, they're cold, you know, all these other issues. And do we have these names

for men? What name is there for men that enjoy sex? So already, you know, that it's skewed, right? It's, I feel like it's like Goldilocks in the three chairs, you know, like you can have a little bit of libido, but you can't have too much and you can't have too little. And who's defining a woman's libido. It's usually in relation to a man's libido. And that's like her libido is low and his is higher. His is the correct one. And she needs to raise her libido. And if his libido is low, then his libido, the low libido is the correct one and hers is too high. So there's a lot of these double standards going on here. There's a lot of myths around penetrative sex being the best type of sexual intimacy.

Like the focus is on like women should have an orgasm with penetrative sex. And if they don't, there's something wrong with them. But we know 85% of women need stimulation to their clitoris in order to have an orgasm. But still this myth is being perpetuated that women, the best way for a woman to have an orgasm is through vaginal penetration as opposed to clitoral. And then even if we talk about men have penises and then we say women have vaginas, no, women do have vaginas, but that is not the equivalent structure. If a man has a penis, the equivalent structure we are talking about is the clitoris. You better find that thing. Break this myth, please. So don't get me started because I will be at this for a long time, but basically there's so many levels and so much

that goes on that for a woman to claim her sexuality, own her sexuality for herself and take responsibility for her sexuality. Cause on the other hand, because we have not been given permission to be sexual beings, we're expecting our partner to know about our body and our sexuality. And our partners are trying to figure it out. They're like, what if I press here? Will this work right? Could we own our own sexuality and explore our own body so that we could tell our partners, if you do touch to the left and down a little bit, that's my spot, right?

That would be very helpful for them too. So they're trying their best, but we need to get on the on board with this and accept their sexuality. And what happens if we have not done it beforehand during our perimenopausal and menopausal time, it becomes so important because this is what I call the make or break time around sexuality for women. And this is where if we have not owned our sexuality, we may be inclined to step back and just let it leave altogether from the relationship. Or we can choose a different path where we become responsible for our sexuality, get to know our body, figure it out and join the conversation

and ask for our equal pleasure with our partners as well. So if someone came to you, and I imagine this happens all the time and says, you know, I want something different in my sex life. I'm, you know, we used to do it this way for a long time. It's been working, not working for me anymore, perhaps because of the vaginal dryness, perhaps because of all kinds of things. How would you recommend beginning the conversation around the way we're having sex needs to change, especially if it's been happening like that for a long time? Okay. So I'll come at it in two aspects. One, I'm hearing that there needs to be a conversation. So I will have a discussion about the conversation. If there's any physical issue that's going on, it doesn't matter about the

conversation if there's physical discomfort going on, right? So make sure you check in with your gynecologist and work on that side of things. You see if you need to add lubricants, see if maybe you need pelvic floor physical therapy. There's so much that goes into the menopausal time. This is like, we have to work at this. This is not necessarily like it's one and done. It's something that it's, it's like at a maintenance level. So I want to acknowledge that side of it. Now I do hear that you're asking about the communication and how do you do the communication with your partner? So that's a good question. So sometimes women and people just in general will choose not to discuss sex and stay where they are,

even if they're not enjoying themselves because they feel that they don't want to hurt their partner's feelings, or it's such a difficult conversation to talk about sex. And I've been there 10 years, you know, so I definitely understand what you're saying, right? So if that is the case, we also need to recognize if we're perimenopausal, menopausal, we're in our forties and fifties, right? We're probably going to live into our eighties and nineties or beyond. You can have 40 or 50 more years of sexual intimacy. When people look at it in that perspective, they're usually a little bit more interested in having a conversation and giving themselves permission to have these difficult conversations.

So that's one aspect to think of it. And are you willing to do the work so you can have the sexual intimacy that you want for the next 40, 50 years? Often women are like, it's not going to matter. I've missed my time. Like we have this concept that sexual intimacy is just for our 20s and 30s and into 40s. And as we hit into 50s, 60s and beyond, then we just kind of let it peter off. Let me just tell you, I have so many clients that are in their 60s and 70s and having amazing

sex because they decided that it mattered to them. And because they realized they had 30, 40, 50 more years of sexual intimacy. So how do you have the conversation with your partner? You start with a conversation with yourself. You start from a place of like, how do you want to show up with this conversation? How do you want to be? Like very often we get to the breaking point and then we show up or we're yelling and screaming and blaming and saying something has to change, damn it. Like we don't want to be at that point having a conversation. It probably won't go well.

Please also realize it's not going to be one conversation. It's going to be multiple conversations. It's going to be a continuous conversation that's going to happen over a period of time because your body's always going to be changing. Your partner's body is going to be changing too. So as long as you get used to this discomfort around talking around sex, it's okay because it's a conversation that continues, right? So how do we have the conversation? We figure out how we want to show up. We focus on the fact that

we want to do this as a team. We check in with our partner as to what's a good time and day, not waiting till they get home from, you know, late and they're exhausted from work and then jumping on them at that point with the issue, but saying, hey, I'd like to talk about sexual intimacy. And would you be able to, what day and time might work for you? And you don't even need to have an answer right then. Just let them think about it. Also show up into the conversation and allow your partner to have whatever reaction they're going to have. Now, if you show up and you think to yourself, I need to have this response from my partner in order for me to continue the conversation, you may not get that response because your partner's dealing with their own issues and

thoughts. And their thought might be, she's thinking I'm not good enough at this or whatever. We don't know what their thought is, right? So they're going to come out with whatever response. Allow them in a loving fashion to come out with whatever response that they're going to have. But suggest that it come from a place of working together as a team. And then if you can say, you know, my body's changing, my interest in sexual intimacy is changing.

And I'd like to like have a conversation of what we want this to look like and how we want it to evolve over time. And I always say, blame me, blame Dr. Sonia. I was listening to this podcast. She was on this podcast. She was talking about like, as we go through perimenopause and menopause,

our body changes. We might want to put toys in the bedroom. We might want to try this, I need to do self pleasure more to figure out my body, blame me for it all. Like I am here for that. I am down for that. In fact, I will say right now, it's my fault. It is my fault. And I am 100% here for it to be my fault so that you can have the sexual intimacy that you all deserve. Thank you, Dr. Sonia. This has been so helpful and so many practical ideas. Is there one thought that you'd like to leave us with around, yeah, how to create a fulfilling

sex life in midlife and at menopause? Believe that you can. Like the fact that this is really, this is where my life coaching comes out. But if you think to yourself, I'm hitting menopause, it's all over. It will be. If you think to yourself, I'm hitting menopause and my sex life can be even more amazing. And I get to define it now. I don't have to listen to what society has to say. I can make it whatever way I want to with pleasure and connection and satisfaction and creativity. And I get to explore as long as I'm not hurting myself or hurting anybody else. And we're consenting adults. I get to explore and have some fun. So yes, your future, your sexual intimacy future is in your

hands. And I believe that's the best place for it. Thank you. How can our listeners connect with you? Yeah, probably the best place is just through my website, soniawrightmd.com. And then I also have a course that I do for Own Your Sexuality. I offer that once a year and it'll be offered in January as well. So, and then you can always listen to me on my podcast. So I love connecting with women and people in general and whatever aspect that they need my help. And I'm here for you. And thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

I appreciate it. My stomach muscles hurt a little bit after that conversation with Sonia. I love her sense of humor. I love the way that she brings lightness and possibility and curiosity to what can be a really sticky topic. I really hope it was uplifting for you too. I always love to hear from you. You can email me at sophie at redschool.net. I'd love to hear your ideas for the podcast. I'd love to hear what you want us to be talking about, if there are specific menopause or menstrual cycle topics that are up for you at the moment that you want to explore and want this to be a conversation you see between you and me and all of us who are fascinated with the world of menstruality and creating a world where it's normal to talk about menstrual

cycles and menopause around the kitchen kitchen table at schools in libraries in boardrooms everywhere in the public sphere and in private so please do bring your voice into the conversation and let me know what you'd like to hear about so that's it for this week thank you for listening thank you for tuning in thank you for being part of this community and I will connect with you again next time and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm