The Relationship Cycle Behind Desire, Rejection, and Sex

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Welcome to Dear Dr. Tracy, the podcast that dives deep into the messy, beautiful world of relationships. I'm Dr. Tracy, clinical psychologist, relationship expert, and your go-to guide for navigating relationships, boundaries, in-laws, and everything in between. Whether you're striving to rekindle the spark, set healthy limits, or build deeper connections, this is the space where real talk meets expert advice. Together, we'll tackle the tough questions, untangle the sticky situations, and uncover the small shifts that lead to big transformations in your relationships. So grab a coffee, settle in, and let's rewrite the stories you tell yourself. This is Dear Dr. Tracy, your guide to creating relationships that feel good. If you've ever wondered why you and your partner can love each other so much and still feel completely out of sync when it comes to conversations, communication, and sex, This conversation is for you. Maybe one of you reaches for sex to feel close while the other needs to feel emotionally connected before desire can even become possible. Maybe the conversations have become so loaded that you both started avoiding them, or maybe you're caught in the same cycle and neither of you knows how to change it. Today, I'm joined by 2 people I deeply respect in the couples therapy and sex therapy field, Dr. Laurie Watson and George Faller. Laurie is a certified sex therapist and emotionally focused therapist who has spent 35 years working with couples navigating emotional and sexual struggles. She's the author of Wanting Sex Again and internationally recognized for her work in sexual attachment. George is a renowned emotionally focused therapy trainer, supervisor, and couples therapist. Drawing on his experience as a New York City firefighter during 9/11, he has a remarkable ability to help therapists and couples stay grounded in the middle of intense emotional moments. And one of the reasons why we met today is because they have released a brand new book called Brave Love, Great Sex: Harnessing Attachment Theory for Passionate Relationships. We had such an honest and practical conversation about desire, about the emotional cycles couples get caught in, and the sexual cycle that can quietly develop inside the relational cycle. And most importantly, we talked about how couples can stop treating each other as the problem and begin to understand and change the cycle that is leaving them both hurt, feeling rejected, and feeling alone. All right, thank you for clicking play today. Let's go into today's conversation. Dr. Laurie and George, thank you for joining me here on the podcast. I'm so excited to be sitting with both of you, to be sharing this book with the world, Brave Love, Great Sex. Your book brings together 2 things that couples often experience as separate. And I think our conversation here is going to be so important for so many listeners. So I just want to start by saying thank you for giving your time to us today.

Oh, thank you so much for having us. I'm so excited to talk about the book and to talk with you.

Same here. Thanks for having us, Dr. Tracy.

So your book really brings together emotional security and erotic connection. What do you think couples misunderstand about the relationship between feeling securely attached And having great sex.

It's good. I think that many of us understand that emotional connection is sort of a basis that creates this foundation for sexual intimacy. But I think one of the things that we also want to get across is that many people find love in the body, that they feel it is the most tangible way that they connect. And they have this deep desire to be chosen and desired and seen in this way as well. And so I think that certainly emotional connection brings us to sexual intimacy, but many times sexual intimacy kind of unlocks the heart for emotional connection. So it kind of runs both ways.

Yeah. And we want to help couples say yes to excitement and say no to feel safe. I mean, both of them are super important and the original attachment theory research that talks about these 3 systems, right? This need-based— need emotional connection, vulnerability, or you need touch and sexual kind of excitement— are 2 ways we need. And that's trying to be responded by the caregiving system, right? And what we see so often with couples is one partner wants to have a conversation, and then the other feels like they're being criticized, and both people are getting caught up in defenses, and nobody's getting caregiving, the thing that's needed to make us have success in whichever way we need to connect.

And we're just trying to simplify When you say caregiving, tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, caregiving is this altruistic side in all of us that when we see somebody we love and needs us, that comes forward, right? It's like when a baby cries, the parent responds. That's the caregiving system. And every relationship needs caregiving because that's when a need is met by caregiving. It's what we call co-regulation, right? This is where we experience the power of connection. And if caregiving is offline, which happens inside and outside the bedroom, then we start to run into these defense mechanisms. cycles that we talk a lot about.

Right. And in parenting, of course, caregiving is always online. But in a romantic relationship, caregiving is reciprocal. I take care of you, you take care of me.

Hmm. You know, I think about a lot of relationships, and I was listening to both of you on your podcast, which is also called Brave Love, Great Sex. And I think a lot of times what I see happening between couples, especially when they become parents, is they lose The erotic energy between them. And I've used the word, I know other people use the word, and I wonder if people even really understand what eroticism or erotic energy means. I'd love to hear from both of you about what that looks like. And then maybe even how do we start to bring that back into our relationships?

You know, I am watching my children become parents, and I am seeing the way they try to balance their life. And some of me, I just want to You know, pull my hair out when I see their mistakes, when I see the unevenness that sometimes is happening. You know, I know that even though I raised my sons to, you know, cook and clean, I still often see them give that over to their wives. It's like an unfair load. And I keep telling my sons, you know, this is a classic impasse that happens when, you know, young families have children and What are you thinking here? You know, because you have to build together this place so that one person isn't carrying everything or isn't managing everything. Even, even if you're doing your share, you don't want your partner to have to think about it all and to direct you. It's like it has to be shared because I know for many, many years as a sex therapist, right, that that over-functioning, that giving up of them, giving the other person the Yeah, I think this is where men can contribute to the conversation because a lot of times this is our primary way into connection, right?

And we're really talking about the power of longings, right? This is how we feel seen, known, feel special, safe, engaged, expansive. I mean, all these positive emotions, you know, come through this doorway. And so often what kills it is, is the pressure. It's all of, I have to do this, I have to be perfect. The fears of what could go wrong, rejection, I'm gonna fail, it's not gonna work. And like, we can't get out of our own way when we're suffocated with those pressures, right? But when we could find a way of reducing those pressures and actually tap into those longings, we talk about catching glimmers. All of us know moments in our life where we like to dance or we heard a song and we, you know, we were excited, we wanted something. And it's really tapping into that wanting power. So for your listeners, like, when was the last time you actually wanted something for you? Not doing it outta obligation or duty, which is a loving thing. to do, but like actually wanted something yourself.

That right there feels like a really important marker for people to just pause here and ask themselves, what, what is something I want and desire? And to go and do that for yourself. And I think what I'm hearing you both say is then that translates into your relationship afterwards. Because if you're always, as Laurie is saying, if you're always doing the family role, if you're looking after the kids and you're doing bedtime, and then you're telling yourself, I have to be there every single night, and you lose yourself, you lose what fills you up, what sparks excitement, that then also leaks into the bedroom. It leaks into the wanting between each other. And I think if I put that together with George, what you're saying is, yes, for, for many men, the entryway is into physical connection. Not all men, but for many men, because of socialization, because of what you've been taught, because of how your brains differ.

Hormones.

Exactly. Thank you.

Testosterone.

Right.

I often say, you know, that resentment is the monster under the bed, that it can kind of kill a person's desire. But on the other hand, what I also noticed, Tracy, with working with so many couples over the years, is once we resolve that cycle and there is balance, sex doesn't always come back online. And so that's what we need to think about, is there is 2 cycles. In a romantic relationship, the emotional cycle and the sexual cycle, obviously the caregiving cycle, that it answers the need in both of those places. And so I think what George is saying is that, you know, if you are resentful, but finally you get your partner to kind of address and balance the relationship, one other way to think about it is how do I balance the sexual cycle so that I'm not answering just out of duty? Or because my partner is asking, but what do I need sexually? What do I need that makes me feel erotic, that turns me on? You know, because this oftentimes desire kind of gets pressured away. It gets obscured. I don't think that it leaves because I really think it's part of our life energy.

And to emphasize that Brave Love, Great Sex, your new book that is out, is what will help readers walk through that so that on one page I already have it highlighted and I thought it was absolutely beautiful. It's the first time I've seen it put together is the 2 cycles, the emotional cycle of disconnection, the pursue-withdraw, the blame-blame, the 3 common cycles we see with couples. But then on top of that, there's another cycle, which is then your sexual cycle. So for people listening, I just really need to plug this book because this is one of the most comprehensive books I've seen build together EFT and sex, and to see then how your cycles are reenacted. And I want to hear from both of you because I think so oftentimes what we do is we turn the other person into the bad guy and we say, well, if you just did this differently, then we could feel differently, then we could have more sex even. But it's actually about mapping out the 2 cycles and then seeing where you can change.

And that's what we call the MAP, right? The Mega Attachment cycle where you can see 2 of them simultaneously. So often we're getting tunnel vision. We just see what our partner's doing that's hurting us, and we don't see how we survive that and what that does to our partner inside and outside the bedroom. So we talk in the book about crisscross patterns and parallel patterns, right, that couples fall into. So I'll give my example because I'm crisscross, and then Loria will give hers because she's parallel, right? But in my relationship, my wife wants to talk about what's going on, and like a lot of times I— that's like a minefield that leads to a fight. So I walk away. That's that classic she pursues, I withdraw. But then not surprisingly, in the bedroom, because I don't get connection so much through conversation, touch becomes my primary way. And I try to reach out to her and she don't feel connected to me and she says no and rolls over. So the good news about that is we're not that different after all. Like, I don't understand her anger and criticism, yet that's exactly what I do in the bedroom. And she don't get why I walk away in a conversation, yet that's why she rolls over. So once we can help couples see they have the same moves, It's a lot easier to take it less personal. Once you can name a cycle and start blaming that cycle instead of each other, it really creates the momentum to start replacing it with a positive cycle.

Not all women are the ones who are sexual withdrawers. About 25% of the women that come into my office are people who initiate sex, who want sex, who know their erotic self, and they want that from their partner, often partnered with somebody who is a sexual withdrawer. And I am both. I pursue sexually and I pursue emotionally as well. So I want to talk about things. I also find in my body sort of the deepest sense of connection, the, the truest way that I connect to my partner. So I'm Often pushing for both things. And, you know, obviously when we first got married and I was a little surprised, I, I had, you know, ideas about how men would relate and what they would be like. And suddenly we were in this different kind of situation, you know, where I'm wanting to talk about it all the time.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm also wanting to be in bed all the time. And my partner is like, whoa, feeling suffocated, feeling pressured, backing up. And I just didn't know how to understand it. But of course, it is 2 cycles. And for him, I kept sending him this message was, you're not good enough. You're not up to the task. You, you know, you're failing me emotionally. Now you're failing me sexually, which is a really good message to send to a male partner, I might add, you know. And so it was very difficult to understand this. And it wasn't until I really got a hold of attachment theory that I started to see, oh, This is what's happening to us. I'm pressuring both ways. And probably, you know, the way we pressure, especially emotionally, comes from our attachment style. And the way we, you know, pressure or pull away sexually is influenced by our attachment style, but it's also influenced by many other things— our history, our hormones, our first experiences, all of that as well. Our language, you know, can we even talk about it? So, you know, I had to find my way through that as well. And I would say many people have the crisscross cycle, especially in a heterosexual relationship, but other people have this parallel style where they're pursuing in both places and their partner is withdrawing in both places.

What do you got going on, Tracy?

I know this one. I, oh yes. And this is a conversation that Greg and I have regularly and he's such a willing participant on the podcast and I always love his share. So I was, I was sad he wasn't able to join us. today's conversation, because it would have been great to have him. And he's my non-therapist husband. He's just the regular guy. So, and he's, you know, it's funny, I met him in '06, just as I started my PhD. So then I remember when in our early dating days, I'm deep in EFT, and I'm crying on the phone to him saying, I think I'm realizing that I need you. And that's so scary for me. So I am your classic pursuer. And he is the Defend, withdraw in terms of our emotional cycle, and we very stereotypical in terms of men and women. I go into the do I even matter to you? Do you care about me? And he goes into the I'm inadequate and I'm failing. That's our emotional cycle. And then sexually, we are similar to you, Laurie, in the sense that I'm a pursuer. And as I'm sitting here, I'm hypothesizing isn't it interesting? Do sex therapists tend to be more pursuers for who we are as people? And and then he's the one who's more withdrawn. And I think that's changed over our relationship as well, depending on what was happening— our long-distance stint that we did in the first years of our relationship, having children. Yes. And, and, you know, I think one of the most important things for us in conversation is really there's this desire to remove shame and blame. It's so easy to get stuck in the why don't you, why can't you, right? And especially when you can label something, whether that's in the emotional cycle or the sexual cycle. And then for the other person to really have to really reach and see this as a privilege to reach to— because I, I would wonder, George, about some of the withdrawn men that you work with. What do you tell them, the ones who want to go into the, I'm inadequate, she's coming at me, where do I go? What did they need to hold on to?

I mean, the irony is so many of the men I work with are first responders or military, right? So, and they don't do feelings, and they've been learned to take space to feel safe. And yet I invite them to think about what they do professionally. What they do is co-regulation. They go towards the threat with a team, right? They're using other nervous systems to face the threat, right? So they do it actually really well. They just don't know how to put words to that process. So I'm just trying to help them do what's kind of natural. They've learned hide themselves to avoid exposure. But in avoiding, you know, the sharing of our fears, we avoid the solution too. So it's really just pacing and taking that time. But why we wrote this book is there are a lot of books talking about the emotional cycle and how do you get people to reengage, but not a lot talking about the interplay between the sexual and the emotional cycle, right? And it's like, it's a lot easier to get men to talk about emotions when you start talking about sex. It's similar feelings, rejection, failure. We only have limited ways of making sense of it not working. But when you start getting their buy-in, like their motivational systems are wanting to talk about this, before you know it, they don't mind to come to therapy because what's important to them is also being addressed.

I often say how couples come to therapy at a much quicker acceptance or readiness when there's a sex issue, right? So couples can quote unquote easily come to therapy saying we haven't had sex. And it really is the looking for, well, let's trace this down further because it's not just about sex. Let's look at the emotional connection between the two of you. And I'm curious then to hear from both of you for the more pursuing partner. And, and I do think about, again, this is the stereotypical presentation of the heterosexual couple that shows up to my therapy room where the man will say, she's always saying no, I need this to feel loved. I need to have sex to feel connected. What kind of advice do you give to those people, whether man or woman.

Yeah, I love that. And I ask them to talk about what it means to them to have sex, what happens for them when they have sex, when they have that deep sense of connection, what happens to them when they're not having sex. Basically, I want them to open the vest and talk about the inner longing, the places that hurt, the places that feel exquisite joy with their partner, that feel that Deep connection both ways. I want them to share because it's not just a power struggle then. It's not just give me what I need and I'll give you what you need, right? Because that's the perfect tightest knot. You go first, and then once you answer my needs, I'll be able to answer your needs. And that's where couples often come to us from, right? We're in this knot. I don't want to go first because if I give you sex, you're just going to take that and go about your way and not give me the support and the connection that I need. Or if I give you support and connection. I've done that. I've taken out the garbage. I've listened to you ad nauseam, and it never turns you on sexually, you know. So, so they're very stuck. So I ask the sexual pursuer, man or woman, to talk about the deep inner longing place. What is it like for you?

Yeah, we trust the process. We trust people are stuck for good reasons. And it's actually leaning into those places, like saying no to the sex a lot of couples are having makes a lot of sense because it's loaded with pressure and, you know, doubts and insecurities and shame and Those are actually the places we need to address because both people are suffering alone. Neither one of them are getting their partner's caregiving. You know, great lovers are great communicators. They learn to not only talk about what works, but what doesn't work. And most of us grow up in families where we don't talk about these things. So we just hope our partner's a mind reader, but they're not. And, you know, so it is just a process. If you can just start with a conversation, this book provides the starting point, lots of conversations just to help people start, you know, heading towards each other instead of facing it alone. Yeah.

And I just want to echo that. I looked at the back of the book with all of the extra questions and conversation starters and exercises, and it is filled with resources. So I'll just say the name again for people listening: Brave Love, Great Sex. It's available anywhere you get your books. Did you two narrate the audiobook?

Yes.

Yes. I did most of the chapters, and George did most of the questions and all the things you just referenced in the back of the book as well.

Well, that's amazing. I'm curious then, if someone were to say, this is really hard for us. I, the pursuer, sit down beside my partner. This person already clams up. I can tell this is awkward. They don't want to do it. What should I do? Because I know that's the place that people are often starting at. And especially I think of the listeners who have young children and they're just starting to come up for air.

It's so true. There is often so much tension, and there are often cracks in the relationship even before they get to children. And then when there's so much demand on resource with small children—time, money, and energy—right? Those tiny cracks kind of become you know the Grand Canyon. We're just separate from each other, and there's all this tension about talking about it. So I really want couples to be very deliberate. it very intentional to prepare that conversation, not to spring it on their partner, not to say, hey, I just read this great book and I want to talk to you about sex. Ah, you know, I don't want to do that. So really say, you know, I know this is a place that both of us can grow, and I would love to set aside a time for us to talk about it as best we can. And we do have a format that they can go through that helps structure that conversation so they get— don't get bogged down. In just one area, but that, you know, they look at it as a very multidimensional way of being connected to each other.

Yeah. And to respect that we're both very different, right? Like my wife initiates in emotional conversations, I'm more receptive. And then in a bedroom, I initiate and she's more receptive. We're very different with that. How do we respect each other's styles and not get frustrated because our partner's not like us? That might be boring anyway. And this, I love, as Laurie's saying, it's really helping couples be more intentional. I mean, whatever we put our energy towards, we grow. If you wanna work out more, you wanna eat right, you wanna sleep right, like we prioritize things. And for a lot of couples, 20% of couples are having no sex. This is a huge problem.

Mm-hmm.

Not because they don't love each other, it's just because the pressures and the, you know, the fears become so big, it's easier just to avoid it. And that's tragic. This beautiful way of kind of replenishing and recharging and tapping into longings gets taken off the table. And then touch disappears outside the bed. bedroom too. And, and that's what we're trying to highlight. What happens inside and outside the bedroom heavily influence each other. Don't just pay attention to one and work on that cycle. Like, you can't really address the emotional cycle if you're not also looking at touch, and you can't really improve sex if you're not talking about the emotional cycle. They both are important parts of each other.

I really think people need to hear that because I'm noticing this epidemic of loneliness in relationships. Every time I post about this online, it just goes completely viral around the drift that's happening between people.

Right.

And as soon as you put the phone in the video clip as some kind of skit or something, it is off the charts because we've got these devices that are stimulating connection but aren't actually giving us the deeper felt sense closeness and bonding That we need with the person who's right beside us.

Absolutely. There's no oxytocin that comes from that phone, right? No oxytocin is released, which bonds us with our partner.

So then going back to what you said and really emphasizing this point of we need touch. It is important. So I'm thinking too about how people can sometimes get to this place of saying, well, that's what my partner wants and I'm okay without sex and we're fine this way. What do you say to those people?

Well, oftentimes, you know, it's often a woman who's saying that, like, I don't have time anymore because our bodies actually do take time. I mean, they take about It takes about 45 minutes to get warmed up, to get aroused, and to reach orgasm. And they're thinking, you know, I don't have time. And they often compare themselves to a male partner whose body takes 2 minutes to become aroused, to have an erection, maybe another 4 minutes to have an orgasm. And they're like, you know, what's wrong with me? So there's— they come into the sexual experience thinking they should be just as quick as he is. And they don't have that sort of stamina. They're at the end of their day. They're tired. They're like, who's got 45 minutes on a Thursday night? Right? There are so many reasons that they might pull back. And, and many women I talked to, because I went through the Women's Health Initiative being published, right? When all the women went off their hormones. It sounds like you might've gone through that as well. And, you know, I had all these women calling me. I, you know, I don't wanna have sex anymore. I never wanna have sex. sex. And so I had to ask them, okay, are you having orgasms? You know, do you, do you use a vibrator to help with that 45 minutes? Do you have any pain issues? Because so many women have sexual pain issues.

Yes.

Are you fantasizing? Do you ever think about sex just for yourself to imagine what would be best for you? You know, and many times, right, these women would, they would be getting depressed. They're put on an SSRI, which is an antidepressant. That's killing their sex drive, or they're having sex that is boring, you know, and they have an imagination too, and they have whispered to their partners early on, this is what I like, this is how I like it, and for whatever reason, maybe that gets sideswept, you know, or their partner doesn't remember in the throes of passion, and so they pull back and they're like, okay, I did say it, Laurie, I have put this out there. And so they don't necessarily like know that it's okay to keep asking, to keep getting across what they need and what they want. And so frequency just pulls down. And I mean, we know there are people who are not sexual, right? Asexual people, maybe people who are in companionship types of relationships, but most of us want sex and want emotional connection. And without it, we're subject to the temptation of others. Our relationship just kind of erodes. It becomes run-of-the-mill. We're just getting it done, but we don't have that spark and that life force that keeps us together.

It's an assertion of self too. This is like, for so many, we wouldn't tell men emotionally, you know, you're just doing it for your wife to make them happy. We want to see— to get them to see the value. Their lives are enriched when they reengage, when they do it for themselves, when they can be vulnerable. Same thing with females in the sexual cycle. We're not trying to get them to do this for their partner. That's just doing more of the same. How can they assert themselves? How can they find these parts of themselves that have been suffocated with all the kind of logistics and mental load of life, right? When both people can access more who they are, there's more freedom for this couple to have higher levels of engagement.

I know you cite this in the book about great sex as well. What the research finds about optimal, I'm using my quotation marks, optimal lovers. It's often even not about the act of intercourse. It's everything else around it that oftentimes people lose, and the definition of sex then becomes so narrow that it's just penetration rather than the play, the exploration, the freedom that you feel. I think of, you know, one couple that would describe playing with their Nerf guns and hide and seek in the house, and that was their way of connecting. Or another one would have this chessboard that they would move around when in between meetings. This was during COVID I remember them. And just these ways of connecting and playing and aliveness. And Laurie, you had mentioned it earlier around music and dancing. What— when did you go dancing and just move your body for the sake of movement and connection and presence?

Exactly. Oh, I just love what you're saying. It's, it's such a turn-on to think about sex that way, right? As full-bodied as, you know, many of our senses being engaged in it, our movement, our sight, hearing, you know, the curiosity that we bring to the bedroom that says, okay, what would enliven me now? We do know that novelty and unpredictability do enliven sex. But I think sometimes we have heard that that needs to be artificially designed by being But I really think in a secure relationship that it's depth, that we can go deeper with each other in that safety and explore our erotic minds and tell each other our fantasies, because that's a never-ending source of fun and erotic pleasure.

And these 2 cycles are meant to go together, right? And our culture separates them. It turns sex into this, you know, animalistic, you know, lustful, all about novelty. And, you know, That's not what the research says. Great lovers are vulnerable. They're engaged. They're authentic. They take risks. They can surrender. They're at ease. They can communicate. All these things that are super important emotionally are super important sexually and vice versa.

There's one question that always plays with me, and I know other people experience this as well, which is— maybe it's not a question, but the statement. And I remember learning this early on, which is Some people are emotional, or some people need emotional connection before they can have sex, while other people need sex before they can feel emotionally connected. What would you two say to those people?

I would say every single time, like, if you know that being sexual with your partner helps them open up to you with their heart, and it's a good day, You know, maybe you don't feel desire physiologically, but maybe you can bring your mind around to it thinking, I know this about my partner. I know what makes them feel loved. And yes, I love to start with a Saturday spent, you know, hiking, dinner out, and then make love. But sometimes I know for them, a quickie on Saturday morning sets their—

sets them right for the whole day.

And so can we also design a way to give to our partner in the way that they like to be loved? And maybe you need sex and you're just like, I'm just— I just need this to get started, to open up. But I know my partner does need talking. So you design that, you design it with regularity. Let's have family meetings. Let's go out to coffee every Saturday morning or Sunday morning. Put the kids in church and, you know, church school and go out to coffee and for donuts or something so that we have time. You know, I think that people can build it into their lives so that they are meeting those needs without that you go first, not— oh yes, it happens.

This might be too old-fashioned. I'm dating myself, but this is God's funny sense of humor. I think marriage, a committed relationship, is a perfect grown machine. I mean, you meet somebody opposite of you that's going to complement you to allow you to grow in areas you weren't. So if I'm not really emotionally engaged, but my partner's primary language is that, I get to grow that part of myself. If hers is not physical, she gets to grow that with me. I mean, what a perfect match when you have people that are different that can communicate and grow each other. It's just pretty inspiring.

Absolutely. Romance is a second chance to heal the wounds from childhood, right? And to grow the places inside us that have been stunted because of those places that we were wounded. So it's a second chance. It's so beautiful. It's such a great setup.

Oh, I have, Laurie, I haven't heard someone say it that way before. And I think that's just absolutely beautiful that romance is a chance for us to heal those wounds. And, and what a beautiful opportunity to have that for, for people listening. One of the things that Greg and I know, so I've shared with my listeners before that we are without the village in Ottawa. We don't have family next door, down the street to drop the kids off. Harder to find the regular babysitters, and because we're both entrepreneurs, it's very easy for us to just go, go, go, go, go. What's the next thing? Here's the to-do list. Oh, it's seven p.m., and we have to open the folder of the clinic and what needs to get done in the next week. And something that we've been really intentional on is. Our schedules are flexible, which means what's the day of the week that that's the day that we are prioritizing sex, and it's part of our routine, and we know, and it's not the, you know, it's not robotic. It doesn't lose excitement and passion, but it's prioritized.

It's foreplay.

And you can absolutely, you can anticipate. Yes, you can say, okay, what do I need So that I can get into a sexy mind, you know? Absolutely. Is it a little bit of autonomy first? You know, because I think women are often giving to their families and they don't take enough for themselves. So what do they need? And this, I think it's a beautiful thing to schedule it.

Yeah. Something that works for us in terms of busy entrepreneurs. Brains are always going. We can live in our brains. The kids always need something and there's no energy left. By 9 PM. Now with the kids who want to stay up late and keep chatting with us, and we're, we're saying bedtime, let's go to bed. Oh, I'm, I'm so thrilled, you two. You are also my publishing family with Tarcher. My second book was published with Tarcher. I had such a positive experience with them. But it's Brave Love, Great Sex, You Two. I'm so grateful for you to take your time, first to sit here with me and have this conversation, but also for you to write this book for so many people integrating emotionally focused therapy, attachment theory, how we bond and respond to each other, and then also how we have great sex. So please tell everybody where they can find you. And the book is out, so it's available. Where should they go?

Awesome. Well, we're at Brave Love, Great Sex Podcast, and that's our website as well.

Yeah, you can find us on Instagram and our website, georgefowler.com. And Lori Watson, all that good stuff.

All the good stuff. I will put it in the show notes. Thank you to both of you for having this conversation with me and for my listeners.

And thank you, Tracy, for your beautiful mission of sharing, uh, love to couples, right? We're in this together, so it's just nice to have partners that have each other's back. So keep it up, the good work.

And I'd love to meet you and talk with you in person. That's wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Lori.

This podcast episode is sponsored by Quince. Now that the nights are getting cooler, there's nothing better than getting into a really comfortable bed at the end of the day. Quince has become one of my go-tos for bedding because the quality is just so good, it lasts, and I love the color selection. And Greg and I have completely different sleep needs, so in order for us to sleep in the same bed, I use Quince bamboo sheet sets to help keep me cool. What I love about Quince is they make beautiful hotel-quality bedding in natural materials, from soft European linen to breathable organic cotton, Plus they have quilts, coverlets, and duvet inserts for those extra cozy layers. And everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middle person. So you're paying for the quality, not the traditional brand markup. And it's not just bedding. Quince brings that same thoughtful approach to everything they make, from apparel and home essentials to cookware and furniture. We've gotten a few of our favorite clothing pieces from Quince as well. I love Quince bedding, and I know you will too. Make your bed your favorite place this season with Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/tracy. Get free shipping on your order, and their 365-day return makes it so easy to change your mind. Now available in Canada and the UK. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot What's up?

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