Are you not asking for more for fear you’ll hurt his feelings?

Hello beautiful. Welcome back to Sex, Love Power. We're asking for more. Today we're going to talk about why women are so often reticent to bring up what they desire with their partners and how we can I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. I invite you here each week to join this conversation because in the lives of busy, ambitious people, often with big careers and families, they're in the midst of raising. There's not a lot of space devoted to talking about delicious sex, deeper love, or how to cultivate them both. And there are very few conversations about how modern gender dynamics and the dynamics of power and privilege play into love and sex. Yet to create the intimacy, the passion, and the fulfillment we yearn for, we have to create space for this conversation. This podcast is where I drop the seeds for us to explore sex and love through these lenses of brain science, power, and personal evolution. You join the conversation by dming me on social media or leaving a message at 206-659-9865, or especially by joining the secret society@society.lizenberry.com all those links are in the show notes, which you'll find@lizenberry.com Episode 008 A lot of women tell me they don't want to talk to their husbands about things that would make their love deeper or their sex better because they're concerned about how he's going to feel. Can you imagine that things could be hotter in your bedroom? Is there a fantasy you'd like to live out, or some new position or erotic adventure you'd like to try if you're not talking about it, or if you're going so far as to not think about what might make things juicier for you. Why is that? I often see women tamping down their dreams and ambitions for their relationship because they're concerned those desires will feel like an insult to the relationship they already have? I wanted to devote an episode of the podcast to this because there are some really big underlying factors at play here, and there's a huge underlying potential for claiming more joy, more lightness, and more pleasure in your life and in your relationship if you can get past this mistaken belief that we have to reel in our desires to protect men's feelings about relationship. The other side of that coin is that we ourselves are actively putting a lid on our relationship's potential by not speaking up. And given that the divorce rate hovers around 50%, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that some of us are ultimately killing our marriages in this attempt to protect them from the hurt caused by our authentic desires, women either get fed up of pushing down what they really want and leave because their love is dead before their partners ever get a real chance to meet them in the kind of relationship that they actually want, or they get so resentful and negative that their partners are the ones who step out and have affairs or leave them or someone with whom they can feel successful in love. So this is a pretty big deal, right? That's why we need to talk about it. I'm going to start by walking you through some of the most common concerns I hear from women about how it's going to feel for their partner if they bring up something they desire. You'll be able to assess which of these fears is stopping you. Then we'll look at the mistaken beliefs that sometimes make men so sensitive to criticism or so fragile in the face of women's erotic desires, and that in turn make women so protective of men's feelings in this area. By the end, you're going to be able to at least begin to conceive of how you might talk to your partner about your desires in a way that feels joyful and visionary and kind and like an invitation to him rather than feeling maybe critical or scary or threatening. And as always, I desire to serve couples of all flavors. I have no interest in marginalizing anyone. That said, with this episode, I'm talking very specifically about cisgendered men in committed relationships with women. So that's why my language is pointedly specific rather than inclusive, which is normally my preference. But here we go. First, let's talk about how you know you're hedging your bets. You're short ordering on your relationship. You're not asking for what you want. You're not talking about the things that you desire with your partner because you're trying to take care of his feelings. Let's see which of these sounds like you do. You find yourself saying, I don't want to tell him that something turns me off because he might feel hurt. I don't want to ask him to adjust his approach because I don't want him to think that he's not doing a good job. I don't want to bring this up because he might think I'm not happy, or that I'm saying we have a bad relationship and we don't. I don't want to ask to experiment with something different because I think that he'll think that I think that he's bad in bed. I don't want to tell him about this desire I have or this turn on I felt because I'm afraid that he'll think that I want to be with someone else. Do any of those sound like you? This is what we do. It is kind to be sure. We're sensitive to our husband's feelings. We try not to say things that we already know will upset him. But really, if we're honest, there are other things you do bring up. Right? Things that actually do upset him that he doesn't like. Right. You tell him what to do with his laundry or his dishes or his parenting. But sex, that is really touchy. Love too, right? Now, here's why this might or might not be news to you, but we live in a patriarchal society. This means, in essence, two important things about this topic of discussing sexual desires with men. Thing 1. In a patriarchy, masculinity is privilege. But how masculine someone is, how much privilege his masculinity can confer on him, is in the eyes of the other privileged folks. So every man has to live up to the unspoken but clearly, ubiquitously conveyed standards of masculinity. Masculinity becomes performative. You don't just have it, you have to earn it. And sex in a patriarchal, puritanical society like ours becomes. Is labeled as essentially masculine and essentially dirty. So doing sex right means you're a real man, capital R, capital M. Not being good enough at it means you're not. Not only is your wife less satisfied than you want her to be, but your very privilege as a man is what's threatened. These are such high stakes. Not consciously, but always there, below the surface. So it's not the individual frail ego of your man that's causing you to walk on eggshells. It's the entire system of mutually conferred male privilege that sets him up for fragility and sets you up to have to protect that fragility. Patriarchy tells us that men are supposed to want sex, to perform well sexually. As in, they have to be able to get and maintain an erection, to ejaculate, not too soon and not too late to demonstrate virility. Today, in the early 21st century, the standards for performative sexuality have expanded even further. Not only must a man get it up, keep it up and fire it off in the right way, he has to show his partner a good time too. He must give her an orgasm. Hear the language there? Or orgasms, plural. It's his job, his doing, right? You can see this in the language we use. Sexual performance and give her an orgasm, when, truth be told, every woman knows from experience that her orgasms are very much created by the efforts of her own heart, body, and mind, in addition to anything her partner contributes. And we place tremendous pressure on women to perform sexually by having orgasms. So it's pressure all around. Still, patriarchy labels sex as something that happens because and when the man wants it, it starts with his penis. When it erect penetrates his partner, it ends when he ejaculates. All else is foreplay, a sideshow to the main event. Sex is the man's job and his prerogative. I know that these thoughts don't describe the entirety of how we think about sex consciously, but they are what's at work when we have a hard time talking about sex in our relationship, because they always live there, below the surface. Now, the other piece of how patriarchy affects a woman's willingness or ability to successfully ask for what she desires has to do with protecting the privileged. Inside patriarchy, male feeling, male security, male privilege is protected at the cost of all else. So when we take out the scale and we stack a woman's satisfaction and desire on one side and we place her husband's comfort on the other side, her satisfaction and desire will never outweigh his comfort. To the extent that we subscribe to patriarchal ideals, protecting the master is the name of the game. Inside a hierarchy, the master's right to comfort, to not being confronted, to not feeling vulnerable, is paramount. You may have been hearing a lot lately about white fragility. You may have been coping with it a lot. If you're a person of color and if you pass as white, I hope you've been deliberately seeking to learn more about it because it's invisible to people who have the privilege. What we're talking about here is a related concept. In a white supremacist culture where those who identify as white have more privilege than anyone else, the emotional comfort, the convenience of white people and their right to avoid feeling confronted outweighs the physical safety, let alone the emotional safety of people of color. And even inside a marriage, these dynamics can play out between a man and a woman. Patriarchy confers on a man the right to comfort, to feeling like he's a okay, like he does things really well, like he's unassailable. As the story of patriarchy goes, the ease for him matters more than his wife's deepest desires, her needs, her dreams, and her visions. Patriarchy taught us to keep him comfortable no matter what it costs her, and therefore, no matter what it costs them both in terms of intimacy. See, I'm not saying patriarchy is good for men and bad for women. It crushes both of us at the core of our humanity. Now, I grew up in the 70s and 80s with a feminist mom, so of course I learned lots of things besides this black and white patriarchal model I'm talking about where his comfort matters and my desires and my needs don't. And you likely grew up around then, maybe a little earlier, maybe several decades later. So we are not built strictly of the stuff of patriarchal womanhood. But that is part of why these ideas are so insidious, because they're not the whole story, and so we don't even see them. We don't think of ourselves as these Victorian maidens fluttering our fans and kowtowing to our men's fragile egos. But patriarchy hides out in shadowy corners of our culture, and sexuality, with all of its taboos, is a stronghold of these old notions. So to be truly liberated in our sexuality, to have room to build our erotic dreams as freely as we build our dreams around our fitness, our finances, our careers, we have to break the silence. We have to name the fictitious fragility that we have manufactured for men, and we have to begin to dismantle that fiction. It all starts inside our homes. For each woman, it starts with two One, enough devotion to the vision of passion and closeness that you've been gifted with, and two, enough skillfulness to be able to talk to your husband in a kind and visionary way. When you see that more is possible for your living room, for instance, a cozier, more welcoming space. When you see that more is possible for your dinners, you don't hold that back. You make it happen, right? You redecorate, you grocery shop, you plan better meals. Those are arenas that are sanctioned by patriarchy as clearly the feminine domain. And there are other areas, like money or vacation plans, where I'm guessing you also feel free to share your ideas. You don't walk around on eggshells around your husband. But when it comes to what you desire sexually, you may have had some experiences with him that were painful for you or for him, or both. And after that, it could be that you've backed off and clammed up and stopped dreaming so big, stopped sharing what you yearn for, maybe stopped even paying attention to what you're hungry for. And if so, what effect has that had on your erotic connection together and on your own erotic intelligence, your own capacity, your own for pleasure and aliveness? If you've been Tamping it down, it may begin to feel like you've got a tourniquet around the brightest, most alive spark in you, like you can't even feel it anymore. When women talk about wanting to feel that spark again, wanting to feel butterflies with their partner, being able to tap into what they really enjoy, what turns them on, what makes them feel most alive, is one of the keys that helps them unlock butterflies for a lifetime. And what we're talking about here is the first step to tapping into what they really enjoy. That first step is lifting the edict against asking your husband for something that he's not already doing in the erotic realm. So now let's talk about how we can do that. Let's talk about language. There are seven keys to talking to your husband about what you'd like more of. Key number timing. Bring it up at a good time. Don't bring it up when you're in the middle of something and you don't like it, you're likely to be highly reactive and he's likely to feel deeply vulnerable. Instead, choose a time when you're both totally relaxed and frame it up. Well, to frame it up, use key number consent. Say, there's something I'd like to talk to you about, and it's a little sensitive, but I think if we've talked about this, we could have even more fun together in bed. Is now a good time? And if he says, okay, yeah, let's talk about it, then he's agreed to it. So he's likely to be more open than if you'd sprung it on him. And you're going to have to accept that. If he says, no, I'm not up for that right now, that's okay too. In that case, you know, it wouldn't have gone well anyway. And quite likely his curiosity will get the best of him. If he's not willing immediately, he's going to come circling back to you and want to talk about it later. So just be patient if he says no at first. Key number three. Intention. Show him what it will provide for the two of you. Point to a positive intention you have for the conversation, a promise that lies on the other side. Say something like, I want to talk about something that I think will help us share even more pleasure and feel closer. This lets him know you're trying to go for something good. And for the vast majority of husbands, he's deeply motivated to please you. If he sees a clear path to succeeding at that reciprocity, start the conversation by creating a two way street. Say you know I love making love with you or say I really like it when we and tell him something you really like. Whatever you want to name, then say, and I wonder if we can talk about what each of us would desire to make it even better. So you're building from strength to strength. That's your frame. And if you keep the conversation two way, he's got an invitation to share with you, something that would turn him on, perhaps something he might have fantasized about but never told you about. So listen to his ideas first and then ask if he'll listen to yours. Key number five Positive focus. When it's your turn to invite, maintain your focus on what your request will provide. Some of the kinds of phrases you'll want to use will include I think it might really turn me on if I think it might be really fun for us. If I'm wondering if it might feel really good for you to something I remember really enjoying with you is that time when or I notice I'm feeling hungry to feel this certain way. I think that would really make me weak in the knees. Paint a picture for him of a really smitten, satisfied wife. He wants that and he will take action to make it happen. Key number curiosity. Frame all of this as an experiment rather than setting it up as there's a right way to do this or I want you to do X, which might make your partner feel like you have a new standard that they have to live up to. Say, I wonder if we could experiment with so that he knows that you don't know how this goes. He doesn't know how this goes and you don't expect him to. This is going to be fun, it's going to be playful, and you're just seeing what happens, seeing whether the result is fun or pleasurable in some way. You're open. Key number seven is resilience around the conversation. Be prepared for and have resilience in the face of any reactivity or pushback that you may get. When we're presented with something that's a little bit new or possibly threatening, something that might push some of our insecurities, our immediate response is often one of reactivity. This is true for you and me too, right? We want to defend against it, we want to get away from it, we want to fight one or all of the above. So know that this might come up for your husband too, and just be relaxed and strong when you bring up this thing that may be somewhat provocative for your partner. Be resilient so that his initial reaction can Blow through. Just like an aikido master will let an attacker's energy flow past them without counterreacting, just let yourself contain. If you had to deliver the news to a young child that a party that they were excited about had been canceled, you'd know that they were going to be upset about it, right? And you wouldn't get upset with them for being upset about it. You wouldn't try to argue with them. You'd just say, I know, honey, ouch. So not exactly those words. But similarly, we want to hold our partners in whatever reaction they need to have in the immediate term, knowing that their true response to us, their actual engagement with the invitation we're making, will come after they've had the opportunity to flesh out that initial reaction. If you turn on a faucet that hasn't been used in months, you're going to want to run the water a little bit, just to let the water that's been standing in the pipes flow through before you drink a glass. The response you're really looking for will come after you've let his initial reaction flow through. So just disregard any initial pushback. It's natural and it's not personal and it's not heartfelt. Ignore it. Those are the seven timing, consent, intention, reciprocity, positive focus, curiosity, and resilience. As you can hear, these are all more than language tips. They're attitudes. They represent an entire approach that will serve you very well anytime you're talking in any way about sex or love with your partner. So that's what I thought it was vital that we talk about today. I hope this little mini course on what happens when we're in bed with the patriarchy and what we can do to actually get talking about what we desire will give you some great food for thought and some clear steps you can take action on this week. And I really hope that this is just the beginning of our conversation about this topic. I want you to be inspired to open up some new conversations and some new bedroom experiments with your sweetheart. And I want you to feel a mountain of support and solidarity from me and the secret society of turned on women who are part of this conversation. Stay tuned because next week I'm going to talk more about one of the stances that women often have that really stops us from asking in a way that other people can hear, or what we desire. We're going to talk a lot about approval, disapproval, and celebration. I think you're going to love it. But for this week, get started. Just pick one little desire you have and follow the seven keys in setting up a conversation with your beloved to discover a desire that he has and share your invitation to experiment with him. Deal? Are you going to do it? Put it on your action list for the week. Write it down. Let's make it happen. Let's make more and better love here. Sweetness. You deserve it, but nothing moves until you do. After you have the conversation with your partner or if you have questions, come tell us about it in the free community@society.lizenberry.com Inside there you'll find a cheat sheet with the seven keys I introduced today. Great conversations and so much more. I'll see you there. Now the final thing is are you subscribed to this podcast? I drop in bonus episodes that you'll only find out about if you're subscribed so that you get a notification. Make sure you never miss an episode of Sex Love Power. Go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Hit that subscribe button. And if you really want to help me and help other people find this podcast and have a deeper connection and reignite the spark, please leave a five star review. I so appreciate it. Okay darling, that's it. I wish I could hug you. I know it takes a ton of courage to think about shaking things up, potentially rocking the boat with your husband. So I am so grateful and inspired that you listened this far. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now go have that come conversation. I'll be with you all the while and I'll be back with more same time next week. Till then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.