Strategies for Great Sex

If the fix us strategies haven't worked, you might think, maybe it's not us. Maybe I'm the problem. This is a common malady among go getters of all genders, and particularly among women. Women have been cultured to believe that relationships are our province, that if we're good at relationships, we'll have good relationships, that we're supposed to be really good at them. And, you know, if we have a male partner, they're not necessarily supposed to be great at relationships. They're dudes. They're going to do what they do. So I'm going to figure out what my problem is. You might think hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here Today. We're talking about some of the solutions that we try in our quest to have the kind of love and sex in our marriages that we want. Let's see if you feel seen by some of these solutions that I'm going to walk you through. If you haven't tried any of these, these are a great place to start because they're all helpful and people come to me after they've tried a great many of them, and it's often over a period of years or even decades. So sometimes they're effective for people and sometimes they get us part of the way and keep us together and keep us satisfied enough to want to keep trying. But if they haven't really done the trick, this episode is going to show you why. And I'm going to help you see what you actually need in order to get the real depth, intimacy, sweetness, and passion that you've been yearning for, even if you haven't seen it anywhere else in anyone else's relationship, in your own history, or between you and your partner to date. Let's jump in. You know you want more in your relationship. You want it for yourself and you want it for your partner. You see that you could be going deeper in sex, in love, that there could be more pleasure, that there could be More closeness. And frankly, you've tried a lot of things to help bring that about. In this episode, I want to talk about a lot of the things that people have tried and why many of them are great ideas, but why so many people come to me still frustrated despite the thousands of dollars and the years, no exaggeration, years, even decades of effort that they've put into creating the kind of depth that they're hungry for. They know that they're married to the right person, that this person, usually a guy, but I don't ever want to use language that's exclusive because this happens in all different configurations of relationships. But if you feel like, you know, more is possible, but maybe the kind of relationship that you really want is not something you've ever really seen in real life, you may have tried a number of different ways to get there, and they haven't really hit the spot. So let's walk through some of the things people try. First, there's the medical solutions. Like maybe you tried to address male plumbing, Viagra, testosterone, something. Try to find a pharmaceutical solution, your partner, to give them more va, va, voom. And see if that helps. Maybe you tried hormone replacement therapy for you, which is for women whose hormones are changing, often a choice that makes a huge difference in their physiological sexual response. You might have tried antidepressants or anxiety medication or ADD medication, and those things can be very helpful. Some of those things have been helpful for me in the past. I don't use any of that now, but I have at times and definitely a an advocate for better living through chemistry, if that is what's out of alignment. Also in this category is simply like using lubricants, finding things that help change the friction, the physiology in the bedroom. So a pharmaceutical solution for you is another thing that you might have tried that might have helped to some extent, but not really, really, really done the trick. So a lot of people will try some of those things and then they'll say, okay, what else can we try? And then we come to the category I call novelty solutions. So maybe you go to toys in Babeland or an online sex store. You check out LELO.com, you introduce some new sex toys. You try different lingerie. You get a wonderful book by Laura Korn and learn some new positions or some new ways to play together sexually. You go away for the weekend, you try to turn up the novelty. And maybe when you're doing it, that's great. In the moment, experience could be heightened, but you're still not finding the real closeness or the momentum in intimacy that you'd like to find. And you don't have the energy to work that hard at it all the time. You don't have the money or the time to go away every weekend. So you get a little frustrated with that solution and at a different level of maybe kind of resignation. A lot of women tell me, so I found a really good vibrator that I love for me. And I call this the like, choose your own adventure, create your own adventure kind of strategy. You know, where a woman will tell me, I've just given up on really getting delicious sexual satisfaction with him. I have a rhythm with myself. I make love to myself in a way that really hits the spot for me. I've got the toys that help. And it doesn't really matter what happens with him anymore. So they have lukewarm love with their spouse, whether that's a him or otherwise. And they still get a degree of that sexual hunger met because they're having great orgasms on their own. But you can hear in how they tell me this story that there's a little bit of settling there. There's a way that they're short ordering, I call it, you know, asking for less. Because they started to feel like they're not going to get it inside their relationship. Then some people try, and none of these are obviously in a particular order. They come in a different order in different relationships. And not everybody tries all of these. But maybe you'll also see yourself in the next category, sexual consciousness solutions. So this is sort of where you try to find more of your own turn on you stoke the flame of the goddess within you. You learn more about tantra, about Kundalini. You get a jade egg and you work on your own body image, your sexual consciousness. You might go to a luscious sensual workshop or retreat. You tap into the divine feminine in you and awaken that. And all day, every day, you're walking around juicier. Fabulous. Highly recommend that. Really good idea for everybody. But what if it turns out not to be enough? And many women tell me that it hasn't been, that that really didn't create a straight line to deeper connection with their husbands. It's like you swapped out this juicier version of you and your partner didn't even necessarily notice that much. Or they notice. They like it, but it doesn't mean they can meet you in it. And in fact, it's all the more frustrating because in a sense, you were taller. And the gap between the two of you is all the more pronounced in how you show up together. So maybe you try a different strategy from this same category, and that is taking your partner with you to say tantra workshops. Maybe you buy David Data books and ask your partner to read those with you. You might go to Sex Positive meetups. You might go on webinars with John Weinland. There's lots of different ways that you might invite your partner to step into that juicy arc of divine feminine and divine masculine polarity and build the skills of erotic energy with you. But those requests have maybe resulted in compliance. Like, maybe they went, but they didn't really get into the practices such that you were doing those things every week, or you did it for a while after the workshop, but you didn't keep it up, or you read part of the book, but it was clear to you after a while that you were pushing it and they weren't that interested and you didn't keep going. So you've got manuals or books gathering dust on your nightstand, and it's just a depressing reminder of how much you've invested in something that's still not a part of your life. So then you start to think, maybe there's a problem in the relationship. And the category here, I would call it Solutions that Relate to Fixing Us. So you think about, is there a problem in the relationship? Are we not communicating well enough? Are we not close enough? Are we not connected enough? So you pick up a book by John Gottman or a book by my mentor, Terry Real, or Marshall Rosenberg, who founded Nonviolent Communication. All fabulous ideas, wonderful tools. Maybe it helps some, but it still doesn't create that deeper thing that you can feel. You might not even be able to describe it, but. But you can feel it in your bones that you were built for. So maybe your partner's not a book person, or maybe those weren't the right books. Then maybe you try workshops. So you talk your partner into going to a Landmark workshop or a Gottman weekend or a Tony Robbins seminar. Or maybe you go on a vision quest. You know, go out in the wilderness together individually and go deeper with yourself. And we've tried so many of these things, and they're all helpful. They're all peak experiences. They create wonderful distinctions and unlock new capacities. But what if in your relationship, they still don't really hit the spot? Well, then you might try what many people think of as the nuclear option. Good God, we're going to sit down together alone in a room with another person and talk about this. So you go to therapy. You Find a marriage counselor or a sex therapist and you try to address what you think of as a problem between the two of you. You presume that there's something that's like a mismatch between the two of you or a communication problem or so much water under the bridge, so many experiences together that maybe have sullied the waters between the two of you. You think it's a problem that belongs to the two of you. And that's where I'm a little skeptical. I'm not sure with so, so so many women who want more being so frustrated, despite being really smart, capable people who have solved problems in every other area of their lives, the ways that we get stuck around sex and intimacy, I just don't buy it that it's personal. But if the fix us strategies haven't worked, you might think maybe it's not us, maybe I'm the problem. This is a common malady among go getters of all genders and particularly among women. Women have been cultured to believe that relationships are our province, that if we're good at relationships, we'll have good relationships, that we're supposed to be really good at them. And, you know, if we have a male partner, they're not necessarily supposed to be great at relationships. They're dudes. They're going to do what they do. So I'm going to figure out what my problem is. You might think you might address the persistent hunger that you've been feeling, like it's a personal failing or a moral failing on your part. And maybe through self help, through personal growth work or through therapy, you might try to fix it. You might try to lower your standards, like genuinely decide to try to be happy with what is intrinsically not satisfying. But if you're doing this to yourself, you're trying to figure out why you're so selfish, why you're so demanding, why you're so hard to please. You might have thought your partner might have even said, you're impossible. You want too much. And if you've taken that to heart, you've really tried to not demand so much of life, of love, of intimacy. I know the pain of that, of trying to pare down my yearning to a manageable size so that it didn't feel like too much to ask. Trying to fix myself so I didn't want it anymore. It reminds me, as I say it out loud now, of people who know they're gay trying to fix themselves so they're not. It's ridiculous. It's never going to happen. Because it's not a flaw in the first place. It's authentic. It speaks of aliveness and it's real. So maybe the fix me part worked to some extent. You tamped yourself down. You've kind of boxed yourself in. You're still not satisfied. So maybe you start to think. Or maybe you go in a different order and you start with him, and when that doesn't work, you go to fixing you. But there's this category of fix him solutions. You know, maybe you get really mad and you say, look, you're withdrawn, you stonewall. And we know John Gottman says that's one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and our marriage will not last if you keep doing that. Maybe you buy him books about avoidant attachment. Maybe you read up on male depression and learn about that. Maybe you ask him to learn some new tricks to get more skilled sexually. Maybe he does it. Maybe you wish he would take better care of himself and you talk to him about that. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Maybe you ask him to go to individual therapy. Maybe you find a men's group and encourage him to join that. And maybe he does all these things and it changes how he shows up some. Maybe it improves his career. Maybe he's a wonderful father. Maybe some of these things help him be an even better, more present father. If you're like so many of my clients, your husband is not one of those guys that walks in expecting you to hand him a martini and bend over in a low cut blouse after work so he can just be the man of the house. He honors you and is an equal partner in parenting and endeavors at least to do his part with your home and your money and managing everything. But still you're frustrated. You don't feel met, you don't feel ravished, you don't feel wanted and seen at the level that you'd like. It's not going as deep as you're hungry for. And if you've been working really hard on all of this and getting some of what you crave, but not a lot, you might eventually try to redirect your attention. And some people who aren't as into growth and self reflection might start here instead. With these solutions I think of as just placing your attention elsewhere. Maybe you compensate yourself or the two of you together compensate yourselves for what you're missing in your relationship. You eat great food, you drink great wine or cocktails. You buy beautiful things. You keep your house really gorgeous. You go on really exciting trips. Maybe you spend time thinking about oh, gosh, I'd love a new car. Or you know what handbag I'd like to get next. You create a life that's really beautiful on the surface, that is maybe the envy of your friends. You tell yourself you have a lot to celebrate. You keep yourself busy, and you maintain distance from that gnawing hunger that persists no matter how much pleasure of other sorts you pack in. It doesn't go away, but you can kind of spackle it over with good stuff. Or maybe you go a different route that's not so much about what you eat and drink and buy, but about staying busy. You might pour yourself into your career, pour yourself into activism or service work. Just about everybody pours ourselves into our children in a certain way at least, even if it's not with the intention of redirecting our attention away from what we're missing in our marriage. As your children get older, you pour yourselves into their children. Your energy goes to your pets. You chase more accolades or money or both. Maybe you join a cooking club or a salsa class. You read great books, you talk about them on social media. You take lots of photos, you organize your house, you make new plans. All these are great things to do. But as we're talking about it, if I say, are you just keeping yourself busy enough so that you don't have time for the sex and closeness that you're not having? If that question stings, this might be you using this redirection solution. So this is not the feel good episode of the century. I'm walking through all of the things that my clients try before they come to me, and there is not a single thing on this list that I didn't try. These are very reasonable, pretty helpful strategies for making a good marriage sweeter, hotter, deeper, and if they work, it's awesome. But I'm for when they don't work. People come to me because there's something subtler, deeper, more ephemeral that they're reaching for, that they want. And sometimes people don't come to me. They use this one last strategy, and that's barking up a different tree altogether. People do this to greater and lesser degrees. Sometimes they just invest in relationships outside the marriage in the sense of really getting a lot of their depth needs met from friends, from literature, from spiritual practice. But sometimes we're taken by surprise as we cultivate great relationships outside the marriage. One of them goes deeper. People who can't seem to find depth with their spouse sometimes find it somewhere else with someone else. Sometimes that leads to infidelity Sometimes people preempt that by renegotiating a monogamous agreement into a consensually non monogamous relationship. Sometimes that works beautifully. Other times people simply get divorced. And in several famous examples, along with many thousands of unknown ones, sometimes women recognize relationships with men are not for me, the kind of depth and pleasure that I want actually is more easily found in a relationship with a woman. So those things are all awesome if they turn out to be your path forward in life. So nothing we're talking about today is something I'm saying don't do, or these are bad ideas, or these won't help you. They all help a bit. And for you, one or more of them may be the solution. But if it hasn't been, if you really want to be with this person for whatever reason, that is the long history you have together, the long future you hope to have together, everything you've built together, the family you cherish and want to keep intact, the deep love that you have and the willingness that you know that both of you share for trying to go deeper if you've got your reasons for wanting to double down on this relationship. The way that I teach in all my free content, as well as in the ways that couples work with me, is that we are visionaries. We see something that not everybody sees. We know things about ourselves and our bodies and what's possible that not everybody knows. We're ahead of our time. So if you're that kind of pioneer in our culture, you're somebody who sees with her internal eyes more than she can see around her in other relationships, more than has ever been materialized in her relationship, almost certainly more than your parents had or your partner's parents had. You need a lot of support, encouragement, guidance, community, and tools to help you create that thing you've never seen. It's not so different from people who sought in the past to abolish slavery or to win the vote for women. We have to believe in something that we've never seen in order to bring it about. And we have to push through the conventional wisdom of our time in order to create it. The beautiful thing about this kind of revolution that my clients engage in is that we don't have to change the whole world at first. We can just start right inside ourselves and our relationships, calling ourselves up and then calling our partners forward, believing in ourselves, believing in our partners, believing in the potential of the relationship, and being willing to buck everything we've been taught about relationships, sex, marriage, men, women, so that we can create a new, more alive experience and of parenthood. Of all those things I love to provide the nourishment that helps people find the strength, the vision, the tenacity in themselves to bring about a transformation in how they do relationship so that they can create momentum with the kind of depth, sweetness, passion and pleasure that they've always known that they could have, that they were born for, and that they really wouldn't be fully alive without. So if your best life includes that kind of sweet, juicy, passionate being held and seen, cherished, worshiped even, and being able to do that for your partner as well, you don't have to know how to bring it about. You don't have to have seen it in anybody else. Your partner does not have to see it yet. Just keep listening to this podcast and if you're ready to explore working together, reach out to me because this is what I help people do. But also, if you haven't yet exhausted the list of strategies, by all means, this list is a great place to start. If you're further back in the process, use the solutions that I talked about in this episode because many of them are super helpful, Many of them are great adjuncts for my clients to working with me. And a lot of times we have to exhaust all other options before we go to the ultimate journey of depth and devotion that are required to create the transformation we're hungry for. So wherever you are on the path and whatever your next step is, I wish you all the best. I want for you the love, sex, pleasure and intimacy with yourself, your partner, and the divine that you want. May it be so. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the show Notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex Podcast Podcast. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget, with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen. Hit that subscribe button, and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Azenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.