495: "I Want To Want Him But I Do Not" - Why Your Intimate Life Feels Like It Has Died and What To Do About It with Susan Bratton

What happens when you want to want him, but you just don't, or you can't? And you keep hearing about this sex life in midlife and that you should enjoy it and be excited for it, and you're just missing that desire. It's just. It's just gone. It's left the building. Or maybe you haven't had it in years.

Welcome to Midlife Conversations. I'm your host, Natalie Gill, and I'm passionate about having amazing conversations that matter to us midlife women. On this podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated health topics and breaking them down simply so that we can optimize aging together. I share actionable steps to help you thrive in what I believe are our best years to come. Join me as I interview the most inspiring people living their best midlife years and dive into essential topics like hormone changes, health optimization, weight management, blood sugar, emotional well being, relationships, beauty, and so much more. This is a conversation I wanted to open up today on Midlife Conversations. I've got my friend Susan Bratton here now. She's the intimacy expert to millions. And I'm going to let you. I'm going to let her share in just a moment. I asked her at the beginning, I said, if you were sitting next to somebody on an airplane and they said, what do you do? How would you answer that? And I wanted to share that. I met her recently. We have similar circles of friends and groups, but I met her recently. She was speaking at my friend Chalene Johnson's event, and I had just gotten off the stage speaking, and I saw the audience going berserk. Like, I've never seen this response of midlife women literally going berserks over her talk. And I thought, I've got to know more. I've got to understand more. And I want to open up this whole conversation. So thanks so much for being here today, Susan.

My pleasure, darling. I'm so happy that we got to meet at Chalene's event. And, yeah, I was delighted by the response of the audience because often when I'm speaking to midlife women about intimacy, they're like, ugh, I feel fat, I feel ugly. I feel old. My husband's pestering me. He's grumpy. I can never give him what he wants. Hurts. I've lost my lubrication. I'm, you know, I'm just never in the mood. My libido has flatlined. I feel so guilty. I feel like a failure. I feel ashamed. I feel like I'm letting him down. I know sex is Good for me. But oh, my God, it's the last thing. I just want to lie down and get five minutes peace from you people. Can you stop being hungry for just like five minutes and let me scroll my socials people or watch my show? You know, like, this is. You are totally normal if you can relate to this. You know, I'm a sexpert, and this is how I feel sometimes too. But I've got a lot of wisdom, advice, coping mechanisms, solutions, and so don't worry if you think you feel like any of or all of those things. We got you, girl.

Okay. Yes to all of that. I hear this from women all the time. All of it. Every single thing you just said. You definitely have the profile down. Where do I even start? Because I. I think they've almost turned off the conversation where, like, I just don't want it. It's just. Something's wrong with me. I just don't.

Well, and you said, oh, my God, Natalie, you literally just nailed it. Something's wrong with me. Nothing. Not there's nothing wrong with you. You're just like all the rest of us. We're exactly the same. Nobody's different. This is what happens, and here's why it happens. There's a couple of big forces at work that have gotten us into this, gotten us twisted up in our lingerie, as they say. And.

One of them is that the only thing we've ever seen are patriarchal representations of what quote unquote sex is like. It's all built around what feels good to his equipment and what he wants. And then we think there's something wrong with me. I'm just not the kind of woman who wants it. Other women do, but I don't. We have this massively sexualized culture and zero female focused sexual literacy or education to the point where the doctors. We go to get books in medical school that don't even have our accurate genital anatomy depicted in them. So we think we're broken. We think we're just the kind of woman who can't have pleasure from intercourse or an orgasm from intercourse. It's just a us. Other women can. And her husband's like, well, maybe you can't, but we're still gonna do it, you know, like it's. It's expected of us. It's part of our agreement in a relationship. It's our job. We owe them. And so what we end up doing is what one of my girlfriend calls duty booty. I called it mercy sex for a long time. And then one of My friends said, oh, yeah, I call it duty booty. And I'm like, oh, I'm stealing that. That's perfect. It's duty booty and duty ain'. Fun. And so the other issue that happens is, in addition to everything we see being male oriented, whether you're talking about porn, which I don't, like, find degrading to women and don't really. If I find a man who's like, no, I don't watch that, I'm like, good for you, because that's manipulating you and it's telling you what it's making you think women are like that. And really, I mean, once we get on a roll, sometimes every once in a while, we're like crazy nuts for it. But generally, it takes us so long to get warmed up that often sex is over before we've gotten even fully, what's called engorged. So I'm gonna drop a few medical terms now and then because we don't get a good sex education, because all we see are male orientations of pleasure. Because. And it's not your husband's fault. It is not. He lives in the same culture you do, and it's made us all suffer. He's suffering, we're suffering. Right. So we're all in this together. And thank goodness for you, Natalie, that you're having. You're brave enough to have me on to talk about this, because most women just go along their whole lives trying to avoid him for sex and hoping he gives up on it. Or don't ask, don't tell, get your needs met elsewhere. Leave me alone. It doesn't. It's not pleasurable. And the problem is that people like me who are sex educators, we are shadow banned, censored. Like, I joke that the story of my life should be called SEGS S E GG S because we can't even use the word sex on social media. I can't buy any traffic to my passionate lovemaking techniques because I'm shadow banned or blocked from that. I can't, you know, just. It's just very, very hard to get the female pleasure positive information out in the world. But thank God for podcasts, because right now they are still an uncensored medium where we can have real talk about real issues like you do on your show.

Let me ask you before we get into, like, what we do about this, because I have a lot, a lot of questions there, but. Yeah, why is it so heavily censored? Like, what's your take on that? Is it because it falls into the porn category, I mean, why is it.

It's religious repression, it's patriarchy, it's taking away our bodily autonomy, not caring about our pleasure. All of those kinds of things are.

Men in control, not women in control. And what happens over time is. I'll give you a really perfect example. When I say having sex to you, what does that mean? Let's have sex. What does it mean? What does it expect to happen?

I mean intercourse, right?

But that's not what sex is. Why do we have this terminology of foreplay and sex? And why do we rush through foreplay to get to sex? Because it procreates, it makes babies for the extension of the culture. We're pawns in the game, right? And so the problem is that if. If what sex meant was foot rubs, having my hair brushed, full body touch, sensual massage, words of adoration, words of encouragement, words of appreciation, a long lingering hold while I can get out of my head and into my body and become fully relaxed. Kisses, little kisses on my eyelids and my cheeks and my neck, hearing that I smell good, I look good, I taste good, I'm beautiful, you love my body. Oral pleasuring, manual pleasure, using toys with no concern that understanding that they're not only not going to make you not be able to have an orgasm from intercourse, but that they're actually going to increase your orgasmic capacity and potential. They're going to activate more of the tissue of your genital structures. They're going to help you have the time and the stimulation that it needs to get fully engorged, to understand that you have as much erectile tissue in your vulvovaginal system as your male body partner does. But it takes you 20 minutes to achieve the erection that he achieves in one or two minutes because he's testosterone dominant and his erectile tissue chambers are straight instead of little wiggly squiggles like inside us. We've never been taught any of these things. No, none of it. We go straight to penetration. And when we're penetrated before we're primed, it doesn't help us have orgasms. We don't like it. We're not lubricated yet. We're not turned on yet. We're still calming down. We're estrogen dominant. And that makes us worried about things. It makes us. We are prey in this world. Women don't walk safely.

And funny as you're saying this, because I'm thinking back to, like elementary school, literally elementary school, what we learned. And men are learning the same thing. So we learned, literally none of that we learned, just the end result.

Yeah.

So it's interesting. This programming runs deep.

In addition to that, our husbands are watching porn, they're masturbating to porn. I mean, I hate to break it to you, but they are, almost all of them. And the problem is that what are women in porn like? They're ready to go. They're hot and turned on and they want it and give it to me. And there's no warm up, there's no foreplay, she's just ready. And so then our husbands start to think there's something wrong with us. We think there's something wrong with us. And also all of the penetrative pleasure that you see in pornography is what a penis wants, not wanting what a vagina wants. You don't see any porn. That is that. So one of the things that I teach, and this goes back to you're sitting next to me on the plane and what do I do for a living. And I say I do three things. I'm a sexpert intimacy expert to millions. And my job is to teach passionate lovemaking techniques how to make love pleasurably for both parties, especially for, for her. Because it takes some knowledge to do that well. And one of my biggest areas of expertise, because people do want to have intercourse, I love intercourse, but I want female pleasure led intercourse techniques. And all men have ever seen is what feels good to a penis. They don't even know what feels good to a vagina. Now that's not their fault. And they're willing to learn. Men are willing to learn. So this is a big part of my world is the teaching lovers how to have mutually satisfying, mutually orgasmic intercourse. Because it is a lovely part of the male female pair bond bedroom communication skills. Because if I had a nickel, here's what I want all the money in the world to come to me for is if I had a nickel for every time someone said, my parents never talk to me about sex. I feel really wounded about it. I never got any information. I started off on the left foot. That's not true. Everybody did. Nobody's parents talked to them. Nobody knew anything. We're just learning this stuff now. And the second thing is that a woman will say to herself, I'm just not the kind of woman who can have an orgasm from intercourse. Other women might be able to, but I can't. Or maybe I can, but it takes a lot of work. And that's not true either. They're learned skills, orgasm is learned skills. And so what I also Hear, and this is the other nickels I want is I don't know what I want. I just know what I'm getting, isn't it? And that's because we never see depictions of female pleasure first lovemaking. And so this is my job. I teach bedroom communication skills. How to know what you want and ask for it and have your partner be happy you did right. Because what happens is women say, oh, you know, that doesn't feel so good. And their partners go, well, don't tell me what to do, I know what I'm doing. Or they emotionally collapse, or they check out, they get pissed off. Like they feel like they did something wrong. They take it as rejection. Men run around feeling victimized, rejected, angry and grumpy. Women feel like they're wrong, they did something wrong, they're broken, they just don't know how to do. And, and that's just literally because of what our culture did to us. So I teach community pleasuring skills, communication techniques, and intimate wellness. Because as we age, I could start this conversation off by saying, the longer you can extend your sex span, the longer you can extend your health and happiness span. You'll live longer if you keep having sex. But if I say that women are like, I don't, I don't. I should eat vegetables and work out every day too. But I'm not. Like, we're busy. And so I don't start conversations with sexist groups. Good for you. I start conversations with, let me tell you how to actually have to overcome all this water under the bridge in your relationship. And then let me tell you later how to fix the problems. Loss of lubrication, loss of sensation, vaginal atrophy, labial atrophy, clitoral atrophy, painful sex, vaginal tissue thinning, incontinence, pelvic pain.

Sadness about our saggy boobs, body image issues, feeling fat, feeling ugly, feeling like I don't have a libido. Those are all the kind of physiologic health related things. So if you think about a good sex life and then you come to the conclusion, oh wow, it's actually mindset and lifelong mastery I'm going for. I didn't realize there was a lot of could learn. I thought it was just tab A into slot B. Turns out that's the patriarchal lens. Let's get mama what she needs and let's focus on that. Because if mom is happy, then daddy's happy because it all feels good to him, frankly. He's got the lucky appendage right but for us, we have a fussy little system that needs a little work to keep going. It needs support. It needs vaginal estrogen. It needs, you know, pelvic strength. It needs good vaginal microbiome. It needs regular engorgement and blood flow. It might need nitric oxide boosters, photobiomodulation, gainswave acoustic wave treatments. Right. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do in the sexual regenerative therapy stack of things that fix what happens over time as we age. And I'm 64 and having the best sex of my life, the juiciest yoni of my life, and the most orgasmic pleasure of my life.

Okay, before I ask my gazillion questions, because I've got a lot of them already. I'm ready. And I know, I understand, listening to you, that you really do understand. The midlife woman struggles like this is very common. And I think people that don't feel that way, they're almost like that's not the norm. I think most midlife women are feeling the way that you've described, and it was very programmed and all of that's there. So I guess let me kind of start with, were you ever really there because you're an educator?

I was 42. I almost got divorced. I'd never had an orgasm from intercourse. I'd had sex with my husband for 12 years, and I'd had it. I did mercy sex, duty, booty. I avoided him. He begged. He did honeydews. He, you know, he. He tried to have day, but it was just. I'd never had an orgasm from it because it wasn't any good for me. And I was just like, ugh. He thought I was a lesbian. Like, it was like, you know. And so we were like, well, we love each other. We get along really well. We have a beautiful daughter together. Let's go to therapy. We went to the therapist, the very first marriage and family therapist. And she was like, well, you know.

It just wanes over time. It's just natural what you guys are going through. And we walked out, and my husband was like, I'm never gonna see that therapist again. So then we met another therapist. And the next therapist basically said to my husband, because my husband was like, I just want sex every day. And my therapist was like, you sound like a sex addict. I'm not a sex addict. And so then we're like, okay, huh? What do we do next? And we went, we live in the Silicon Valley. We lived in the Silicon Valley at the time. So we Went to a sex workshop called Sex, Love and Intimacy from the Human Awareness Institute. And we started learning what to do. And when. When someone told us what to do and we did it, I instantly became orgasmic. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. I just needed the right. I needed what the vagina wants, not what the penis wants. And so that was the moment. 40. When. That was 22 years ago.

Okay.

That was the moment. I said, we need to teach everybody in the world this. We were. We were Silicon Valley tech people. And I said, we need to bring these workshops. Nobody's going to spend $1,000 and get naked in a workshop like we are. I was brave. I've always been courageous.

Oh, you literally went there. You, like, did that.

Went there. Yeah.

That's another one.

Got naked in a room full of people, learned about sex.

Okay.

Yeah, you're right.

Most women are not gonna do that.

Not in a million years. But you know what one of the most beautiful parts of it was? I remember we did this thing. There were, like. I'm gonna say there were 28 people in the workshop, and they ranged in age from 25 to 65.

Okay.

And they were gender balanced. It was half men and it was half women. And I had an emotional breakdown on the side of the road before we even got there. I was so upset and nervous and worried. I'd never even looked at my vulva with a mirror. I was not who I am today. Teaching about female anatomy. You know, so comfortable throwing vibrators at a crowd. Yeah. You know, teaching. Teaching people about how to orgasmically activate with vibrators and all this stuff. And we went there, and we had to do this thing where we were in two circles. One circle was the inner circle facing out, and the outer circle was outside facing in. So we were facing each other. And we did this thing where we did heart and hand, and we held hands and. And as we faced a person, we put our hand on our heart and we held the other hand of the person we were facing. And one by one by one, we stepped to the left. Stepped to the left, step to the left. So that over time, through this guided experience.

The two leaders of the workshop were talking us through, looking each other in the eye and hearing what the workshop leaders had to say. And we were all naked. We had to take our clothes off. I remember sitting there on my little backjack in the workshop, and they said, okay, everybody close their eyes. And the first thing we're gonna do is if you're comfortable, you know, we'll ask you to Remove a piece of clothing and then another, and then another. You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with. And I peaked. Natalie. I peeked, and everybody was naked. But then I was like, oh, my God, I'm gonna have to get messy.

I'm already, like, nauseous just listening to you like, about that. I'm like, there's no way. There's absolutely.

And you have a perfect physique. Imagine how everyone else feels, right? And so. But I did it. I took off my clothes. But then when we did that going around, the hands on the heart and the circle, and our leaders were saying, just look this beautiful person in the eye. This is just a loving human in all their imperfections. Don't they still look so beautiful to you? They want love. They want affection. They want pleasure. They deserve it. We're all in these different containers. These containers mean nothing. You know that. It's how you're loved. It's the beauty that you bring to the conversation. It's the connection of the hearts that we're experiencing now. Do you notice that it doesn't matter whether we're clothed or naked, that we're all just part of this beautiful human connection? And that was so healing to me to be like, okay, I had hated my body. I had felt fat. I had beat myself up, up. I had just been starving myself my whole life and still feeling fat. You know, all the stuff we put ourselves through, and that was cathartic. And then the moment when one day my husband said to me, I've brought a mirror to the bed, and I'd like to show you your vulva, and I'd like to tell you how beautiful it is to me. And I looked at it for the first time in my life. My husband had seen it before, but. But I'd never seen her. And he was like, this is your mons, and these are your labia, and this is your clitoral shaft. And this is called the vestibule. And he just showed me to myself and told me how beautiful I was. There were a million little moments like this that made me finally let go of all the shame, the repression, the body image issues. At 64, I don't worry about how I look. I like how I look more now than I've ever looked in my life. Do I have wrinkly skin? Do I have age spots? Do my boobs hang down? Yes. I don't care. I feel more beautiful than I've ever felt. Thank God we have the ability to heal through the trauma of this oppression around our body image, our love of ourselves, our willingness to experience pleasure. And so it was those 20 years ago that I started to teach. I started to publish the work of my mentors and study sexuality. And I stand on the shoulders of giants passing lineages down, of healing modalities that help us step into the pleasure that is our birthright. And to write the scales that have gotten wonky from religious and patriarchal repression to help women step into self love and the expansion of their pleasure.

So as you're talking, I mean I literally notice in my body how uncomfortable some, when you say some of the things I'm like, oh my gosh. And I'm realizing how deep that oppression and how deep that ingraining has become. Like, I like, I don't like. And I don't think of myself as like a prude or I don't know, I don't think think of myself that. So it's interesting, my whole body responding to like what you're saying. So I, I know my, a lot of my listeners are too, so. And they're not going to go to a sex workshop. Most people are not going to do that. They're not going to be naked in a room. They just, they won't do that.

Of course, but you don't have to because I did it for you.

So where do we even, how do we even, what's the first step? Because most women are still where you said, I want to want them, but I don't. And they're listening to some things you're saying and they're feeling, but I still don't want it. So how do I even. What's, where do they even start? Where do you, where do they even.

Where do they start? This whole conversation?

Yep.

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Let's start with discussing female libido, desire and arousal. Let's talk a little bit about genital anatomy because this will help you understand that there's not a darn thing wrong with you and it's not actually your libido. I mean, it may be. And let's, let's determine that. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is what steps could I take to begin to want him again?

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, help, help them, help everyone understand those three things.

And in the time that we have for a, you know, what is it, 40, 45 minute podcast we're doing today, right. We can't fix everything in the universe, but those are three really good places to start. So let's do that. Yeah, I'll come back if you need me to. No problem. And I'm out there in the world. You can, you know, find more. There's always more. So let's talk about libido, desire and arousal. You've heard of a Venn diagram version? It's the three interlocking circles and you're in the middle. Libido, desire, arousal. Libido is your health. Your libido and your health are two sides of the same coin. If you're having breast cancer, if you're having an autoimmune issue, if you're having sleep issues, if you're having hormonal issues, these and any other health issues, emotional anxiety, depression, anything, financial times are still. They create this anxiety that's Going to affect your libido. If you feel great, your libido will come back. Generally.

Let's. Right there, though, what you said, that is most midlife women, like, they're dealing with that anxiety. They're dealing with all that on top of it. So what's happening is sex feels like another chore. It feels like another thing on there to do. I. My brain is someplace else. And all the things that you shared.

Yeah. So one thing is that if you want to want him, even if you don't, if you. If you literally do wish you wanted him, I'm going to give you some coping mechanisms for that. Okay? The second thing is desire. And desire is how do you feel about yourself? Are you talking crazy crap about yourself to yourself all the time? Oh, you fat pig. Is this how you address yourself? Are you constantly looking in the mirror and seeing every flaw? Or are you feeling like I'm desirable? I know my husband wants me. I feel good about myself. I'm. Hey, I'm not perfect. But nobody is. We're just in these meat packages and it's the way it goes. And I'm taking steps to eat well and get my sleep and move my body. And, you know, those are important things. And interestingly enough, one of the platforms on which I speak often is something I call the fourth factor. And that's that sleep, nutrition, and movement are only three of the four things that help you live a longer, healthier, happier life. The fourth is intimacy. And by intimacy, I don't mean holding hands. I mean having orgasms. Orgasms are rebooting the nervous system, releasing floods of neurotransmitters producing oxytocin, giving you a vascular event in your brain. They're releasing natural killer cells, improving your immune function. There are five aspects of health that just having orgasms help with menopause symptoms. Orgasms help with menstrual symptoms. Orgasms help you sleep with pain, with everything. Everything with pain, they release endorphins. Like the list of why having an orgasm is helpful and not just one. Orgasms are learned skills. When you have one pathway, then you can work on another pathway and another pathway. There's over 20 kinds of orgasms the human body can have. And so the one pathway you might have found so far, or if you didn't yet, you'll find one. If you understand there's nothing wrong with you, you're not broken. It's simply that you haven't gotten the right inputs. Stimulation and awareness. That's why I like sex toys, because they're pleasure tools that activate corpuscles, nerve endings, mechanoreceptors, all these cells in our vulvovaginal system that send signals to our brain. Why is your sex, why is the biggest sex organ in your brain? Because it tells you it feels good. Yeah. Not because you want to hear something or see something, because you're processing the pleasure sensations, but it has to have good neural pathways and you have to make new ones and build new ones. And that's how it works. So you can see, start out having one little way you get there with one tiny orgasm. And then you can start to have lots of different kinds of orgasms.

I have a weird question and I want to get too off track here, but. And I, I have definitely heard this before from women. Not publicly, but like in a, in a conversation with coaching groups or like smaller groups, they'll share that. There's some women that like the intimate, especially women that grew up in like the 70s or the 70s and 80s. I see this a lot where they were taught this different messaging about sex. And then they almost.

It's intimacy specifically. So like they might be okay having an orgasm or even like somebody they barely know having sex with them, but it's the intimacy with their spouse or the person that they should feel. It's like an actual intimacy issue. Do you, does that make sense, what I'm sharing? Like, it's not the act of it, like they could, they earn into that, but it's the intimacy part that's a struggle.

Yes. So libido is your body, desire is your emotions. So how you're talking to yourself and how you. What's going on with your partner and if you're pissed at him outside the bedroom, how are you going if you are not getting your needs met in the relationship, if he is begging and grabbing at you and grumpy at you and he's not romancing you, he's not being a stand up man in the other area. You gotta fix that totally. And then arousal is the. I don't want it. I wish I wanted it. And that's because.

Masculine arousal. And I mentioned this briefly earlier and I really want to put a point on it. It takes a minute or two for a man to become aroused.

They look at boobs and they're there, you see.

Seize your boobs. Exactly. And he's testosterone dominant. He has nighttime erections. He wakes up with morning wood. He could have sex at a moment's notice. I mean, if you said to your husband, all right, let's have Sex. He'll literally have his pants off in two seconds. Yeah, two seconds. Because he's ready to go. Because of testosterone. That's one of the reasons I like, in addition to estrogen and progesterone replacement, I like testosterone replacement. It gives you a little. And it also reverses kind of the atrophy of the clitoral structures. It makes them meatier again, which means they have more surface area, which means they feel more sensation. So your orgasms are better if you think about the fact that his penis gets engorged erect very quickly. His whole penis is filled with spongy tissue. He. It's twice as big as what you see sticking out. It actually goes in and down toward his testicles. So it's about as big as a banana, a medium sized banana. Average penis is 6 inches in length. Well, it's actually not quite 12, but it's bigger than that inside him too. It's all sponge in there with a little skin, a couple of tubes, some, you know, capillaries, a couple of nerves, a couple of, you know, it's mostly sponge. And when it gets erect, it gets erect super fast. It's like blowing up one of those long skinny balloons that you make toys out of, you know, little sculptures. It's like that. And it goes for us, ours is more like you made one of the. You turned it into a dachshund. You took that long tube of balloon and you turned it into dachshund and twisted it all up. That's. We have the same amount of a tissue, but it's in all these little nooks and crannies. So it takes us longer to come to arousal. Often he's already had his release and he's snoring or out in the kitchen rooting around for a sandwich and you aren't even turned on yet rushed to intercourse. Because our, our world shows us that's what sex is. So we don't. We get cheated on. What is really sex to us as well, which is all the stuff that is called foreplay. Like it's an appetizer instead of the main event. It's the main event. We need it too. It's as main as all, all the other stuff. And so we think there's something wrong with us because we don't land on the bed turned on. Here's the coping mechanism. And this is arousal. So your arousal ladder, your husband's arousal ladder is like little tiny steps that he can just run up. Your arousal ladder starts with a step that almost you can like, you can barely get your leg up on the rung and you and your husband has to get underneath you and, like, push your butt up the ladder. That's normal. When I land on the bed, I schedule dates with my husband. We work together. We have for two decades. We run these businesses together. And I don't expect to be turned on. I don't expect to be desiring him. Every once in a while, I'm like, oh, hallelujah, I'm horny. But that's not how it is for us. And partly that's because as estrogen dominant females who don't walk around in the world safe, who carry double the labor of our male partners, most of them, my husband does equal labor. I'm very lucky. But many, many women, they have a career and they got to do all the stuff at home too. And so we don't walk safely in the world. We're prey. We're nervous. We're up in our head. We're multitaskers. You tell your husband about something while he's doing something else, he's like, honey, I'm busy, you know? And you're like juggling 53 things at once. We're different. So he's single, focused, goal oriented, trying to complete the task. And we're still like thinking about 27 things and not turned on. So the way that you do this is for me. Here are my coping mechanisms. My coping mechanisms are as follows. Feel free to liberally steal these ideas or make up your own that work for you. Mine are, I schedule sex with my husband. I tell him exactly the time I can be available so that I'm prepared. And he knows he needs to be showered, shaved, manicured, and he sets up the nest. He builds the lover space. He lays down the waterproof blanket on top. He gets out my lubes, he gets out my toys. He gets out a stack of towels. He gets a water pitcher. He turns on the music. He makes the temperature nice. That's his job.

So you literally, like, schedule it like you would a massage or whatever else. Like, you're like, here's the hour that we're going to be. This is our time, literally on the books. Your sex date?

Yes. And I'm. And I'm old, so I do it in the late afternoon. Because if I make dinner and have a glass of wine while I'm cooking, then I just want to scroll and go to bed and get my 90 sleep score. Because I got to get up for 8am meetings. So. Yes. But I know that we can do, do the heavy lifting together. I don't expect to be turned on when I land on the bed. So what I do is. All right, I know I show up and we pretty much start with him holding me. I tell him how I'm doing, we heart connect, we relax for a minute, we check in with each other, and then we almost always start our date with a yoni massage. Do you know what a yoni is?

It's our vaginas, right?

Yes.

I mean it's a whole area. It's everything.

It is. Or no, I don't like the word vagina because I feel like a vagina is just where his penis goes and that's not even where my clitoris is. Okay, Right.

So it's every, it's all the parts, it's everything, right?

Exactly. It's a total student word. Y O, N. I like my little yoni. And, and it sounds sweet. It's not medical. Some women call it their flower. You know, anything like that. But the way that our tissue works is that the vaginal pocket, it's not a canal. We get that confused with the birth canal. But it's not like a tube. It's not an inside out penis. And it doesn't like, especially when we're older. That's only one of the things it likes. It likes a lot of different, different things it never gets. Which is why I teach orgasmic intercourse. And one of the things I'll drop right here for your, for your listeners is that if you. Excuse me, if you go to orgasmicintercourse.com because frankly, this is what our husbands want from us too. Right? It's not like, you know, yes, we can up the amount of what he thinks is foreplay, get him better at doing all these things, but ultimately he wants intercourse. And so do we in the grand scheme of things. Right. We remember when it was amazing for us. And so orgasmicintercourse.com is a place you can go where I have 10 of my most fabulous intercourse techniques free. You can just read them and you can try them with your partner. And this gets to one other thing, which is that when you got to get out of this rut of the thing you've been doing that isn't working for you. So trying new things together is how you generate new sexual relationship energy together. So say, honey, I want to have a date. And there's some things I want to learn. I want to learn how to have a yoni massage. And I also want to practice some orgasmic intercourse techniques. And they're@organgasmicintercourse.com and I want you to go read them. And let's decide each time we make love, we'll try one of them and we'll put practice them because Susan says it takes three times to get good. And so we're going to learn how to have erotic play dates together. And the very first thing I want to learn is yoni massage. And then yoni massage is where he can manually pleasure you. And he can also use some tools. And there's two tools I recommend, and I think a man does well with a tool. Some guys are very nimble with their fingers, and other guys are all thumbs. And you could be married to one or the other. And I don't know which one you are, but it's good to give a guy a tool in addition to letting him get his hands on you and pleasure you. And the two tools that I like, and they change over time because I'm a sex tech expert, I literally speak at conferences on sextech. And the two that I currently recommend, one is called the queen and one is called Enhance. And if you go and everybody always was like, what's the link? I made it easy. It's@drivedesire.com and the Queen is a little stronger. For us ladies who like our Hitachi magic wands, we like a lot of stimulation. We need a lot of sensation. And in enhance is for our ladies who are very delicate. They're maybe hypersensitive people or they've got kids in the next room. They don't want anything to be, you know, noisy. Not that the queen is noisy, but I like them both, because some days I'm a tiger, and some days I'm a pussycat. And some days I want to start light and go heavy. Some days I want heavy. Some days, you know, you never know what you want. But giving them a tool to use will really help them get used to laying you down and pleasuring you, letting you get out of your head and into your body and allowing you that 20 minutes to achieve the erection that happens for him in two minutes. So that your vulva, your vulvovaginal system, the erectile tissue systems of your yoni, have a chance for the blood to flow in and get plumped up so that they can set. There's more surface area when they're touched and stimulated and penetrated, so that it sends more signals to your biggest sex organ, your brain. That's what we've been missing. Once you start to do these things, the new relationship the trying new things, the yoni massage, the taking your time, not being rushed, setting the date, making him set it up. This is. Is a good system. And then there's two more things. Take these if you want them. For me, one personally is, and this is because I was sexually abused as a child, which is probably why I struggled to have orgasms at first and I had to learn how to do it. I don't know. But because I was abused as a child, I don't like when my husband penetrates me. I like to be in control of the. The moment of penetration. Now I have orgasms the whole time I'm making love with them.

Easy, easy.

I've learned how to do it. But I would lose my energy. My turn on would drop off when I. When he entered me. And then I realized, oh, I'll get on top of him and be in control. And then I'm fine once we get going. But I have that little weird thing you might have some little weird thing that different. And you're allowed to have your own thing. You need to make it easy for you. That's my point. The second thing is I do not owe him intercourse. I do not owe him anything. If we have a yoni massage and I'm like, babe, I'm exhausted. I just don't want to make love. I don't want to go further. I'm not turned on. I'm okay, but can you just tuck me in? He's like, yeah, of course I can just tuck you in. Because what he's learned is that he went from begging for sex and making me feel so guilty to giving me unlimited yoni massages. And 95 times out of a hundred, I want more. Because I finally got the sensation and pleasuring that I needed and time that I needed to get turned on for the female body. We're all the same. We're not different. Women are just different than. Than men. And so if I say I don't want more, he's like, no problem. Because he's realized if he pressures me, I won't lay down. Yeah, I won't show up. I won't schedule the date. But if he doesn't pressure me so that I always can get out of it if I need to, I don't have to do more, then I'm willing to go. And the last thing is that I don't owe him. Him his release. I don't. That's his. That's his world. And yes, of course I want him to have incredible orgasmic pleasure. With me, but I don't owe it to him every time. So if halfway through I'm like, you know what? I'm not feeling it, I'm tired or I'm done, or I got to get up and go, or I forgot something or whatever, he's fine. He will live. They masturbate every day anyway, which is wild. Kill him.

You know, as you're saying that too, I'm thinking that's another thing we've been wired to believe. Like, it's all like how many times the women have sex and they're not. They don't have their ending. But it's always expected that the man will. So you're right. That's another just deeply wired thing.

Oppressive control mechanism. Right. So it's interesting when you surface all of the things that I've been saying, oh, we need 20 minutes. Oh, you know, we. Our vagina isn't an inside out penis. We don't just want you to pump away. Especially when we get old and our vaginal mucosal lining becomes more frail and friable. You know, these are. We want different things. And so, yeah, I mean, it's. I've just changed everything.

Yeah.

In the conversation of why. No wonder we don't want what they're offering. But it's not his fault and he will be willing to learn.

So what's coming up for me too is I've heard Many OBGYNs or GYNs speak about sex and intimacy and they don't even talk about this part. What they talk about is after the act, after intercourse, the snuggle time. And what I was thinking when I hear that is, yeah, but if. But that just feels like another job to a woman who. Who's still not wanting it to begin with. So where you just open up, this whole thing is. It's the whole leading up to things, it's the whole getting out of your head. It's also what came up for me is about the whole being present and being in a flow state. So what makes sense is when you first meet somebody or you're first dating your spouse, you are fully present. You are in that flow present. You don't have other distractions in your brain. So that's another reason you're able to relax. Where now you're married 10 years, 15 years, years, 20 years, like you've got this pile of stuff in your brain. So of course it feels a lot harder. So everything I'm hearing is similar to getting a massage or getting like. It's a way to get out of your head and into your body. So you said yoni massage, but I think just. Even a massage in general might help people do that to start, too. Like just. Just something to get you out of your head and in without feeling like there's an ending. You have to prompt promise.

Remember when I. I actually started before the yoni massage with being held.

Right.

That's what that is. That's. I have a technique. It's called the soulmate embrace. It's@soulmateembrace.com it's free. You can download it, give that to your partner. That's where you start. And then you move to yoni massage, and then you see where it leads you. And you said an interesting thing, too, Natalie. You said flow. I have something I call my dope flow sex date. And that's one of the ten orgasmic intercourse techniques. And it's really about getting out of this mindset of what I call grabbing a boob and sticking it in and moving toward. What does my body want now? Do I need a foot rub, a back rub, a belly rub? Do I need to be held? Do I want a yoni massage? Am I turning. Turned on? And do I just want to pounce on you? Because there are definitely times when I throw my husband down on the bed and ride him like a cowgirl and have my way with him. And I taught myself how to do it. It's one of the things I teach in the orgasmic intercourse techniques is how to use him for your pleasure, which he loves nothing more than you to do. And I give you the step by step of exactly how to do it so you can practice and get really good at it.

How do you feel? Does this help or hurt? When people use outside things like alcohol or THC or like a CBD and CBD oil. Like, how do you. Is that. Do you suggest. Do you say that's not ideal? Like, what's. Because I feel like that's an escape thing that people do to get in the mood. But is that a good start or is that hurting?

I love it. And I'm going to show you a couple things I love. Let me know if you want me to have these sent to you. I really. So first of all, if you're going to have. I usually have a little glass of wine when I'm cooking dinner.

Okay.

It helps me relax. I'm not drinking heavily. I don't need to be drunk to have sex. Like if that's the other end of the spectrum. But yeah, have a little cocktail Go out and have some cocktails for dinner. And if you're young enough to, to have the energy to have sex when you get home afterward, God love you, you know. That's fantastic. Yeah.

54. I'd probably fall asleep if I had the glass of champagne first, but exactly.

CBD and THC. Some people love THC. THC has been shown. Dr. Susan Mulvaney actually has a foundation and she's trying to get THC to be something that is prescribed. Prescribed medically for women, especially women in menopause who struggle with orgasm.

Wow.

It can be extremely beneficial. And there are a couple of products that I have that I love. Where are they? Here they are. These, these are at.

Lover lusty bundle.com There are vapor disiacs, Sex Bites and Vitality and Stamina gummies that have a little bit of THC and libido botanicals in them. And I actually like these better than having a glass of wine. I take a little quarter, I take a little nibble off of one an hour before my date. And it really helps me get out of my head and into my body. I love these. Don't eat a whole one. Oh my gosh. You'll have couch lock, you'll have bedlock, but these are really good. And then for lubes, I think CBD based lubricants are very, very good because CBD is a phytocannabinoid that triggers our own endocannabinoid system. And we have a ton of endocannabinoid receptors in our brain and in our yoni, in our genital system, right in that tissue. And the endocannabinoid system is one, one of our body's pleasure healing pathways. When we're talking about why sex is good for us, it's a healing experience. And there's two brands I like. One is Nude. This is@loversbundle.com I always say the links to things because people really want to find things. This one is very nice. This is more of like a massage oil. It has essential oils and CBD in it. And I like the this, which is a three different products. It's called the Pleasure protocol. There are these melts that you peel one open. It's a suppository that goes up inside the vagina and it's cocoa butter and CBD and it melts and stays up in the canal because I find for menopausal, perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, the dryness can be a problem. And the, the cocoa butter actually has this oleic acid in it, which is what the good microbiome, it's what the good bacteria in your vagina eat. And so the cocoa butter with the CBD where you don't have to try to get lube up inside you and it melts and stays in there, makes your vagina feel velvety and luscious and rich in a way that no kind of oil getting up there can do. It comes with the awaken arousal oil, which you just apply to the vulva, maybe during your yoni massage. And that awakens the brain to yoni connection. And then you've got sex oil for all the slide and glide that you need and reapply as needed. So this system, this pleasure protocol system is excellent for lovemaking as well. So these are the kinds of, of things that I recommend, and I don't recommend lube that you get from Walmart or Target or CVS or the grocery store because essentially lube is like ultra processed food now where we used to eat whole foods and ingredients, we used to have lubes that were made with hyaluronic acid, aloe vera, you know, cocoa butter, things like this. But now if you look at the container and look at the ingredients in sexual lubricants, the top 30 sex sexual lubricants have things like PFAS in them forever, chemicals, all these kind of.

And you absorb that quickly that way. So you're, it's getting right in your.

Body, going right into your system, right into your bloodstream. So I never recommend off the shelf lubricants because they are garbage. Just like all the stuff in the middle of the grocery store.

What I love about this conversation with you is you're the first person ever that I've that in this space that like you really do get what's going on in the midlife woman's brain. Like, you really get it, you were there. And then you're also not talking about the things that we keep hearing others talking about. Like you literally have doven into this like initial space and this headspace. One more question for you about this. Where, what do you advise? So somebody's listening and maybe they have the light bulb moments now and they're going, okay, this is making sense. I want to talk to my spouse about this. But do you have any advice on that? Like some of them are so disconnected from their spouse right now. It feels like, like I know my husband, he'd be amazing if I'm like, hey, go listen to this, go that he's, he's on board. He just wants to make me happy in that area, which I'm very blessed that I have that with my husband, But a lot of women don't. Any advice to them on how they even have this conversation?

Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is you can. You. You can talk to them about things you can say. I would like to try yoni massage. And I'd like you to get me these. These pleasure tools. I would like to try these lubricants, and I'd like you to buy these for me. I would like you to hold me in this way. Please read this. Soulmate embrace. I would like to try yoni massage. Go to betterlover.com and look. Look up yoni massage. And let's watch the videos together or separate.

But what if they're defensive at that. What if. I don't. I'm just guessing. My husband would not be. But I'm thinking ahead. Like, what if somebody's husband's like, why should I do that? I don't. I don't know. Is that a thing? Is it the wrong husband? I don't. I don't know. Like, is.

Some husbands are stubborn donkeys, and with a stubborn. There are husbands who are, like, eager to do whatever it will take to be close to you, and when you find solutions, they will do them.

Yeah.

There are other husbands who are defensive, shut down, angry, frustrated. Sometimes writing them a letter.

Okay.

Sometimes talking to them briefly in little dribs and drabs in the car when they're trapped with you.

Yeah.

They can't get away.

And then I'm thinking about the woman that's not confident. Right. And now she's gonna go have this conversation. And if they say the wrong thing, I just feel that could, like, put them back in their shell. You know what I mean? Like, that's where I'm. What I'm thinking. And I don't know that that's the norm, but it could. I'm just thinking of everyone listening.

Yeah. One of the issues is that generally men don't want to talk to women about this because they feel like women can talk circles around them. You know, that I'm a man. A few words. That's actually the male brain. I mean, there's nature and nurture and nature is that men have difficulty with these conversations. So one of the things you have to do sometimes is you have to dribble it out a little bit at a time. You can buy the lube and say, you know, I got this. I'd like to try it. I'd like to try this tool. I'd like you to. I'd like to try this holding technique. You know, you can ease them into things. I mean, you could go to a therapist and a therapist can help you navigate, navigate this stuff. So if you have the kind of a partner who. There is no talking to them. They're in defense and defiant and unwilling to listen, then you've got bigger fish.

Yeah, I was just gonna say you have a bigger problem. I think if that's the case, it's a bigger problem. It's a, it's a. There. It's a therapy conversation.

Generally, guys are eager to hear your plan for remediating your sex life.

Yeah. So women, if you, if you're up against that, that's just a bigger issue. I'm gonna advise. Don't take that as your. If you, if you're feeling rejected about that, I think it's. It's definitely a therapy conversation. Susan, this was so helpful. I know I'm going to have to have you on like 10 more times now because there's going to be so many questions, but you really got me thinking. My wheels are spinning. This was so helpful. I'm going to put all the links you mentioned in the show notes, but.

I don't want to.

I want to make sure the main thing you said was. Can you tell you said orgasmic intentions.

Or what was that? Intercourse. Okay.com soulmate embrace.

Drivedesire.Com and betterlover.com betterlover is where I have my newsletter. And if you sign up for my newsletter, you can reply to. And I send it out twice a week with just this kind of info. And when I send it out, if you reply to it, I get it doesn't go to my care team. I get it. And so my care team's been with me, with me for 17 years. So, you know, they take care of a lot of stuff for me. But that particular newsletter, I get your question. So you can send me a private email with any question you have and I will answer it. And almost always I already have a video for it or an ebook or I'll write you three things or what was the. You know, here's what I recommend. I will give you an answer. It may take me a few days to get back. I'm very busy. But. But I will reply.

Very generous and thank you for, for what you do. And I under. And I understand how like, almost like discriminated against you've been. It's like it's wild. But. And you're. And really what you share is so important and so helpful. I mean, heck, it took me forever to even like, have you on my podcast because I even get in my head, like, oh, what do people think? And. But I, I see how important, you know, I've been following your stuff and I'm thinking, well, there's really stuff. There's some important. This is an important conversation and we're not having enough of it. So thank you so much.

Were you nervous about having me? Yeah, I was.

I told you that I think you're. I think you're amazing and I can't wait to have you back. Yeah. And I'm excited.

Okay.

Thank you for being. Thank you for being here.

My pleasure. Thank you.

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