The Truth about Sex Addiction w/ Marnie Breecker

Okay, let's be real. Confidence is sexy in and out of the bedroom. And when it comes to performance, sometimes a little support makes a big difference. So whether you're craving more stamina, fuller erections, or you're just looking to level up your pleasure game, there's a tool that's been helping people feel more empowered for years. Meet Bathmate, the world's leading hydro powered penis pump. These aren't gimmicks. They're FDA registered, backed by science, and designed to give real, lasting results. At Bathmate Direct, you'll find pumps that naturally support size, strength and blood flow, helping you experience bigger, harder, more energized erections over time. And because they work with water, they're more comfortable, more effective, and way safer than traditional air pumps. With just a few minutes a day, the Bathmate hydro pump can help you increase size and girth, gradually boost confidence in and out of the bedroom, improve stamina and performance, support stronger erections through better blood flow. And the best part, it's all natural, non invasive and totally shower friendly. You can literally work out your sexual wellness while you wash your hair. It's iconic. Right now, Bathmate Direct is giving our listeners 10% off when you use code SW10@bathmate direct.com. that's Bathmate Direct B A T H M A T E D I r e c t dot com. Use code SW10 for 10% off. So head to bathmate direct dot com, use SW10 and level up your confidence.

In fact, two different people can be engaging in the same sexual behaviors and even look like they're both addicts and one is not an addict at all, meaning that they are making a conscious choice to do it. They're not feeling guilt and shame after the behavior. They're not saying, I'm never going to do this again. They're not acting against their own value system. Whereas an addict, truly they might love their partner, they might believe in every bit of their core that cheating and betraying the person they love the most is actually totally wrong and horrible and crushing. And they can't stop the behavior.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily, and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. So listen, is sex addiction real? The truth is, just because someone cheats doesn't mean they're a sex addict. And if someone is a sex offender, that also doesn't mean they're a sex addiction. But according to Marni Breaker at the center for Relational Healing, Sex addiction is indeed real. It's an intimacy disorder with emotional and physiological symptoms. On this best of show, Marnie and I talk about the signs of sex addiction. The deep human need for love and connection, affordable treatment options, love addiction, a how to on imago therapy and healing steps for couples. All right, Intentions with Emily for each show, join me in setting an intention for the show. I do it. I encourage you to do it. And think about what do you wanna get out of this episod. My intention is to give you more information about something that is often misunderstood, I.e. sex addiction, and also give you some communication tools you can start using today. Please rate and review Sex With Emily wherever you listen to the show. My article, four tips for lasting longer in Bed is up at sex with emily.com. also check out my YouTube channel for more sex tips and advice. If you want to ask me questions, do it. Leave me your questions or message me at sex with emily.com Ask Emily or call my hotline, 559-talk-SEX or 559-825-5739. Always include your name, your age, where you live and how you listen to the show. And totally cool to change your name if you want to remain anonymous. All right, everyone. Enjoy this episode.

Marty Breaker is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex addiction therapist, and certified clinical partners specialist. She has been trained in imago therapy and emdr. Marnie's professional mission is educating others on the complexity of sex addiction and its traumatic impact on partners and family systems. Her goal is, above all, to treat every client with kindness, respect, and compassion. Find more marnie@marniebreeker.com or on Instagram at Centerfor Relational Healing. Okay, so this is Marnie Breaker. Hi. We're on Instagram live right now. Anyone has any questions? Marnie is a sex addiction specialist. We have a question. Are there warning signs for sex addiction or sex offending? Yeah, we. Sex offending. Yeah.

Well, they're. They're two very different things. So if we're talking about sex addiction, you know, I actually wrote an article. I should send it to you, Emily. I gotta find it. But I wrote an article for single women about how to know what to look for and when somebody becomes sexual or sexualizes a conversation really fast, that's actually a big red flag right off the bat, you know?

Really?

Yeah. Sexualizing something very quick is an example.

Not like just like, hey, we gonna bone after dinner? But more like, I'll give you a steak. Looks like what I wanted. I don't know.

Well, yeah, that actually I know what you were getting at, but, yes, that could be an example, but it doesn't have to be. It could be subtle. Years ago, when I was dating, I was on, like, that JDate site, you know, many years ago, and this guy and I were talking. We were chatting. It was kind of late. It was maybe like 11, 11:30 at night. And he. I sent something to him, and he's like, can you call me? Like, he wanted to get on the phone right away. I. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but when I spoke to him on the phone, I actually agreed to get on the phone with him.

Okay.

Probably shouldn't admit that, but I did. I got on the phone with him, and he disclosed to me in that conversation that he's a sex addict. And I had a weird feeling as soon as he wanted to get on the phone so quick. There's, like, an urgency. There's not a lot of boundaries. You can see that with sex addicts. Like, they push your boundaries. They're not really respectful when you're saying no or you're setting limit when somebody is constantly lying or keeping secrets. You know, even hearing about someone with a pretty significant trauma background. Not that all of them will become sex addicts or drug addicts, but, you know, it is something to be aware of and to. To see how did the trauma impact this person. Now, as an adult, can you describe.

Some of the common sexual addiction behaviors? What that looks like when they're coming to you, when they've been addicted to prostitutes or porn or.

The most common would be porn. Compulsive masturbation, prostitutes, escorts, massage parlors, strip clubs. Those would be the biggest top one.

So it's really not even with the.

Partners, necessarily with their own partners. Yeah, no.

We get so many questions. We, like, my partner watches porn. Is it a problem? How do we know if it's a problem? My partner's looking at anything else that's getting them turned on, and it's not me.

Well, that's a whole different issue. The reality is, with sex addiction, it's a disease that occurs in secrecy. So when someone's looking at a lot of porn and they're keeping it from their partner, likely there is something to hide. We're not gonna get into a whole conversation about whether or not pornography is good or bad. Exactly. But when you're in a relationship with somebody keeping a secret like that you have that you look at a lot of pornography and that you're masturbating into it, even to the point where you can't really perform in your own relationship. That's. That's a problem. And so, I mean, to get back to the, to the person's question about signs, you know, I would say that when you're in a relationship or you're getting to know somebody who is incredibly secretive and they are not disclosing and they're not vulnerable, like those are some.

Big signs, you know, not vulnerable about anything.

Right. Can't connect. Sex addiction is an intimacy disorder. That's what it is. It's not about sex.

And that's a lot of your work at the center for Relational Healing. Is intimacy disorders?

Yeah.

Is addiction physical and mental disorder, and is it genetic?

Addiction can definitely be genetic. I mean, you see it intergenerationally within families. So you will often see, or I'll see in my office, for instance, people that come in and there is a history of addiction in their, in their history. There is definitely a lot of research, research that does show, like, from a genetic standpoint, it can be inherited, but also that can be, you know, you grow up with a parent who has an addiction and they have maladaptive way of coping, and you see that they don't know how to regulate and self soothe. And as a child, you kind of pick up on those things. And in terms of the attachment piece, when you are young and you're either enmeshed by a parent and smothered, or you're abandoned and neglected, that's going to impact how you can attach as you get older. It can often make somebody love addicted. It can make someone love avoidant. It can make someone sex addicted. I mean, there's so many things that can happen. It is, I would say, a physiological and an emotional disorder for sure, because most people that have an actual addiction, even though we talked earlier about that withdrawal, they are withdrawn when they're not getting it and they're for them, it might be incredible. Anxiety, panic attacks, depression. That's the physiological piece that I'm referring to. People get headaches and digestive issues, and my clients are in tremendous distress. And it's both physiological as well as emotional.

Can somebody be addicted to love? Marnie?

Yeah, they call it love addiction, but really it's more being addicted to a person and to the attention and to the adoration and to the validation. And really, when somebody doesn't have a sense of self themselves, like they can't really esteem themselves, then they're looking to others to esteem them. So when they're getting lots of attention from somebody and they feel really Great and desirable. Like they're. They're on cloud nine and they're happy. And then if they lose that or the person they're interested in is not returning that interest or they're rejecting them, they could feel this is a person that literally can become so depressed that they comes suicidal. Like, we see a lot of love addiction in inpatient and intensive outpatient settings.

When is sex addiction different than just cheating in a marriage? Thanks, K. Pope. Thank you, K. I love it. That's a great question.

Okay, so I'm glad that you asked that, Kay. Because the reality is that one of the reasons that I think sex addiction loses some credibility is that oftentimes when somebody gets caught cheating or engaging in some kind of egregious behavior, sexually, sex addiction gets blamed or it's often thrown out as the. The reason behind it. And the truth is that just because someone cheats does not make them a sex addict by any means. In fact, two different people can be engaging in the same sexual behaviors and even look like they're both addicts, um, and one is not an addict at all, meaning that they are making a conscious choice to do it. They're not feeling guilt and shame after the behavior. They're not saying, I'm never going to do this again. They're not acting against their own value system, whereas an addict truly is not. They might love their partner. They might believe in every bit of their core that cheating and betraying the person they love the most is actually totally wrong and horrible and, you know, crushing. And they can't stop the behavior. They need to get that hit, just like a drug addict needs to get that hit.

But for most people, infidelity or people come into one of your programs, which I love that you have, actually recovery programs for people who are going through trauma or through cheating through infidelity. Would you say that a lot of people in infidelity are sex addicts? It just seems like, from what I hear, mostly it's more of like, they wanted love attention from someone else. It wasn't so much of a sex addiction.

I do think that the reality is that people make conscious choices to cheat when they feel like they're not getting their needs met in a relationship, when they feel when kids come into the picture and a mother, a parent, like a partner is not so, you know, so much available to their husband anymore, to be there all the time. That often actually engages somebody in distancing themselves and starting affairs, going, you know, getting it elsewhere. But that's not. That's not an addiction.

Right.

It's a choice and it's a terrible choice. And we see a lot of disconnect in our society and today. And instead of couples coming together when, when things are tough or when they're struggling, they are moving further and further apart and people make that choice.

What kind of help can people get if they're seeing some signs of sex addiction in the relationship for themselves or as a partner?

Yeah, there are so many treatment centers available now and places that specialize in betrayal, trauma and sex addiction, infidelity. My center here, here in Los Angeles, the Center for Relational Healing.

That's center for Relational Healing, Marty's in la.

We. I will say that I have a phenomenal staff and I take such incredible pride in the work that we do. But we're not the only people, obviously, that do this work. There are certified sex addiction therapists around the country as well as abroad. There are partner specialists. I'm actually a certified clinical partner specialist as well. And there's an organization that trains therapists to be able to work with the cheated or betrayed partner. It's actually pretty easy to find help if you get online and you do a Google search. And then the type of treatment you get really depends on the acuity of what's involved. Like if you've got a full blown sex addiction case, sometimes, you know, outpatient therapy once a week is not going to be enough. Group therapy is important. Twelve step programs, sometimes intensive outpatient therapy. It just really depends on what you're looking at.

Can you define the difference between being a sex addict and a sex pervert? And they probably mean sex offender, I'm thinking, or that's sexual deviant.

I guess it would depend on how we're defining pervert. Because somebody who is, for instance, a voyeur who is looking at, at people like peeping inside people's windows, things like that. Or someone who's engaging in frauderism, which is touching another person without their permission. You see that like in crowded rooms or like on the subway where someone's rubbing up against you. And it can sort of be under the guise of, oh, it's just crowded in here. But it's an intentional conscious thing to do that's perverted. And that definitely, definitely would fall into the, under the category of sex offending, you know, sex addiction. You know, there could be people that have fetishes that are sex addicts. But I certainly wouldn't pathologize that and say that anybody's, you know, fetish is necessarily perverted. So I Do think that they're drastically different things.

Okay, Marnie, let's talk about how couples can repair after dealing with infidelity, the trauma of infidelity in a relationship. And can they repair?

They can repair. It is a lot of work, and it's a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of time, resources, and a lot of pain. The first thing that I want to say is that most partners that have been cheated on or have experienced betrayal trauma in their relationship will say that while of course they're not happy that their husbands or their partners cheated on them. Nobody wants that. But that's not really the part that's the inexcusable part. That's not the part that's traumatic. The part that's traumatic is the broken trust. It's that shattered sense of what you thought was true is not anymore. And partners go back and look at everything that they thought once was their reality, and they realized that it was not their reality at all. And so to really recreate trust and reestablish intimacy is the goal of relational healing. When couples first come in, typically what we usually see is the addict comes in because they were caught every once in a in a while.

Very rarely the addict or someone who cheated. They might not be called an addict.

Exactly. Yeah. The person who has acted out sexually out. Right, right. They'll come in, and usually they've been caught. And so their partner will know something. They might have seen a receipt for something. They might have gotten a phone bill. They might have gotten always a receipt.

It used to be, back in the day, it was a receipt. Now it's the phone.

Right, right. Or the. Something from the Internet, like pictures pop up or somebody sees, like, the history. That's a big one. Looking at their partner's history.

Browser.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

People don't delete their histories. And so usually a partner discovers something, and then that's what gets the. The acting out partner into therapy. But usually that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's been discovered. There's usually a lot more. At least with addiction. If you do. If you are dealing with a couple that's just dealing with infidelity, which is still horrible. I don't mean to say just.

Right.

But if that really. Maybe it was an isolated affair or somebody was seeing, you know, was engaging in something for a short period of time, and it's really an isolated thing. You're not looking at addiction, and you don't always get more information. There's not always more than just what that issue was that the partner discovered. But with sex addiction, you really are typically looking at years of acting out and secrets and lies. And so one of the first things that happens is an addict will be working with his therapist to prepare what's called a formal disclosure. And that's essentially an opportunity for him to come in with, like, a written list. Often it's accompanied by a polygraph. They'll have to take his polygraph, you know, before or after, and. And they will read this list to their partner. And the reason for this. Some people think this is crazy. That's gotta be so painful, and it's so awful. The truth is, the partner has the right to know the truth about the relationship so they can make an informed decision about what they want to do.

Right. So they're so. So it'd be like, give me example of a disclosure.

So. Well, they're usually pretty long, but, you know, it might start with, you know, In March of 1996, I. I met a woman at a bar when I was on a, you know, work vacation, and we went up and had, you know, oral sex and vaginal sex in my hotel room, and it was unprotected. Okay.

And then they keep going, like. Yeah, like. And then there was this time after work when I met some. Right.

Yeah. And it could be. I mean, I just did a disclosure not too long ago. I mean, there was somebody that disclosed hundreds of partners, and he's been married, you know, for. I think it's been 30 years or something like that.

And. And so how does.

How do you recover?

How do you recover? And his partner is, I'm assuming, heterosexual.

Heterosexual, yeah.

She just. Mouth agape. And does he not get a break? Like, if there's that many things in 30 years. Can I break for some lunch here?

I mean, the disclosure itself. You mean, do we take a break? No, no, but we're allowed to. Like, the partner calls the shots, and if they need to take a break for any reason, of course we stop it.

But mouth agape. They just. What? Like, one of them would be bad? But if there's like 50.

I mean, it's awful. I actually have a disclosure coming up this coming week. It is, I will say, even as a therapist, it's probably the most difficult thing that I do because imagine if it's so hard for me to sit and listen to this, I can't even begin to imagine what it's like, not just for the partner. That's. That's horrendous. But also if the addict is Actually doing this, that means that they have come to some place in their recovery and healing where they realize how important it is that they give their partner this information. There's some degree of empathy and. And it's torturous for them to be doing this. You know, they're looking at the person that they love more than anything, and they're saying, I did all these horrible things. I put you in danger. I put, you know, I put your health at risk. I was having all this unprotected sex and. Or I brought people into our home, or I introduced people to our children. And so to. To hold that as a therapist is really painful.

So you can't even imagine what you hear. And it is torturous on all sides of it because you have the empathy as well. You do have empathy. So how could we work with children today? Like, is there some kind of tools or parents, any kind of work parents can do around children suffering to kind of prevent this? Is it about education? Because I just see so many friends now who are parents doing the best of their ability, but their kids are suffering as well.

It's important. But, you know, I think it's actually worse now than it was because of social media. In other words, parents are putting kids in front of TVs and video and they're seeing. So they're having so much exposure. And kids are growing up wanting to get liked. And with the Snapchat and with Instagram and the selfies, the selfie culture, it's creating so much narcissism.

Right.

I was outside my office the other day, and I saw this girl with, like, a little midriff top, and she had her phone and she was, like, posing and then pulling her shirt down to show more cleavage. I had no idea what she was doing with those pictures. But I'm just thinking, this is our culture now.

This is our culture now. It's really upsetting. You're right. It's more so, like, if we didn't have narcissism as a problem before, it's just like, tenfold. So, yeah, you're right. It is a bigger issue. But I just think you're right. The problems today. I'm kind of grateful now for my childhood trauma.

Me too.

Thank God there wasn't, like, other things on top of it. You're right.

But you know what? What I do think parents can do is teach them how to have what's called emotional regulation. How do you tolerate negative feelings in a way that's not going to take you out and make you feel like you do need to, you know, use some sort of a mind altering substance or behavior. Right.

Like teaching emotional regulation. That's exactly what it is, because tolerance. But it is true now that kids, because of whatever's going on, could be media, could be that there's so many, so much more pressure on kids to succeed today and to get into schools, that it's really about learning how to regulate your emotions at a young age and not just numbing out on your phone. Because now it's so much easier to numb out. Right. Like you could just do it and.

In TV and I mean, there's so many ways to numb out video games. It's another big one. When I see kids at restaurants, I don't know if you ever pay attention. You look around, you see families and like parents are on their phones. The kids have the video games. And I'm thinking, oh my God, talk about intimacy disorders. Like, this is creating so many problems in terms of learning how to become intimate.

Right.

Like, think about, we used to go, if you went out for dinner by yourself or to breakfast by yourself, you might have a newspaper with you or a book. Now whoever is sitting by themselves and not looking at their phone.

Exactly right. Or sometimes you just be like, look, put the menu down. You might even look around the restaurant, notice the, like, trees or look outside.

You would smile at somebody.

You don't, you don't smile, you don't look up. We're all on our phones. We're gonna take a quick break, but stick around after work. From our sponsors, more with Marnie Breake.

Talk about intimacy disorders. How would you even define that? I used to just say I dated a series of people who were like, before I got into this work, emotionally blocked, emotionally unavailable. And really, it's about intimacy.

Yeah. There's a term called intimacy anorexia.

And where does that come from?

For instance, if somebody grew up in a family where their primary caregivers are not giving that they're neglecting them, it could be because the parents are working 3, 4 jobs in order to put food on the table. It could be because the parents have a mental illness, they have an addiction. Not present. Whatever it is, they feel rejected or neglected. Our need, our number one most primal need as a human being, is to connect and to be loved. Right. So important. And so we grow up and it's not like we don't want that connection. We do, we crave it, we desire it. But we can be so afraid of being neglected again and abandoned again that it creates this fear, like, I'm not going to get close to people.

Right, right. Abandonment issues.

Right. And so that can be sort of the intimacy, anorexia, like, I'm not. I'm not letting you in. I'm not going to be vulnerable.

I'm not putting myself.

Right. Which I think is like, just what. But so many. I want to say the majority of people. I know, many people.

Many people.

But then again, all we hear is, like, you just said, the healing, how it really works, is that we are all deeply craving love and connection. Like, that's all we want. This is the most alone, I think culture in America, we live so separate from everybody else. We're not near our families. We all moved away. We don't have the community. We don't, like, share homes with each other. We don't. We're like very isolated already. And then now, I think the impact of having the Internet, our homes, and tv, social media, all that stuff has driven a further wedge between us and really feeling authentic connection and relationships.

That very much. And that's also.

That also you're gonna have to build a village for people who want to come stay at your center.

The center. I know. I've actually thought about sometimes somebody up, a residential treatment center, but there's so many, and I can't take that on right now. But I've got a lot of other things going on. There's a false sense of intimacy, again, that comes from technology and the Internet. Like the advent of the Internet was a huge reason why pornography addiction became so big. You know, people started choosing to be at home where they could, you know, it's affordable, it is anonymous. And there's one other a. I can't think of what it is, but in any event, anal. No. Did I say accessible? Oh, accessible, Anonymous and affordable. And people choose to be at home with their. Their pornography rather than being out there, have, you know, going on dates, being out with their friends, being intimate and true intimacy. So people develop these relationships in their homes where they don't have to leave.

Right.

And this becomes their. Their sense of intimacy. These people in these films, they're not going to leave them, they're not going to hurt them, they're not going to put them down, they're not going to reject them.

Right. You know, but they're still getting that. Yeah, they're still getting off the orgasm.

I know.

God, this is all such good stuff. Thank you, Marnie. I feel like we're going to move into some emails because I want you to help me answer Some questions here from the listeners, but this has been such a great discussion and I love that you live here because you're going to come back on the show. Marnie Breaker, the Center for Relational healing. It. It's LACRH.com and your Instagram and all that. Do you want to give all that out? We can also put it on our website.

You can just put it on the website.

Okay. So thank you, Marni. This is amazing. So now we're going to go into some emails. Hi, Emily. I think I'm a sex addict, but I can't afford a therapist. I don't want my wife to know about this. Are there bibliotherapy resources or other resources I can access to treat my sex addiction? What steps can I begin to take on my own? Thank you. Leigh, 48, Toronto.

Lee, I'm so glad that you reached out and there are resources. If you don't have the financial means to go and see a specialist. First suggestion would be get to a 12 step meeting immediately. SAA. Go online to SAA or SA.org they are all over. There's phone meetings and computer meetings and lots of meetings in person. And you can get there essentially free of charge. And you will connect with a lot of other people in a confidential environment and get a tremendous amount of support work the steps. There's also tons of books out there that you can read. I will say that while I understand not wanting to tell your wife, at some point, it is the secrecy that's going to keep you from being able to connect to your wife and from really healing. So eventually I would consider letting her in and sharing with her.

Thank you. That is a great point. And you, did you say sla, like Sex and Love addicts.

SLA is another one.

Okay, so you were saying saa?

Yes.

Okay. So I think that that's just the key here. We think that these secrets, you know, like they say in 12, you're just as sick as your secrets that the more we reveal to others, we think that that's going to be the most devastating thing, but that's actually what heals us. So all these secrets and things that we can't deal with, especially with addiction.

Yeah, we see a lot of people recovering finally after doing the disclosure that weren't able to before they did a disclosure because they finally, like you said, they finally actually come clean and said everything that they were so terrified of saying, and they held on for years and then suddenly they're no longer walking around in shame.

Right, exactly. That's like the antidote to shame. Right, right.

They're looking at their partner saying, you know, everything that I've done, you've known every awful thing now that I have done, and you still love me and you're here like, oh, okay. You know.

Right. Because we all kind of. A lot of us have a base. Many of us have a fear of abandonment. And then if we do, if we have to pile onto an addict addiction that we're so ashamed of, like, it's just like this quagmire. But if you start to. You're like. And you do reveal everything to your partner and they're still there, it's like, wow.

Right? I don't have any more secrets. It's amazing. Hi, Emily. My wife and I have been married for 15 years. We have two kids, and we're still in love. We both have high pressure jobs and are balancing work, our house, kids, and their schoolwork. It can feel like too much at times. While we have a healthy sex life, I definitely want to have sex way more than she does. I feel like my hormones are through the roof and I desire her all the time. We have sex once a week and maybe a hand job one more time a week. It's not enough. I'm afraid to bring this up for fear that she may judge me as a sex addict. I turn to porn and masturbating when I'm not having sex with my wife. I would never resort to cheating, but how do I separate myself from thinking I'm an addict rather than just a loving husband who desires his wife? A lot. Thanks for all you do. Love the show. Longtime listener, and I'm sure you will say communication is lubrication. It is. Communication is a lubrication. Matthew, 43, Michigan, my home state. I don't feel like he's exhibiting signs of sex addiction, and I can understand that. I hear this a lot from listeners are like, is there a problem with me? My partner doesn't, you know, they don't desire me. How do you know? And then oftentimes there can be allegations, like where you're masturbating all the time or you want sex so much, they can kind of label their partners as. So they take that on. So, you know, masturbation is really healthy in a relationship. I say couples should always be masturbating, and you should keep masturbating even when you're in a relationship and out of a relationship. And so, yeah, I mean, I think all that's important, but I don't see any sex addiction here. I see that they really just need to talk about their sex life.

That's what I say.

Prioritize it.

Yeah. I would definitely want to assure you that assuming you're giving us all the, you know, the truth here, it does not seem like there's any indication of sex addiction. But it does seem like you do need to be willing to talk to your wife and have a very honest, candid conversation without worrying about her judgment. To talk about the difference in desire. What you're describing is one of the most common reasons that people come in for sexual sex therapy in marriages. There's just a difference in desire.

Yeah, exactly.

And sex therapy going to speak if. If there are financial resources. That's what sex therapists do. They come in and it's like a safe environment and, you know, with a. With really safe container. You talk about this stuff. When you let go of the judgment and you have somebody there that's sort of a neutral third party that can help you. There's exercises people can do sometimes. Listen, the reality is being a mom or being a dad is exhausting. It can be when you have high pressure jobs and you're balancing a million things. And sex is often, especially for women, not the thing, it's the first thing that goes. So sometimes it takes having like a real mindful practice and really recommitting to that. And, you know, Matthew, maybe if you really share with your wife how much you want to connect to her and how much you desire her and. And that you want to do it in a way that feels good for her without pressuring, I imagine that it might help you grow and create more intimacy and vulnerability.

What you're saying about sex therapy, though, I think a lot of couples go to talk regular therapy, and I think sex therapy can be just tremendously helpful for so many couples. Do you do sex therapy as well? I just feel like there's a lot of traditionally trained therapists that really aren't trained in sex therapy. And I know a lot of couples are like, we're in therapy for 10 years. Sex never came up. I'm like, how is that possible? And they go to one sex therapist like, Bazam. It all comes together. Okay, we'll do one more question. And this is especially for you because I find this fascinating. I don't know much as much about it. You're trained in this. Hi, Emily. Can you explain Imago therapy? I believe you briefly covered this in other podcast episodes, but I'd love more information about it, who can benefit from it, how it works, and expected results. Thanks. A27 Michigan. Two people from my home state. I love it. So I have talked about it, but I'm not an expert in it, so trained in it. So can you explain Imago therapy?

Yeah. So Imago was created by Harville Hendricks, who is a published author and he's also been a speaker and he's been all over the place. I love Imago therapy. It's really created for couples. But the reality is that I do think that it can be effective for any people in a relationship. Like, I remember coming over and one of my best friends was struggling with her daughter when she. She was 16 years old and she was like, I just, oh my God. It's insane. We can't communicate. It's horrible. And I came over and I facilitated a mago dialogue for them. And so, yes, it's created for couples and can be incredibly helpful. It's a very structured conversation.

Can we do an example of it? Cause I know it's pretty easy to do so.

Okay, so the first step would be the sender says something and the receiver mirrors it back. And you really want to do it verbatim. As you get better at this and more effective at this, then you could. You can really paraphrase. But in the beginning, you really want to mirror it back. Black exactly as is. Then the second thing you do, you say, is there more? Is there more? Yes. And then I will tell you until there's no more. And then you will say, okay, so what I heard you say. And then you paraphrase. Just like a general overview of what you heard me say. The next step is you validate. So I heard everything that you said that was really important to me. Thank you for sharing. What you just said made sense. Any of those things. A validating statement, right? And then the third part is, is where you actually attune to my emotions. So you think you say something like, based on what you just said, I imagine that you must feel. Fill in the blanks. Right? And so. And then you check it out. Is that how you feel? And then I tell you. So we're not making any interpretations or actually, sorry, we're not making any assumptions about what the other person's saying. We're checking it out. Is that really what you said? Help me understand it. And then here's the most important component of.

It'S not about being right. The idea behind Imago therapy is that two people can have completely different worldviews. And it doesn't mean that one is right and the other one's wrong. And it's not about proving our point. It's about being heard, listening with curiosity, and validating and empathizing and attuning with our partner. Yeah.

I love it.

It's amazing.

I get chill because I've done some of this work. You know, I've studied some somatic therapy a little bit, but I get this. Let's do it.

Okay. All right. Now I've got to think of something I want to say to you. Yeah. Okay, let's think. I'm gonna. This is gonna be a hypothetical thing.

We don't know each other enough for you to be. To have a. To have a confrontation.

Yeah. I'm not mad at you.

Not yet. So.

Okay. So I'm gonna make this up. So, Emily, when I came here today for this interview and the door was locked outside and I was knocking and nobody was here, and I waited for, you know, like 15 minutes before you showed up, I felt really disrespected and I. I didn't know if you were gonna be here, and I felt like you didn't value my time.

So what I heard you say was that when you arrived, you were waiting outside 15 minutes, and you were knocking at the door, and no one answered, and you felt really frustrated. You felt really frustrated because we had a time set up and.

And disrespected.

And you felt you felt frustrated and disrespected. Is that. Is that true?

Yes.

Okay, so what I heard you say. Is there anything more?

No, that's it.

Okay, So I hear what you're saying about that you were waiting and. And you felt frustrated and disrespected. You felt like I didn't value your.

Time, and you actually got everything you added and frustrated. I don't know that I said frustrated.

Frustrated.

I'm not sure if you're.

Okay, so you felt disrespected, and I didn't value your time because, you know, you came at this. At this time, and I feel like that you. Yeah. You must have felt really hurt and disregarded and angry. And angry. You must have felt really angry.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So that's like. That's the idea now. Me sitting here listening to. Even though this is a totally made up circle.

Totally never locked the door ever.

No, they let me in right away. And actually the producer came, came and met me in the parking lot. Everything was beautiful.

Not only that, we came to the park. Right. But.

But the point of it is that there's no defensiveness on your part. Instead of you going into Making an excuse or justifying it. You completely validated the experience. You know, you didn't go to defensiveness. You were like, yeah, I get that. I totally hear what you're saying. And thank you. And basically sort of the impression I got was, thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, thank you for sharing.

Yeah. And I could understand why you would feel these. These things. You know, think about how many times partners get together and they have an argument and the other person, instead of just saying, you're right. You're absolutely right. I didn't come home in time for dinner. Instead of being like, why are you always getting on my case? You know, like, I was. I was working really hard and, you know, like, that's not going to bring a couple closer together. Exactly. A part of just wants to feel validated.

I think it'd be really helpful to do a link to Imago Therapy on our website because I've done a few workshops and I've. Over the years, I've learned this stuff. And the reason why it's just so helpful is because it's like you're really just literally mirroring back to them. You're listening and you're saying back to. And then you're getting in touch with emotions. But I think the reason why this is so challenging is because, for example, like, let's say we were in a relationship though, right? And you were like, every time, you know, let's say we shared, you know, a similar thing, but we shared one key to the house. Right? Let's say, like something happened and there was only one key left of the house. And you're thinking, I came home and you took the key and I'm going, like, I told you that you should. You left for work and you left on the table. I'm thinking, well, yeah, because you left it on the table today. I had to take it and lock the door. Right. Because I was. I'm right. That it. So you're really upset by it. So I feel like in this scenario, like, it wasn't true. And if that was a really case, I would feel bad that I was 15 minutes late. But in a relationship, typically if your partner's mad, you're going to easily think of why not. So how do you get partners to, in that moment, diffuse it without. It's a practice I get.

Well, that's why. That's why there's the. The. This dialogue. It's called Imago dialogue because there's safety in the structure. Some people say it's so contrived doing this Whole thing. This is not like normal conversation. But that's where the. That's where the safety comes in. Because the person who's listening, who's again called the receiver, that person is. They're instructed to look neutral, to not make eye gestures, not roll their eyes, no facial expressions, you know, and to really listen out of curiosity. The goal of this is not to be right. It doesn't mean there aren't times when there is right or wrong. There could be, but the idea is to be able to understand that your partner's experience was a certain way and they felt a certain way, like everything.

We are entitled to our feelings. And I learned this, like, when I was. My mom went to some kind of training thing in the 70s, and she was like, always start with your feelings, never attack. I feel this way, so I kind of get this. But I feel like if you're doing a mago and you. You're feeling like. But I'm so mad, you could flip it back and say, now what's going on with you? Right in the same session, you could be like, okay, so I was late. So tell me about how you're feeling. I could say, well, this morning when you left for work, and the key, you know, I felt the key was on the table. And I felt like, you don't listen to me, which is really disrespectful, you know, and then we could have played it back, and then we see that we both had different experiences and interpretations of something.

So this is, by the way, one of the things that I do do. You're asking before about some of the treatment that's available for couples. This is not necessarily for couples dealing with infidelity, although it's pretty common. But we do offer these. They're called couples boundaries workshops, where couples come in and. Not that the issues they're bringing in are not important, but really what we're doing throughout the whole workshop, we are using these different issues, like the one you and I just talked about and role played. But they're real ones for the couple. But we're really helping them learn how to communicate with each other and listen from a place of curiosity and to share, to be known without that, like wanting to. To judge or have to agree or to. To be right and make your wrong.

It's all about being right. And then when it gets to, like, contempt when couples like, that's just. So this is a way just to diffuse everything, I think. I love it. Thank you. That was really good. That's a great practice. Everyone check it out on our website. We have to go. This is a great show.

That's it for today's episode. See you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. Be sure to like subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Sex with Emily. Oh, I've been told I give really good email, so sign up@sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your your sex life, dating or relationships, call my hotline 559-talk-SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or go to sexwithemily.com askemily Special thanks to Acast for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedbackexwithemily.com.

There's one overlooked mineral behind better sleep. Sharper focus, stronger muscles and a healthier heart. And at least half of us aren't getting enough. Most people don't realize they're running low on one of the most vital minerals for human magnesium. And here's the thing, no single form of magnesium can deliver all of its benefits. That's exactly why Qualia Magnesium plus was created with 10 highly bioavailable forms of magnesium plus over 70 essential minerals. It provides total magnesium support, helping you sleep better, think clearer, move stronger and feel your best every day. And honestly, when you're less stressed and more energized, your intimacy and desire naturally benefit too. Sure, magnesium can help you sleep, but Qualia Magnesium plus goes beyond that. It's a whole body nourishment for how you think, move, connect and feel. More than just a sleep supplement, it's a foundation for daily well being which absolutely supports a healthier sex life. Getting enough magnesium from food alone is harder than ever due to depletion, needed soils and chronic stress and our body's reduced ability to absorb it as we age. Well, Qualia's Magnesium plus formula is non gmo, vegan, gluten free and designed so all the ingredients work together for comprehensive magnesium support. And personally, I've been taking Qualia Magnesium plus in the evenings and I really noticed calmer nights and clear mornings and just feeling more grounded in my body, which always makes intimacy feel more accessible and enjoyable. It's become such an easy part of my nightly routine. Experience the most, most trusted magnesium for your purity, potency and performance go to qualialife.com sex with Emily for 50% off. And here's a bonus Use the code Sex With Emily for an additional 15 off your order. That's Q U A L I A life.com sex with Emily thanks for Qualia for sponsoring this episode.