Replanting Desire: How to Grow an Authentic Sex Life in Midlife and Beyond

This week's episode has been sponsored by Oh My Bod, shifting the evolution of pleasure. Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And today, all the way from West Virginia— West Virginia, I feel like talking in a Southern accent. West Virginia, is, is a certified holistic sexuality educator, embodied intimacy and relationship coach, restoring positive and consensual approaches to sexuality and relationships. I'd like to welcome Lauren Elise Rogers. Hi, Lauren.

Hi, I am so thankful to be here. Thank you for having me today.

Oh, I'm so glad to have you on the show. And just before this, well, actually, let's talk about Every time I send out an invite to appear on the podcast, I always ask people what they want to talk about because I don't want to talk about stuff they're not interested in talking about. And you said something that immediately perked my interest, which was about weeding our sexual gardens and welcoming embodied sexual choices in later life. And I was like, what does that mean?

We're like, that's a great topic. I don't understand what you're saying.

What does that mean? Yeah, what does it mean to weed our sexual gardens?

No, I'd love to jump right into this. Because even before we started recording, you and I were mentioning that there are oftentimes where we all of a sudden pause and say, wait a second, there's some belief I have within myself. And is it serving me anymore? And I applaud every single one of us out there who is taking a moment to ask themselves that question. And so where this idea of a sexual belief garden came from is from the incredible Rev Bev. She is one of my favorite teachers in the space of religious orthodoxy, and how it affects the shame and guilt we all feel regarding our sexual behaviors. So I took her analogy of a sexual belief garden and kind of just kept building on it, because the primary clientele who seeks me out is a person who comes face to face with an obstacle of some sort of belief that is no longer serving them. And what they truly want to figure out is where it came from, and if they want it to remain in their metaphorical sexual garden. So what I walk my clients through is a simple exercise, and we can do something right here. Yeah, that is a mini version of it that has been in absolutely invaluable to so many, because they've been able to go, huh, that gardener planted that one, don't align with that anymore. What do I want to do now? And once we plucked, and once we've weeded and tilled and nurtured and spread some manure around, well, then we have a fresh garden bed ready for us to plant new seeds, regardless of our age. You and I were talking about, yes, maybe there's a specific demographic for this precious podcast audience of yours. And yet, I see this across all age ranges, all through the lifespan, and we all get to garden. So let me do this with everyone. So research shows that at the ages of 7, 14, and 21, certain sexual beliefs were planted in our metaphorical gardens. Those are really important ages developmentally. And what we were experiencing, whether it was home or school or church, They matter. They truly matter. So you want to get creative with me? You want to do this exercise?

I'm willing to go there.

Okay. So I'm going to ask you some questions. You can just think of your answers in your head. Okay, you don't need to say them out loud. What I'd love to do is after we've done these questions at 7, 14, and 21, I'd like you to share with us if you feel consenting in your body, if there were any themes, if there was anything that you saw the same, or if there's something that you're like, giggling at that, "Oh, I used to believe that when I was 7. I don't anymore." Okay? So either something that feels nonexistent or something that feels, "Oh wow, there was a theme." Okay? So I want you to embody yourself at 7 years old, kind of go back in time. Where were you around that age? What was influencing little you?

Okay?

So now again, in your head, I want you to think about these fill-in-the-blank answers. Sex is fill in the blank. My body is fill in the blank. A girl's role is. A boy's role is. Pleasure is. Relationships are. I want To stay safe, I— Pause there. And we'll fast forward in time. 14 years old. Lots has changed. Lots has changed. We're developing as a young person. Put yourself in your body at 14. Here we go. Sex is— fill in the blank. Relationships are. I want to stay safe or chosen.

I—

it's a girl's job to— it's a boy's job to— my body belongs to— my pleasure is Now we're fast forward once again. Age 21. This is a very, very special age. Research shows this is the age where most young adults first desire penetrative intercourse. Now many have experienced it earlier, but this is where desire starts to come online. So it's interesting. All right, 21. Sex is. Relationships are. I want or need. Men want. It's my job to. Marriage is. My pleasure is. To stay safe or chosen, I and my body is.

Great questions. Great questions.

So my follow-up to you is, did you notice any themes and/or were all of them different? Please share.

Yeah, I suppose the really interesting thing for me about looking at those those particular ages is that when I was a child, I was growing up on Long Island. I was playing, play, I was quite playful. I was very creative. My mom used to say that I love to sing in front of their friends and, and express myself. So I was, you know, I was quite an extrovert little kid, right? I don't remember anything pleasure-wise, but I remember messing around with little girls.

Very much, very normal, very normal sex play.

My own age, like messing around, being inquisitive.

Yes.

When I— by the time I was 14, it was the year after I moved to the UK. So I was in a completely unfamiliar place, and I was in a really weird school. I was in a Department of Defense school. On, on, on outside of London with a bunch of kids who a lot of them moved every single year. Right. So amongst those kids, there were some real extrovert kids. And I was a— I was like, I just arrived in this foreign country. It was all very exciting. I was like this provincial kid from New York. And these girls were smoking cigarettes. I remember at 14, like trying a cigarette, like I wanted to be like them. They were all kind of like they felt really grown up, you know. So I felt— so that was like a really interesting age because I felt that the— that, yeah, that it was a really fundamental age in, in transitioning to this new place. And then at 21, I moved again and I came back to the States having lived in London as a teenager. So by the time I got—

keep going.

Yeah. So by the time I got back to the States, I didn't feel American anymore. I was foreign again in this country. I was a punk. I was— I fucked everybody on campus, boys and girls, really. I was really outrageous. It was all about just like showing off. Everything was just about like showing off and being big and being bold. And to a certain extent, that hasn't changed too much in my life, frankly. But it's interesting that those three ages were— I was in three different locations. I was in 3 different sets of circumstances. I came from 3 different cultures. It was like, it was all kind of quite messy. Frankly, it was messy.

Yeah, this is fascinating. So from just— I won't, we won't spend the entire conversation talking about this. But what I would love for your audience to notice is that what we do with our bodies is so amazing to me, that these bodies of ours, these fleshy meat suits of ours, are geared towards using pleasure as an antidote to pain. And what I often see and is so often in the spaces that I came from ridiculed and told is sinful or wrong or bad. I would like us all to notice your geniusness, your wisdom of the safety-seeking behaviors that your wise body utilized, because most often we use sex to meet a human need. And it's so beautiful to see how you used this brilliant body of yours to meet human needs of connection, of community, of belonging. What I think is fascinating is that when we can, with a shame-free lens, say, wow, look how my wise body did what it needed. Now, do I still want to use sex as a way to meet that need? And if we do, great. But what so often happens, I see, is that we haven't put that connection together. We haven't said, oh, sex doesn't have to only serve that one purpose. And we can use it however we so desire. And it can be recreational, or relational, or procreative. It can be any of those things. And when we look at it through a sex-positive lens, when we say pleasure is good, not wrong, which is how I was raised, then we can go, Hmm, look at us being so wise. And yet, is that how we want to continue to always use sex? So that's how I would then begin with my clients to weed a garden and say, hmm, maybe we do like some of this. Let's keep this in this little bed over here. And yet, maybe we also want to cultivate a different species of this flower. And what would that look like? So beautifully done. You took us through it expertly.

Such an interesting exercise. And I, and you know, looking back at that, as well as that, I suppose seeing, um, seeing myself as that 21-year-old, that was the— that was a quick way to make friends. Yes, yes. So being— because also being the outsider in a community of concern, in a very conservative community, because I was in New Hampshire, it was so conservative.

Oh my God.

So I, I just— and I was— it was easy for me to make friends. And in fact, a lot of those friends— I'm going to New York tomorrow to visit some friends. And one of the people that I'm seeing— well, in fact, two of them that I'm seeing are people that are my old school friends. So these are people I've known for years, but not people that I had sex with, but just people that I've known for years. But, you know, there is that kind of way that if you're a bit quirky, sometimes people gravitate towards you, because in those environments where everybody is quite conservative, people seek out the ones that are rebelling, right? And so that was— it was easy to find me because I was easy to thought. But I'm curious about your background because obviously we've had completely different experiences here. And part of what I'm hearing from you and what, and what you've been able to do is look at, I, I'm assuming, some of the heavily religious communities in which you grew up and, and work your way through that. So that— how did that evolve?

Oh my goodness. We'll tell the abbreviated version now. Folks can reach out or follow me on social media to hear the very extended versions. Because it's, it's a story. I was born and raised in the same town that I am in now. And I was raised, yes, very conservatively, evangelically, under this umbrella headship model that it was God, my father, my mother, and then the children. It was very misogynistic and patriarchal. I belonged to my father. I had a purity ring on that was given to dance. Oh yeah, it's fucking disgusting. And God bless them. What's so interesting, Suzanne, is that I don't think they intended to mess me up. I think that they had come out of painful sexual experiences and relational experiences of their youth, and that they had had these conversion experiences, and that those in power were telling them this was a better way. And what parent doesn't want to raise their child in a better way than they were raised? I don't think that there is malintent behind it. But what ended up happening is so much, so much blatant withholding of information that I had a right to. So I ended up getting married at 21. I was a virgin on my wedding night. I was married for a decade. We had one child. My husband was an alcoholic. He had these things called parasomnias. It was truly, truly horrible. I went through years of being untouched and unsexed. It was in that marriage that I taught myself how to masturbate, because I was so convinced I was going to have an affair. And I thought, either I learned the sin of self-pleasure, or I have an affair. And I think one is going to be worse. And so I'm going to choose the lesser of two evils. So anyway, someone started having dreams about me here in this little town, and took me on a walk one day and said, what's going on? And I ended up spilling the whole story to them. They got me into counseling. The counselor said, why are you choosing to stay in this marriage? And I looked at them and thought. I have never, ever thought I had a choice, ever. So one thing led to another, we ended up divorced. Through that divorce, though, I lost my entire community, because there was no abuse or adultery, which were the only two grounds for divorce was inside the church community that I was in. And so then when I was alone in this basement apartment with a rat dying in the wall, no money, I mean, just the bottom of the barrels. It was there that I thought, okay, I'm no longer a virgin. Am I a whore? The only two options that had been presented to me as a young person were a whore or a virgin. And so I began relooking at all of these things. I didn't know then that there were ideas like these metaphors of a sexual garden, but I did begin to consider all of the beliefs that had been given to me. And did I agree with them anymore? And could I still be— and you and I were saying this before we came on air— a values-driven, aligned, ethical human being who does explore my sexuality? And so I just began devouring books. I mean, you name it, I read it. And I did, I did devour a lot of men too. It is my very proud slut era. And one of those men that I met in California, I was traveling for a business trip, I was looking for a one-night stand. And he was just fascinated by this work I was doing. And he ended up moving to Virginia to be with me. And he's now my partner and we're married and it's beautiful. But along the way, he said to me, have you ever thought about starting a business with all of this wisdom that you're gaining? And I was like, what in the world? Who else needs this type of thing? Nobody needs this. It was just me. I was the only one who didn't have this type of education. And he said, I don't think so. I think there's a lot of people out there. So I went back to school. And then in 2022, I hung up a shingle for Sex Ed for You, my business now. And now I get to work with individuals around the world who are looking to reclaim and reaccess their inherently perfect sexuality. And that's the short version.

Wow, that's incredible. And when— I'm just curious, what— so when you left your marriage and you ended up in that rat-infested basement, did you— what happened to your kid? Where did they go?

She was with me. So my now ex-husband relapsed, and so he almost lost custody completely of her. So she was with me for about 6 months, and we slept together in one tiny little bed. It was frozen. And yet, Suzanne Noble, that is her fondest time of memories to look back upon. We didn't have access to the house because my husband had claimed it, and he had said we were not allowed to enter. And so she was building toy structures out of things in our apartment. And the memories from that time are our most treasured. And she now gets to watch her parents who have done endless work on themselves. And my ex-husband, happy story, is now happily gay and partnered. And she gets to see her father now living his best life and her mother now living her best life. And she is the coolest 15-year-old on this planet and thriving. Thriving. And so these stories that were told about how divorce is the end of all children, I say bullshit. No, unhappy humans parenting younger people, that's, that's far more destructive.

Yeah, completely. And one of the things that my father said to me, and he was, and people still find this quite shocking, is they said, you know, my dad said, you should always put your partner before your kids, because happy parents happy kids.

Yes.

And unhappy parents don't.

Yes.

So, you know, you put all your energy, you said you put all your energy in your kid and then your kid gets to 18 and leaves home, goes to university, whatever, generally, if we're lucky, if we're lucky. And then, you know, you're left with this person that you may not know anymore because you've, you've focused so much of your attention on this, on this little individual to the exclusion of your own relationship. And I see it happen all the time. And hearing your story, two people, super happy kid, super happy, you know, like, it's great, right?

I mean, it's really, it's interesting, people living their best life.

That's what you want to see as children, don't you? Yes, people living their best life.

Yes, it's so interesting that you bring this up because my now husband and I just returned from two weeks of vacation alone.. And while I was there, someone from my Instagram audience said, it appears that you invest all of your energy into your partner. What about your kid? I had to bring up exactly what you just said. Oh my goodness. Okay, this was 2 weeks. That's it out of an entire calendar year. And you better believe Mama was texting about the missing assignments and the where you're going, and that my 15-year-old who is in this season of differentiation is spreading apart from me. It is good for her actually to go 2 weeks without her mother And I believe in a collectivist society, she has an incredible team. Her father is still here, excuse me, who is a parent too, and has a wonderful partner. And she has an incredible team of care providers all around her. And yes, this, this misplaced belief that the primary partnership we need to be focusing on is with our children is ill-founded. And an entire demographic that I now serve is those who are empty nesters, who all of a sudden are looking at this partner going, oh my goodness, I don't even like you. And so I have a large chunk of clientele in their 50s to 60s who are now empty nesters and going, I don't want to have sex with you. I have no intimate relationship with you. And you better believe that is disruptive to your now 18, 19— ha, shocker— 21-year-old children, which is that memory piece.

Yeah, right. And, and all, you know, But on the flip side, I hear from so many— I mean, God, this is a massive discussion, isn't it? And actually, it's interesting because often when we talk about this stage of life, we often talk about it in terms of some of the physical or sexual health challenges, right? We talk about low libido, or we talk about menopause, or we talk about erectile dysfunction, or we talk about some of the stuff that goes on with our bodies because of hormones or whatever. But, you know, I've spoken to enough healthcare professionals to know that sometimes sitting underneath that is other challenges, right? The empty nesting, the I haven't paid attention to you for all of this time, this we don't even know each other anymore. And funny that that should contribute to I don't want to fuck you.

Shocker, right? Right. I, one of my most fascinating things to dig into is the folks 60 and above who are having great sex. And what's interesting is it's not that they didn't want sex, it's that they didn't want that sex, right? So maybe it was, yes, sex with a partner who's seemed utterly disinterested in them for 20 years. Well, yeah, one of my foundational things with my clients is, let's just start out with, I don't want you having sex with someone you don't like. And so if you're coming to me, because you want to have more sex with your partner, we're going to start out trying to figure out if you like your partner, because over my dead body am I going to try to get you to have more sex with someone you don't like. No. So let's start with yes, the underlying life transition things. We get to change and evolve and grow as humans. And I'm not here to say that we need to blow up the containers of relationships that we have cultivated for many years. That does come with some elements of safety and security that can be beautiful. But most people in female bodies are bored out of their minds. They are— they want so much more. The women we see having great sex are the unpartnered ones in their 60s who get to have the type of sex they want to when they want to. And it's— it is such a fun, juicy conversation because it can be nurtured. It is fun to break apart our old containers of relationship and build new ones, regardless of whether we stay with the person we were with or find a new one.

Yeah, I mean, I always say that it's easier, of course, when you aren't partnered up and you are at my age to be able to have the kind of sex you want, especially if you know the kind of sex you want.

Ding ding.

It's not always easy, but because you're starting afresh and you can meet someone and just tell them like, this is what I like, this is what I don't like. Whereas when you're in a partnership and perhaps, as you say, you've neglected your partner, because you felt the responsibility being this fantastic, I'm always there for you parent who is never unavailable and who is always, you know, fully present. And your own primary partner is just being neglected for years. And I don't think, you know, and I don't blame one gender or the other because I don't— I personally think that it's the responsibility of both people to sort of put that effort into the relationship. So You know, yes, yes, yes.

And we, we were saying this offline before we started, that so many folks grow up with pleasure-negative lenses. And how I see this kind of outflowing out of religiosity is in this way that you were just speaking to. We will so often put things like parenting on a pedestal. We will say that's more holy, and that's better. And things like sex, right, and intimacy and desire and lust and filth. You and I were talking about this earlier, right? These, these cravings for the good stuff of life. We will look at that with this negative lens. And what's interesting from my studies is I found some of the origins of that go all the way back to Plato, who really believed in this mind-body dualism, that the mind was more holy than the body. And so this is one of those sex-negative beliefs that I really encourage anyone of any age to start to dig into. Is my worship of things like parenting and taking care of our house and being good citizens— these are all good things. They are. But have we in some way idolized them and then looked at things like pleasure and craving and sexy date nights and 2 weeks with your partner out of the country? Do we look down our nose at those things? With a pleasure-negative lens? And how much of that do we still align with?

Yeah, it's such a great question. And I suspect most people don't ever ask themselves that because it's subliminal, isn't it? It's not, it's, it's not something that becomes a, that we actually consciously think of. We don't consciously think, I'm going to deny myself pleasure to become the perfect parent. It just sort of, it just sort of happens. Yes. And then before we know it, we have no pleasure. And, you know, we might feel right, self-righteous about how good a parent we now are. But are we thinking to ourselves, oh, but I haven't had sex in 3 weeks or a month or 6 months? Or, you know, we're not— we're— I think a lot of people don't. They, they just stop thinking about it. Right.

Yes. You know what's interesting? Totally a juicy moment for this audience specifically. In school, I really wanted to see long-term research on sexual beliefs and who was thriving in these senior years. So fun fact, my very first foray into the professional world was with senior citizens. I was in a financial planning firm that specialized with folks 60 and above in retirement, and they quickly became my favorite demographic on earth because you got to see who was thriving and who was not, right? So I was fascinated by— once I started to get into the sexual components, right? I was like, wait a second, maybe some of my favorite people were the ones having great sex. And why, right? And so I stumbled into a journal article that looked at a little town in the UK, and looked at individuals 60 and above, and asked deep probing questions of everyone, and looked at what what is helping you thrive now, sexually and relationally? It looked at folks who were all forms of orientation, and all levels of partnership status. So there was one man in his 70s who identified as gay, and he was living happily and singly. And then there was one couple who'd been together for forever. There was one swinger couple. I mean, it was just all these different types of folks. And the one thing that was the connected for all of these folks who were living and flourishing, whether they were going into the pub once a month and hanging out with some young man and having a great sexual encounter or having sex 3 times a week. The one thing that stood— that connected them all together was that at some point in their lives, they had considered their sexual values and whether or not they still aligned with their beliefs given to them in childhood and adolescence.

Fascinating.

That was the only thing. So those folks, no matter what they were doing behaviorally, were acting out of their own desires and feeling at peace with their own ethics. And that's what it took to live a flourishing, sexual, romantic, intimate life in their later years. And they were loving it. All like sourced back to— now at some point, we looked at it and said, yeah, we believe that. No, we don't believe this. We're fine.

That's amazing. And that really almost wraps up the going back to the beginning, which was about what the hell is weeding our sexual gardens.

There we go. Look at us. We did such a good job.

Yes, we've come full circle. And we know that if you weed your sexual garden at some point, then the likelihood is that you will have a flourishing garden for the future. And if you don't weed it, you're just going to end up full of Well, you're just gonna end up full of weeds.

You're just gonna be weedy. No, but truly, I think that it's what we all deserve. It's not the type of sex. It's not what we do with our bodies. It is knowing what we deserve to do with our bodies, and that we get to choose. I am such a huge proponent of informed decision making. At the end of my work with one client, I was asking the the typical questions. What are some of the most valuable lessons you've gained? What's one thing that surprised you? And the thing that surprised her stood out, and she gave me permission to share this for as many years as I want to. She said, I think before I began this work, I was so afraid of what would happen on the other side. And I said, oh, tell me more. And she said, you know, growing up, I was told about the slippery slope into depravity. I was told that I would become something that I would abhor. That I would turn into a ravaging beast. I said, oh my goodness. Okay, well, if that didn't happen, what, what was on the other side of that door? She said, hmm, informed decision-making. Yes. Right.

And that's, and that's what it's all about, isn't it? It is making—

yes.

Some of us are informed, you can't make the decisions.

You can't. And I think, you know, some of us are going to go on and exist in this professional realm like you and I do, and some of us are going to embody sexuality in a way that literally is a part of everything we do. Great, great. But some of us just want to have great private sex. Absolutely wonderful. You still deserve to have access to the information that helps you make the best choices for you and the people you choose to engage with intimately.

Completely. Yeah, 100%. Lauren, I have so enjoyed this conversation. And I wish I could talk to another half an hour, but you know, I got my principles.

I love them. I love them. This sounds like a juicy place to wrap up.

Don't leave immediately because of this software, but it has been really lovely to have you on the show and I hope you'll come back again.

I would love, love to come back. Thank you for having me.