Why Waiting to Feel “In the Mood” Doesn’t Work ... and What Does

Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. One of the constant topics that has come up over the years from all the various channels in which I post is, I've been married for 20, 30 years. My wife and I do not have sex anymore. I am really frustrated. Usually this is from the man's point of view and although sometimes from the woman as well. And what can I do about it? And I'm not the best person to ask because I had that same situation in my own marriage and I didn't work that out. But my guest today did manage to work it out to the point where she actually wrote a book about it. Called The Sure Thing. So I am so excited to talk about this topic, as I know so many of our listeners will be. Welcome, Ilana, to Sex Advice for Seniors. And tell me, like, how did this all come about?

Well, thank you so much for having me, Suzanne. It's such a thrill to share.

This week's episode has been sponsored by Oh My Bod, shifting the evolution Pleasure.

I'm 57 myself, and my spouse and I have been practicing for a little over 5 years, this weekly practice that I call the Sure Thing. How it came about was in 2018. So we've been together since 2002. Okay, so, you know, so we're going on 20 years, we have a kid, and everything was fabulous. And we met in this advanced pleasure course in San Francisco, and it was really hot. We had an open relationship for the first couple years, and And you know how it goes. You have the kid, the cosmic coitus, just, you know, and then, you know, frustration, you know, the usual struggle, literally 12 years of struggle. So it's 2018. I'm in a car with a friend and she's a single mom at the time. And we're both Jewish. And she wants to, I learned in Hebrew high that if you have sex on Shabbat, you get the double mitzvah. Which is a mitzvah is a good deed. So it's just like building up the good karma. So yes, we love the sex positivity about the Jewish tradition, at least some aspects, some perceptions and perspectives. That's a good thing. And so, so she wanted to get her double mitzvah and have a consort to explore sacred sexuality on the Sabbath, on Saturday. And I was like, I want that too. That sounds fantastic. Meanwhile, this is like 10 years into this struggle with my spouse. And so we, it occurred, it dawned on me, it's like, it's a sure thing, a Shabbat unification ritual. And so we had this idea. Then fast forward, meanwhile, there's so much gunk and buildup and resentment between me and my spouse that I'm like, screw you. I'm not going to invite you into this practice. And, you know, the rejection, the different desire levels, you know, all the things were happening in our relationship. And so now fast forward, it's December 2020, and I'm hiking with a friend who is in an open marriage for a long time, and they have a very active sex life, but they were, she was having issues. And so I said, you know what, after you make love in that afterglow, why don't you bring this up with your spouse? And a minute later, I'm like, wait a second, I should do the same thing with this sure thing. And it takes, you know how sometimes when you tell a friend and you kind of, you have a sacred witness. And you have some accountability. And so I told her by winter solstice, which longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere in December, I'm gonna do it by then. So I had a deadline and I did, you know, I invited him in. Our son was at a drum lesson and, uh, we made love. And afterwards I said, hey baby, what do you think about having a weekly practice of deepening in intimacy, pleasure, and connection? He's like, sounds great. And it started. So it, we now had this structure. It was no longer, am I interested? Am I in the mood? I don't feel, we have a practice. You show up and we just show up. Literally. I mean, I don't know if it was exactly overnight, but it felt like all of that built up resentment and gunk really disappeared because now we have this practice where we just showed up. On Saturdays normally, because that's when our kid had something going on. And, um, and it was about 6 months into this and it was miraculous, miraculous for me. So many parts of myself that I had like connected with briefly in my 20s or whatever, you know, that was now like coming out. It's like this, this part of me that I call vivacious Viv now had this whole canvas in our bedroom to express herself, to make demands, to have desires. To try things we've never tried. And we've been together for all these years. And about 6 months into it, after one of our Sure Things, we're high-fiving because it's just, it's so simple and it's so wonderful. I said, sweetheart, I think I'm gonna have to write a book about this because I just want to share this with people. Everybody has this, you know, we got to share the love. So there you have it. So now, 4 and a half years later, we have the book.

And it's so funny that you should say this because I haven't done much research here. So my thing is that I schedule sex with a person that I've been seeing for a couple of years on a, generally on a Sunday, because that's when we're both available. And people have always said to me, oh my gosh, that seems so prescriptive. But I think it's so liberating, frankly, because there is something about putting that time in the diary that not only sets you up for pleasure because you know that that's what's on the agenda like nothing else. You're just— that's what's going to happen in that space of time. But it also helps me, and I don't know if you felt this as an older woman, it helps me to kind of rev up my libido and rev up my arousal because my brain is already starting to go into gear about what's going to happen. And there's something about that that's very intoxicating. And also means that I can be super playful because I'm not thinking about the washing that needs to be done or the grocery shopping or anything like that. I mean, was that part of your plan? Like this idea of putting this ritual in every week would give you that space to just explore?

Definitely. Absolutely. It's kind of like this time out of time time. And for the thing about the Sure Thing practice is you design it. It's personalizable. You set an intention. And so our intention is deepening in intimacy, pleasure, and connection. Of course, anyone can enjoy that connect— that, that intention, if that's what they want, please take it. It's yours. And do we often have sex? Yes. Is there often orgasms? Yes, but it's not required. That's not like we don't have a goal. The goal is fulfilling the intention. And so that then takes the pressure off of like, oh, I gotta get it up. I gotta get— often our sure thing will start with a simple question that one of us will ask the other one, which is what would be most pleasurable right now? And that could be anything. And that will then take us into, you know, the next question or the next, you know, it just starts it off.

Yeah. Um, look, you said something that really struck a chord with me, but clearly you were able to move beyond this, which is that you'd had this period of time during which you'd built up a lot of resentment. And so there wasn't this feeling about, I want to be sexual with this person, because there was all this stuff going on in the background. Could have been, you know, child rearing and the demands of that and how imbalanced that often is for so many women. It could have just been stress, whatever. How did you move past that?

Because I focused on what I wanted. I know I love this man. I love him. He actually does a lot of parenting, turns out. So that's not more than me generally. So, um, so that's not happened. That's not the dynamic. It was that, you know, I adore him. I knew I wanted to spend my life with him and yet I wanted to have a more active sex life and more intimacy, more sexual intimacy with him. And so that's where the struggle came in. Um, And so it was a choice. I feel like I was at this crossroads when I finally decided, because I had been sitting on this for almost 2 years, this desire, this like tangible practice. And we both meditate every day. And so we know the value of practices. So I had an inkling that he'd be down for it and that it would serve us. And we know how practices support our lives. Already. So it just, you know, was really on that hike when I was just like, enough already. I mean, I can stew about this for another 2 years and be like, uh, he doesn't deserve it. Or I can really focus on what do I want? What I want is more intimacy, pleasure, and connection with him and with myself. Because that's the other thing I want to tell you, Suzanne, is you don't have to wait for anybody to start a sure thing. If your partner's not ready, if you don't have a partner, there's the solo Sure. There's a whole chapter about having a solo practice. I, you know, after getting a little frustrated from a few weeks that we missed our Sure Thing for different reasons, he was out of town, I was not feeling well, and I started getting a little edgy and noticed my tone was a little sharper. It didn't have that edge for a while. And then I thought, wait a second. Why am I not having a sure thing myself? I don't need him. I have everything I need. I just ask myself what would be most pleasurable right now and then lovingly, you know, give that to myself.

Yeah. And I think that's, that's amazing and beautiful. And I also hear that, you know, you and your husband were aligned in quite a lot of ways to start with. So you clearly, as you said, you both meditated together. You actually met on a workshop that sounds like it was quite quite expansive. You had an open relationship. I'm assuming there was already quite a lot of communication going on in your relationship that made you feel at ease with asking for this.

You know, it's gotten so much better since we've had the Sure Thing. We've had this practice. I mean, yes, and, and there was resentment. There was this, and there was a tone that I used to use all the time, you know, like you stupid effing idiot. Except, you know, not saying it out loud, but you know, the tone was oof. And, uh, so, so there, so yes, we had a lot aligned and yes, there, there was a lot, um, that wasn't matching and that we were missing. And what I found about a year ago, my spouse was sharing some things with me that, you know, we've been together for over 20 years that he wasn't sharing. And I knew he would share this. With his Zen teacher, for instance, or something. But he started sharing this stuff with me and I said, honey, I'm, I'm really touched and it really means a lot that you're sharing this with me. And I'm just wondering how come now? And he thought about it for a second and thought and said, you know, I think it's our sure thing because I just feel so close to you. So it's just, it just continues to amaze me what comes out of just having a simple rhythm, a simple practice, a clear intention.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think that it's not— sure, at the beginning, I suspect maybe it felt a bit uncomfortable because you felt disconnected. So was there a few weeks of settling into this shore thing, or did it feel like immediately once you'd set the intention that that freed something up in you?

Yeah, no, it was a problem. And I feel like, you know, cuz there was a, there were many weeks where it was like, I just wasn't in the mood. I just wasn't in the mood. And then I, um, read Come As You Are and learned about responsive desire and spontaneous desire. And that was a total game changer because it's like, okay, we, we can just, let's just go lie in the bed and hold hands. Let's just go lie down. Let's, let's just put on some music. We have a Sure Thing playlist, right? So, and some music that really kind of gets me going. So we'll put that on. I'll take a bath. I'll ask him for a back rub. I'll offer an anointing, you know, with, with holy oils if he wants to be anointed and just do something sensual together. And then, and that's it. And so it's not this pressure of, oh, I gotta like. Get my libido going. And what often happens is we start, you know, and we, and the, the responsive desire, which is based on context, right? And then all of a sudden I'm feeling like, oh yeah, baby, you know, would you, you know, stroke me here? Yeah.

Yeah. I just made a video yesterday about, I'm, I'm, while I'm in, in Thailand, I've actually rented a little recording studio and I'm making all these videos because I've decided I just want to up my game. And one of the things I talked about was responsive versus spontaneous desire, which comes up a lot in in the conversations that I've had. And it's worth, I think, reminding older women especially that responsive desire is about, like you said, some sort of physical context, some sort of contact where there's— where the person is. I suppose the thing that I always think of when I think of responsive desire is that we have to trust at this age that our body is going to respond to touch. Because sometimes if we're, if we haven't been touched in a while, and we're used to that spontaneous desire we had when we were younger, we just assume that we don't have a sex drive anymore. And I think, you know, what you've said, and certainly what I've discovered is it can be such small things to bring it back, right? Like, touch my shoulders, lie in bed next to me, and let's just cuddle, you know, like, kiss the back of my neck. It doesn't— we're not talking about massive, like, you know, full-on penetrative sex. We're talking about those small little movements and that small contact that we can have with our partner that just gets those wheels turning in our brain again and says, oh God, this feels nice, you know. And I think sometimes women don't trust that that's going to actually happen because it hasn't been turned on or activated in so they just think it won't matter if he touches me. I'm still not going to, I'm still not going to be interested. And I think, you know, what I've heard you say is like, it's those little things. It's, it's those little small things that, that can make the most difference.

And, and it's like, and without having an attachment to what is, where it's going to go, just enjoy like the touch of the neck, right? Or the kiss on your back and just See if you can just relax and expand into that sensation without having to feel like, oh, am I starting to feel something in my yoni? You know what I mean? It's like, maybe you will, maybe you won't, but just enjoy what, what that is and let that, you know, the pleasure wash over you and expand and guide you to what you may want next.

Yeah.

I think, and I think it's, we've been so conditioned. You know, with the Hollywood movies, with that, that the spontaneous, you know, anticipation, instead of letting it naturally arise, you know, within us that it's, you know, I was in my 50s until I knew about this. So, you know, doing this pleasure practice with my spouse. And so that was really a big key to, you know, notice realizing that it didn't take so much effort anymore, because it's like, Okay, I don't have to be in the mood. It's okay. Just be where I am, but turn towards each other and turn towards pleasure, you know, is really, you know, that's, that's, uh, yeah, that's the game. That's the game I'm playing. Yeah.

And I think it doesn't, you know, it's interesting hearing the way that you talk about it, the vernacular that you use, very similar to what I actually do, but I use completely different vernacular when I talk about my the way that I schedule in my sex life, the way that I create some sort of sensual atmosphere, the way that I try and make the whole thing creative often, because that works for me. And I like, I like a story, but everybody's different in this sort of thing. But I think, you know, where we're getting to is the same place, which is that it's, you know, putting that time aside for pleasure. Whether you're in a casual relationship, whether you're in a committed relationship, or whether you're just in a relationship with yourself.

That's right.

What actually activates and makes us feel, you know, more horny, gives us pleasure, and also is just so good for our body. I mean, I think this is the other thing. Did you discover, because I certainly have, that since I've done this, I just feel happier. I mean, people, people tell me I look better. I'm like, baby, mostly I'm just having a fun time with myself, but occasionally I have a fun time with somebody else as well. And that's good.

But, but, you know, there's actual, there's actual research to support how like that pleasure is medicine. You know, it's medicine for, for, for the body and, and, and obviously for the heart and for the soul. Clearly. Yeah. I mean, I feel more energetic. I'm doing things. I mean, I learned to ski. I feel like this practice and connecting with this part of myself that I call vivacious Viv, my wild, sensual self. You know, I'm, I'm training to be a black belt in Aikido. I mean, I'm, I'm only 3rd Kyu right now, but I'm hoping by the time I am 60 that I, that I'll, I'll be a black belt. I wasn't doing any of this, nothing, you know, before I started this, because it's like I'm discovering parts of myself and the creativity, it's unbelievable because it's, it's the, you know, in the womb, it's that same, you know, you kind of open up that funnel and then whoo, it just, it just, you know, flows forth is what I'm finding. Yeah. Yeah.

And as you said, it opens up the pathways to be able to communicate better with your partner because there's that space again, just to be able to relax and to be able to do that. And that your partner chose to share aspects of his, himself that he hadn't before shows how comfortable that practice has made him feel and how valued he feels, I suspect as well, by doing that regular practice. And also just how much closer it's brought you all together. I mean, look, there's no downside to doing this. I think that's the thing about all of this, right? Is that there's no downside. I know that some people— I spoke to a woman a few months ago who was in a very similar situation and explored reconnecting with her partner using Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent, which I'm sure that you might be familiar with. And it was a similar sort of exploration and journey into starting off with like, she didn't even want him to rub her feet initially. She hadn't touched her in so long. And, and he said, can I just rub your feet? And that's how it started with just rubbing her feet until eventually they regained their sexual attraction for each other and explored sexual pleasure together, but started off in a really small way. And it was about the two of them acknowledging that they just lost that desire and they both wanted it back. I think often what I hear is that the man, Suzanne Noble, is, is, is desperately craving intimacy and touch and some sort of closeness with his partner. And he doesn't know how to start the conversation without feeling like either he's blaming his partner for not being interested in him or that he's going to be rejected because he's always been rejected. And so rejection becomes the pattern that he, that he becomes used to. How do you deal with situations where one person is so desperate for that intimacy and the other person has just forgotten about it completely and is just, and is also, also sometimes can be quite challenged by even the remote suggestion of getting close. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Well, I know it's very common. And in fact, I was working with a couple recently, similar situation that you speak of, and it was just, let's have, and so the, I, I led an online course last spring, the Spring 2025 Sure Thing Challenge. I'm going to do another one this spring. That one was really to support me to just finish the book. So get it out in the world. And plus I wanted to get the practice out because we are in such dire and dangerous times. And this is a real practice that can help us regulate our nervous system and really center ourselves and center what's really true, and be embodied, more embodied in ourselves. And so she took the class and she was still resistant. And it was months, and he was the one who was always coming and always asking, and she was not interested, not interested, also had, has fibroids and has some discomfort while having penetrative sex. And, you know, so a lot, lot of issues that many, many women struggle with. And so finally she just felt like, okay, she wanted some closeness. And so she said, let's just have a practice of, of hugging each other every day. Let's just have a practice. And they were going to hug each other and they have a teen daughter as well. And so everybody in the family was going to hug each other. And my friend was like, yeah, but you know what? I'm the one who's always having to remind him. And even though he's the one who's been wanting the sex, right? I said, just be patient, be patient. You'll see, because this happened with my spouse and I. I was the one who was like, okay, baby, it's time for our sure thing. It's time for our sure thing. Now he's like, okay, it's sure thing time. What we haven't had, you know, it's our sure thing. In about a week, her spouse started saying, hey, where's our hug? Where's the hug? And then he wanted to add a kiss to it. And by this time, His wife was open to it. So now they have daily hugs and daily kisses. And so I would just encourage people to start with that, just having a daily, whatever it is for you, holding hands, having a hug, touching each other's face, touching, you know, looking into each other's eyes, having a kiss, having a little makeout, but just something that's regular that feels accessible. Yeah. And trust that it will, it will build, it will grow. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I, you know, I think that's a really, really great suggestion because it's about how you can get started. And often it's the getting started, as you said with the, that example, that's the, that's the key. If you are not willing to get started, then, you know, as I say, nothing changes if nothing changes. Right. And so, okay, so you got this book out in the world. Is it out now? Have you got it out now? Yes.

Well, it's, yeah, February 3rd, February 3rd. You can order it now on, on Amazon, the ebook. We got an ebook preorder and we made it into the Amazon bestseller in a few of the categories. So yay, we're getting it out. And the book is really, it's, I call it a playbook. It's interactive. There's tons of exercises. There's guided visualizations and The promise is that it will guide you through to have a reliable ongoing practice that will provide you with sensual fulfillment for as long as you want. And really by the end, you know, going through it, it's ultimately Suzanne Noble, I believe all of this begins and ends with loving ourselves. And so the more I love and accept myself, clearly the more love I'm going to bring into my partnership. Into my family, into my community, and the world, of course. And so there's a lot of practices about really falling more deeply in love with ourselves in the book. And so I'm just, I'm so thrilled and I feel like it's just a perfect moment to get it out into the world because we need practices that are gonna sustain us and have us continue to be resilient and return to kindness and courage. Because that is really what we need. We need to really amp up the kindness and the courage. Yeah.

So, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, you're in the States, so we— enough said. What a, what a total mess.

Yes, absolutely total mess. Yes.

Yes.

And what's happening is people are coming together in community and acts of kindness and courage. I mean, that's what is happening. And so that's, that's where we're headed to create the the reality that we know is possible, you know, here on this beautiful planet that we all share. So yeah.

Yeah. No, I agree. I know that a lot of people at the moment are speaking about the local initiatives that are taking place in the States, my son included, who lives there. And it is about kindness and it is about also, you know, getting back to the short thing about how we can bring that kindness back into our relationships. In a much more intentional way and making space for that. And I think that is the fundamental basis of what makes a good relationship is about, you know, creating space for kindness and being intentional in how we show our love for the person that we're with, no matter, you know, the depth of our love for that person. And that's, that's what it's all about. That's what's going to continue to sustain these long-term relationships because I think, you know, for a lot of people, the kindness is gone. And when the kindness goes, it's very, very difficult to be with the other person.

Yeah. Yeah. And it can be revived because in every moment we have that choice. You know, we have— I have the choice to be cranky because he didn't do the dishes when I asked him to, or I could be loving and trust that the dishes will get done. Is it better for my nervous system and my frame of mind to just be Okay, you know, I'd rather be accepting of what is instead of— so just knowing we always have these opportunities.

Absolutely. Ilana, it's been a delight to speak to you and I wish you so much luck with The Short Thing and we will post a link across all the channels and everywhere so that people can find the book. It sounds wonderful. I'm going to get a copy myself because it really sounds like such a useful guide for everybody, even those of us who are not in a deeply committed relationship, but still with people that we enjoy. So thanks very much for coming on Sex Advice for Seniors.

Thanks for having me, Suzanne Noble Noble. So fun.