Nurturing Your Intimate Relationships with Vanessa & Xander Marin

Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following, we break those rules, and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more satisfied in the second half of our lives. I'm your host, Aaron Keating. Welcome back to the podcast, longtime listeners. And hello and welcome. If you are new and listening for the first or second or third time, welcome. I am so glad to have you here. Both groups of people mean everything to me, all the devoted listeners and the new ears that are tuning in. It is not lost on me that there is a lot of media. I think the technical term is a shit ton of media out there that you could be listening to or reading or watching or scrolling. And it means a lot to me that you resonate with the conversations we have here on Hotter Than Ever and that you have joined us for this one. Hotties. This is another deep talk about sex and relationships, and it's a special one because Vanessa and Xander Marin are my guests today. And maybe you have seen their awesome content on Instagram, which is where I first discovered them. This is the first couple interview I have ever done on the podcast, and Xander is the first male human ever on Hadri than ever. After more than 100 episodes. Vanessa and Xander are a married couple. Vanessa's a sex therapist with 20 years of experience, and Xander is a regular dude. I think that actually undersells him because together they wrote a New York Times bestselling book called Sex Talks, the five conversations that will transform your love life. And they host the podcast Pillow Talks, about where they give listeners sex tips, relationship advice, and hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors. And who doesn't want to know what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors. That's all I've ever wanted to know. What I love about Vanessa and Xander is how open and honest and playful they are around sex and the role it plays and how it works in their own relationship. They use themselves and their dynamics and the things that have come up for them as one of the ways that they educate people about sex and intimacy. I love it. I find them super disarming and fun, and I think you will, too. All right, let's get hot.

Hot.

Just, just, just, just, just, just, just. Vanessa and Xander Marin, welcome to Hotter Than Ever.

So excited to be here as your first couple.

Thank you.

It's amazing. It's amazing. I. I just love what you guys do. I discovered you on Instagram as many, many people I'm sure have, and TikTok and other places. Certainly for my cohort of listeners, women over 40, we are largely on Facebook and Instagram. And I was instantly drawn in by your. Your charming, down to earth, no nonsense way of talking about sex as a couple. And also your videos are so funny and. And so honest. And you use yourselves, it seems, as a stand in for your audience's questions and concerns and challenges in relationships and sex and intimacy. It's just so charming and so super relatable the way that you talk about sexuality. And I think it really helps to normalize what a lot of us experience as kind of a fraught thing in our lives. Like a thing that we have expectations around, a thing that we have hopes and dreams around and needs and maybe don't know how to get those needs met or are dealing with a dynamic in a relationship where we're like, this is wonky and weird. And I don't know why I feel weird about it.

So.

So I guess I just want to start with, like, you didn't start as a couple doing sex ed on the Internet.

We did not.

What has your journey been? To become the viral sensation that you are today.

Yeah. I really had to convince Xander to join me in this. It took quite a bit of time. But to back it up, like, I started this business on my own originally, and it was because I have always had a fascination with circle sexuality.

Yeah.

It really did stem back from my parents very awkward attempt at trying to give me the talk. Like most people, it was extremely awkward. And I remember in that moment, all that I really got was my. My mom said, if you have any questions about sex, you can ask them. And I knew even though she was saying I could ask them, I knew that what she was really saying was, please, for the love of God, don't ask us anything. We don't want to talk about this. This topic is off limits. And that moment really stuck with me, like, but why can't we talk about it? I actually had a lot of questions. There were a lot of things that I was curious about, of course. And I felt that pain of knowing that I couldn't really talk to my parents about it. So that moment stuck with me. And as I got older, I realized, I think that this is my purpose for being on this earth, to help people get more comfortable talking about sex and openly. So I ended up starting this business originally as a psychotherapist. I went through the whole thing, got licensed, was seeing clients one on one. And I very quickly realized I'm talking about the same things over and over again, I'm giving the same information over and over again. How do I make this more accessible? Because there's a limit of how many clients I can see in a week. So I started making online guides and courses where people could get access to my techniques and all this information, but have that comfort, privacy of their own home. And the business really exploded from there. So Xander initially joined to do the operations end of things, like help me out, like building the back end of the business. And I just had this hunch from the beginning of us starting to work together. I thought, I think there's something about us talking about this stuff together as a couple that would be really valuable. And even though my training is in psychotherapy, where I was literally taught in grad school, and don't talk about yourself with your clients. Don't share anything personal. I thought with this topic in particular, we've gone through our own ups and downs. We've been together. We're coming up on 17 years in just a couple months. I don't feel nearly old enough to be in a relationship for 17 years. I don't know how that.

How'd that happen?

I don't know, but. But yeah, I just thought we've had our own ups and downs. We've gone through everything that you can imagine challenges in our own sex life. And we've found a way to, like, make it feel really fun and playful and intimate and all the things. So I'll let you tell your version of it, but, yeah, it took me like three years, like three or four years to really convince him to come in front of the camera with me.

Badgering.

Yeah, gentle badgering. Like, I know I'm onto something. I'm not going to push too hard, but I am going to push consistently.

Yeah, it definitely, it definitely took a while because the reality is I had plenty of my own hang ups around this. I think that I. I probably had the experience that many people have, many, many men have in like, coming of age, learning about sex. I felt like some of my earliest memories are like people probably in. In elementary school, once I'm in like fourth, fifth, sixth grade, like kids on the playground saying words and laughing about stuff. And I didn't know what it meant.

They didn't either.

For me, that created this dynamic where it was like I already felt behind the curve on the topic of sex. Like, you know, as a kid, you want to fit in with people. Kids are joking about things. You don't know what it is. So already it's like, ooh, this Is an unsafe topic where, like, I'm supposed to know more and like, as a man, you start to learn, oh, I'm supposed to lead when it comes to sex. I'm supposed to know what I'm doing. But then you're kind of conditioned from the very beginning to be like, oh, God, well, ooh, am I doing enough? Do I know enough? Do I, Am I behind the curve? So for me, sex always kind of just felt like this thing. Obviously it was something that I really wanted, but what I also really wanted was like, I just want to be like, good enough at it. Like, I want to, I want to have it together enough so that I can kind of fulfill on my, my duty to be a man when it comes to sex. But it never felt like a topic where I was like, oh, yeah, I'm excited to talk about this. I'm excited to kind of, to like, yeah, to kind of be, be public about like, yeah, I have sex and I feel comfortable with that. Then let's talk about it. So it took me a while, really a while of us talking about it. And ultimately it took me realizing that like, it actually, it was okay to talk about it initially, whether that might have been in therapy or between us, but actually, like, the way that I got more comfortable with things was actually when I asked for help and when I talked about it. And so eventually it got to this point where it was like, okay, I could slip, slip a little conversation in here or there on Instagram. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, this actually feels really good to talk about this. And people are relating with me. It's, it's not that playground situation where people are like, oh, I can't believe you don't know that. So, yeah, that was kind of my introduction to it. And I've realized that it's, it's been one of those, it's been really healing and something that's really brought us close together and been really fun for us.

I think that's so amazing because it takes a certain kind of relationship and a certain kind of communication in a couple to run a business together. And then beyond running the business, that the stuff of your intimate life is sort of fodder for a public conversation. Like, that's really vulnerable. And I just think it's really rare otherwise there would be tons of other couples out there doing it. Right? Like, I think it's really rare for people to be as exposed and self expressed as you guys are. And I, I think you're really doing a service to to people watching. I imagine women get a lot out of it, but I also imagine if men let themselves, they. They'll get a lot out of it, too.

Yeah, we're actually the. The next stage in our business or the current stage in our business is that we're really trying to make more content for men, too, because especially on social media, our audience has primarily been women. And we're trying to invite more men into these conversations as well, because, like Xander said, most men internalize this belief that I'm supposed to know everything about sex. I'm supposed to take the lead. I'm supposed to make sure it's a good experience. Experience. And there's this really intense pressure on so many men that I think a lot of us women don't really recognize. So we're trying to create more content to show, like, look at. Look at the different challenges that, you know, we're all going through. But let's, you know, let's make it more normal. Let's make it more okay for men to be a part of the conversation, too.

Yeah. And I think a lot of that is what is. You're sort of expected to go out there and lead, and your model is what, porn? Like, that's not real. That's. That's entertainment. And. And. And really the things that. That couples need to know is how to communicate around this stuff. And obviously, like, nobody is taught good communication, really, in this culture. And then for men to have to be vulnerable enough to say, this is a topic I want to talk about. Like, that's a. That's a big ask against the cultural backdrop that we all are in.

Yeah. Most of us are just totally terrified of vulnerability in general. And I think that's a big part of why we make the decision to go first in our content. Like, we know we're asking people to do vulnerable things, and so we want to lead by example and show, like, hey, look, this is challenging for us too. We're not super comfortable every time we go on Instagram and hit the record button, but we choose to do it. We feel the benefits of doing it. We'll show you how to do it. But I think that sex isn't really worth having without vulnerability. So that's a big thing that I want to teach our community how to get comfortable with it.

I love that as a thesis. Yeah. Because I don't. I don't know that that's what people learn growing up. Yeah.

No, not at all. We learn to avoid vulnerability at all costs. And I mean, if you think about what that looks like with sex, when you're not really vulnerable with your partner. If you're just focused on what is my performance or how does my body look, is my partner. Are they having a good enough time that they're thinking, I'm. I'm good at this? Like, it's just. It's disconnected. It's mechanical.

It's not too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how does the public facing side of your relationship impact the personal, private side? Because obviously you have a personal, private side of your relationship, even though you are. Do you are talking about intimate issues. It's performative. Right. When you're. When you're doing it. When you're. When you're fully clothed and miming sex positions or.

Some of my favorite reels to record.

They're freaking hilarious. They're so fun. That's. That's fun and everything, but you also have a real relationship behind the scenes.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Like, one of the reasons why we decided to write our book Sex Talks, was that one. Xander came in front of the camera with me. We started talking about sex, talking so much more openly in our own relationship and realizing, like, that our intimacy was deepening so much too. Like, oh, whoa, this is really great to get to talk about it openly and honestly. So it's affected it in really positive ways. And there have definitely been challenges, too. I mean, one of the things that we had to get clear on early on is that we made a no questions asked veto policy. So. So at any point, either one of us could say, hey, I know we literally just recorded that story for Instagram, but actually, I don't want to post it.

Yeah.

And the other person does not try to convince them otherwise. It's just like, okay, you're not comfortable with that. Sure. So we do that, you know, during the podcast with Instagram. Like, anything that we create, we allow. Allow ourselves to have that boundary of actually. I know, I know I just said that out loud, but it didn't feel very good, and I don't want that out there publicly.

Yeah. One interesting thing. We get this question asked over and over and over again on Instagram. So many people have this idea or this worry that, oh, well, you guys talk about sex all the time. All the time for a living. So do you ever get bored of it in your own relationship? Like, do you have less sex or do you want to have less sex because you talk about it so much? Like, does it become. Does it feel clinical?

Yeah.

And that could not be further from the truth. For us, the more that we talk about it, the more comfortable we feel about it. The more, like, fun and playful it feels, the more we want to have it. I feel like we have more sex and we have better sex as a result of talking about it so much and as a result of feeling so much more comfortable with that topic, with each other. So, yeah, I definitely. I think that ends up being one of the kind of, like, final objections that a lot of people have to wanting to talk about it. This worry that, oh, well, if we talk about it, it's going to lose the mystery or make it less. It's going to be less special or less spontaneous. But I. I mean, I'd invite you to try it. It's. It's. I. I think that, yeah, working through that vulnerability, which, I mean, it's really that vulnerability, ultimately that is keeping people from that and coming up with these ideas like, oh, I'm not going to want it if I talk about it all the time. That's just, like, a way to avoid having to push through that vulnerability. But, yeah, we let ourself feel those feelings, like, vulnerability or any feeling. Like, that's how we actually get through that and come out the other side. Like, we can actually pass through those things pretty quickly if we, if, if we just try. So, yeah, I would encourage anyone to, to try talking about it a little more because you're going to like the result.

Yeah, I mean, my own personal experience is that good sex begets more good sex. Good communication begets more good communication. And, like, if you're in a sex mindset, right, if you're in an intimacy mindset, both of you, then that's how you keep the, the ball rolling. Right. If you keep, if you keep your heads in the game. I think, you know, this is a podcast for women over 40 who are looking to live their best lives in the second half of their lives. And I think, you know, a concern that a lot of women have is, like, do I want sex enough? As my hormones change, as I head into perimenopause and menopause, or as I am in a long relationship, is it a problem the way I'm feeling about how much sex I want or how connected I feel sexually to my partner, like, is. I feel like we inevitably pathologize ourselves, like, wherever we are, it's hard for us to just accept where we are. But what is it that you have found about libido, long marriages, midlife? I'd love to hear your insights on that.

Well, I first want to say, we all have this magical ideal that we're trying to live up to, but we're not even fully sure what it is. But we just have this sense that everybody else is having more sex than we are.

Yes.

So that's. That's one of the most common questions we get asked, is how much sex should we be having?

Anytime I should. Should in there is going to get you. Yeah.

Whenever you hear the word should, it's usually not a good. Not a good thing. I'm actually far less interested in frequency than I am in the quality of the sex that we're having too. Because usually when people will say, oh, we're not having very much sex, I like to ask, okay, well, tell us about the sex that you are having then.

Yeah.

And a lot of women in particular will describe sex that is not initiated in a great way. It's not particularly pleasurable for her. It feels like it's way more about her partner's experience than it is for her. It's boring, it's routine, it's predictable. So then I ask, okay, well, why would you crave that experience? And even then, why would you crave more of that experience than you're currently having? Like, it doesn't make sense.

Right.

I think that we look at desire in really backwards ways. Like, it does. Why would we want to somehow magically force ourselves to desire this thing that we're not really enjoying that much? I think we need to look at the enjoyment aspect first before we look at the frequency.

Right. Right.

It's.

It's right. I love that.

I. My. The comparison I always make is with mushy broccoli. We love making food comparisons. We're both big foodies. And so I like to say, like, okay, do you ever find yourself crazy craving, just craving a bowl of overly steamed mushy broccoli? No. Do you think that there's anything wrong with you for not waking up every day just craving mushy broccoli? Of course not. But if we're really honest with ourselves, a lot of us are having mushy broccoli sex and beating ourselves up for not wanting more of it. But again, it just doesn't make sense to crave an experience that we're not enjoying. The pleasure has to come first.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Let's talk a bit about sex in a long marriage. Because I was married for 17 years, and the last 10 years of that marriage, there was no sex. So, of course, when I got divorced.

Things a podcast where you talk about sex and relationships all the time.

That is the fact. I call it my Rum Springer period. The period that I've been in for the past couple of years. I'm having a lot of fun to make up for lost time. But, but I hear this a lot, that I'm in a long marriage, I'm in a long relationship. Our intimacy isn't working. We kind of don't have sex. I mean, I myself even was. I said to my best friend, it's just possible to, to just not have it and, and be in a, in a relationship, in a marriage. And it's just not that important to me anymore. And she was like, yeah, sure, she knew I was lying, but for some people, that's not a lie. For some people, it's okay.

Absolutely.

But I'm curious what you're seeing when you're talking to people out there around this issue, which I imagine is, is pretty common.

It's extremely common. So there, and there are so many factors that feed into it too. So the pleasure is definitely one of the absolute top reasons that this happens. Another big one that comes up is a lack of emotional intimacy. I think a lot of us, we think of physical intimacy and emotional intimacy as happening totally, totally separate from each other. And especially with sex, we tend to compartmentalize it. We think of sex as just this thing that happens at the end of the night when the lights are turned off, the doors are closed, we're both in bed, and we don't think about how we've interacted with each other all throughout the day. And so that's another question that we ask couples like, okay, tell us about the emotional intimacy between the two of you. And unfortunately, most couples in long term relationships will describe a lot of disconnection. Our life has just turned into logistics, kids, schedules. The only conversations we have are, hey, are you picking up the dry cleaning? I've got to go pick up Bobby from soccer practice. Couples are not spending quality time together. They can't remember the last time they had a date night. And they're feeling resentful of each other for mental load imbalances, for imbalances in handling, like, household chores and responsibilities. It's like all of that, okay, is it really such a shocker that you don't want to have sex with your partner? Or if you're, you know, you're crawling into bed at the end of the night and you're like, who's this stranger getting into my bed? Like that you want, you don't want to have sex with them.

You're like, I'm. I'm married. I don't have sex with strangers.

I finished that part of my life. So, yeah, it's like, we need to look at that emotional intimacy as well, so that you're. You're feeling connected to each other, and even that you're feeling this thread of intimacy between the two of you throughout the day, so it doesn't feel like this enormous chasm between the two of you when you're crawling into bed at the end of the night.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that's right. What are some strategies that couples can use to reconnect and get that connection back? I mean, I imagine, like, it takes two to tango, Right. So both people have to be willing to come to that conversation with openness. That seems to be the first challenge, is to get everybody kind of on the same page about, like, this is what we want. And this may be not as easy as whatever your initiation. You did a series of videos on initiation, bad sex initiation. And they were so funny. The boob grab and all the.

Oh, yes.

Like, so funny and so real like that. It's going to take a rewiring in a certain way, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, when it comes to emotional intimacy, we're big believers in the things that you. The small things that you do on a regular basis matter way more than the big things you do every once in a while. So I think a lot of couples, when they're feeling disconnected, their heads go to, like, oh, well, maybe we just need to, like, go on a vacation together, like, find a couple's retreat. And, like, sure, those things are great, but how often are you actually going to be able to do those?

Right?

So instead we think about, like, what are little things, things that you can do on a daily basis that are going to help you feel closer to each other? And I think that's a great question for everybody to answer for themselves. Like, so that's like a little homework assignment for your listener. And I like thinking about it in different time increments, too. So let's say. So a lot of people in our community are really busy parents who, like, I barely have time to use the bathroom.

Oh, for sure.

So I like to think really reasonable. If you have 60 seconds, what is something small that you and your partner could do to feel just a little bit more connected? And then maybe if you have five minutes, what's something that fits into that timeframe? 10 to 20 minutes, what's something that fits into that timeframe? So, like, come up with answers for those time frames. But I'll give you a couple of, like, fan favorite ones. These tend to be pretty popular with a lot of people, so one of them is gratitude. I know we're all familiar with gratitude, but it's kind of, kind of feels like a cringy eye roll thing. Like.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, let me get on my gratitude journal. But research actually has shown that when we express gratitude, like expressing gratitude for our partner is one of the top predictors of marital satisfaction. And I love gratitude because it's free, it's easy, and it's really fast. So if you could just one time during the day, point out to your partner something that you appreciate about them, something you're grateful for about them. It's shocking how far one little sentence can go. And then another one of my favorite.

You want to model it?

Yeah. I mean, so I am really grateful for Xander always making me laugh. He's always willing to do whatever it takes, sometimes some pretty ridiculous things. He did a. A very cute little dance for me in the hallway earlier today, and he's just like, willing to, to be silly, make me laugh. And I appreciate that.

So nice.

So, yeah, another.

I see Xander's eyes because he was maybe wanted to give you one back.

Oh, well, I, I. Vanessa, I'm so grateful. I'm grateful for how you show up in podcast interviews. I love listening to you. I just love seeing you being in your zone of genius singing.

Very sweet.

There you go. Okay.

Yeah, it literally just takes like 10 seconds. It doesn't even have to be anything fancy. It could be. Hey, I saw you unloaded the dishwasher. Thank you. I appreciate that. But it really does go a long way. And then another one that I love is something that we call the 30 and 6. So it's a 30 second hug and a 6 second kiss. And research has found that those are the time frames that, that our body takes to release oxytocin, which is that the love hormone, the trust hormone. It's the hormone that prevents. Not prevents, but it promotes a sense of closeness and bonding. So I love that one too, because it's literally 36 seconds. Who doesn't have 36 seconds in a day? So 30 second hug, six second kiss.

It's so great. It's so great. This leads me to your book, Sex talks. Five conversations that will transform your love life. So what are the five conversations? I mean, people will buy the book anyway, but maybe you'll give them a little bit of a cheat sheet on it. Yeah.

So the reason that we wrote Sex Talks is because the advice to talk about your sex life, Everybody's heard that. That is nothing new, right? We all know that we should be talking about our sex lives. But one thing that Xander and I really struggled with early in our relationship is, yeah, we knew we should be talking about our sex life, but we didn't know how. Like, what are we supposed to say? When do we say it? How do we say it? And we definitely didn't know how to talk about it when things started getting challenging. When we, like, hit that point in our relationship where all the fun, new, exciting energy and worn off, and now it's like, oh, you again. That kind of thing. So we wrote the book because I was also very shocked. I started doing some research, looking for other books, looking on Amazon, and there was literally not a single book about how to talk to your partner about sexual. There were books about, like, sexual technique. There were books about talking to your kids about sex, but there was literally nothing for talking to the person that you are having sex with about what you're doing. So we wanted to make a really practical guide to break that down for people. So we cover five key conversations that we think every couple will benefit from having. The first conversation is what we call acknowledgement, which is literally just getting comfortable talking about sex, like, as a subject. The second conversation is all about, like, emotional intimacy and closeness. You know that we just talked about that a little bit, about how important it is to feel that closeness. Third is about desire. What do we need to feel excited about being intimate with each other? Fourth is pleasure. What do you need to, like, feel good to have a satisfying experience? And the fifth is all about exploiting exploration.

And the really cool thing is that not only are those are the five conversations that you need to have, we put them in that order. Because it turns out that those five conversations are actually, like what we would call the five pillars to a successful relationship and sex life. So, like, that acknowledgment one in terms of a broader relationship, that's more just like communication in general. Like, you need to be able to communicate and acknowledge. Like, hey, sex is important, and we need to be able to talk about it. But then really, if you go through that order, that's kind of how you can start to unwind. Like, if sex feels like a really tricky topic that's just broken in your relationship. Like, first you gotta have that baseline level of connection. After you're able to even admit that something is going on like that. That's the communication part. So you gotta have that baseline level of. Of. Of connection. If you don't have that, then in almost every relationship, at least one partner is not going to feel very open to doing anything beyond that in a sexual way. So, you know, and then, then there's desire. And a huge part of that is initiation and the way that sex is initiated. So, okay, so we have the connection, but like, if we can't even initiate.

Sex, then, like, if we're just doing the boob.

Yeah, if we're just doing the boob. Honk. Then probably at least one. One person in the relationship is not going to have much desire or be very open to sex. Once we get that right, then it's all about pleasure. Okay, so we're initiating sex, we can start to have it. But if the pleasure isn't there for both partners, then like Vanessa said, no one is going to want to be. No one's going to be craving it. Or at least the one person that's not having the very pleasurable sex is definitely not going to be craving it. And so once we get the pleasure right, then finally we get to the exploration where it's like, long term. You got to have a little bit of spice every now and then to kind of get. Keep everybody excited and not fall into kind of like a predictable or routine kind of rut. So that's sort of like, that's sort of like zooming out how we like to think of relationships and sex and how you would go about sort of peeling back the onion to fix what feels like an impossible problem for a lot of couples.

Yeah, I love that. And I love the, like, the sequential nature of it too, because you do have to build that foundation of like, hey, there's something up with us. We need to acknowledge, like, this stuff. And are you willing to go into this with me to try to figure it out, as opposed to like just bringing home a new sex toy and being like. Or bringing home Viagra and being like this will solve it. It's like, wait, that all. Every piece of it requires communication.

Oh, yeah. So many people jump to the very jump to the end, like you just said, like, they'll jump to exploration. Oh, yeah. The way that we fix this is introducing a brand new thing or like, oh, we need to have a threesome or I'm gonna bring my home or new lingerie. And it's like, hold on a second. If you haven't addressed, like, let's go way back. Like, if the connection isn't there, like, you're actually only Gonna make the problem feel worse because your partner's gonna be like, hey, like, it doesn't feel like you're understanding what's going on at all.

Right. Or there's no, there's no foundational conversation that there is something going on on. Right. It is amazing how hard it is to communicate.

It is. But you know what? If you can learn how to communicate about sex comfortably and confidently, you can talk about anything. Like, some of my favorite feedback from the book has been people who said, you know, this really is just a communication book. Like, I use some of the tools and techniques, like my co workers with my sister, my parents. So it's, It's. It's definitely a. A good goal to have.

Yeah, I think that's so great. So for the women who are listening to this podcast who are newly separated or divorced, how common is it for women to have the kind of experience that I'm having, which is like, my sexuality, like, came roaring back after my marriage was over and I felt free to, like, pursue my own desires and my own pleasure without the weight of all the fraught shit that was in my sex life with my ex husband? Have you heard this a lot from people?

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, sex can get really complicated in relationships, and especially if we're not talking about it, we don't have the resources to address it. A lot of people take the same path that it sounds like you took of kind of shutting down and saying, well, it's not really that important is that I don't. Who needs sex to live. And also, I think, like, as women, we're fed a lot of really confusing messages about sex and about desire, too, where we're supposed to want it, but not too much. We're supposed to be into it, but not too much. And so it is. It can be easier, especially as we're hitting these decades of life, too, where we hear all these stories of, oh, yeah, you.

Well, your.

Your desire starts to shut down anyways. It's just not that important. But once you've gotten out of that situation and realize, like, oh, yeah, I'm not. I'm no longer with this person person. I'm no longer tethered to the issues that we have. Like, actually, there's so much about my body and my sexuality and my interests and my curiosities that I want to explore. So it's a very, very common dynamic.

Yeah, I think women take a couple different tacts. One is like, I'm done with that. Like, no more of that for me. I have definitely Heard that. Or like, nah, I don't need men. I'm. Thanks, thanks. I'm divorced now. I don't need men or women or whatever it is that, whoever it is that your is your preferred partner. But then of course, the women who listen to this podcast relate to me being frank about like, oh, my God, I was a really sexual person in the beginning of my marriage and in my earlier life. Where did that go? And reconnecting with that part of myself has really made me feel whole again in a way. And. And also, like, yeah, I get to have pleasure. Wow. How amazing. How amazing. And what a thing to look forward to in the. For the rest of your life, if that's what you choose.

Yeah. I think one of the challenges that comes up in relationships is that we, we learn to tie our sexuality to another person and we lose touch with our own relationship, with our own sexuality. And that's when it can become so fraught and so challenging, we start to shut down. Yeah.

Especially if you're thinking like, oh, I'm doing this for this person. Like, there's no, you're not in that statement at all.

Yeah.

Which is the case for a lot of women. It's for him. It's. His pleasure is more important. I'm not getting anything out of it. So, yeah, we lose that connection with ourselves. But I think it's really important for all of us to stay in touch with our own relationship, with our own sexuality, regardless of what's going on in the relationship. If it's good, if it's bad, whatever. Like, we need to hold on to that relationship with ourselves.

And then in terms of how to do that, are you talking about solo sex, masturbation, exploration with yourself? Is that something you encourage women to do?

Yeah, definitely. There are practicalities to it for sure. Like, I'm definitely a fan of masturbation. I'm definitely a fan of self care and just having a relationship with our own bodies. But I also think there's, there's not so tangible aspects to it as well. So one example that comes to mind is a lot of couples struggle with mismatched sex drives and in particular with the woman who's the one who has higher desire. I know we talk all the time about men having higher desire, but we've polled our audience before, and in male female relationships, it was actually in 45% of those relationships, the woman was the one who had higher desire. And so a lot of women in these relationships will start to shut down because it's like, what happened? I Thought guys are supposed to want it all the time. He's supposed to be all over me. It's supposed to be running into the closet or the shower whenever I'm taking my clothes off. And so women will start to feel like we're not desirable in those situations. And I've worked with a lot of clients where the task for them was to recognize you're a desirable person, just exactly who you are and how you are. Like, how much your partner. How frequently your partner wants to have sex with you. That is not the main component to your desirability. So sometimes it's more like the mental aspect of it, the emotional aspect of it.

Yeah, I think. I think a lot of it is just like giving yourself permission to be allowed to have sexual thoughts or desires. Like, it's not. It's not like we're saying, oh, yeah, you. You have to go out, you always have to masturbate, or you. You. That's the only way to maintain this sexual connection. I mean, it's like the reality is, it's like, hey, it's you. You are a sexual being. You're gonna have. You're gonna have dreams sometimes where about other people. There's going to be sexual attraction. You're gonna maybe have sex with someone else in a dream, or you're gonna have a fantasy, or you're gonna see someone on the street who's attractive. And, like, I think it's so easy the way a lot of us think about relationships. Like, oh, I'm in a serious relationship. I gotta shut all that down. And so, like, we shut it down, we beat ourselves up over having any kind of sexual thought or having any kind of dream. Like, as if that's somehow under, you know, control that you can force yourself to not. But I think that we find ways kind of to trick our brain into shutting that stuff down. And it can just be as simple as, like, yeah, I had a dream last night that now that I'm awake and, like, you know, I'm remembering that I'm married. Like, hmm, that's. That's a little weird. But, hey, that was exciting and fun in the dream. And it can just. That can just be what it is. I don't have to beat myself up. I don't have to judge myself. I don't have to, like, go tell on myself. Like, it's just.

It.

It is what it is. And I think that that's also a great way just to. To remind yourself, yeah, I get to. I get to have that relationship with myself.

Yeah. I super relate to the associating my partner's desire for me with, like, whether or not I have a sexuality. When I was sort of in the middle of the, like, marriage, kids, big career, like, all of these things at the same time. So much pressure, so much demands on me. And we weren't having sex. I wasn't looking at anybody and thinking, oh, he's cute. I wasn't. I was like, my ex used to say people were flirting with me and I'd be like, what? Like, I had no radar. Like, it was off. It was literally like the switch had been turned off. And I do think that's like a weird self preservation thing because I didn't want to admit what was going on in the marriage. But, like, it's so interesting to try to be inside a partnership and then also claim, like, actually I have my own sexuality. That's. That's mine. And for me to care for and nurture. And it can look a lot of different ways, like you guys said.

Yeah, there's another food comparison springing to mind. It's like, imagine a chocolate cake in a bakery. Like, if somebody walks in and they don't really feel like having chocolate cake, that doesn't mean the chocolate cake isn't delicious.

Right?

Like, the chocolate cake is always delicious, objectively.

Some people are going to want it.

Some people are not. But that doesn't affect the chemistry of the cake itself. Like, we need to see ourselves as the chocolate cake.

I love it. I love that. That's. That's our pull quote. You are the chocolate cake. Um, what should women look out for as they head into perimenopause and menopause with regard to their sexuality? Because I, I just, I think a lot of women experience physiological changes, certainly hormone changes. What should we. Because we don't talk about this stuff and doctors aren't trained. You get four hours on women's sexuality and. Which includes the menopause chapter in medical school. What would you say as we start to sort of notice ourselves in the early or middle or even end stages of menopause, that we should be looking out for?

Yeah, perimenopause and menopause are so fascinating to me because on the one hand, I totally agree with you. Like, there is it. It's insane how little education there is. It's crazy how hard we as women have to fight to like, be our own advocates to find people who specialize in it. And at the same time, like, my Instagram is just littered with very scary posts about perimenopause and menopause, like you're gonna totally dry up, you're gonna have zero sex drive, you're gonna be painful and hate your partner. Right. And then I've looked at, there've been some really interesting cross cultural studies where in different cultures they see menopause as this incredible gift and actually as a woman's sexual awakening to no longer have to worry about getting pregnant, which is one of the biggest fears that most of us deal with in our lives. And they've actually found that in other cultures where they view menopause positively, they actually have fewer physical symptoms. So it's such an interesting. There's just so much around it. And I don't say that to downplay symptoms or to say it's all in your head. We women hear way too much of that crap. It's just interesting, like different ways that we can view this transition period. So. So yeah, on a just physiological basis, there are things that can happen as our hormone levels. It's a huge transition that we're going through hormonally. And hormones do play a big role in desire, in lubrication, in our mood. I think my nice middle ground for that is to approach it with curiosity, like, yeah, what is going to happen for me? So we don't want to go to the fear mongery side of like, my life is going to be over. But we also want to be prepared and kind of think like, yeah, what is this going to feel like for me? And as we notice things change in our body to treat them with curiosity as well. Interesting. That's a little bit different. Is there anything I want to do about this right now? Is there any research I want to find, any doctors that I want to look for? Or is this just something to like notice for right now? And also being like flexible and adaptable, like one perfect example that comes up is around wetness. You know, a lot of women feel so ashamed and embarrassed about their natural vaginal lubrication. But the thing that's so interesting about that is your wetness is not an indicator of your arousal. You can be totally turned on and very dry. You can be very wet and not at all turned on. So a lot of women just beat themselves up over this. When the reality is, here's a very simple solution.

Lube.

Lube is wonderful. It's sexy, it's easy to use. We recommend it for all couples and.

Plenty of people use it who are not in menopause. Like it doesn't mean anything.

Yeah. So like, let yourself just look at with curiosity, like, okay, this is something that feels different, feels challenging. What can I do to address this? What can I do to make myself feel more comfortable and more confident? But yeah, definitely educate yourself. Look for doctors that are experts in this and don't be afraid to advocate for yourself.

Yeah, that's such an interesting thing about wetness because I think men are like proud too if, if you are wet, they're like, I did that. Like, that's a direct correlation to you.

It is not. It is not at all.

Yeah, that's not. Not very helpful for, for the guys out there you're setting yourself up for. What if it's not problems right now, you're setting yourself up for problems in the future.

And the ironic thing is that men know this because they also get erections at times when they really don't want to have erections.

Right.

And they have times when they are really wanting to have an erection and struggling to get there. So it's like, yes, there's definitely some over overlap in what's going on in our brains and our bodies, but it's not a perfect overlap by any means.

Yeah. And we tell ourselves so many stories about what our physiological reactions mean. Right. And we layer so much meaning and weight onto so many things that, that if we could take it more lightly and, and not take it personally if your partner doesn't have a full erection or whatever, you know what I mean? Like where your partner's not fully lubricated, it's like, okay, this is just where we're at and let's like, figure out where we're going from here. Acceptance is the answer to everything. I really think so. This has been a really great conversation. I just want to ask you one more question, which is like, what do you want our listeners to know about what their options and their choices are around sex and intimacy as they head into the second half of their lives, whether they're married or single? I think what happens is we get told these sort of black and white things about different phases of life. And I'd love to hear from you what is possible for women in midlife as. As their bodies change and their relationships.

And dynamics change, Everything is possible. There's so much and it's. Yeah, that's really a message that I want to share with everybody, is there's so much to explore and experience when it comes to sex. And if we can learn to approach our sex lives with curiosity, with openness, with willingness, like, there's so much connection, pleasure, joy to experience, so I want. I want to help open people's minds up to what truly is possible.

Yeah. I would just say it's never. It's never too late. I think it's so easy for us to just get this idea of, okay, well, if I didn't figure this out in my 20s, if I didn't do this in my 30s, then it's off the table. But it really. Yeah, it really never is too late. We work with people across all age ranges and have never, never encountered a situation where someone was, like, too old to figure something out.

I've taught women in their 70s and 80s how to have orgasms for the first time. It is not too late.

That is really wonderful. That's a great place to leave off. There is hope for all of us. Thank you both so much. I really admire the work that you do. I think you're doing a great service to the world with your openness, and I'm glad to have you here. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If you loved this conversation with the lovely Vanessa and Xander Marin and you thought, oh, maybe this is an episode of Hotter Than Ever that I can share with my spouse or my partner, my. My significant other, because it sums up some things I want to talk about in our intimate life. Sometimes it's easier to listen to other people talk about those things than to bring them up cold. Please do just that. Just go into your podcast app and hit share. Share this episode with your nearest and dearest. I love it when you share episodes of the show because it spreads the message of openness and empowerment and pleasure and joy for women over 40 far and wide. And if you haven't ever commented on any of our posts on Instagram, start that conversation now and I promise to respond directly to you within a week. Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating with vocals by Issa Fernandes. I will talk to you next week, Hotties. Are you dreading the holidays like I am? You know, this time of year is always so stressful for me. There's always so many expectations that the holidays are supposed to be this super warm and positive family time. And it's always been hard for me and I'm going to do my best to have some really clear boundaries and actually enjoy the holidays this year. Who is with me if you're in, please, let's support each other through this.