Our Sex Life is a Disaster

0:01None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel. Each episode of Where Should We Begin is a one-time counseling session. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed. But their voices and their stories are real.

0:24This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're joined by Cody Sanchez, a Wall Street veteran turned business acquisition expert who's teaching everyday people how to build wealth through Main Street, not just the stock market. After 15 years in finance, Cody founded Contrarian Thinking, a multi-platform media empire that's demystifying mergers and acquisitions for regular investors, not just the ultra wealthy. Get ready for an unfiltered conversation about financial literacy, growing your business, and how to stop trading time for money. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff.

0:59We've really been having trouble connecting sexually. It just ends in disaster, basically, like anytime we try. I wrote my book, Mating in Captivity, because so often people would come to see me and they're opening line would be, we love each other very much, we have no sex. And that begs the question, why does good intimacy so often fade in people who continue to love each other as much as ever? This couple, these two women, they are completely stuck in an erotic stalemate. The context of the moment is that one of them is eight months pregnant, and everybody has been warning them about the expected decline of their sexual activity.

1:51You are eight months pregnant and you are feeling a time pressure and a fear of what sex will be like after you have a baby and, you know, the crazy things people tell you when you're pregnant and what your sex life will be after that. But it doesn't seem like this is just a developmental and circumstantial reality between them. Basically, the dance is that one of them approaches and the other one tries to do it right. But the word trying is what is complicated here. Because the moment she tries, her partner feels that she's not really into it. She then gets really upset. And then they stop everything and then they launch a deep three-hour conversation into the night that brings them back together into their closeness and intimacy, but also into a complete erotic dry spell.

2:48And this gets repeated and repeated, so they arrive eager to break free of this sexual impasse. So let's listen. We've been together six years, and we have this shared friend and we met. And it was very beautiful in that way. Just like, yeah, let's talk more. Let's do more stuff with each other. Let's plan a trip. Let's do it. Then we got married. And it was very freeing and very, like, pure. And what drew you? Well, I think that, like, initial metaphor, I always say it's like I'm an anthropologist and she's a series of hidden doors. So I'm very curious about her. I like want to know. And she's extremely.

3:47You can't say you because she's sitting next to you. Just in case you want. You're very, very interesting to me. And then you convinced me to trust you in a way I've never trusted anybody else. Because you're made of more tough material than other people, I think. What would be your material you're made of? What's my material? I think I'm extremely certain about who I am, what I want. I have a lot of words immediately about my emotions. It's very direct. I'm trying to explain myself all the time. And that kind of hides that I'm not really trusting of other people to do it for themselves. And so I've developed these ways to really do a lot of work for them.

4:54I'm very sensitive to how they're feeling. I'm very alert, very vigilant to their moods, and I'm very descriptive with how I feel and how I want to be treated so that they know how to get it right. I'm providing them all the data. And that implies your wife? I think a lot of times that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah, I think you are afraid of being misunderstood. I feel like you have a lot of words for your feelings and your emotions and you know what they are right when you're feeling them. And when you're feeling them, you have to say them. And I don't. Like, I'll be crying and you'll ask me what's wrong or what I'm feeling and I can't name a word for it.

5:46But you're the person who's, like, slowly brought that out. So you're learning a new language. Yeah. that you didn't know existed or that you were taught to suppress or that wasn't valued I think my value was that I'm easygoing I'm not going to make a make a fuss make a problem you have to worry about me and I get praised for being useful and helpful and kind and not making it about me and I think part of what I learned with that was like okay so it's just like accommodate everyone else everything's okay if you're able to like maneuver around and go with the flow and not be bothered by anyone or anything and what would you say are the circumstances of your life that made that way of being so...

6:56I think like my childhood. Yeah. Growing up in two different houses, the really chaotic stepfather and... Chaotic can mean a lot of things. If we're going to go to new language and more precision. he was more of a child than a parent in the way he acted so was not dependable in that role to me while also chaotically ripping apart our house and turns out he didn't pay taxes and then we had to file bankruptcy and like both chaotic physically but also like emotionally it was always like he was doing something wacky but in that house my grandmother lived on the bottom floor and so I just like hung out with her all the time whenever things were like a little chaotic I was like I'll leave go be with my grandma all that goes on upstairs and I take refuge over here you shielded yourself yeah and so why her of all people of all people why you I think you're unlike anyone I've ever met you're so fun and funny like I joke about it but you do have a zest for life that is very like infectious and I think I know I have that in me as well but it can be tamped down by my like pragmatism I think and And you bring that out in me when I feel like I am like a stick in the mud or like you encourage me to have fun in life.

8:42And I need that. So you're the stick and you're the arabesque.

8:53And what made you want to do a session here? How did that come about?

9:04well we've had a hard last two years and I think we've really been having trouble connecting sexually it just ends in disaster basically like anytime we try I will intend to have sex, like we'll like start connecting and then something will feel off. And however I bring that up will lead to conversation that becomes more and more emotional and heightened and heated. and it will end in us both sobbing and no physical connection that happens. And then at this point, I think we're just kind of avoiding that entirely because it feels so stuck and so pointless to keep trying in that vein. But that's awful too.

10:07Like, I feel like I understand the pattern. Like, I understand why we're both making these mistakes, and I don't know how to not make them. So tell me, because this wasn't always like that. Okay, it wasn't always like that. So what is a little snapshot of sex between the two of us, the on's and off's? What's been the history? what's been glamorous and fun and glorious and blissful and what's been upsetting? I think, I don't know, maybe I'll speak for myself because I want to hear from you too. At the beginning especially, it was so much discovery. I remember I used to say like I didn't know I was in a box I'm stepping out of this box that I didn't even know I was in having sex with men was fine well it wasn't that great but like it could be fine but having sex with a woman that I was in love with was extraordinary I kept being more stretched out and more amazed at how good it felt.

11:32I remember crying a lot after orgasming, just being so overwhelmed by how happy I was. And I think then it got a little hard because there was like a disagreement of how much we wanted to have sex. But we went to therapy then and it got better. What did you do there that was helpful? I think the things we took from that that we still use are like, it's always better when we are lighter. We're at our best when we're like having a good time and it's fun and it's playful. I think in sex, it gets too easy to dive into the like heady space. And then we're like in a deep conversation and then it just gets so heavy and we don't know how to get out of it.

12:23and when you go deep where do you go what exactly is it the same conversation over and over in some aspects and I feel like it's just like there's so many things that have like globbed onto it where it's like you are eight months pregnant and you are feeling a time pressure and a fear of what sex will be like after you have a baby and you've had a lot of self-body hatred that I think is like attached to it and it gets really like do you desire me and also my body is changing and will continue to change and then I think you have had a past assault experience that I think we had previously talked about but I think in the last year at least it has like risen to the surface more and that fear has is much more present for you than previously so sometimes like that comes up you get upset because you are picking up on my energy of uncertainty or nervousness in what to do next your fear is that I don't want to be there and you don't want to have sex with someone who doesn't want to be there and so I think those like fears everything else starts like raining down on them and so then we're like having these conversations where we're pulling these apart, but they're kind of conversations we've had a lot.

13:49And then it's nine times out of 10 gets to a place of, okay, we are connected again. But we always end that being like, why did we have to spend two hours going through that again? Yep. That's a good summary. And I think a lot of what I see as your fear is getting it wrong. and I've become so upset all the time that you are like very, very worried that you're getting it wrong and then your touch becomes hesitant and then I'm picking up on that and getting all wound up about that which makes you more nervous and not feeling super connected to what you want which is hard for you in the first place.

14:33Okay. But you had a version of that a few years before you got pregnant. And you went and sought help, and somebody said, if you keep it light, you bring your playfulness into it, it actually will keep you in the experience. And you were able to do it, which is really important. There's a part of you that feels like there's a timeliness to it now. You feel like, ah, I've got a few more months of woman before mother. And then God knows what's going to happen to me. Well, it's definitely feeling like pressure. It feels like we're running out of time. We wasted all this time not connecting. Yeah.

15:23Tell me a little bit about becoming pregnant. How was that? And how much has that had an effect? Yeah, that was part of the hardness of the last two years. It just took a while. We had to immediately go to the doctor to do it. We tried a bunch of times with increasing intervention and then finally did IVF. And it was very expensive. And, you know, it was a lot of hormones that made me crazy. Well, the IUI hormones that were terrible. Your whole life becomes revolving around this cycle and you can't plan anything. You can't travel and you can't. Yeah, so it sucked. I think we were both feeling really alone in different ways during a lot of it and had a really hard time.

16:27and tried our best to empathize with each other, but it was really hard to fully see each other because I think we were going through such different things. But can you have experiences where you feel more differentiated without that instantly meaning that you have to feel more lonely or alone? Well, I'm not sure if this addresses what you're saying, but we were being so careful with each other. I am so empathic towards you. I know you're trying so hard. You'd be out of your mind doing chores, working so hard, making sure that everything was operating well. And I'd be trying so hard to regulate my emotions so I wasn't taking things out on you.

17:17And we were just being extremely polite to each other. We weren't connected. It was kind of like roommates almost, like in a kind way, but very separate. Welcome to marital formality. Marital formality. That's how I'm visualizing it as you describe it. But you experienced it because you were going through something different. i.e. you're pregnant i'm not you're doing the shots i'm not and this is like our first exercise where it's challenging for us to actually that's what i mean by differentiated recognize this difference without it becoming distant and formal yeah and isolating

18:17so the question is how do you both have things that you know the other person may not fully see without having this have bad consequences

18:33because what you describe sexually is kind of similar i began to not know exactly what you want And so I started to become so cautious. I don't want to do it wrong, whatever that means. In effect, I become more disconnected from my own pleasure because I'm busy making sure you're okay. And it starts to become more caretaking than lovemaking. And when that caretaking takes place, we become emotionally entangled with each other, but we're not having fun. It kind of curtails the pleasure. we can be caring we can be loving but we're not able to actually let go which is the foundation for being able to enjoy it yeah I think that's sounds right I feel like we've before realized like the fun having fun together what you call light I call it fun yeah I'm talking it's not just like fluffy fun yeah because you've kind of highlighted the importance of the light, of the lightness, right?

19:44This is the opposite of any conversation, psychological digging, plumbing, probing, responsible, loving, caring, but not able to. You can't do the two at the same time. When you bring to your sexuality a level of emotional responsibility and caretaking, you will block the erotic energy that is the playfulness that then becomes translated into sex. That means no talking anymore of that sort. After, before, unrelated, but not in that moment. Even if you have to stop. Stop, put some music, stop, do some breathing, stop, do gentle touch. Don't start telling what's happening in your heads. Because you will go there because you're kind, loving, caring people.

20:56And you will think that you can't go back to the play until you've taken care of the bassinet.

21:09I want to clarify this a little bit because of course there is responsibility and worry and care in love. It's when the burden of responsibility becomes excessive or overwhelming to the person. It's when the caretaking takes over that I begin to sense that the very ingredients that nurture love are sometimes the same ones that stifle desire. Because if you feel intensely responsible for the other person, you cannot let go. Letting go, surrender, is an experience of freedom and unselfconsciousness. If you're busy making sure the other person is okay, you cannot actually enter inside yourself. to surrender.

22:04That doesn't mean that one has to become careless. It's a real gradation. And some people understand that there is a way in which they love that makes it harder for them to make love to the person they love. And this is what I think about when I listen to them. It's like the kind of connection that they are cultivating brings the emotional security that they need. But sometimes what makes us feel emotionally secure is not the same as what makes us feel sexually excited. And that's when they say the lightness is so important to them. Because the lightness means that we are being playful, mischievous, curious.

22:46And that lightness creates a certain differentiation, a certain space between them that then allows them to come close. It's difficult to go inside another. I'm not talking about orifices. I'm talking about the universe of another. when you are already inside.

23:06We are in the midst of our session and there is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break, so stay with us.

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24:31Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. But how? It seems like sometimes I have such a bad feeling. I'm so overwhelmed. if you took her hand now when you feel that overwhelm where would you put her hand because you were having a moment of it right now too right she's giving me something to do there's more thing i need to do i don't know how to get to it i can't even consider the thought of it because i'm instantly overwhelmed by the idea that i can't do it so and where do you put her when you're overwhelmed.

25:37Okay. And then, you want to lean your head in it. All right, let it go. Let your head lean in her hand. And then stop checking to see how she's doing. Don't check, is she okay? Is it okay? Am I asking too much? Am I too much? Stop thinking about her for a second, if you can.

26:11now you just went back to check on her stop checking on her

26:20and what I just said you can tell her too are you okay are you worried about yourself no let her know that you don't need that kind of caretaking in the moment it's okay You don't have to worry about me right now.

26:42Why did you take the hand off? Because I wanted to be able to check in on her.

26:54We're going to have a little box for coins. And every time you go to check on her, you're going to put coins in the box. Oh, we'll be retired soon. Huh? We'll have our retirement soon. Yes, okay.

27:12I don't know. It's like I feel like I already take up so much of the space being taken care of. Could it be possible that when you actually stop, you take more space?

27:31if you take the hand do it again so you put your hand you put it on your face right and then you lean your face on it and then you can close your eyes if you want that way it may help you a little bit more to not be so focused on her and then you realize I'm agitated and I'm just going to stay with the sensation. I just need to bring me back in my body. So I'm going to breathe. I'm going to use the hand because I'm resting on it and it just feels solid and I can let the weight of my head lean on her. And that leaning brings a lot of trust and safety because I'm not all alone. I'm just enjoying the feel of this.

28:23And by the way, you can move the hand. Because the whole effort for you is to not begin to try to think about any of this. Just, it's okay. We get taken out of our body and we go back in. And we go back in through touch, through breath, through movement. And that is how you keep this contained.

28:51How much of this have you been able to hear now? I think a lot. Tell me what you hear. Well, that it really needs to be protected from the emotional digging, that that's very threatening to the space that it needs to be. I think that feels really helpful. When you're having a big emotional reaction, my instinct is to, like, guard myself. And that makes you want to check on me more. What do you mean by guard? Like, I get overwhelmed. When I'm mad. When you're mad. Sometimes I get overwhelmed when you're so upset because you're so sad. It just feels so bad to watch that, that I feel helpless and that I'm responsible and that I've caused this pain for you and don't want to sit in that bad feeling.