Episode 57: The naked truth about emotionally sober sex

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So today we’re gonna talk about sex. In the last couple of next chapter calls, we’ve had a lot of conversation around how to increase our libidos, how to manage sober sex after years of being drunk while we had sex. Some of us come into sobriety and it’s been decades since we’ve had sex sober. And that feels very confusing.

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because it leads many of us to believe we don’t have a libido and we don’t want sex. We’d rather just punch our ticket, gray our hair, and become old women and hope our husbands don’t leave us. And so there’s a lot of fear and anxiety. And so today, I’m going to approach how to improve your libido through the context of emotional sobriety and go over some of the problems.

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that are preventing you from enjoying sex that have always been there and that have to be dealt with now that you’re sober. And where we’re gonna land with this towards the end is, spoiler alert, your sexuality is about you and your body not pleasing your partner. I’ll end with ways you can connect with the sensual side of yourself and how to stop looking at sexuality as, you know,

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tick marks on the bedpost. It’s much more about creativity and feeling comfortable and confident in your body and being aware of your own physical needs and the state of your nervous system. Because only a woman who feels confident and powerful and is able to stand in her truth is gonna feel sexy. So disconnecting your sexuality from your partner’s expectations is really step one.

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The first mindset shift you need to make is that there is no right way to be sexual. Stop diagnosing yourself with low libido or high libido if you’re in that camp. There’s no right amount of sexual desire. There’s just the amount of sexual desire you have. When we think of this in terms of emotional sobriety, remember that the circumstance is always neutral.

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It’s your thoughts and your feelings about the circumstance that are generating your feelings. And your feelings are what’s driving your behavior. So ultimately, thinking that you have a low libido does become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stop telling yourself how things should be and start dealing with reality. The only way you can change anything is by accepting it. And honestly, acceptance comes before the desire to change.

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One of the ways I have reclaimed my sexuality was to stop agreeing that my lack of libido was a problem. I stopped agreeing that because we were no longer having as much sex as we used to have when I was drinking, or we were not having as much sex as my husband wanted, that something was wrong with me. I stopped agreeing with that. Because that thought that I have a low libido and that I’ve become a frigid old shrew,

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creates a lot of shame. Well, shame isn’t sexy. And going to the doctor and self-reporting that, you know, I am yet another middle-aged woman who has dried up and shriveled up, and what can you do about it? That is not the way to get the juices going again. If you are looking for a pill to change what’s going on in your body, you’re asking to ignore what’s going on in your body.

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You’re assuming that your body is wrong. You’re assuming that you need to be fixed instead of getting curious as to what’s going on. What needs are not being met? Why do you feel disconnected? Those are the real questions. If you have no desire for sex, except on a deep level you wish that you wanted sex,

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I always would say, I don’t want to have sex, but I want to want to have sex. I want to be fully functioning and sensual and sexual. I want to have that connection and intimacy with my partner. But when it came down to doing the deed, I didn’t actually want to show up. So I had to acknowledge that disconnect. And while this certainly can be so multifaceted and be a reflection of issues within your

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It’s really important to get right with yourself before you tackle the issues in your relationship, to clean up your side of the street, as they say. And that requires radical honesty and a willingness to be uncomfortable when you look at the truths. You know, for many of us, the reason sober sex seems so vulnerable and even intrusive is because for so long, when we were drinking, we made a habit

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out of surrendering the car keys to our body and climbing onto the floor of the back seat and taking a nap. And as I’ve done this work, I’ll go ahead and share my brutal honesty with you. I gave it up whenever my husband wanted it because I was pretending that drinking made me horny. So it was supporting my own dysfunction. It made cocktails on a Monday night seem like less of an issue. It bought my husband’s participation in my dysfunction.

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I was trading sex for his willingness to ignore the obvious, that I was shit-faced every night. If I said I needed alcohol to relax after a stressful day, then he didn’t argue because I made it worth his while. Even I tried to believe that, but in reality, of course alcohol wasn’t making me horny. It was making me drunk and desensitized. I was completely disconnected from my body.

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And so I was in the habit of performative sex. I was delivering a product as advertised. And I was completely disconnected from my own experience. My mindset was get the job done, get my timesheet signed, act satisfied and grateful and intimate, slap him on the ass, but let’s call a spade a spade. What I was really doing was justifying my drinking that night.

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and making sure I was in the clear for tomorrow. Because God forbid, if I was too drunk to have sex, then we might have to talk about that. And my husband might be less willing to go along with me next time I ask him to open the bottle of wine and pour me a glass. I do wanna pause here and say that all of this bears no reflection on my husband. He’s a very attentive and generous and kind man.

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I was an Academy Award-winning actress. And as smart as he is, he can’t read my mind. I wasn’t being honest with myself, much less him. I think that’s how you actually pass a lie detector test. You got to believe what you’re saying or doing and think that it’s actually true. Part of my identity as a drinker was to see myself as a carefree, sex-loving woman. And so I pretended to be.

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I thought I guess I just would fake it till I make it. But there’s a difference between forcing yourself to do uncomfortable things because you know the reward is on the other side of your fear and the opposite, which is denying that your fear actually exists. The difference is in your relationship with yourself. Are you loving yourself or abandoning yourself, honoring your truth or ignoring it? In my case, as a daily drinker,

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I had long ago abandoned myself and I was ignoring my truth because I didn’t want to deal with my addiction. So it’s no wonder when I wake up in early sobriety that I realize I don’t know who I am or what I want or what I like. I’ve said before that early sobriety, I felt like I was just kind of in shock, like I had

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discombobulated, my nervous system had to heal, my brain chemistry was out of whack, I had no dopamine. So regardless of these truths that have to be untangled and these connections that have to be reformed in your mind, just understand that physically, for the most part, you might not be capable of having a normal sexual response. And...

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Now you’re relying on the old coping skills of just go ahead and do it anyway. And your inner goddess is saying, hey, wait a minute, what about me? Stop abandoning me. And you wanna do that, but because in our culture, we are so used to measuring our sexuality and relationship to somebody else’s needs, we don’t know how to hit the pause button and take care of ourselves. Because we think that

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everything’s permanent. That’s one of the first early lessons of emotional sobriety is to realize that the way you feel right now is just the way you feel right now. It’s not permanent. You’re not gonna feel this way forever. And so allowing yourself and making room for yourself to not have the libido because your nervous system is healing and your brain chemistry is healing and you’ve got a lot of work to do to untangle

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old mental cords and old habits and all of that, and your desire is not to have sex more so your spouse could be happier, but your desire truly is to become a fully integrated healthy woman, then you’re going to have to pause and deal with this. Allow for this period of turning inward and working on yourself and taking care of your own needs, giving yourself permission.

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to take care of you because long term, that’s what will allow you to take care of other people. And if you continue to participate in sex with your partner for external reasons, to keep the peace, to please your partner, to check the box, then you are robbing yourself of the ability to reconnect with your internal experience. As long as you are continuing to view sex as an obligation,

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or a transactional exchange with your domestic partner, you know, let’s have sex real quick so you can leave me alone, or let’s have sex so we can get it out of the way. As long as those are your attitudes, you’re not ever going to experience genuine desire. And if that’s where you’re at, and that’s what you feel like you have to do, it’s okay. Just becoming aware of your motivation is...

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a huge step. You can do this work and still have somewhat consistent sex with your partner and make progress. Being honest with yourself is what will reconnect you to yourself, your body, your sexuality. You can change the rules with your partner a little bit at a time. And I know this because that’s how I approached this. I changed the rules a little bit at a time, which was

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important because I really didn’t know what I wanted or what I needed. I didn’t have the clarity that I do now. This has taken a lot for me to get to this place. I didn’t have the capacity to be honest with my husband when I didn’t yet realize that this was much bigger than he and I’s relationship. You know, if you were raised in the 70s, 80s and 90s, you couldn’t help. We all internalized the belief that the female body

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is the primary object of male desire, and that your own desire is just a performance. It’s a reflection of their desire. We watched Brooke Shields and Pam Anderson and Britney Spears playing the role of innocent schoolgirls sucking on lollipops, seemingly unaware that their labias were hanging out at the bottom of their skirts. And we were conditioned to believe that sexuality, our sexuality, female sexuality, should be

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accidental, little girl-like. We should all be like a virgin. As Usher says, I want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed. I was still playing along with that bullshit till late in my 40s, believing that my sexuality was performance-based and subject to men’s approval and also compartmentalized, that my sexuality was just about sex.

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and not a whole dimension of my physical, mental, social, spiritual, physical well-being that exists with me all the time, not just in the bedroom. I had to untangle all that conditioning and make sense of my feelings and my body. I had to confront my fears about aging and what desire looks like. It’s no wonder I couldn’t get it up.

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or that it’s hard for us to get it up because we have so much fear and self judgment and shame and uncertainty. Those feelings are not aphrodisiacs. And while I didn’t cut my husband off completely, you know, you can’t change the rules without changing the rules. I realized that the first step in rekindling my desire was to admit and accept that I didn’t have any. I had to give myself permission to say no

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even when it was uncomfortable, even when it was a problem for my husband, I had to give myself permission to say no and go to bed without feeling guilty. The first thing I had to learn to ask for from my husband sexually was for him to leave me alone. And the way I did that was to be very, very honest and open and include him somewhat in the process. I let him know.

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that my goal was for us to have a fabulous, wonderful sex life where we were both satisfied, but that the only way I could get there so that it was genuine and real and authentic was to stop pretending, to stop performing, to stop putting his needs above mine and to start valuing myself. And I’ll admit he was a little crestfallen.

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When I told him I was going to start asking for what I needed, he probably visualized vibrators and edible lube. And that’s not what he got. But we had to start where I was. But being honest and allowing your partner to see you as you are and seeing that they can accept you because you are not rejecting them, you are taking care of yourself in.

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preparation to repair, restore, and renew, you know, your own vitality, they are motivated to see that through with you. And the honesty about this can be very connecting, even though it might not lead to sex in the beginning. Breaking the cycle of obligatory sex benefits them too, because on a subconscious level, they know. And I know that because my husband has shared that with me.

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As I’ve grown, he’s grown. He had a subconscious feeling like he was using me. And it felt icky to him as well. We’re all raised to believe that men are really simple and they just want sex and that sex is what makes them happy. Men and women are raised to believe that women are responsible for a man’s sexual needs. We’re instructed early on, don’t be a dick tease.

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We are cautioned that blue balls are a painful condition and only a heartless whore would leave a man unsatisfied. We are told that men need regular sex, and if they don’t, then they’ll be whacking off to porn or shacking up with somebody else. And so a lot of our behaviors, both men and women, are just conditioned responses to our cultural programming. It’s not based on biology.

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You need what you think you need far more than what you actually need. I mean, let’s put this in perspective and stop pretending that an unattended erection is somehow an emergency. Oh, your penis is a little swollen? Well, my boobs swell every month, right before I start hemorrhaging for five days. And the few times in my life where I don’t bleed for a week out of the month, I ended up growing a human being inside my body.

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and then pushing a 10 centimeter head through my vagina. And then I had to deal with swollen and leaky boobs and bite marks for a year with each of my children. As women, we are used to taking responsibility for the discomfort in our bodies. And it’s time we allowed men to take responsibility for theirs. I mean, go take an ibuprofen and a shower, like handle your own junk, dudes. Because the ideas that women deprive men of sex

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All the other rules that go with toxic masculinity keeps men from experiencing spiritual deep connections with their spouses or partners. Because we’re judging our relationship by arbitrary metrics of sex instead of the actual experience of connection. Nobody wins when we give our partners sex in lieu of our authentic selves. And just hearing myself say that out loud,

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reveals the programming, you know, men get sex, women give sex. I mean, of course all of us have this subconscious approach to sex that feels transactional and performative. I love the saying that happiness equals reality minus expectations. The expectations that men and women put on themselves and sex to

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quantify the happiness in their relationship, seriously deletes from authentic happiness. Which is why it takes conscious intention to become emotionally sober about sex. Because there are so many subconscious beliefs run in the show that you’re not even aware of. And for me, it was much easier to become emotionally sober in my relationship with my husband and other people.

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outside the context of sex. I mean, I kind of understood pretty quickly that codependency is when my emotions are based on his emotions and his emotions are based on my emotions and round and round we go. And I experienced amazing freedom when I allowed myself to speak my truth about a certain opinion and then allow him to be upset or uncomfortable or disappointed with that truth. And

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allow him to deal with his feelings without judging him for having feelings or feeling the need to change his feelings. But I had a lot of trouble applying that to sex because of the deeply held beliefs that I was responsible for real for my husband’s sexual well-being, that I was responsible for his needs. And that created a lot of fear because if I wasn’t meeting my husband’s needs, somebody else would and I was going to get kicked out of the cave.

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And so it was scary to give myself permission and time and space to start with my zero level of desire and be honest with it. And when you don’t feel safe, it’s real hard to feel sexy. So I had to work through a lot of fear and resistance to my own truth and allowing it to be what it was before I ever had hopes of getting the party going again. But feeling safe in your body.

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with yourself, in your relationship with your partner. Safety is what is required for you to connect to your authentic self, your sexuality. I teach the importance in the next chapter of monitoring your body for its level of stress, to become aware when your body goes into a state of stress. Most of the time, we’re all living in our heads and we’re just completely disconnected from what’s happening to us physically.

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but a state of stress feels like fight or flight or freeze. And when you’re in a state of stress, you are cut off from your sensuality, your sexuality, your creativity, and even love. You’re playing defense. You’re in problem-solving mode. You’re in worst-case scenario mode. You’re in survival mode. And that’s not sexy. But before I go on, I do wanna stop and acknowledge that

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Some women do experience sex as a stress reliever. I’m just not wired that way. The closest I can come to understanding that is like makeup sex, where intimacy serves as reassurance that my relationship is intact, that I am safe. It’s not the orgasm that relieves me, it is the feeling that me and my partner are back on the same page. And of course, that’s a perfectly legit reason to have sex. But what I wanna focus on

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is having sex under stress that’s being caused by the idea that we have to please and put out for our partner because not doing so would be a threat to our survival. If the idea of having sex is causing your stress, then you need to ask yourself if the reason you’re wanting to improve your libido is not because you wanna feel more sexual because you think that sounds fun and enjoyable and healthy, but

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because your partner wants more sex. In that case, what you’re really asking when you say, how can I improve my libido under that situation, is how do I get my inner goddess to shut the fuck up about her own needs so I can please my man? And that’s the problem, not the solution. The first step is to love yourself, acknowledge yourself, validate your own needs, including the need for not having sex right now.

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This is an invitation to heal, to integrate your mind and body, to purge your subconscious of all the patriarchal, toxic conditioning that’s holding you back, not just in the bedroom, but across the board. The first step is to accept yourself. Your libido is what it is. It’s not right or wrong or good or bad. It shouldn’t be less or more. Your libido is not a problem.

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A healthy relationship with your body is based on curiosity instead of judgment. To stop placing conditions on your self-love. To stop placing conditions about when it’s okay to love yourself and when you need to reject yourself because you’re not meeting some external expectation or arbitrary metric for being sexual or sexy or perfect enough. It’s a critical shift.

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to be able to see yourself as perfect just as you are right now, even if there are things that you wanna change about yourself. Because you really can’t change what you refuse to accept. As long as you are rejecting certain parts of who you are, you can’t be a whole integrated person. The stuff that you’re refusing to accept will just go subconscious, and then you’ll have subconscious emotions driving your bus.

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Being emotionally sober is to be able to recognize that there are uncomfortable parts of you and to accept them and allow for them and to be able to tolerate those feelings. Because if you can’t tolerate them, then you start doing stupid shit to numb and avoid and escape your body or your brain or whatever, because you can’t acknowledge what’s really going on. You have to deal with your fear of your own humanity.

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that you are a messy human being who’s always just gonna be who you are in this moment. You have to move away from this idea that you’re gonna get there someday, like there’s some place to be, and shift your focus from accomplishment to one of resiliency, the ability to get up when you fall down, the ability to overcome obstacles, the ability to experience happiness as the result of

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overcoming struggles. You know, that’s what happiness is. Happiness is not having everything you want and being able to check all the boxes and looking perfect in any given moment. That is not happy. Many of us have achieved a lot of external metrics for happiness and we weren’t happy. We were drinking through it. Happiness is something that you experience because you step into your fear. You allow pain.

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to heal you, to strengthen you, to help you grow. And as long as you’re alive, there will be opportunities to have pain and to face your fears and to experience growth as a result. We will be doing that every day until the day we die, if we’re doing it right. And so having a quote, low libido is really an invitation to heal, to heal these subconscious beliefs that are holding you and possibly your partner back.

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because your inner goddess is sick of being ignored while you’ve been pretending to be Tia Catan in the white snake video, singing Here I Go Again. Identifying with an image that you’re projecting, a more sexualized version of yourself, has disconnected you from your authentic self. So the call to action here is not to ask, how do I make myself wanna have more sex so I can make my partner happy, but how do I...

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reconnect with the parts of myself that I have rejected and lost so that I can become a whole, healthy, sensual, sexual being. And if that’s your goal, I’ve got some suggestions for you. First of all, recognizing that cultivating your libido is about your desire. And disconnecting that from your relationship with your partner is key. Now,

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I will talk about how to include your partner on this trip, but let’s just start with you. Start by tuning into your sensuality, the five senses and noticing small pleasures every single day where you are actually in your body experiencing little bits of joy. And I do wanna say that if you’re an early sobriety, this is going to feel a little hard because you are in a dopamine deficit. But...

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You also can accelerate your dopamine recovery by paying conscious attention to things you want to enjoy. And that actually rewires and reprograms your brain because the mind and the body are connected. I know it’s 2023, none of us knew that. But if you direct your attention to noticing how food tastes, noticing the...

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pleasant smells in your environment, maybe a candle or maybe essential oils or going outside and smelling the blossoms on the trees or the rain in the air. Start trying to take pleasure in the aesthetics. Set the table before dinner, make your bed and declutter your bed stand so that your room looks nice and do that in the rest of your house as well. Appreciate the colors that you see on.

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plants or flowers or trees or in artwork or even the color of the walls. Maybe repaint some of your home so that the color and the vibe feels pleasing to you. Notice things that please you. Pay attention to the way your body feels as it moves. Sway your hips with music or put on some Latin music and do some gyrations or.

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even just some hip circles and a gentle yoga flow. You know, one time I took a Tai Chi class and I was shocked at how sensual that made me feel. So movements can really be healing, somatic movements that incorporate your loins and your hips and your belly. Those can actually open up the energy flow into those areas especially if you’re consciously inviting

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the opening to occur. Start getting dressed in clothes that make you feel sexy. You notice a silky fabric against your skin, or you’ve got some jeans that make your butt feel tight and lifted. Maybe do your hair and makeup or not. Some days I get my hair and makeup done and feel like a freaking fluffed up poodle. And other days I can have a bare face and no makeup and feel very beautiful.

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kind of just depends on my mood. My point is pay attention to your mood and if you need a little lift, ask yourself what would your body like? Would your body like some makeup or would your body like to go bare faced? Just lean into experiencing your body in a way that gives you pleasure. And then you can begin to open up your mind. And I highly recommend reading books.

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You know, you might be into trashy romance novels, and I don’t say that with any judgment. I tend to get turned on with more intellectually stimulating content. That’s just me. But reading, as opposed to watching shows or sexy movies, reading actually engages your imagination on a whole other level and dimension. And so reading a novel that allows

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explore sexuality and sensuality, can go a long way in reawakening your connection to your libido. The approach that I use for teaching you how to regulate your nervous system, where obviously understanding what triggers you into a state of stress, that’s important, but the opposite, noticing what soothes you, we call those glimmers. So in polyvagal theory, you’ve got things that trigger you.

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creating stress or heightening your stress, and then learning to pay attention to the glimmers, things that bring you back into a sense of safety and connection. Start noticing the little glimmers in your desire that are the breadcrumbs leading you down the path of reconnecting with your sensuality. Notice when you’re in the presence of another person that awakens something deep in you.

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Not because you have any intention of acting on it, but just to acknowledge that you’re a human being with desire in there. Noticing when the sound of someone’s voice turns you on a little bit, or when someone’s physique or presence has a certain energy about it. Notice when your body responds, and take that as a sign that you are coming back online, that indeed your sexual response system is functioning.

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Not in a lustful, panty-dropping way, but just in a physical, human way. Notice when you’re attracted to people or places or things or scents or colors, foster the connection with awareness. Oh, my body liked that. Oh, I think that turned me on a little bit. Oh, look at me, I’m shaking my hips when I walk. It feels good to be in my body today. So just start.

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looking for the moments when you are experiencing little blips of pleasure, and then start trying to give yourself more pleasure. And last but not least, you also may find it helpful to get a vibrator and work on your sexual response system. But just remember that sex, sexuality begins with sensuality. It is not all about having an orgasm. It is about feeling connected to your own body.

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And then that’s where once you are connected to your body, you can begin to foster the desire to connect with your spouse’s body. The lack of interest in sex is not a reflection of a lack of love or attractiveness of your partner. It truly is a lack of connection that starts with you, but then you wanna work on building the connection with them.

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And for me, I found that the biggest bang for my buck in the early days was fostering intimacy with honesty, allowing him to see where I am and where I wanted to be, sharing with him sometimes some of the things that I was doing, sharing my struggles, even when it made me feel uncomfortable. And the only exception to that would be there’s a difference between.

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being uncomfortable because you’re doing something hard and stepping into a truth, and when you feel unsafe. You don’t want to force yourself to do things that because of the dynamics of your relationship, you are exposing yourself in a way that you’re not sure it won’t be used against you. There’s also a reason often where you’re.

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not wanting to have sex, and it’s not all about your response system. You know, this is complicated, sex is complicated. If you don’t feel supported by your partner, then yeah, you’re not going to want to share what you’re going through. And that is okay. And maybe you need the help of a counselor, maybe you need just some time to deal with your own feelings about their feelings. And I got to say that

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For me, my husband and I didn’t ever go to therapy. I learned how to tolerate my own discomfort when I set a new boundary or changed a rule or requested something that he wasn’t appreciative of, like I need to be left alone. I learned how to deal with my own feelings, but ultimately I was safe because as I look back, his response was always appropriate, even if it was habitual and knee-jerk reaction.

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It was something that we could deal with together and I didn’t feel physically unsafe. I didn’t feel emotionally unsafe. We were just two humans trying to do our best. If you’re not in a relationship with like that, then yeah, for sure, protect yourself. Whether you have to protect yourself just with space and time, or whether you wanna see a counselor work with a coach or get yourself into marital therapy, whatever, the primary focus here is gonna have to be

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that you are taking care of your own needs. You’re accepting responsibility for where you’re at, and you are willing to give yourself what you need, even if it’s at the under duress of your partner. It’s okay to ask for what you want, take the time that you need, acknowledge that you are not ready. But what I’ll say about not being ready, just don’t allow this state of not being ready to...

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to allow you to procrastinate dealing with things or to ignore or avoid. Don’t let not being ready put you in a perpetual state of limbo. Ask yourself if you’re not ready, what needs to happen to be ready to deal with this? Not to have sex, but to deal with your own healing and journey. And actively work on yourself

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connection with yourself. And if you’re not actively working on that and you’re just letting days and weeks and months slide through your fingers, I mean, of course there are times that you’re busy and you’re stressed and you can’t spend time, you know, working on yourself. But at some point, you know, if you’re living in a state of stress to avoid learning how to be in a state of safety, well, that’s not gonna serve you. So while it’s important to pace yourself,

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It’s also important to have a vision for where you want to go and have an action plan for how you’re going to get there. And another thing you can do when it comes to reconnecting with your spouse if you have the desire to do that and to include them on your journey is, as I teach in the next chapter, motivation is fueled by evidence of progress. So just like you’re noticing little things that

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that you experience pleasure with, little things that turn you on. You can also start noticing what your spouse is doing right, how they are showing up for you. Start a list of things that your partner is doing right every day. Just like you’re noticing small glimmers that register in your nervous system as pleasure, start noticing the little glimmers of hope that

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You know, your spouse is really trying and all the little things they do that maybe you don’t notice and you’ve not expressed the appreciation. For a long time, if you’ve been dealing with a low libido and feel like you’re constantly playing defense every time you get out of the shower or getting into bed, you have been stuck in a negative cycle of playing defense and start playing some offense when it comes to your partner.

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Once you’ve set the boundaries, laid some ground rules, let your spouse in on the plan and what you’re doing for yourself, then you don’t have to be defensive anymore. Shift your focus to the glimmers of hope, signs that your spouse is a full, loving, attentive, caring human being, also trying to do his best. And communicate that, you know, there’s more than just sex. I know

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Men don’t always want to hear that, but there’s ways to be intimate. Put your hand on a shoulder, compliment them in their clothes. Hey, you look nice. Or tell them that you’re proud of him for how hard he’s working or of whatever things going on in his life that he’s showing up for. Like acknowledge him or her. I guess now that I’m almost done with this episode, I realize I’ve not used inclusive language for same sex partnerships or...

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from a man’s point of view. Hopefully, if you’re still listening, you’ve translated the pronouns on your own, but I do apologize. But a lot of this episode has been about my own personal experience as a heterosexual woman. And I trust you all to be able to translate as needed or obviously quit listening if my perspective isn’t helpful to you. And so I will end with the hope for you that...

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As somebody who experienced zero libido and wondered if it was gonna end my marriage because I was making it mean that I was no longer interested in my husband, and I did a lot of work to untangle old beliefs, habits, and unspoken rules that I had created within my marriage that had to be changed little by little with respect and patience for my spouse.

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I can tell you that there is the other side to this. I feel so much more authentic now in my relationship because I am able to be honest about who I am and what I need. And because I’m able to honor my own needs, then I also am able to compromise and be compassionate towards my spouse. Because the biggest boner killer of them all is resentment.

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And when you are valuing somebody else’s needs as a higher priority than your own, you are resentful. And as long as you’re carrying that resentment that your needs don’t count and not acknowledging that it’s your responsibility to manage your needs and blaming your partner for the way you feel, well, that’s the cul-de-sac of toxicity and contempt in a relationship.

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And contempt is for a whole new episode, but in addition to restoring my connection with my libido, I’ve also rid my marriage of contempt. They say that contempt is one of the four dark horsemen. And having been through a divorce, I can tell you that from experience, contempt is really the beginning of the end. And I was able to heal contempt in my marriage.

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really just by starting to respect myself. Once I respected myself, I no longer had to disrespect who my husband was or what he needed out of sheer spite. Once I was able to acknowledge my own needs and be honest about what they were, I could stop hating my husband because he couldn’t figure it out, when in truth, I hadn’t figured it out yet.

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So let me know if you are interested in an episode about contempt. I don’t have that on my docket, but I do kind of have this desire to write a book called How to Heal Your Marriage Without Talking to Your Partner. Because so much of our issues, well, all of our issues, they’re all coming from within. And when you learn how to resolve your own emotions and how to live emotionally sober and take care of your own needs and...

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validate yourself and remove the conditions that you’re placing on the acceptance of yourself, then you stop being a whiny, needy jerk to your partner. It’s really quite magical and transformational, this whole emotional sobriety thing. And so as I end, I’ll let you know that if you wanna send me an email following up with this episode or requesting contempt or any other topic, that’s in the show notes. And then also if you’re interested in

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tackling emotional sobriety in your journey, wherever you’re at, whether you’re still a drinker or whether you’ve been sober for a while, and you’re hitting that wall where you’re starting to realize this isn’t about alcohol, and it never really was, and you’re ready to actively pursue emotional sobriety, then get in the show notes. I do a masterclass that kind of lays out the big picture of emotional sobriety.

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as well as talks about the 12 week program that I offer. So get in the show notes and register for the masterclass or you can click on the link that leads to more information about the next chapter. But no matter what you do, do make your own healing a priority. Telling yourself that you don’t have time or continuing to live with dysfunction or disconnect or just a lack of joy is wasting your one precious life.

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There’s a recovery quote out there that says you’re either suffering from your childhood trauma or you’re recovering from it. And it’s true. So you might as well start recovering because life gets so much better when you resolve old traumas, old beliefs, old patterns of behaviors and step into the most powerful, awesome version of yourself. Thanks for listening.

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If you liked what you heard, please take the time to rate and review the show so that other people can find it. I really appreciate it. And check out the show notes for any resources I’ve mentioned, including links to follow me on Instagram and join my private Facebook group where I connect with my tribe every day. I love it in there and we have so much fun. And finally, if you’re ready to redefine sobriety so that you can feel excited.

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about quitting drinking, follow the link to my 10 Days to Spontaneous Sobriety course where I will help you eliminate, eradicate, obliterate, cancel your desire to drink. Because looking and feeling your best is addictive too. I’ll see you soon.