Communicating Wants & Needs with Xanet Pailet

My guest today is Xanet Pailet—a sex and intimacy coach, bestselling author, and someone who really gets what it means to start over and reclaim joy. After 26 years in a sexless marriage and a demanding legal career, she now helps couples reconnect emotionally and sexually through retreats and coaching. We’re talking all about vulnerability, speaking your truth, and learning to actually ask for what you want & need!  Her new book, The Sex and Intimacy Repair Kit, comes out next year—so you're getting a sneak peek at her wisdom right here….So let’s call her in!  

Transcript

Speaker Dar:

My guest today is Xanet Pailet—a sex and intimacy coach, bestselling author, and someone who really gets what it means to start over and reclaim joy. After 26 years in a sexless marriage and a demanding legal career, she now helps couples reconnect emotionally and sexually through retreats and coaching. We’re talking all about vulnerability, speaking your truth, and learning to actually ask for what you want & need!  Her new book, The Sex and Intimacy Repair Kit, comes out next year—so you're getting a sneak peek at her wisdom right here….So let’s call her in! I'm so excited about our topic today, communicating wants and needs and vulnerability, but before we dive in, how about if you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to this point. 

Speaker Xanet   

All right. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Darla for inviting me to be on this podcast. I'm super excited to be able to talk to your audience and share some information around the work that I do and the important issues that we face as women. So a little bit about me is my profession. I'm a healthcare lawyer. Uh, I've lived in a essentially sexless marriage for over 26 years, and had a lot of issues around my sexuality. Sex was painful for me. I had vaginismus, which is a contraction of the vagina so that penetration is impossible. I was very, very disconnected from my body, and this actually happened at a fairly early age in my youth, and when I turned 50, I'm now 65 so this has been a 15-year journey for me. When I turned 50, I left my marriage and started a new life, and part of starting that new life was actually taking a really hard look at what was going on with my body and my sexuality, because I knew I was relatively young, still wanted to be in a relationship, and didn't know how to navigate the whole sexual piece, because it absolutely scared the daylights out of me. So as I took a deeper dive into what was happening in my body and identified some trauma that I had as a child, I really started to through a lot of the healing work I did, started to really and reconnect with my body and reconnect with my sexuality, and it just started me on this journey that was incredibly powerful. And it was so powerful that I decided to, I was working in New York, living in New York, then, with my ex-husband at the time, decided to, like, leave New York and completely just change my life all around and to take a deep dive into how I could, as I was going through my healing journey, how that could translate to me helping, initially, other women around opening up about their own body and their own struggles and their own sexuality, and being able to be, really be very vulnerable about the challenges that we face as a culture, as a society, and the very, very high prevalence there is of sexless marriages, which I think people are afraid to talk about, but it's a very high percentage. It's like 35% of relationships, or marriages are sexless, which we define as having sex less than 10 times a year. And that really became my journey to become a sex and intimacy educator and coach. And because I'm a lifelong learner and I'm a lawyer, I had to know everything. So one training program wasn't nearly enough. I have seven different certifications, from hands-on work with women, which is called holistic pelvic care, to also becoming a certified trauma practitioner. So I used all of those tools in creating a very thriving business, where I've actually had a huge impact on couples and women over the last 15 years. It's incredibly rewarding for me 

Speaker Dar: 

Well, thank you for sharing that powerful story of transformation. Your story. I just the first time I heard it, it was, Oh, I just got goosebumps and and the fact that you'll share with us is actually part of being vulnerable, and I would like us to move on to defining vulnerability Now in the context of women identity, because vulnerability is part of our title, so I'm turning it over to you again. 

Speaker Xanet  

Well, that's such a great question. So when I think about vulnerability, and I think about it, always in the context. Of relationships, both relationship with self and relationship with others, especially romantic partners. I really define vulnerability as letting people see into you. When I actually think of the word intimacy into me, see right allowing others to see into us. That is what vulnerability is. Vulnerability is letting go of the ego, which is very, very, very hard. Vulnerability is allowing all of yourself to be seen, all of the messy parts in particular because I think as women, we do a really, really good job. I mean, I did it for 26 years, like on the outside. I had the perfect life, right? A great job, great kids. I was a Broadway producer, you know, I had a husband who was a partner in a law firm. Like, everything looked amazing. That's what we show on the outside. Vulnerability is actually allowing others to see us on the inside, to show the truth, to be truly authentic to what our experience is, to what our feelings are, which is really hard for a lot of people, for so many reasons, right? We want to keep up a certain identity we're concerned about people actually thinking, Oh, you're not as good as you say you are, or, you know, Janae, you're supposed to be like the expert in intimacy. How is it that you're sending out an email and talking about the challenges you're having in your relationship? Right? That's truly being vulnerable, saying to people, yes, you know, my life is messy. I'm a human being. You're a human being. Nobody is perfect. Can we allow ourselves just to be okay with that, to be accepting of that, and to recognize in fact, that is part of our feminine power, such huge power. You know, Darla, I have a T-shirt. It's my favorite t-shirt. It's a workout t-shirt now, but what it says on the front of it is that vulnerability is sexy, and it is when you allow somebody to actually see into you. It lets their guard down. It lets them realize, Oh, it's okay for me to be human. I'm just as messed up as they are. And that is really a human connection that we really need to allow ourselves to be, to see and be seen in others. And it creates connection, it creates intimacy, which is really what everybody is striving for in our lives. 

Speaker Dar   

Wow…that was so profound. I mean, I don't even know where to start to unpack that, but I love the sea into us for intimacy, see into us and vulnerability is sexy. Definitely like your T-shirt, for sure. I keep coming back to really 35% of marriages. Wow. 

Speaker Xanet 

It happens really frequently for a number of reasons. First of all, you get in a long-term relationship, right? That, you know, there's three stages of a relationship, the first one being the most exciting one initially, right? It's the new relationship, energy, oh, I just met somebody new. And this actually happens on a biological level. It's not just in our heads. Biologically, when we meet somebody new and there's excitement, there are hormones that are released, that are dopamine hormones that actually create our desire to spend more time with that person, to have a lot of sex, to sort of let ourselves go. And truly this is actually Mother Nature in her wisdom, trying to cultivate procreation, if you will, right? That's literally what Mother Nature is doing. But though, that energy, that dopamine, which is really the the kind of like the crack cocaine, if you will, and it's the same thing when people are addicted to addicted to drugs or alcohol, there is a dopamine rush that happens that creates all of this buzz and excitement that that stops after six to 18 months, just naturally, biologically, it ends, and then we end up like, being like, Okay, so now what you know that that desire isn't there? Much that attraction maybe has faded a little bit like, what do we do? And I think a lot of couples just get stuck at that point, and they find themselves just going into this road experience of doing the same things. And for women who tend to get bored very easily, that becomes a problem. That's one reason it happens. Another reason that happens is because we're not really allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with our partner. We're not really feeling that deep emotional connection that we need in order to really have a satisfying love life. And without that, this just becomes, sometimes a chore, something I have to check off on my checklist. Yeah. Another issue is that a lot of women really aren't experiencing a lot of pleasure. We've been socialized as women, many women from religion and from society, like it's our job to please our partner, and it's their pleasure first, and not ours. So if we're not experiencing pleasure again, it's just like, put it on the to do list, you know, and then you end up doing it less and less and less. It's a very, very common experience. 

Speaker Dar  

Wow. Well, that definitely leads us into the next part of our topic, communicating our wants and needs. 

Speaker Xanet 

Yeah. So for me, in all the work that I do, communication is the absolute key to having a good emotional relationship with a partner or with anybody for that matter, and certainly a good intimate relationship with them as well. And again, I see this so much in so many of the women that are part of the couples that I work with, we're often put in this place of being a caregiver and being a people pleaser. And that, I think, really women, again, have been very in many ways, socialized to be people pleasers, and as people pleasers, our needs, our desires, our wants, are the very, very last in line. And, you know, I saw that in in my own marriage, and it owned my my own relationship, right, like I was concerned first and foremost about my children, and I was, you know, working full time, had a big jobs, but I was still first and first and foremost, concerned about my kids, and then I was concerned about my husband, and he was a lovely man, but had a lot of emotional needs. And so that was exhausting for me, and that I learned from my mother, who was also very emotionally needy. So you see the patterns that happen in childhood that we repeat in relationships, and so it was very hard for me to be able to express my needs, or, for that matter, even know what it was that I wanted. I just knew that I needed something different than what I was getting. And this is not uncommon, either. For a lot of women, I just felt really empty inside again, you know, had this amazing life, you know, from the outside in, but from the inside out, I was really unhappy in my life. I felt very unloved, not cared for, not emotionally seen, really had my needs put on the back burner. And I think that's a very common experience for women. So one of the things that I really one of the ways in which I really try to help women improve their life and their sex life, is to start really connecting with what is it that they want? Like, how do they want to show up in their relationship? What do they want in the bedroom? How do they want to be touched? What are their desires? Maybe around their fantasies, like, what is not actually happening for them in their intimate life, because that's actually my focus that they want and can't communicate about. And you can't communicate about those things unless you've created a fair amount of emotional safety with your partner. And emotional safety doesn't happen unless there's. Vulnerability on both sides, right? So that's the first stepping ground, and then being able to start to express your wants and needs and desires and even figure out what they are. It's it shouldn't be shocking to me, Darla, but it is pretty shocking to me, even every time it shows up, how many women don't know what they want, they don't know what they want in their bed, in the bedroom, they don't know how they want to be touched. It happens all the time, because we put somebody else's needs and wants in front of our own. 

Speaker Dar: 

I am so glad you mentioned that, because I am guessing that a large amount of our listeners are saying to themselves right now, I don't know what I want. I mean, I've done caregiving for my children. I've done caregiving for my husband. I've done caregiving for her, for elderly parents, and, wow, what do I really want? I bet that's quite the starting place for most of your clients. 

Speaker Xanet 

It absolutely is, it's it's always a it's also a wonderful experience to see how they start with, like, I have no idea what I want. And then we get into the work, and they're like, oh, you know, because my work is very interactive and experiential. So I'm not just talking to a couple, I'm actually working with them and showing them things. Oh, I like that. Oh, I think I want to be touched that way, or, oh, that didn't work for me at all, right? And so it's always so wonderful to see that transformation as they start to get really clear with what feels good for them. 

Speaker Dar   

Yes, I could tell that really lights you up. Very nice. So I would love it if you would lead our audience through an activity that could just kind of get them warmed up, get them started thinking this way. 

Speaker Xanet:   

Sure. So one of the things, one of the ways in which we as women get stymied in our sexuality is because of the sexual blueprint that we have, and by that, I mean the messages that you received around sex and intimacy as a child, and as you know, a teenager, because that's When these messages get really formed in our brain, and everything that happens, it's, I'm sure you all know in your childhood, actually ends up, you end up taking those messages and importing them, if you will, into any new romantic relationship that you have so understanding the messages that you received as a as a child, around sex and intimacy, and then also being able to understand what are your true beliefs around this versus what has been imposed upon you by society, by parents, by religious religion and by other types of social situations. It's really helpful for us to start to unpack what we really believe and to understand how many of these false beliefs have impacted our relationship around sex and intimacy. So what I'd like you all to do is just to think about whether this has happened to you as a child. So I'm just going to go through a number of scenarios here, and you can just check off the ones that really feel relevant to you. The first one is, was sex ever talked about in your household? Was sex talked about in your household, or was that something that was just never spoken about? Question number one, question number two, did your parents model any type of intimacy? For example, did you ever see them kiss passionately or touch each other or hug each other? Number three, were you allowed to crawl into your parents’ bed, to cuddle? Was there touch? Did you receive touch as a child? If you didn't receive touch as a child, that often makes touch challenging for you as an adult, were you told to close your eyes if there was a romantic scene on TV? You know how parents just like it. Covered their kids' eyes. No, don't watch that. Were you told that? Did you receive negative messages around sex from your parents, teachers or religious institutions? Were you shamed for that? Did your parents walk around naked in front of you? Was nudity an accepted thing where bodies and accepted part of growing up. Often there's a lot of shame around that, and that's one of the things that contributes to women's negative body image, which is another huge issue and a block to intimacy. Did you ever get caught or shamed for exploring your body or touching yourself as a child again? This is something that's very natural for children to do. In fact, this was one of my experiences that I got very shamed for as a child, and can have a very negative impact on how you feel around yourself and your body. Did you feel supported by your parents around the changes that happen to your body during puberty? This can be a very challenging and scary place for young girls, right? Either their breasts developed too quickly, like mine did, and then there was a lot of teasing around it. And my mother didn't get me a bra for quite a while, and that just was horrible. Or the right one, or, you know, a lot of girls, you know, they develop later in life, and then they have teasing around that. But again, all of this creates negative images, negative associations for us around our body, which impacts how we connect to our partner. Did you have embarrassing incidents that happened during adolescence that impacted how you felt about your body? The most common thing that happened for me and for a lot of women, because I write a lot about this in my book, is, you know, having your period and having an accident in school in front of your friends, right where you had to go to the nurse's office or you had to cover yourself like this is Supernatural. Very often, we weren't told it's natural. We weren't appropriately, appropriately, appropriately prepared for it. I think this is very different in the younger generation, but in our generation, I think this was very common. Did you have a challenging relationship with your mother or your father or and the last one is, did you have a negative first sexual experience? Again, that can also create a lot of challenges, and you bring that into your next and future intimate relationships. Gosh, there's so much just reading that list, I'm just like, Oh my god. How did we survive? 

Speaker Dar: 

Thank you for sharing that. For sure, we have a little bit of time for you to give us a quick client example. Protect their confidentiality, of course, but, but tell us about a great trance formation that you'd like to share. 

Speaker Xanet: 

Yeah, I mean, actually, I just had this experience pretty recently. I had a lovely couple at my retreat. They were both ex-military people, so they had a certain sort of mindset, if you will. And they came in, you know, they've been married for 12 or 15 years, um, they had two kids that were on the rather young side. They're great and we love each other. We're great friends. She's my best friend; he's my best friend. We do everything together. The only problem is our sex life sucks, right? And that's a very common experience that I hear and why couples come to see a sex and intimacy expert and coach and they really didn't believe that anything could shift. But a couple of things happened very, very early on. On the first night of my retreat, I work with couples over four days, so it's basically like 13 hours of intensive work together. I always focus on communication and vulnerability, and this woman was pretty shut down emotionally, but as we started getting more into being able to share and express like how she likes to be loved and how she likes to be touched and all of the fear that she has. Had around sex, and there was a lot of it, she really just started to break down in tears and be able to sort of release the dam that had been blocking her energy and her sexuality. And that's very common, right when we are closed down around our emotional connection with our partner in this part of her life, it also blocks us to be able to express and be comfortable and even feel attracted, because her concern was like, I don't even think I'm attracted to my partner anymore. I don't desire him anymore, and that's hard to overcome, but that was the beginning of a huge breakthrough, and all I can tell you is by the end of the weekend, so four days later, not only were they, you know, having lots of fun sexual sessions, but a whole so many things opened up for them as a couple, in terms of what they really wanted and learning How to touch each other. And for her, it was amazing. She had incredible transformation where she was able to really be herself and be vulnerable. And also, she learned she had this superpower, because we look at different sexual styles, there's lots of different styles that we have. And she realized that she was a very energetic person. And because she was such an energetic person, she was actually seeing colors, right? So, so, so you get it right that, you know, when we're in the spiritual realm, very often we connect with energy, and we connect with energy in different ways. But for her, it showed up in colors. So when she was we were doing an exercise where we were doing some, she was doing some breathing with her partner, she was actually able to start to see like the color orange, which is fascinating, because the color orange in the in the tantric energy center system, the chakra systems, which some of you probably have heard of, if you've done a lot of yoga, is the color of sexuality. And so she just was able to access her body and her connection with her partner in an incredibly powerful way. So this couple did a 180 very, very quickly, and it's just like, it's so amazing, right? People come in freaked out about what is going to happen this weekend, and they bring all their fears around their body and their body image and their sexuality into the room, and then they leave like totally different persons. And that's why I do this work, and that happens all the time. This is not a one-off thing, like I can give you hundreds of examples of this transformation actually happening. And so that was an incredible weekend. I left on a high 

Speaker Dar 

That is wonderful. Thank you for sharing that, and I think it's important that everyone knows that this isn't an isolated case. This happens when people let themselves be vulnerable and they start to recognize their wants and their needs under your guidance. So you have an exciting offer for our audience, so I'm going to have you lead us into that. 

Speaker Xanet 

Okay, great. a really awesome free mini course, which is called 20 minutes to better sex. It's seven bite sized videos that will give you a lot of guidance around how to have a better sexual connection with your partner. And it's not about different positions or anything like that. It's really about understanding the difference between women's arousal and men's arousal, the importance of slowing down, of taking your time, the concept of touching for your own pleasure. These are like seven major main concepts that probably, if you really think about it, they they form the core of my philosophy and my teachings, and it's available if you go to this website, which is how to improve your love life.com, how to Improve your love life.com, and that'll be in the show notes as well. But I'm super excited about this offering, and you'll get to meet me because I'm on the video. 

Speaker Dar: 

Terrific, terrific. As we wrap up, is there anything else that you're really called to share with our audience today?  

Speaker Xanet

I am so one of the thing, one of the ways in which I really help women empower their bodies, work through issues around body image and aging and become more connected to our sensuality, is I, I do offer, and this will be in February of 2026 in Costa Rica, a week long retreat, a women's sexual awakening and empowerment retreat in this beautiful, incredible private retreat center in Costa Rica, with absolutely gorgeous accommodations, five-star accommodations, five star food, hot pools. It's an amazing experience, very interactive with cacao ceremonies and sound healing and breath work, as well as workshops to help you really reconnect with our body. It's an amazing opportunity to reconnect with your body, to rest, to be taken care of, and most importantly, to be with a community of women who also share all of the same challenges that we share, and who can grow together. It's an absolutely beautiful experience, and I would love to be able to invite all of your listeners to come find out more about that retreat. 

Speaker Dar: 

Thank you for giving us some advance notice. So thank you. Yes. Thank you so much. Well, today I really want to just give you a big Virtual hug. It's been so exciting to have you here and to have you talk about a topic that can be rather uncomfortable, and you've just made it so enlightening, so full of light and love. And I just, Oh, I'm just so grateful. Thank you so much. Thanks. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai