Smart Sex, Smart Love with Dr Joe Kort
Psychotherapist, life coach and author, Dr Joe Kort is breaking through the taboos of the most intimate of subjects, to bring leading experts together to talk all things sex and relationships. There’s always room for improving sex and together, Joe Kort and his guests delve deeper into the most personal of human behavior, getting right under the covers to discuss the different paths we take towards pleasure. #pleasure #sex https://www.facebook.com/joekort/ https://twitter.com/drjoekort www.JoeKort.com
Smart Sex, Smart Love with Dr Joe Kort
Why Sex Is Never Just Sex with Juliane Maxwald
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Juliane Maxwald is a licensed psychoanalyst and AASECT certified sex therapist whose work focuses on the deeper psychological dynamics shaping sexuality, desire, and relationships. With over 15 years of experience, she integrates psychoanalytic theory with modern sex therapy to help individuals and couples understand how unconscious patterns, attachment, and past experiences influence their intimate lives.
In this conversation, Juliane and Dr. Joe Kort explore the idea that sex is more than behavior, it is a window into the unconscious. Juliane shares how desire, arousal, and even sexual struggles often reflect deeper emotional patterns, including unresolved trauma, relational dynamics, and internalized shame. She introduces the concept of desire discrepancy and explains how differences in libido are rarely random, but instead reveal important insights about connection, stress, and personal history.
They also discuss infidelity through a psychological lens, challenging the idea that it is simply about betrayal or attraction to another person. Instead, they explore what affairs can represent emotionally, how couples can repair and grow from them, and why major life transitions often trigger these experiences. The conversation also touches on shame, ethical non-monogamy, and how open communication plays a critical role in both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships.
Together, they introduce the concept of outercourse, expanding the definition of sex beyond intercourse and encouraging a more flexible, creative, and individualized approach to intimacy. They discuss how rigid sexual scripts can create pressure and disconnection, and why redefining sex can help people experience more freedom, connection, and authenticity.
Listen to this Smart Sex, Smart Love episode as Dr. Joe Kort talks with Juliane Maxwald about the unconscious meaning of sexuality, navigating desire and infidelity, and why rethinking sex can lead to deeper understanding and transformation.
Hi everybody. Welcome to Smart sex, smart love, where talking about sex goes beyond the taboo and talking about love goes beyond the honeymoon. My guest today is Juliane Maxwald a licensed psychoanalyst and asect certified sex therapist based in New York specializing in sexuality trauma and relational dynamics. She has over 15 years of experience working with individuals and couples, and she teaches and supervises nationally across psychoanalytic and sex therapy settings. Juliane is also the author of psychoanalytic sex therapy, exploring the unconscious life of sexuality, where she bridges depth psychology and modern sex therapy to help us understand the many of the struggles we experience around intimacy, desire and relationships that are not just problems to fix, but expressions of deeper emotional patterns. Her work focuses on helping people understand what's happening beneath the surface, how sexuality, relationships and emotional life are deeply connected, and how that understanding can lead to meaningful change. Today we're going to be talking about relationships, desire, infidelity, and some of the deeper psychological dynamics that shape our intimate lives, and we may also explore the concept of outer course, which is part of the work she and I have been developing together. Welcome Juliane.
JULIANE MAXWALD:It's so nice to be here. Thanks, Joe.
JOE KORT:Yes, and so I'm so glad to have you. Psycho analytic theory is what I was originally trained in, you know, which now we call psychodynamic a little bit more too. But maybe you could tell the audience what you mean when you say psycho psychoanalysis with sex therapy.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yes, absolutely. So my training is primarily in psychoanalysis. That's kind of been my formal training. But along the way, I've done lots of other kinds of work, which is more behavioral couples therapy training, and then, most recently, sex their trauma therapy training, and most recently, sex therapy training. And so this is really, this book was really my way of bringing those two worlds together and just talking about through cases, all of the ways that are unconscious or the things that we might not really know about ourselves show up in in sex and sexuality. Like, I always like to say that there's so much more to the story than the behavior, the symptom that's showing up in sex. And I think of sex as the stage where all of our relational attachment issues, surface, unresolved trauma, surface, power dynamic. Surface, like there's so much underneath the behavior and the symptom of sex, it's the stage. It's not the whole story.
JOE KORT:That's so well said. What kind of pushback? If I could ask you, did you get from other psychoanalysts, and did you get any?
JULIANE MAXWALD:I did, and maybe not so much pushback, but misunderstanding, maybe a little bit of judgment. I mean, the psychoanalytic world is very thought based, and I love that about psychoanalysis, but it doesn't always focus so much on, on, maybe, like a practical application of, of of life or behavior, and certainly they tend to avoid sex and sexuality. And so when I was in my training, we talked about all the other emotions, about love, about aggression, about frustration, anxiety, for sure, but sex was always I felt left off of the table, and so I had a real interest in pursuing that, independent of the training that I was getting there.
JOE KORT:I think it's great. I'm glad you did that, because I know psychoanalytic theory. I love it. It doesn't always deal it talks about sex, and it can help people understand what sexual behaviors mean, but they don't talk about the practical steps of sex therapy, do they?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Right. That's right. And that's actually what I really love about sex therapy, is that it dives into the nitty gritty of sex. And there's a way that sex therapists can normalize sexual experience. Are not intimidated to talk specifically, directly about sexual acts, sexual you know, problems or issues, and I think that takes a real commitment to a kind of training where you normalize that and you feel comfortable talking about all of the many layers of sex.
JOE KORT:Now, in your book psychoanalytic sex therapy, you talk about sexuality as a window into the unconscious. Can you tell us what that means?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yes. So I think of the unconscious as a kind of language of the psyche, and that language gets expressed most easily through sex or certainly shows up in sex, because sex is a place where, where our our it's hard to fake in sex. Our desires sort of come to the surface in sex. Our insecurities show up in sex. We feel most exposed, in many ways, most vulnerable when it comes to sex and our sex lives, and so to me, sex is a portal, really, into the unconscious. It's just a pipeline. In the same way that dreams are, sex is is a way, if you're willing to explore it and get curious and interested in all of the ways that sex can be confusing. Sex can be contradictory. Sex can be overwhelming. There's a there's a window into understanding yourself on a deeper level.
JOE KORT:I love it because you it's aligned so much of the way I think of there's a non sexual narrative that can help people understand themselves by by taking the non sexual narrative from what you what your turn ons are, is that what you mean?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yes, absolutely. Like, if people really get curious about, why is this fantasy turned me on? Or why do I have shame around this particular thing that I'm interested in? Or, Why do I shut down, you know, in sex, or when certain sexual acts are being, you know are I'm being invited into, there's such a window into early relational patterns, power struggles, longings, insecurities, inhibitions, it's all there. And I think what your work really does, well, I love your work so much is you are not afraid to sort of turn the light on subjects that would otherwise make some people feel uncomfortable, and you ask us all you know or not even ask us, but just show us the ways that sex does not fit into a neat box.
JOE KORT:Yes, right, It does not. It's so nuanced. We both know this, right, and so confusing to people, and so complex, and people want to make it like it's so simple and it is not.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Right, right, absolutely.
JOE KORT:What are some of the common stories that you see the psyche telling through someone's sexuality that you see in your office?
JULIANE MAXWALD:One thing that I see a lot is desire discrepancy, or the ways that one person might might shut down sexually. And there's so many reasons for this, and I see it across the board with women and men or, you know, gay or straight people, and there's usually a wider context for why like desire usually doesn't shut down for just a random reason. There's usually there a bigger story around that, and that could be as simple as stress, you know, in their lives, whether that's work or family or illness, you know, health related concerns, or it could be something a little more complicated, and that you don't feel seen in your relationship, or you or you're holding on to resentments from a long time ago, or you have unresolved issues from your childhood around pleasure or around slowing down, or around Connecting to your body or around desire, and so that's one of the very, very common issues that I see show up. And what I find is that most of the time, couples and or individuals were just never really given the language to talk accurately about sex. They weren't really given the opportunity to understand that sex is so much more than just what we do with our bodies. It really taps into some of our deepest longings, our deepest fears, our deepest insecurities, and so much of that gets laid down in our early experiences at home, in our families and our communities. You know, religiously, politically, socially, like sex is a very, very layered experience, and it all shows up.
JOE KORT:And this is a perfect time to ask you about to describe desire discrepancy, which, by the way, a lot of people don't know, most couples have where one has a higher desire and one has a lower desire, and you talk about it as a place where arousal and attachment collide. Can you explain?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yes, well, it's so to sort of jump off what, what you just described is desire. Discrepancy can mean a lot of different things. Desire and arousal show up differently for certain people. Some people might really under a lot of stress. Some people might turn towards sex or intimacy or or arousal as a way of not necessarily coping, but as an expression of pleasure as a way to to deal in, I guess, in a sense, with the stressful parts of life, where, for some other people that might completely shut them down, where they might be somebody with more of a responsive desire, where the context of their of the sexual experience matters. And so there's all different kinds of discrepancies that show up. I mean, it could be where one person identifies more as kinky, whereas another person, you know, doesn't feel comfortable exploring, you know, more kinky or BDSM related activities, or it could just be, you know, somebody's arousal pattern is different, like they, you know, sex every couple weeks is enough, whereas, for some people, sex a couple times a week is, you know, is more of of what feels right for them.
JOE KORT:And you also talk about how couples can move from frustration and pressure into curiosity and connection when talking about desire, can you tell us how you do that as a therapist.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Right, well, so that is really giving people the opportunity to see desire as something more than just frequency of sex, and to really help people kind of slow down a little bit and get reflective or get curious around. Well, what does sex actually mean to you? Is it a way to connect to your partner in a loving, safe way? Is it a way to be rebellious and a little defiant? Is it a way to be playful and exploratory? You know, sex means so many different things to everybody, really, and so inviting couples to just slow down a little bit talk about their relationship to sex, what it means for them, and how that gets negotiated between you and your partner, like there's so Many unspoken expectations around sex that just giving people the opportunity to talk about it in a thoughtful, reflective way with somebody who has a lot of experience working with couples, I find that, in and of itself, incredibly helpful, and and and from there, Well, from there, you can open up lots of things. I mean, you can open up, you know, resentments from from previous behaviors that happened. You can you can open up longings for certain kinds of sexual experiences that maybe they're afraid to ask for don't really know how to express. And so it's just to me, desire discrepancy is the window into really discovering and uncovering what's going on between the couple or the partners, or what's going on between somebody and their own relationship to their self and their body and their history.
JOE KORT:I love everything you just said, because I think that also speaks to infidelity. And you talk about that in your book, too. And before I ask you some questions about that, you know, I've been doing a lot of online, you know, social media, content, whatever. And then, you know, my clients that come in here, and people are all over the map about what they think infidelity is, and what one partner thinks it is another partner doesn't think it is. And I think about the quote in the field that couples fight over contracts they've never made. Do you know, do you see that in your office, where they're fighting over an infidelity, but one didn't even see it as one, and one did.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Right, absolutely. And that, I think, ties into exactly what I was saying before about these unspoken expectations, and half of the time we don't even realize that we have them. We just assume that our kind of psychological operating system is the same one that our partners are are are living under. And until you really start talking about it and understanding like what feels like a rejection, what feels like a boundary violation, you don't really know.
JOE KORT:You really don't know. And so you talk about though the third person that it's that it's rarely about the third person that was involved in the infidelity, but it's about what's happening underneath. Can you unpack that?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yes. I mean, typically, when you know this idea that if you're stepping outside of your relationship and you're involved with somebody else, it's not so much about that person, but it's about the experience or what that person is representing and and then the bigger question might be, why? Why can't you talk about that in your primary relationship? Or what are you learning about yourself that maybe you didn't know? You know, if there's, if there's a kind of compulsive quality to it, you know, what are you kind of acting out or, what are you what is it about this experience that you that you're learning about yourself, or what is it about what's happening in the relationship that this can't be kind of openly talked about?
JOE KORT:A lot of people say you can't recover and come back from infidelity. What do you say?
JULIANE MAXWALD:I don't think that's true at all. I mean, I find that the majority of couples or people that come into my office are successful at recovering from infidelity, which is not to say that it isn't brutal, gnarly, painful, uncomfortable work, because it is, and there's a lot that oftentimes has to go into it, and so I'm very open and very upfront with people when I start working with them, but I also tell them, you know, the countless, countless, countless of couples and individuals that I work with who very successfully move through an infidelity experience.
JOE KORT:Do you have, like, one example that people listening might want to hear of how somebody how that happens, or just like in general, how do you get past it?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Well, again, it's it's focusing on the behavior in the beginning. Is important in so far, is that the person who was betrayed in the relationship. There needs to be a repair that has to happen. I mean, there has to be an acknowledgement that how painful of an experience, how much of a betrayal this felt to the person, that it actually really was. And then after you move through that initial kind of crisis phase, and this is assuming that the person has ended the affair, ended the acting out behavior, and is committed, fully committed to repairing the relationship, then the work really becomes around. Okay. Why did this happen? What you know, why did it show up? Did it you know? Why is it showing up now in our relationship, and what can we learn about ourselves, each person involved and or our relationship, and what needs to happen in order to grow, heal, move forward from you know, one thing that I see so often in my practice, and this always really surprises people, and it's incredibly hurtful, but oftentimes around a big life milestone, whether that's getting engaged, moving In with a partner, having a child, losing a parent. It's often at these big milestone moments where you'll see an infidelity happening, because it's almost like an existential crisis, so to speak. And so that can be incredibly painful because it feels like an even deeper cut in terms of the of the betrayal, but that's a really good example of how, if we go a little bit deeper, after we do some of the healing, if we go a little bit deeper and we start to really think about or look at or question, Okay, what was happening at this time? Why was this happening? How were you responding to this big life moment, this big identity transition, for example.
JOE KORT:We know that a lot of people have shame, right? The LGBT community has shame because we were shamed as children, religious shame, cultural shame. You carry your parents shame and their parents shame. How do you help clients move from shame and avoidance toward understanding and openness?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yeah, I mean, that's a great question, and I think that shame really goes to the heart of so much of the work that we do as sex therapists. What's tricky about shame that I find is it takes a while. For some people, it takes a while to really understand how deep that shame runs. I think, oftentimes, especially with acting out behavior or compulsive behavior, people might not even realize how deep the shame runs until they stop a certain behavior, and shame can show up in so many ways, like, again, in ways that we might not even be conscious of. It can show up in headaches. It can show up in other bodily symptoms. And so the first thing is really being able to identify where the shame is, and then really just unpacking it, like, where did that shame come from? You know? Where did you absorb it? Did you absorb it from your parents? What did you notice in their relationship dynamic? What did you learn about sex growing up? What didn't you learn about sex growing up? You know? What? What maladaptive messages around masculinity or gender or femininity, you know, were you exposed to? Whether that was in your family, in your community and your religion, there's so many layers of shame, and so being able to just unpack that and identify it, and recognize that so much of that has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with the negative, maladaptive messages that you absorbed and are carrying with you.
JOE KORT:And you also talk about ethical non monogamy, which everybody online and everybody in general has so many different opinions about and I always talk about how gay male relationships have been having open relationships, successful open relationships, since the beginning of gay time, right? Like we've just always been able to do it. I'm not saying everybody does this successfully, but it's talked about and it's negotiated. How do you work with couples who are open or trying to become open.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Well, one thing I'll say to, especially to my heterosexual couples, is that heterosexual people can learn so much from gay sex because there is a openness, there's a frankness, there's a creativeness, there's a playfulness that can happen with, you know, gay and lesbian people, there's a way that there's a uncoupling of sex and love, which is not to say it's a split, because they can certainly be together, but you can yours, your the way that you love somebody and the interest that You have in sex do not have to line up neatly, and that's okay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's when we try to collapse them and we assume that that, you know, there is, there can't be any kind of discrepancy in there. There can't be any kind of variety or or, you know, queerness, so to speak, and sex that that I think straight people in particular get themselves into trouble. I agree, yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, go ahead. Well, no, I forgot your original question.
JOE KORT:Oh, no, that was it. It's helpful. And I think a lot of times people say, Why are gay and lesbian so much better? Or find it easier dealing with sexual shame or getting through, you know, open relationships, and I say that, it's because we've been forced to examine our own sexuality just to come out, and straight people don't necessarily have to do that.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Right, absolutely. I also think open relationships are non monogamy, and the ways that people are experimenting with them now are also forcing people to just communicate about sex in a way that they never had to, which I think is wonderful that you having a successful open relationship again, depending on what your parameters are, typically requires a lot of communication and a lot of self awareness and and a commitment to be really honest about what might be coming up for you in terms of feelings and boundaries and fears and insecurities, and a willingness to really talk openly with Your partner or partners about what's what's coming up.
JOE KORT:I love every word you just said, and I always say this, monogamous couples need to do exactly the same thing, but they feel like they don't. Always ask my couples, have you negotiated your monogamy? If they tell me they're monogamous, they're like, What do you mean? Negotiate? Have they done each one of those things that you just said? Right and and more often than not, not enough. Oh, so let's talk about outer course, because you and I are working together and collaborating on this topic. We're trying to, we're, we're going to try to write a book and get it published. And I started the conversation for gay men. I call it sides where gay men don't top, which means they don't insert. They don't have intercourse by inserting, and they don't have intercourse by bottoming, by receiving. And we know that this isn't just gay men. There's people in the rest of the LGBT community, in straight people, in all people that don't want to have intercourse. And it's called the clinical word, is outer course. Can you talk about that a little bit?
JULIANE MAXWALD:Yeah, absolutely. I think that outer course touches on so many relevant topics in sex and sexuality today. You know from what you're describing, in terms of sides, but also in terms of of permission to have sex in a way that feels good for you. You know, plenty of women struggle with pain related to sex. Men, you know, struggle with erectile predictability or unpredictability. There's so much focus on this prescribed way of having sex, that sex somehow means penetrative intercourse, regardless of if that's, you know, anal or vaginal or oral even. And it, and that's such a narrow definition of what a sexual experience can be like. And so the idea of bringing outer course, kind of center stage and talking about, what about all of these different ways that people can engage in a sexual experience, whether that's through fantasy, whether that's through touch, whether that's through role playing, it just allows for so much creativity, and I think it gives people permission to really tap into and be honest about, and for many, many people learn about what's possible in terms of their bodies, their minds and erotic encounter with somebody. It just opens things up in a way that I think is so needed and and so relevant right now.
JOE KORT:I really think we're going to be a great team on this, because I'm going to be able to speak to the LGBT community experience and the male experience, and you're going to be able to talk about the female straight perspective. Not that we don't have information about these things each other, but I think it'll be more compelling for people to hear us talk like this.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Right, exactly. I think that we both bring something unique but very similar kind of to the table. And I'm sure you see this in your practice, and I see this all the time too. I find people are so hungry for permission to think about sex in a different way.
JOE KORT:Yes.
JULIANE MAXWALD:There's so many ways that a narrow script around sex creates so much shame, so much humiliation, so much worthlessness, you know, feeling like you're not getting it right, feeling the pressure to do sex in one particular way. There's, I find this that that people are just, you know, really eager to hear more about outer course, and are very open to to learning about it, engaging in it, understanding that intercourse is not the gold standard of sex, right?
JOE KORT:What are some key things you want people to take away from your book, from your work, and some final thoughts from you?
JULIANE MAXWALD:I would like people to mostly to take away from my work, the idea that sex is a personal experience, that it's a creative experience, that it can be a very profound experience, you know that, but that it's an individual experience, and that it and to give people permission, or to provide examples of the many, many, many ways that people experience sex, and also the many ways that people experience problems related to their sexuality. And if you're willing to sort of look beneath the surface to really understand that there's so much healing, so much growth, so much transformation that can happen through sex and sexuality.
JOE KORT:I love it. Where can people find you? Juliane?
JULIANE MAXWALD:I am online on Instagram @JulianeMaxwald, and my website is www.julianemaxwald.co and I'm on LinkedIn and and those are the main ways.
JOE KORT:All right, and they can pick up your book, psychoanalytic sex therapy, exploring the unconscious life of sexuality. You must be so proud of that. And I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I've scanned through it, and I you know, it just resonates so much for me.
JULIANE MAXWALD:Thank you.
JOE KORT:Yes. Was a really pleasure having you on the show. And for those of you that would like to hear more about my work and the things I do, you can find me on www.smartsexsmartlove.com, that's where the podcast lives, as well as Apple Spotify and all the other places you can find podcasts. But you can also find me on Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, all@DrJoeKort D, R, J, O, E, K, O, R, T. I hope you enjoyed listening, and hope you come back next time and stay healthy and stay happy.