E270: Why High-Functioning Women Aren't Having Great Sex (and What to Fix) with Dr. Heather Rhodes

Have you ever caught yourself thinking “I could take it or leave it” when it comes to sex?

This is your headphones warning episode. My friend, Dr. Heather Rhodes, is back with me, and we’re talking about something you might not be saying out loud - what happens when desire feels out of reach. You love your husband, you care about your marriage, and at the same time, you feel tired out, stuck in your head, or just not that interested.

And it’s so confusing, because on paper, everything looks fine. But inside, there’s tension. Your mind is always running, and your body feels a step behind. 

It’s incredible how tiny habits can slowly drain that spark without us even being aware. One minute, everything is exciting and fresh, and the next, it can feel flat and distant.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why being in your head all the time can shut down your desire, and how to start shifting that
• How negativity, unspoken tension, and resentment can hurt your connections more than you realize
• What if your low libido has nothing to do with your hormones 

And yes, some parts of this one may have you staring into space for a minute. So, put your headphones in and come listen before you add “fix libido” to another mental to-do list.

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too! 
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

00:00:42 Leisha

Hey, welcome back.

00:00:43 Leisha

Today I have Dr.

00:00:45 Leisha

Heather Rhodes here with me again.

00:00:47 Leisha

And this is going to be a solo for you episode if you have kiddos around, because we are going to be talking about

00:00:56 Leisha

sex and libido from a perspective of your nervous system, from a perspective of emotions, spirituality.

00:01:05 Leisha

We've got all kinds of things lined up for you and we're not going to hold back.

00:01:09 Leisha

So just this is your headphones warning.

00:01:12 Leisha

And we're really excited about this because we think this is a topic that is honestly missing in any meaningful way in the Christian world.

00:01:22 Leisha

And

00:01:23 Leisha

We believe that God has created sex for so many good purposes, even if we're just talking literally about safety in your body and hormones.

00:01:33 Leisha

And if we're not even talking about your relationship, we're not even talking about procreation, we're not talking about fertility, we're not talking about anything else just for your health and your hormones.

00:01:42 Leisha

It has a huge purpose.

00:01:43 Leisha

And so we're gonna start from that perspective today.

00:01:46 Leisha

Welcome, Heather.

00:01:47 Heather

Hi, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about.

00:01:51 Heather

What we're basically doing is taking our private Voxer.

00:01:54 Heather

We're talking each other about these things and letting you guys in to sip the tea.

00:02:01 Leisha

Like today with our Voxer chats.

00:02:05 Heather

Our hormone happy hour listeners, this is a really great follow-up to what we talked about last week.

00:02:10 Heather

My episode last week was about metabolizing stress, not just processing it and how do you actually

00:02:17 Heather

go from getting out of your head of what do I do and analyzing and searching and answers and all of that.

00:02:23 Heather

And how do you actually metabolize your stress by moving it through your body?

00:02:27 Heather

And so this is a really good follow up to that.

00:02:31 Leisha

Yeah, I think that's where we should start.

00:02:33 Heather

So Alicia and I had planned to talk a little bit about why you should care.

00:02:38 Heather

Make me care about having good sex.

00:02:40 Heather

Because I think a lot of times, especially if there is something going on with your hormones or your libido,

00:02:44 Heather

it can be a little bit of a take it or leave it situation where it doesn't feel like a priority.

00:02:48 Heather

It doesn't feel like you really care that much about it.

00:02:51 Heather

And that's understandable and that's okay.

00:02:53 Heather

And that's a really good sign that there's a misalignment of something in your body.

00:02:59 Heather

So whether it's your nervous system or your hormones, your masculine, feminine energy, or the polarity in your marriage, I can speak for myself.

00:03:06 Heather

I've gone through seasons, I've shared this with my listeners of

00:03:09 Heather

literally just do not care about this.

00:03:11 Heather

Not important, not on my priority list.

00:03:14 Heather

And one of the things that has helped me see, wait a second, this is so much more and so much deeper, besides just the sheer fact that God created it.

00:03:22 Heather

And I do know that there is discussion and conversation in the space around how sex can be used as a weapon against the enemy and a way to really take a stand spiritually for your marriage against the enemy.

00:03:35 Heather

There's also a lot of physical, emotional

00:03:39 Heather

spiritual components to sex that can really start shifting this full bodied.

00:03:45 Heather

And so one of the cool things that we were just talking about of why I'm like, oh wait, this is one of, this reminds me why it's so important is because I am someone that can so easily get in my head or stay in my head, or I am sometimes even patterned to where

00:04:03 Heather

in my brain, in my world, problems and having something to solve and having something to fix and finding chaos.

00:04:10 Heather

Even though I'm not trying to find chaos, my brain is a little bit wired to always be trying to achieve or accomplish or find the next thing.

00:04:16 Heather

And so what I can find myself doing is creating a pattern in my lifestyle where I'm constantly

00:04:24 Heather

striving for that noise in my brain to calm down, but the way I'm going about it is by trying to calm down my outside scenarios.

00:04:34 Heather

So I'm like, oh, I need to take another bath.

00:04:37 Heather

I need to rest more.

00:04:38 Heather

I need to make sure I don't overload my schedule.

00:04:40 Heather

I need to go on more vacations.

00:04:41 Heather

I need to take another walk, right?

00:04:44 Heather

And it almost feels like no matter how much I'm shifting these things, I still feel like I'm running in this, but why am I stressed?

00:04:52 Heather

Why do I still feel this overwhelm or this overload?

00:04:54 Heather

And

00:04:55 Heather

Sometimes I can even know it's that my brain is cycling through or trying to solve a problem.

00:04:59 Heather

But a lot of times it's because I'm not getting out of my head.

00:05:02 Heather

And a lot of people will come to me and be like, I know this is happening in my health, but I have such a hard time getting out of my head about it.

00:05:08 Heather

And you can do the therapy, you can have a coach, you can have someone tell you how to get out of your head or tell you to get out of your head.

00:05:14 Heather

But what will actually move the needle?

00:05:16 Heather

The one way out of your head is into your body.

00:05:20 Heather

And most of us are really disconnected from our body.

00:05:23 Heather

And so we're going to actually talk about that and expand on that a little bit deeper today.

00:05:26 Heather

But good sex is one way to get out of your head because it forces you to, it's a way, I shouldn't even say force us, it is a way that we are designed as biological beings to have these moments where our head literally cannot be the primary focal point.

00:05:43 Heather

We have to resolve the chaos and the spinning

00:05:46 Heather

in our head.

00:05:46 Heather

So if you're someone who feels like, I can't get out of my head, or I'm constantly spinning my wheels, or I'm just cycling all the time, this episode's going to help you because we're going to teach you one of the ways to get into your body.

00:05:56 Heather

So anytime you're thinking, I can't get out of my head, what you actually want to be thinking is, wait, how can I get into my body?

00:06:02 Heather

That's going to be a reframe of that conversation that's actually going to help you to truly see your nervous system start regulating and start changing, which we know the implications of that usually looks like hormone changes,

00:06:14 Heather

mood changes, relationship changes, mothering changes, et cetera.

00:06:19 Leisha

Okay, so two things that come up for me from what you just said is number one, that constant, almost like I have to do more or enough just to keep myself baseline regulated, right?

00:06:31 Leisha

It's not even actually working to fully regulate your nervous system or to make long term change, but you're like, I have to take another bath, I have to take another walk just to survive.

00:06:40 Leisha

even just that perspective or that belief system that we have is like, I have to do more to get the results that I want.

00:06:48 Leisha

And I would also venture to say, many of us can relate to, I'm too in my head to have the libido I want to have or to have desire, or I'm in my head.

00:06:59 Leisha

And so because I'm in my head, I'm

00:07:02 Leisha

I'm feeling stressed, I'm feeling touched out, I'm feeling overwhelmed.

00:07:05 Leisha

And the last thing that I actually want is someone else to need something from me.

00:07:10 Leisha

And if that's a perspective that we have is like, this is someone else needing something from me versus the feminine perspective of being able to receive, but I need to get into my body to enjoy this.

00:07:23 Leisha

There's a little bit of, I think, maybe misunderstanding there or a little bit of

00:07:27 Leisha

belief there that may not be fully true and maybe the act of getting into your body is what gets you out of your head versus thinking you have to get out of your head first.

00:07:37 Heather

Oh yeah, that's exactly what I was saying.

00:07:39 Heather

It's like you have to see it differently.

00:07:40 Heather

Instead of thinking like, how do I get out of my head?

00:07:43 Heather

Ask a better question, which is how do I get into my body?

00:07:46 Heather

And so sex and good sex is like one of the best ways to get into your body.

00:07:51 Heather

For my fertility girls, we literally have our challenge, receive

00:07:55 Heather

to conceive.

00:07:56 Heather

This is what this is, I think, holds so much energy.

00:07:59 Heather

This is what practicing.

00:08:02 Heather

I don't even want to say learning to do, because then it starts to become an achievement thing.

00:08:06 Heather

But practicing this is actually what starts to allow the protocols and the strategies and the labs and all the things you've been doing that haven't been moving the needle.

00:08:17 Heather

It actually starts to move the needle because your body's in a place where it can even be receptive to that.

00:08:22 Heather

So

00:08:23 Heather

That's so good, Alicia.

00:08:24 Heather

And I think too, what you said about moms being like that reframe of how do I think about this in a way that it's for me?

00:08:34 Heather

It's like a gift to me instead of I have to do this.

00:08:37 Heather

And I think another thing you mentioned too, that's so important, especially right now, okay, nervous system is real hot and heavy on the internet right now.

00:08:44 Heather

I think nervous system,

00:08:47 Heather

therapy, nervous system regulation coaches, all of that.

00:08:51 Heather

And it's not a bad thing, but I absolutely think the result of that right now is exactly what you said, which is I have to do all of these things to be regulated so that I can do X, Y, Z.

00:09:05 Heather

And so really you're just

00:09:07 Heather

keeping the nervous system dysregulating by trying so hard to keep it regulated, which feels a little like meta.

00:09:14 Heather

But that's why we wanted to bring this episode of, hold on a second, if you can come in with this actually really fun thing, because even if you take that same mentality of how do I achieve good sex,

00:09:26 Heather

Because achieving good sex requires you to get into your body, you're not allowed to have good sex and still be stuck in your head.

00:09:34 Heather

So we're literally like giving you the answer, but just giving it to you with a little twist so you don't feel like you're actually having to do and work and achieve and add to your to-do list.

00:09:44 Heather

And so dropping into your body, the pursuit of good sex is actually this little hack, this little brain hack you can do.

00:09:52 Heather

to get out of your head and start getting different results in more than just the bedroom.

00:09:58 Leisha

I'm gonna start with the very first one.

00:10:01 Leisha

When you are stuck in your head and you're that girl who's, I have to check the boxes, I have to do more.

00:10:07 Leisha

We were talking about this in just my personal life in general, not related to sex, just related to how my brain works.

00:10:13 Leisha

When I feel like I'm not getting a result that I want, I'm like, how do I make it harder on myself?

00:10:17 Leisha

Okay, I'll just start out and tell you, that's not helpful.

00:10:22 Leisha

It's not helpful.

00:10:23 Leisha

Girls in the back.

00:10:24 Leisha

It's not helpful.

00:10:26 Leisha

And I'm starting to be able to see that, or at least I have Heather here to tell me when I'm doing that.

00:10:31 Leisha

She was like, that doesn't sound right.

00:10:32 Leisha

You're like, I'm having a hard time.

00:10:35 Heather

I think it will be really helpful for them to understand the context.

00:10:37 Heather

So you weren't thinking, let me make it harder on myself.

00:10:40 Heather

What you were thinking was if I put myself in a situation where I am comparing myself to people that are ahead of me and I'm seeing all this momentum these other people have, like,

00:10:49 Heather

That's what's going to spark me to get this fire lit under my **** and start moving.

00:10:54 Heather

And I think that clarifying piece is so helpful because I think so many of our listeners are doing that too.

00:10:59 Heather

We're on Instagram, we're comparing, we're like, oh my gosh, if I can just wake up at 5 A.m.

00:11:03 Heather

and do this stuff, or if I can just throw out five pieces of content, or if I can just go to Burn Bootcamp every day, people are doing, but they don't have that recognition of what you just said, wait a second, you're trying to achieve the result by adding pressure.

00:11:15 Leisha

And so I think that can come from several different places, but

00:11:19 Leisha

When you have that underlying, I need to do more to get the result that I want, I need that pressure, I need that push from something else, whether it's something outside that gives you that internal motivation.

00:11:32 Leisha

It comes from this perfection mindset where we think that we need to arrive at some point before we can be who we want to be or have what we want to have.

00:11:41 Leisha

And when we're stuck in that pattern, it keeps us stuck in our heads.

00:11:46 Leisha

When we were talking about titles for this episode, or if we do future episodes on this, we were talking about like great sex for good girls.

00:11:55 Leisha

And if you identify as that, you identify as a good girl who's, I'm doing, I'm trying to do things right, and I'm trying to check the boxes, a lot of times that can keep us stuck in maybe some of the things that we grew up in.

00:12:10 Leisha

Maybe it keeps us stuck in shame.

00:12:13 Leisha

Maybe it keeps us stuck in this pattern of, because we're not actually ever achieving perfection, but we keep pushing ourselves toward that, I think it can keep us from making progress.

00:12:22 Leisha

And the reason I'm talking about this in relationship to sex is because that is also a masculine perspective of this, like, we have to just keep doing

00:12:34 Leisha

to be able to be who we want to be or to be able to receive.

00:12:38 Leisha

When we look at polarity and the dynamics between masculine and feminine, this is the thing, I'll be honest, this is the thing that has made the most difference in my own marriage when we do it.

00:12:49 Leisha

Okay, so I'm not saying this is perfect all the time, but this is something that makes the most difference in my libido, in my desire, in my ability to just be perfect.

00:12:58 Leisha

on or even just available outside of my perfect window of like when the kids are finally not awake or the whatever that thing is in your head where you're like, this is the only time it fits.

00:13:08 Leisha

I would like to talk about masculine feminine a little bit more and what that actually means.

00:13:12 Leisha

And so I'll start with when we are in that do, go, check all the boxes.

00:13:20 Leisha

We are more in a masculine state than a feminine.

00:13:22 Heather

I think that what we're talking about is

00:13:25 Heather

what are some of the things that can keep you from having good sex?

00:13:28 Heather

And so the one that Lisha is referring to is the polarity being off.

00:13:32 Heather

And so polarity is referring to that masculine and feminine energy.

00:13:35 Heather

And the thing with polarity, you have to think of it like a magnet, which is you can't have a magnet can't attract something that's facing the same side, right?

00:13:47 Heather

You have to have the positive and the negative side of the magnet, and that's what allows the magnet to actually pull something towards it.

00:13:53 Heather

And so

00:13:54 Heather

with hilarity, that's a big, I feel like that's everything when it comes to good sex.

00:13:59 Heather

Because if you're existing in a relationship and every relationship has a masculine and every relationship has a feminine, and I think the hardest part for women is that being a parent,

00:14:09 Heather

or being a career girl or being a entrepreneur, whatever it may be, typically requires you to be in a masculine role.

00:14:18 Heather

And so if you don't know or feel safe enough flipping into your feminine, then you're bringing that masculine energy into that relationship with your partner and your husband should be holding the masculine energy.

00:14:31 Heather

And so the masculine, just like highlighting some of the things you said, masculine really is about pursuing,

00:14:38 Heather

providing.

00:14:39 Heather

And so if you are being the provider, if you are being the pursuer, if you don't understand how to turn that off and allow your husband to become that for you, then you guys can be operating outside of polarity.

00:14:51 Heather

And so that can create two issues.

00:14:53 Heather

Number one is you can have polarity issues in your relationship.

00:14:55 Heather

And eventually, if you guys start to feel more and more comfortable in those roles, even if dysregulated, your body won't really feel safe going into other roles.

00:15:05 Heather

And Lisha was exactly right.

00:15:08 Heather

in saying that if you are in masculine, then your husband will be forced into feminine.

00:15:15 Heather

So whoever's holding masculine forces the other person into feminine.

00:15:19 Heather

You can't have two masculine at once.

00:15:21 Heather

One person will have to go down.

00:15:23 Heather

And whenever you are fixing this, feminine has to

00:15:29 Heather

show up first.

00:15:29 Heather

So you have to go to feminine to even give your husband the chance to start feeling comfortable and safe in healthy masculinity.

00:15:38 Heather

And I think what's happened is a lot of us have seen really strong, good examples of unhealthy masculinity, which is being controlling, being domineering.

00:15:46 Heather

Sometimes it looks like not valuing your opinion or your thoughts or considering you or your needs or whatever, shutting down your emotions or not having strong

00:15:57 Heather

strong emotional intelligence, those can all be examples of unhealthy masculinity.

00:16:01 Heather

And so I think because culturally, I think if you look at generations, our generation right now, the millennials are having a hard time with healthy masculinity because what was modeled as a culture was a lot of unhealthy masculinity.

00:16:15 Heather

And so the rebound of that is a lot of men right now who are either mimicking that and they're in unhealthy need too, or they went into this like pseudo feminine energy where they're more peacemakers and the women are wearing the pants and the women are a little bit more aggressive and the women are like, I can handle things, I can handle it myself, I don't need you, I can take or leave you, whatever.

00:16:35 Heather

I think that is creating this culture where sex is meh for most people right now.

00:16:41 Heather

And yeah, that was such a good pinpoint.

00:16:45 Heather

of what's happening and one of the reasons why you might be struggling to have good sex.

00:16:51 Heather

Another reason we wanted to step into as to why, like the episode, this episode is how to have good sex, but to have good sex, you have to understand what is blocking you from having good sex.

00:17:02 Heather

And another thing is hidden shame, resentment, or bitterness.

00:17:08 Heather

And it can be hidden or it can be

00:17:11 Heather

out on the open, but I think a lot of it tends to happen subconsciously.

00:17:15 Heather

I think it can be very micro to where you don't even know it's happening subconsciously.

00:17:20 Heather

And that's why we're even bringing an episode like this, because if you feel like, hey, maybe the polarity isn't off, you are very clear that you know how to go into feminine, you feel safe and feminine, your husband's a great example of healthy masculine energy.

00:17:34 Heather

But if you feel like that's not necessarily the issue, or even if that is the issue and you're like, why is that the issue?

00:17:40 Heather

It could be the next kind

00:17:41 Heather

kind of topic we want to hit on, which is this bitterness, resentment, and shame that can be really hidden because at least for me, until we put a practice in place to very intentionally set the time and space to think about where are we holding these little like micro offenses or where are we feeling frustrated or where are we feeling irritated or what's triggering us in our conversations or as we go through our day, I wasn't really clear or aware of, oh wait, you are holding.

00:18:08 Heather

onto some of these things.

00:18:10 Heather

And anything you're holding onto, it prevents you from being in that full release, that full relaxed and safe state with that partner, which ultimately is going to manifest physically in your body and you're not gonna have fully released tissues.

00:18:26 Heather

And that's what actually gets you really good sex.

00:18:29 Leisha

Started out with, what do we mean by that?

00:18:31 Leisha

What do we mean by good sex?

00:18:32 Leisha

Because I think that before

00:18:35 Leisha

I started learning more.

00:18:37 Leisha

I was like, yeah, everything's good.

00:18:39 Leisha

We do it.

00:18:40 Leisha

We like it.

00:18:42 Leisha

Sometimes we don't want to.

00:18:43 Leisha

That's fine.

00:18:44 Heather

It was like, if everybody gets to the finish line, it's good sex, right?

00:18:47 Heather

Even if it takes 7 minutes, that's what we've been conditioned to think.

00:18:53 Heather

Oh, that's.

00:18:53 Heather

Yeah, exactly.

00:18:55 Leisha

Realizing that there is more, even just in the woman's body, to

00:19:02 Leisha

good sex than just having an orgasm in general.

00:19:06 Leisha

Did you know?

00:19:08 Leisha

Some of you totally know this, some of you really don't know this because I haven't found this in any Christian marriage books, I'll tell you that.

00:19:14 Leisha

Having A clitoral orgasm is not all there is to it as a woman.

00:19:19 Leisha

You can have a ****** orgasm, you can have a cervical orgasm, and especially the cervical orgasms because of how, not only just how deep it is in your body, but because of the

00:19:30 Leisha

level of openness that you need to have, the level of surrender, the level of trust with your partner, that in itself changes your nervous system.

00:19:39 Leisha

Being able to be open enough and surrendered enough and just allowing someone in, being in that feminine enough that you can truly allow your husband in to have that kind of orgasm, those are the ones that can be full body and can be truly regulating to your nervous system.

00:19:58 Leisha

Like they have

00:19:59 Leisha

scientifically proven effects on your cortisol levels and even on trauma that you're holding, because so many of us as women, we think that we hold a lot of our tension in our shoulders and our necks, and we do, and also our pelvic floors.

00:20:12 Leisha

And so when you're holding that trauma and that.

00:20:15 Leisha

whatever it is.

00:20:16 Leisha

It can be truly, when I'm talking about trauma, absolutely trauma from sexual abuse, that is a huge issue that we would think of there.

00:20:24 Leisha

But also just like when we are holding emotions in our body, that can be a place that you're holding them.

00:20:30 Leisha

So there's some things that I feel like would be maybe obvious that you would be holding in your pelvic floor, but there's also things that would not be obvious that you'd be holding there.

00:20:38 Leisha

I believe that we can hold a lot of bitterness and resentment in our bodies in general.

00:20:44 Leisha

I think we hold a lot of that in our

00:20:45 Leisha

I think we hold a lot of that in our liver and our gallbladder, but I also think we can hold it in our pelvic floor, especially when it's related to our husbands.

00:20:53 Leisha

I know this personally because when I went through some recent forgiveness for my husband for things that I thought that I had forgiven him for, that I felt a physical release in my hips and my pelvic floor when I was not holding something against my husband.

00:21:06 Leisha

And I was like, this is not.

00:21:09 Heather

I think the biggest things too, just to hit on what we hold in our womb space, which is the pelvic floor, is going to be struggles with scarcity versus lack, any type of fear, control, and then also motherhood, woundings and traumas, and then worthiness.

00:21:25 Heather

Because it's the place where you create life, if you've struggled to feel like what you create, the life you've created, children, anything, schedule, budget,

00:21:36 Heather

money, that's all where a lot of worthiness is rooted in and held.

00:21:40 Heather

So you can definitely have any struggles with those things.

00:21:44 Leisha

Yeah, I would agree.

00:21:46 Leisha

So we've hit on masculine, feminine to some extent.

00:21:48 Leisha

We've hit on bitterness and resentment.

00:21:50 Leisha

I think the other thing that I really wanted to talk about when it comes to, I believe, the things that you really need to have,

00:21:58 Leisha

I don't want to say in place, but that you need to be working on, that you need to be aware of to truly be open and have good sex is feminine energy, understanding what you're holding as far as emotions, whether it's against your husband or just in general that's keeping you closed off.

00:22:13 Leisha

And you need to have that trust for yourself and for your partner.

00:22:17 Leisha

But one of the ways that you can do that is by what Heather was like briefly touching on a minute ago, which is

00:22:23 Leisha

What are the things that you are just sweeping under the rug?

00:22:26 Leisha

And so having an exercise where you are consistently bringing things to the light together, this does not mean this is a criticism session, but it's truly like asking questions to essentially make sure that there's not areas of your relationship that are in the dark, that you're just, you're both just pushing off into the corner that you don't wanna deal with, that are causing maybe some of that bitterness, resentment, shame,

00:22:51 Leisha

that are keeping you from being able to be open or keeping you from having that honesty with each other.

00:22:57 Leisha

Yeah, so this is one of the ways.

00:22:59 Heather

That if we're saying, hey, bitterness, shake, resentment can be a block to good sex.

00:23:02 Heather

One of the things you can do about that is be really intentional about how are you

00:23:08 Heather

removing these things and keeping that relationship constantly flowing where, and it's not that you do it once so that you just don't have any more of it because it's so normal and it builds up.

00:23:18 Heather

The point is to have a rhythm and a routine in your relationship.

00:23:22 Heather

that creates the space for you to have good sex consistently.

00:23:27 Heather

And so by deciding, okay, this is a rhythm and a routine that we have, then you set the time, you set the space, you know how the activity is going to go.

00:23:34 Heather

It becomes a safe space.

00:23:36 Heather

You set expectations of how you move through the activity.

00:23:40 Heather

And by activity, it's just a discussion.

00:23:41 Heather

But

00:23:42 Heather

For me, so we have this in our libido course.

00:23:44 Heather

We talk about the bring it to the light exercise, and we put some parameters around it so that everyone can have an open, honest, and vulnerable conversation.

00:23:52 Heather

And by everyone, I just mean you and your spouse.

00:23:54 Heather

There doesn't need to be anybody else there.

00:23:55 Heather

But it's so that you have some parameters so that you're both going into it with the right mindset, with the walls down, so that each person can have that safety and that trust.

00:24:06 Heather

And you can start in the beginning.

00:24:08 Heather

You might need to do this more often because it's almost like cleaning out a closet.

00:24:11 Heather

You just need to get

00:24:12 Heather

everything out.

00:24:13 Heather

But if you don't have a consistent routine, then all you're doing is cleaning out your closet every six months.

00:24:20 Heather

And what's happening while the closet's refilling back up is you're not having good sex.

00:24:25 Heather

When I teach and talk to our clients about it, it's like you might need to do it more in the beginning.

00:24:30 Heather

But once you feel like, okay, we've moved through the majority of the muck that's just been building up over the last few months to years, depending on how safe and vulnerable you've ever been with your partner, then

00:24:42 Heather

Eventually you can get to, okay, we do this once a week, 30 minutes once a week.

00:24:46 Heather

And that's another piece to good sex is you have to set the stage and the schedule for good sex, not that good sex has to be scheduled.

00:24:56 Heather

When you are anticipating it and you're both clear and there's intention that you guys have created and prepared yourselves mentally, emotionally, and spiritually,

00:25:05 Heather

to go into a sex state, that's incredible.

00:25:08 Heather

It's gonna be so much better.

00:25:09 Heather

And spontaneous sex in the back of a car or something can still be fun.

00:25:13 Heather

But I think that really good sex that you want those deeper, and that was something, oh my gosh, yeah, you mentioned this, Alicia, about the cervical orgasms and how much it can be supportive for the female nervous system.

00:25:25 Heather

And when we do an orgasm episode, we'll talk more about this, but one of the coolest things about it, I feel, is that they've done studies to show it can keep cortisol suppressed for

00:25:35 Heather

up to, I think it's like 48 to 72 hours.

00:25:39 Heather

Yes, you should consistently be creating a life that has these rhythms and there's these routines to allow you to have consistently good sex where there's intimacy and vulnerability and safety and your nervous systems are healing.

00:25:51 Heather

And then when your nervous systems are healing, you're actually

00:25:55 Heather

supporting nervous system healing in your entire family as a whole, because there's the nervous system web in the family.

00:26:02 Heather

Anything else you wanted to add to that?

00:26:03 Leisha

I think that we've been able to hit on a few things.

00:26:06 Leisha

And so I think that just taking a minute to think about what stood out to you is probably the thing that you should investigate first.

00:26:15 Leisha

We will work on making some resources because we haven't really found any that are, I would just say, aligned spiritually with what we

00:26:25 Leisha

believe to be true.

00:26:26 Leisha

And I think that it's really helpful to be able to come from a perspective where you can go all in versus you're trying to filter things out and figure out what's good and what's not good.

00:26:34 Heather

And then utilizing a source of truth like the Father and the Word and Holy Spirit in the Bible as a guide, which is something

00:26:41 Heather

something that I think is just such, it's the best gift.

00:26:43 Heather

And it's the perfect example of polarity.

00:26:45 Heather

And the Bible talks about why it's so important that we don't open ourselves up to offense.

00:26:49 Heather

And that was a command given a lot of times in the New Testament.

00:26:52 Heather

I think that's just so needed too, because I think there's so many women that their hormone journeys and their health journey isn't

00:27:00 Heather

the whole goal of it is to create a family or to enhance and really bring life and vibrancy to the family they have and the marriage they have.

00:27:08 Heather

And they want their bodies to help them do that.

00:27:12 Heather

They want their bodies to be a tool in stewarding all of these things the Lord's given them.

00:27:16 Heather

And I think having an understanding of good

00:27:20 Heather

good sex and what might need to shift and what patterns you've just accepted as normal or what was modeled for you or where you've subconsciously just operated in these routines that actually pursuing more and being intentional about more would bring you more healing than the way you've been consistently doing it right now.

00:27:38 Heather

Or even just adding this to the way you've been doing it.

00:27:41 Heather

And I think it's really exciting.

00:27:44 Heather

to be able to share that with women in a way that supports them in all three areas, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

00:27:51 Heather

What did I say?

00:27:52 Heather

Physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

00:27:54 Leisha

I think that there's a lot to it, but it can be simple and it can be doable, even if you're not where you'd like to be right now.

00:28:02 Leisha

And I think what you said about what we see around us or what we've seen modeled, I think that so many of us are just settling for what we think is fine, especially in the church, because

00:28:13 Leisha

It's just so common to have conversations where it's, oh yeah, I don't really want it that much, but I have to.

00:28:19 Leisha

And it's just, if that's what you hear all the time, and you're like, I know I need to because it's good for my marriage, but really I'd be fine without it.

00:28:27 Leisha

That doesn't mean that it's your hormones.

00:28:29 Leisha

It can mean that it's not your hormones.

00:28:30 Leisha

It can mean that it's your emotions and your beliefs and your polarity in your relationship.

00:28:36 Leisha

There's so many different things that can contribute.

00:28:39 Leisha

And I just want to encourage you.

00:28:42 Heather

They will follow, though.

00:28:44 Leisha

Absolutely.

00:28:45 Heather

What you are hearing most likely in Christian spaces is about how you should be abstaining from this and that and the books and fighting against lust and sexual immorality and all of that.

00:28:55 Heather

And I feel like what's missing, especially in our culture, is really us helping Christian women with the roots of why are those things a struggle for our husbands?

00:29:05 Heather

Why are those things a struggle for us?

00:29:07 Heather

Why are those things a temptation, the books, the...

00:29:10 Heather

whatever it is.

00:29:11 Heather

And a lot of times it's because they're giving us these examples.

00:29:15 Heather

I'm thinking specifically about the fantasy books that are really talked about right now.

00:29:19 Heather

It's giving these examples as a culture of this masculine and feminine energy and the polarity and what it looks like.

00:29:27 Heather

And I feel like that feels so desirable, but we're not able to tangibly see why that feels desirable and it's packaged in this really not.

00:29:36 Heather

And so I think that's where really going after the root of, hold on a second, looking at the way God truly designed intimacy, it is for us to desire these things, but we can desire them with a lens of purity and a lens of reflecting him.

00:29:53 Heather

And I think all we're seeing in the way sex is talked about in our culture and the way as Christians, we are set apart from engaging in that,

00:30:02 Heather

is that there is an alternative of yes, be set apart, and this is where you can be intentional about honoring this design the Lord has.

00:30:10 Leisha

I think that's a great place to wrap up.

00:30:12 Heather

Yeah, so I was going to say we are going to have more on this topic for you guys.

00:30:18 Heather

lots of different things to talk about in this arena.

00:30:20 Heather

And so we're excited to bring it.

00:30:22 Heather

And I'm excited for the results because I love when I get a good message that's, hey, I've been doing this from your libido course, or I've been trying this from a podcast and this is what it looks like in my family.

00:30:34 Heather

And so as always, my same, and I'm sure Alicia's too, call to actions of reach out to us.

00:30:40 Heather

We're available.

00:30:41 Heather

We're here ready to chat with you guys on this topic.

00:30:44 Leisha

Perfect.

00:30:45 Leisha

All right.

00:30:46 Leisha

See you girls next week.