Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Welcome back, y'all. Hello, hello. So let's just dive right in. As you guys can tell from today's episode, we are going to be talking about sex drives, eroticism. Um, I almost titled this episode, So You're Kinky AF, but your spouse isn't, what to do. Um, and then thanks to my recent work with my wonderful um business and marketing friend from the community, I was like, no, no, no, we have to do SEO. We got to be thinking about that. But yeah, babes, this is what I'm gonna be talking about in today's episode. Um, this is one of my all-time like favorite topics. I love diving into and talking about sexuality, eroticism, intimacy. Those of you that have been listening to the podcast for a long time know this. Anybody that is in the community with me knows this. Um, I think it is probably a huge piece of that is because I was raised so strictly not that in Mormonism. Um, you know, sexuality is so heavily repressed, so uh just so controlled in that religion that the process for me, which really started, I would say, about a year before I got divorced, and has definitely been a big area that I have spent a lot of time and interest in myself discovering post-divorce, um, is this this area. This is a space where I continue to uncover and explore and understand parts about myself. And it's been one of the like richest areas for me to find out more about me, about life, about the creative juices within me, um, coming into my own body, owning my desires. It's just an a like beautifully rich area. And um, I do want to say that as I'm saying that, some of you may not relate to that at all. You're like, oh my God, sex drives, eroticism. This is not something that I think about or really a huge part of my marriage, or if it is a part of my marriage, it's a part of my marriage. I don't want to talk about. Uh, to those of you that are in that space, I just want you to know, I understand that is really, I would say a level of what I was experiencing in my marriage. Um, yes, there was, I look back now, there was definitely eroticism. I think I've always been, um, as we'll talk about in the episode a little bit further, as I've learned more about what eroticism is for me. I look back and I'm like, yeah, I've always been a pretty erotic individual without even knowing it, without having any idea that that's what that um feeling was. And now that I've become more comfortable with it and owned it and know what it is, I'm like, oh yeah, that's that's that. But I would not have said that about myself just seven, eight years ago, back when I was married, and definitely not while I was growing up. I had no framework. I had nobody helping me understand that about myself. And as I was saying to Quinn yesterday on the phone when I was talking about some of this, some big, like have had some big shifts and breakthroughs right now at the moment with understanding my eroticism. Um it is wild how much your reality, how you see yourself, how you move through the world can change my loves. This work, the work of coaching, of understanding yourself, of really coming into curiosity and exploration with who you are, uh, does it just pay incredible dividends? You can have, you know, the same scenario a year ago and then have it again a year later. And due to the like deep personal inner work you've been doing, it can impact you in completely different ways. So if you are one of my babes that is like, ooh, I don't know if this really describes me, you still I think will get a lot out of this episode, even though I am going to be speaking specifically to my babes that are like, yeah, I see myself as the higher drive. I am more interested in my eroticism and intimacy in sex than perhaps my partner is or my spouse's in marriage. So another big impetus behind why this episode is landing right now is that last week I had just a couple opportunities. There was a woman that I coached in the community. There's a woman that I'm working with right now as a one-on-one client. And it just tapped me back in in seeing these women to how painful it can be when you are someone for whom, you know, maybe your top three values of the playgrounds that you want to play in in life, like one of them is definitely sex, intimacy, eroticism. Okay. If that is you and you are currently living your adult life in a way where you don't understand your relationship with your own eroticism, with the Eros energy. Maybe you're ashamed of it, you're afraid of it, or you're paired with a partner with whom you are not a match in this area. Oof, this can be one of the most painful parts of your marriage. It can be one of the most painful parts of yourself within that marriage. So, and I saw this last week with a couple of my babes in the community, my one-on-one client. And for all of you listening that are nodding your heads, this episode I hope is going to really not, you know, not I can't take away all of that shame. I mean, goodness, y'all, it's been seven years of doing this work myself. But I'm hoping that this episode cracks the door on you stepping back from dismissing this, which is what I see so many of you do, um, as it being a thing that's, you know, I'm too much, or my sexuality is too much, or it'd be better if I just keep the lid on that and instead going, wait a second, hold up. There may be something really, really important and vital for me here. Um I have seen, as I said at the beginning of this episode, that this area, the area of our intimacy, our eroticism, holds deep, deep insights into ourselves. And when we are willing to go dig into the depths of those, I see it often, it's like we're mining, you know, for these treasures that are down, sometimes really hidden down in these caves of our inner worlds. But when we mine for them, oh the treasures that we uncover. Um, I also want to say at the beginning of this episode that as you guys can hear in my voice, this specific area of working with women who perhaps are in a marriage where you feel like the sex drives are mismatched and really in both directions. That's the beauty of how much my work has led me to understand both when we, you know, when we are the one with the higher drive, feeling like our partner doesn't want it as much as us and all the pieces that come with that, and also the flip side of that. Because in my marriage, I experienced more of what I would say is the opposite side where we're experiencing perhaps sexual coercion. We are not feeling pleasure in our bodies, perhaps we're not actually experiencing desire because all we've known sex as is what our partner wants from us. Because of that, I am very proud to say that I really do an incredible job spotting patterns in this area and holding really radically approving an open space around talking about this realm that for many of us, maybe you don't get to talk about that freely. Um, it can be really uncomfortable for a lot of us. And so if you are someone at the end of this episode that finds yourself hungering for deeper exploration around this topic and wanting to dive in around your particular marriage and your particular experiences and your particular spouse, my 90 minutes are a perfect place for us to dive into more of this together. So keep that in mind, especially if you get to the end of the episode and you're like, oh, take me deeper, Britta. Go sign up for a 90 and we can do that there. Now, there are two books that I'm gonna use in today's episode that I have really the first one, especially, I cannot recommend enough. This book blew my mind, really has opened things up for me, especially around the ideas of eroticism. So the first book that I want to tell you guys about and to consider reading, it is deep. It is meaty. This book is this book is a tome. It's got a lot of good stuff in it, but it is The Erotic Mind by Jack Moran. I don't even know. I'm trying to think of where I found this book, and I I don't even know. I think it might have been something I was looking up on Amazon at some point. Um, but y'all, this book. What I love so much about this book is that it really digs down into his research around eroticism, um, which just gives it so much more of a foundation, like an actual applied foundation from his work over decades with people exploring and helping them understand their sexuality and eroticism. And it really peels back so many layers through this book. It helps you get down into much more of the like deeply complex and paradoxical richness of how eroticism is formed. And to start us off with this book, I really wanted to take some time and just read to you how he defines eroticism. Because I've probably, you have probably heard the word erotic, eroticism more in the last 12 minutes of this episode than you may have had your whole life. Who knows? This was not erotic. The word erotic, the word eroticism was not a word that was a huge part of my vocabulary prior to this book. Um, definitely not a word that was ever, ever used while I was growing up. I don't think I ever used it in my marriage for the 12 years I was married, definitely not. Um, and now I can't get enough of it. As you guys can tell, like this word just lands so much more deeply and more rich than even, you know, the ideas of sex or intimacy for me. So, for many of you that are like, what is she talking about when she's saying eroticism? Let's dive in together into how he defines it. So, what is eroticism? The modern concept of eroticism is rooted in Greek mythology. Eros was the young and playful god of love, son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. At the most basic level, Eros is the source of attraction and the craving for sexual love. Some Greek philosophers also saw Eros as the force behind all creation, his absence leading to decay and destruction. Sigmund Freud was drawn to this interpretation, associating Eros, which he conceived as energy rather than a god, with his concept of libido, a combination of sexual drive and life force. Eroticism can best be understood as the multifaceted process through which our innate capacity for arousal is shaped, focused, suppressed, and expressed. We're born sensuous and sexual, but we become erotic as we receive both overt and subtle messages about ourselves from our primary caretakers and gradually integrate these messages with our experiences of touch as well as the highly personal mental images and emotions that go with them. As we grow, the demands and ideals of our culture, along with the interpersonal dynamics of our families and communities, influence our responses profoundly. Okay, y'all. So are we getting an idea of the depth? I keep using that word around eroticism. I love when he emphasizes like we are born sensuous and sexual, but becoming erotic is something that develops through all of these different layers. And I love that part, overt and subtle messages about ourselves from our primary caretakers. Huge piece of our eroticism when we're growing up. And then those messages, we take them. And as we get into experiences of touch and the highly personal mental images and emotions that end up going with them, and then the demands and ideals from our culture and the dynamics of our families and communities, we take all of those pieces and they get mixed together into this highly personal, one-of-a-kind, erotic, what I'm going to call a blueprint. I know there's someone out there, I think I might have talked about her on the on the podcast before that actually talks about erotic blueprints. That's not the one I'm talking about here. But I do love thinking of what he is talking of as like we all end up with this very specific erotic blueprint, this way that our eroticism moves and flows, what turns us on, what turns us off. It's very multifaceted and influenced by all of these pieces. Now I want to continue reading. He says eroticism is the process through which sex becomes meaningful. By the time we reach adulthood, we've all discovered that by itself, sex can be little more than a collection of urges and acts. But the erotic is intricately connected with our hopes, expectations, struggles, and anxieties, everything that makes us human. Whereas sex can be simple by its very nature, eroticism is complex. And from this richness, true passions are born. It is also through the magic of Eros that sex and our search for emotional closeness become intertwined. Okay, y'all. So hopefully from that little bit of reading, you guys are now on the same page with me of like, whoa, okay, this is not when Brita is saying eroticism, when she's talking about the feeling of eros, it is something more than the act of sex. And as I was saying, as I have done this personal work around, you know, at the beginning, I didn't understand I was that I was necessarily understanding my eroticism. I just knew, okay, there's something here in this intimacy piece, in the sex piece that's really fascinating to me, that I'm drawn to, but I don't fully understand about myself. I don't really understand it with my partners. I want to explore this. As I've gone into those journeys, those experiences that have come really post-divorce, mainly. Mainly post-divorce was where I got to explore more and with a lot more freedom and permission and curiosity that I was not given growing up. And really, because both my husband and I, my ex-husband and I were raised so strictly Mormon, there wasn't a lot of exploration or ability for us to truly understand ourselves, understand our eroticism, because we were trapped in the mental constructs that had been implanted in us far before we ever reached that point. Just because you're married and an adult and you can do what you want with your body doesn't mean you can actually do what you want with your body, because you may still have tons of thoughts and beliefs that are constraining you within your head that are limiting and shutting down the full expression of that eroticism. Now, coming back to this idea of you having your own blueprint and no blueprint being exactly the same as someone else's, one of the things that's so fascinating in this book, The Erotic Mind, is how something that will be a turn-on for one person may very well be a utter turn off for another. And that certain environments or people or situations can all affect us in how we feel that sexual drive and life force moving through us. Now, for me, one of the most fascinating pieces that I've really um I'm like so deeply proud of myself for being willing to look at, dive into, understand more around, especially in the last, let's say, probably in the last two to three years within the secure attachment partnership with Joe, is understanding more of how experiencing sexual abuse from my father when I was very young, along with the intense negative messaging around my body and sex within Mormonism, gave me some pretty gnarly parts in my blueprint that without deep examination around, they at a point in my um relationships and exploration, I was starting to notice they were definitely coming out sideways and in shadowy ways. And this is where, you know, we have these aspects of ourselves. When we've talked on the podcast before about shadow work or repressing, I'm thinking specifically a lot of my episode with Danny Granaroli, um, that, you know, when we have these parts that we have denied, repressed, shoved into the closet, they don't just stay there. They find their way out. And often they find their way out at inconvenient times, moments when we they, you know, we maybe end up hurting other people or hurting ourselves. And it can feel really scary and overwhelming when those moments happen. I think that's, you know, the real tragedy for so many of us that because we were taught for many of us to repress and to hide and to not understand these pieces, then when they do come out and they come out like a wrecking ball in our lives or in our relationships, we then come to fear them. We make the mistake of thinking. Oh, this part of myself is actually very dangerous. When what I've learned is yes, it is, it is difficult. It is a process to be able to see these parts, to go down into those parts of our eroticism that were perhaps formed through trauma, through, you know, not the ideal ideas of how this is going to be formed, which is one of the reasons I love Jack Morin's book, because he definitely dives into us understanding not only the 50% of our eroticism that's in the light, but understanding the 50% of our eroticism that's also in the dark. And if we need any confirmation that we all have this, all we have to do is look at, you know, politicians and people in the public space who have these like dark, kinky secrets that get leaked. And all of us, you know, want to be like, oh my gosh, that's so crazy. Oh, they're so weird. And yet we deny and hide our own pieces as well. Um, and I'm speaking specifically, I want to be clear. I'm speaking from a framework here in the US where, you know, we have our particular flavor around sex and the way it's treated within our culture. Um, and there, I would say there's still, still, for so many of us and as a culture at large, a lot of shame, confusion, misinformation around sex and eroticism. But what I've learned through my own exploration around going towards uh the trauma, understanding it, um going towards the shadowy parts of myself, the parts that are a little scary to look at, a little like, oh, oh my gosh, is that me? Oh, that is me. Oh, what what part of me is that? Why is that there? Is that when I have done that work, when I have gone towards understanding and curiosity, eventually, instead of those being parts that are repressed and locked away in a closet that will burst open on me when I'm not expecting it and kind of act out in those shadowy, unconscious ways, I get to now understand those parts of me and incorporate and own them and then work with those sides of my eroticism, those particular kinks that come from my history, and now own them and work with them consciously for my pleasure. And that is where there is this incredible, you know, as someone who had a lot of my eroticism formed without my consent, with the painful uh experiences of, you know, power over dynamics and a loss of power and a loss of desire being mine and it being someone else's. And it is so, I cannot tell you how empowering it is to be able to see and understand the erotic sides of myself that are now intertwined from all of that, and to be able to the phrase is coming through for me, y'all, is to see those kinks and be like, to make them my bitch. Like, I don't know, I don't know how else to say it, other than that kink no longer comes out sideways and scares me and makes me feel out of control. Now that I see it, I know it, I get to own it. It gets to be mine, mine to use, how I will, in the spaces I want. And that I think is one of the most important parts when we are thinking about why, why should we care about sexuality? Why should we care about our eroticism? I I don't know if this is the case for everybody, but for me, being able to move confidently in sexual spaces, being able to understand my eroticism is one of the biggest ways that I get to land and feel like an adult. And I know that's that's a big piece of my own particular blueprint, but that grounds me into the experience of I am an adult that gets to use my body, my pleasure, that gets to share it or not share it in the ways that feel good for me. Now, for many of you that are currently having affairs or have had affairs, or in those experiences have felt like you maybe became a different person or had an alternate side of yourself come out when it comes to the realms of pleasure and intimacy and sex. I want to offer that you may as well have a pretty rich and complicated erotic blueprint. And I want to especially encourage you, if that is the case for you, to take the time to get to know yourself. Because, like I was just explaining with my story, and as I talked about in episode 97, episode 97 is where I talked about fate versus destiny. Like Jung says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. This is the, uh, this is like one of the biggest tragedies in my mind, which is that those of us that have very complicated erotic blueprints, perhaps from things out of our control, you know, I did not get to pick being raised in a cult that was extreme around my body and about my sexuality, and basically said my sexuality was only to be used with my husband. Like there masturbation is not a thing in Mormonism. I'm pretty sure it's seen as a sin. They don't even talk about it for women. They shame the men around it a lot. Don't even talk about it for women. So didn't get to pick that, didn't get to pick what my dad did to me. You know, I didn't get there were a lot of things that were out of my control. And for many of you, that may have been the case too, that formed your eroticism the way it did. But what is in my control now as an adult is getting to say, I'm going to lean in, I'm going to dive down, I'm going to understand these parts of myself. Instead of continuing to see these alternate sides of me that come out and then dismissing them and saying, they are not important. These don't matter. I can live without this, which, uh, right? Haven't we all, those of us that have felt these sides, haven't we all done that and assumed, no, no, no, no. What the world says is important is, you know, the job and the and the spouse and the marriage and raising kids. And that's what should be enough for me. When what's lurking in the shadows is there's more here than you're actually allowing. And the biggest tragedy is that for those of us that have those deep erotic blueprints, but never actually take the time to understand them, to own them, to consciously work with them, we can end up feeling like we've got a lot of wrecking ball moments in our lives and a lot of confusion and a lot of pain around an area that has the potential to be so deeply connecting and rich. It's a huge lost potential in my mind, and honestly, a tragedy for so many, both men and women who don't understand these parts of themselves and then are, you know, driven through their life by these aspects instead of getting to really examine those hidden fears, dive into those memories that we have pushed away. For some of us, even, you know, repressed memories that can come back up. And the unacknowledged habits that we're kind of hiding from ourselves, those all, if we will dive into them, they give us the opportunity to take back control of our fate and transform it into becoming our destiny. And so for those of you needing a little bit of an extra push on like why this matters, those of us with heavy blueprints, and I will say, for those of you that are like, well, I don't have a heavy blueprint, just want to remind you that seven to eight years ago, I did not know any of this about myself. So don't rule yourselves out necessarily. And to drive home why it's so crucial, I want to read to you another part from the erotic mind. Because don't just take my word for it, right? You're like, okay, well, Brita thinks it's really crucial, but is it? Let me read this part. He says, few of us have been taught that we can be trusted in the erotic realm. Rather, quite the opposite. As youngsters, most of us were encouraged by a variety of subliminal and explicit messages to be wary of our eroticism as it was developing. Understandably, adults who have learned these lessons will often feel squeamish about examining the content and meaning of their turn-ons. It's not surprising or unusual to harbor a semi-conscious concern that you might uncover things about yourself that you would be better off not knowing. You can imagine how such an attitude restricts your vision. But if your childhood training has made you uneasy about eroticism, denying that attitude will only make matters worse. The best thing you can do is to acknowledge your feelings, no matter how illogical it may seem, and avoid putting yourself down for them. Discomfort with one's sexuality takes years to build up and can't be changed overnight. Your journey of erotic self-discovery will be infinitely easier and more rewarding if you can find and nurture even a small spark of faith in yourself. As you come to realize that Eros is fueled by the energy of life itself and thus contains a deep-rooted urge towards growth and self-affirmation, the legacy of mistrust can be gradually overcome. Keep in mind that those who establish a comfortable acceptance of their erotic urges are the least likely to inflict harm upon themselves or others. Let that land, my babes. Because most of you have that backwards. Most of you think that if I resist and deny and shove down and push away my erotic urges, oh, that is what will keep myself and the people I love safe. And I will say it clear and loud right here. That is not the case. I have seen, just like he says here, that when we deny these, when we don't come to know ourselves, when we hide, when we shove these into the shadow, that is when we are at the most risk of inflicting harm upon ourselves and upon others. And this is where we really get to the heart of this episode, which is that I have seen so many women who fall into this camp of being taught that sex and intimacy don't matter. Right? Like it's not a big I am honestly, I'm shocked by how many of you come to me, you know, and the marriage isn't working. You're considering divorce. Are we staying? Are we going? And when the fact that we haven't had intimacy in a year, or we're sleeping on different floors of the house and we have been for years, is brought up, it is like a passing footnote. It's not even like the core issue. And I see all sorts of reasons for that, you know, kind of kind of on that different pendulum. The the one side of you, maybe, you know, one one group of you may fall more in the, oh, the problem is me. I have, you know, this drive for sex that is, you know, needs to be repressed, and I shouldn't want this. I especially see for those of you that tend to be on this end too, maybe you've had really erotic experiences in the past, but they've been with partners that were abusive or insecurely attached or had addictions. And so your brain went, E, that level of eroticism and pleasure equals pain. And I need to stay away from it. Therefore, I need to abandon that and I need to go this direction to like safety, security, tame, vanilla. And then there's the opposite side, which will be, you know, those of you that are like, I just don't even feel I don't miss being on a different floor from my husband because I don't want to be touched by him. I don't actually feel drawn to that person. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, it's understanding that this really actually does matter for a good portion of us. Now, let me also say I love that in the second book I'm going to talk about, she does say at the beginning where she's like, for those of you that like sex is not your thing or it just has not interested you and eroticism is not your thing, this episode is not for you. Okay. I love you all. You do exist and you are wonderful and beautiful and perfect exactly as you are. So if you're listening to this episode and you're like, man, am I supposed to want sex more? No, no, no. Just trust yourselves, trust your journey. But specifically for my babes that are, you know, falling more in this percentage of the population and believing that this is not a big piece and you can just do without it, I'm hoping that this episode will help you reconsider. Because as he says, I and I'm gonna go back and read that part, as you come to realize that Eros is fueled by the energy of life itself and thus contains a deep-rooted urge towards growth and self-affirmation, the legacy of mistrust can be gradually overcome. He is pointing out here something that I have seen repeatedly, which is understanding that, yes, as much as Eros, you know, we think of it in the realms of eroticism and sexuality and intimacy, but it has something much deeper, the very energy of life itself. And this energy contains a deep-rooted urge towards growth and self-affirmation. And thus, for those of us that shove it aside and say, not a big deal, don't care, don't need it, or ooh, I need it too much, I need to just shove this down. We are literally suppressing and throwing away the source of massive levels of self-growth and life energy. And coming back to what he said earlier, when we deny this part of ourselves, what we're gonna see over and over is that we end up inflicting harm on ourselves or on others. And any of my women listening that have had affairs, they will be pretty open with you about the harm that gets caused with those affairs. Like I haven't met a woman yet on one of my calls who is proud of that piece, you know, that part of what the affair creates. But I also understand that the underlying harm that gets created, you know, with an affair, the people that get hurt, your spouse that gets hurt when you have an affair. What's underneath all of that, though, is typically a very twisted and painful, tangled wrestling with your own eroticism and years of inflicting harm on yourself as well. And this is what gets brushed over in our world of, you know, teaching women that this doesn't matter, that um that sex and desire and eroticism are something that that men are interested in. It's not something we need to worry about, and you'll be fine within the constraints of your marriage or with no understanding, no go deeper, no under like once for those of you that read this book, I I reach out to me, tell me in the comments on this episode, like reach back out around how this starts to blow your mind. Because once you start to understand how deeply complex your eroticism is, the the fact that there are religions out there teaching everybody one way of their sexuality and how it should be done and that it should look like this will just blow your mind. Just be like, this is this is the worst. This is the worst. I cannot believe that some dude out there thought they knew how everybody needed to do it and set it up as like, here, this is the one way that God says to do it. It's bullshit. I also want to normalize that, you know, you guys are hearing me talk about this six, seven plus years into really exploring and understanding more about myself in this space. For many of you, especially if you are someone listening at the beginning of your journey with this, I just want to normalize that you may feel very like, whoa, confused, overwhelmed, or, you know, this just isn't something that I thought was that important. And I really want to remind you when we talked about the episodes Gwen and I did from Gerda Lerner and Patriarchy, that we have thousands of years of women's eroticism and sexuality being controlled by the men around them. I mean, literally having women's bodies used as property to be traded to other men. So if this still feels like, whoa, I I I don't, this feels new to you, or um, this feels really taboo, welcome. Welcome to the club. As much as we may move through the world thinking, especially here in the US, that we have really changed and opened the doors around this. All I have to do is look at a recent call that I had, an intimacy chat that we did, where I asked everybody on the call, like, so did your mothers ever talk to you about vibrators or masturbating? And not a single woman on the call raised her hand. Like there was no one on the call that it had a mother who was, you know, teaching, hey, this is your body. It has these amazing capabilities. You get to use it how you want. No, nobody. And here we are in 2026. Um, and you know, in that same vein, I also talking to Quinn yesterday, I was like, rover, Roe v. Wade just got repealed. Like, what bigger example do we need to see that women's body autonomy is still being controlled and out of their hands. So know that this is an ongoing process. You, as the women listening to this podcast, I see us as you know, another wave of women on the front lines of reclaiming what was meant to be ours from the very beginning. I truly believe your eroticism, your sexuality, your um ability to feel pleasure and experience intimacy with yourself and with others is your gift by having a human body. It is no one else's. It does not belong to anybody else. It is not owned by anybody else, it is yours. And oh, what a journey so many of us as women have to take to reclaim that. It is not given to us as a birthright in the world that we live in today. And what an incredibly special gift it is. I described it on a recent coaching call to the woman I was coaching as like this gorgeous wild Mustang that she has within her that she has been told should be kept in a very tiny corral. Like no trees, no leaves, you know, no. No grass, just this tiny bare dirt corral. And that that's where that creature should be happy and satisfied versus when you think of a Mustang like running across the plains. Um, I don't know if any of you have ever, you know, those of you who've gotten to ride horses and actually ride them when they're running. Oh my gosh. If you want to understand like the thrill of eroticism and Eros energy, that epitomizes it for me. It is that feeling of freedom, expression, growth, life force. Now, I do want to say here, like a quick side note that in thinking about these women and the conversations we've been having in the community, that another amazing space, not only on the 90 minutes for like a deep one-on-one drop-in with me, but another amazing space to be exploring and understanding this part of yourself, I have to say, is in the stay or go community. That is a space where I have specifically, and with the, you know, with the amazing support of the women in that community, it is a very pleasure-positive, intimacy-positive space. And when we get to be in spaces like that with other women that are approaching their sexuality from positive spaces and curiosity, it is so healing. And it gives us the permission. Often maybe we can't give ourselves that permission, but when we see other women giving themselves permission, that gives us permission to think differently about ourselves, our body, and our pleasure. So if you are longing to feel less alone in this experience, maybe feeling the like, oh my God, am I just this, you know, that horrible thing that we think about ourselves? Am I just the crazy one out here on the edge? Am I just the weirdo? I want you to text Stay Orgo Community to 33777 and come join the community because that is also a space where I have seen this work really start to open for those of us that are in the deep trenches of stepping in and engaging with our eroticism in a world that has really taught us this doesn't matter. You can cut this part off of yourself and forget about it and not prioritize it, and it'll be fine. So the first takeaway from all of that and this first part of the episode is understanding and valuing that if you are worried right now about mismatched sex drives in your marriage, you have to go deep into knowing and understanding yourself and really learning about your eroticism and being able to own your eroticism to show up as an adult partner within the dynamic. Now, that is only a part of the equation, though, when we are adding in a spouse within a marriage. And this is where we get into the second takeaway that I want you guys to have from this episode. And it is gonna come from the book Come Together by Emily Naguski, The Science and Art of Creating Lasting Sexual Connection. I have mentioned her before on the podcast and her book, Come As You Are. She wrote a book, I believe it was 10 years ago, called Come As You Are, all about women's sexuality, connecting with your body, um, pleasure in your body. Great book. Highly recommend it. This book is her second book that is now focused on how do we do it within connection? Okay. We got to learn how to do it with ourselves, and then how do we do it in connection? And I loved in this book that straight out the gate, she gave me the answer that I was most curious about to the following question. And the question is what do you think is the key to great sex over the long term? And I love that she takes us into all of these other things that we would think it would be. You know, she's like, some people think it's frequency, it's not. Some people think it's novelty and adventure, it's not. Some people think the key to satisfying long-term sex is monogamy or non-monogamy, watching porn or not watching porn, being kinky or vanilla. It's not. Notice if any of these are things that you thought were going to be the answer. Some people think it's attractiveness, being conventionally good looking, having a perfect relationship or a perfect body, or having skills, like knowing a lot about how to give great oral sex. None of those things actually predict great sex in the long term. So what does she dug deep into the science, and the science taught her three essential characteristics of couples who sustain a connection over the long term. Are you guys ready to hear them? I know you're so eager. You're like, what? What could they be? I was very excited to read them too, and honestly, I was shocked when I read them. So she says the three characteristics of partnerships that sustain a strong sexual connection are one, they are friends. Or to put it more precisely, they trust and admire each other. Two, they prioritize sex. That is, they decide that it matters for their relationship. And don't worry, those of you cringing at this one, I'll dig into this a little bit deeper. And then three, instead of accepting other people's opinions about how they're supposed to do sex in their partnership, they prioritize what's genuinely true for them and what works in their unique relationship. So I have to say, guys, this was hugely reassuring for me very recently. A little peek into my sex life at the moment, which is that Joe and I had tons of eroticism, just natural in our first year of dating. And then lo and behold, over the last year and a half, we have noticed things changing. And, you know, that's the gift of me and the way my brain works is as things change, I instead of just like, okay, this is what it is now, I'm usually like, whoa, wait, why is this what we actually want? Do, you know, let's dive in. And in diving in, we realized some things, especially that was a big reason why I went back and started reading The Erotic Mind and realizing, you know, some of the things that erotically worked for us, like not living together and now living together, and you know, some of the ways we've changed like fundamental pieces in our lives actually lead to a decrease in eroticism that we have to now consciously um add other pieces in to compensate for. So a big piece too, though, was this book, getting this book. And at the time I was like, oh my gosh, you know, what are is it something that can change? Is it something that we can kind of play with, work with? And I have to tell you, getting these three things felt so great because although this would not, by the way, have been the case for me, I would say back in my marriage, you know, to my ex-husband, I looking back, there was a real lack of trust that had gotten eroded in the relationship through, you know, and and not through him being a bad guy, but just through the complex interplay of our own traumas, our own erotic blueprints, not understanding each other, that um religious trauma, then leading to sexual coercion. I see sexual coercion come out of religious trauma and you know, ideas around the woman will cleave to her husband, her body shall be his all the time. So it was so reassuring for me to see like one, they are friends, they trust and admire each other. And I was like, yep, Joe and I, we definitely have this. Two, they prioritize sex. This was the piece that it was like, okay, I had definitely this year, with all of the business stress, let this slip. I'd fallen back into the very thing I'm advising you guys on this episode to not do. I'd fallen back into the world of, okay, pleasure, sex, like that's something I get to do after I've been a good girl and gotten all of the things that have to get done, after I've gotten, you know, my business where it needs to be and the kids are taken care of and work is done and everything is perfect, then I get to reward myself. So we're not prioritizing sex. And actually, this is where I want to dive in on the second one when she says prioritize sex. I take this deeper. I definitely think prioritizing sex is too uh vague for me. And it's not, it's not about sex for me. It really is about eroticism. And so for me, the second one is they prioritize eroticism. That holds so much more depth for me. And really, when I realized, you know, they prioritize eroticism for me, that leads us straight into the third one, which is instead of accepting other people's opinions about how they're supposed to do sex in their partnership, they prioritize what's genuinely true for them and what works in their unique relationship. And this was where and why I started this episode off with the erotic mind. Because for a lot of us, we don't know what is genuinely true for us. And let me just say here clearly: if you do not understand yourself through the lens of the erotic mind book, through eroticism, I would go very far in saying that you may think you know what's genuinely true for you, and you may have only scratched the surface, babe. You may, I would have really, I was like laughing with Quinn yesterday about how much, you know, back when we first started coaching, we thought we knew ourselves. We thought we knew what we wanted. And now here we are six years later, and it's like, oh my gosh, just so adorable how much I thought I knew me and how I have just uncovered and and really found so many more layers to myself. Now, in thinking about these three things, this last one, especially, and this whole idea that you can't prioritize what's genuinely true for you and what's going to work in the relationship unless you actually know that brings me to the most important piece that I think of when I'm working with women who are saying we have got mismatched sex drive in this marriage. And specifically in the dynamic where you are the one that is the more erotic partner. For some of you, you are going to have partners that are just not interested in diving into and doing the deep discovery work of their own eroticism in order to be a match for you. And I've seen this a lot recently of women coming to me and they're like, I just have this drive or this desire. Maybe you've even asked your partner to try certain things or to, especially for those of us that are more kinky, right? Like, um, I want to try this or I want to do that. And your partner's just like, I mean, I could, but I don't really want to. It doesn't really interest me. Oh, I can just like feel the sails, you know, the wind deflating out of your sales when you have a partner that is just not interested in doing that, that doesn't feel drawn to, or, you know, maybe their top three values of what they want to experience most in life, erotic, sexual intimacy is not one of them. And if you are someone who finds yourself in this level of mismatched sex drive, erotic interest, sexual connection, I want to encourage you to not discount how big of a deal this may very well be. Because I see over and over many of you as women doing this exact thing. When you find yourself in this dynamic, so many women just say, Okay, well, I can live without that. And as I've come to learn about myself, y'all, I think that's like one of the most um, the biggest gifts I've given myself is in diving into and understanding more about myself. When you come to know what you need, then you can show up more um honest and clear in the life that you're living, in the people that you're with. And as I've, you know, especially I would say in this last year, with all of this deeper trauma work, understanding my erotic blueprint, then understanding my ADHD sides, which have a lot to do with, I would say the way I experience eroticism and the way I really love to go so deep into things and explore the edges. And I want to push the edges and I want to see myself more clearly through those experiences. The more I have owned that about myself, the more I've accepted my truth that I need a partner who has the same level of fascination and interest when it comes to sex. That is a non-negotiable for me. This is, you know, number two, they prioritize sex. I need a partner who prioritizes eroticism and who is willing to explore or even, you know, brush up against those parts of themselves that may scare him, that may make him uncomfortable to see. Um, and that together, you know, what I love is that together we get to figure those pieces out. Yes, there will be highs, there will be lows, there will be the flow of, you know, understanding ourselves and each other through that, but that's a journey I want to be on. And if I look back at my marriage, that just was not the case there. It for a variety of reasons, I would offer, I think a big part of it was just the amount of water under the bridge in that relationship, the, you know, historical backgrounds that both of us had, the erotic blueprints we had and the way they were interacting were just really not a match. And although I didn't understand that back then, like I had no, not nearly even close to the amount of awareness that I do now. I'm so grateful that really ultimately I just trusted what my body was saying and what my soul calls were leading me towards, which was there's something else. I don't know what it is, I don't understand it, I don't even know if it's gonna be with another partner or not, but this is where I need to go. And that has led me to this relationship with my current partner. Now I do want to caveat that. I mean, it's it's wonderful now that at this stage in my journey, I do have a partner that I get to explore and play and heal and grow and understand myself better in this erotic area. But that is not where I started. And I really want to leave you all as we finish up this episode with the place that I recommend as the best place to start. So maybe you find yourself, you know, either end of the pendulum right now. Maybe you are a partner who's like, I'm the more erotic one. I have so much more desire. I don't feel that connection with my partner. They don't seem to want me back the same way. Maybe you're on the other end where you're like, I he seems to keep trying to do things with me, and I don't want him to touch me, and I don't really feel connected to my eroticism or my body. Where I want you to start, whether you have either of those pieces, you know, a partner that's out of touch, whether you're healing from sexual coercion or you're touch-starved, I want you to start with self-touch. This is where my journey began. And it has been the through line through all of the process that has been the place that I come back to. And I think it's especially important for those of us that have experienced any kind of sexual abuse, molestation, or sexual coercion in our experiences with others. If that is the case for you, the safest place to start opening and understanding Eros energy, exploring eroticism is with yourself. That is where we first start to learn what feels good in our bodies, what doesn't feel good, where are the boundaries, where are the places where, you know, we can explore more of our fantasies, of the things that turn us on without having to perform for others. It's a place where we get to relearn how to feel turned on in our body purely from our own touch, our own thoughts, uh, without, you know, needing to make somebody else feel good at the same time or feeling the pressure around that. And we also get to really control the speed and the tempo. And I found speed is really important, being able to slow way, way, way, way, way down. And often we can't even slow down that much unless it's just us with ourselves. So if you're listening to this episode and you're like, I want a partner, I want it, and it's and you don't have one, babe. This is where we start. Self-pleasure is by far, not only is it an amazing place where I've been able to like explore and understand more of my pleasure and my eroticism and what turns me on, but it is a place where I have also learned the benefits of like moving energy and resetting my nervous system through pleasure. That may sound like what? Maybe I'll get to talk about this on an episode in the future, but especially for me with my ADHD and my brain kind of like it'll get locked up and my body will get locked up, and I'll just start overperforming and kind of surviving. Oh my gosh, does self-pleasure help so much to take me out of sympathetic and get me down into the parasympathetic of my body? It can be like a reset of the computer for me. Now I want to be clear that self-pleasure can be tough for those of you that are in unhappy marriages. Maybe you don't feel safe enough to touch yourself in your home. Maybe you feel afraid that you're gonna get walked in on. So if that is the case, I want you to notice that because that's really important information. Okay. That is not something to just gloss over. If you don't feel safe or like you want to self-pleasure in your own home, that's really important information for you to consider when you are deciding whether you want to stay or go. Okay. Don't just gloss over that piece. Finally, I want to recap for you guys the two big takeaways that I want from this episode. And the first one for sure is that babes, nobody may have ever said this to you. Nobody may have emphasized, maybe your mother didn't tell you, your grandmother, nobody may have told you how important your own personal eroticism is. But I hope in this episode that you hear me when I say it is so important to understand this and to know for yourself what you need when it comes to sex. Because when we pretend that it isn't there, when we deny our eroticism, which the majority of us have been trained to do, it will come out sideways. We can end up harming ourselves or others when we act like this is not a part of us. And secondly, if you know you are the more erotic partner in your marriage and you are wondering whether there is potential for you in your spouse, I want you to remember those three points and ask yourself do I deeply trust and admire my spouse? You know, are they my friend? Would I consider them a deep friend? Two, have we decided to prioritize sex? And I'd go so far as saying to prioritize eroticism, understanding ourselves and each other erotically. And three, do we prioritize what's genuinely true for us rather than accepting other people's opinions about how we're supposed to do sex in our partnership? And this is where, you know, we get to step. Are you able with your partner to step outside of the rules and the constraints that the both of you have been programmed with? Are you able to find a way for both of you in your erotic ways to create something that works just for the two of you? That is your intimate, personal, erotic playground together. I think sex and intimacy and pleasure is one of the most juicy and amazing and fun playgrounds we get to play in as adults. And at the same time, it is the most overlooked and undervalued areas for us as women. And I truly believe that's because for many of us, you know, maybe we've only had sex through the lens and on the schedule of our spouse's pleasure and desire, or maybe because we feel so ashamed and scared of our own levels of desire that we can't even bear to admit our own eroticism to ourselves. But whatever way you swing on that pendulum, my loves, please let this episode and my voice and my insistency on this drive home for you that this is one of the most untapped and rich and deep areas for coming to know and understand yourself. It is one of my favorite places to end up doing the work. We do the work of coming to know ourselves in all sorts of areas, in our relationships, in our in our relationships with people, in our relationships with food, in our relationships with money. One of the favorite places I love to do it is in our relationships with our own eroticism. So I hope this episode encourages you to not just set it aside, to not just be content with letting it be an afterthought or, you know, a sub note off to the side, but to really examine for yourself where do I fall on that spectrum and what do I want to understand about myself most in this area? It's the work I am so dedicated, committed to. It's a huge piece, huge, huge piece, especially when we are trying to decide if we want to stay married or not. I definitely think this part has to be put on the table in one of the front and center locations. All right, babes. That's what I've got for you this week. So much love. Would love to meet more of you, see more of you on my 90 minutes in the community. I've been having some of you reach out to me for the one-on-ones. Ah, it makes my life so juicy getting to dive into these pieces with all of you and hold this space. So I'm very excited and looking forward to meeting more of you in those more intimate places. And until then, I will see you all next week.