Hate Your Husband Suddenly? It Might Be Perimenopause ft. Alyx Coble-Frakes

Perimenopause & Divorce: why everyone should care about this. 

It can seem like most of our lives as women, we are being controlled by a mysterious power behind the scenes: our periods! 

And we're really not wrong for feeling that way. On this episode of the Divorce Curious podcast, I'm joined by the founder of The Agenda Period, Alyx Coble-Frakes, and she is dropping some seriously fascinating knowledge on us about how our cycles impact every part of our lives, including and especially our relationships. 

Did you know that 70% of all divorces are filed by women who are in perimenopause? That's just one of the suprising pieces of data that Alyx shares in this episode as we discuss the impact of perimenopause on relationships and so much more! 

Give it a listen, leave me a comment, and share this episode with the women and men in your life. 

Connect with Alyx Coble-Frakes 

www.theagendaperiod.com 

Waitlist: https://the-agenda-period-2023.myflodesk.com/bavawaitlist

Bio: 

  Alyx Coble-Frakes is a femtech founder, speaker, and creator of The Agenda., the cycle-based planning platform helping women reclaim their health, energy, and productivity. She is a regular media guest across local and national television and podcasts, known for making the menstrual cycle relatable, actionable, and empowering — especially during the often-ignored perimenopause transition.  

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Transcript

Lisa Mitchell (00:00)
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Divorce Curious podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell. But we don't really care about that because I am notorious for bringing on people who are way cooler than I am. And I think I did it again, you guys. I think I did it again. So we are very excited today to be joined by Alyx Coble-Frakes. Yes, nailed it. Nailed it. ⁓ my God.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (00:20)
You nailed it. nailed, oh, 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. That was so good.

Lisa Mitchell (00:25)
And we are also, recording this for the podcast and we're also experimenting with live streaming on YouTube on my Lisa Mitchell expert channel. So we have no idea what's gonna happen today from the technology or interaction side of things. wish us luck. We're just gonna giddy up, but Alyx, I am so excited to have you here today and I ⁓ have to give a shout out to the amazing divorce coach.

Leah GiaQuinta because she has assembled a dare I say, know, baddie group of women who are all focused on supporting women specifically in our own unique ways when it comes to the intersection of divorce and menopause. Right, so there's this big topic, collective conscious. I heard Oprah yapping about it the other day about gray divorce and.

There are segments on all the major news networks. so finally there's like, my God, women exist. They evolve through different phases of their life. They may make decisions to get out of situations that they're not happy with and do things for themselves. my God, stop the presses.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (01:27)
Autonomy?

Women having autonomy? What? I can't believe it. Who would have thought?

Lisa Mitchell (01:30)
I mean, who would have thunk? What a

time to be alive. What an absolute time to be alive. And I cannot think of anybody better than you, Alyx, to invite onto the Divorce Curious show because, you are like all of my favorite things. And I'll tell you why, because there are several reasons. First of all, you are candid. Like, here it is. This is me.

This is what I'm doing. Here's my story. And any woman that moves through the world with a courageous approach of just like take it or leave it, I don't care, immediately gets up there on my favorites list. You'd be in my top eight on MySpace if that was still a thing right now. So you'd have your own song, right? You'd have your own song. But.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (02:08)
That's high praise high praise

Lisa Mitchell (02:14)
In addition to just being a very candid and courageous person, you also are a tech maven. So technology like nerds unite. We love us some good tech. We love to solve problems with great websites and apps and data and really help people understand what's going on behind the scenes. Not just like input, but you actually give valuable outputs that help make data driven decisions, which, you know, if we were on LinkedIn right now, everybody would be.

logging on to find out about our data-driven decision-making model? Hashtag!

Alyx Coble-Frakes (02:43)
Hashtag data training decisions

in divorce. That's what we need to create. We need to create a data model to be like, hey, if these things don't keep working or they stop working, that's the data you need. Now it's time for your gray divorce. Here you go. The proof is right in the pudding. The proof is in the pudding.

Lisa Mitchell (02:59)
V2, V2,

come into beta, come into a beta test near you soon.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (03:04)
no.

Lisa Mitchell (03:05)
I'm not even really joking. This is our second tech enabled solution that we've talked our way into. You know that,

Alyx Coble-Frakes (03:12)
I love this, I love what's happening here. We're just gonna solve all of the menopause problems with cool technology made by women for women. Let's go.

Lisa Mitchell (03:18)
I'm

so for it. It's about time. It's about time. It's our time to shine, solving our problems with our technology and using our data the way we want to not to fund the evil empires. ⁓ So any investors that are listening to this right now, because there's a lot that follow this, hit us up. We're doing a friends and family round, unofficial. We'll get you a term sheet. It'll be fun. We'll make it worth your while.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (03:22)
Yes.

Exactly.

Hit us up.

Lisa Mitchell (03:42)
my God, where are we going? Anyways, Alyx, think I'm still introducing why I like you, right? Okay, so candidness, tech platforms, ⁓ solving problems that I care about, obviously, as a woman of a certain age, as they say. Every day is a fresh hell when it comes to what is happening and why, and why today does someone that I loved and enjoyed make the top list of people who may end up buried in my backyard at some point? Like it is a...

Alyx Coble-Frakes (04:00)
Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (04:07)
It is a wild, wild time to exist as women in our bodies. And anybody that can give me a little bit more understanding and then God forbid some support and tools to help make this experience more manageable, again, top eight, probably like posted up in the spot right under my daughter, I'm just gonna say. So that's my brag board for you.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (04:20)
Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (04:30)
But why don't you tell the good folks here listening and watching, well, what you're about, what you're working on and why you're doing it.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (04:31)
Thank you.

Yeah, I never set out to be a period entrepreneur, so it's a really interesting path that led me right here. I think my 10-year-old self would be mortified of the fact that I talk about periods on the internet, because she didn't really understand the internet. That was pretty new when I was 10. So she would be mortified that I was telling people about my first period story, talking about all of these things. And I'm in the middle of working on my next book right now, and it's all about this kind of

these like circumstances that the smartest women I know keep falling into, keep crashing into in these very predictable periods of time throughout our life because no one really prepared us for life as a woman because under the patriarchy, under his eye, know, everything about being a woman is terrible, dangerous, bad, not to be something that's admirable, not to be something that we're proud of. And because of that rhetoric that's so early, it also...

codes, all of these things that are unique to women that men don't deal with. So our first menstrual cycle, like our puberty looks very different than boy puberty, going through pregnancy, the crashes of postpartum, and then this lack of support in menopause and perimenopause. And the reason that when we see this red thread, why it is...

I don't believe our bodies designed it to be horrible. We actually crafted the menstrual cycle over thousands of years of human evolution. Our body decided that this was the best, most efficient way to be a human on this period planet that I like to call it. Like this planet that has four seasons and 13 moons, very similar to a woman's body when a woman's body is working in rhythm. So.

Like, patriarchy did this really great job of convincing us that all of these things are just terrible because Eve ate an apple, right? Like, this is like where religion and patriarchy, like some chick that you're distantly related to ate an apple and so now the rest of your life is going to be terrible. And I'm like, that's not, that's not fair. You must all pay forever. Right, and then, exactly, and the not knowing and then not having access to education is actually the thing that makes it terrible because the thing itself is not supposed to be terrible.

Lisa Mitchell (06:20)
We must all pay, forever.

the weakness of the females.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (06:34)
So, and I can say this as someone who used to have horrendous periods and now has very delightful periods because I have gotten access over years of like understanding how my body works, understanding how to support the endocrine system. I have just dipped my toe into perimenopause and I'm bound and determined to make it as delightful as possible because our body did not set us up for terror and horror.

the just like this intersection of like the way that the world is and the lack of information to it all the way back to there was a concerted effort in the 1900s in the United States to make midwifery illegal because women used to pass down the information to other women. Women were helping women birth babies, helping women understand if their cycle was gone, how to bring it back. All of these things were kept in the hands of these womb tenders and mostly women, predominantly women of color. Then when gynecology became an official career for

mostly male doctors. They were not only male doctors, I think, because I don't even know if women went to college back when this whole thing happened. They weren't allowed to go study medicine. So they had a very concerted effort to make midwifery illegal across the entire United States. And this did a thing that really severed women's tie from the women before them passing on the general racial knowledge on how to live within your body with dignity, with ease, with clarity. So that was, you know, like 125 years ago.

And we can see that women are clawing it back now. They're really trying to understand these things because we all got sold this vision that birth control was gonna save all of our problems and away we go. And that's just not the reality. So we're finding ourselves with these pieces of a shattered health system that's completely been fragmented and made us think that we were not supposed to complain about it because it just sucks to be a woman. So really you don't need to complain about it. Just accept that it's terrible and then shut the fuck up about it.

Lisa Mitchell (08:17)
Yeah, because it's primarily like, it's primarily like, you know, a mental more, more in your head, right? It's really more of a mental condition than it is physical, right? So to the point that the FDA like can't really intervene and, and in ways to fix that because it's not medical, right? Like it's just, you know, a silly little, silly little girls complaining about some cramps.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (08:17)
Right? Like that's kind of like the story we've been fed.

Yeah, of course, of course, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Still fairly long girls.

And then they like like insult to injury. All of the big medical research has mostly been done on men's bodies, all of like the intentional hormonal research, all of the diet plans, all of the workout regiments, the medication has all been tested on a body that has a male pattern, a 24 hour cycle. We've got a 28 day cycle.

So you can't tell me that the medicine that is supposed to work for me on day one is gonna be the same because my body's not the same on day 20 as it is on day one.

Lisa Mitchell (09:07)
Yeah, see, that's wild to me. Like the fact that it was just brought to my awareness recently as I've been exploring more women founders and entrepreneurs that are working in the space of women's health, the fact that so many of the approved available recommended interventions for us across the scope of health and medicine, right? Like not just things that are lady problems, right?

The fact that like these major things that have just been like the gold standard for us weren't even researched. Like the research did not even include women. Like.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (09:47)
It wasn't

legally required to include women in medical research until 1991, I believe, one or three. So like the year I was born. And then what's even worse than that, so most medical research has like predominantly been on mice and rats. So they weren't even required to have female rats in their study until 2016. So even when they're like...

Lisa Mitchell (09:54)
Wild.

Stop it. Stop it. 2016 like less than

10 years ago from the time we're recording this.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (10:13)
Yes. that's when they were like, okay, okay, okay, we'll include women in our studies. Just kidding. We're only going to study rats and we're only going to study male rats. Hashtag loophole. And then they didn't even study. like all the period products, have been like, they tested the viscosity to be able to show you how much liquid that they can hold. They were testing them with water until 2024.

Lisa Mitchell (10:34)
See, that's the

part that's wild to me. Like never once in the life of having periods has my period resembled water. Like ever, like not even close.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (10:40)
Never, not even once, nope. So like, of course,

the absorption isn't gonna be the same. So like, we're like recommending products and treatments to women that don't work for them because they haven't been studied for how our bodies work. It's just so enraging sometimes.

Lisa Mitchell (10:53)
I was

just gonna say, is it any wonder that we're all so like absolutely filled with rage about everything systemic at the moment, specifically healthcare and then, and, and, and, and, and, and, and everything else that discounts. my God, it's exhausting. Well, so thank you for taking up the charge. Thank you for bringing so much awareness and so much visibility to this topic. I can tell you I was at a,

Alyx Coble-Frakes (10:56)
So mad, they were all so mad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (11:18)
I was at a big tech, it was like a meeting of founders and investors and it was this big, big event, like 40 plus founders got the chance to pitch and then it got kind of whittled down. there was, I think six female founders that pitched. And then there were two that actually like were two of the four winners were female founded. ⁓

Alyx Coble-Frakes (11:23)
fun.

Awesome.

Lisa Mitchell (11:42)
technology teams in the medical space, no less. One was like disease diagnosis, specifically Lyme disease from ticks, being able to identify at the source at the time that it occurs, which was super, super cool. And then the other one is a technology company called Sanfire. That is this device that helps specifically for women around PMDD, PMS, right? But it's not so much like the chemical intervention. It's more like how your brain's

Alyx Coble-Frakes (11:49)
Mmm.

wow. ⁓

So cool.

Lisa Mitchell (12:08)
recognized pain signals, right? So, but her during her pitch, was so interesting because it's primarily, I mean, we did have some female judges, but it's, I'd say 85 % of the people in the room are men, right? That aren't aren't on staff for the event. And I got, I had a little sidebar conversation with one of the judges after, after the event and, and they disclosed that like, the amount of discomfort in the judges panel discussion around

Alyx Coble-Frakes (12:10)
Yeah.

Yep.

Lisa Mitchell (12:33)
even saying the word period was like palpable. Now to their credit, right, they went through, this company got funded, the tech's awesome, it's great. I was so excited. It was literally like all the women as she was doing her pitch, because she said things like, well, the FDA, it's mental, so the FDA, we don't have to wait for FDA clearance because they considered it a mental problem, not a physical problem, so we can just do what we want, right? And it landed every woman, and again, there weren't a lot of us, but every woman in the...

in the audience was like giving snaps, right? And when they made it through to the final, we're all like cheering because it felt like in a sea of, and all great technology, right? But to have a female founded team and then to have a female focused product, a female health focused product. Like for me, I was like, okay, maybe, mean, female founders only get what? 2 % of all distributed capital on a good year and it's declining. ⁓

Alyx Coble-Frakes (13:01)
It like, yeah!

A win for all of us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. 2%. Yep.

Lisa Mitchell (13:26)
So as a female founder myself, it's like any of us that get any money from anybody is gonna be a big cheer, but especially when it's going to help women feel better in their bodies and manage their cycles and their phases of life more effectively. So I am rooting for you to get whatever support and funding you're seeking now and in the future and count me in as an investor and a connector and whatever else I can do there because the sooner we can get this stuff to market, man, the better off we are.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (13:31)
win.

Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (13:51)
I have a particular interest in your take around, well, I have lots of interest in your take, but talk to me about what you are hearing and seeing from women who are finally being able to control their experience with their cycles and support themselves better and what that is doing in their relationships or how they're finding you after their relationships.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (14:17)
Yeah, because of all of that stuff we talked about, all of the taboo, we get a lot during our normal menstruating life that we're just like crazy. Like anytime you're angry, a man will be like, are you PMSing? Like what's wrong? Like I think they're starting to learn better not to say that to us, but like when I was growing up, I heard that so many times, right? Like I heard that a lot. this.

Lisa Mitchell (14:34)
you'd be surprised.

she's on her period.

She must be starting soon. Yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (14:41)
Right. And like the thing that I want to really bring to this, this is like my hot take with Alyx Kovalefrakes, is that both things can be true. Is that like we are chemically different during the time right up before our period, and that doesn't mean that we are disconnected from our experience. I actually think it means we're more connected to our experience because of the way our hormones shift. So the first half of our hormone or the first half of our cycle from period through ovulation, we have much higher levels typically of estrogen with a healthy cycle.

Estrogen as we know there's now lots of great brain science even some of the stuff you sent me about that that team right Estrogen is a pro-social hormone because during the first half of our cycle We want to get pregnant our body is an animal like our body wants to get pregnant because its only job is to pass on its genetic Materials, so it's like hey, I've got this gray egg. I'm cooking up who wants to come scramble this egg right so like we because of that humans evolved biologically to women to

demonstrate many, many higher levels of pro-social hormones during the first half of our cycle. This is what I'm calling it. And then during the second half of our cycle, our body is trying to do a very different job. Our body is trying to protect a potential pregnancy. So what progesterone does, it's very calming in the brain. We have lower estrogen relative to progesterone. Progesterone is a calming hormone, but when these hormones shift, we turn inward to ourself to what I call the pro-self orientation because your body is now

thinking it's creating its own little universe within itself, gonna create this little nest for this potential embryo, right? Like we are doing this internal work, which means things do not roll off our back as easily. We are not as easy to say yes. We are not as perky and we are not as in tuned with everybody else's needs, not because we're crazy, but because our body intentionally wants us to be more in tuned with ourself so that we can do this job of potentially carrying out a pregnancy.

So as we move into perimenopause, we spend more and more time in a pro self orientation and less and less time in a pro social orientation, which means the bullshit that's not working in our lives. It's not that we're crazy or that we are reactive or that these things are not true. It is that without estrogen fluffing up our synapses, we are seeing things in a way that honestly I think feels a lot more clear and a lot more grounded for a lot of women, which is when those conversations come up.

Lisa Mitchell (16:36)
Mmm.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (16:59)
or in women that I've worked with now through a divorce or on the other side, they said, I told him about these things. We'd have the same fight every single month. I said, I bet you had it in the luteal phase. Was it always a little bit before your period? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he would maybe sometimes bring that up or say I was a little bit crazy or say I was just hormonal. Nope, that is the time when women are clear. This is when the time where if something continues to bother you, it's gonna show up in this phase.

This is the time. And what that really starts to mean is like, this is the time to make sure you're doing your boundary work and that you are starting to live in better integrity during the first half of your cycle. Because what gets really jarring for men is that men are doing the same thing every day. that's, watch wins repeat, watch wins repeat. So if half of the time you let them get away with murder and the other half of the time you want to murder them, that gets very confusing for the men.

in our lives because God bless them they do the same thing every day wash rinse repeat.

Lisa Mitchell (17:51)
you

incongruent

messaging the root of most conflict.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (17:59)
Yes, I'm writing that one down.

Lisa Mitchell (18:01)
I just delivered a session this morning on communicate in the leadership realm, but it applies at home too.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (18:04)
Yep. so we, so

it does. So women are unintentionally having incongruent messaging, right? Where they're letting things slide. They're letting things go. They're, they're because estrogen is protective in the brain. You're like, he's not that annoying right now. I'll just pick up those socks for him. it's no big deal. But then I literally had an agent reach out to me today and she said,

Yeah, no, I'm really gonna dive into your proposal and I'm gonna let my husband know that if he can't figure out how to wash out his oatmeal bowl in the morning, it will lead to a divorce. Because I can't keep telling this man to wash out his oatmeal bowl. I said, oh, hello, where's your gonna pause? Hello, queen, how are you?

Lisa Mitchell (18:43)
the universal experience happening right there. Like, exhibit A, friends. Exhibit A, and then he's like, it's just an oatmeal bowl, she wants to divorce me. It's like, no, it's been the oatmeal bowl over 20 years times a thousand, yeah. Yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (18:47)
Wash out your damn pleobole. Wash it out! ⁓

And he's like, you didn't care last week.

Yeah,

yeah. And so I think women, we've been raised and socialized to people please. We've been raised and socialized to shut down our physical symptoms, to be very disconnected from our body because our bodies are full of shame and taboo because they bleed and they're weird and they make babies and it stresses everybody out. And so you get to this pressing point in perimenopausal when you can no longer ignore your lived reality, your body, because of the hormonal shifts, start screaming at you more consistently. You have less and less and less tolerance.

for not being treated in the way that feels equal to you. And so while we're seeing divorce decrease across the board, we're seeing an increase in perimenopause and 70 % of divorce initiated by women is happening during the perimenopausal years.

Lisa Mitchell (19:41)
Boom, really, okay, so 70 % of divorce initiation is happening by women during menopause. That's the knowledge you just dropped on us.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (19:52)
So overall, 80 % of all divorces are initiated by women and of that 80 % of all divorces, 70 % of them happen during perimenopause. So the vast majority of all divorces being asked for, are being asked for by perimenopausal women.

Lisa Mitchell (20:01)
wild.

No wonder it's finally hitting the airwaves. Like that's a big path of destruction right there, right? Yeah, like everybody knows somebody who is being impacted by this reality.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (20:11)
That's a... It's a big kaboom! Yes.

My nail tech was like, ⁓ I hear all the women talking to their husbands. She'll be nervous. I'm like, what? He's like, all the ladies, all the old ladies, all my old clients, they're leaving them. They're leaving those men. I'm like, as they should, as they should. Because the other thing that's different is like we just, we just passed the 50th anniversary of women being able to open up their, their own checking account. Like I think this is the 51st year that that's been able to happen. And so before

Lisa Mitchell (20:41)
Also wild.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (20:45)
Everyone's like, well, my grandma just stayed. Will your grandma not have a choice? She didn't have the financial freedom or flexibility to leave. She was financially trapped in a situation that she just had to put on her best front and smile and act like nothing was wrong.

Lisa Mitchell (20:57)
Yeah, I'm like,

yo boo boo, your grandma was a hostage. A hostage, like let's just call it what it is, an economic hostage, right? An illegal hostage. So yeah, wild.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (21:00)
Hostage. Hostage. Yes. Yes. Yes. So now

women are out earning on degrees, bringing home similar amounts of income and still in 2025 doing 70 % of the unpaid labor at home. And so women are like, the math is not mapping anymore. Like, why should I be bringing in a similar amount of money and then doing more work?

at home than you are. It is unfair and it doesn't feel good in my body anymore and I'm unwilling to be a single mom with an extra adult that I have to keep cleaning up after in my home.

Lisa Mitchell (21:38)
Yes, now see what's so interesting to me is that I pulled that parachute at 30, right? Which was more, I mean, my daughter was like three. So maybe that was more like the same kind of postpartum body readjusting. mean, we had a lot of compounding circumstances. So I can't just say it was hormonal, but I don't think that helped, right? And I got so much judgment for it.

Right. And there's lots of reasons, lots of reasons for that. mean, everybody from neighbors to church people, to family, to like everybody had big, big opinions about my failure to maintain my marriage. Right. Those same people now are either realize like they are doing the same things now going into the verge of 50 and beyond with no qualms about it completely justified.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (22:10)
Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (22:22)
Like I wish I would have done it sooner is what I hear the most, right? So those same people that judged me are now like a hundred percent like, yeah, I don't know how you got there at 30, but I'm there now.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (22:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

They were

judging because they wanted it for themselves. like, I'm with you, my twins were three when I officially filed for divorce and I was 32 and then I was 33 by the time my divorce was finalized. And it's only because I had all of these friends who were in perimenopause, because like I had all those stories like, I'll be ruined, no one will ever wanna date me again, I can't have a happy life, I'll be miserable.

Lisa Mitchell (22:39)
Right.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (23:00)
And also like having romantic relationships be the center is only a story that we tell to women. We never tell men that the only aspirational thing in their life is to like get married. We do not have that narrative to men. We have that narrative to women because it keeps them locked into a system of servitude that does not serve them at all. So it's only because I had older friends, I could see the writing on the wall. I was like, this dude hasn't changed in 10 years. Why am gonna give him the next 10 hot years of my life? Goodbye, I'm leaving now.

Lisa Mitchell (23:10)
Right. Right.

Yeah, and they say that like the number one sentiment of women who wait to pursue divorce is that they wish they would have done it sooner. Like across the board by a landslide. I wish I would have done it sooner.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (23:28)
Cause he's not going to change.

Yep. So I'm very glad. I'm

very glad with my decision to have had a pre-Perry divorce, but it was also definitely influenced by all before I even knew the term Perry Gray divorce. was what I was. I was already seeing that phenomenon and I was extremely influenced by it because I was like, I'm going to therapy. I bought him a self-help book. He won't read it. I asked him to go to therapy with me. He said, if you need to go to therapy, that's because you're crazy. And I was like, huh?

I was like, let's read fair play. Let's watch the book. And he's like, no, I don't want to do that. No, I just want you to keep doing everything for me. I'm like, no, this doesn't work for me anymore. So goodbye. So yeah, no, no regrets here. But yeah, I was definitely influenced by all the older women in my life who were like thriving and who were like really standing up for themselves and finding fulfilling and genuine partnerships.

Lisa Mitchell (24:07)
No. Yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (24:26)
in a more honest way because they were really crystal clear on what their expectations and standards were as they were going into their next relationships.

Lisa Mitchell (24:34)
Now, I'm curious if you have seen either anecdotally or maybe more data-driven since we're such big fans of validated data. Are you seeing that if women have or when they have a better understanding of A, this is how my cycle works, this is the support that best helps me maintain feeling good throughout the different phases of my cycle because it

It is different what you need at different phases is gonna vary, right? And are you seeing or has there been any storytelling or data around like women who are able to get that knowledge and that support and care for themselves better are having better outcomes relationally? Or is there anything going around that? Cause I feel like

Alyx Coble-Frakes (25:18)
Yes.

Lisa Mitchell (25:21)
people would throw some money at that if it was gonna help their marriage stick around on the normal investor profile, we'll say.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (25:27)
Yes, because when women understand themselves, the number one thing like we, set out to create a productivity tool. And the number one thing our users have always said to us from the beginning is that it creates such a different level of self-awareness that they've never had before. And when women are self-aware, they are more productive because when you are unaware, you get spun up, you get more drug around by your emotions.

And so then they say like, know how to take the things, cause like I do, there's stuff that hits me harder in the luteal phase. So I know how to take it seriously, but not personally. I can separate myself from those initial reactions. I can understand. Yeah. It feels like the sky is falling. I'm having a real chicken little day over here. And I know I have no estrogen left in the tank. I'm running on E over here. So that just makes sense. I don't try to quit my business every month anymore. Like when I'm in the luteal phase, which is a nice change. ⁓

Lisa Mitchell (25:55)
Mmm.

Yes.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (26:15)
Our users repeatedly and consistently say that, that when they understand themselves, they're able to do that self-advocacy. And that's really what came up for me. I think my ex-husband and I were both completely underwater because I had twins. So it was my first time into motherhood and like, to the first year.

Lisa Mitchell (26:27)
Yeah.

I had one and we both

sank. Yeah, we both sank with one. So I can't imagine having two. Yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (26:34)
blackout,

like it's just like, don't even remember the first year of their life. I was completely offline mentally, I think it was just like a crazy, horrible time. And then like the more I got my footing back and then the more I tried to communicate and the more I got back to my hormonal understanding and things were not shifting is when I said, I don't want to keep investing. I'm not getting the ROI from this engagement. And so it's time to move it along.

Lisa Mitchell (26:59)
spoken like a

true founder.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (27:00)
Yes, and I think women say that too, like they understand this relationship isn't working out for me because now when you finally understand that you need different things in the phases and you're willing to give it to yourself, anyone in your life who's not willing to be accommodating to that biological reality does not have a place in your health ecosystem.

Lisa Mitchell (27:18)
Mmm. I love that.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (27:20)
Because it's not, it is

biologically real. It is a biological reality that women need different things based on their biochemical hormones that change throughout their menstrual cycle.

Lisa Mitchell (27:29)
So other than the threat of divorce, which even that isn't sometimes compelling enough to get a partner to pay attention or care, how are you equipping women to enter into the conversation with their partner to bring them along on the ride of knowledge, education and care in their health ecosystem?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (27:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we've got a couple of tools. I'll show you one for the people who are not live streaming with us on YouTube. But one of the things that Anna, my co-founder brought into the company was the cycle sticker. So this is a window cling that goes on your mirror and then you have a little arrow and it points to the phase that you're in. So this is a low tech option, a low tech high.

Lisa Mitchell (28:04)
Brilliant.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (28:10)
high efficiency model right here to you literally as can't be more simple. The arrow just points to what phase you're in and then you need a like it gives them a tip eventually.

Lisa Mitchell (28:12)
Brilliant. Brilliant.

I don't know how reactions

work, but I'm gonna applause us for that one. Cause again, I don't know what these tools are. I'm just playing with all of them. ⁓

Alyx Coble-Frakes (28:27)
Yeah

Eventually

we'd like to have a partnership app, so we'll see that that's kind of in the pipeline to feed some more of that content in. But it's also really the thing that I'm working to communicate clearly in the book that I'm working on is how women also don't understand that men are really that simple as like, there's something that happens with that wash of that hormones that they do feel the same. They come back to their baseline. They come back to their baseline and it's not to be dismissive. It's just how their hormones work. And so we're just like all,

kind of roaming around, not understanding each other. And so what we tell women to do is like put up a tool like the cycle sticker and then begin to track your cycle yourself. And as you get healthier, you're gonna see one of two things. And this is the scary thing because women know this is true. And this is what I saw in my marriage. When you start to really turn your energy back to getting healthy, a healthy partner will applaud you and cheer you on and join in your efforts to help you become the healthiest version of yourself.

a partner who is not interested in you being the healthiest version of yourself because it takes away time from them, will get less engaged with you the more healthy that you become. And either way, you've got a great answer about what you can do next.

Lisa Mitchell (29:39)
See, I love so much that it is the way I would see it, right? When the partner tool becomes available or even just the conversation in the meantime, it's like, well, we're not saying this is divorce insurance, but it sure does increase the odds of a more peaceful household. And who doesn't, if all I have to do is look at a sticker and know like proceed with caution or

Alyx Coble-Frakes (29:58)
Absolutely. Because my-

Lisa Mitchell (30:05)
parties on like, okay, how much easier can we make it?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (30:09)
Exactly. then you also like the women's libido changes tremendously throughout the cycle. So if you want to have a better sex life, understanding that sensation, frequency, intensity and desire change with the cycle. If you care about the person you're sleeping with, you should want to know that data. And if the person you're sleeping with does not want to know that data about you, you should not be sleeping with them because like, yikes, right?

Lisa Mitchell (30:30)
There's your go-to-market

right there. Like I'm gonna give you tools and you need to utilize them or we're not dating. Like sign here, press hard three copies, right? This is the minimum, the table stakes for us to consider being partners and or having sex together is you have to give at least, you have to give me this much of a shit every month about my wellbeing. Like bare minimum, I'll give you a sticker.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (30:42)
you

pretty much me on the dating apps.

Lisa Mitchell (30:55)
I'll educate you on the phases. I'll do all the heavy lifting per usual on the education side of things. But like, all you have to do is check the opt in box. If I have to send you text reminders of, hey, it might be this phase right now. Don't say stupid shit or pick your stuff up, right? Like you should download that app. Like we should do this together.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (30:55)
Tell you how to do it. I'll teach ya.

Yeah.

Pay attention,

pay attention. Yes, yes, because it's like that weaponizing competence. I've seen y'all organize. I know you can do your football draft. You can do your football draft. You can keep track of what quarterback has what stats. If you can track 50 different men and things about their bodies, surely for the last 15 seasons.

Lisa Mitchell (31:22)
my God, don't start me.

for the last 15 seasons. For the last 15 seasons

across six different sports.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (31:38)
If you can do all of that, you can track the four phases of my damn menstrual cycle. Otherwise, need not apply.

Lisa Mitchell (31:43)
Table stakes, table stakes, this is it. Like, feel like, I feel like, okay, listen up, listen up, match, listen up, bumble, listen up, listen up everybody, right? Like you need right now to connect with Alyx and build this into, if you wanna, everybody bitches that women are not engaging and that we've all been disenchanted and we don't have the stick-to-it-iveness to be abused on dating apps all the time, like,

Alyx Coble-Frakes (31:43)
The end. The end.

Hinge.

Lisa Mitchell (32:09)
the good old days when we would just take any bad behavior. Get this shit built in to your upfront contract. Like do this. Like let's just get the awkward going right now and set some expectations. And if you can't opt in, like if I could filter out.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (32:15)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.

menace

on hinge. I was a menace on hinge. At first conversation, as soon as you got the, do you do? I help people with their periods. Do you want to more about it? And then whatever they said would either continue the conversation or they'd get blocked because I'm like, nope, can't do it.

Lisa Mitchell (32:37)
Yeah,

see you're as much fun as a party as I am when people ask what I do and I say I'm a body language expert and a forensic interviewer. Wanna have a conversation? No. No, no, no, thanks. Yeah, I gotta go. Enjoy your night. Good luck.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (32:44)
They're like, no. They're like, I feel like I'm tied up. I'm tied up too.

Human lie detector, Lisa.

Lisa Mitchell (32:54)
I mean, there's cues and clues. It's not a science, it's an art, right? But I mean, I do have a tendency to sniff out bullshit fairly quickly in the process, which does not bode well for most people, which is why I haven't been on an app in like four years, because who needs to set yourself up to be disappointed? But if somebody, like for real though, like if somebody was gonna say, we're gonna do things differently and we're gonna create a standard and we're gonna give tools.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (32:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (33:20)
Right? Communication tools, transparency tools, like ways for you to build real supportive partnerships.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (33:25)
Yeah.

changes everything.

Lisa Mitchell (33:27)
And this was in it. Like honestly, there's, you know, there was another founder who's got an app called Keeper and it basically guarantees like right now the stat is one out of every 10 matches they make in Zin Marriage. I need to make an introduction to you.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (33:41)
wow.

I was like, they need the menstrual cycle data overlay because that would increase the stats.

Lisa Mitchell (33:47)
100%.

Yeah, you heard it here first, folks. We're making deals. We're doing strategic partnerships. We're getting things going, right? Yeah, it's for real.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (33:53)
Yeah?

That's, that's,

cause all my pictures, this is so funny. So the guy ended up like matching with and like really, really falling in love with and we're now engaged. But I was like, it was so funny before we went on our first date, I was ovulating and I was like, we'll have to see if you think I'm pretty when I'm in the luteal phase. And he's like, what do you mean? You had like a bunch of different pictures on your profile. And I was like, uh-huh. And he's like, wait, it's not like you.

only took pictures when you were ovulating and used them for your dating pictures. And I was like, why would I not do that? Why would I not do that? And he was like, ⁓ my God, that's so diabolical. It's like, you gotta work your jelly. You gotta take the pictures when you feel like pictures being taken. And that's when I'm ovulating, because I look great. So that's so funny.

Lisa Mitchell (34:24)
Or did I?

Right.

Wow, okay.

So I think it's so interesting for people watching and listening to this too, because like it is divorce curious and it's for the before, during and after, right? So we have a mix of people that are all different phases from evaluating and questioning and trying to figure out to in the thick of it fighting for their lives to like, my God, I'm out now, what do I do? Right? I think it is so interesting to talk about the impact of your dating perception.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (34:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (35:03)
and your dating behavior based on the cycles of your period. Do you want to go there a little bit? Okay, let's go.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (35:08)
Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Yes.

So, yes. So when you're on your period, you are at the lowest place. You are at the lowest place energetically, in the lowest place hormonally. And you have a heightened sense of intuition. So this could be a really interesting time to be chatting with people on the apps, to kind of sitting with it and then really tuning into your body's symptoms. There was a great podcast from Luz Warrior and she called it Bleed On It. So I love that. So like.

Sit an intuition on your period. So if anyone has a big red flag on your period, move on to the next. ⁓

Lisa Mitchell (35:41)
So you can be cozied on the

couch, total gremlin mode, total gremlin mode, caring for yourself, doing all the things that make you feel cozy and loved and discerning, discerning.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (35:45)
And you're like, mmm.

Trust that body connection. Yeah, deep discerning

during that phase. Then the follicular phase. This is a great time to go. I recommend going on a first date in the follicular or ovulation phase. Be very careful. I don't want any first date babies blamed on me. But it really, like, when you have that high energy, it's a really good time to go on that first date, to see how you feel, to see how the vibes are, to see if the flow is easy. And then...

really get even like turn that listening ear in to in the luteal phase like watch the pattern. This part is very analytical and very well organized. So is everything matching up? Are things feeling really good? Or are we starting to see a little bit of a fray? what's, hmm, like that's really interesting. I would say you need to go on a date with somebody in each phase of your cycle at least twice, like at least six dates, one in each, two in each of the four phases.

before you commit to being official with somebody. Because you want to see how do they handle and understand the different parts and pieces of your cycle, because those are the different parts and pieces of yourself. And then I would recommend.

Lisa Mitchell (36:53)
Okay, so

can we build a dating app tracker or do you have a dating app tracker into the app? Because that would be a really interesting thing to keep track of. Okay, I've never seen this dude when I've been in my luteal phase, so it could be a totally different vibe.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (36:59)
No, let's build it.

Totally different vibe, yes.

Lisa Mitchell (37:13)
I wonder

if that's why you get the ick sometimes. Like you can be totally cool with some- Did we crack the code on ick?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (37:15)
Absolutely it is.

Yes, that is the it code because your body is trying to protect a potential pregnancy. It's what it thinks is going on right there. And so if someone is just like not hitting the vibes, doesn't give you that provider energy, doesn't give you that feeling of body safety, if anything feels out of alignment, your spidey senses will be tingling during the luteal phase. So you really want to date somebody through all of the phases.

Lisa Mitchell (37:20)
⁓

Ooh, I just got like, I just legit

got like goosebumps, like for real when you said that. Like that feels so true to me. Like as a threat management professional, who's like the gift of fear and your intuition. And if it keeps you alive, it would make sense that it would also then ping in a similar fashion.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (37:49)
Yes.

Which is why

birth control can be very dangerous because birth control flattens our hormonal response and therefore, DOLs are threat detection mechanisms.

Lisa Mitchell (38:05)
Ooh, so not just like threat from like threat of I don't want to make a baby, but this person, but threat of like this person may have bad intentions towards me.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (38:13)
Harm me.

Every single time I was on hormonal birth control, I was on Yaz during college, and every single time I was on the sugar pill, I tried to break up with him. I wanted to break up with him. My body desperately wanted to break up with him. And then I would go on the pill again after those seven days and be like, no, it's fine. He's great. He was emotionally abusive, very verbally abusive.

And it just doled, like now, you know, reading the book, This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, long after I left that relationship, but just like understanding the connection and it actually doles your cortisol response. So your body isn't spiking to the natural ways, the natural threat perception that women have and deep in their intuition, deep in their gut wisdom, that gets masked by hormonal birth control.

Lisa Mitchell (38:55)
Well, that's some bullshit. Like, that's not on the warning label.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (38:58)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, no doctor ever told me about that. I was just like, ⁓

Lisa Mitchell (39:02)
mean, blood clots

maybe, but never like you could be setting yourself up for dangerous people. Like that's not in the label. Where's that?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (39:10)
It doesn't tell you if you're hormonally compatible with someone because there's something in human saliva that when you kiss somebody, depending on how their kiss tastes to you, will tell your body if they're a good person for you to make a baby with. And when you are on hormonal birth control, it doesn't tell you that you're compatible. And so there's some like guesses that this is one of the reasons there's so much infertility in modern life, because people who are not actually genetically compatible with each other.

met when they were on birth control, got off of birth control, and now are trying to conceive and have a hard time conceiving. And they just don't like each other as much when they're off of birth control because all of their threat perception, all of their intuition from the woman's side was tamped down during that relationship, during the initial stages.

Lisa Mitchell (39:52)
Yeah, so

if you see the far away look in my eyes, it's because my brain is doing like that Julia Roberts algorithm triangulation stuff of like, my God, it could have all been avoided.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (40:04)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Lisa Mitchell (40:07)
Who do we sue? Can we class action for that bullshit because...

Alyx Coble-Frakes (40:10)
Action

against the Yaz Foundation and Big Pharma and let's take them all to court because this is bullshit honey like what have they been putting us through? Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (40:19)
I mean, this

talk about being a menace, like, what are we doing? And again, the question is always like, who benefits from us not understanding when we're not compatible with somebody? Per usual, per usual.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (40:23)
Yes.

Men. Men. And think about like our

teenage daughters being on this and then sending them out into the dating pool. Just like me, my parents thought they were doing the protective thing to put me on. My dad paid for, was like so proud. He's like, you're not gonna be a team parent. I was the team parent. My dad was 19 when I was born. My mom was 22. He's like, and he like loved it. Cause like we used to mess with the pharmacist. was like this old Catholic dude who got so sketched out. And I was like, oh, did my dad call to pay for my birth control? And I would just do it just to fuck with him. And he's like,

Lisa Mitchell (40:39)
Right, right.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (40:57)
Yeah, your prescription is ready. And like we thought we were doing the thing that was like very protective. And it set me up for emotionally toxic dating relationships because no one understood that biochemical level. And so now we're still sending young girls out into the dating pool with their threat perception diminished, they're into cut off from their intuition because of the way that these hormones impact the gut and brain biome and how everything connects in and

Lisa Mitchell (40:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

now.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (41:24)
And like, of course then that is going to even exacerbate some of these perimenopause divorces because women were having babies with people they weren't compatible with. And their whole life has been kind of built on the structure that doesn't really make sense to them as they get back in tune with their own hormones, as they get back into midlife and they turn more and more to their pro self orientation.

Lisa Mitchell (41:44)
So basically we're losing the anesthetic. We're losing the anesthetic of hormone alteration and raw dog and bad relationships now and just raw dog and bad relationships, man, with our full rage and unmitigated hormonal response.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (41:47)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

It's raw dog.

⁓ no!

Lisa Mitchell (42:05)
How else did we think it would go?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (42:07)
Yeah, it's quite a conundrum, quite a pickle we found ourselves in, so...

Lisa Mitchell (42:11)
my God, it's like

being the only sober one in a club full of drunk people. Nobody's having fun.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (42:17)
Nobody's having fun here. Yeah, we're not having fun. Because men also, when we talk about like who's responsible, most of the men that we're in partnership with are not actually the ones responsible. Like it's like men on the top of this horrible system that are benefiting from the billions of dollars being like extracted literally from the pain in women's bodies. Like there is an algorithm about like how much the economic suffering of women's pain, like.

Lisa Mitchell (42:19)
What are we doing?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (42:42)
to keep them just managed enough so that they stay on birth control, because that's a multi-billion dollar industry, but not really fully healthy. And so average men are also not actually benefiting from this system.

Lisa Mitchell (42:53)
Other than the fact that having managed systems helps keep us showing up in the workplace so we can economically be supportive, yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (42:56)
Yes.

way that they want us to, yes. And like in the, yes,

and in the home. But like the bigger overall system is I think most men would want to be in better partnership or would want to learn because they are tired of getting divorced. I keep telling them that's sad. They're scared. They're like, I don't know what to do. And I'm like, how about be a real human person in a relationship? Can you learn how, wanna learn how to do that? Here's some tools for you.

Lisa Mitchell (43:23)
Well, I can only imagine like, and again, there's no excuse making here for my side of the fence about bad behavior from either gender, but it's so interesting to me that as a woman who lives in this body, who has had this experience for several, several, several, several decades now, how much I did not know and still feel like I do not know. I feel like I'm learning something new every day that pisses me off or makes me think, I wonder what could have been different had that not been the choices made for me, right?

Like this has zero airplay for men, like zero, zero airplay. So it's one of those things where like, you know, if you raise a kid and you tell them red is blue, they're gonna think red is blue, right? Because you don't, it's what you're taught, what you have exposure to, what you learn. And if it's a concept that is never once broached ever in the history of you learning about

the other gender or what relationships work with or what you should be responsible for. It would be really jarring to then learn like, ⁓ you mean there's things that I could know to make things better that no one's ever bothered to share with me? And by the way, I'm.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (44:25)
Yeah, my partner said that he's like, I would

have avoided 60 to 70 % of the fights in my first marriage if I understood what the luteal phase was. I just didn't even know that was a thing. Like, what is the luteal phase? I didn't even, she didn't know, she didn't know what the luteal phase was. I sure as hell didn't know what the luteal phase was. What are we doing here?

Lisa Mitchell (44:37)
Holy shit.

Yeah, okay. So you're helping to lead the charge and education tools, things that are easy to incorporate this conversation into your relationships, into educating your daughters, into sharing it with your friends, into using it to help protect yourself as we found out, because you view things differently when things are not, when things are modified or you don't understand what's going on. So,

how, you could give the women listening to this right now, regardless of what phase before, during or after that they're in and their relationship or divorce journey, one piece of advice, like get off this podcast and go do what to make the biggest change?

Alyx Coble-Frakes (45:25)
I would say that like the first piece leads to the second piece. So start tracking your cycle and then stop arguing with men about the reality of what you're experiencing because there's the number one tool of the patriarchy is destabilization, right? Like is like to try to get us to argue about is this thing happening or not? So really getting clear that your experience is this is the thing that I have been experiencing and I am no longer willing to have this experience in a partnership.

Lisa Mitchell (45:36)
Mm.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (45:52)
or whatever the case may be. So stop arguing about that. And if you are in a place where the person just wants you to keep arguing about reality, bring your energy back to yourself. You're gonna be tracking your cycles. So then if you see symptoms pop up, if you start to understand your map, if you start to like, hey, maybe go get your levels checked out. Maybe you could use some HRT. Like what are the different things that your body is needing? But bring your energy back to the pro self orientation and turn that goodness instead of being mad, instead of being mad that you stayed so long, instead of being mad that you're

maybe gonna get divorced instead of being pissed off that it didn't turn out the way that you thought it did. Understand that you didn't have the right information. You've got some information now and let go of this idea that just because it wasn't like, what do they call it? There's a term for it in business. Like the time you've lost in something. So you can't make a change. The sunk cost fallacy. Let go of the sunk cost fallacy. Just because you have spent 10 years doing something in a way that doesn't work for you, stop beating yourself up and just change.

Lisa Mitchell (46:37)
sunk cost fallacy. Yeah, sunk cost. Yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (46:48)
The best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. So let go of like, stop beating yourself up and move forward with that new understanding and turn yourself back to your own health and put that oxygen mask on first because we're seeing so many women in perimenopause struggling with obesity, struggling with all of these hormonal health conditions, adrenal fatigue.

all of these different conditions and disorders. And all of that is because of this people pleasing, giving ourselves away, doing the unpaid labor. So it's really this permission slip in midlife or however old you are to turn that energy, your own loving energy back to yourself. And then watch if the ecosystem around you will thrive. And if it doesn't thrive, you've got your answer. If you getting healthier makes your partner less connected to you, that is your answer.

Lisa Mitchell (47:35)
There's nothing else I can say about that. You just dropped all the mics. I'm just in my brain thinking of how many amazing edits and soundbites. We're gonna rock people's worlds. This is amazing. the list of wisdom nuggets is long and amazing. Okay, Alyx, this has been a very educational for me, frankly. So thank you for sharing your wisdom with me. It's been activating.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (47:46)
many clips.

Lisa Mitchell (48:01)
For me, like I'm trying to pay attention in my body to where I've been feeling what, and it has been, wow, there's been a lot of activation.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (48:07)
Yeah. Well, not a

move in a lot of somatic body moving around. Let's go.

Lisa Mitchell (48:13)
a lot

of stuff. I'll be doing some grounding work after this. Maybe I'll do a live stream on grounding practices just so we can all get back to the, know, the less rageful state that we got activated into upon learning some of these nuggets of wisdom here. Where can people go to connect with you? Because an hour with me covering all of this is not nearly enough.

And I know you have invested your brilliance, your time, your money, you and your co-founder into really equipping women to help them help themselves without shame and without exploitation.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (48:46)
Yeah, so check out the agenda.

Yes, yes, yeah. So check out theagenda.com. That is our clearinghouse for all things. We put up blog posts, all of our podcasts that we're on. So eventually this beautiful podcast will live there. So just check it out. We want women to be having these conversations because I think that's one of the things that helps stabilize our reality. honestly, watching TikTok helped me get divorced because it gave me language and I...

I ran to my husband like, my God, I figured it out. Neither of us are bad or wrong. We just didn't understand. And then he was like, nah chick, I don't wanna do that. ⁓ Good luck on your journey. And I was like, okay, I guess this is where the train departs the station. So these conversations are super important because we recognize that we're not crazy and we're not alone. So come hang out with us, come join in the conversation. Yeah, and then check out the app, it's free. The Agenda Period, check it out on iOS or Android.

Lisa Mitchell (49:27)
Yeah.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (49:37)
We hope that you can start tracking your cycle and recognize that you're not crazy. You're just a cyclical goddess waiting to fully tap into her four phases and her own bodily wisdom. So come hang out with us. We have a lot of fun.

Lisa Mitchell (49:48)
my God, I love it. And you have cute merch and great products. Like the merch store is...

Alyx Coble-Frakes (49:51)
So cute. Yeah, we got so much stuff. We got

perfume for your period. We're cooking up some fitness products. We're just, we're gonna keep, I'm like, how many different ways can I get people to track their cycle until they all leave their shitty husbands and we create a revolution? I don't know. We'll see how many, what we need to do.

Lisa Mitchell (50:07)
how many husbands can we be in partnership with that can better support their wives? And then everybody wins, right? We don't need all the paperwork. We can just do a little bit of development and a little bit of support with the right app, the right resources. The agenda period is where you're gonna go to find Alyx and connect with her great tools and resources. Download the app, iOS and Android. then, know, stay tuned because I think we cooked up two or three other new ways that we can

Alyx Coble-Frakes (50:09)
Improve!

Yes, exactly.

Yes.

Lisa Mitchell (50:36)
help socialize this and improve the experience perhaps in the dating realm. Like maybe some partnership right from the beginning would be a amazing, amazing experience. I'll make some introductions after this podcast, but Alyx, thank you so much for A, for the work you're doing, right? I know it is, being a female founder, a lot of times you feel like you're shouting into the void when you have the most like easily palatable idea.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (50:41)
Fingers crossed, let's go. Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (51:02)
in the collective consciousness, but for you to be a female founder in the tech space, shouting into the void of predominantly male stakeholders who look like deer in headlights that want to run out of the room because you said the word period out loud. And we're uncomfortable with that because that's lady stuff. That's lady stuff. ⁓ Thank you for being courageous and being bold and being...

Alyx Coble-Frakes (51:21)
That's girl stuff. Why do I need to know that?

Lisa Mitchell (51:25)
And going into that confrontation, not for the sake of being controversial, but for the sake of being an advocate for yourself and for me and for my daughter and for everybody out there who's listening to this and people who may never listen to it, but will benefit from the work and the ad. I mean, this is advocacy, right? Like this is advocacy at the most important level because it is visibility and it's health.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (51:26)
Mmm.

Lisa Mitchell (51:49)
And it's prioritizing what is best for us, regardless of anything else, regardless of capitalism or, or, you know, patriarchy or like nobody benefits from this, but the women who choose to invest in this knowledge and in these tools and in this process. And I think that is the most beautiful ideal world that I want to live in is with people like you who are doing work like this. for myself and for everyone who's listening and watching today, I I'm a hundred percent sure they're feeling the exact same way. So thank you.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (52:11)
Thank you.

Lisa Mitchell (52:17)
⁓ Tons of gratitude, tons of respect because this is you are pushing a very big rock up a very steep hill and hopefully now you have a whole new pile of people in the army to help you push. So count me in.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (52:17)
Mm.

Yay, thank you.

Thank you.

Lisa Mitchell (52:31)
All right,

friends. just, man, I am, I'm literally buzzing right now. I had a whole like cathartic and devastating experience all at the same time, but I'm ending it on hope and I'm ending it with knowledge and empowerment. Thanks to Alyx and what she's done with the agenda period. y'all, I have a feeling Alyx is going to be back. ⁓ so send your questions, share this episode, please, please, please, please, please. Like so much of this information was new for me and I consider myself a pretty tuned in person. I had no idea.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (52:40)
It's.

Lisa Mitchell (52:58)
about some of this stuff and your friends don't either. Send this to your daughters, have them share it with their sorority sisters. Like, I know my daughter's getting this and I'm gonna be like, put this on the sorority playlist. Like y'all need to listen to this and know this now, right? So share it, like, comment, if you have questions, put it in the comments. I'll connect with Alyx, maybe we'll come back for a Q and A or another live session or something. ⁓ Cause this is too important. This work is too important. The outcome is too important to not just keep beating the drum on this.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (53:10)
Yeah.

Totally. Yeah.

Lisa Mitchell (53:27)
Alyx, thank you so much. And for everybody listening or watching, stay curious. Until next time.

Alyx Coble-Frakes (53:29)
Thank