SHE Asked Podcast
Welcome to The SHE Asked Podcast with Anna McBride—a space where the stories we tell ourselves are challenged, reimagined, and rewritten to unlock personal transformation.
Hosted by former therapist, storyteller, and lifelong seeker Anna McBride, this podcast dives deep into the power of narrative. Through personal stories and intimate conversations with guests, we explore how shifting our internal dialogue can change not just how we see our lives—but how we live them.
Each episode offers what Anna calls “practical hope”—real tools, lived experience, and emotional honesty for anyone feeling stuck, lost, or ready for change. Whether you’re navigating divorce, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to understand your past, The SHE Asked Podcast invites you to become the author of your own story—and the hero in it, too.
Follow along for weekly episodes filled with compassion, perspective, and the courage to ask yourself:
What story am I telling—and is it still serving me?
SHE Asked Podcast
Menopause + Midlife Reckoning: What Women Need to Know About Sex After 40
Welcome to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope with Anna McBride.
In this episode, Anna sits with internationally acclaimed somatic sexologist and author Cyndi Darnell (Sex When You Don’t Feel Like It) to explore how women can rewrite their sexual stories after 40.
Together, they unpack what it really means to awaken during midlife:
• Why menopause can be both a reckoning and a rebirth
• The myths and lies women were taught about sex, love, and worth
• How to move from “being nice” to living in integrity and authenticity
• Rethinking monogamy, mediocrity, and meaning for modern women
• How to rediscover desire, satisfaction, and erotic agency after decades of conditioning
Whether you’re navigating menopause, healing after divorce, or simply seeking a more authentic connection to your body and pleasure, this conversation is a must-listen.
CYNDI DARNELL
Clinical Somatic Sexologist, Psychotherapist & Author
📘 Sex When You Don’t Feel Like It: The Truth About Mismatched Libido and Rediscovering Desire
🌐 www.cyndidarnell.com
🎧 Listen weekly on She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope — conversations for women redefining love, healing, and identity after life’s biggest changes.
📲 Subscribe, rate & review to help more women find these conversations.
#Menopause #FemaleDesire #CyndiDarnell #SexEducation #MidlifeAwakening #SheAskedPodcast #AnnaMcBride #FeminineRebirth #SexAfter40 #WomenHealing #SomaticTherapy
Welcome back to She Ask: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I get to have a conversation today with Cindy Darnell, internationally acclaimed clinical somatic sexologist, psychotherapist, and author of Sex When You Don't Feel Like It. Your work has been featured in New York Times and Forbes magazine. You're the host of the Erotic Philosopher, a podcast since 2020. So it's great to have you here, Cindy, to thank you for joining us today. I always say the best thing about sex is being able to talk about it. So I'm grateful to be able to have you here and add into the conversation. But I first want to start with a story, as I like to do in my podcast. I want to share with you and our listeners a story of my menopause experience. So I began my menopause journey at the age of 35 after giving birth to twins at 27 and a son at 31. And after having my son, I became aware that I had suffered from endometriosis and I didn't even know it, only because I have a high tolerance for pain, and I just thought that's what my periods were supposed to be like. And so after giving birth to him, I my I had C-section deliveries of both the twins and him because I couldn't dilate beyond a certain point. And I didn't know enough to know that was one of the indicators of something that could be like endometriosis, a challenge with dilation. And after delivering him and during the delivery, the obstetrician said, Would you like me to attend to this problem that you have? And I said, What was that? He said, endometriosis. And I said, Wow, I didn't even know I had it. Long story shorter, I went and had a procedure done, which was to clear out all the clots, and there was a ton of them. The doctor said it was surprising that I could even deliver twins much less or have them to birth, both cases. And then I started understanding through the perimenopause and then the menopause, that I never really understood how my body worked. I never really understood nor took responsibility for what I was experiencing during my periods, much less in my other stages of life. And it is true, I read the Bible back then, which was The Wisdom of Menopause by Christine Northrop. That was the only one I knew that was relative to it. And so my life took a big shift when I turned 40 for many reasons. I got separated, I I had an eating disorder for a couple of decades, and I finally addressed that. So there were a lot of shifts in my life, which I think goes along with what I think menopause is supposed to do, be an awakening, as you say, as well as a reckoning. And when I heard that this was something that you describe as that time period, it really resonated with me because that definitely was what my experience was. I had to address what I hadn't been ready to face till then, how dissatisfied I was in my marriage, how unaware I was about what my body had been trying to tell me for quite some time. So that's my menopausal journey. And it really, since then, my life has been dramatically going in this direction, leading to this conversation, I think, with someone like yourself. And I would really like to hear from you what you mean by the menopause being a period of reckoning and awakening.
SPEAKER_01:So I think Anna, like for a lot of us, we were we grew up being told that menopause was the end of something. That we have this cultural obsession, especially under Western patriarchy, that we are only of value as long as we are fertile and reproducing, which is firstly patently untrue. Secondly, ties us to a very heteronormative understanding of what our bodies are even for. And also that if the only imperative for humans is simply to reproduce, and then therefore if we are no longer of reproductive age or value, that we cease to have anything to contribute to society. And this perhaps in our grandmother's day was the only piece of information that was what it was, and that women did become obsolete at 50 or so years ago. What I think has dramatically changed now is that a lot of women, and I think that a lot of this has to do with economic independence that and access to information. So women in their 40s and 50s now, many have their own careers. We can get our own credit cards now. When you and I were children, women couldn't even get credit cards on our own.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that was my mother's experience.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is a d very dramatic difference, and so now the shift is less about our reproductive value or viability, even historically or currently, and more about this lie that we were told that we were only of value as long as we were reproducing, and women coming into their 40s and 50s now who are looking at their spouses and going, Do I want the next 20 years to look like the previous 20 years? And if so, do I want the next 20 years to involve you being by my side? A lot of women are now saying, I don't want either of those things. This is the reckoning. So it's no longer about women playing small and being nice, it's about women taking up space. And at times that is gonna make the people around them uncomfortable because it is very inconsistent with how women have been conditioned to behave. And this is, I think, where the real reckoning is. It's when we were tricked into being told we were not valuable, it's actually the time that we become most powerful.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for saying that. I totally agree with you. I think what's interesting, I had a traditional marriage, and I was 30 years old when I realized how unhappy I was in it. And I started creating a voice for myself, which then brought about the shifts that of awareness of just how this wasn't really going to work. I just didn't know yet or had a career yet in which I could feel able to support myself, much less our children. I felt very strongly bonded to that situation. I think what's really great to hear you say is the more independent women become, I think it's what creates the opportunity, although society can create it or make it out to be a problem, that we have to choose one or the other, versus understanding that we have a lot more available to us, at least now we do and thankfully and that it isn't, it may be the end, but it's also the rebirth, right? The type of life that we want to have.
SPEAKER_01:But it's the end of being, I think it's the end of being irreversibly under a patriarchal gaze, over 45 when patriarchy sees us as no longer viable slash invisible. We finally have the opportunity to be free of all that bullshit, and then we can make the the second and the third trimester of our lives whatever we want them to be without having to check in society about am I allowed to take up space? We can just claim it, possibly for some women, for the first time in their lives.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah, I think so. How would you describe how menopause or that that period impacts women yourself, particularly emotionally, spiritually?
SPEAKER_01:I think for me it's it was really about the last vestiges of niceness, and I don't mean kindness, I make a real distinction between kindness and niceness. Kindness is a value that I hold. Niceness for me is a performance. So nice is when I am just smiling and being cute and trying to just smooth things over and get by. That's nice. Kindness is no, I care about humanity, I care about women, I care about animals, I care about society, and that's a value that I hold. So I think menopause for a lot of us is when we cease to bother playing with niceness and we start to become a version of us that is more authentic, which at times requires taking a risk of people not liking us very much. Right. Yeah. And that we can find a groundedness in who we are to say, This is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm noticing, this is what I would like from you, friend, partner, boss, whoever. You either can offer me what I'm asking for or not, and I will make a decision accordingly. None of that is nice.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:It's rooted in kindness because it's about honesty and integrity. Right. But it's not about nice. It's not about me compromising myself to make you happy. I'm not doing that anymore. That is a massive shift that happens to women in menopause.
SPEAKER_02:I would agree. I think uh the word that came to mind, you said it was integrity, is when your mind, body, and spirit are in alignment. And for me, it definitely was the first time that was beginning to happen.
SPEAKER_01:And I've read theories from people they say that the absence of estrogen, that estrogen is like the nice hormone, and that as our bodies are producing less estrogen, even if we're on hormone replacement, it's still not the amounts of estrogen that our younger bodies have. Is it got something to do with that? Maybe I don't know. I don't have any definitive answers, but it is it's an interesting coincidence. Right. That estrogen leaves the body and we become more of who we really are.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Wow, I love that thought. It almost forces us to become masculine in a sense, in terms of really owning our life for the first time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I would be even less inclined to say that it's masculine because I don't necessarily believe in a binary around masculine and feminine. I think it just means that we get to take up space without the filters of patriarchy, okay having to perform to get our way, that we no longer have to do that. Yeah, because they don't like us anyway, because we're no longer cute and fertile. So we get to take up space on our own terms, and that is really invigorating. So it's I think it's men don't even get to do that. We get to do it, and this is our own process.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of being authentic and also being in alignment for myself in a way where I give myself permission to be who I am without worry about, as you said, approval. I know that for most of my life, in order to be appealing, I thought I had to meet the man's approval. First was my father, then came my husband, right? And society at large. And now I'm appreciating just really being the one person that approves, and that's me. Person pleasing, not people pleasing. Yeah. So speak a little bit about what you mean when you say that everything that we were told about and sold about sex isn't true or is a lie.
SPEAKER_01:So again, this is very much through that younger person's heteronormative lens. So for your listeners who are like, what is this heteronormative? She speaks of. What I'm talking about is this fundamental social agreement that heterosexual man-woman, penis, and vagina sex is the pinnacle of sexual human experience. That is what we are all aiming for. That we are looking for this man-woman type connection that is transcendent and powerful. And we've been sold this through kind of Judeo-Christian myths that this is what creates a new life, therefore it's aspirational. And to have a baby, if that is what motivates you around sex to reproduce, then yeah, that's helpful. But the good news is that these days we don't even need to do that to have babies. There's a bazillion ways that you can make a baby, some of which involve penis and vagina sex, but we don't have to do it that way. Because uh, for most of us, whether we are in hetero relationships or otherwise, our motivations for having sex have generally have very little to almost nothing to do with reproduction, and everything to do with things within us that are longing to be met. Now, whether those things are money, power, status, emotional fulfillment, meaning, connection, joy, pleasure, uh relieving boredom, seeking revenge on somebody. There were studies done about the reasons that people have sex, and reproduction is often very low down on the list. So when I talk about the things that we've been told about sex are lies, it is this fundamental imperative that heterosexuality is the default for humans, it is not that the reasons that people have sex are fundamentally rooted in reproduction, also not true. And if sex for women especially were really about the reasons that we did it, which could involve penis in vagina sex, but can also involve making out and hand sex and using vibrators and oral sex and masturbation and all the things that women have access to that don't necessarily center men, the way we would understand and conceptualize sex would be dramatically different, including our capacity for orgasm. A lot of women will say to me that orgasm is not why they have partnered sex, it might be the reason that they have solo sex. It's generally not the reason they have partnered sex, partly because they know it's less likely to happen, especially if they're having sex with men.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And the reason that women will have partnered sex is often, not always, but often because they want to be able to access parts of themselves that they cannot get to by themselves. Okay. That is what partnered sex means to a lot of women, but we are never told that. No as women. We are told.
SPEAKER_02:I know I wasn't.
SPEAKER_01:We are told that we do sex for love. We are most young women, especially, are told that love and sex are the same thing. It's not until we get much older that we're like, hang on a minute. Right. Hang on a minute. So this is what I mean about so much of what we've been told about sex is lies. And a lot of it has to do with the very gendered scripts around men are like this, women are like that, all of this, men are from Mars, yeah, women are from Venus, it's all BS, it's complete garbage. And uh all of us having the opportunity to reflect and ask ourselves if sex matters to me, which for a lot of people in menopause it doesn't matter anymore, and that's okay, but for those for whom it does matter, yeah, what inspires you, what motivates you, it's probably gonna be different than when you were in your 20s, probably gonna be different than when you were in your 30s. A lot of women in menopause horiness is not a motivator anymore. Something else is gonna motive motivate them. And that this is a really interesting shift in the discussion. Other women in their 50s and 60s become very sexual in ways that they were not in their 20s and 30s, sometimes because they feel more confident in their bodies, even though their bodies may be flabbergas and softer and saggier than they were in their 20s, they have finally taken off that cloak of judgment and oppression, and they're like, I don't care if my tummy is big, I don't c care if my boobs are saggy, this is what I've got, and I am gonna center myself in sex. And I see a lot more of this with older women than with younger women.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So this is what I mean about sex being lies. That so much of what we were told was never about our joy and never about our embodiment. It was entirely about how can we be effective members of society.
SPEAKER_02:So Cindy, I think the vaginas. I think this is incre an incredible uh awareness that I'm coming to, in the so far that I myself, I was married for a long time, 36 years, at least more than half of which was an unhappy coupling. However, it took me till it did, till it ended. And and I had an awakening at the end of that marriage, meaning full permission to finally date and get to know my body through actually seeking sex partners that were gonna have some investment in my pleasure. And I think because I started taking ownership of what pleasure meant to me. So I'm wondering what part does pleasure play into this as a part of desire or motivation for women seeking sex after 40.
SPEAKER_01:It depends on them. I don't think that there is a categorically clear motivator, but pleasure it pleasure can be a physical thing, so it can be the pursuit of physical orgasm, perhaps, or just feeling good, or that kind of thing. It can be pleasure through the lens of validation, that you find me attractive, that you like the way my body looks and feels and smells and tastes and whatever. It can be pleasure in being able to center oneself to say I want to date multiple people and have multiple experiences of eroticism that are based on something that matters to me. That if I wanna if I want to date people of a certain type that are into a particular thing, that I can find them this is the benefit of apps these days. You can narrow it down. You can be like, I want men of this kind of type who are in this age bracket, who are this kind of penis size, like whatever. You can narrow it right down if that's what you want to do these days. We have never had that ability before, all of us. This is across the board. So pleasure can be pleasure, is a motivator, absolutely, but it doesn't always have to be physical pleasure, it might be mental pleasure, it might be emotional pleasure, it might be. I tend to invite women to think more about satisfaction. What's going to bring you satisfaction? Pleasure, we can sometimes get squished into this narrow lane again of if we only measure pleasure as orgasms, this can really narrow our experience for someone. So if your motivation is to feel free or liberated, or you want to feel really kinky, you want to feel really edgy, you want to feel you want to feel maybe you want to feel lovey-dovey and more conventional. So I'm not saying that there one's one style is superior to another, but when we shift the focus from performance to satisfaction, it shifts the gaze from being external, okay, what are my friends doing, what's expected of me, to what's gonna make me wanna feel good about myself or what's gonna make me want to do this again.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And women generally don't get to ask themselves that question because the entire trajectory of their lives has been focused on how can I make you happy, husband, partner, child, boss, neighbor, teacher at my kid's school. I'm constantly making sure that everyone else around me is taken care of, often, not always, but often at the neglect or the expense of myself. Being an older person, still experiencing sex. And sex for you as an older person may or may not involve taking your pants off. Like for some people, sex can become a little bit more esoteric, it can become a bit more through through speech or through through activities that are a little bit more. I'm thinking about m more recently, there's a film with Nicole Kidman called Baby Girl, where she goes on this experience with this young fella who ostensibly is not particularly attractive nor good looking, but seems to get under her skin on some level. And because there's something that she is hungry for. She's hung, and this is exactly what I mean about women seeking an experience of being able to access something that within themselves that they can't get to by themselves. She had a husband who was perfectly willing, but for whatever reason didn't realize how to or what to or whatever. She had to go on this journey with this other guy who turned out to be a bit whatever he was, but she got to meet parts of herself. And what I liked about that film, in contrast with other films of that style, is it was very much about her journey coming back to herself. That's what I really liked about that film. Often older age sexuality films for women are not like that, and they can be very much about her still moving toward something more traditional. But okay. I want to encourage women to start bringing that shift, that gaze inward and going, Yeah, what's gonna be meaningful to me? What's gonna be satisfying to me? And it may or may not involve you taking your pants off. This is where we have to start changing the narrative about sex too, because sex does not have to be pants off, penis in vagina. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. I think it this is an interesting moment to pivot because we you also talk a lot about monogamy and mediocrity and meaning for women. And I'm speaking from my own perspective, I didn't understand what the effect of being in a monogamous r marriage, married to somebody, I had the mindset of monogamy. He did not, that's what ended the marriage. However, for me, I there was so much that I could not put a voice to because I wasn't, I didn't give myself permission and we didn't have that context of conversation in our marriage. And however, I think like now that I'm on this side, divorced a few years now, that I'm able to speak up for myself in ways that ensures that I'm going to get towards what I really want if I pursue that type of a relationship with someone. So speak a little bit about monogamy, mediocrity, and meaning for women after.
SPEAKER_01:So I think again, because in the same way that we've been spoon-fed, this sex reproduction, marriage, blah, blah thing, once we start realizing that's an option, but not the only option, it it gives us, and this is the reckoning part, it gives us the opportunity to start questioning some of these sacred cows that we thought were part of our identity. So even what you were describing, that you valued monogamy and but you didn't realize that he didn't. Now, if you two had been able to have this conversation, perhaps at the beginning of your marriage, where it's certainly back in the 90s, whatever, these conversations were not happening nearly as publicly as they are these days. So there's been a massive social shift as well. But the reality is that what makes our our hearts full can be very different than what makes our sex lives full. And what we what is fulfilling romantically and emotionally is not always going to be fulfilling sexually. But because society has fused sex and love together, it has tricked us into thinking that in order to have to have it all, we have to find a partner who is romantically, mentally, socially, and sexually compatible with us, and then we can just have one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That is a very tall order, and that is an especially tall order if we're looking at it for the trajectory of a 30-something year marriage. I'm not saying it's not gonna happen, but it's slim. The chances are slim. And instead of it being a shortcoming in us, or possibly a shortcoming in our partners, which we'll talk about that in a second, it's more about looking at the container that we have grown up in to say, well, possibly the container that we were told is our North Star, marriage monogamy, all of that stuff. Maybe that was never actually for us, for our flourishing. Maybe that was just a way of controlling and containing us. Because if we had a society of women who took up space sexually and made decisions for themselves, the sighting would probably be dramatically different than it currently is. And there are gonna be people listening who say, no, I really value monogamy, and I will say, Great, no problem. I'm not saying that everybody should or shouldn't be monogamous or non-monogamous. I'm just saying that the human trajectory can really go in a variety of ways. This is backed up by science. This is not just what I reckon, my opinion. There is enough scientific data now as we look at it through medical history, but also through studies of society and anthropology. Humans inherently are not an especially monogamous species. That doesn't mean that we don't love, we love deeply. We are very socially bonded creatures, we are very emotionally oriented creatures. I do believe that we are absolutely capable of deep love that lasts for decades. But the fact that we fuse this with sex creates a lot of problems in partnerships and marriages because it makes us feel like we are in some way inferior or less than or unworthy if one of us what they call cheats or experiences a longing for sexual experiences outside of the convention, society tells us that then therefore there is something wrong in the marriage. Now, sometimes there is something wrong in the marriage, but sometimes there's not. And if we don't know the difference, if we don't have the language or the emotional capacity to talk about what we're noticing, thinking, feeling, longing for, which a lot of partners do not, this is how we end up in situations where we get cheated on, where we feel resentful, where we end up having revenge sex with people, neighbors, and whatever else, and everything can get extremely messy. Yeah, because we still try to think the container that I was fed, that must be the truth, because that's how my grandma lived, that's how my mum lived, right? That's how I'm living, and I'm gonna tell my daughters to live like that too, rather than going, actually, I'm not the problem. The women in my family are not the problem, the container is the problem, and this is the thing we start changing. But that's gonna happen gradually, that's not gonna be an overnight shift. This is a cultural shift that happens over generations.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for saying that. Because I want I was gonna ask you, do you think that younger generations as a whether as a Gen X or groups following that are more open to a different type of way of looking at relationships or connections when it comes to commitment towards X?
SPEAKER_01:We certainly exposed to it, but we can also see now, like with the Gen Zs and some of the alphas, even there's this other swing where things are going back to more conservative values. And we see this with some of the young, younger folks now with the trad wife movement and all this kind of thing. So I don't know how sustainable this whole trad wife thing, for example, is going to be. It seems to be getting picked up by the younger ones. Certainly, I don't know anyone my age who's getting into the trad wife thing, but I do see it with these young women in their twenties. Obviously, not all the youngsters, but it's not so much that I think younger people certainly are exposed to these newer ideas. Absolutely. The degree to which they're latching onto them, I think it's variable. Of course, it's gonna match up with what's happening politically globally right now. There is a real shift to more conservative values currently, and people are gonna have their own opinions about that. But also what can happen is when people are looking for stability, when people are looking for security, when people are looking for a swing back to traditional values, thinking I'm gonna find that. If I go back to traditional values, I'm gonna find the stability that I'm looking for. Perhaps temporarily you'll find something that resembles stability. But what are you gonna do when you hit 30? What are you gonna do when you're not this young, pretty thing anymore? Patriarchy hinges on women remaining young and pretty. That is not gonna happen. You are gonna get old and flabby, and it's gonna be up to you the degree to which you roll with that or not. Patriarch, and this is the thing about the container, patriarchy is the container, so you can drive wife it up as much as you want, but it's not gonna change the container that tells us we are only valuable as long as we're bring pretty and cooking. Well, yeah, I think an individual is gonna have to reconcile that. Are you okay with that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think what I hear. You saying is it really is a degree of the conversation that you're having. I mentioned I had twins and they're women, twin daughters. They're now 36 years old. And they they're so one's heterosexual, the other one's gay, queer. And it's interesting to watch them now in their 30s. They were encouraged by their mother to have get their career going and to understand who they are as women before they get into committed relationships, which I'm happy to say they they have. And we've had great conversations, I think, is them becoming adults, living in full permission to be who they are. It gave me permission to do the same. And so I grew up as a result of them growing up, meaning owning, coming to own myself more. And so I have one of the twins, the one who's queer, who's actually been in partnership for 10 years and now is exploring, I think they're exploring what they describe as polyamory, in order to see if they can transcend these social norms, even within their own community, to be satisfied in life. And it is interesting to see every or hear rather everyone's opinion about this. I'm just really encouraged by it because it again makes me feel really happy to see my daughter exploring her happiness.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And that's why I was asking you about younger generations, because I know, like in my age group, I'm now pushing 62 years old, that this wouldn't, this was not afforded to me. I was given the traditional, very conservative, even though my parents were moderates, lifestyle, right? That involved a man and a woman, maybe a gay couple, but a couple nonetheless, right?
SPEAKER_01:And I think And still, even with gay couples having to fit a fairly conventional model. And what your daughter is doing, which a lot of folks who are exploring polyamory and variations on non-monogamy are doing, is they are questioning this container. They are busting the container down and saying, who does this really serve? And I think that this is a wonderful time for societies to start doing this, that it's not just about going to sex parties, running around willy-nilly. Maybe for some people it is that, but certainly for people who are actually practicing polyamory, which is multiple relationships, it requires an extraordinary degree of emotional integrity, of self-awareness, of self-reflection, of accountability. And these are skills that are really valuable whether you are monogamous or non-monogamous. And a lot of people, especially folks who default to monogamy, feel like they can skim over all of that emotional self-inquiry because the script has been handed to them. To be monogamous means I only look at you. And therefore I don't have to question anything that I'm noticing inside myself, which is not true because ultimately even if you're not talking about it and you're not addressing it, it's going to start infecting your relationship. Whereas if you're already polyamorously inclined or inclined to start questioning the container of monogamy, it then forces you to lean into who am I? What do I want? What do you want? How might we make this work together? If I feel afraid of opening up, what would I need? What kind of reassurance would I need from you that I'm still valuable to you? What does that mean for our finances? If we have children together, what does that mean for them? A lot of this stuff is also contained within with money and resources because patriarchy and capitalism go together. It's all about controlling resources because then when you can control resources, you control people's freedom. That's where it all starts to unravel. Yeah. But so younger folks have grown up with some of these ideas a little bit more than our Gen X generation. But also, too, this is where there is a shift I am seeing more, and perhaps because we're here in New York City, that's a much more progressive, generally set of folks. Perhaps in Middle America or where I'm from in Australia, people are more traditional still. What I am seeing more of is again women who are in their 50s and 60s, who are in divorce perhaps for the second time, who are dating men, but they're saying, I don't want to date men who need to be coddled. I don't want to date men who need to have a mother figure. I want a man who is able to bring qualities, emotional qualities to the table. And what they're often finding is that men of our generation don't have those skills because they outsourced all of that stuff to their wives and girlfriends. So now these men in their 50s and 60s are really falling behind because the women who would potentially date them are like, What are you bringing?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because if you're not bringing any emotional intelligence, you're not bringing any integrity, sincerity, whatever, I don't need your money, I've got my own. So what are you bringing? And these guys are like, Wow, women have changed, and women are like, Yeah, we have. Women our age are dating men 10, 20 years younger than us because they're not looking for the money, they're looking for the companionship, and these younger fellas are offering us some of this. So this is another big shift that older men are going, uh-oh, the ship sailed and we didn't get on it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That's why I think it for me it comes down to the conversation and the stories that we tell ourselves about what we need, what we want, really what we want. I think this is the first time in my life where I gave myself full permission to have a desire and to have my desires met in without apology, without needing to justify, argue, defend, or explain them. Just own them. Own them. And so I just want to shift a little bit to talk about your book, Sex When You Don't Feel Like It. That was my whole marriage, actually.
SPEAKER_01:And so I'm not laughing at the predicament, but I'm laughing at the that's why I called it that. And I called it that because you know, sometimes folks kind of say, Oh, what's your book called Cindy Sex when you don't want it? I'm like, no, that's a very different thing. There's a big difference between not feeling like it and not wanting it. If you don't want sex, that's a complete sentence. I don't want sex, fine. That's the end of it. The answer is no, done, finished, kaput. I don't feel like it. There's room for exploration, but I don't feel like it today, or I don't feel like that kind of sex, or I don't feel like I want it in the way that we've traditionally been doing it. So that's where there's room for exploration.
SPEAKER_00:I don't feel like it.
SPEAKER_01:What do you feel like instead then? As opposed to I don't want it, that's complete and that's done. So the book is about when there's wiggle room and curiosity, and it's for lower libido partners and higher libido partners. It's not just for one. Because when you're in a partnership with someone, there's always gonna be one who wants it more than the other. That's normal. There's also gonna be people who want different types of sex, and again, this is where we deviate from the traditional penis in vagina model to what's gonna be fulfilling, what's gonna be meaningful, what's gonna be satisfying. And so I take the readers, I've got the book here. I take the readers on a real journey of you know, looking at science, because I'm a believer in science, about what would the science tell us about how libido and desire work, but then also in the second part of the book, it's really about exercises and practices doing things. So it's one thing to have all the science, but it doesn't it if you can't apply the science, then what's the point? So a lot of it is really about if you want to dig into this, if you're genuinely curious about in the book I refer to it as your erotic template. Who are you sexually?
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And it's not um it's not a static thing, it's gonna change day by day. If you're still having periods, it's gonna change week by week. If you're not having periods, it tends to be a little bit more stable, but still can shift depending on who you're with. If you're if you've got one or two or three lovers, what you do with one lover might be different than with another, than another. That doesn't mean that you're being fake or phony or insincere. It just means that the combination of you and this other person brings out different qualities in you. This is another upside, I think, of non-dynamic within the couple to meet different parts of yourself, which who doesn't want to do that? I love the thought. Oh, yeah, this is what the book is about. It's really about taking readers on a journey of exploring what motivates them, what brings them satisfaction. And if you're in a monogamous partnership, the book is still for you because it's about being able to have a script to talk to your partner to say, I've learned this about myself recently, or I used to be into this and now it's a bit more this. And not just I'm not talking about positions and where you put your legs. I think that kind of stuff really makes no difference at all. Yeah. But how do you want sex to make you feel? And what part of sex makes you feel that way? Because penis in vagina sex, ostensibly, whether you're on your back, on your feet, on your face, on your with your butt in the air, whatever, it all leads to the more or less the same type of thing because it's a repetitive motion. But if your body doesn't long for that repetitive motion, then no matter what position you're in, you're not gonna want something that doesn't feel particularly interesting to you. It might not be painful, but if it's not interesting, why would you do it? And so this is where we have to start shifting the conversation from how do you want sex to make you feel? What kind of sex makes you feel that way if you've ever had it? And here's the other thing a lot of women our age have never had sex that has been fulfilling to them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that's that right there is the invitation to get to know yourself so well that you know what you want to feel and what makes you feel that, what particular style, flavor, approach to it. And I gotta say, I was one of those women, Cindy, that didn't know myself enough, right? Until I actually got out of what was such an unfulfilling marriage and then started really being committed to never again attitude. And and so for the women that you describe that aren't that know that they're not in it or never experienced fulfilling sex, what is the process on which you most recommend how they get started and getting to understand what that's like?
SPEAKER_01:They have to recognize that's even happening. Then they have to ask themselves, are they okay with it? Because there are some women who will say, you know, I've never enjoyed sex, I'm not interested in it, I'm not interested in any further exploration of it, I'm gonna be single for the rest of my life and just live on my farm with my dogs and whatever, just waiting for death. And I'll say, Okay, if you really feel like that in your heart of hearts, that's what you want, I will support you in that, no problem. And for those who are like, I've been in this kind of really tepid, sexually tepid marriage for 30 whatever years. I take care of my body, I feel connected to myself for the first time in my life. I want to go and explore sex with women or sex with much younger men, or I want to go to an orgy or whatever. That's where it's like, hey, so what would we need to put in place for you to feel? Like you could start to take what I call in the book meaningful risks, and these are tiny acts of courage that you do every day, every week, because the cumulative effect of tiny acts of courage is that's what build builds confidence. You are not gonna come out of a tepid marriage feeling like Wonder Woman, it's very unlikely. You're gonna have to build up to that. So tiny acts of courage, tiny risks are the things you have to do, and so this is often the journey of erotic self-inquiry for women because it feels really fucking scary. Yeah. Because it's been so foreign your whole life.
SPEAKER_02:I'll tell you what I did, and it's not a lot, and I don't know that I don't recommend this. Yeah, and I did it, and there's a long story behind it. However, I hired an escort that we explore all the different ways in which I wanted to feel what I wanted to feel, and I had my situation with this person. However, what the good that came from it was that I knew I definitively knew what I liked and what I didn't like, and could be and then could build from there. And it gave me the circumstances in which I could control that journey. I wasn't in it to, I wasn't in commitment, in other words.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. And so that's one of the benefits of that type of sex is you get to really center yourself when you're purchasing an experience because you get to say, I want to feel like this, or I want to know what this is, or you can even because these people are professionals, you can say, What kinds of things do other women like? Can you try them on me? And so I can know if maybe I like it too. Professional sexual service providers are worth their weight in gold. I think it's an incredible thing that that I think it should be certainly decriminalized and ideally covered by medical insurance, but that's probably a bit too radical for some folks. I do think so. Because what a wonderful way to get your mental, emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual needs met by people who are really effectively trained professionals in being there to make sure you're having a good time. Like what a wonderful thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, he definitely was invested in that.
SPEAKER_01:So congratulations. I think that's fabulous.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. A final question I have for you is how can we create safer spaces for women, regardless of their sexual preference, to talk openly about sex after menopause?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know that we can create safer spaces. I think it's always risky, and I don't mean risky as in dangerous, but risky as in you are gonna feel a degree of pushback or trepidation because culturally, socially, it is still very difficult for women to take up space and talk about sex. So if you expect to feel safe doing it, maybe don't do that. But consider instead where is my where is my edge? Where is my tiny act of courage? What can I tolerate today? Who maybe in my immediate community can I share a secret with? Or are there Reddit threads I can follow or Instagram accounts that I can follow or books that I can read, movies that I can watch, things like that that can inspire me to consider finding community of perhaps women who share similar values or ideas, and that you can start cultivating a life that is a bit more consistent with this tiny act of courage thing, rather than saying, How can I feel absolutely safe? I don't know that we can, but to be the safety has to come from yourself. If you trust yourself, if you feel like you can hold yourself, that's going to give you a fundamental safety net to be able to then start to take tiny risks with who you share pieces of information about yourself with. So uh yeah, a hyperfixation on safety, I think, is not helpful because society generally is not especially safe for women and sex. It's that's not wildly unsafe, but it's not super safe. So it's more about us creating smaller communities, smaller networks where we can feel a kinship and that we can feel some sort of stability within ourselves to then start finding opportunities to let these parts of our kind of tigress, lioness, whatever energy out.
SPEAKER_02:I think maybe we need to start a circle like that, Cindy. You and I can create a circle for women here in New York City to just have that open conversation. That's a room I would show up to be in with you, that's for sure. I want to thank you for this conversation, for you taking time out of your day for to invite us to challenge the stories that we have been given about sex and menopause, our libidos, all of that, inviting us to awaken and to have a reckoning with these stories. It doesn't mean starting over, it means maybe going deeper or starting a little bit deeper within ourselves. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:And it's such I'm loving, I just turned 54 on the weekend on Sunday was my birthday.
SPEAKER_02:Happy birthday.
SPEAKER_01:And I thank you. And I love it. I thought I remember being in my 20s and thinking I would hate being old. And there was a window of transitioning in my 30s where I really was hating a lot of things, including what I thought was old at 34. But now I'm like 20 years on the other side of that and I'm 54. I feel better in myself than I ever have. I have always been a very sexual person, with the exception of a little window during perimenopause, my late 40s, where I was really oh god, I never and I was actually when I was writing my book, I was like, I am like a fraud. I'm writing a book about having sex, and I feel like I never ever want to have sex again, which it was a real reckoning for me because I had always been a very sexual person. But now I'm well and truly on the other side of menopause, and I take hormones, and I am grateful that I have the opportunity to do that, and I'm having fantastic sex again, and I love it, and I'm really enjoying my body, even though I'm heavier than I've ever been in my life. I'm certainly stronger than I've ever been in my life. I'm at the gym lifting weights a lot, and I just feel great, and I I practice non-monogamy. I will never be monogamous again. It doesn't work for me, it makes me sad, it makes my body really depressed. Wow. And I have a great business that's thriving, and I've got my doggies, and I love going to the beach, and I just I feel great. And I never thought that I would have said this at 54, but I feel better than I felt at 24.
SPEAKER_02:I love hearing that. I feel the same way, and I'm another decade beyond you. However, uh show please share with our listeners how they can find you. Your book again, show the book. Tell us how they can find you on social media and other places.
SPEAKER_01:This is my book, Sex When You Don't Feel Like It. It's all on my website, which is my name, Cindy Darnell, C Y N D I D A R N E D L dot com. I have an Instagram account which I haven't really been on much this last 12 months or so. It's there, but I'm not like super, super active on social media currently. I might be again. But my website certainly has a lot of resources. I am bringing out a bunch of new online classes for folks about different kinds of somatic self-inquiry around sex, but also around emotional intelligence and just bringing self-awareness back to the body because I do think sex and emotion are very connected, but I don't necessarily think one needs to even be in a relationship to have great sex. You can have sex by yourself, you can have sex with other people. You can be monogamous, you can be non-monogamous, you can be straight, queer, whatever. And I think that there are ways we can do it all. I don't make any heavy prescription about anything other than be kind to yourself, don't be nice, but be kind and be curious, always be curious. And so my online courses are really about facilitating curiosity. I offer counseling, therapy, and coaching, depending on where you are in the world, changes the name of what I do. But I was a trained psychotherapist for years. I still have bits of that, but I generally don't do mental health counselling. Everything I do is sex and relationships oriented, and also personal development, self-inquiry. Who am I, what do I want to feel, what matters to me, and relationship skills. I love working with couples and lovers around developing relationship skills, including tolerating insecurities and fears and jealousies. That's all part of it, especially when we're practicing non-monogamy, these little things bubble up, and I love coaching folks through through some of these complicated realms. So that's what I do.
SPEAKER_02:I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on She Ask, where healing meets practical hope. We love giving out tools. We're gonna share all of what you offer in our notes about this episode, and I look forward to having another conversation with you again soon.
SPEAKER_01:Likewise, Anna. It's lovely spending time with you.
SPEAKER_02:You as well. All right, take good care and good luck with your tough your puppy.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:All right, all right, bye bye.