Your Desire Didn't Die. It Went Underground.

Your desire did not expire at fifty. It went underground — and there is a nervous system reason for every bit of it. In this episode of Sexy After 50, Dr. Juls unpacks why midlife transformation and sexual desire are the same conversation, happening in the same body, and what it takes to bring that hunger back home.

The restlessness so many women feel in their fifties — that low hum of wanting more without knowing what more even means — is not a midlife crisis. According to Polyvagal Theory, it is the nervous system announcing that the old strategies are finished and something truer wants to come next. That something includes desire.

Drawing on research from Skerrett, Spira, and Chandy (2021), Basson's circular model of female sexual response, Nagoski's dual control model, and the interoceptive awareness research of Garfinkel and Critchley, Dr. Juls traces the exact neurological and somatic pathway from shutdown back to wanting. This episode is the conversation your girlfriends are afraid to start and your doctor is too rushed to finish.

Women searching for low libido after 50, nervous system and sexual desire, or how to reconnect with intimacy in midlife will find both the science and the somatic roadmap waiting here.

In this episode you will discover why desire goes underground in midlife rather than disappearing — and why that distinction changes everything. You will understand how novelty and creativity directly feed erotic energy through the dopamine seeking system and the second chakra. You will learn why co-regulation, not chemistry, is the soil that desire requires. And you will walk away with two concrete practices: The Desire Crossroads Mapping, a ten-minute somatic body scan, and Your Erotic Autobiography, a journaling practice designed to crack open the question of what you have been waiting for permission to want.

They told you the fire dies at 50. They lied.

Desire Reset Guide is your 72-hour erotic reboot—where you'll unlock the arousal pathway buried in your nervous system, reclaim the raw hunger you were taught to suppress, and rewire your body to crave pleasure again.

Not because you're broken. Because you're ready to burn.

Get the Desire Reset Guide

Move from Invisible to Incredible.

Dr. Juls | Sexy After 50 Podcast
New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays, 5am CST

This podcast is for women over 50 navigating low desire, sexual disconnection, and body changes who want nervous-system-informed insight into libido, aliveness, intimacy, and embodied pleasure so they can move from tamed and underground to rebooted, alive, and unapologetically hungry.

Transcript

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In this episode, you will discover your desire didn't disappear. It went underground. And this is actually the nervous system's invitation to call your hunger back home. Sexy After 50. Improve sex and intimacy by healing your nervous system so you finally feel turned on and confident. We're waking up what never left desire and fire. I'm Dr. Jules. Let's get to it. Sweet soul, welcome back. Here are three reasons I need you to hang out with me until the very end of this episode. First, you're gonna understand why midlife transformation and sexual desire are not two separate topics. Girl, they're the same conversation happening in the same body through the same nervous system. And once you see that, you cannot unsee it. Second, you're going to get a somatic practice I call the Desire Crossroads. And it's a mapping that you can do tonight in 10 minutes, zero equipment, and frankly, a whole lot of pleasure, potential. And third, you're going to walk away with a journaling practice called your erotic autobiography. And that is going to do more for your desire in 30 minutes than any supplement, hormone patch, or glass of wine has done in years. So, okay, friend, pour yourself something good. I've got my Java, and I hope you've got yours because we're about to have the conversation. Your girlfriends are afraid to start, and your doctor is too flippin' rushed to finish. I want to talk to you about a crossroads, not the existential midlife crisis kind that movies love to dramatize. Although we have those. I know I had mine. Oh. Hollywood has made that look exhausting, truth be told. And I mean, come on, y'all. Come on. The real one, the one where you wake up some Tuesday morning and something in your body quietly, almost politely, raises its hand and says, Um, I want more than this. That's kind of what happened to us, right? We woke up and thought, is this all the is this all there is? Is this all there is? So y'all, it might not even feel like desire at first, as it comes back online. It might feel like restlessness, it might feel like irritation, like standing in your kitchen looking at the life you built and feeling strangely like a stranger in it. Women's fiction author um Heidi Herman, she describes midlife as standing at a crossroads where the road behind you, it's well traveled. You know it is, and it's familiar, and the path ahead shimmers with uncertainty and promise. And I love that image because it is exactly what I hear from all the lovely souls in my practice and in my community every single week. And I sure wish that y'all would become part of that community. But back to our story. Um, here's what Heidi's article sparked in me and what I want to offer you today, girl. What if that crossroads is not just about career reinvention or emptiness or finding a new hobby? What if the most dangerous, delicious, profound thing is waiting for you on that shimmering path? And what if that's your own desire? Because she's not gone. I want to say that clearly, and I want you to hear it in your body. Your desire did not die. She went quiet, she went underground, and there is a very specific reason rooted in nervous system science for what happened, and a very clear, somatic pathway back to her. And that is exactly what we're unpacking today. So let's get to it. Okay, sip of my Java. Here we go. Research published in Springer Science and Business Media back in 2021, seems like yesterday, right? By Scarrett, Spira, and Chandy looked at women navigating the transition from midlife into what they called emerging elderhood. And y'all they're finding was that this life chapter, rather than representing decline, is characterized by profound opportunities for growth and fulfillment, rather, when women engage intentionally with this stage. But what stopped most women from doing that? The big fat liar called fear. Threat, the nervous system reading change as danger. This is really important because here is what Poor Hayes polyvagal theory tells us about desire and threat. The ventral vagal state, which is it's the part that is associated, the part of your nervous system that is associated with safety, play, creativity, connection. It's the only state where desire can actually live. Underscore, hear me again. Only state, the ventral vagal, only state desire can live in. If you're like me, I've spent 30 years in sympathetic and dorsal, fight or flight or shutdown. Desire doesn't live there. And ladies, we've got to get our nervous system softened, our body softened to allow desire to come back. But when our nervous system reads our life as threatening, and that could be the threat of aging, becoming invisible, losing your sense of self, watching your body change, losing an income if you retire, your system shifts into sympathetic activation or that dorsal vagal shutdown. And in shutdown, desire flatlines. And it's not because you're broken. Girl, not we're not broken. We are not broken. It's because your body, crazy enough, is doing exactly what it was designed to do. So the crossroads moment that so many women experience in their 50s is the nervous system waking up and saying, girl, the old strategies not working anymore. The old self, the one who performed and produced and managed and shrunk herself to stay safe and she's exhausted. Flipping, exhausted. Stop, put your hand on your heart chakra, you know that's true. Exhausted. She's done. And that restlessness, that is not a crisis. That is your ventral vagal system knocking on the door saying, Girl, I am ready for something real. And real, oh my love, real includes desire. It includes intimacy. It includes your body being touched and lit up and present in a way that she has maybe not been in years. So when Heidi Herman writes that women who embrace midlife changes rather than resist them, report greater well-being and satisfaction. I want you to hear that through this lens. Embracing the change is a nervous system intervention. It is literally moving from threat to safety. And safety, oh sisters, safety is where desire is born. You gotta have it. Safety for desire to come back online. And that's what I was talking about, softening into your body. We have been braced for so many years, facing so many self-created threats. Our body is going, shit, I don't feel safe here. We've got to let it feel safe again. So I got you, I got some ideas here. Marie and Norget published research in 2022 showing that women who engaged in self-reflection during midlife reported significantly higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of purpose. The researchers found that asking the question, what do I value now, and sitting with it honestly, was among the most powerful things a midlife woman could do for her well-being. Notice that there's not a big prize tag on that, lady. Notice this ship we talk about is free. Free. Or join my intensive, my somatic, intensive, um, my intensive somatic radiance, a seven-day program. Doesn't cost much. Get yourself on this path. But being honest with yourself and reflecting is the best thing research shows you can do for your well-being, especially at midlife. Now I want to take that research and put it squarely in the most important room in your house. The bedroom. Thought I was gonna say the kitchen, right? The bedroom. Because self-reflection is not just about your career, your relation, or your relationships, or your morning routine. It is also, and this is the part no one is saying, it's about your erotic life. Rosemary Basson's circular model, which we've talked about on the program before, her circular model of female sexual desire, published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, showed us something revolutionary. Women's desire, and we've talked about this before, but it's it's revolutionary. Women's desire is not spontaneous the way it is often depicted in movies. Or maybe the first time you were kissing in a car and sex came online. I mean, that was that's that's history. That that's your teenage self. Our desire is not spontaneous, it is responsive. I talk about this a lot in any podcast of mine you listen to, any TV interview you see me on, or any podcast guesting I do. Not responsive, it's relational, it's contextual. Desire in women arises in response to stimuli that feel safe, inviting, personally meaningful, which means that without self-reflection about what you actually want, what lights you up, what your body is hungry for, your system has nothing to respond to. It's waiting for an invitation you've not written yet. Think of your computer screen, just going in that circle. It's waiting. Gal, y'all, the women I work with inside my um, and I'm gonna screw up the title. Bear with me. Seven-day somatic radiance intensive. The ones who find their way to the desire and fire reset, which is my free um guide that's in the show notes of this this podcast. Anyway, they almost universally tell me the same thing in their first session. They have not thought about what they wanted erotically in years, sometimes decades, sometimes never, because there's some shame tied to that that we work through. We're gonna work through. But they have been so busy for the most part attending to everyone else's needs, so accustomed to performing desire rather than feeling it, that the question, the real question, the delicious, dangerous question, what do I actually want right now has been sitting unanswered like an unopened letter. Self-reflection in midlife is erotic. It's erotic when it is honest. When you finally ask, what kind of touch have I been longing for? What conversation with my partner have I been avoiding because I'm afraid of what I might actually say? What has my body been trying to tell me that I keep drowning out with busyness, which is a whole other addiction we need to talk about over on my compassion fatigue cure podcast? Girl, those are not therapy questions. Those are sacred questions, and answering them is the beginning of your desire at returning, the homecoming. Really, it's that easy. So here's where it gets a little spicy, but bear with me because the science here genuinely is exciting. Heidi Herman cites the 2022 Global Wellness Trends Report, finding that women over 40 who prioritize movement and creative activities report higher energy and improved mood. She also discusses research from Stanford's Through Wise Eyes project, showing that thriving women in later life share a zest for learning and novelty. And she writes about women who like Mirabel, who took up painting at 52 and is now blossoming creatively in ways she never imagined. Now, girl, do you know what novelty does to the brain? Oh, it is an Aphrodigi act. Your brain loves novelty. It triggers dopamine. Not the reward dopamine, not the anticipatory dopamine, the wanting kind, the craving kind. So neuroscientist Jacques Penksap called it the seeking system. And it's one of the most primal, powerful, motivational circuits in the human brain. When we try something new, when we learn something unfamiliar, when we step outside our habitual patterns, the brain lights up. It says, hello, and it lights up with that electric, forward-leaning hunger that is the biological signature of desire. And our old friend Emily Nagoski, who makes an appearance as a scientist on this program a lot, her dual control model of sexual response, that y'all know I reference constantly, would say this clearly. Desire arrives. Novelty releases that break. Novelty wakes up the accelerator, which means that Mirabel picking up a paintbrush at 52 was also quite literally feeding her erotic energy. She probably didn't know that, but you know who did? Her body. Her body absolutely knew that. So this is where I marry somatic and chakra psychology. I map it on to the neuroscience in a way that I find titillating. That's a word. You know, I like to make shit up when it comes to words. And I find it breathtaking. So on to our second chakra, which we talk about a lot, located in the lower abdomen, just below your navel, your sacral chakra governs. What does it govern? Y'all can probably say it with me. Pleasure, creativity, sensuality, flow. And in the yogic yogic tradition, it is associated with water, the willingness to move and be moved, and with the part of you that says yes to sensation. And it shadows the thing that blocks it. It's rigidity. Well, rigidity is the thing that blocks it. Routine without aliveness. I mean, take a big deep breath. Think about your day-to-day. Routine without aliveness. Life lived from the waist up. Often, y'all, it's from the head up. We are floating heads of competence. Think we can think our way out of everything. We can't. Routine without aliveness. Life lived from the waist up, from the mind alone, with the body dragging along behind as if it's an afterthought. When a woman at 55 takes up salsa or starts writing, not salsa, the chips and salsa that we love here in Texas, and that is mighty good. Go make you some of that, but I'm talking about the salsa dancing. Um, or maybe she starts writing, or signs up for a pottery class, or buys herself the lingerie she's been telling herself is too much for too many years. Her sacral chakra is coming back online. She is feeding the part of her that wants, that craves, that creates. And that fire does not stay neatly contained to the art class or the pottery wheel. Girl, it travels. It finds its way into the bedroom, it finds its way into your body, it finds its way into the hunger that you thought you'd left behind perhaps in your 30s. So if your desire has felt dim, I want to ask you, when was the last time you did something genuinely new? Not learn a new computer program. If that's your thing, fine. But I'm talking new and fun and yummy, not productive, not useful, new, novel, something that made your body lean forward with that particular aliveness that has nothing to do with your I'm trying to find mine, to do list. Because that is where she is waiting for you, not in a pill bottle. Not in a hormone panel, but do your hormones. In the willing, juicy, creative life, you are still allowed to be living. I want to teach you a somatic practice right here, right now. And it's adapted, it's adapted from interceptive awareness work, specifically the research of Sarah Garfinkel and Hugo Critchley. We've talked about them before on the program. They're at the University of Sussex. And the studies they did on interception show that the capacity to sense your own internal body is, well, the state of your own internal body is directly linked to emotional awareness and desire. Women with richer interceptive awareness report richer desire because she's in her body, she feels it. So we are training that muscle right here, right now. And the practice is called the desire crossroads mapping. And you're going to need 10 minutes, quiet space, ideally, no bra. The last part is optional, but I stand by it. So I want you to start, and maybe you need to bookmark this and come back to it when you have the time for some privacy, but just listen as you're going. Just kind of wrap your head around it if you can't do it with me. But start by sitting comfortably, both feet flat on the floor, close your eyes, take three full breaths, slow, deep, into your own belly. The kind that push your waistband out instead of lifting up your chest. This, my sweet friend, is vagal tone work. You're telling your nervous system the threat is not here. You're safe. Stay. Now bring your attention to the center of your body, just below your navel, the home of your sacral chakra, and place both hands there, palm flat against your skin, if you are comfortable. Feel your own warmth. This is the body you have lived in for fifty plus years. Think about that. This is the body that has carried and birthed and worked and loved and worried. She has been so busy. Let her be still for just a moment. Now I want you to do something a little unusual. I want you to imagine that there is a younger version of you standing on one side of a crossroad, and the version of you who is fully alive, fully desired, fully wanting, is standing on the other side, not performing, not managing, actually wanting. Breathe into that image. Notice where you feel it in your body. Does it feel like warmth? A tightening? A pull, a flutter? Girl, there's no wrong answer. There's just curiosity. Just notice And now ask that alive version a single question. What does she want right now? Not what does she think she should want, not any rules. Just what does she actually want? Stay with whatever arises, do not you dare, don't edit. Don't you dare edit, no editing. Your body's answer might be surprising and very wise. It might be tender, it might be a little dangerous. Let it be. And when you're ready, gently open your eyes and write down whatever came, even if it's one word. That word is your compass right now. And the next step, if what you just experienced in that practice woke something up in you, and if part of you is thinking, okay, but what now? I want to tell you about my desire and fire reset. It's free. I made it just for you. It's a guide, it's a 72-hour guide designed specifically for you, where you're standing at this cross right here, right now, at this crossroads. I want you to know. I want you to want. And if that feels really yummy, I want you to check out my seven-day somatic um radiance intensive. Okay, so all that stuff is on my website, Julie Merriman PhD.com backslash desire. Get you to the fire and desire, or it's in the show notes. Okay. Um, there's our commercial back to our program. Thank you for listening. Okay, so Scaret and colleagues back in 2021, their research found that social support is one of the most powerful buffers against the health risk associated with midlife transition. And us gals who invest in friendship, in community, in being known by others, being seen by others, report greater happiness and resilience than those who navigate the season in isolation. And I see you, you miss busy. Oh, I don't have time for that. You do. You need time for that. That very thing that you're thinking, uh, just don't want to do that, is the very thing you need to make time to do. Through polyvagal, through the polyvagal lens, this is co-regulation that Poor Hayes talks about. Co-regulation is the biological need to be in the presence of another regulated nervous system. We literally borrow each other's calm. We literally settle into safety in the company of people who make us feel seen. And here is the intimacy piece that nobody is talking about enough. Co-regulation, my friend, co-regulation is the soil that desire grows in. You cannot be fully sexually alive with another person if your nervous system experiences that person is threatening. And it's not about if you love that person or not. You can love someone deeply and still have a nervous system that reads them as unsafe, that reads closeness as danger, that learns somewhere along the way that wanting is risky and receiving is selfish, maybe some shame evolved. A lot of the beautiful souls over 50 that I work with, I found carry a particular adaptation in their bodies of one of these things. And girl, it was useful once. It helped us once, but it is not useful now. It's worn out schema that we need to replace. So building co-regulation, whether with a partner, a close friend, in my community, around the radiance intensive, is literally building the nervous system capacity for intimacy. Imagine that. The very thing we brace ourselves against is the very thing we need. It is not soft work. Your body needs to get softer. It is foundational. Your vagus nerve does not care how many years you've been married. It can't count, does not care. It cares whether this moment, this person, this presence feels safe enough to open. The heart chakra governs this territory, intimacy, vulnerability, the willingness to be received. Its blockage shows up as the closed chest, the held breath, the arms crossed over the heart without knowing why. Its opening feels like the exhale. You forgot you were holding. So it's like looking at someone and thinking, Wow, you can actually see me, and not flinching. That's the foundational work. Not feeling getting a compliment. You know, you you just I feel people just go, I don't, I can't take that. It's not flinching, it's being open and connected. Girl, that's intimacy. And intimacy is the front door to desire. So this week's journaling practice is called your erotic autobiography. And I want to take you, I really invite you to take it serious because it will do more for your desire than I can fully convey in this moment. Find 30 minutes, find privacy, bring your best pen because you are writing something that matters. And I want you to start here. What is the earliest memory you have of feeling genuinely bodily alive? Not necessarily sexually alive, but if that's it, that's fine. Just alive in your body, warm, vibrating, awake, present. Maybe you were dancing, maybe you were running barefoot, maybe you were laughing so hard you could not breathe. Write that memory in as much physical detail as you can. Then move to this. When your body, when did your body start feeling like a problem to manage rather than a home to inhabit? What changed? When did you start editing yourself? You don't need to analyze it, we're just gonna witness it at this point. Now write this prompt. If desire were a room in my body, what would it look like right now? Is it locked? Dusty? Is the door slightly open? Is there a light coming from somewhere? And finally, what is the one thing I have been waiting for permission to want? Girl, this last question, it's the one that cracks things open. I have learned from the women I've worked with. They've told me they wrote for an hour on that last prompt. Alone. Because we've been waiting for permission, perhaps, from a partner, from a culture, and a culture that has told us our desire has an expiration date, from a version of ourselves that believed wanting was selfish. You do not need permission anymore. You needed someone to tell you that you do not need permission, perhaps. And if that is you, consider this me telling you. All right. Here is what we covered today. We're gonna land this ship. Here's the three things I invite you to carry out of this episode. One, your desire went underground for a reason rooted in your nervous system, not a personal failure. When your body reads your life is threatening, when midlife changes triggers to that threat response, desire is the first thing to go quiet. Understanding this removes blame and opens the door to healing. Two, you learn novelty and creativity are not luxuries. How we've been taught that. Act your age, don't play. BS on that. These things are desires fuel. Your sacral chakra, your dopamine-seeking system, your body's capacity for wanting all live in the same territory. And when you feed your creativity, your curiosity, your appetite for what is new, you are feeding your desire directly and physiologically. And three, intimacy requires nervous system safety. And nervous system safety girl, it's built through co-regulation, through connection, through community. Hint, hint, I have one for you, and through the slow, brave work of letting yourself be seen without shame, without judgment, with self-compassion. Show up, be yourself. That's some throat chakra work as well. But this, my friend, is the soil. Desire is what grows from there. If this episode lit anything up in you, go get my book. Hop over to my website or even on Amazon. It's called My Brand New Book is Are We Gonna Have Sex or What? And is the midlife guide for reigniting desire, reclaiming your body, and living fully alive. And it goes deeper into everything and more that we touched on today. It's going to meet you exactly where you are. The link, um, well, it's on my website. So, anyway, thank you so much for they told you the fire dies at 50. They lied. Tap the show notes to download reignite your fire and desire. Your free 72-hour erotic reboot. Unlock the arousal pathway buried in your nervous system. Reclaim the raw hunger you were taught to suppress, and rewire your body to crave pleasure again. Not because you're broken, but because you're ready to burn. Move from invisible to incredible. I'm Dr. Jules Keeper. For being here, I can't wait to hear about your homecoming. This is Sexy After 50, and you are still the most interesting chapter of your own story. Now, girl, go write something worth reading. Ciao.