Xanet - Intimacy

In this episode, I’m joined by Xanet.

Xanet is a sex and intimacy coach who came into this work through lived experience. Twenty six years in a sexless marriage. Not theory. Not study. Real life.

This conversation sits inside intimacy, vulnerability, and what actually happens in long term relationships when the surface level connection fades and people are left facing themselves.

We talk about the difference between sex and intimacy and how most people confuse the two. How easy it is to have sex without real closeness, especially in the beginning of relationships when dopamine and novelty are doing most of the work.

But long term intimacy is different.

It asks more of you.
More honesty.
More vulnerability.
More exposure.

Because eventually it is not about impressing the other person anymore. It is about allowing yourself to actually be seen.

We go into the fear around that.

How much easier it can feel to be sexually open with someone new than with the person you have built a life with. Because with a stranger there is no real risk. But with your partner, rejection lands deeper. You still have to look them in the eye afterwards. You still have to stay in the relationship with whatever gets exposed.

Xanet speaks openly about her own attachment wounds and how they still show up in her relationship now. The fear around hard conversations. The fear of abandonment. And how awareness does not magically remove the reaction, but it does create space to work with it differently.

This one also moves into something I care about a lot.

The way childhood patterns show up in adult relationships. Not as concepts, but in real moments. Conflict, defensiveness, withdrawal, fear, reassurance. Most of the time it is not two adults fighting. It is two wounded children trying to protect themselves.

We also talk about therapy itself and how easy it is for people like us to hide behind awareness, language, and knowledge. To start therapising instead of connecting. To explain instead of feeling.

This conversation is not about perfect relationships.

It is about what it takes to stay open inside one. What it takes to repair. To own your shit. To stop seeing your partner as the enemy and start seeing what is actually happening underneath the reaction.

The question Xanet leaves for the next guest is this.

If there is one thing in your life you could have done differently, what would it have been?

It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist
Hosted by Chad Taylor. Author of It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME

No tips.
No fixing.
Just real conversations.

Xanet Pailet can be found at 

https://www.passionateintimacyretreats.com/

@xanetpop on Instagram

WEBSITE

INSTAGRAM 

BOOK SALES: SHOPIFY

GROUPS/COURSES: PATREON

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm Chad Taylor, psychotherapist, author of It's You, Oh Fuck It's Me. No tips, no Fixing, just real conversations. So today I've got Janae here. Janae, who the fuck are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Well, hi everyone, and hi Chad. Um I am a sex and intimacy educator and coach. I live in Asheville, North Carolina. And I came to this work from being in a sexless marriage, living in a sexless marriage for 26 years.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Okay. Lived experience, which I think the world needs more of.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Mm-hmm. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Rather than me going straight in and asking you the question about your sexless marriage, how did you turn that into where you are now?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Well, I think it was very, very aligned with your book, right? Which is like I had to take a really hard look at who I was when I left that marriage and where all of my own shame, trauma, and other wounding came from that, you know, caused me to be in a marriage that had no sex and also not a ton of intimacy. And really like look at, you know, well, who am I and where did that come from? And what do I do about that? And rather than blaming my ex-husband, which I never really did, I knew it was like for me on me, but I also didn't, I had no compassion for myself, no kindness for myself. So that really led me into, you know, I was a lawyer by training. So I was in the sort of corporate healthcare world, I had my own consulting company. But when I left the marriage and really took a hard look at me and did the hard work, I realized that this was something that I was really passionate about. That as I saw changes happening in my life, that is really how I wanted to spend, if you will, the second chapter of my life, just really focusing on helping others who hopefully were able to get intervention way before I was. Let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

I think we're very aligned. I'm obviously a clinical psychotherapist. So would you say that you what demographic is your ideal client or is there one?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Um I would say that right now, in the last seven years, I've been really focusing on couples in long-term relationships. Sometimes it's a first marriage, sometimes it's a second marriage, sometimes it's a third marriage. But they're in some level of long-term relationship, and most often they're really struggling around sex or they're in a sexless marriage.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, and I guess I'll probably ask you that a bit later, but uh the what's the correlation between intimacy and sex? And is there a difference? And how do you work with people on that?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Um That's a great question. So I think they're very integrally related. It was interesting because I posted this on Facebook about a month ago. Like uh you can you can have sex without intimacy, but can you have was it you can have sex without intimacy, but can you have intimacy without sex? Because I was really curious about what people's reactions would be in my community. And a lot of what I heard was, yes, you can have intimacy without sex. It's more like emotional, you're more like friends, maybe you're cuddling, but it's not sexual. And I don't disagree with that. I think there's a lot of different ways to experience there's lots of different types of intimacy that you can experience. But in a long-term relationship with both couples, both partners actually want to be sexual with each other, then I think the sexual intimacy has to go along with the emotional intimacy. And in fact, I think it's very hard, especially for women, to really allow themselves to open up sexually unless they feel that emotional connection, that emotional intimacy with their partner. So I do think they're very integrally related.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, and I think it's hard for everybody, women and men. I know as a man, if there's something that I wanted to, it's a lot easier to do it with a has been previously for me until the relationship that I'm in now, which is amazing because we've got there's two of us that are both working on ourselves consistently. I'll go to a therapist, even though I'm a therapist, she goes to a therapist. But I guess what I see a lot of, and I think in my last relationships, is it's easier to be more open sexually with somebody you've just met than it is with a long-term partner. Because of that, if I want to do something different and she rejects me, I've got to look her in the eye and I've got to hang around with her and I've got to parent her. If I wanna, I don't know, buy sex toy, if I wanna, I don't know, ask her if we can dress up or wear a it's not my thing, but wear a nurse's outfit or wear a French maid's outfit. I probably wouldn't mind that one. Sophie, if you're listening to this, which is my partner, there you go. But what I'm saying is if I was to want to do that, say it was my birthday or her birthday and I want to do that, and that's shut down, or that's almost like, why the fuck would you want to do that? Like, aren't you happy with who I am? I think I write a lot of this in my book. It it's easier to be sexually open with somebody I've just met or somebody we've just met because there isn't that or intimacy, you know, coming from into me, I see, which I'm sure you cover a lot in your book, that it's that intimacy being that two people almost the deeper you get towards the other person, unfortunately, the deeper you're really going into yourself.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yeah, no, I think that's definitely true. And yeah, I think you can have maybe better sex, more exciting sex, more friction sex, you know, when you're not in a long-term relationship, maybe. But I think, you know, that's also driven by hormones. That's driven by the fact that you're in new relationship energy. And if that connection isn't there after the new relationship energy goes away, right, then you're in a really different place, right? You haven't really established that connection. And yes, I definitely agree that I see that with a lot of couples, like sex is amazing in the beginning, and there's all this new relationship energy flowing. And especially if there are people who are a little bit more on the avoidance side, and then they actually make their way into more of a long-term relationship. The actual intimacy is terrifying for them to allow themselves to be that vulnerable, to be that authentic, right? Ultimately, I think you're going to have a better sexual experience when there's a lot of intimacy with your partner. It'll be different. It can still be very exciting, but it'll be deeper and more passionate at a very core level. But it also requires a lot of emotional safety and trust.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah. Even a simple thing is looking into your partner's eyes while you're having an orgasm. I don't think I'd want to do that with a stranger personally. But I definitely think Yeah, there's a different type of there's a different type of great sex. I would I would like to say. And Sophie, again, if my partner's listening to this, it's we've been together about four years now, and I think it just gets better and better, the intimacy gets better and better because it isn't all about what it was in the first three or six months, like you talked about, that new relationship energy. And I think the world's full of dopamine, and I think that's why we have short-term relationships, because that first rush of doing all that stuff, it's the rush is there, right? And it's a different now, four years in. It's a different kind of rush, but it's still a rush, right? But I don't think many people can do the work to get to that point.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yeah, I agree with that. It can be a struggle.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Oh, they can find me at my website, which is passionate intimacy retreats with an S dot com, passionate intimacyretreats.com.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Great. And I will link that for people in the show notes if you like what Janae said and you'd love to connect with her for work or find out where her book's gonna come out or where you can buy it, her books, I will leave that in the bottom of the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

So I do a thing here where the last guest leaves something for the next guest. It's a question or a statement, just something to leave the next guest when they come on. And the last guest left, which is right in line with you. What's something you wish you were better at in relationships?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Something I wish I was better at in relationships is it's still hard for me to be able to have hard conversations. I do it, but it's still, you know, there's still fear. I have an attachment wound, an abandonment wound, right? So I'm always nervous. Like if I'm going to broach some hard topic with my partner, that is that gonna be the thing that's gonna make him decide, yeah, no, we've been together four years, five years now. So we're a year ahead of you. Is that gonna be the thing that's gonna make him say, yeah, no, I think I'm done? Never has happened, and I really don't think that would happen, but there's always that internal fear that I I have. That's hard for me in a relationship.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

And how have you worked on that yourself? Like how, without this turning into a therapy session, but I make it pretty raw and real. How have you worked? How have you got to where you can be? I suppose the number one thing I'd say is what's it like when you're aware of that? It's probably, I guess it would be easier to deal with in the moment when you're not unconscious to those behaviors that you've probably had all your life, I'm guessing, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Right, right. I would say that it's gotten a lot easier for me to be able to have those hard conversations. I think I'm in a pretty secure relationship, maybe the most secure relationship I've ever been in at an emotional level, and that we trust each other. And I feel I know that we've had hard conversations before and it made us closer, right? And that's one of, for me, one of the values of learning how to actually repair conflict is if you do it correctly, it actually creates more intimacy. So I know that it will end up, even though it might be hard and I might upset him, and he might not use the skills that I think he should use in that moment and become very defensive. Or I feel invalidated, like I still know it's worth it doing it. So I think that's a part of it. And at times I just I do some parenting of myself. Like, yeah, that was then, this is now, you were three years old, you're not anymore. And just reassuring that inner scare child, right? That this person who loves you and who's living with you is not going to leave you.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah. And for anyone listening out there that hasn't done therapy or hasn't come to somebody like you, what does being a three-year-old child have to do with being an adult in a relationship?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Oh, yeah. So all of our childhood wounds, all of them, show up in our adult romantic relationships, right? And so for me, you know, a major child wound that I had was an abandonment wound because my dad died when I was three years old. My mom never remarried. And so I, you know, much of my romantic relationship, I stayed in maybe unhealthy relationships for 26 years because I was afraid of that little girl didn't want to be abandoned. And that's a big attachment wound. And so all of these childhood wounds we have, they all show up in the way in which we handle romantic relationships and the way in which we get triggered when we're in a conflict with our partner, right? Because when we're in a conflict with our partner, there's no adult in the room. There's usually only two children with their wounds that have showed up in the room. And you cannot repair in that moment. It's impossible. It just gets worse and worse and worse.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah. I was watching two guys fighting outside my offices, one floor up, and it's in a pretty small town. And I was watching two grown men obviously fight over a car park the other day, and I was thinking straight after that. And it's easy for me to judge and think, look at you, you idiot. But I'm that person, right? When I'm triggered, that's me right there. When I'm running late for work or I've gone out for lunch and I need to come back and I've got a client and there's no car parks, that's me, right? But this time I had lunch after that and I try and usually close my eyes and practice a little bit of meditation and quiet time in my lunch break because my job is pretty intense, as I'm sure yours is. And I thought, when's the first time I ever felt like that? And I have shared this before with somebody on the podcast for anybody else, if somebody listening again is gonna have to deal with it, sorry. But I thought games like musical chairs and things where like we're almost we're almost taught or pass the parcel, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't play these games at childhood parties, but it's more about when you're when you've lost and when you've you're triggered and you're over in the corner and you're being told you can't have an emotion, you can't get angry, you can't get sad, it's just a game. I think that a lot of this like I'm I'm exactly like you in believing that zero to seven when our brain is in a different state, it's almost like a sponge. All that's in there, right? It's all in there. And when we're triggered, that a lot of that is trying to make its way out. It's actually trying to make its way out.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah, absolutely. And it does. It does.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

So I don't even really need to go into this next question too much because we've almost answered it, but I will. What from my book landed for you? What in a personal way? Where do you see some of these things show up in your own life and any examples you've got?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, well, I mean, I think your book is so focused on taking personal responsibility for your own stuff and your own issues and not blaming the other person, but actually owning up to your own stuff. So I think I'm I try to be very conscious about what my own excuse me, my own stuff is. Um, yeah, I'll I'll tell an interesting story. When I first met my partner five years ago, our very, very first date, we had a great date. And at the end of the date, I said to him, I want to tell you all of the things that really makes it hard to be in a relationship with me. I actually think I said that makes it it that sucks to be in a relationship with me. And then I listed like five or six things just to kind of see how he reacted to that. And also because I felt like it was important to get that out on the table. And also just to see, like, did he like freak out? Because that would be a red flag warning, like, yeah, we're not the right person, right? I think that really owning your own stuff with my couples, I always make them write down on a piece of paper all the things that makes it hard to be in a relationship with you. And then when we get into talking about how to repair and how to talk to each other when you're in conflict or noticing what happens when the trigger is up, I'm like, okay, well, look at your sheet of paper. Let's identify what part of this is related to your own thing that you need to take ownership of, right? Like I can't expect my partner to fix it, right? That's not their responsibility. Maybe the responsibility at times is to bring it to light. Sometimes, you know, my partner will say, hey, Jinee, you know, I think maybe you're getting a little defensive right now. You want to take a look at that? Or you're being a little judgmental. No, not me. Do you want to take a look at that, right? Which I appreciate because in the moment I can't get there. But I do think what you say in your book about owning your own stuff, knowing what your own stuff is, because so many people don't understand what their own stuff is. They haven't done the work to understand where their wounding comes from, where their triggers come from, how the way their mother dismissed them when they were five years old had an effect on how they feel when they get criticized by a partner, for example. So really understanding that piece, I think is just really, really critical to be able to stay in a healthy relationship, in a romantic relationship. I think it's also important for other relationships in our lives as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, I love to hear that. And and something you said then was when your partner says you're getting defensive. Maybe you should take a look at that. I think it's when I hear that, and then I know how I process it in my life, and I hear how you process it in your life. This is the basis of the work that we're doing, right? It's the the way I see that play out most of the time is, oh, who's fucking defensive? That's usually the comeback from when it's called out, right? Or it's like, hey, I'm just letting you're getting a bit angry. I'm fucking angry. You're fucking angry.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yes. Our cookie mechanisms immediately, you know, come online. Yes, it's it's hard not to, right? It's definitely hard not to.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Definitely is. And and something you said earlier about repairing conflict makes us closer, gives us more intimacy. The original name for my book, before I changed, it morphed and did these things, was called I'm fucked, you're fucked, why being wrong is foreplay. So it really was about the oxytocin and about not quite dopamine, but oxytocin that actually comes in when you admit fault. You almost let's call it I'm not religious, but let's call it that type confession thing where you admit fault to your partner. The actual uh yeah, the oxytocin and the level of closeness when two people are admitting fault rather than fighting and can make an apology or own their shit without the butt. You know, it's so nice when I have a disagreement with my partner, which is very, very rare. Like so rare sometimes I've got to pinch myself. So I asked her to marry me, I wasn't gonna get married, and a couple of weeks ago I asked her to marry me because I thought this this woman is the person I can grow with. She makes me grow every day and she challenges me, but not not in the boot camp type way of yelling at me and telling more me what I need to do. She and and I think I do that for her.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Which is so important. But where do you think people like us, where do you think we can hide behind awareness, therapists? Where do you think sometimes we can hide behind our identity or who we think we are as in this sort of stuff? Do you think that's something we've got to be careful of?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

I don't hide behind it for me personally, like I'm pretty good at owning up to my own stuff, but I struggle with not therapizing or coaching my partner, right? And we both see therapists as well, and we're working with, we've been working with a couple's therapists for a couple of years, just learning skills on how to be more vulnerable, how to be more authentic with each other, how to deal with conflict. I think for me, that's where I don't know that I hide behind it, but I could see that he would say, Janae, you're therapizing me. And I'm like, oh shit, you're right, I am.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

And are there times when you don't text them? Because I want people to see on this that we're all realed. Just that's what I say to my kids as soon as they come in. I say just letting you know, even though I'm in this chair, I'm in that chair pretty regularly, like once a week.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Oh, yeah. I mean, all the time. And you know, and I say that with my clients all the time as well. Like, I'm certainly not perfect, I'm gonna fuck up. Just telling you that right now, right? Like, but yeah, I think that I think that it's hard when he calls me out on that. And then I'm like, oh yeah, I can see that I might be doing that. But I have a lot more information, I could debate it. You know, I have a lot more information, I have a lot more skills, I can look at it from a different perspective, but it's a very narrow perspective. And we actually process at very different levels. Like, you know, he's a lot more like intellectually and up in his head, and I try to really focus more on the emotional aspect of it. But I can be a good debater as well. We can litigate the facts, let's just put it that way. And that's very helpful as we've learned.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

So good to hear too, you know, so good to hear this stuff for me about, and I see it in my clients after they've been working on themselves for a while, that how important this is. And even as a therapist, what I try and say to my clients is when I because most people now listening to podcasts and we think we've got it all right. We think we under Yeah, yeah, I know that. I'll try and tell sometimes them something and it's like, Yeah, I know that. I listened to it on here, or yeah, I read that. Yeah, like let's just skip over. I get that. And I sort of have to say to them, look, when I go to see my therapist every week On a Thursday afternoon, I've got to almost, as I walk in the door, I've got to say, okay, Chad, today you know nothing about therapy. Because otherwise, what I've found myself doing early on was almost like he I'm going to him with a problem and then he's therapizing me. And then I'm thinking how I would have worked with myself if I was in his position coming in for me. And it's like, this is just fucking ridiculous, Chad.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Right, right, right. Yes. And I think that's why our styles are so different. But I try to I like the way in which when we're able to like be in that space of just like, let's just talk about, well, let's not litigate the facts. Let's look at the conversation under the conversation. Like, what are the feelings that are really coming up for you when that happened? And what are the feelings that are really coming up for me when that happened? Right. And I think for me, that's the crux of creating that repair is being able to both express your feelings, not be invalidated and be able to empathize with each other, but also own that part of you that caused that, that caused you to have those feelings and that trigger, right? Like I know. I mean, I say that to him a lot, you know, like I know I have this abandonment wound. And when you are dropping your son off and you say you're going to come back in a half an hour or 45 minutes, and it's three hours later and you're still not back, I'm about to call the police. Because of this child who is completely not in her adult mind at that moment, but she's like a three-year-old wondering what happened to her father, why he never came home or whatever it was, right? That is important, right? That whole, that whole, the whole cycle of empathizing, but also like understanding where that trigger comes from and looking at yourself and saying, wait a second, we gotta like settle that down piece as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Yeah, and I love to hear that a real life story from somebody and not be shamed about it. And also I think some people, I think there'd be two types of people out there listening to this. There'd be some listening thinking, well, that's not his responsibility, that's your problem, which I don't agree with. And then there'd be other people saying, well, he should have done this. And I think personally that if we're in a relationship with somebody, that we have like all therapy and all relationships are a form of reparenting, in my opinion, whether we want to agree with it or not. So if my partner, if you were my partner and I knew that you had these abandonment issues, and I knew that this was an issue for you, like there's no fucking excuse, people out there. I use this a lot, like there's no excuse when your phones are on you all the time to send a like a message that even says, I'm okay. Like, really, how long does that take you? You can do it when you're driving, you shouldn't, but you could. Right. You could do it through voice to text, just letting you know I'm okay. Like it's not fucking hard people, and that makes all the difference. And I'd use that a lot of clients I get, you know, when they're out drinking or partying, or you know, I get a lot of younger clients, which is great, in their late 20s, early 30s, which I love because it's there's a chance before the four relationships or the fifth marriage, right, that we're on, and I wasn't that person, I am on my sort of third serious relationship. Yeah, and I sort of say to the person, look, if you're out and you know your partner is a bit anxious, or she's home with the baby, or he's home with the baby, or whatever it might be, there's no excuse because I say, Oh, I got drinking with the boys and and I'm gonna use the men because I think they're worse at it. I got drinking with the boys, I just completely didn't think to they might have checked in at nine and said, Yeah, I'll just have one more beer, and then three o'clock comes and he's got 33 missed calls and I have as many messages because she's stressed. She's home with the baby, she's also stressed. Part of her wants him home, which is okay. Right? There's so many emotions going on here. And then he gets home drunk, then he wakes up late the next day because he's hung over. And I say, There's no fucking excuse why you couldn't set an alarm on your phone at 7, at 9, at 11, at 12. When your alarm goes off, go to the toilet, send your partner a two-second voice message, and everything's sorted. Like it's not fucking hard to communicate, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Mm-hmm. No, I agree with that. No.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

We've got to have phones all the time.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, and I I I I definitely and I we're definitely on the same wavelength, which not all therapists are. I think in a healthy relationship, you are doing some parenting of your partner. I mean, that is like the interdependence, right? Of like when that little child is there, when that little girl is there, she needs like her daddy when he's triggered, right? Uh, and is feeling not confident or whatever, showing up, like he needs nurturing as well, right? And I think that is an important part of being in a healthy, interdependent as opposed to codependent relationship, right? Um, but um it's I agree, some people are like, you know, that's your shit, you've got to work it out. And I I don't think that's fair, and I don't think it's healthy.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

And I don't think it can be done because it just makes us more and more independent. And then when we get in a new relationship and the same stuff blows up, like I I really think I understand that we need time to ourselves to work on ourselves, but it's also to me a bit like learning to surf in a pool. Like you can paddle around and you can have the board and the wetsuit. But the waves are never the same, right? Like you can do all the work on yourself out there, people, and then get in a relationship and think, fuck, wow, I'm not nowhere near as healed as I thought I was. Like it's the relationship is the actual training, right? That's absolutely right. But the the real the real work happens in a relationship.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Yeah, and the most healing that can happen around your attachment style, all of that happens in the context of the relationship. It's as well. I 100% agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

So it's been so great to have you here today. It's a quick, quick run for people to listen to on their way to work or the way home or in their lunch break. One sentence question statement, no teaching, just something we can leave the next guest, or you can leave the next guest for.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

I guess that would be a question. So my question would be if there's one thing in your life that you could have done differently, what would it have been?

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Great. If there's one thing that you could have done differently in your life, what would it have been? Thank you. And that's where we'll leave it.