Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

If there is no such thing as a sex drive, what is that unmistakable and potent force that moves us, motivates us and pulls us towards the pleasures of erotic exchange? It’s not a drive, it’s desire – the powerful force of wanting, the complex motivational system that allows us to imagine into future states of possibility.

Challenging thousands-old understandings of the human “sex drive,” the latest science suggests a new model of erotic desire – rather than a drive to discharge or satiate a need, erotic desire is a complex system of motivations in relationship with the external and social world. It’s all about motivating behavior to pull us towards imagined future states of pleasure and joy. Desire is a work of the imagination, in deep dialogue with our physical bodies and social selves.

It’s time to welcome back the mystery and power of erotic desire – and that starts with getting curious about what is calling you. If you give yourself more space for wanting, what do you want more of? What do you want to experience? What do you want to feel?

Check out the rest of the Rethinking Libido Series here.

Transcript for Podcast Episode #351: Desire ~ The Pleasure Of Wanting

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Charlotte Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:04 I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 And we are the pleasure mechanics.

Chris Rose: 00:06 On this podcast, we have soulful, honest, explicit conversations about every element of sex and sexuality, and the lived experience thereof. We want to know how it feels for you and how we can create a more joyful, pleasurable world for all of us together. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive. There’s over 350 episodes waiting for you, but don’t worry. We have created some easy ways for you to get started. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/free and get started with our free online courses so you can dive in right away. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free.

Chris Rose: 00:52 All right, we are in the middle of our libido series. We are doing a multi episode deep dive into this question of libido. Because so many people use the language of libido to describe their sexual struggle. So we wanted to really break it apart, invite in our sex therapist friends to help us with this one, and get a grasp on what we mean when we talk about libido struggles. If you are new to this series, check out pleasuremechanics.com/libido where you will find the complete series hosted for you. Also at pleasuremechanics.com/libido are ways for you to participate in this series and share your stories with us.

Chris Rose: 01:38 And we have been getting so many beautiful stories from you all. Thank you. And again, from all different parts of the libido narrative. We’re hearing from couples with wildly different libidos. We’re hearing from people who are in great relationships, but their libido is nowhere to be found. And we’re hearing from so many people with sexual urgency. With this feeling of yeah, I know what I want. How do I get it? What do I do with this feelings of urgency and frustration building in me? So next week we’re going to really talk about sexual frustration and take that on.

Chris Rose: 02:22 But today, I wanted to spend a few moments, a few minutes, the whole episode really talking about we got a lot of questions and pushback on this idea that there is no such thing as sex drive. There is no such thing as a sex drive. And if that is true according to the science, then what is this feeling in me that makes me feel like I’m making so many of my life decisions because of sex? Something is driving me around sex.

Chris Rose: 02:55 The language you use to describe this feeling is rich and wonderful, and really speaks to this idea that something is moving us with sex. We do feel driven, quite literally sometimes across borders. People give up jobs, people change their lives out of passion and desire. Surely we are driven, no?

Chris Rose: 03:21 So we want to talk about why there’s no such thing as a sex drive, what there is instead, and why it’s such a better invitation. Why this reframe will really transform how you think about desire and how we’re going to use this understanding of desire moving forward. All right.

Charlotte Rose: 03:40 So we’re going to talk about why there is no such thing as a sex drive, but we first want to thank Emily Nagoski for translating all of this science into a really manageable, digestible information that is found in her book Come as You Are. It’s a great book. We love it. We love her, is a great thinker. So all of this is mostly from her

Chris Rose: 04:02 From her, and then from her recommended references where we could dig more into the science she cited. She’s so good at pulling up, and by science we’re talking about behavioral science, anthropology, all of the sciences. Physical science, social sciences. Emily Nagoski is so good at pulling out of all of the science what we feel to be true and kind of giving us more clues about our human behavior.

Chris Rose: 04:31 So, sex drive. So by the sciences, drive is a word used to describe something really specific. And that’s an internal state that creates behavior to fulfill our needs. Our needs. And if those needs are not fulfilled, there is predictable, ongoing damage to the system.

Chris Rose: 04:56 So thirst is a derive. You get progressively thirstier. It motivates your behavior, ranging from getting up and getting yourself a drink of water to lapping out of a puddle if necessary. Right? Your thirst will motivate your behavior to satiate that need.

Charlotte Rose: 05:14 Hunger is another drive. When we need to eat, it will take priority over all else if we get to a certain state of hunger. It will increase and increase until we are entirely focused on getting food

Chris Rose: 05:29 And some say that social belonging is also a human need. And that if it is not fulfilled, there is a predictable and increasing state of damage to the organism. So these are our drives, and there has been a misnomer when we talk about sex drive. It was named a drive by a certain field of medicine at a specific time in history, and then it became popularized. But since then, systematically science has debunked the idea of it being a drive.

Chris Rose: 06:01 It was called a drive because it had thousands of years of medical antiquity behind it. And this is when I went to Emily Nagoski’s references, and I discovered this history of medical knowledge going back to Plato, for example. That understood sexuality as something that kind of stirred from within you, built up, and then needed to be discharged. This was our foundational understanding of sexual energy, of desire. It was built up and then discharged through ejaculation, through reproduction of the human baby. And this kind of then was adopted through the sciences over time and through different philosophies. And I’m kind of obsessed with this model. We’re going to be talking more about shifting our attitudes that sex is something to discharge. Because just for a moment relate to that. How much do you relate to your sexuality as something within you that needs to be expelled? Because this is the model that then was adopted and what was discharged was the evil of it, and the sin of it, and the impurity of it. All of this has been mapped into our language, right? And this is often what we think about when we think about sex drive. There is this well within us that gets to an uncomfortable point of tension and needs to be discharged.

Chris Rose: 07:28 Now, what are we motivated by? What are we driven by? What is this thing we all experienced in more or less degrees? What makes us want sex if not a sex drive? It is a less convenient term, but it is an internal motivational system. A complex internal motivational system in dialogue with your social context and physical environment.

Charlotte Rose: 08:00 So that is what your desire for sex emerges out of. That is the landscape internally and externally where desire emerges.

Chris Rose: 08:10 So desire is a motivational system. A motivational system experienced by you as an individual in relation to your external environment and your social context. Motivational system.

Chris Rose: 08:24 So what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, let’s start with what it’s not. A sex drive pushes you towards a behavior to satiate a need. Motivational systems pull you, they draw you. They pull you with wanting and longing towards a perceived future state. You are motivated into action by what this complex, beautiful human body of ours interprets as what will become a positive feeling state. So we are motivated into feeling sexual desire by the call, the longing, the draw, the wanting of specific feelings states, of specific social States, of specific outcomes.

Charlotte Rose: 09:14 Anticipation.

Chris Rose: 09:16 This is the wanting of sex, because this also becomes really important. The wanting of sex is different from the liking of sex. So when we’re talking about sexual desire here, the wanting of sex. That is driven by this complex set of motivations for you as an individual to feel something in the future. It’s very beautiful and poetic, but it’s also very practical, right? So whereas if you’re hungry, depending on how hungry are, you will eat just about anything. It’s not very specific. When you are drawn, this model of being drawn towards pleasure, towards belonging, towards joy, towards kinship, towards what you want. Is so much more poetic and specific to you at this moment, and so much more expansive. Because it’s not just this, “I have this thing in me and I have to get it out, and whatever I like bump into next is good enough.” It’s not this expulsion model. It’s this model that invites us to think about what is pulling us, what is calling us, what are we curious about? What are we longing for? What are we wanting? The wanting.

Chris Rose: 10:38 And this is where desire relates to creativity and all of these other human things. Because when we want something that is not in our current state, right? We want to feel touch, we want to feel an orgasm, we want to see our lover’s eyes as they look at us and I feel connected to them. I want to feel sweaty. What are your wants? That is what draws you into your desire. That’s what gives it specific contours. And equally when you want to see something in the world that does not exist yet, that’s what draws you in to that act of creation, of collaboration. And this is where it all kind of comes together in that eroticism, right? That energy that runs through us and between us as humans that draws us forward into the act of creation, and collaboration, and creating life force energy together.

Chris Rose: 11:36 All right. So if desire is a drawing out, a motivational system, then we can get really specific with what are your specific motivations. And what is tamping those motivations down? What is encouraging, what is exciting, and what is inhibiting your desire? Both within you as a feeling being. You as an individual, human organism. Your brain, your body, your history, your experiences. All interpret this sensory experience of your life, right? So what within you as an individual and within your social context, are influencing your desire? That’s a much broader conversation than what’s wrong with my sex drive.

Charlotte Rose: 12:32 This is so important for us all to hear. The language we hear from people often is that when they’re not experiencing high levels of desire all the time, they feel like quote their sex drive is broken. And this isn’t the case. This isn’t true. And it’s really important for us to know that and register that. We get so focused on this culture, on thinking that is us as an individual. That is broken, doing things wrong, not getting it right. But what the science says about desire is that all of us basically are responsive to our context. That our desire emerges from a combination of internal and external factors. Meaning that there is so much at play that creates our experience of desire in the world.

Chris Rose: 13:26 Right. And I want to pause for a moment because where this gets trippy, right? We can talk conveniently about this individual experience within a social context. But if you think of a fish in water, there’s the biology of that fish, the system of that fish, and then there’s the water, and we can distinguish. But of course, the health of that water impacts the health of the fish. So when we’re talking about your individual relationship with desire, your experience of desire, big factors on the individual level are things like stress, sleep, nourishment. Which are also social factors, right? If you’re working two jobs and are exhausted, where is the space for desire? But you’re working two jobs and are exhausted because of social factors, right? So let’s just acknowledge that. And you can see as we start pulling apart, we can both start getting really specific with all these factors, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Chris Rose: 14:24 So part of our goal here, kind of an operationalizing desire over this series and these conversations, is to help you identify the pieces of this that you have the most control and agency, and to access to. And to acknowledge with love and tenderness the things that you do not have access to, the things you cannot control at this time. Or the things that we can only control together.

Chris Rose: 14:52 So I just want to say that because that fish might be feeling really sick. But if that fish is swimming in poisoned water, of course the fish is sick. I know all the fish in that bowl are sick. So we’re going to work on the fish, we’re going to work on looking around the water, but we’re also going to work on the health of that water overall so all the fish get a little better, little swimmers.

Charlotte Rose: 15:14 And we see clearly in that situation that it is not the fish’s fault. There is nothing wrong with them. They are not doing anything wrong. And that piece I think is so important for us all to install.

Chris Rose: 15:30 I’m just thinking about sad little fish swimming around. Okay. So this is why this is so important. Is because on this podcast in all of this work as a community, yes, we are going to work on becoming stronger swimmers. We’re going to work on expanding our erotic capacity, expanding our relational capacity. Doing sex better, building all of these skills that give us access to more pleasure in our bodies, to more connection with each other. And, why we always go to the social on this podcast is because sexuality is a deeply socially felt experience. So let’s look at some of that context now. I want to talk about this culture of desire idea. Because as soon as you realize that your experience of desire is so in relation to your external circumstances, you start seeing places you can intervene. You start seeing actions you can take within that context and you’re like, “I can put myself in a different fishbowl.” Right now I have the image of two fishbowls side by side and the one smart fish realizes there’s a healthier fish bowl, and he can do a belly flop up and out.

Charlotte Rose: 16:44 Take quite a bit of action to get there.

Chris Rose: 16:46 Totally, I mean we’ve all seen finding Nemo. Fish are amazing. So we’re going to all do a belly flop up and out into a healthier fish bowl. Wow. I do not expect that metaphor today. Okay, so the culture of desire.

Chris Rose: 17:00 When we talk about culture, the smallest culture you are in … so you have your individual ecosystem, your relationship to yourself, all of your thoughts, your attitudes, your body, all of that. We’re setting that all into this cultural context.

Chris Rose: 17:15 The first culture you’re born into again that you can’t control is your family. Your natal family, your situation. So your family is your first culture. And then as you build your own family later in life.

Charlotte Rose: 17:31 For those that do.

Chris Rose: 17:32 Well, we all have different families, right? So family is a culture and then community is a culture. Your neighborhood, your work community, the people you interact with. We’re kind of doing a ever expanding circles of community here. So individual, family, community and friendships, extended family. And then region, regional cultures and subcultures within regions, nation states, human culture of the globe. Within this particular geopolitical moment, right? That is the culture we’re talking about to the pulse of this globe itself. All of that context affects your desire.

Chris Rose: 18:18 And let’s just start, I was going to start at the micro, but let’s start at the macro. I think we’re all feeling this more than ever right now with the speed of information and awareness about this globe. Global events can impact your desire. How many emails did we get after the last election cycle that’s like where did my libido go? And that partly global events affect your desire because you become aware of them. They’re in your awareness system through the culture of your media consumption and your community.

Chris Rose: 18:55 So the global context of your sexuality, and we’re feeling that more and more. The cultural context, the culture you are born into. What it says bodies are meant to do, what different bodies have access and privileges to, how your body was treated within that. We can see how that has an impact on your experience of desire. Both your position being born into a culture, but then also your lived experience and that accumulated experience of pleasure, and reward, and punishment, and denial, and access to pleasure, and denial to pleasure, and what you’re told your value is and what you’re told your worth is. All of that accumulated experience in our bodies. That’s a big variable. That’s a big variable. Some of it we have control over, some of it we don’t. Again, dialing in the community, the culture that we live in day to day. Does that support the emergence of your desire? Does it inspire you? Do you feel erotically relevant in your community? Does your sexuality have a relevance in your day to day life, or do you live your day to day life as a very desexualized being with no erotic turn on, with no erotic relevance, and then you expect it to just show up on Friday night?

Chris Rose: 20:21 From there, your individual media consumption, the subcultures you’re a part of, the media, the books, the TV you watch, all of that has a deep impact on what is available for you to respond to. What will wake up and stir your desire. What will inspire you, what will call to you. And then again, the community of our home, our family. What are all of the factors there?

Chris Rose: 20:45 That is all of what mean when we talk about context. You wake up in this world in a whole series of different cultural contexts that all have influence over your experience of desire.

Chris Rose: 21:02 So when I get these emails that are like, “I don’t know why I’m not feeling sexual desire. I must be broken. What’s wrong with my libido? Fix my libido.” And then they lay out their life circumstances, we start to think what in those life circumstance makes sense for you to want sex right now? If you want to want sex more, how do we shift your life context so it would make more sense for desire to emerge?

Chris Rose: 21:31 So this is where we find the agency. It’s like our desire is not a fixed thing. It is not a gauge within us that I am a high libido person or a low libido person. And that means something about me. Desire is an active engagement through our bodies with the entire world.

Chris Rose: 21:51 One quick example of this where I become so aware of all of these different factors is when we go visit my family in Portland, Oregon. So when we go visit my family in Portland, Oregon, the town is crawling with queer, specifically queer women. And all of a sudden, my desire and sexuality wake up in the most an expected places because in the grocery store, there’s all these dikes flirting with me. And I’m sexually relevant to the community there.

Chris Rose: 22:23 And the baristas and the ice cream scoopers are loving our family and giving us winks and nods and free scoops, and it’s like our sexuality is irrelevant in the social community. So it wakes up, it is excited, is given gas, right? It is accelerated through that social context.

Chris Rose: 22:43 But then when I go to my mother’s house for example, everything about that context is the most quashing, inhibiting experience that even when Charlotte and I were there alone, and we were staying in my mom’s house and we had Portland all to ourselves, we couldn’t really get frisky and go to the strip clubs and make it an erotic vacation. Because we were staying at my mom’s house and it was such an inhibitor for me for so many reasons.

Chris Rose: 23:13 So this juxtaposition, right? What are all of the factors at play that will excite you or inhibit you? That will give fuel to your desire or quash it for now. And to remember that is an ongoing dynamic process. Everyday changing, always renewing, always ready for your active engagement in that process. Beautifully said. So it’s just exciting to think about what the pieces that you can have agency over. Where can you make small changes, big changes, dramatic changes, or micro changes that can really make a difference to you? If you know yourself, you know your relationship.

Charlotte Rose: 24:02 It’s a really powerful question. And if this all feels overwhelming, that is completely understandable. It’s just astounding what impacts and influences our sexuality, and what we want to do about that.

Chris Rose: 24:15 So again, if we can think about desire as a motivational system towards positive feeling states, then we can think about what motivates us and what those states might be. And then we can think about what is encouraging that desire and what is inhibiting. What is giving gas to it and what is putting the brakes on it. Emily Nagoski talks about the dual model control of arousal. So what puts gas and brakes on what feels good. And let’s start talking about the dual model control of desire. What puts the gas in brakes on what you desire, on your experience of desire, on what you are allowed to want. On what you are allowed to want.

Chris Rose: 25:04 Because these motivations, when we talk about the motivations, that sounds vague. Here are some motivations for wanting. I want sex because I want to feel loved and connected to another human being.

Charlotte Rose: 25:18 I want sex because I want to feel the pleasure of orgasms.

Chris Rose: 25:23 I want sex because I want to feel touched. I want my entire body touched, naked. All of it.

Charlotte Rose: 25:33 I want sex because I want to feel connected. I want to eye gaze, I want to feel loved, and intimate, and hell.

Chris Rose: 25:41 I want sex because I want to release some tension in my body and I want to get sweaty, and grunt, and feel messy, and just let it all out there and not hold back and be polite any more. This is fun. We could keep going. So add in your own. Why do you want the sex you want? Because we don’t all just want this vague idea of sex. You want a specific kind of sex. And we didn’t even talk about, so let’s do another round. I want sex to feel valued and that someone cares about me, and that someone will take care of me.

Charlotte Rose: 26:18 I want sex because I want to feel desired.

Chris Rose: 26:20 I want sex because I want to feel powerful, and I want to feel social status, and I want to demonstrate my social status to others. I want sex because I want to feel chosen and I want to feel special. What is motivating the kind of sex you want to have?

Chris Rose: 26:40 When we get honest about that, and I think we’ve talked about this in kind of the first episode. We’re thinking libido, when we get honest about what we want, there are more ways to get what we want. Those options are expanded.

Charlotte Rose: 26:53 So you’re saying when you get specific about the experience that you crave and long for, then you can find multiple ways, sex being one of them, but also other ways to try and seek out and create those experiences?

Chris Rose: 27:07 Yeah, and in this there’s a recognition that sex is very potent. So we’re looking at our motivations. We’re getting really honest about that. What is pulling us towards wanting sex? What is in that heady mix. And in the literature, they nod to the idea that the combination of the motivations is often headier than anyone individually. Which is why these packaged deals of someone choosing you, and then looking at you, and they love you, and they desire, and they want your body and you’re good enough and you’re chosen. And then you get touched and then you get an orgasm, and then you get that afterglow, and then you get pancakes. That is a wonderful mix of motivations all wrapped up into a desire to be taken home on a Saturday night, or a desire for your partner to give you the kind of attention that he used to give you.

Chris Rose: 28:02 What are your desires, what are they motivated by? And only then can we look at agency within this system, agency within yourself as an individual. And then agency to affect your context. To start playing with some of these gas and brakes pedals and looking at what will make watershed differences. Where are the gas and brake pedals that are constricting your desire so intensely? You’re barely feeling it anymore. How do we release some pressure there? How do we amp up gas in certain areas? This is the work of sexual agency. And it’s complicated, and it can be overwhelming. But we’re here for you.

Charlotte Rose: 28:46 So one of the questions I want to leave you with is what have you given yourself permission to want? What have you let yourself desire? And can you give yourself a little bit more room around that?

Chris Rose: 29:00 Are you talking about sexually in life? All of it?

Charlotte Rose: 29:04 I think it’s great to do all of it. To look in life because I feel like it’s an easier warm up. There’s more permission around that, and then move into the sexual realm. Because so many of us have constrained what we see as possible for ourselves. So give yourself permission to want. And as you walk around in the world, notice what else do you want more of. What sensual inputs are delighting you right now? Are you craving more of, are you interested in? And let yourself be guided. Let your curiosity be a part of your sensuality and sexuality.

Chris Rose: 29:43 But we need to, this is the anticapitalist sidebar. When we’re talking about wanting to want, we’re not talking about things and objects, and consumables. Because that is where all of this has been trained to focus. So when Charlotte says, “What do you want?” All of us could come up with a list of objects on our Amazon wishlist. This is not that question. It’s what do you want to feel? What do you want to experience? What do you want to create? What do you want to collaborate on? What do you want to feel and experience? Are the most important questions here. And even better if you can answer things that are not contingent upon spending a dollar. I want to feel artistically alive. I want to feel intellectually challenged. I want to feel deeply engaged. I want to feel more connected to nature. I want to get back into my love of art and color. What are the wants that have nothing to do with buying anything? Those are the erotic wants. Those are those sparks of life that are yours specifically.

Chris Rose: 30:52 And this is all a process of getting all of the breaks out of the way, all of the inhibitions. And we’re going to do another episode because I’ve been really geeking out on this idea of trained inhibitions. Trained inhibitions. If we get our inhibitions out of the way, give our desire a little more space. Feel your wanting. And we’re going to get really specific with that as the experience of desire. It is not a poison in you that needs to be discharged. It is not a pressure valve within you that’s going to because you to explode. These are old models, they are not accurate. And we are going to shift into a model of desire that is about active engagement with the world through and with your body, and you specifically. Specifically your desire. How do we activate that?

Charlotte Rose: 31:49 I just want a name for some people they may have the experience that those first things you were talking about, they might feel like they’re a pressure cooker that are going to explode. And partly, that’s because we have named that experienced that way over, and over, and over again in culture. So you may relate to that. And as we begin to shift our language and offer you other models, be curious and see if what we’re talking about does match what you feel, and if you can rename the experience.

Chris Rose: 32:17 And that’s what we’re going to do next week. We are going to tackle sexual frustration and reframe it. So if you have experiences of sexual frustration, if you are hearing all of this and you’re like, “Those ladies don’t get it. They don’t get what it feels to have like a rock hard penis that wants to fuck something.” First of all, I want to say I do get it. I do get it, because our bodies actually have the same amount of erectile tissue. But I do get it also because I have been in deep erotic engagement with thousands of men over the decades, and I have listened to you, and I understand what you’re feeling. And I want to understand more.

Chris Rose: 32:55 When you offer me your words and your experience, and this is true for all of your beautiful bodies that are in community with us and in dialogue with us. I just want to put out there that I am actively, deeply engaged with ongoing communities of men about their sexual experience. And I want to hear more. I want to hear more from all of you. But specifically for next week, I want to hear his stories of sexual frustration. Of feeling pent up, of feeling ready to explode. And tell me specifically what that felt like, and we will address it next week. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/libido, where you will find this complete libido series hosted for you. If all of this is just feeling really exciting, and overwhelming, and you’re ready to deeply engage with this topic. Right now if you’re listening to this podcast in September, 2019, our friend Vanessa Marin, the fabulous sex therapist, is about to throw open the doors on her wonderful course about libido and walking you through all of this overwhelm with friendly wisdom and a guided tour of what’s going on in your libido.

Chris Rose: 34:11 So check out the show notes page for that resource, other resources from our trusted friends. And again, this entire series is all together at pleasuremechanics.com/libido. All of the resources and episodes are there for you. We are so grateful for all of you for being part of our community. Thank you so much to those of you who support our work. And if you love this show and want to support the work we are doing in this world, come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/love and show us some love. All right, we will be back next week to talk about sexual frustration. I’m already excited about that. Contribute at pleasuremechanics.com/libido. All right, I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 34:55 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 34:56 We are the pleasure mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 34:57 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Lost Libidos, Mismatched Libidos, Out Of Control Libidos: Libido problems are the most frequently reported sexual struggle. If you struggle with your libido or sex drive, join us for an intimate conversation with renowned sex therapist Vanessa Marin. We explore a new framework of understanding libido, desire and passion: one that puts each of us in the driver’s seat of our sex lives.

Please note: links on this page may be affiliate links, and if you enroll in a training with our trusted partners we will earn a percentage of your tuition to help support our work. We only link to resources that we know, use and love ourselves!

Podcast Transcript for Episode #350: Libido, Lost and Found: An Interview With Vanessa Marin

Chris: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris from PleasureMechanics.com and on today’s episode we are joined once again by the fabulous Sex Therapist, Vanessa Marin. Vanessa joins us to continue the conversation about rethinking libido. Last week, Charlotte and I dove in and tore apart some of our common attitudes and perceptions about libido and sex drive. And we introduced the idea that the concept of libido is a place that we package a lot of different sexual and emotional and relational and lifestyle concerns and struggles into. And so Vanessa and I continue this conversation and talk about what is a more useful attitude towards the idea of libido and sex drive. How do we actively cultivate our interest and desire in sex if that’s what we want? Do you want to want more? Is a key question in this conversation. If you want to want more, I highly recommend you join Vanessa in her free online training that’s coming up.

Chris: 01:19 She’s going to tell you all about it. The link is in the show notes page. We love Vanessa. We always love talking to her. I hope you enjoy our conversation with her. Here is my conversation with Sex Therapist, Vanessa Marin. Vanessa Marin. Welcome back to Speaking of Sex.

Vanessa Marin: 01:38 I am so glad to be back, Chris. I just have to tell you before we even get started, I get so many amazing emails from the people in your community who find me through you. So I’m just so excited to be here yet again. And to be able to share with your community. They’re really, really amazing.

Chris: 01:57 Definitely. We definitely resonate on so many of these issues. We’ve talked on the podcast before about performance anxiety, about female orgasm, and today we’re going to dive into this capital L libido topic.

Vanessa Marin: 02:11 Oh, yes.

Chris: 02:13 And I always think of this as, you know, I get emails every day, as I’m sure you do, about desire mismatch and mismatched libidos, low libidos, high libidos, libido is out of control, lost libidos and I feel like it’s almost this place we project so many different sexual issues and struggles, but also lifestyle and context issues.

Chris: 02:40 And one of the things I was so excited about with this conversation is that you arrive at this conversation about libido with a lens that it’s not really one problem but a confluence of a lot of different factors. So how do you begin to think about libido and desire?

Vanessa Marin: 03:01 Yeah, I do think of it. I think that most of us, we hear the phrase sex drive and we just think it’s about our interest in sex. It feels very singular to us. But I think that it’s actually about so much more than that. And I think that it’s a trap that a lot of us fall into about thinking that it’s just about our interest in sex. It makes it feel like we don’t really have any options for changing it, for improving it, for having the kind of relationship with it that we want. So I really think of our sex drive as a reflection of everything going on inside of us and in our environment. And I really like to think of it as an invitation for us to take a look at how we’re relating to our sex drive, what various factors might be playing into it, what’s decreasing it, what’s increasing it, and try to get really a sense of curiosity about all of those different dynamics.

Vanessa Marin: 03:58 So in particular, I know that’s a really broad answer, so in particular, I do like to think about it. I’ve created this model that I call the five foundations model of sex drive, where I’ve come up with the five general categories of factors that I think can affect our sex drives.

Vanessa Marin: 04:17 So they’re the physical foundation, the mental foundation, the emotional foundation, relational foundation, and the sensual foundation. So that was my way of taking this really big concept and trying to boil it down into a specific structure.

Chris: 04:33 And this is one of the things you do so well. You operationalize overwhelm. You walk us through all of these different points of inquiry and intervention and then kind of guide us into possible points of discussion with our partners, with ourselves or physical practices perhaps that give us a new experience. When I think of sex drive, and I do want to ask you about how you feel about that term. I know Emily Nagoski talks about we need to stop using the term sex drive because it’s not a physiological drive. And yet it is so convenient and so many people experience this feeling of being driven by a longing, by a desire. What do you think are some of the longings and desires we pack into this feeling of I want more sex or I want a better relationship with my sexuality?

Vanessa Marin: 05:29 That’s another good question. I mean, I think that ultimately at the end of the day, sex is really about connection for us. It’s about connection to ourselves and connection to our partners. And so I think that’s what we’re really looking for. So we all have different relationships with sex. We’re all looking for different things out of it. But I do think that that’s the root desire.

Chris: 05:53 And when that connection starts to be lost, we start feeling … I’ve been really thinking recently about how it manifests differently in some people. For some people it’s a longing and for other people it’s a frustration. Some people it starts tumbling into kind of a sense of worthlessness and self doubt. Why does our relationship with sexuality spiral like this? Like when we’re in a loving, healthy, happy relationship, but our libido starts to change or our context starts to change and sexuality isn’t as available to us anymore. It becomes this projection screen of like all of the possible issues in our life.

Vanessa Marin: 06:39 Yeah.

Chris: 06:39 How do you [crosstalk 00:06:40] to that as a Sex Therapist and like help people unpack what is true for them?

Vanessa Marin: 06:46 Well, the interesting thing is that I think that people really compartmentalize their sex lives and they just start thinking about it as, you know, “Oh, I’m not having enough sex or my partner thinks we’re not having enough sex.” So I talk a lot about couples tend to play the numbers game of you know, “How often are we having it? And did we have it last Wednesday? No it was the Wednesday before that.”

Vanessa Marin: 07:07 You know, we really get fixated on the frequency aspect and I think that’s because we’re so overwhelmed and it’s such a big issue, such a big topic that we try to shrink it down into something that feels like a manageable way to talk about it. Like numbers are easier to talk about. So a lot of my work is helping couples realize that the numbers are actually one of the least important things about your sex life. And then it’s really about getting a sense of the kind of connection that you want to share with yourself and with your partner through sex. So a lot of times when I share that with people, they make sense in the moment. They’re like, “Oh yeah, of course.” But they just haven’t really thought about it on their own before.

Vanessa Marin: 07:51 And I think thinking about it through that lens can also be really useful for partners to talk about, because it’s very easy if you’re feeling like, “My partner wants to be having a lot more sex. I don’t, this is so frustrating. I feel like something’s wrong with me. I’m bothered by my partner always wanting sex.” You know, it’s really easy to fixate again on those numbers. But if we think about it as, “My partner wants to feel more connected with me, my partner wants to experience playfulness or exploration or curiosity or sensuality with me.” I think that really helps us soften into our partner’s desires. Because connection is something that we can experience in so many different ways. It doesn’t just need to involve a penis going into a vagina or a body part being touched by another body part. So I think it’s really, really transformative to start looking at it through that lens.

Chris: 08:44 I love that so much that in the specificity of naming what we are longing, what we are desiring, we can start being met more fully and more specifically. The itch just gets scratched when you know where it is.

Vanessa Marin: 08:58 Exactly. Yeah. I’m just creating this brand new model that I’m calling The Sexual Personality Types model, where I’ve been taking just notes from years and years and years of working with clients and trying to identify what’s our main motivation for sex. Like what’s the main thing that we turn to sex for. So I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with this model and I think it can be super useful for us to think about it. We all love personality tests. I mean, I totally do too, but kind of being able to talk about it with our partner of, you know, for me the exploration is the most important part of sex, that we’re trying new things and kind of exploring our boundaries with each other. Or maybe for another partner. The prioritization of sex is the most important thing. So I want to feel like we’re carving out time for each other. We’re putting sex at the top of our to-do list instead of the bottom. So I think that’s another fun framework to look at it as well.

Chris: 09:58 How do you think about, when we think about libido and sex drive, some people experience it and their struggle is very internal. Like they don’t have enough interest in sex or too high interest in sex and it’s kind of about who they are as a person. And then other people experience it as a relational issue. Like, “I’m fine, but my partner isn’t meeting me where I’m at.” And this is where we get the mismatched libido narratives. The relationship isn’t holding what I want. Do you approach it from both like how do we take inventory of ourselves and then what we bring to the relationship?

Vanessa Marin: 10:35 Yeah, I definitely think we need to take a look at it from both perspectives. And I think it’s super crucial to make the distinction between are you a want to want or are you a don’t want to want? So there are some people who are perfectly happy with their sex drives as they are. Maybe their sex drive feels like it’s on the lower end. Maybe it feels like it’s on the higher end, but they’re saying, “I don’t want to want anymore. I’m happy with where I am.” And so I like to be super clear that I don’t think there’s one right sex drive that everyone needs to have or work towards. I think you can be perfectly content and happy with any kind of sex drive and we really get to choose what feels right for us.

Vanessa Marin: 11:17 But on the other hand, I take a look at a lot of people who will describe themselves as, “I want to want. So I don’t feel much desire. Maybe I don’t even feel any desire, but I want to feel that. Maybe I felt that strongly at a different point in my life and now I feel disconnected from that part of myself or I want that back. I want that energy and that vitality back.” So that’s a really important distinction for me is what are your own goals and desires? Even if you’re not actively feeling the desire for sex at that moment.

Chris: 11:51 And I feel like so many individuals and couples find us and find you at this juncture of wanting to want, wanting to experience something different, but then they sometimes get stuck in that place of not really knowing the next step forward. How do you think about those first conversations and the first moments where you’re choosing to prioritize your sex life again if you are raising it up in the list of your priorities?

Vanessa Marin: 12:20 Yes, I’m a prioritizer type. So that was one that came to mind right away for me. So for me, it really boils down to like the most central fundamental belief that I have about desire is that it’s not something that comes barging in your front door. It’s something that you have to invite in. So I think if you’re in that space of feeling, “I want to want sex more often, I don’t know what the next step is, but I know that I want to want it.” I think looking through this lens of curiosity. So it’s really easy for us to feel like something’s wrong with us. We’re broken inside, we’re stuck. There is no hope, we can’t change. But I think it’s really important to recognize there are so many different factors that can affect your desire and this is, wanting to want is an opportunity, an invitation to take a look at what those factors might be.

Vanessa Marin: 13:18 So we can take all this energy that we might usually spend feeling like we’re broken, something’s wrong with us, and instead try to get in touch with our sense of curiosity. What is it that might be blocking me from feeling to desire that I want to feel. And understanding I need to create the right kinds of contexts, environments for me to be able to feel that desire. And so I love looking at it through kind of two different modes of like what are the things that are actively blocking me from feeling desire and what are the things that really get me going that rev up my sex drive? So looking at it in both of those phases.

Vanessa Marin: 13:58 But if we can start with that curiosity where we know nothing’s wrong with you, you’re not broken, but instead can you take that energy and think about getting curious about yourself?

Chris: 14:11 This is one of the lessons from massage we sometimes map into relationships, is that a tight muscle takes energy to maintain that knot. And that actually takes energy from the body to stay tense. So in the release, you not only get the relaxation, but you get that energy back. And sometimes couples don’t realize how much relational energy they’re putting into their stuckness. And I’m curious how you think about if one partner is feeling ready to take those next steps and explore, have new conversations, open this up. How do you start assessing your partner’s willingness so you’re not risking another big rejection? Or do you just have to be brave and show up and put your wants on the table?

Vanessa Marin: 15:03 Such a good question. And I’m going to have to think about that, the massaging analogy too. I have some back pain issues from a really bad car accident, so that’s, I’m going to have to be kicking that idea around a little bit. That’s really interesting. So when it comes to talking to your partner about your sex life, I do think the second part of your question is true that there is no way to protect ourselves from ever being rejected by our partners or from our partner just not being on the same sort of page that we’re at, we’re on.

Vanessa Marin: 15:38 So I think we have to, you know, we have to recognize that sex is a tricky topic for most of us and we just aren’t given a lot of resources to learn how to talk about it, how to have good conversations about it. So most of us really struggle. And I think it needs to just start with that recognition of this is going to be hard and that’s okay. It’s going to be hard and I’m going to choose to do it anyways. And so there are definitely ways to ease into a conversation. So if you’re wanting to talk about sex drives with your partner and the two of you, maybe you’ve never really talked about sex before, I usually recommend that couples start talking about sex in a positive context.

Vanessa Marin: 16:18 So sex is really, you know, it’s really vulnerable. It’s a taboo topic for a lot of us. So a lot of people jump in just talking about the problems or the issues or the complaints or the frustrations. And I think that just sends our walls right up. So instead, can you see if you could open up a positive conversation with your partner, where you’re not trying to accomplish any goal, you’re not trying to get any sort of agreement from your partner, you’re just talking about sex and getting a little more comfortable with it? So one of my favorite ways to open up that conversation is to simply ask the question, what’s one of your favorite sexual memories with me? And being able to kind of rehash and share like, “Oh yeah, that time that we went away on that trip and we stayed in bed the whole day and it was so great.”

Vanessa Marin: 17:04 So again, you’re not going into anything after that. It’s just a single conversation sharing a fun memory between the two of you and what specifically made that time so great. So I think that’s a great starting point is just making it a topic that’s not taboo, that there’s some more openness around and that you now have some positive experiences discussing. And then from there I think we can start to talk about having that same sort of curiosity with your partner. So again, it’s not about complaining to your partner or telling them they need to fix things, but maybe it’s saying something like, “You know, I’m noticing that I’m feeling a lot less desire than I used to or I’m feeling less connected to you than I used to or our lives are really full and busy and it just feels like there’s not really as much space for us. And I’m just getting curious myself about what I can do to create more space for us or to have more energy for our relationship or prioritize us more often. What do you think? What do you think might be some ideas?

Vanessa Marin: 18:04 So it’s, yeah, I really keep coming back to that word, curiosity. I think that’s our best friend in these kinds of conversations.

Chris: 18:10 Well, and I want people to feel the difference in their body when they hear that conversation starter versus, “You never touch me anymore.”

Vanessa Marin: 18:19 Exactly.

Chris: 18:20 [crosstalk 00:18:20] lead with an accusation or blame. I love that we call it like a peak erotic experience conversation. Some of those conversations might bring us back to the beginning stages of our relationship. When things were fresh and new, we were in new relationship energy. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And sometimes, especially in long-term relationships, there’s a recognition of there’s no going back to that, it’s a new curiosity because it’s not who are you? It’s who are you now?

Vanessa Marin: 18:54 Yes.

Chris: 18:55 Who are you becoming? And who are we becoming together?

Vanessa Marin: 18:58 Absolutely. And I think new relationship energy and couples reflecting back on that early days of their relationship. I think there is something really interesting with that as well. So, yes, new relationship energy, it’s a very special thing. We cannot fully replicate it. You know, your relationship is never going to be what it was in those early stages. Just because we’re always different, we’re always evolving, we’re always changing. But I do think that a lot of couples, they believe that, “Oh, in the early days of our relationship, sex was so easy. It just happened. It was spontaneous and there was no effort involved.” And so when I’m working with a couple who tells me that, I will kind of trace back to the beginning of their relationship and point out like there actually was a tremendous amount of effort involved in those early stages.

Vanessa Marin: 19:49 So you’re talking to each other all the time, you’re planning dates with each other. When you have a date scheduled, you might spend hours getting ready for that date. Maybe you go to the gym or you go on a run to get yourself pumped up. Maybe you’re taking a shower and really touching your body and feeling really sexy. Maybe you’re listening to your favorite music and dancing around. You’re doing your hair, your makeup, picking out your perfect outfit, or talking to your friends about how excited you are. So there’s a ton of effort at the beginning of a new relationship and I think that, you know, so what needs to change is not that all of a sudden it used to be so easy and effortless and now it takes a lot of effort because it’s just not true.

Vanessa Marin: 20:31 What needs to change is our attitude about the effort that we’re putting in, that we can recognize that effort felt so fun at the beginning of our relationship. And again, it’s going to be different because relationships are different at every stage, but can we get back to the same sort of place where we can respect that effort involved and enjoy that effort involved too?

Chris: 20:53 Oh, I love it so much. Sometimes we’ve talked about it as having an affair with your spouse, like again, thinking of the effort you would put into having an affair-

Vanessa Marin: 21:04 That’s good.

Chris: 21:05 [crosstalk 00:21:05] and then freshness. So when you think of libido, one of the things we’ve come to and reflecting of it as like really thinking of it as something that changes over time in the context of our lives and embracing that changeability really fully. Sometimes I hear you think about it as like we each have kind of a natural range. And I totally resonate with that because I know people and it’s like food. There are people who don’t stop thinking about food. They plan their next meal as they’re eating. They read a cookbook while they’re having breakfast. And other people that would take a pill if that would give them the nourishment.

Chris: 21:46 And that’s, you know, as natural part of our human lives as sex. And so there are people who are so highly driven by sex and love sex and sex’s their hobby. And then there are people that it’s like, you know, it’s a contextual part of their relationship and the way they enjoy their body. And then there are people that have no interest in sex. Do you, from all of your work with people, like do you imagine this spectrum is something like we each slide this whole spectrum or do we have a fixed window within the spectrum? How do you imagine the changeability and flexibility within our lives?

Vanessa Marin: 22:23 I tend to think that we have our own sort of fixed range that we are capable of moving within. So I think that yeah, we all have different relationships with desire, different amounts of desire, different ways that we experience it. And so I think that, but it’s definitely important to recognize that it’s not a fixed value. I think that’s kind of another myth that a lot of people think is that you just have your sex drive and it is what it is and it’s unchanging. So I think it falls within a range and I like to think of where you are in your particular range may be a sign of other things that are going on in your life.

Vanessa Marin: 23:05 So again, if you are happy with where you are in your range of feeling good, great, stay there, that’s awesome. But if you’re feeling like, “Wow, I’m just really you know, it feels like my sex drive is so much lower than it was at other points in my life. Or I’m feeling like disconnected from my sense of desire.” Then I think that’s the invitation to take a look at what might be some things that are blocking you from feeling your full desire potential and what might be other factors that you can add to help yourself get closer to your full desire potential.

Chris: 23:36 I want to push back a little bit, because I’m sure especially with your finishing school program and teaching so many women to have orgasms, like I’m sure you have seen the women who like they identified very strongly as a low libido person. And then they prioritized it and something opened up in them and a new range of possibility was available.

Vanessa Marin: 23:59 Absolutely.

Chris: 24:00 I guess what I’m asking is like how do we imagine kind of like keeping the possibilities open for ourselves, but also accepting our present circumstances. So like not striving but also keeping possibilities and windows open.

Vanessa Marin: 24:15 Yeah, it really comes down to us being really, really honest with ourselves. And this is tricky sometimes, I know, because sometimes we can have so many defenses built up that it just feels like, “No, no, no, I’m just a low desire person. That’s just the way that I am.” So I think first thing is can we start with-

Chris: 24:36 Or, “I’m so broken there’s no going back.”

Vanessa Marin: 24:38 Exactly. Exactly. I see that so much. And definitely in finishing school and around pleasure and orgasm, like my body is just not capable of responding, that kind of thing.

Vanessa Marin: 24:49 So I think it’s really important for us to be honest with ourselves about is that fear talking or is that genuinely how I feel? And that’s again, it’s really, really tricky sometimes to peel back those layers. So a couple of interesting questions that you could ask yourself to maybe help wiggle the layers out a little bit is, you know, one might be, okay, so let’s say I just gave myself full permission to just be a low sex drive person. I really and truly just made that, okay, I accepted that. What does that stir up for you?

Vanessa Marin: 25:27 So if that stirs up like, “Okay, good. Yeah, I feel good about that.” Maybe that’s a sign that you truly are someone who naturally has a lower sex drive and that’s okay. But if you get the sense of like, “Oh no, wait, wait.” Even if it’s just the teeniest, tiniest little voice inside of you, maybe that’s a sign that instead those are just, you know, protective mechanism. And then I think another interesting question could be, let’s sort of assume that my partner would completely accept and acknowledge and respect my sex drive as it is. How would that feel?

Vanessa Marin: 26:03 So if we kind of take any pressure that we feel about our partners experience, that can be another great way to eliminate, is it truly how you feel about yourself or is it potentially just some fear that might be talking?

Chris: 26:18 That’s so beautiful. I’m noticing a theme here in like all of the courses and of course how we work with sexuality is like when we relieve the pressure what becomes more true?

Vanessa Marin: 26:31 It’s so true. And you know, it’s one of those things that just sounds really simple and obvious when you tell people. But when I really start digging in with people and saying, “Okay, what are the dynamics that are getting in the way? What are the ways that you’re pressuring yourself that you’re putting these expectations on yourself, that you’re closing yourself off?” There’s just so much space that’s there that can emerge from there. So we really, it’s easy to write it off as, “Oh yeah, yeah, I know, I could have less stress in my life or I could sleep more or we could go on more date nights.” You know, it’s so easy to write those things off, but if we really give ourselves the space and the curiosity, there can be some very, very powerful transformations that emerge.

Chris: 27:14 So as you said in the beginning of the episode, you’re one of our communities favorite guests, our members who have signed up for your men’s courses and your female orgasm courses. Like I always think it’s amazing they write to me with gratitude for you. [crosstalk 00:27:29] “Thank you for introducing me to Vanessa,” which I always think is like next level.

Vanessa Marin: 27:35 That’s so awesome.

Chris: 27:37 It’s like, “Thank you for the referral.” And that just is really meaningful to me because I know that people who really commit to your courses and go through have beautiful, meaningful experiences. And you also are so generous in opening up these video series and your email list if itself is like a sex therapy program. If your not on Vanessa’s email list and reading it every week. Please do. It’s a practice for me because you’re so generous in sharing the wisdom you’re gathering from your community in your work in this field. Can you tell us about this next offering that is opening right now and is inviting couples into a new conversation about libido?

Vanessa Marin: 28:22 Yes, I would be thrilled too. So we are just about to release this brand new, a free video series called Bring Your Sex Life Back to Life, Overcome Mismatch Sex Drives and Create a Sex Life Worth Craving. So if this podcast has been interesting to you, you will definitely love the free video series. So the really interesting kind of journey that we’ve actually been on this year is starting. We’ve released a couple of these video series this year and we’ve started to get really, really personal in them. My background is as a licensed psychotherapist. So my training was that it was not about me. I wasn’t supposed to share anything about myself. It was just supposed to be about the client. And so when I started transitioning into doing online courses and more of a coaching type of role, I started out like that. And what I’ve realized is that I need to be a part of the conversation that I’m opening up. I need to share more about my own experiences and my own stories to help people recognize that we’re not alone in the struggles that we’re having.

Vanessa Marin: 29:29 So if you are a couple who feels like you have mismatched sex drives, I know it’s so easy to feel like you’re alone. You must be the only couple going through this. Everyone else is having so much more sex than you. So we really kind of approached this series trying to have this foundation of how can we help people recognize that they’re not alone? So I’m sharing a lot of personal stories about my own relationship with my husband, Xander and the very first video, which you know we’re releasing on Sunday, the 15th, is going to be about the lowest point in our relationship, when we were really struggling with mismatched sex drives and wondering if we were not compatible, if this amazing chemistry that we’d had, you know, was just something temporary and fleeting.

Vanessa Marin: 30:18 So I’m going to be sharing that and then getting into the three main mistakes that most couples make in the bedroom, all three of which we made in pretty serious ways. And then the second video will be about the two different sex drive types and why it’s so important for you to know which one you are, which one your partner is, and how your types fit together. And then we’re doing something that we have never done before, which I’m really excited about. We are doing three live trainings, so we’re meeting over Zoom, it’ll be private, no one will see you, your name, anything like that. But you’ll be able to join me live and I’m going to go through a training all about couples who are really, really busy and struggling to make the time for intimacy. My specific step-by-step process for how you can create that time for your relationship.

Vanessa Marin: 31:07 So we are really excited about the series. We’ve been like putting our heart and soul into it. I’m still feeling a little bit nervous about this first video going out on Sunday, but we’ve just had such a great response to us being vulnerable and sharing our own stories. So I know that it’s going to be met with a lot of just support and encouragement and many of them, people from your community as well. So we’re very excited for that. And if you’re interested in signing up, I believe you’ll have a special link probably in the show notes that they can just go directly to, to sign up.

Chris: 31:42 Definitely. And I want to encourage you to not only sign up, but to kind of schedule this in and consider this a really generous offering from a world-class sex therapist who will join you in your living room. Like sometimes when we think about online courses and I’ve been talking to the couples who are having the most success with our online courses about how they’re using them, they really make an event of it. So they like order in food, or open a bottle of wine and sit down and pretend like it is a session. Not even pretend. They experience it as a session with us or with you. And by taking it seriously, you’re placing your attention on it. And giving yourself that gift of the conversation. Because the video will end and then you will go into your conversation about it and then we’ll open up conversations for days.

Vanessa Marin: 32:34 Yes, yes. I love that. I think it’s so great to make it, you know, feel like that’s really special. I know there’s always a challenge when there’s something that’s free that you’re sort of like, “Oh well yeah, we’ll watch that later. You know, we’ll get back around to that.” So I definitely recommend scheduling it and almost imagining that you paid $1,000 or $2,000 for it so that way you really feel invested in it. And we also, you know, if you’re listening to this right now and wondering, “God, I want to watch this, but I don’t know if my partner would,” when you sign up for it, we automatically send you a free guide about how to talk to your partner about participating in this series with you, even if you’ve never talked about sex with them before.

Vanessa Marin: 33:16 So we definitely want to support couples in starting to open up these conversations and get back on the same page and be able to get just so much value out of this free series by participating together.

Chris: 33:31 And there will be links in the show notes page. I really recommend you join Vanessa and we will be there too learning along with you. So I want to end this conversation and imagine in 10 years, when you and I are doing our 25th episode together, what do you hope has changed about the cultural conversation about libido?

Vanessa Marin: 33:53 That’s such a good question. Can I say everything? Yeah, I think that, I guess I come back to that fundamental idea that I have, which is this desire is something that we invite in and that we make an active effort to cultivate. One of the greatest pieces of feedback that I ever got from some clients where they were saying, “We now know that our sex life is something that we work on. Not something that we rely on to just work.” And I think if we could see, yeah, if we could all see desire and that same sort of way that it’s something that we work on and that that’s a beautiful thing to cultivate desire to invite it in, to be curious about it. I think that could make all the difference in the world.

Chris: 34:40 Beautiful. Vanessa Marin, thank you so much for joining us once again on Speaking of Sex.

Vanessa Marin: 34:44 Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great.

Chris: 34:47 Cheers. And folks, check out the links in the show notes page and even if you’re listening to this down the road, the links will work to bring you to the best of Vanessa Marin. Thanks again for joining us, Vanessa.

Vanessa Marin: 34:58 Thank you.

Chris: 35:00 Thank you so much for listening. Those links to Vanessa’s upcoming free video training are in the show notes. You’ll also find them at pleasuremechanics.com/libido, where we are gathering our entire Rethinking Libido Podcast mini series. We are going to keep this conversation going. There is more to talk about when it comes to libido, including what to do with sexual urgency, what to do when you feel so hungry for sex. Let’s talk about that and more on upcoming episodes of Speaking of Sex. If you have something to say about libido, come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/hello and record us a message, or come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/libido and you’ll find the full conversation and opportunities to participate. I’m Chris from pleasuremechanics.com, wishing you a lifetime of pleasure and curiosity. Cheers.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Low libido? Loss of libido? Crazy high libido? Mismatched Libido? There are 99 libido problems out there, and many people report struggling with their libido. Libido troubles are one of the leading reasons people seek out the advice of a sex therapist or tune into sex podcasts like this one. But it is time to rethink libido, debunk libido myths and start talking about the truth about human libido: that it is mysterious, fluid and contextual.

If you are struggling with libido troubles, tune in and start rethinking what your sex drive means and what your relationship to your libido can look like over time.

Ready for more?

Listen to our episode about Surviving Sexless Seasons

Read more from Emily Nagoski on why there is no such thing as a sex drive.

Ready to master new erotic skills? Check out our online courses and use the code SPEAKINGOFSEX for 20% off the course of your choice.

Podcast Transcript for Episode 349: Rethinking Libido Problems

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:01 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are the pleasure mechanics. And on this podcast, we have soulful and explicit conversations about every aspect of human sexuality. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive. And go to pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started with our free online course, The Erotic Essentials. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started. And if you love this show and want to support the work that we do, go to pleasuremechanics.com/love. And you’ll find ways to show us some love and support so we can keep doing the work that we do. Hey you.

Charlotte Rose: 00:51 Hey.

Chris Rose: 00:52 Hey.

Charlotte Rose: 00:52 I was like, are you talking to me or the people?

Chris Rose: 00:57 You’re the only one in the room, baby. So Charlotte and I are luxuriating right now because our daughter just started kindergarten. So our one and only child just started full time school for the first time, and we are thrilled.

Charlotte Rose: 01:15 Yeah, this feels like absolutely a game changer, and it feels kind of amazing.

Chris Rose: 01:20 Last year was great because she was in part-time school, but kind of after pickup and drop off, it was a little bit like we got a blip of the day. This feels like we get the whole day.

Charlotte Rose: 01:29 So we’re so excited to make more stuff for you.

Chris Rose: 01:35 Watch out. But it also, I think what we’re noticing and it leads right into the theme that I want to talk about today is we are only … this is day three, we’re only a couple days into it, and we’re noticing the tremendous energetic shift. And the shift of how we are able to place our attention, what kind of container our day can become. And how dynamic life is, just how changeable life is. Because I feel like we’re in a whole new phase now. Okay, onwards.

Chris Rose: 02:10 And what we want to talk about today is libido, and specifically this idea of mismatched libidos. And we are launching into a multi episode exploration of this topic. I am going to call out this topic right from the beginning as the biggest problem people have that is not really a problem. Meaning it is not one problem. There is no one problem called mismatched libido. And yet, it’s become this landing place for so many people’s sexual struggles, so many people’s narratives about why they are suffering sexually. It’s like, “Well my partner and I just have a mismatched to libido.”

Charlotte Rose: 02:58 There’s a lot of pain in that for a lot of people and a lot of couples.

Chris Rose: 03:02 It’s the number one thing we hear. It’s the number one thing sex therapists report. It’s consistently the language that people use, mismatched libido, or I have a really low libido. I’ve lost my libido. If we did kind of a word scramble where libido was the topic and we had 10,000 of us in a room together, what are some of the things you would be shouting out? Right? Because when we think about libido, it’s either I have a really high libido and that’s a problem. My low libido is a problem. My partner has a high libido. We project a lot of problems onto this word libido. And we don’t even know what it means. As I say it again and again, libido. It’s like, what does libido mean?

Chris Rose: 03:50 One of our favorite sex science writers Emily Nagoski reports, there is no such thing as a human sex drive. How does it feel to hear that? What does that mean? And what is our experience of this concept of libido, sex drive, interest in sex? And how do we change our relationship to it if we want to?

Chris Rose: 04:16 Those are the framing questions we want to go into the next few episodes with. Because we are going to be bringing on some guests, some sex therapists to talk about libido. But I do not want to go into this conversation with any assumptions intact. I wanted to do this framing episode, especially after last week’s conversation. So last week we hosted Dana B. Myers, and we were talking all about sex as parents. And next week, we’re going to be hosting sex therapist Vanessa Marin, who is brilliant and wise, and is offering a new course on libido called The Passion Project. All about bringing your relationship to libido more in alignment with your partners.

Chris Rose: 05:03 So we’re kind of sandwiched in between these two really important conversations that are so much the sandwich of life we are in now, Charlotte. Charlotte and I are emerging out of this long season, not only of being new parents, but of my illness. Of dealing with ill parents, of just a lot of life changes. So our relationship to this concept of libido is dramatically changed over the past decade of our life. And we want to report from that place too and really introduce the concept that this is not a fixed identity. You are not a high libido person, or a low libido person. Because both of us have been both of those things at different times, even just within the container of our relationship.

Chris Rose: 05:50 So let’s explore this. Let’s explore libido together with curiosity, with the willingness to pull apart assumptions. But really also with an honoring. And Charlotte, you were very insistent upon this as I was getting kind of rebel rousing, planning this episode. Of honoring the pain and the struggle that are in this pool with us and in this experience of our relationship to libido.

Charlotte Rose: 06:20 So what is libido? How do we define it? We have the cultural idea of what that is, but let’s dive in and really explore what does it mean.

Chris Rose: 06:29 Well, it doesn’t mean anything and that’s part of the problem. Part of the problem with this whole conversation and why I get so fired up about this is because we have to address it. And sex therapists like Vanessa Marin have to build courses about it, because it’s how people understand their sexual struggles.

Charlotte Rose: 06:47 But.

Chris Rose: 06:47 But the idea of libido, most people if I asked what does libido mean? It’s like well, it’s your sex drive. It’s how much you’re interested in sex. So there’s no such thing as a sex drive in the human animal. And Emily Nagoski does a great job explaining this. Physical drives are drives for things that if we did not have them, would cause us to perish. So the drive around hunger and thirst is a motivational system that activates when our need for food or water becomes life threatening. And all of our behavior becomes oriented to satiating that need.

Chris Rose: 07:30 This was extended into this concept of sex drive. But humans don’t have a sex drive. If you don’t have sex, it will not kill you. There is perhaps a metaphorical perishing of your DNA. But that’s just a story. That’s a concept. That’s a cultural idea.

Chris Rose: 07:50 So what we need to do is get rid of an idea that there is any one thing that is a healthy sex drive. Because what happened is this idea of sex drive got invented in the psychoanalysis field, and it got kind of popularized. So if people have a sense that there is this thing called the sex drive that we are supposed to have, and it is supposed to act a certain way. And if it is not acting that way, it means you are broken

Chris Rose: 08:21 And yet there is no agreement, there’s no medical agreement about what that sex drive is supposed to look like. And there’s also no truth telling about the reality that this interest in sex and the interest in desire … okay wait. Okay. I’m getting ahead of myself. Okay. So libido does not exist. It is not a thing in the human animal, like our need for food and water.

Charlotte Rose: 08:47 Not to diminish that some people may experience an urgency and a necessity of sex. But that is not a sex drive.

Chris Rose: 08:56 So what can we agree on here? So we can agree on there is this confluence of factors that dictate individual’s interest, desire, and attention towards sexuality at any given time in their life. So some people are what we would, if we want to call that libido for short, fine. Let’s call libido the confluence of your energy, interest, availability for, and desire for sexual expression, right? That’s a mouthful.

Chris Rose: 09:32 So if we think about libido as interest in desire and sexuality, then we have to ask interest and desire for what? Because most of the clinical understandings, most of the “science” around libido studies PIV. Penetration, penis in vagina sex. And that is not the barometer of sexual expression. We know this. We know that that is not the only way humans are sexual. It is not inclusive of things like masturbation, massage, cuddling, kissing, long walks while talking about your soul’s mission. All of the other ways we connect and enjoy one another. Nor things like kinky sex and how you might have interest in things like bondage and domination, but not much interest in traditional vanilla PIV at the moment.

Chris Rose: 10:28 So we need to complicate this conversation. You have sexual interest and desire in what? And all range of options there are healthy and normal. You can have just the interest in having a vibrant masturbation life, and build your whole sex life and sexual identity around that. And that can be a normal, healthy expression of human sexuality.

Chris Rose: 10:53 You can have no interest in sexual connection with other human beings, and some people would identify more along an asexual spectrum where there’s just no interest. And that can be a healthy, normal expression of human sexuality without suffering. You can live a happy, fulfilled life with no interest and sexual connection.

Chris Rose: 11:14 Some people have a passionate interest in sexuality. They think about it all the time. They want to have sex every day. Sometimes I get emails where it’s like, “I’m a high libido person, I want sex three to five times a day and my partner’s not up for it.” And it’s like if you want to do anything other than eat, and shit, and piss three or five times a day, that is a high interest in that activity, right? If you’re watching football three to five times a day, if you’re going to the gym three to five times a day, if you’re doing anything three to five times a day, that is really intense high interest in my book.

Chris Rose: 11:53 Other people would say, “I’m a really high libido person. I want sex once a week.” And the idea of having sex once a week. So this ties into our idea of sexual frequency and what is normal there. And after decades in this field, I am here to tell you there is no normal there. For some people, a wonderful pace of sex would be cuddling every night, and then having a longer session two to three times a month. And that would feel great. That would feel like a fulfilling, full, satisfying sex life. Other people are deep in suffering and struggle because they are not having intercourse every day.

Chris Rose: 12:36 So what do we do with this? And okay, interest in what? Complicating the interest in what question and knowing that there’s so many ways of expressing your human sexuality. Normalizing that there are so many ways to be interested in sex and levels of interest, and that those are all normal and healthy. It is not healthier to be higher libido or lower libido. Nor are you happier if you are higher libido or lower libido. Because I hear both tales of fulfillment and tails of struggle from both ends of this spectrum.

Chris Rose: 13:18 And, we have to recognize that individuals change within this spectrum, travel within this spectrum, multiple times throughout their lifetime. And in context to what else is going on in their life. Charlotte and I have both been high libido people who have organized our life around sex. Those were the days. Those were wonderful days, and it made sense in the context of the rest of our life and who we were as people at the time. We have both been people with almost no libido, and been completely happy and content. Some of the happiest times of our life were our lowest libido times. And also some of the scariest, right? Like when I was sick. And that was a different reason to be low libido. My body was barely surviving. There’s no room for sex in that. There was room for affection, and touch, and all of these things. But when we were with our infant and our days were full of cuddling that tender newborn, and I was bringing Charlotte chia pudding trays with flowers and tending to her every need. Those were some of the most deeply erotic, connected moments of our life. And they had nothing to do with our genitals. Well, I was tending to your genitals. Your genitals had a different function at that time. Right? So this is changeable. This is changeable.

Chris Rose: 14:52 And what I am seeing is the suffering is in the stuckness. The suffering is when we get into these places, especially in longterm relationships. Because let’s face it. In short term relationships, if your sex life goes haywire, you can break up. It’s an easier time to just exit. Your context changes and one of you is out the door. In a longterm relationship when libido changes, when your context changes and your relationship to sex radically shifts, so much of the suffering is A, getting stuck in that place and believing it will never change again.

Charlotte Rose: 15:30 And in the story and what you make it mean about what the situation is.

Chris Rose: 15:35 Right. Say more about that because I think that is exactly it. It’s the story around our sex drive, the story of our libido.

Charlotte Rose: 15:44 If you have a low libido and you feel like there is something wrong with you and that you should be feeling more of something. And you don’t because at some level you’re a failure or you are not enough. Those stories can really take up a lot of emotional energy, and you can really believe them to be true. And they kind of grip us, and we do stay stuck in that. And that can be not helpful.

Charlotte Rose: 16:12 Equally, if you are a high libido person and your partner doesn’t want to have sex as much as you, you can make that mean that you are not desirable if you did X, Y, or Z that would want to have sex more. So again, it’s about your lack of worthiness, your lack of attractiveness, your lack of skill. And it becomes all about lack. Your lack of masculinity or femininity. It goes on and on. We all have our own specific iteration of these stories, and it’s so important to look at them because culture repeats these. So we relate to these stories as if they really are true. So take a minute and think about your own relationship to your interest in sex. Now in this current moment in your life, in the past, how does your partner, how do you think of your partner’s relationship to their interest in sex, and how are you guys talking about it together? What is your story of your relationship’s sex interest?

Chris Rose: 17:17 And this is so much of it, right? Is being honest about your narratives, about your sexuality. And painting that picture really explicitly for yourself so you kind of have it externalized and can look at it more honestly. And then how does your interest in sex interact with your partners? And when I dig into this with people, often there is this arc where there’s something in the poly community called new relationship energy, NRE. And it’s such a predictable pattern that the community gave it a name. And NRE is that lusty phase in the beginning of a relationship where you can’t seem to get enough of each other. You don’t want to take your hands off of each other. If you could stay in bed all day, you would. When you’re not with each other, you’re thinking about each other. It is a surge. It is a bonding. It is a chemical intoxication that humans do really well. Right? It’s one of the beautiful, pleasurable experiences of sexuality that we should revere and celebrate. When you meet someone and there’s sparks between two people at the same time and you’re both in that NRE, it’s wonderful. It doesn’t last, but it’s wonderful.

Chris Rose: 18:37 And we then set our benchmark kind of high because we think my sexuality has been met by this person’s, and we see each other, and we like each other, and we get into each other. And also to note, this isn’t always the case. Some people have different kinds of sexual chemistry that take a while to brew, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Chris Rose: 18:58 But when we have a certain expectation of what our sex lives will look like for the long haul, and then it changes, people start developing very specific stories about why it changed. “I let myself go and I gained 10 pounds.” And it’s like the partner doesn’t even know what you weigh. They’re not aware of that at all. In your head, you’re projecting your insecurities, your vulnerabilities. The places you have been shamed about sexuality will become the culprits of why your libido is changing.

Chris Rose: 19:35 Likewise, if your libido shifts again within a relationship and all of a sudden you have a surge of sexual energy, sometimes that creates a crisis because you don’t know why you’re suddenly feeling this and maybe you’re not even feeling it directed towards your partner. And you have to navigate all of a sudden having more sexual energy and interest than your partner can hold. Or perhaps, life events happen and you are on different contexts all of a sudden. I say on, you’re in different contexts, but I’m almost visualizing these as islands sometimes. Sometimes this is the birth of a child, and the unequal, physical, and emotional burden and lifestyle burden means one partner is still pretty interested in sex and still feels pretty autonomous, and is ready to have a sex life. And the other partner is like on a different planet island. It’s like they are out at sea and you’re not even talking to one another anymore.

Chris Rose: 20:38 Or it’s a physical illness. One person’s energy is gone and the other person is still pretty healthy, and there can be a feeling of abandonment and betrayal in that because it’s like this is not what I signed up for? What do I do with my libido now when you’re totally unavailable to meet me? Still love you, still want to do life with you. But where the hell are you in bed?

Chris Rose: 21:02 And other times, it’s a slow drift. Resentment, anger, separation, distance come up. And you find yourself, this I visualize as you are on the same path and then started kind of wandering. And the woods get thicker, and then you find yourselves on very different paths in the same woods. And you’re kind of trying to communicate, but there’s all this shit between you and brambles. “Where are you baby? I’m over here. I still love you.”

Chris Rose: 21:30 So you may find yourself in one of these patterns. These are the patterns. I see every single day in my inbox. And they are all stories of shifting sexual contexts. And we are reminded that our interest in sex, our availability for sex, that feeling of like I want to get naked and roll around with someone, and fuck, and be fucked. And that interest, desire, whether it is spontaneous or responsive, that interest, desire, availability for sex changes so many times over our lifetime. And if you’re in a relationship with one or more people, your changes are not always going to sync up. So what do we do with that?

Chris Rose: 22:16 We did a big episode about this called Surviving Sexless Seasons that we’ve gotten so much amazing feedback around, because I think we are truth telling about something we all know here. So part of the question is how do we get out? How do we get into a new season when we want to? Because if you are suffering and you are looking at your libido, your interest in sex as a point of suffering, then there are strategies. There are things we can identify to start easing that suffering and start giving you what you need when we are specific about what we need, when we say I need more sex. Or I need you to pressure me less for sex. What do we mean in those statements? What do we mean when we talk about libido? What are we actually talking about? And if we get specific there, I believe our suffering can be lessened. So that’s what I think what we want to do in these few episodes. Is get really fricking specific about where the suffering is, where it comes from, and what we can do about it.

Charlotte Rose: 23:22 And acknowledge that everyone in relationship has high and low interest for a variety of different qualities or experiences, and that those were important and should be paid attention to also.

Chris Rose: 23:37 Say more about that. Because it’s so true when we say high desire for sex. When we look at what we’re desiring, very few are like, “I have a desire to put my penis in a wet, moist, hole. That is what I want.” Or, “I want my hole filled with a penis.” And if we’re breaking sex down, and I say it in those voices. But that is what the science does is it boils sex down into penis, vagina intercourse. And that is not the meaning of sex in our lives.

Chris Rose: 24:09 So when you say you have a higher low interest in sex, and you might surprise yourself here because you might think you’re a low libido person. And when we start talking you’re like, “Yeah I want more of that, I want more of that.” So high or low interest in what of the following qualities?

Charlotte Rose: 24:26 Connecting, which I think of as chatting and talking about things that are non plan related. Not about your kid, not about your business, but about life and interests. And just spending time talking and being with one another.

Chris Rose: 24:42 That’s emotional, affectionate connection. And then another need might be physical affection, touch. For so many of us, sex is the only event where we get a lot of our skin touched. We’ve talked about touch hunger. And the interesting thing here is this is actually one of the only places the science is very clear, is that the human body wants and craves affectionate, meaningful touch from other humans. Or from other mammals. Some people like pets, but affectionate touch. So is part of your high interest in sex just a craving for more touch? Or are you a low libido person who actually has a high interest in nonsexual touch? Massage, affectionate touch, cuddling. What’s another one?

Charlotte Rose: 25:34 Some people have a really high need for heartfelt, emotional connection. Whether it’s you’re being seen, you’re being heard, you’re being held. It is separate from sex. It can be a unique experience that is separate from sex, but often we mash it up with sex. We think of it, it’s a place people access that experience through sex often. But it can be a separate experience.

Chris Rose: 25:59 Right. If sex is the only path you know to get to that place of deep intimacy where you can feel naked, and raw, and vulnerable, and still feel held and safe in someone else’s gaze? Then yeah, you might have a high interest in sex to get there. And if we can identify other ways of getting there, that can feel like a good alternative sometimes.

Chris Rose: 26:23 Other people go to sex for stress relief, and they want to have a hot and sweaty sex session because they crave that physical release and the bestial expression that it allows. When I’m working with these people, sometimes the solution is taking up like martial arts or dance where you can power out a session or weightlifting. Another experience, or hiking up a mountain if you’re a nature person. Something where you can really go for it, lay it all out there, and end in a hot, sweaty, breathless mess.

Charlotte Rose: 27:01 Having physical cathartic experiences. It makes sense. It’s a physical need. So find other ways of doing that.

Chris Rose: 27:08 For some people.

Charlotte Rose: 27:09 For some people.

Chris Rose: 27:11 For other people, sex is an experience of being able to relax. And it’s how they get to the place of being able to drop their to do list, and focus on sensuality, and relax. So what they’re longing for and what they’re craving for is to take more time to do that. But they only give themselves permission to do that if they have a partner and the romantic context of sex to give themselves space and time.

Chris Rose: 27:36 So you can see what we’re going for. It’s like when we start thinking about our interest and desire for this capital S sex, this category of human experience. And we can start being specific about what we’re longing for, what we’re needing more of in our life. And then we get realistic about our situation.

Chris Rose: 28:00 Do you have a partner that’s available to assist you with that or not? Because sometimes and often, the answer is no. I have this longing and craving. Sex would be a delightful way to get that met. But that is not available to me at this moment for some reason, whether or not you’re in a relationship.

Chris Rose: 28:20 And I want single people to hear this, that there are a lot of people in relationships that feel very alone and lonely in their sexuality. Having a partner does not guarantee you a sex partner. And I want people in relationships to also hear that they are not alone if you’re in a relationship and feeling lonely. This is very common.

Chris Rose: 28:41 So whether or not you’re in a relationship, whether or not you have a life partner. If you don’t have a sex partner to meet some of these needs, to meet some of these desires, then we can start mapping other ways to start filling in those longings.

Chris Rose: 28:59 Like we said, if you are someone who loves getting hot and sweaty, and fucking until you’re panting for breath, and you see yourself in that statement, and that is not available to you, you can spend your life sexually frustrated. Or you could go master another skill using your body, using some of that same energy. Or bring that same energy into your masturbation practice, accessorize so you have something to penetrate and fuck or you have … they have amazing devices now for any kind of physical experience you want out of sex. You can kind of create for yourself. And that can be meaningful. It’s not the same. And sometimes I get in these email loops with people and it’s like, “Yeah, but yeah,” but it’s like, yes. Sharing sex with another human being is a beautiful, special experience that cannot be replicated. But the needs, wants, desires, physical experiences and expressions of sex are myriad. They’re so numerous, and there’s so many ways as humans we can be creative in expressing these things, filling these needs.

Charlotte Rose: 30:13 But it does involve being honest with yourself about what you long for, what you crave, what you desire. And giving yourself permission to find a way to make a plan to give that to yourself. So there’s acknowledging the truth within yourself, giving yourself permission, and then getting creative about how you can fulfill those needs and desires within whatever your circumstance is. So if that’s solo, if that is partnered, if that is any other option.

Chris Rose: 30:46 And it’s also looking, so then there’s this process that we’re talking about meeting our needs in alternative ways. But then there’s also looking at what is holding us back from creating the sex life we want. So then there’s also getting really specific about all of those things. And either alone or within your relationship, laying it all out there and being honest about, “We’re not having sex because this, this, and this. And if we can change these few factors, we could have a more satisfying sex life together.”

Chris Rose: 31:19 So next week, we are joined by Vanessa Marin. She is an amazing sex therapist. We have had her on the podcast. She’s probably our most recurring guest at this point, because she brings all of the information, and knowledge, and wisdom of sex therapy to this conversation. We’re going to be talking all about libido, what she sees in her practice, and how she approaches mismatched libido. And then she’s going to be telling you about a course she is offering now that is called The Passion Project and is really a comprehensive step by step guide through this maze for couples. To realign your relationship to your own libido, and then to get your own on track with your partners.

Chris Rose: 32:09 So we are going to talk about this, and I am going to push her with some questions about what we mean when we talk about libido. And I was thrilled when she gave us access to her course and I saw that she takes just as a multifaceted approach as we do. That this is not one conversation. It’s many to pull apart and really understand your positionality within this question of interest, and desire, and sex. And we’re going to continue the conversation. So we also want hear from you. I hear about your libidos all the time, guys, but I’m open to hearing about it now specifically. What are your struggles, what are your questions? Especially after you heard us just kind of explode this idea of mismatched libidos being a problem. I hope we recognized that this is a very common language for our suffering.

Chris Rose: 33:04 And yet, it is representative of so many profound issues around … we didn’t even talk about shame, we didn’t even talk about trauma, right? We didn’t even talk about the internalized sense of if I admit I want sex, that means I’m a slut. And therefore I’m less valuable as a woman. So I better not admit that I want sex.

Charlotte Rose: 33:30 Well that’s the thing is that every single thing creates a context for our libido or for our interest in sex. We are holistic beings, and we are affected by every aspect of our life. And to think it is an isolated thing that is concrete-

Chris Rose: 33:49 Let alone fixed. Like you are my libido person.

Charlotte Rose: 33:53 Is I think not giving us enough credit for being the fluid, changeable, responsive beings that we actually. So let’s cut ourselves a little slack.

Chris Rose: 34:06 Totally. And look for the solutions. I really want to approach all of this with honoring all of these different stories and struggles that you share with us. And then really looking for the patterns, the solutions, the most influential pivot points. The most effective places of intervention that we can offer to you to change your relationship to this story.

Charlotte Rose: 34:35 Particularly to the struggle, because some people don’t actually need to change the reality of it. Because they are comfortable and okay with what the situation is. But just change their relationship to the stories.

Chris Rose: 34:48 Yes.

Charlotte Rose: 34:48 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 34:49 Yes.

Charlotte Rose: 34:50 Some will want to change the physical experience of their reality. It depends.

Chris Rose: 34:55 Right. There’s the acceptance of your reality. There’s releasing judgment of your reality. Those are stages. And then there are stages, kind I do my hot air balloon moment? Is it the time for the hot air balloon? So we went to this hot air balloon festival recently where we had to wake up at 5:00 AM and drive across-

Charlotte Rose: 35:12 We didn’t have to, we chose to.

Chris Rose: 35:13 We chose to. We chose to wake up at 5:00 AM and drive across the river, and we got to see 100 hot air balloons lift off. And I’ve always used the hot air balloon as this metaphor for arousal. Right? So how do we go from the birthday party balloon model of sexual arousal to becoming more like hot air balloons that are expansively exploring the skies of eroticism. But at the hot air balloon festival, what I saw was all of these collapsed hot air balloons on the ground.

Charlotte Rose: 35:48 That’s how they all start.

Chris Rose: 35:49 They all start collapsed, deflated, sad puddles of color. And then what they do is humans lift up the flap, and they take a big fan, and they start blowing air into the balloon.

Charlotte Rose: 36:04 It’s so old school.

Chris Rose: 36:05 It’s really old school. It’s also very remedial, right? There’s nothing glorious about it. There’s nothing beautiful about it, but it’s very loving because it’s like I’m holding up the flap and blowing air into the balloon. And then comes the stage where the balloon kind of starts arising and bobbing, and it starts taking shape, and you kind of see the colors, and you can see what it looks like. And you start igniting its flame. And its own flame, its own heat start filling it with hot air. It then starts kind of bobbing on the ground. And the basket is just lifting off, and you kind of have disbelief that this heavy object is ever going to soar. And then you have liftoff, and there’s that breathless moment of [inaudible 00:36:50] and then the balloon is off and away, and soaring in its own direction, influenced by so much.

Chris Rose: 36:59 But I was in ecstatic tears in this moment at six in the morning watching these hot air balloons because I realize we are here for you at every stage of this erotic journey. We will hold up your flap and blow hot air into you as you release the shame, as you get over the trauma. As we do this work of crawling out of the deflated pit that so many of our sexualities are in. We will also be there for you as you ignite your flame and as you start taking shape and your own sexuality starts expressing itself and showing its fucking potential. And we will be there waving you off and guiding you as you sail into your ecstatic, erotic journeys.

Chris Rose: 37:43 This is the work of our service to you. People have been calling it an erotic ministry recently after our erotic massage episodes, which I love. We show up every day to guide you in all of these moments of your sexual process, knowing that even when you are off on your journey, you’re going to land at some point and need to be blown up again. That’s a cyclical process.

Charlotte Rose: 38:11 I love the piece where it’s like this very pedestrian experience where you are just making an effort to put wind in your sails. I mean you’re-

Chris Rose: 38:20 It’s a balloon.

Charlotte Rose: 38:22 I know, it doesn’t make sense. I shouldn’t say that.

Chris Rose: 38:25 You make the effort to fill it up, trusting that that journey will be worth it.

Charlotte Rose: 38:28 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 38:29 All right. Let’s breathe into our balloons together or something. We will see you next. We will have Vanessa Marin with us to talk more about libido. Tell us what’s on your mind around this subject. Email us, chris@pleasuremechanics.com. I love receiving your stories. I’m sorry if I can’t respond to every single email. I do my very best. And if you want to support our work in this world and get priority access to our attention, please join the Patreon at patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. The link is in the show notes page. Or join us in one of our erotic mastery courses. Come over to pleasuremechanics.com, check out our online courses, and use the code Speaking of Sex for 20% off the online course of your choice. The online courses allow us to guide you in your orotic explorations, foot you on, support you along the way. And again, you show your support for the work we do in this world and get priority access to our time and attention. As the show grows, I realize I can’t reply to everyone. So I’m asking if you want more of our time and attention, please show your support, join a course, join the Patreon. And then you’ll have a little bit more of my attention, and that only makes sense as we move forward.

Chris Rose: 39:54 All right. Next week, Vanessa Marin talking more about libido. We want to hear what you’re thinking about this subject. And we hope that this conversation has been useful for you in already perhaps alleviating some suffering around this topic. And if you want to get started in the conversation with Vanessa Marin, please use the link in the show notes page to join her free video series that has already kicked off. We continue to feature Vanessa Marin because over the years, we have featured her courses on performance anxiety for men. On female orgasm. And dozens and dozens of our community members have enrolled in her courses and loved them.

Chris Rose: 40:37 I get emails of gratitude for introducing people to Vanessa, and we have taken all of her courses and learned from them. So she is a trusted ally and resource for you. If this conversation is hot on your mind, join Vanessa in the conversation. Join us here next week, and let us know how we can serve you in this conversation of ending the suffering around libido. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 41:08 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 41:09 We are the pleasure mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 41:11 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.