024: How To Reduce Stress About Sex In Your Relationship - Part 1
In episodes 24 - 26 we're going all in on how to reduce stress in your relationship about sex!
When I interviewed multiple working moms before creating The Working Mom Happiness Method, sex was one of the most common topics that came up.
This is because as busy, working moms, a lot of days the last thing we want to do when we finally get settled in for the night is touch anyone or anything!
In these 3 episodes we'll cover all the tips and tricks for how to fix this.
We'll talk about learning to accept yourself (your body and your sexuality), learning more about what turns you on and what turns you off, timing and energy levels, and ensuring you're not using sex to avoid feelings or for validation.
Here are links to the two books I mention in the episodes:
Come As You Are
Eat That Frog
Here's the Instagram account for the sex therapist I mention in the episodes: Kristin B Hodson
Learn more about The Working Mom Happiness Method course here!
To join The Working Mom Happiness Method Facebook group click here.
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Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues, and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.
Hi, welcome to the episode where we're going to talk all about sex. And am I a little terrified? Yes, I am. Just being fully honest with you. So I teach this topic in my working mom happiness Method program in the one on one version and the group version. And it's been pretty scary for me to open up there as well and be vulnerable here. But it's less scary because in those situations, I have the ability to meet live either one on one or with a small group with the ladies who are learning this and I can really hear their perspectives and we can go deep, and they can get even more context and thought for me. And so that feels a little less scary. Whereas here, I'm about to share way too much information about my own sex life, which husband is aware, because he's involved in that, obviously. But I'm also about to get very graphic about some body parts and some other things. And I might giggle a little bit because you know, I'm not the most mature about all of these things. But I'm going to open up and I'm going to do it anyway, even though this is such a big public forum where I don't have the chance to give you extra context and hear your perspective. This is not a two way conversation right now. It's just a one way conversation. And so that yes, that is slightly terrifying. But if it helps just one person which I'm confident it will it to me it's worth it. And so just jumping in Messy action vulnerability, gonna go for it. A couple of disclaimers before we get started. My usual one, which I gave in the last topic when we covered relationships is that I love and support all types of relationships across the LGBTQ spectrum. The month is June right now I have a pride flag proudly flying outside of my house, I am an ally for anyone on that spectrum in any way. And I'm fully supportive of sexual relationships in those relationships. However, you won't hear me talking about that as I cover this only because I don't have experience on this topic in those types of relationships, I have my own personal experiences, I've gone through this. And then I have the ladies who I've coached and worked with. And then I've had everything that I've researched and read all of those things. But none of that has been related to the LGBTQ plus spectrum specifically. So that's just why I'm not covering it. So that's an important thing to me, I wanted to call that out. A couple other disclaimers that I think are important. Like I said, I'm going to be using some pretty graphic terms to describe body parts, not meant to offend anybody. It's just part of this topic. And so that'll be there. Just prepare yourself. If you're listening to this with you have kids in the car or something and you're not comfortable, then obviously don't listen to it in that way. I'm going to be talking about religion and some of the negative impacts it can have as it relates to sexual trauma. And that is not meant to offend anybody. So happy for you to believe whatever you believe. But there are some real impacts from that, that I'm gonna get very real on and talk about, I will touch on pornography. And I will talk a little bit about my own experience that I had with that and some other things there. And I know that can be very triggering. And then I will touch on sexual abuse. We're not going to go deeper anything. There won't be any specifics or details, but I know that can be very triggering, but it's in there because it's so common that we just need to cover and acknowledge that it can impact our healthy relationships later on in life after it has occurred. So we'll just go briefly mentioned that but just wanted to call out that trigger warning. Let's also acknowledge this is a topic that could be a three month course on its own and we're about to cover it probably in about an hour. I think I'll split this out into two episodes because I have a lot to cover here. But it We'll just be scratching the surface. So if you want to go deeper here, please reach out to me, you can message me on Instagram, you can contact me on my website, women's best life, university, all of these this information is in the show notes as well be happy to go deeper on any aspect of this with you or I highly also encourage sex therapy. I'm not a sex therapist, I'm not a licensed therapist at all, I'm just sharing my own experiences. And speaking of that, in my own personal experience, implementing the tools that I'm about to share with you here has taken me from a person who was really struggling with sex in my relationship, because my husband and I were so different on the spectrum of how often we wanted to have sex, I am more over here on like, I don't need to have sex hardly ever I don't physical touch is like the lowest on my love language list. I just don't need it to feel connected and loved. And he very much does and like like, I could go months and be fine. And he wants it multiple times every day, just to put it frankly. So we're we were very, very different. And that was something that we really struggled with in our marriage. And so I went from that being a huge struggle in my marriage, to bring it all the way to the other end of the spectrum where I figured it out. And I was able to learn how to meet his relationship need of having more frequent set sex in a way that worked with my own boundaries and my own happiness. And so that's why I wanted to share it because it just helped and improved my life so much. So that's kind of my own experience with it. The other thing that I should call out, because I'm more on that end of the spectrum where like, I don't need it or want it very often, I you're going to feel some bias towards that end of the spectrum. As I go through this, however, the tools that I'm going to share, they apply to everybody, whether you are more like me, and you rarely want it or need it, or whether you're on the other side of the spectrum, like my husband, where you want it every single day. And we're gonna get into this. But all of that is normal for women, you could be anywhere in between what I just said and be in a range that is very normal and healthy. And we're going to, we're going to talk about that. But I probably have a little more bias towards my end of the spectrum. And I will say that as I interviewed women, because you remember I've mentioned this before, as I was creating this program, I interviewed lots of different working moms. And I made it a point to include all of the biggest pain points or issues in their lives in the program. And sex really was one that came up because when we get busy and overwhelmed, it's really hard to make space and find space and enjoy sex, make space for it and enjoy it. And so that was one of the biggest things that came up. And the most common thing I did find in the ladies who I talked to, they were more on the end of the spectrum as me not necessarily saying they, they didn't ever need it, or they were, you know, could go months without it. But more that it felt like a chore because they were overwhelmed and exhausted in their lives, that's a little bit more common. But that doesn't mean you're not normal if you're on a different end of the spectrum from that. So I just wanted to call that out and clarify that. That's why it's in here as part of the program. And I think it's a really important part of just figuring out in order to live your overall best life. The other thing before we jump in, I want to give credit where credit is due a lot of what is in here is based on a book I read called come as you are by Emily Nikolsky. And I will be linking that in the show notes, I highly recommend you read it because like we said, this could be a three month topic. And that book goes deep into all of this. So it's a great resource to start for more information on the stuff that I'm talking about. Now, this is just my experience that I'm sharing after having read the book and implemented the things plus after having implemented these with a lot of the ladies who I've worked with and coached. But it is a game changer. I also went through literally years of therapy on this too. So it's kind of a mixture of her book and my own stuff that I learned in therapy and what's worked for me and how I've implemented the things that I've learned in her book, and how they have worked for me, that's it's all a mixture of that, but I definitely want it to give her credit. So with that, I believe I will be splitting this up into two episodes, because I like to keep these short and sweet because we are busy. So what we're going to cover across the two episodes. As far as topics go, we've got five main topics we've got accepting your body, accepting your sexuality, and how you feel about sex, breaks and accelerators. And I'll talk about what those mean when we get there. Timing of sex and energy levels, and then avoiding feelings or looking for validation meaning like using sex to avoid feelings or using it seeking validation. So we're gonna get into all of that stuff. And we'll, we'll go deep as we get into all those topics. There's a lot more but that's just kind of how they rolled up. So let's start with the first topic, which is accepting and being confident in your body because it is such a massive step to improving your sex life. And we've covered this a lot in the program. We know it's such a massive step to just overall happiness in life and it's for so many of us. It's the outer layer of our onion, right? It's hard to even like dive deep into what else you need to work on because you're so consumed with what At last your body looking a certain way. And so hopefully, since you've been listening to all the other episodes, you've been working on those tools, right, identifying your negative thoughts about your body, and then redirecting those. And then we also talked about, you know, looking at yourself in the mirror, naked is like the advanced step. But maybe with clothes on to start and thinking, saying something positive or smiling, we talked about all that that's homework, in the pool from the previous episodes, well, this is really going to sort of build on that because it just is so important, being comfortable with your body for feeling comfortable, during sex, essentially. So let's just dive a little bit deeper into this. I know, this isn't like rocket science either. Just saying like, it's pretty obvious, but feeling sexy matters. We get in our own way, so often as it relates to this, because really, truly, worrying so much about the way that our body looks. It's almost more for other women than it is for men. In the real world, and real life, I believe that women we are harder on each other than men are on us. Now, I want to just caveat that a little bit, because a huge part of why we hate our bodies is men in the patriarchy, I don't want to like, lose sight of that. That's kind of up here on this macro level where men control the beauty industry, the fitness industry, and men have shaped women's roles in society, you know, from way back in the day when we were property and we were owned. So I'm not discounting that. Men are a lot of the cause of why we have body insecurities. But I really think like in real life, so when you're just out with your friends, or the people you know, or you're in a relationship, dating someone married to someone, whatever. I think women scrutinize women's bodies way more than men scrutinize women's bodies. And I have I have an example of this actually can't remember if I shared this in the relationship topic. I don't think I did. I have a friend who I actually loved how he described this. We were talking about this concept. And he was like, You're absolutely right. In fact, he said that the whole one to 10 scale thing is complete BS like being a 10. You know, if a woman is a 10, like super perfect and hot and whatever, you know, I'm holding up air quotes, society's definition of perfect and hot and all these things is like a 10, right on the one to 10 scale. He's like, there's no such thing as one to 10. He's like, there's either a zero or a one. There's, there's either I would or I wouldn't. And what he means by that is, I would have sex with her, or I wouldn't have sex with zero or one. And now that could sound really bad. But that's not how he meant that I want to caveat, he's a really, he's a really good guy. And he was we were having a real conversation about this. He wasn't like messing around, he was being very serious. And what he was trying to convey was, and most women are ones like, like most women, he would he would sleep with. And he what he was trying to say is that Yeah, certainly guys have types right guys have certain types of they're attracted to or not attracted to. But it's there's a small percentage of women who like fall so far out of that type that he wouldn't. And then there are other guys who would appreciate that same type of woman where, you know, he would rank more as the zero and either the zero or the one kind of scale. And so anyway, I don't like using scales at all to talk about women. I am not condoning any of that. It was just a great way like concept to think about this, in that I really think a lot of that scale stuff is more women comparing women now or there's also like jerky guys, like not good guys like player guys who are using that stuff and who really mean it. But I really think with good guys. I really believe this. They're not particular they're not expecting our bodies to be society's definition of perfect or supermodel like, they don't care if we have cellulite or what our boobs look like as far as like saggy slash not saggy or like, if we have like butt acne or they don't care if our skin's perfect and our bodies Perfect. Now, like I said, guys do have types. But here's the thing. If you're getting into a relationship with a guy, you're probably his type, like he's not going to pursue you or date you for longer than a couple of times if you don't overall meet his general type. So this whole concept of like, we have to look perfect for our men to be attracted to us. It's just not true. It's not actually a thing. What men really want is they want us to be confident enough in our bodies to be confident enough to be naked in front of them with the lights on like they're very visual. And this is not by the way, I'm stereotyping not all men, but I think most men fall into this category. Like they're very visual and they just want us to be confident enough to show them our bodies, right? That's a big part of it. They don't care about all the little perfectionist type things and the chances are really high that, if you're with this guy, you are his type, you fall into his type. And so you don't need to be worrying about the perfection after that. I think that's really, really important. There's another important thing too, that I want to just kind of come out and be really blunt about. If you you are with a man, and he is putting you down based on the way that you look, or they're making fun of you, or not making fun of you, and pressuring you in a serious way to look a different way, like if he's pressuring you for plastic surgery or to lose weight, or whatever it is, as it relates to the way that your body looks, that's a huge red flag. It's a huge and massive red flag. And I really think that's worth taking a good look at as to whether or not you should be with him. Because for the most part, good guys aren't doing that. Now, maybe it's happened once or twice, but I'm saying if this is like a theme, now let's address part of this, let's address like a different side of this a couple different sides, let's say, the the man that you're with, when you got with him, you've been with him a long time, and that when you got with him, your body looked a lot different. Like let's say you've gained a significant amount of weight. And he's saying, Well, I'm not attracted to you anymore, because you look completely different. Like maybe you were his type when you got together or got married, and you're not his type anymore, because your body has changed significantly. Now that could be a real thing, okay. And there couldn't be an instance where that doesn't make him a bad person, I have to say, I'm a little hesitant about saying that, like, if he really has completely fallen out of love with you, I'm like, It's questionable, but, but there could be a scenario where you know, a guy who's a good person, he feels that way. And there's just no attraction left for that reason.
If that's the case, like, I feel for you that that is, that's really difficult, but chances are, you're beating yourself up and you think there's something wrong with you, which that's just not the case. The reality is you deserve to be with somebody who is attracted to you and appreciates you within your current body. Okay. And so that's something to really dive into therapy with have a deep conversation with him about I would recommend, like I said, working with a therapist on that and seeing where that needs to go. Now there is another aspect of this, if you're the man that you're with is concerned for your health. So if you have, let's say it's the same scenario, you have gained a lot of weight and you're struggling to be able to do the activities you used to do, because you can't move around very well in your body. And that has affected the relationship because you can't do the things that you want, or that he wants to be able to do with you. That is one that is definitely like a lot more tricky, because he's not saying it's about the way that you look, he loves you, He just wants to protect your health and be able to do the things that you want to do together. Now, you know, because I've, I've really talked about this a lot over the course of the program and the podcast episodes, that weight is not a good indicator of health weight is not a good indicator of health. However, one thing that is an indicator of health is if you can't move around, and you can't do the things you want to do in your life, right? Because that's part of living your best in your happiest life. But we all know that pursuing weight loss fails 95% of the time. So the answer is not that you have to starve yourself and pursue weight loss, right? The answer is to start implementing all of the things we talked about in the program, take the focus away from weight loss and how you look and shifted over to healthy habits and small consistent actions over time. And eventually what needs to happen for your body to be able to do the things that you want to do will happen and sorry if that felt like a little bit of a tangent, but I just think all of that is so important about accepting and being confident in your current body because you deserve to be with somebody who loves and appreciates and is attracted to your current body regardless of how it looks. Okay, so hopefully that all came across. And that all makes sense. The other thing that I want to call out here is body parts. So first of all, and she talks about this in the book that come as you are book, as it relates to accepting and being confident in our current body. That means the body parts like our for lack of a better term, our private parts, our sexual body parts, okay? We want to be confident and comfortable with those two beyond just like our overall body those parts very specifically and to start. Most of us aren't even using the proper terms to describe the female anatomy. What I'm talking about is we say vagina, we say vagina and what we really mean is vulva because the vagina is the part that's inside you can't see it. The vulva is the part you see the vole vulva is the outer part of the female anatomy like What you see. And so part of accepting and being confident in our current body is starting with the right name. So this like when I read the book, this like blew my mind, I was like, she's so right. Nobody calls it the vulva. Everybody calls it the vagina, like, Let's all make it a point to call it what it's actually called. Because I think that is just so much more like accepting and respecting of our actual bodies using the the actual correct term. So anyway, sorry, get a little bit passionate about that, but, but part of it is
being comfortable with those parts of our body. So we can be confident enough to share those parts of our body and show those parts of our body to our sexual partners. Because some of you may hear that and be like, Well, duh, that's stating the obvious, but for me, and the religious and conservative culture that I grew up in, I had no idea that men actually were attracted to and wanted to see, like, what the gynecologist saw, I had no idea. Like, I had spent the better part of my marriage while at that point, not, not now. I mean, I'm almost 20 years. And yeah, I guess it was still the better part, like 10 plus years of my marriage, probably around 10 years, hiding those parts of me. And let me tell you a quick story. And this is the where the pornography piece comes in. So back when Mike and I were struggling with our marriage, I was like, pretty desperate to try to improve the relationship. So I was looking up all the different things. And I came across this training, who it was by this guy who he had surveyed, like 50,000 men it was it was like what men want. So it was a training for women to learn what men want and how to improve their relationships. And that sounds like really, like sexist and not okay. But it really it really wasn't that it was actually very thoughtfully and tastefully done. I really enjoyed it. And I learned a lot from it. But one of the assignments in there, he had assigned us to watch and I think I think it was like 10 minutes of pornography, pornography meant for straight men, because that was it was a training for women about what men what men want. So it was a learning experience. And he was not asking us to watch pornography to like, get addicted to it or anything, you know, like that. And he did recognize and called out that there are negative sides to pornography, right? That they show women, unrealistic. Women's bodies, they show sexual things that a lot of women aren't willing to do. Right? He called out all the sort of downsides. And there, I know, there are many other downsides, okay, under age, all the things like I know, I'm not trying to go there in this episode. But I understand that this assignment was meant for somebody like me, who I had been so sheltered in my life and didn't know a lot about sex, to learn what men actually want, like, like, why they're watching and what they're looking at. And I can tell you after watching for tenants, and I had never, I had never seen pornography in my whole life I never had because I wasn't really that interested in sex. I grew up in a religious community where it was considered very sinful and very bad and very wrong. And I just saw I just never had and I think I was probably 30 When I took this training, so 30 years old, had never seen it. And so I watched it, I did the assignment. And I watched it. And I couldn't believe the parts of women they were showing in the camera, like I couldn't believe that I didn't know that's what men wanted to see. Like, what the gynecologist sees what I said that to me was such an aha moment, I had no i, DIA. That's what he wanted. And this is where the graphic term comes in. One of the things that shocked me the most was that they were showing women's butts. And by butts, I mean like, like the butthole. And I'm sorry to use that language, but like, I'm not really a person who's going to seriously say anus. I'm sorry, that's just not who I am. But they were showing the butthole. And by the way, Mike knew I was going to do this, like I talked to him about it beforehand. And so after I came to him, and I was like, wait a minute, it's like I was so confused. I was like, you want to see our buttholes it was like, um, yeah, yeah, pretty much. Like I was so shocked by that I had, and I don't mean it, like in a judgy way. It wasn't judgey it was like genuine shock and surprise, like, I had no idea because to me that was just like, like, I didn't want to see his like, I didn't I had no interest in that. And, by the way, if if you do have interest in that, I'm not judging you. We're all different. It's all normal, right? But for me, that was just like so foreign. It's such a foreign concept to me, like I had no idea that that was a thing. And so, part of what she talks about in the book come as you are is that we all need to get a mirror, a handheld mirror and we all Need to get it out and spend some time looking at ourselves down there. Because that's the first step in getting more comfortable with those parts of your body. And the more comfortable we are with those parts of our body, the more comfortable we're going to be sharing those with our partners where because most of them, that's what they want. And I this, this has been such a funny thing as I've done my program and hat and told this to women in my program, because a lot of them have had the same reaction that I have. And maybe you think that is so naive, and you're like, I can't believe they didn't know that. And that's fine. And that's great. That means you didn't have such like a strict or conservative or taboo upbringing when it when it came to sex. And that's fabulous. Or maybe you learned it earlier in your life than I did. But like most of the women who I've shared this with, they had sort of similar upbringings. And they were also shocked, and a lot of them went and asked their husbands and sure enough, every single one of them was like, Yeah, I do want to see that. And that does turn me on. It's so and I'm not saying that's the truth for every man. Right? Of course, this is stereotyping. This is generalization. Like I'm sure there are some men who aren't interested in that. And that's all normal. And that's fine, too. But, but I really do think and, you know, Mike kind of confirmed with this and some of the other guys who that ladies have asked that probably most guys are interested in that. And it was just like, mind blowing. So the assignment there is to get a hand mirror, get a little bit more comfortable with yourself. I know that might make you feel awkward. It made me feel awkward at first too. But it really is the thing, just like when we talked about standing in front of the mirror naked, looking at your body, saying positive things, we want to do the same things with our sexual anatomy with those parts as well and get more comfortable with them. Okay, so that is a big part of accepting your body. So I just I really wanted to make sure that that was clear. Okay, so the only thing I want to cover before moving on to the next topic is talk about all this with your partner, ask him these questions. Ask him the whole question. See, what do you think so maybe you already know the answer, but like, I didn't so. So have a conversation. It's really, really important to talk about these things. Okay, so let's move on to the next topic. The next topic is all about accepting and embracing your sexuality. And in fact, you know what I think I'm going to do because we're approaching 30 minutes, I just checked my timer. Let's pause here. And in the next episode I'm going to talk about we're going to start off with the topic accepting and embrace embracing your sexuality. So get excited, kind of a funny place to end but I like to keep these short, like I said, because we're all busy. So I will talk to you about this in the next episode. Thanks so much for listening. As always, please leave a good recommendation. Tell your friends tell anyone you think would benefit because the goal is to have this reach as many women and help as many women as possible. So
thanks for listening I'll see in the next episode
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