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Have you ever felt that your sensitivities in a relationship are misunderstood or undervalued? Are you struggling with maintaining sexual desire in a long-term relationship, particularly amidst the chaos and demands of daily life?
Often, highly sensitive individuals find it challenging to balance their emotional and physical needs, leading to a decline in intimacy and connection over time. Understanding and addressing these unique sensitivities are essential for nurturing a fulfilling and passionate relationship.
In this episode, we delve into the intricacies of how highly sensitive people interact with intimacy and sexuality. We explore various models of sexual desire, emphasize the importance of context and emotional connection, and offer practical solutions for managing overstimulation. With insights on daily practices, de-armoring needs, and creating intentional connection time, this episode provides a holistic approach to reviving sexual desire and intimacy in long-term relationships, ultimately fostering deeper emotional bonds and mutual understanding.
Irene Fehr is a Sex & Intimacy Coach and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps couples make love & sex work in a long-term relationship and bring sex and passion into sexless ones. Weaving together somatic coaching, mindfulness, emotional communication work, and experience with the dynamics of highly sensitive women's sexual desire in a long-term relationship, Irene has developed and successfully applied her holistic “Connection Sex” framework to turn her client’s relationships around toward more passion, connection, and love.
In this episode
7:24 Irene Fehr’s personal journey and insights on highly sensitive people.
09:25 Understanding overstimulation and emotional disconnect in relationships.
13:19 Exploring the differences in sexual desire: Spontaneous vs. Responsive models and the role of high sensitivity.
23:21 How high sensitivity impacts male sexual desire and performance in relationships.
28:31 The importance of creating space for highly sensitive individuals in relationships, especially in sexual dynamics.
38:49 The importance of emotional and physical de-armoring for intimacy in Long-term relationships.
45:21 Balancing sexual desire in relationships: Overcoming expectations and building daily connection.
Your Check List of Actions to Take
- Recognize and validate your own sensitivity as legitimate, understanding that it is not a flaw but a trait that requires mindful management.
- Identify and communicate your sensory, emotional, and physical needs to create a conducive environment for intimacy, allowing time for both partners to prepare.
- Engage in daily activities that bring small pleasures, such as drinking tea or enjoying a favorite scent, to enhance overall arousal and sexual desire.
- Take 10-15 minutes alone after work to decompress and regulate your nervous system before re-engaging with loved ones.
- Develop a routine of non-sexual but intimate touching, such as hugging or cuddling, to foster connection and increase general physical comfort.
- Practice mindfulness by tuning into your body and appreciating sensual experiences in daily life to build a foundation of arousal.
- Create boundaries to avoid overstimulation, like limiting exposure to stressful environments and taking moments of quiet solitude when needed.
Mentioned
Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)
The Highly Sensitive Person Test
Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication
Connect with Irene Fehr
Websites: irenefehr.com
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCR09-jgEvU89NH9CwoJ2I1Q
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/irenefehr
Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins
Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship
Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins
Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/
Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins
Twitter: @DrJessHiggins
Website: drjessicahiggins.com
Email: [email protected]
About Today's Show
Irene, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me here again, the second time.
Yes. As we've met before, maybe people who are longtime listeners caught your first interview. For those that didn't, I'll make sure to put that link on today's show notes for reference. Today we're going to be talking about highly sensitive people. I know you tend to focus a little bit more on women specifically, and the topic we're going to be focusing on is sexuality, and how that might look different, and the experience in relationship around sexuality and when highly sensitive trait is at play. Is that right?
That's right, and particularly in a long-term relationship. Because something unique happens in a long-term relationship that particularly affects highly sensitive people, and so I'd love to zoom in on that.
Yes, let's do that. Before we do, Irene, I know you do so much, and what would you like people to know about you, what got you interested in looking at highly sensitive people, and/or both, of how this fits with sexuality? I know sexuality is a big focus of where you support people in intimate relationship.
Absolutely. So I'm a sex and intimacy coach, and for the last decade, my focus has been sexual desire and passion in a long-term relationship, particularly in situations where the woman “loses” her interest in sex or loses her libido. I'm a systemic thinker. So since the beginning of doing this work, I was always trying to look at themes, look at patterns, what's happening? How is this system that we call a relationship, how does it work in terms of sexuality, sexual desire, and other aspects of the relationship, like parenting and connection? So something I started to see happen is that women who lose their interest in sex, or for whom it's very difficult to get in the mood for sex in a long-term relationship, they tend to be highly responsive. So you have the responsive versus spontaneous sexual desire models that Emily Nagoski wrote about, and women who tend to lose sexual desire in a long-term relationship tend to be extremely responsive.
Which is probably quite the opposite of what we might imagine on first blink.
Exactly, and also, it doesn't look that way when you meet them, myself included. Because how I got into this work is that I lost my desire for sex in my marriage and ended up in a sexless marriage. So I had experience, and I have a lot of interest in this area, because I went through that. So it doesn't look like that when we are dating. There may be some differences. Highly sensitive people—again, myself being one—are more sensitive, of course, to sensory inputs and get overwhelmed. There's also some other elements. But generally, there's not a huge difference.
But when you look at the length of a long-term relationship, it could be a couple of years, or it could be a couple of decades, there are huge, huge differences. Again, women tend to be even on the extreme end of responsiveness. It happens in two areas. One is certainly emotional responsivity, which is another word for sensitivity, and needing emotional connection. Then there's a second one, which is sensitivity to different stimuli around us. So that is noise, that is activity, that is people around, that is having to do 20 million things during a day and switching tasks. Of course, children and being over-touched from having children. This high sensitivity means there is overstimulation. And when it comes to sexual desire, sex is stimulation. That's what it is. It's sexual stimulation. So you have sensory overstimulation, and you have, if you will, emotional under-stimulation, meaning there's not a lot of emotional connection. You have lives that are being lived in parallel. You only talk about the practicalities, because you're busy with work and children and all of that. So again, you have sensory overstimulation, you have emotional under-stimulation for women, and that is a very bad recipe for sexual desire. Because we cannot pile on more stimulation on top of overstimulation. There needs to be sensory regulation, nervous system regulation. And you need more emotional connection, which you're missing. It comes into a perfect storm.
So I started to see these patterns, but I wasn't thinking about it in terms of highly sensitive people. Then I just had this light bulb. All of the women who come to me—including, again, myself, who experienced this in my own relationship—are highly sensitive. So I started to map what is happening to highly sensitive qualities, and there's so much overlap. Knowing this, of course, provides more information to work with this. But also, for a lot of women, it provides relief, like: Oh, I'm not crazy, I'm not broken and crazy thinking that I need to be somehow else, that there is a reason for that. So it opens up working with this in a different way.
Yes, there's so many things that you're saying. I want to orient with you a bit, just to get a little more of the lay of the land here. Because it does seem like we're talking about some aspects or traits in human experience that overlap, that affect the lived experience, especially as we're talking about intimacy and sexuality. So we're talking about the highly sensitive person, as you're describing, one that is absorbing and picking up on a lot of information. I know you could talk probably a whole episode, if not a whole series, on highly sensitive people. Elaine Aron has devoted a lot of this research, and one in five people tend to resonate or identify as, or would qualify as highly sensitive person. You're also talking about, when you talk about Emily Nagoski, I've read her book, or parts of her book. So when you talk about the differences, do you want to spell that out a little bit, for people who maybe don't know her work?
Absolutely. So what she talked about in her book called Come As You Are, is that there are basically two different models of sexual desire. I'll start with the first one, because this one is how we present sexuality in a general way, in a stereotypical way. This is how sexuality is presented in the media, and how we, again, think of what sexuality is, which is the spontaneous model. You spontaneously want to have sex. For example, you see your partner, or you see an attractive person, and your sexual desire arises and you're ready to have sex. The thing is that it's the model that most men resonate with—not even all, but most men resonate with. A lot of it has to do with the physiological ability to do that. So they are able to get aroused anywhere from within 20 seconds to couple of minutes, and be fully ready to have intercourse and potentially orgasm within another couple of minutes. So the physiology of men, driven by testosterone, allows for that. Again, because society has used this model to basically denote that's how sexuality is, this is how sexual desire should be, we think of other models as something being wrong or something less than.
When you look at most women, most women identify with the responsive sexual desire model, which is that you need to have stimulus to respond to, that is positive, that is playful, that is arousing, that is sexy. And from there, sexual desire develops. It's cultivated. It doesn't happen like this. It doesn't arise out of nowhere. And with this, too, there is a much longer timeline. It's not, I have a kiss and I'm ready for sex. No, there needs to be a series of positively stimulating experiences, usually in some progression, with some increasing intensity and pleasure. So that's the responsive sexual model. If you look at what a person with a responsive sexual model is responding to, it is absolutely connection. It is their own state of being, whether they're overwhelmed and exhausted, or they have space for sexual desire and for sexual connection. It is touch, whether it fits where they are in that moment.
“The kind of touch that you would offer someone at the end of a busy day will be very different than the kind of touch that you would offer to someone two weeks into a vacation. So you have to be very contextual.”
This is where people with responsive sexual desire tend to be very sensitive to these contexts, in the connection and touch in context.
A woman who I interviewed, I'll put her link on today's show notes too, her name is Martha Kauppi, I don't know if you've come across her work. But she was more coming from the medical field and really looking at sexual health and all the layers, the hormones, the mind and the state of thinking, the relationship functioning and the health. Also, just this concept that we often enter into the sexual, intimate space in intimate, long-term relationship, that we have these preconceived notions. It's like, we don't necessarily approach that space from a luxuriating standpoint. She also talked about the importance of rolling consent, that we feel into what feels good. Do I want to do this? It's not like this binary, I say yes, and then everything we're doing, I'm good with. One of the things that really stuck out also, you may be familiar with her, she does a lot with mindfulness and women and their sexual desire.
Lori Brotto.
Yes, thank you. One of the things I got from her interview was that often, women specifically, to your point, expect that desire comes first and then they feel aroused. She's like, oh no, no, no. You want to be mindful of your body and your pleasure and where you feel aroused, where you feel stimulated, individually throughout your life, in the daily living. Then when you can tune into that arousal, then you'll have desire. Does that fit with what you're saying?
Absolutely. And what you mentioned about getting in tune with yourself and what's happening in your body, we can have far more effect on our own desire if we were able to, obviously, take care of the fatigue and the overwhelm. But on the opposite side, to also notice what feels good. It could be, you're drinking your favorite cup of tea and it's enjoying the sensory experience. Or, for example, putting a candle on that you like and smelling that. Or wearing your favorite sweater and touching that. Certainly, like in a shower, noticing: Oh, I'm relaxed under hot water. Those moments can then help you become even more aroused. Because appreciating arousal is arousing in and of itself, and then desire can start to happen.
“To wait for that kind of hit that we get when we have just met someone new and we're really attracted to them, in the long-term relationship, that's unrealistic. You will be waiting for the rest of your life, and it's never going to come. Because it needs to be cultivated.”
Well, and this is so critical, to your point, if one knows themselves to be very responsive. If we're going to talk about a heterosexual couple, and we're talking about female here, I would love to include, if you have anything to say about what you know about men's experience in being highly sensitive as it relates to sexuality. Because I know that it is likely different, and I've heard clients talk about that it's different than maybe someone who doesn't identify with being highly sensitive.
But to this dynamic, if we're looking at a heterosexual couple and the female being highly responsive in those early years, it's just like having a blast. The sexual chemistry is off the charts, and it's just super fun, and it's all going really beautifully. Then when the demands of life and all the things you're describing, perhaps having a child or parenting or just business, whatever the things are that make that overstimulation or the mental load of what could be overstimulation just generally, that when they enter into the sexual space, or just even look at their sexual health together, it just seems like I can appreciate what a puzzle this will be for people. Like, I know myself to be very responsive, and yet I feel a block. I feel a barrier. I feel unable or uninterested, and almost have to protect myself from that space.
Yeah, and that's one of the main responses of particularly women, but also men, of this protection piece. Like I said, the overstimulation aspect of being a highly sensitive person is really a major block to sexuality. Because, again, worth repeating, it doesn't make sense to seek out more stimulation if you're overstimulated, and that can feel very confusing. Without knowing that, without understanding that, that can feel very confusing. Oh, I am responsive. I know I have that in me. Why am I not responding? Or, more than that, why am I responding in the opposite direction and really shutting down, protecting myself, making all these overtures, these patterns to actually block intimacy, like avoid touch, hide. So many things that I hear from women in the couples that come to me, is they avoid showering naked, because that can send the wrong signal, because they know that they're not in a space to engage sexually. They go to sleep first, so that it looks like: I can't be bothered, I'm already asleep. So there are all these patterns that get developed to protect themselves from it, and these are coping mechanisms. But what's really important is to understand what is it that you need to take care of yourself to minimize the overstimulation, or to have time and space to regulate yourself.
Yes, I feel so much empathy for the person that is responding in this coping strategy, and maybe very much loves their partner, wants to be bonded and wants to share in sexual connection, and yet is experiencing this need to protect or block a bit. Now, before we go there, is there anything you want to say about men that are highly sensitive, that might experience sexual intimacy in a long-term relationship differently? I know that's not a major focus of your area.
Yeah. So where there's a huge amount of similarities between men's and women's experience, is that being highly sensitive in a relationship makes you more responsive. So if a man, let's say, generally has spontaneous sexual desire in a long-term relationship, if he has a lot of stimulation in his world, that stimulation will make him more lean towards the responsive end. So that can be also very confusing. Generally, he may think like: Oh, I'm quite a sexual person, why am I shutting down, why am I not really interested? So being highly sensitive leans both men and women towards the more responsive model. Men less so, especially if they didn't start with responsive. Women, of course, again, they're responsive, and then they end up being extremely responsive. And what that looks like for both genders is that it's not being in that headspace, not being available, not wanting to touch or to engage emotionally. Because you can also have emotional overstimulation, and to have more of that, especially if a couple is in crisis, to have more on top of that, they're not going to want to. So there's, again, a lot of similarities there. Where it is different for men in particular is that, let's say they've gotten past the gate of desire and they do want to have sex, being highly sensitive makes them more liable to experience performance issues. So they might not be able to get hard. Again, that's overstimulation.
And seems counterintuitive.
Exactly. But because the body is so stimulated, it doesn't want to respond to more stimulus. Or on the other end, it would be overstimulated to an erection, but then cuming within seconds, because the body has no capacity to hold that stimulation. So these kind of performance issues for men are different than for women. Because for most women, they can get through the gateway of desire, they just don't want to be touched. They don't want to then go there.
Thank you for that. Thank you for giving some example around what this could look like, both with having difficulty maintaining an erection, and also premature ejaculation, both relate to overstimulation. Then when you were talking about from spontaneous, leaning more towards responsive, does it also look like, for the male experience too? I sometimes associate responsiveness with the external circumstances being just right. I don't know if you know what I'm saying, but having it be just right. Do you feel that that also happens for men, if they're highly sensitive and they're turning from more spontaneous towards more responsive, they're wanting the circumstance? I mean, it relates to stimulus, right?
Absolutely. There could be circumstances such as, I can't have the noise of the TV on, for example, it needs to be off. Or at the end of a busy day, I'm not available for sex. It needs to be on a Sunday, when we have had a day off on Saturday, and then I could be available on Sunday. It does create this need to have a perfect context. Because otherwise, these other things add to that oversimulation. Or you need that buffer, like I said, you need a Saturday before you can engage on Sunday, because you need time to decompress, to help the nervous system to calm down and regulate.
Part of my empathy a moment ago was both for the person that may not know that this is what's happening in their system, and then the pain around like, why am I not feeling sexual? Just kind of thinking there's something wrong and not knowing what to do about it, you mentioned confusion. And then, also feeling empathy in the relationship. I think even when people have more awareness, there's still something collectively that we buy into. I'll just speak for myself, that I can feel the pressure, as a partner, of like: Oh, I need to help, or there's something I'm not doing or I should be doing, or that there's some level of responsibility. Or I feel that from my significant other, that if he doesn't see me being easily aroused or experiencing desire, he might take that personally. And if this is at play, it has no relationship or any correlation to how much I find you attractive, how much I love you, how much I want to be with you intimately. Yet, this can get very muddy.
Yes. Actually, what you're saying is a really perfect segue to mentioning, I have called these three needs pre-sex needs, because it's very important to take care of these things so that you don't end up in the situation that you're describing. Because once there, it's very hard to get out of it. It's very hard for the person experiencing it to get out of it. It's very hard for the other partner, because they're confused and wondering what they can do. So it's really important, when you have at least one partner in the relationship who's highly sensitive, to make sure that both them individually, and the couple together, meet these pre-sexual needs. I'd love to share more.
I'm like, what are they? Like, let's set the table, let's be proactive and really help create space for this to be more available.
Exactly, that's the key piece. It's availability. It's availability, both on the sensory level and the emotional level and the physical level. I'll talk about them in order. Because, also, order here is really important. I mean, think of it as the flower opening up. You have this bound up flower, all the petals are tightly bound up, and then it starts to open up. Well, it starts to open up from the exterior. You don't dig in to the middle. It's from the exterior. So this order that I'm going to speak about has to happen in this way, not reversed.
So the first pre-sex need is something that is, I would say, primarily the responsibility of the highly sensitive person, but there is a lot of room for the partner to come in. That is, to transition from overstimulation, to have time between segments in the day to regulate your own nervous system. So an example of it would be, let's say, coming home from work at 5:00, and before entering the house, taking 5-15 minutes to sit in the car, music off, just to tune into yourself. Have a quiet meditation to come back into yourself, in the quiet, because that's really important. That allows, again, the nervous system to regulate and make space for whatever comes in the next segment. Without it, you're just piling on and on and more and more stuff on top, and at some point, the person gets overwhelmed and gets angry and irritated. That's one of the signs of overstimulation. So these transitions are really important.
So let's say, again, a really important one would be between work and coming home. Another one could be between, let's say, putting the kids to bed and switching over to connecting with your partner. That's, again, another time to, maybe, I don't know, take a shower or a bath, to come into your body, again, to regulate your nervous system. That's incredibly important. Again, primarily, this is a responsibility of the highly sensitive partner, and at the same time, the partner needs to be involved. There needs to be an agreement. Hey, when I'm coming home from work, I need that 15 minutes. Don't come to get me in the car. Don't get angry if I don't walk right in. Budgeting that time together, taking over responsibilities and agreeing that the other partner will take care of whatever needs to be taken care of when you are taking your time. So it needs to be a partnership approach. Otherwise, when the responsibility is all on you, it's so easy to fail. It's so easy to give up and be like: Oh, this is too hard. Both people need to be on board. So that's the first one, and again, very important, because it creates space for the other ones.
Can I add a little story here?
Yeah, please.
It's so interesting when I interview people, and I've only had a handful on highly sensitive person, I often am like: I don't know if I am, I think I am. I have taken the kind of self-test. I remember interviewing someone and she's like, if you resonate with many of them and you think you might be, you probably are. Just my early environment required me to be so mobile and so resilient in a lot of ways, so I think I learned some strategies.
Anyway, all this to say, the more stability and health that I get in my own system, the more I recognize how sensitive I am. To this point, I'm thinking of a few times in my history with my husband, where we've done some relaxation or even meditated, and I feel aroused. Not like, I'm hot and heavy and super ready to go, but more of like, the desire and the interest starts to emerge when prior, I do think I have a tendency to pile on. So this giving space, and I recognize if I'm able to go to yoga or do stretch or walk in nature, not from this task place, but from a more embodied place, I am so much more receptive.
I can share more stories. I guess I will say one more thing. It relates to a few other models. But I'll just say, my husband and I were doing the wheel of consent. It's this giving and receiving exercise. I'll share a little bit more later, if it's helpful. But Eddie Martin's work, which is great. I had also interviewed someone with the erotic blueprints, and I was recognizing I might be more energetic. So in this exercise, for people listening, there is the giving and the receiving. There's different layers. I was in the role of asking for what I wanted from my husband. I've never asked this before from him, Irene. I don't even think that I knew it. I just wanted him to do energetic touch, like, not touch my body. And I actually started to cry, I was like: Oh, this is exactly what I wanted, but I didn't really know. It speaks to the sensitivity, I can even feel the welling of the tears now, just how helpful it was for my system to have that space. So this is a place, to your point, that I was able to recognize and ask for it. But also, I was asking it of my partner, and he was willing to meet me in that and really gave me that. So it was very, very helpful. So I just wanted to share this space.
Yeah, and I love hearing that. It is so beautiful, what you're describing. To me, connecting to our deep humanity, which is sensitive. I mean, look at how babies are born. We're just this bundle of sensitivity and softness and tenderness. And connecting to that, it makes me melt.
Yeah, so thank you.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that too. To your point too, when you said that more and more you realized that you are sensitive, I believe way more people are sensitive than they realize. Part of it is that we've numbed ourselves to survive in this world, especially in the modern world, where everything is moving so quickly, where so much is required of us.
“Just on an average day, a modern person sees so many more people than people used to see in a month. Just literally passing by us, in cars, in a store, in an office. And we have, to survive, numb ourselves, to deal with that overstimulation.”
Myself included. My example is, I used to live in New York City and loved it when I was young, and went to university there and for a bit after. Then I moved out to California and lived pretty rurally for most of the time. Then I went back to New York City, and I got there, and it hit me, it's so overstimulating. My whole body actually was stimulated. I was like, how am I sexually stimulated when I'm just walking through Manhattan? It was a moment where I realized: Oh, I've been softening myself, I've been de-armoring myself. I've been getting in touch with my sensitivity and cultivating it, and the armor is no longer there to protect me from all of this. So I can do big cities now, but literally, for two or three days, and then I need to take two days off, because I cannot handle any more of that. So again, to what you were saying, I think more people would recognize that they're sensitive. Because, again, we have to recognize how much armoring we've developed, how much we've numbed ourselves.
Even as we label or use the term highly sensitive person, in this upper range, if we look at it on a continuum, everyone has sensitivity, and there's a continuum or spectrum here of levels. Also, as a human, we are perceiving, we have neuroception, we're relating to the others around us. That if we're expending a lot of energy to process all the stimulus, perhaps, as we're talking about a desire or sexuality, that it's almost as if we are expending a lot of resources. And it's difficult to have more resource, more space, to your point, to be able to tune into this other place. And also, that space requires some safety. That if we're armoring up or needing to push away to get that sense of space, perhaps it doesn't feel as safe to really be as vulnerable or be as sensitive.
Absolutely. That's a perfect segue to the second pre-sex need, which is the de-armoring that needs to happen on the safety level, on the emotional level, and on presence. So this is about really taking the time to connect with a partner. So you have more space, and now it's the connection that, again, for most couples in a long-term relationship rarely happens on a daily basis. Because it's all about the practicalities of life. And here, this is about getting vulnerable, opening up. Even, let's say you are exhausted and you are tired. But to name that, and to be vulnerable about it, and to open your hearts to each other, to know that you're there for each other. So this is incredibly important, and for women in particular, because there's usually a bigger weight put on emotional connection for women. But again, for highly sensitive men as well, it becomes more of a need that they would have otherwise. That de-armoring starts to happen: Oh, my partner is here with me. They're safe. We're connecting. There's eye contact, there is curiosity and a desire to listen to each other and understand each other's experience. It's incredibly important.
Then the third one is the other level of de-armoring, which is the physical de-armoring. So again, let me start from the beginning. You have now more space, because you have done this inner regulation. You have the safety and this sense that your partner is there with you, they're not a stranger that you saw a couple of days ago, but that they're there with you. So now there's more availability to be touched, and some of that numbness that I mentioned before, that armoring can start to come down. Here, progression is very important. So starting with, it could be supportive touch, like being held in a hug, to more affectionate touch, to more sensual touch, to then sexual touch. Because again, you have to go through these gates, those de-armoring gates. It's very important.
“Again, especially for women, physiologically, there's an opening process that needs to, and that happens from the periphery, that happens externally. Going straight for the sexual does not work for women, because all the gates will go back up or close up.”
So it's very important to do that. When I teach different ways of de-armoring, I know that most women don't give themselves permission to really, really be with how much time they need, and how much of maybe, again, being held or being touched in an affectionate or sensual way. They're kind of like: Oh, it's been five minutes, let's go to sexual. Because there's this guilt that I'm taking too long, or there is fatigue. It's 10 o'clock at night, let's get this over with. Whereas, I know for myself that that is a long period of time. But then things start to go up. But to really give yourself permission to be in this de armoring stage for as long as you need to, that is one of the hardest things for us women to do.
I was interviewing, you may know her name too. I'm so sorry I'm referencing all these different interviews. I think I've never really done this before, but it's just all relating to what you're saying. She teaches in Switzerland, and she's written several books. She wrote Love Keys, and her name is fleeting me at the moment.
Diana Richardson, who wrote the book Slow Sex, which is an incredible book.
Yes, I love we could play charades. You're helping me here, I appreciate it. She said two hours minimum. I could hear people and myself being like, that just seems way different than what I give space for. Because I think if we're thinking about those early years, it just happened effortlessly. It was at the end of the night. It was easy, it was fun, and it just was perfect, as far as this sense of how things flow, if we're going to judge as perfect or bad. But that really, she is inviting this space of two hours minimum.
Yeah. It's a little bit misleading, because we think that it happens spontaneously in the beginning, but it doesn't. Because we are thinking about each other, so there's that connection. We are texting each other, or in previous generations, calling each other, spending evenings and nights talking to each other on the phone. If we're together, we're there to be with each other, to engage. All of that adds up to all this amazing, delicious stimulation in the right way, and the connection.
Again, fast forward to long-term relationship. You're talking only about the kids or work and problems. You are connecting in the five minutes that you have before you fall asleep. You are not thinking about each other because you have a million other things to think about. Of course, the responsive person is going to respond negatively to them.
“In a way, it's common sense to lose your libido in this situation. There's nothing broken. You're just responding to a lack of the right kind of stimulus, and you're responding to the abundance of the wrong kind of stimulus.”
Oh my gosh, I'm so, so grateful. You wrote a book about this, right?
In the process, yes.
In the process, okay, and you're teaching about this. This just seems so, so important. I know that we had you on the show quite a while ago, maybe a couple years, and then this is our third time trying to do this interview. I'm so grateful we did.
So I have a question for you. It relates to people who may be experimenting with creating more space, but there's almost this dynamic that has either been so repeated in the couple. Like in a long-term relationship, where, in this case, a heterosexual couple, where the man is a little bit more ready, spontaneous, is taking it a little personally that she's not as interested or not as responsive. He's compliant, he's supportive, he wants to create more space. But it's almost this hover, whether or not she's perceiving it and it's actually not happening, or he is doing it and he's trying to be really respectful, but he also is holding his own desire. So it's almost as if, even if they were to give it two hours of the sequencing of holding, cuddling. But it's this tone of expectation, or when are you going to be ready, or now? That, in of itself, I've heard, will shut the gates. That sense of pressure that the gate is going to open, closes the gate. So how do you help couples that are in this dynamic of like, I can feel you whether or not it's perceived and not their own imagination, or whether or not it's real, or some combination? I can feel you waiting for me to be aroused, and that, in of itself, is a shutdown.
Yeah, absolutely. This is so real and so important. One of the things that helps with that is to actually work with someone to guide you through this process. Because exactly, this couple is going to end up in this situation, actually several times, and they're going to get frustrated, and they're going to conclude: Oh, this is not working. See, we followed her advice, and it's not working. The key piece is to work with someone who's going to help troubleshoot little pieces, whether it's mindset, whether it's something physical that you can do. That's what I do with couples where, like I said, when they try it on their own, it's so easy to get frustrated. But they don't see their blind spots, they don't have the answers of how to deal with these.
The key piece is that it's creating daily practices, not spending two hours once a week and think that this is going to solve the thing. When I work with couples, I teach them daily practices that help them fill their cup throughout the week, to get to Saturday, and that helps with all these pre-sex needs being met daily. Then you end up not having to deal with the scenario that you described. It short-circuits the cycle much earlier than in the moment when that frustration is there, and that's the key piece.
Yeah, the way I'm hearing this is two things. One is, it possibly gives more repetition to have a new learning, a new building of something, a new pattern, and letting some of the old atrophy a bit. So you're getting some reps in before you have this expectation of like, we're going to have. And who's even saying that the end goal is intercourse? It could be something totally different. That could be part of the scenario of mindset like, we're going to take whatever expectations or whatever script we have, and we're going to be in the unknown. That might be really helpful. Then the second thing I was thinking too, is that there is more opportunity for non-sexual touch, that there is this experience of love and nurturing and bonding that isn't so closely associated with orgasm, or whatever perceived goal of sexual intimacy is.
Yeah. Even to add to that, one of the coolest things that I see with almost all my couples, is that when there is a set of daily practices that the couple do, that involves physical connection, especially that has a sensual touch component, what happens over time is that the woman's bucket starts to fill up. So it's not no longer I fill up and then I release something, I fill up and I release. But it's more like, I fill up and I fill up, and I release a little bit, but I fill up and I fill up and I fill up. So over time, her sexual desire cup starts to overflow, and she wants to have a lot more sex.
Whereas it's the reverse for men. For so many men, if not really most men in the world, sex is the only way that they can get touch. Their sexual desire is not just sexual desire, it's also: I am so touch-starved that the only place I know where to get it is sex. So here they are, their cup is filling up with touch and sensuality and also connection and closeness, and then sexual desire, again, stops being so like: I need this, I'm so frustrated. To: Oh, I want it, I would like it. But I can wait. I'm not so rabidly obsessed about it. Their sexual desire starts to taper off, and so they meet. The woman's goes up, and the man's comes down from these rabid levels, to then meet each other. It's a beautiful self-sustaining cycle.
Yes, oh my goodness! Well, I realize you have so much to share. I hope that we've covered what you've wanted to share with us here today. How do people get in touch with your work, what you're teaching, what you're offering?
Yes, so my website is IreneFehr.com. There's a wealth of information on sexual desire in a long-term relationship, being an HSP person, and also about what I call connection sex. So everything that I talked about today, I've weaved into this framework, this approach to sex in a long-term relationship, that allows you to sustain desire, sustain passion. So all of that is there, as well as, of course, ways to work with me.
Wonderful. Well, I love that you offer so much on your website around how to work with you, and also just giving people real scope of what your focus is around connection sex. If people go to your website and they want to work with you, are you willing to share what people might find?
Sure. So my work is very comprehensive and inclusive, in the sense that it's a holistic approach to sexual desire. It's not something that can be looked at only as what happens in the bedroom. So with that in mind, I work with couples for a minimum of a year, and I take them through a process, a journey. There are several steps to figuring out if we have the right fit, both for me with potential clients, and for them to get a sense of, again, if they resonate with what I offer. So it starts with a free consultation call, and then we will talk and see what happens next. But there are, again, several steps, because it is really important to know that the fit is right, and then there's trust, and then there is connection.
Yes. Well, it sounds like a real commitment and an investment in this comprehensive, holistic approach to really have the safety to do these deeper dives, to really get the implementation too. So it's the learning and the process, and also, as you said, iteration. Sometimes we have to look at what's operating, what's maybe interfering, and then once we get the rhythm and the pattern and we implement and get the integration of that, that takes time too.
Yeah, and that's really where most of the value that clients get is in this iteration. They tried it once. They tried it a couple of times. It didn't work as expected. Let's see what happened. Let's troubleshoot, try this. Then it gets a little better, then they still get stuck. Okay, let's try that, and then it just progressively gets better. Part of my approach is that I stay connected with clients between sessions, because they are getting stuck. So again, that's where most of the value is, that I go into the trenches with them, we figure this out, and once they get a hang of these habits and they can get themselves out of being stuck, they are empowered for the rest of their lives.
Yes. Well, I hope that you finish writing your book. I can appreciate how many people will want to utilize your framework, whether or not in the way of just learning and trying to implement, and then also working with you if that does feel like a right fit all around. I'll make sure to have your link to your website on today's show notes. Is there anything else you want to mention before we sign off here?
I just want to thank you for this wonderful space, this rich interview. I want to thank you for giving space to this topic, because we really need to be talking more about highly sensitive people and high sensitivity. We mostly focus on all the things that are kind of difficult about that.
I also want to say a few words about the gifts of being highly sensitive. Part of it is passion and intensity. Part of it is the ability to go deep in connection. Part of it is the ability, when you're highly sensitive, to be very present with what is. Sensuality, being in our bodies. So all of these gifts, we need to be talking more about that.
“Destigmatizing the word sensitivity from, this is someone who's high-maintenance and demanding, to actually, they're just like a beautiful flower. They need specific soil. They need specific context.”
And they bloom, and they blossom beautifully.
Exactly, and have these beautiful gifts. So thank you for giving the space to that.
Yeah, you're welcome. I share what you're describing and the importance of it. So yes, thank you again. It's been really a great time and a pleasure to have you.
Yes, as always. Thank you so much, Jessica.
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