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About this episode

Do you ever feel like intimacy and sexuality come with a set of rules no one can quite explain, and yet everyone expects you to follow? So many of us find ourselves struggling to meet society’s expectations around relationships, sex, and what it means to be fulfilled, only to discover that the realities of our experiences rarely match the myths we’ve been told. From changing hormones to evolving desires and the pressure to fit into cultural norms, finding authentic connection while honoring our true selves can feel overwhelming and, at times, isolating.

In this episode, we dive deep into the complexities of redefining intimacy and sexuality beyond outdated scripts and rigid expectations. The conversation explores how our needs and desires naturally shift over time, why it’s crucial to look inward and tune into our individual truths, and how to break free from patterns and pressures that simply don’t serve us. Through lived stories, practical insights, and compassionate guidance, listeners are invited to reflect, challenge ingrained beliefs, and embrace the freedom to write their own definitions of love, connection, and well-being, whatever stage of life or relationship they’re in.

Dr. Erika Schwartz is the founder of Evolved Science in New York City, specializing in bio-identical hormone therapy for health optimization, disease prevention, and longevity. With over 30 years of experience, she advocates for a holistic approach to wellness, linking hormones with diet, sleep, and stress management. A best-selling author and expert in functional medicine, Dr. Erika frequently appears in major media and hosts the Redefining Medicine podcast. She is committed to empowering patients and transforming healthcare.

Episode Highlights

04:43 The role of individual work in relationship dynamics.

08:06 Integrating holistic health and relationship well-being.

11:59 Challenging cultural myths about intimacy and sexuality.

15:03 Navigating life stages: hormones, relationships, and expectations.

19:48 Breaking away from conventional life paths.

21:06 Exploring sexual fluidity and honoring individual choices.

25:57 The importance of listening to your body and biology.

28:01 Complexities of tradition vs. authentic alignment.

34:59 Embracing change: Letting life and relationships evolve.

47:20 Rewriting relationship commitments and living authentically.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Pause and center yourself: Regularly take a few deep, intentional breaths to ground yourself and become more present in your relationship.
• Spend five minutes daily sitting quietly and tuning in to what you truly want and need, beyond external expectations.
• Challenge cultural myths about intimacy, partnership, and sexuality—ask yourself what actually resonates with you.
• Initiate honest conversations with your partner about your evolving needs, desires, and any shifts you’re experiencing.
• Embrace Change: Remind yourself that your preferences and relationship needs may change over time, and give yourself permission to adapt accordingly.
• Regularly check if your actions are supporting your true relationship goals, and make adjustments to move closer to alignment.
• Prioritize your well-being: Pay attention to factors like sleep, stress, diet, and exercise, since these impact both your health and your intimate relationships.
• Allow your passion and authentic desires to be stronger than your fears; use them as your motivation for personal and relational growth.

Mentioned

The Intimacy Solution (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

The Hormone Solution (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Redefining Medicine (podcast)

Evolve in Love – Next level – Book Your Discovery Call

Evolve in Love (program)

Essentia’s website (*Affiliate link)

Stratami™ Organic Mattress (This is the mattress we purchased) (*Affiliate link)

Classic REM5 Active Mattress – (The mattress we wish we could have gotten for the cooling feature) (*Affiliate link)

Connect with Dr. Erika Schwartz

Websites: drerika.com | eshealth.com

Facebook: facebook.com/drerika.schwartz | facebook.com/evolvedscience

X: twitter.com/drerika

YouTube: youtube.com/user/DrErika

Instagram: instagram.com/drerikaschwartz | instagram.com/eshealth

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/erika-schwartz-md-987666 | linkedin.com/company/evolved-science

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]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Erika, thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much, Dr. Jessica Higgins. So nice to meet you.

Likewise. We've been chatting here, and I just get such a sense that you can address so many topics as it relates to health, wellbeing, and especially the medical field, and just how, as humans, we're negotiating our wellbeing and perhaps counteracting misinformation. For today's topic, we're going to be focusing on intimate relationship, as that's what the show is about. I know you recently, I don't know how recently, but wrote a book, The Intimacy Solution, and you focus on supporting people negotiating love, intimacy, sex. Where would you like to start, just for people getting to know you here? How is this a part of your work and how is this important to you?

Well, thank you so much for having me on your show, first of all. Second of all, I'm so happy you want to talk about The Intimacy Solution, because it's one of eight books I wrote. It came out about six years ago. The thing is that I believe in taking care of the whole patient. I don't look at a patient as an organ system. I work with hormones, obviously, with peptides, with all kinds of really cutting-edge things. I teach at A4M. So there's a lot of stuff that I do that's specific. But when I sit with a patient sitting in front of me, I care about the patient and I want to know everything about them. One of the most important things is the relationships and what stresses them. I always say, what are your stressors? Well, there's the kids, there's work, and there's the relationship. 

So I think that that's why I wrote the book, because I listen to patients all day long. It was a matter of actually saying something that no one seems to be saying. I was watching what you're saying, and it's great, and I love it. I think that you certainly have your finger on the pulse. But I think, at different ages, intimacy and sexuality represent different things. If we try to take intimacy and sexuality and put them together, or focus on one or the other at various ages, we'll miss the boat.

So what this book, The Intimacy Solution, is about, is my patients, because they're stories from my patients, with some of them actually using their own names and some of them not, so we changed them to respect them. What they tell us is how, in your teens, things are very different than in your 40s and 50s, etc. So what I did is, I did the same thing I did with The Hormone Solution, which was, hormones change at all ages, so you have to understand how they affect you. So intimacy and sexuality change at all ages, and you have to understand how to put them together. I always learn everything from my patients, so they told me. That's how that book came to be. It wasn't even thought. Honestly, I never thought about it. Then all of a sudden, my publisher said to me, why don't you write about intimacy? Because all you're talking about is sexuality and intimacy, and most doctors feel uncomfortable.

I'm a conventional internal medicine doctor who took a turn 10 years into it. I started by running a major trauma center, and then I left because I wanted relationships with the patients. Then over the following 9-10 years, I realized that internal medicine was a joke, that what I was doing was just ping-ponging patients and waiting for something to go wrong. That's when I changed and I started. This was in the 90s. Nobody knew anything about it. So that's when I started making it about learning what the patient is.

I appreciate this perspective of the system, the whole system, and just looking at perhaps the wholeness of your patient or perhaps even just the cultures that we live in, and how our beliefs and our expectations inform the decisions we make and how we interact. I appreciate you bringing up just the interconnectedness here. There's so much research about how the intimate connection in a bond, like a marriage or a partnership, I mean, we can't even do it justice here to even name it in a couple of sentences about the impact on health and wellbeing or preventing illness, or just the immune system, or the endocrine system as you're talking about hormones. It is so expansive. So I appreciate just your devoting time and energy to address the topic.

I will say, having read, I haven't gotten through the entire thing, but most of your book, that you are normalizing so many experiences that deviate perhaps from people's expectation of a certain way that is largely promoted. Whether or not, as you said, it's glamorizing or romanticizing that first stage of relationship or younger years in life, and how that's highly fueled by just even the physiological hormones of that age, as you said. Also, the stage in relationship tends to promote certain hormones to have that bonding happen. I just feel you're calling people into thinking higher level, really assessing themselves around where they may have picked up certain hopes or expectations, and asking people to think a little bit more critically, but also really with the focus of intimacy and wellbeing and a depth that perhaps doesn't just come face value. Do you want to help us here? Is that right?

You said it all. It's amazing, because we follow our culture, and the culture really looks at very young, when you're 18 or 16 and you fall in love, you have sex. We think that's intimacy, because we have no other guideline. I mean, we're not going to look at our parents having sex, that's not existent. We're going to look at our experience, and our experience is very limited. It's only limited to that particular moment in time. Then you go into your 20s and you start getting married and you start having children, and things change, and they change dramatically. When they change dramatically, you have no guidepost really. You have nothing you can go on. After you have a baby, you go to the obstetrician who has spent the past nine and a half months literally making sure you deliver a healthy baby. Nobody noticed you. How many OBGYNs will ask you while you're pregnant: Hey, how's your sex life? Is your libido high? Is your libido low? A lot of women have really high libidos during that time. As you know, men show connection by having sex. Women feel connected, and then they have sex.

Stereotypically, yes.

Right, you know that. That's a great time if you're really into it, and it brings you back and it brings you together, and it's wonderful. But then, what happens once you have the baby? The baby is born. You don't know that it's going to change your whole life. There is nothing about postpartum. Then six weeks later, when your life is completely upside down and you have no idea who you are, and you're sitting in the bathtub and there's something floating next to you, and it happens to be your belly, you go like: Oh my God, I'm never going to have sex again, and who am I? Then you go to the OB and he says, or she says: Oh, you're doing great, go home, have sex. The thing is, what does that mean? Because you may not feel like it. Your whole life has been upturned. You will never be the same person you were at 18. Now you have to figure out what to do. The thing is, nobody is talking about it. That's the problem. So we're talking a lot about that.

I mean, yes. And one of the things I appreciated about what you were also sharing in your book, you're speaking to a very common, many people experiencing in the landscape of developing, partnering, having children and raising a family, or just that kind of scope and the expectations, and perhaps the myths that exist. I also really appreciate that you help people understand, it doesn't always work that way for everyone. Sometimes we don't partner right away. Sometimes we don't want marriage. Sometimes we don't want children. There's a whole variation, and to help people work with what's happening in their bodies, but also how they're negotiating life what their expectations are. Do you want to say a little bit more, that it's just even bigger than the scope?

Yeah, I just took that as the most common thread that is culturally the direction. Having said that, there are a lot of women who don't want to get married, who are not interested, who don't want to have kids, who are not interested in that path. It's okay, and it's totally normal. As long as you are comfortable with it, it's okay. I think that's really the biggest message, that it's okay to do whatever you think is right. I think that women follow, for some reason, these cultural mores, shall we say. They think: Oh my God, 30, I have to get married, I have to have children. Why? Where did that come from? Then they start looking for the guy or the girl, whoever it is, who they can settle down with.

But there's such a thing as the prairie vole, and you know about the prairie vol. The prairie vole is this little rat that lives in the prairie, who's the only, supposedly, monogamous mammal. What does that really mean? It's a very interesting concept to think about that. The prairie vole chooses a mate early on, whatever that means. They stay together, they build nests, they have babies together, they raise them, they feed them, they live happily ever after. Except for, once in a while, the prairie vole, male or female, goes off the reservation and has sex with someone else. Well, that brings the concept of monogamy to a very different thought, and that's where the science comes back to. Are humans monogamous, or are humans not monogamous? The question of that becomes really important. Because when you go back to us and you say, I'm following the cultural mores. But what are the genetic parts of me that are really not the same? Like, now it's okay not to have a kid. Well, 20 years ago, it wasn't okay, people thought there was something wrong with you. But there's nothing wrong with you.

So when you brought it up, which is so true, it's fine. So then you have to decide what fulfills you, what makes you feel good? Do you want to have sex with different partners? By all means. Just have safe sex. Don't worry about it. Do you want to have relationships that are really important to you that bring intimacy? You have to realize that sex and intimacy are not the same as you move through life, in your 20, 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever. There is no such thing as intimacy and sex. If you look at people who are not heterosexual, they actually understand the concept of multiple sex partners with no intimacy, and they're okay. They live that kind of life, and it's okay. Well, it might be okay for us if we feel good about it. So it becomes a matter of learning who you are and what works best for you.

Well, and I imagine you would agree that there are people who aren't in a heterosexual relationship that do choose partnership, and that I wouldn't necessarily draw a huge correlation that they're more poly or have multiple partners. I mean, I think that what I'm hearing you say is, oftentimes, when people are in a place of going against what seems like convention, there's a lot more opportunity to decide for oneself and negotiate less about the terms that are imposed. So there's a little bit more willingness to be outside of whatever those boxes are. Do you want to comment on that?

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. That's where we're going, and it's wonderful. I think it's beautiful because it turns us inward. It makes us figure out who we are. Our culture is so externally oriented. We're watching what everybody else is doing. We live by committee, which doesn't really help. 

What gives you the energy to go in the morning and take over the world, do everything wonderful, live a wonderful life?

The more inside time you spend, and I don't even say meditation. I mean, I tell everybody, you have to meditate. Because when you say meditation, a lot of people say: Oh, this is too much for me. I just say, sit. Sit alone. Sit alone for five minutes, once a day, twice a day, three times a day, whenever you want. Just sit alone. That'll bring you to you. That'll help you figure out what works for you. It doesn't matter. I wrote about sexual fluidity, that women are much more fluid than men. That's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with it. Just because 20 years ago it was like: Oh no, we can't do that. Now, we have the freedom, the ability. The beauty of it is that we can, at various times during our lives—and I can tell you stories of patients that'll go on forever—change what we're doing.

I think the other point of The Intimacy Solution was to show that things change, and that what started at 18 doesn't necessarily apply. That's why I used having the baby kind of thing as an example. It doesn't have to stay the same. I have women in their 40s and 50s who decided they would rather be with a woman, because the intimacy is more important, and sexuality follows. So then, sex and intimacy are connected, and they raise their kids. They realize that the only person they can be intimate with is another woman, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think that's wonderful. I'd rather do that than spend my whole life trying to make someone—a male, let's say—fit into what my perception of intimacy and sexuality looks like.

Yes. Well, I have a few things I wanna comment on. One of which is, as you talk about being able to understand some of the biological, either urges or tendencies or how we're wired, I'm wondering, do you also hold that in a similar frame as perhaps we might feel a tendency towards something and we still have conscious choice? Or do you really recommend being in touch with the biology and go with the biology? Because part of what I'm understanding is, we do evolve, our biology does change as we evolve, and that this is something to have just more contact with, as you talk about sit with self, and then how things change and being able to have some discernment here. How do you hold the biological when you reference the importance? I even heard a statistic, medically or biologically, that 20% of people are more poly and they're not monogamous, just from a physiological standpoint. I'm just curious, how do you hold the physical, or as you referenced, just the biological?

Very interesting point. Because remember, it brings, again, the outside world telling us what should be. But then the inside world, as you said, changes. Biologically, it changes. Hormones change. How we feel changes. How much we exercise changes. How much we sleep changes. What we eat and drink changes. As these things shift, we change. I was telling you about the stressors. The stressors change.

The biology changes. But our reaction to the biology somehow is determined more by the outside than the inside. I noticed, from the patients that I see, that it doesn't have to be that way. You can actually spend the time, like we said, non-meditation, whatever, just sitting. Spend the time and listen to what your biology is saying, what your physical body is saying. And you also look outside and see what feels attractive, what feels connected to you, what feels important. Because you're separating intimacy from sexuality as you get older, what is something that you want to connect intimately to? Then sexuality follows sexuality. Sexuality may follow more when you listen to your biology.

So this is really helpful. I'm almost getting a sense, the phrase that's coming up for me is like, you're encouraging people to be in the driver's seat.

That's it. That's exactly what I do. I encourage people to take ownership of their lives. Not just medically speaking, not just health speaking. In totality. At the end of the day, as you know, nobody thinks more about each one of us than we do.

The same way I say doctors don't know best because they don't live in your body. How the hell would you listen to a doctor? They'll give you the information they have. It may apply, it may not apply. So it's up to you to figure out what works. So the more I encourage you to be in the driver's seat, like you said, the more likely you are to enjoy life. Because it's so short, and before you know it, you go like: Well, what did I just miss?

Well, it's interesting. I'm having two experiences as we're talking about this, in that it can be quite complex. Because in some ways, it's throwing out all the tradition or all of the convention to really be in a place of possibility, which there's lots of possibilities, which has its pluses and minuses. That we feel the freedom and we get to feel liberated in choosing, but it's a little bit more effort and it's a little bit more, some might say, risky or challenging or going against what maybe is said by family, friends or culture. So it can feel more effortful. I think that's one of the things that tradition provides.

It might feel scary.

It might feel scary. I think that's one of the things that tradition provides, is a sense of structure and safety and security and predictability and follow this way, and there's benefits to that. So I'm feeling the complexity to this. I remember coming across someone who is a linguist at some Ivy League school and is a researcher, and she was looking at a lot of people who are in non-monogamous relationships. She was saying the language is so much more expansive, like new relationship energy, and that you have all these terms that perhaps more monogamous traditional relationships don't have the same language. So it asks for more ability to describe a wider range. So that's the complexity part.

The other part feels simple, in that you're asking people, if I'm hearing you, to tune inwards, get the sensation, get the cues, get the resonance, the feeling state, and let that be the guide. To have the empowerment, and that that is the north star, if you will, or that is the guiding practice of being with. That is, we could stay simple, but also, they're both probably true too.

I think you couldn't have said it any better. Literally, you couldn't have said it any better. 

Then, there are books written about it, like coming out of your comfort zone. The thing is, you're really not coming out of your comfort zone. You're actually expanding your comfort zone. Making your comfort zone fit your needs, and the rest of the world, shockingly, you'll see, will follow you.

I have a patient who got divorced at some point in her 50s. She got divorced and she was one of the New York socialites. All of a sudden, all these people that were her friends, the guy she was married to was a big shot, and it was like a whole to-do. She was afraid that she would lose her community and her stature. She would lose it. And what happened is, she didn't. She found a new community. She didn't go looking for it, it found her. So as you know, you attract the energy you put out. So she wound up with a completely different community, and all of a sudden, in her 50s, she was renewed. She was passionate about things again. I think it's passion that defines success.

Well, I love this. I'm also recognizing that the experience or what this looks like in practice, because you did describe in your book, if I remember correctly, that there might be people in their 20s or even 30s that are in this framework of experimenting and being free and perhaps having hookups or casual sex, if you will, and multiple partners. Maybe they're wanting partnership or relationship in an intimate, longstanding way, and think that it will happen to them rather than really having it be a part of almost getting this alignment. Like, if they're behaving in one way and then longing for something, and it's not quite their actions and feelings, it's not all the way in alignment. But also, people might change to your point. So I don't know, I guess I'm struggling here with how it can be complex, but again, how it can be simple. That if people are in alignment, maybe it isn't so confusing or maybe they're not going to run up against: Oh wow, finding partnership is way harder than I thought. I thought it was going to happen to me, and it's not. Do you want to speak about just people's process or what it looks like in practice?

It's interesting, because it varies, like everything. For some people, like the couple I told you decided to get together, one of them was a very famous film producer, they were in California, and the other one was from New York. They were friends and they got together, and the one who was the film producer just left home in Hearth and moved to New York with her. Everybody was like: Oh my God, what happened to these two? Well, nothing happened. They just grew up and they decided that this was going to make them happy and passionate and expand their lives. The people from California, she was the one who was there, who she was friends with, eventually stayed. Some left. But there's some people who are supposed to be in your life for a short period of time. Some people are there, they serve their purpose, and they move on. Some people are there for a long time. So she decided that she was happier in this situation. They started a new life in their 50s, and it was wonderful. I mean, they did very well.

So it becomes a matter of going with the flow, literally. Going with the flow. Letting your biology, your physiology, your mental state, guide you to what makes sense. It always makes sense. You know what the other thing is? You can always change. That's what people don't realize, that you can always change. You don't have to change back. But I have people who've changed back. I have people who've said: Oh, you know what? I have actually somebody in the practice who is in her 20s, who went through a phase where she was fully lesbian and all she cared about was women.

Then all of a sudden, she woke up one day, she's now 26. She was like, you know what, I like men. All of a sudden, she has this very lovely boyfriend, and they're moving to California. So it's very interesting to see that and to understand that you can change. As long as you're alive, you can change it. As long as you're alive, you can make it fit your needs. I think it becomes a matter that we're brainwashed to think this is the way it's supposed to be. But we're also brainwashed to pay attention. We're not brainwashed enough there, because we're not looking at consequences enough. 

I see a lot of couples, they cheat, they lie, they create all these multiple lives. Multiple lives don't work, as you know. Then there's no transparency. So if you are transparent and you're honest, you won't create as many negative side effects, so to speak. What you will do is ,you'll just put the truth, and you have to really work on your own truth, instead of the generic truth which we hear and we're all struggling with right now. The generic truth: what's right, what's wrong. I think you go to your own truth and stay there. 

Well, I absolutely agree with you, and I'm feeling into it. I recognize that sometimes when there is an experience or a hit on something and we bring that up, we might not know five steps down the road what that actually means. I do feel that if we can have these difficult conversations, be in a place of alignment, that possibility or things can get created from there that maybe weren't otherwise visible, taking that risk and entering into that space and co-creating. I'm really grateful you spoke to consequences. I'm really grateful you spoke to how we're actually hurting each other when we don't bring these things into light, that we may think we're honoring relationship by staying committed. Or even, we've been talking about tradition in its more conventional sense, but you also name how media and how so much sex is really a part of media. So there's a lot of notions around being sexy or the hookup culture, what sex looks like. So there can be even this sense of like: Oh, I'm doing all the sex and the hooking up, but that actually doesn't maybe feel quite in alignment with what means the most to me, as far as intimacy as you were describing earlier. So that was a side, coming back to that.

It was a beautiful side. It was right on point. Right on point. Beautiful. You are beautiful. You really are beautiful.

Thank you, so are you. I appreciate that. I think when I was reading your book, just on that note, I was like, it's interesting. You're very clear and directive about what you see isn't helpful, what you do see is helpful, and you do give recommendations very clearly. I also was like, where is she coming from? It felt like you were really coming back to this place over and over and over again. I was like, does she have an angle of this or does she have an angle of this? It is really helping people come into this place of being inside themselves and allowing them to be expressed from that place, versus allowing things to be dictated or having to be imposed. So I really appreciate that you're promoting that so clearly.

Thank you. You know what, it's so hard. But the moment you free yourself of those literal yokes that we all have, life is so much better. It's so much lighter. It's so much easier to make decisions without thinking, like you said, three steps, five steps. It's like playing chess. We're not playing chess. This is our life. So you don't have to worry about somebody else's opinion or somebody else's take.

Or have all the math figured out. It's just my step or my commitment. Or what you're encouraging is just to take that step in alignment, to be in a truthful place about where one is.

Exactly, and it makes it so much easier. So much easier. Then, like I said to you, it's about passion. It's not passion necessarily for sex. It's passion for connection. It's passion for intimacy. It's passion for having someone who hears you and gives you back. It's a two-way street. Because a one-way street is a dead end. So it's about finding that, and you can find that anywhere. It's easy. So when you're looking, like you said, for the partner, you have this outline of check marks. That's not going to work.

I have somebody who was telling me the other day, this guy, he's short and he is bald, and he is this and he is that. I was like, so what's the point of what you're telling me? She said, he doesn't look like anything I've ever gone out with before. I said, well, what do you feel when you are with him? She said, well, he made me feel really, really good. I mean, I laugh with him, and he kind of anticipates where I am. So I'm like, so maybe we don't look at the facade so much. Maybe we don't focus on that anymore as much. She looked at me, and it gave her pause. I thought, how funny. Because to me, it's obvious. I mean, this guy sure sounded like the right material for her. But she was still looking to fit into the box.

Well, as you said just a moment ago, and I know we're winding down, but how we constrict ourselves or it's scary, and how fear might show up. We might all feel that sensation of passion or purpose or truth, and this sense of alignment and what we are feeling. Then: Oh no, no, no, I can't do that. So how do you help people? Is it just to notice the fear voice or what's tamping down? Talk to us a little bit about that, if you will.

Yes, help them tamp down the fear, bring down the fear, and think more globally. Open up and think, well, where did this box come from, why am I limited to this box? I'm not limited to this box. I can just break the box and look outside. Then if I look outside, the sun shines. Things are different. The energy levels change.

Totally. What's coming up for me, I have a mentor that I grew up with, and she's more in the metaphysical realm and helping people think about what they're thinking and their beliefs. But one of the things that she encourages, or that there's a phrase here, it's that allow your desire or passion to be bigger than your fear. So one of the things that I'm feeling from what you're describing is, if we're sitting with self and we're connecting with passion and allowing that to be the focus, then that can build strength to perhaps deal with the fear, deal with the scary step or the sweaty 10-minute conversation, if you will. Is that right?

Oh, I would definitely take the perhaps out. I agree 100%. I think it'll definitely take it out and it will elevate your energy and vibration. Speaking of metaphysical stuff, it will elevate you to a very different level, and then you'll start attracting a very different level kind of relationship. Then intimacy and sexuality will marry.

Oh, I feel like I have so many questions I could continue to ask you. It throws up the wedding and the whole idea around our vows and what we're committing to for the rest of our life. I'm sure you would really alter that in ways that would be more in alignment.

For sure. Very quickly, I think it's dinosaurish. I think it doesn't apply. I think you're making the vows today. Tomorrow is another day.

Perhaps that we can commit to being in a place of, it's aspirational. But that the goal is that we are going to do our best. Even a We statement might be even too difficult. But that if I'm in a place of proclaiming some aspirational commitment, that I'm going to do my best to being connected to myself in a way, and healing and growing myself, and then doing my best to bring to you and share with you. Also, that I commit to really wanting to support you in your development, your growth, and we don't know what that's going to be.

We don't know what's going to be in a minute, how can we go a 100 years out? Then, there are people who've been married forever, but it was a different world. We can't use that world as the example, as like you said, an aspiration for us. Because our world is so different. So we have to cut ourselves some slack and be kind. Because if you're kind, you'll see a very different look. These people, I think it's wonderful, but I don't know that it's aspirational for us. I don't think it works. Because we don't have the same limitations, the same goals, and the same roles that we had.

For sure. I do think we can grow together, and I do think when the focus is on what you're describing of being in a place of empowerment and secure functioning, and really all the attachment training and research as it relates to intimate relating. That if we're in secure functioning practice, that we can still honor this. This can all be true.

Well, Dr. Erika, what would you like to invite people to connect with you or learn more? Because you offer so much more beyond what we've talked about here today.

Well, Dr. Erika Schwartz. At Instagram is easiest. I think Facebook, all of them, @DrErikaSchwartz is the easiest way. Our practice is ES Health, also on Instagram. I think it's easy to find me. I'm on Google. The books are on Amazon. It's easy. My goal is to help people feel great, enjoy their lives, and not be afraid.

I love that. Then, ES stands for?

Evolve Science.

Okay. You have a website, I imagine. Do you work with people remotely?

Yeah, of course. We have multiple practitioners. It's a great practice. We love our patients. We look at everybody as a whole, and we don't look at individual pieces. We take care of the whole person.

So for people listening that are resonating with your approach and just some of the messaging you have here, as it relates even to health and wellbeing, that they can perhaps learn more about Evolve Science on your website. I'll put that link on today's show notes, as well as your Instagram and your book link. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you. Oh my God, Dr. Jessica, it's been a pleasure. You're wonderful!