Hi, thank you for joining the Empowered Relationship Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, licensed psychologist and certified coach. Today’s episode is 268, “How to save and transform a sexless marriage/relationship”, an interview with Irene Fehr.
Before we get started, I wanna take a moment and just take a deep breath in with you and a deep breath out. Taking a deep breath is sending a signal to our nervous system that we are inviting a little bit more regulation, a little more relaxation, and turning our attention inwards and focusing on expanding our awareness around what is true for us. As we talk about relationship, we might notice certain perceptions, or interpretations of what might be happening in your relationship, or perhaps with what you observe in your partner. And that’s all in the story and the interpretation.
Then we also will notice certain emotions that get activated, and we also may even notice some physiological responses; some people talk about feeling tight, and constricted, or collapsed, or this sense of pulling away… And others will feel a sense of maybe even anxiety, or heightened arousal, or hyper-focus. Other times we might feel super-relaxed and very open, and turning towards, and really responsive, and this willingness and readiness to play. And all of this is okay, and we just wanna work with it and be aware with it, so that we can be that much more intentional.
The intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast is to help you feel better prepared, more well-equipped in navigating the terrain of long-lasting intimacy, knowing we will feel a range of emotions, sometimes unpleasant and difficult, or even perhaps we might even feel threatened at times, and just how to negotiate what might be getting activated, and that there can be a lot of learning and a lot of opportunity there if we are willing to turn towards it and be curious and explore.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, there in the top navigation bar you’ll see Podcast, and underneath that page you’ll find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 268, “How to save and transform a sexless marriage or relationship”, an interview with Irene Fehr. Let’s get started.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: As a Sex and Intimacy Coach, Irene Fehr, MA, CPCC, has helped hundreds of committed couples to add sex and passion into sexless relationships and fall in love with each other again. She is no stranger to her clients’ complaints, having recovered from the all-too-common story of “happy marriage turned sexless” when she lost her libido. You can read Irene’s perspectives on sex, sexual desire in a long-term relationship, and women’s libido in Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, and ScaryMommy.
Irene, thank you for joining us today.
Irene Fehr: Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love what you’re gonna be sharing with us today. I think it’s something that a lot of people experience, but feel really private and isolated in, and the fact that in long-term relationship sometimes it’s hard to keep that passion and spark alive, right? That sounds like something that you really work with.
Irene Fehr: Yes, that is the core of my work today, and it’s also my personal experience. I ended up in a sexless marriage because I lost my libido, and I experienced everything that my couples experience today, the couples that I work with. And I see the patterns happening in so many couples. This is a typical pattern that happens to all couples, and some are able to work through it, and others get stuck.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And what do you see is the typical pattern?
Irene Fehr: The typical pattern is that in the beginning of the relationship there is naturally excitement. Excitement of meeting a new person, excitement of being attracted to them, excitement of being seen yourself. And that’s all natural and biologically-driven. We are meant to find mates, and then create babies. Only our species’ survival depends on it. So there are all these motivations for connection and having sex in the beginning that are happening to us. They take us on a ride, and it’s exciting, and sex is usually easy, and fun, and light… And I call this type of sex friction sex, because there’s so much physicality in it. There’s so much wanting to be with each other, wanting to rip each other’s clothes off, and have fun, and just touch, touch, touch. And this type of sex is beautiful, and wonderful, and passionate, but it has a shelf life. So I wanna share with you how friction sex in a way dies out on its own, and how there is another type of sex that happens when we fall in love with each other, and that too has a shelf life, and that too dies out on its own, creating this drift in that couple’s experience as the passion wanes. And I differentiate this from the third type of sex, that is something that we get to create. May I go into the different types of sex in more detail?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. And for people listening – it sounds like you had your own personal journey with this. If we’re not aware of these different types of love-making or sex, we can perhaps fall into the expectation that the friction sex is sustainable for the life of the relationship, or long-term. What are people running up against when they’re in that consciousness?
Irene Fehr: Exactly, it looks like it’s the way it’s supposed to be; this is what love is. It’s this passion, and connection, and wanting to be with each other. And we need to, again, be aware that this is the biological forces driving that. And like you said, it’s not sustainable, nor should it be, because it has its purpose. It has the purpose of bringing two people together, and having two people be excited by a future together.
Now, what people run up against when they’re in the beginning of their relationship, when they’re experiencing friction sex, is that because the focus is on the excitement and the fun of being together, it crowds out communication around, for example, needs, what we want and what we need to make sex better. This is because we don’t wanna ruin the mood, we don’t wanna say what we really need or want. Let’s just keep this excitement going and not ruin the mood by speaking up. And that of course has long-term implication, not speaking up for what you need, especially for women and women’s libido.
What also happens in the same vein of “I don’t wanna ruin the mood” is people will hold back their emotions. They don’t want to seem like they’re too much, or they’re too expressive, or they’re showing their vulnerability, and so they hold back with that as well… Again, for fear of ruining the mood, or taking it too fast, too deeply.
And the problem is that when we don’t speak about our needs or we don’t speak about our emotional experience – it could be disappointment, or sadness, or anything that shows up. Or even pleasure. Showing your pleasure fully is a vulnerable experience. Showing that you’re really enjoying yourself is incredibly vulnerable. And some people dare not show that to their partners in the beginning. So what happens without that is that sex can get repetitive; you’re doing the same thing over and over, because it leads to a good orgasm at the end… But there’s little richness. There’s little in addition to the physicality, again, which is why I call this type of sex “friction sex.” It’s about the physical aspects of it.
And over time, the couple gets bored, and that’s especially true for the woman. The lack of variety, the lack of attunement to what’s happening in the moment becomes boring. And what I often see – and this is what happened to me as well – is women’s libido will respond. So it’ll be harder for her to get as aroused… He may be doing the same thing, but it gets harder for her to be aroused, it gets harder for her to have lubrication or to be aroused internally… Her body starts to respond less and less. They may be tightening up and experiencing pain during penetration… Again, if this kind of sex stays the norm in the couple.
Over time, couples will see the passion wane, and a lot of the times if they don’t progress to deeper emotional connection, they will think that there is something wrong with their connection, that there is something wrong with their compatibility. That they’re not meant to be with each other. That since the passion died out and they’ve lost the spark, this is it. And sometimes that’s true, and other times it’s a mistaken notion, because friction sex has limits [00:10:30.19] space for being your full self, being your real self. So this kind of sex naturally diminishes until it’s gone. And a lot of couples try to resuscitate this kind of sex. They spend thousands of dollars on toys, and exciting ventures like going to vacations, or doing things to spice it up. But that isn’t the problem. The problem is, again, this kind of sex naturally goes away, because the hormones of newness go away as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It might not be a great analogy, but I’m listening to you, Irene, and I’m like, I wonder if it’s like getting a new car, and it’s full of gas, and you’re like “Woo-hoo!” You’re enjoying the experience. And then at some point it runs out of gas, and you’re like “Well, this car doesn’t work anymore. What’s wrong with this car?” But it needs fuel, and part of that fuel comes from what we invest and are able to bring to the dynamic. Is that right?
Irene Fehr: Absolutely. I love this analogy. You don’t wanna blame the car. The car has run out of fuel. And the key, which is really the third type of sex that I mentioned, is to learn to create this passion, to give her car fuel, but not rely on it happening magically or it happening out of nothing, the way libido and passion happen out of nothing in the beginning.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, it seems like such a setup.
Irene Fehr: It is such a setup… And it creates so much confusion and so much disappointment in couples. And it tests the couple’s commitment, because they see that things are not working out, and they start to blame themselves, blame each other… Like I said, doubt their compatibility… And it can create havoc in the relationship.
Yeah, I mean – just thinking if we add children, or work stress, or a pandemic stress, whatever types of stress, and pace of life, the hormones, and trying to sync up at the exact same time, and be resourced and relaxed and available and open… That’s just a lot to ask. But then how quickly someone is able to recognize this, because I don’t know that it’s talked about all that often… I know in a lot of the old-school stereotypes of Cosmopolitan Magazine, of like “50 ways to spice up your sex life” – I know there’s that, but what you’re talking about is very different… And I just wonder, how long do people stay stuck before they really raise their hand and say “I’m struggling”? I just wonder if this has a compounding, snowball effect.
Irene Fehr: Absolutely. So the lack of communication about needs, and desires, and the emotional connection adds up to a lot of frustration without the ability to say what you need to get out of that frustration. And if you add love to this element, which then takes couples into the next kind of sex, validation sex, then it becomes even more difficult to untangle this and to really get to the bottom of it.
So like I said, couples will blame themselves, and each other, they’ll blame outside stress… And of course, right now, during the pandemic, there’s plenty of legitimate reasons that are creating stress… But they still look outside of themselves for reasons, and that leaves them powerless, because the reasons and the solutions to fix this predicament are inside, and in the communication between couples.
Now, there is one time, one situation where couples can maintain friction sex for decades, and that happens under the influence of drugs and alcohol. It doesn’t have to be hard drugs; it could be pot, and definitely alcohol. So when couples start to sober up after having maintained this kind of sex for decades, they’re not able to do it; they don’t know what to do, with themselves, with each other… They don’t know how to connect outside of it. But friction sex is lubricated by drugs and alcohol. They make it sustainable. Outside of that, it really has a short shelf life. For some a couple of months, maybe a couple of years. But it runs out.
Now, I mentioned there’s something that happens too when we add love to this. So let’s say the couple sustains friction sex and then they start to fall in love with each other, and you add the emotional richness of that. And so you go into this other phase of the relationship where you’re now struck by the love hormones. This is the limerence stage. And here, it’s all about validation. You feel special, being loved by this person, and you in loving them want to give them and make them happy. And that validates you. So it’s feeling desired, and important in someone’s life, and having them be important in yours.
This stage is beautiful, and it feels amazing, and the sex that happens when you add these components in can be incredibly passionate; it can feel like a blanket of love wrapped around you. There’s merging here, there’s connecting deeply, heart-to-heart with your partner, and it adds this element to sex that it’s about them, and making them happy. And that’s all beautiful. But here the stakes are higher, because when we add love, we also get into attachment territory, and we start to trigger attachment fears.
In this attachment territory, sex means something. Again, it validates something in us. And every action, every word, desire or request is laden with validation. We’re starting to look for answers in our partner’s actions. “Do they love me? Do they care for me? Am I important to them? Will they be there for me?”
So here, the answer to “Would you like to have sex with me?” if it’s positive, it feels amazing. We feel validated. But if it’s negative, we start to take it personally, because it starts to mean something, because there’s love attached to it. “Is it that I’m not desirable anymore? Is it that I’m not important? Is it that I’m not good enough?” So we start to put demands on our partners around sex. It’s not just sex anymore, it’s not just enjoyment, it’s validation. And of course, you create a dance between a pursuer and a withdrawer. Because there’s always that dynamic. Someone wants sex more than the other person. Even if the two people have the same libido, there are external circumstances that make it that they’re not always aligned. They may not be in a good mood; something may be happening at work, or with the family, that’s taking their energy. Maybe they’re tired/more tired than the other partner. Of course, throw children into the mix and that adds a whole level of complexity and exhaustion and frustration.
So once you get into this pursuer/withdrawer dance, sex becomes a battleground of attachment wounds and patterns. And sex starts to look like a demand and a chore. “I need to do this to validate my partner.” Or “I need to pressure my partner to do this, because I need validation.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm. Or the anxiety, or the fear of rejection, or perhaps entering into the norms, like you said, of what has worked in the past, that that’s the place that is successful, so to speak.
Irene Fehr: Absolutely. It gets incredibly messy and incredibly complicated. And even if couples have gotten through the friction sex stage by communicating their needs, they will have an extremely hard time communicating their needs and what’s really going on here. And that will just dig them deeper into the conflict. And here, passion goes away very quickly, because they’re not able to communicate, they’re not able to connect anymore, and it feels like a war zone.
Some couples will continue fighting, perpetuating this vicious cycle of one person pursuing for sex and then the other one retreating from these demands, and building up walls of hurt and resentment on both sides, or they will want to avoid the warzone altogether, and become roommates… Because there’s just too much anxiety, too much conflict, so they will just decide “This is not worth it. Let’s just be roommates.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, I have a couple that fits this a little bit, that I was working with for quite a while… And the husband had a lot more interest in variety and creativity and play, and she was more interested in just more the physical and a certain way that she knows her body really responds… And they would start to have a communication or a dialogue around their respective needs, but I think these attachment fears were getting activated, and it would blow up very quickly… So it was difficult, and they would decide not to go to that specific area of conflict within sex. They still had a healthy — I mean, not healthy, but they still had an active sex life, but they really struggled.
Irene Fehr: And so many couples struggle here. This is a very painful place in a relationship, and here they will start to doubt their love for each other. “Why can’t we make this work? Why are we hurting each other so much?” And they get stuck in these patterns, and again, it’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking to witness that, and that’s where the couples that come to me – that’s their starting point, is “We’re stuck. We know we’re hurting each other, we know that we want something different, but we don’t know how to get out of it.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And what are some of the first steps? Because I’m thinking the way you’re laying this out for us is connection sex is a whole new paradigm, and really to get your mind and awareness around that could potentially change and free up a lot of this being stuck, or in the gridlock patterns.
Irene Fehr: Absolutely. It is a way out. But first, couples need to acknowledge and grieve the death of sex. Friction sex has a shelf life; validation sex has a shelf life. And they get to the point where they could see that it’s gone and they can’t get it back. And like I said, it’s really important to acknowledge that, that this is in a way natural that they got caught in the drift that is driven so much by biology and our psychology and our attachment patterns, which are with us from birth, or even arguable from the time that we are in utero. And acknowledge that they got caught in it and it’s okay; that they are okay, that their love is okay, that they can decide now to find a different way. Acknowledging that they fell into the default path, and now they can create the kind of relationship they want, and the kind of sex life that they want. And that requires identifying that the patterns were the enemy, not each other.
When I see this in the couples that come to me and the couples that I work with, when they can see this and recognize this, they breathe a sigh of relief… Because so much is at stake in a love relationship. Future dreams, family, love, connection, all of that. And so they can begin to forgive each other for having hurt each other, but then again, see hope, see a different way forward.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No kidding. Do you find that partners in relationship are coming to this at the same point, or do you see that one is more initiating this transformation that one is wanting to experience, but maybe the other is still avoiding, or…?
Irene Fehr: Absolutely. There are all sorts of configurations. Sometimes couples can arrive at this together, other times one person sees this, or is more attuned to the challenges in the relationship, and is more willing to do something about it than the other person… There’s also situations where the other partner doesn’t want to do any work around this at all. In my experience, the couples that arrive at this point in some way, maybe not at the same time, but they arrive at this point that they’re willing to get really honest about their pain and also their needs, they’re the ones that succeed in creating connection sex.
Now, it certainly takes two partners to create it, but it doesn’t always have to be two partners initiating it. I think of a relationship as a dance – one person is taking a step and the other person is responding to it. Then the first person is responding to that. So everyone is constantly responding to each other. It takes one person to stop dancing their part, and it forces the other person to look at things and re-evaluate “Oh, my partner stopped dancing, and I’m still trying to move them across the floor. What needs to happen?” But then again, of course, it takes two people to then say “We wanna create a new dance here.” And creation is really at the heart of this stereotype of sex which I call connection sex. It’s about creating, it’s about cultivating and designing, not just a type of sex, but really a different way of life that’s built around communication about needs, negotiation, practicing curiosity… it’s really a different way of being sexual with each other. Making time for each other’s lovers, which is something that goes away as “life takes over”, as you have kids, as there’s distractions that take us away from each other… It’s about giving each other that undivided attention that felt so good in the beginning, but it’s about making choices to do that, rather than doing that the way we do it in the beginning of the relationship. It’s like we live on fumes. We can sleep for three hours, see each other every day, and still do everything; it doesn’t work that way long-term. But it’s about consciously creating an infrastructure in your life that supports your connection, that supports quality time with each other, that supports quality physical time with each other, to play and connect and experiment sexually, and cultivate sexual desire, which is very important specifically for women. That space to take it slow, to explore each other’s bodies and to build that arousal through physical touch, through the whole body, and then of course, the genitals in particular.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, because I’ve heard you say a few times being able to communicate your needs, and I also know some people get a little disconnected and are maybe so bought into the old scripts or the old norms around how sex has been and the routines of that. How do you help people, maybe even in this case more specifically women, access these needs, or their sexual desire if they’ve been operating out of that, or in disconnection with that?
Irene Fehr: This is a great question that touches upon a really important myth that women fall prey to, that leads us to disconnect from our desire… And I wanna offer your audience a free three-video series that talks about this myth and three others. But here, I want to focus on this first one, because it answers you question precisely. So many women, myself included – this is how I got into my own predicament during my marriage, of losing my libido – we assume that libido is libido; it’s just this way of experiencing sexual desire that’s the same for men and women… So invariably, we start to compare ourselves to men. We should be able to get aroused spontaneously, we should be able to have sexual desire if we’re with the man that we love… Even in a same-sex relationship with the person you’re with. What we get wrong is that women’s sexual desire is very different. I love Emily Nagoski’s work around this, identifying that for the most part, men’s sexual desire is spontaneous. They have a thought about their partner, they see a billboard with a semi-naked woman, they wake up in the morning and they not only have sexual desire, but their body is responsive. They’re ready for sex, for penetration sex, because they’re hard. And that happens over a couple of minutes.
Women’s sexual desire is responsive, rather than spontaneous. There needs to be a journey that we go on, that starts to connect us to pleasure. Not just sexual pleasure, but pleasure in our bodies, and relaxation. Just feeling relaxed and softened and not worrying about all these things in our lives, to then start to open up to more pleasure, including sexual pleasure, having our bodies start to get turned on and start to build arousal. Certainly wetness, but also the engorgement of the genitals on the inside… And then sexual desire, or desire for more, for something more sexual, more sexual connection arises out of it.
So when I have women come to me, women in couples, they say “Well, I have such low desire. My husband wants sex all the time, and I don’t, and I don’t know what I want…” The problem is that they’re continuously comparing themselves to men. “I should know what I want. He knows…” What gets missed is this journey to her sexual desire… And it gets missed in mundane life, when couples pass each other in the kitchen, in the hallway, and they have three minutes of quality time togehter before they fall asleep in bed at night – that’s not enough. Women who are running ragged with careers, raising children, maintaining the household… They naturally have no energy for sexual desire, and nor do they have time for the journey to happen. And of course they’re not experiencing sexual desire.
Sexual desire in the beginning of a relationship for women looks the same as men’s. But that’s false advertising. Because think about it – in the beginning, constantly touching each other, there’s quality tension; we’re texting each other, or in old times we were spending time on the phone with each other, going to the movies, and touching each other; who cares about the movie, it’s all about making out in the theater. All of that was happening, so we were getting the nutrients that we needed as women.
But again, fast-forward to the mundane life of a long-term relationship couples – all of that gets taken out, so we need to put that back in. And to your question of how I work with women and couples around this is that I teach couples to add these incredibly important elements back in, intentionally, and allow for spaciousness and quality time together, and more touch, so that it creates a context for the woman to start to connect to herself, and then her desire starts to arise. First it’s a desire of “Oh, I want more touch, more cuddling. I want to kiss my partner” to then “I want something more.” Without the context, her desire doesn’t have any space. It’s not gonna show up. There’s nothing wrong with her, it’s just the way her system works.
This is what trips women up… Again, myself included; I went through this, and it created so much shame and self-blame, and just shutting down, withdrawing from life because I felt there was something wrong with me as a woman.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: “Why won’t my body respond?” or “I love you and I’m interested, but I’m not there, or I can’t get there fast enough or quick enough.” And I just know that the cultural images in the media, and how people — it’s really friction sex that we’re seeing often, and so we’re not even culturally probably supporting this… What did you call it, what journey?
Irene Fehr: I call it the arousal journey.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: The arousal journey. I don’t feel like there is as much messaging around the importance of that.
Irene Fehr: Absolutely. And it’s necessary. What we have, like I said, in the beginning of a relationship is false advertising. This is not how it works. How it works is deliberately creating an infrastructure that allows women the space and the attention and the time to honor her body and listen to it, and honor its pace, to be able to hear what the body is saying that she needs… And to, like I said, fill up on the touch, the undivided attention, the playfulness with her partner. That’s all part of the journey.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And for people listening – I’m getting a lot of examples or visuals in my mind… Do you have any examples that you can share? I know it looks different on each couple or in each person, but just for people to get a sense of what this space would look like, and what listening to their body, or this play, and how to allocate time in a busy couple’s life – do you have any examples for people to get their mind around?
Irene Fehr: Great question. One of the things that I teach my couples is to set aside time each day to be at the center of each other’s attention. So no fly-by kind of connection. Like I said, walking past each other in the kitchen as you’re preparing meals, or doing other things… But setting aside time to look at each other and to touch, and to do it without the goal of sex. This isn’t about scheduling sex, this isn’t about scheduling preparation for sex; this is quality time to be with each other, and maybe for some couples it’s looking into each other’s eyes, or talking to each other, or laying in there and touching each other in a way that feels good. Touching each other for your pleasure, like “Wow, I love my partner’s face and I just wanna touch it, and feel the pleasure on my fingers from touching them.”
When we remove the goal of sex, we create that space for things to arise. So for women in particular, removing the goal of sex creates safety. I don’t have to try to get in the mood. I don’t have to make my body respond. I can just be here. I can just enjoy myself. So this is a consistent practice that I teach my clients to do – no matter what, each day, spend time connecting verbally and connecting physically. And when couples can create this on a regular basis, desire starts to flow. Women start to connect to their bodies, like “Oh, the last time we were sitting there and just touching each other’s faces, I felt a tingle in my body that I haven’t felt for years. I felt this aliveness, and I wanted to kiss you.” That’s how desire starts to unfold, especially for women, in this spacious, unpressured way.
I think of women’s sexuality as a flower. We need to give a flower time to open up. If a rose is in a tight bud, you can’t stand over the rose and say “Open up! Open up, I wanna see your beauty!” We have to let it do it on its own time and in its own way, and then we can really witness and appreciate the gifts and the beauty that it has for us.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Irene, that sounds so important, because even just the idea of communicating one’s needs – that spaciousness to feel embodied, desired, that then unfolds… It could even be too big of a question from the get-go of like communicating — well, the need would probably be for more space or for more play or more affection, but that’s typically not what the implied question is. It’s like, “What do you want sexually? How do you wanna be sexually touched? What kind of position?” or those types of things.
Irene Fehr: Yes. And this question, “What do you want?” is a libido killer [unintelligible 00:37:43.17] I kid you not. I watch women — because I work with couples on Skype… I watch women, when they hear this question, literally deflate and go grey. Sometimes there’s also a bout of rage coming out, because it’s such an enraging question for someone who doesn’t know what they want, and like I said, doesn’t really understand how their desire works, so they’re even more frustrated that they just don’t know how to answer that.
And one of the tips I wanna give your audience is to avoid this question altogether, and instead start by — if you are wanting to see what a woman wants, offer her two options. “Would you like to have Italian food for dinner tonight, or sushi?” “Would you like me to hug you right now, or would you like me to just hold your hand.” “Would you like me to go faster, or is it good just the way it is?” And that gives a woman a quick way to evaluate these two options – and no more than two options – and figure out what is their better option in that moment.
And the same thing for women, when we’re thinking about this question for ourselves – don’t ask your question of “What do you want?”, but narrow down to “Hm… Do I wanna take a bath or a shower right now? What would feel good right now? Do I wanna lay down, or do I want to read?”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, that’s super-helpful.
Irene Fehr: Yeah. And this reduces on so much frustration and so much of the sense that they’re broken. Because they’re not. it’s just that the question takes them to a dead end. It’s too big, it’s too broad, and it’s just impossible to answer.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And it sounds like it’s coming from the paradigm of more the masculine, and I’m just even thinking the pace of life of what you were describing and what’s much more supportive for a woman’s desire and unfolding of her pleasure and desire to be intimate is a very different orientation… So the question that you’re posing between “Would this feel good or would that feel good?” helps negotiate some of that, but it feels like there’s something deeper… And I know we don’t have time to really go into that, but there’s an honoring of the unfolding and more of the feminine responding that you’re speaking to, that a lot of people aren’t even aware of.
Irene Fehr: Yes, and that’s nicely put in terms of the masculine and feminine. The masculine is connecting to the goal; it’s kind of putting the intention out there, of how you want it to be. But the feminine is enjoying the journey. And so you take it step by step. What’s the better option of these two right here in front of me? And then what’s the better option of these two in the next step that I take? Following that path, following that journey.
In the three-video series that I mentioned, which is called “How to want sex again” I talk about this journey and how it’s a winding journey. That’s the feminine. It goes where it goes. It has its own intelligence and its own mind. And the more we could follow that, and the more that we can create a partnership with our partners that supports the freedom of following this journey, the more pleasure we’ll have, the more desire we’ll have, and the more happiness both partners will feel.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That sounds so healing. I’m so grateful for what you’re doing. I’ll make sure to put that link to the video series on today’s show notes. Irene, I know we’re wrapping up… Is there anything you wanna say before we transition? How people can get in touch with you…
Irene Fehr: I wanna add one more thing about partnership, because this is key to creating connection sex. Both partners need to be on board, because sexual desire in a long-term relationship isn’t one partner’s problem. It’s something that gets created in a dynamic between people. It gets created in the communication and in the connection. So partnership is about sharing your needs and about negotiating. Not compromising, but negotiating solutions that work for both people. That’s what makes this sustainable. And it’s about creating infrastructures, and I literally mean this. Creating practices, creating support networks of friends, family, coaches, therapists… It’s creating different ways of supporting the couple to do this. Without that, it’s incredibly difficult. You need that infrastructure that enables the spaciousness and the energy to do this.
Now, it doesn’t mean that you need to have ten extra hours a day to do this… It really takes 15 minutes, half an hour to create really quality connection between partners, but it has to be deliberate and it has to be done in partnership. Both people need to be on board and need to support each other to make it happen.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for saying that. And how do people get in touch with what you’re teaching and what you’re offering?
Irene Fehr: My website is IreneFehr.com, and you’ll find a lot of information on the things that I talked about. So there’s the “How to want sex again” three-video series that’s free, that you can sign up for on the website. There’s also a video going into more details about the three types of sex that I mentioned… And there’s a plethora of articles and resources that cover sexual desire, sexless marriages, or really recovery from/healing from sexless marriages, as well as women’s desire.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Again, I’ll make sure to put those links on today’s show notes, so people can access your website, your free three-video training on how to want sex again, as well as the video on the three types of sex and the background about that. And it sounds like you have a lot of articles and work with couples and women in recovering…
Irene Fehr: Recovering and healing, and transforming sexless marriages to satisfying and enriching ones… And nourishing. That’s the big piece, is having a sex life that nourishes you; that’s not something that you do, but that’s something that gives to you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. Well, thank you for sharing your time with us today.
Irene Fehr: Thank you so much for having me and for this incredibly rich conversation.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s interview, again, with Irene Fehr. You can find all of the links mentioned in the podcast show notes page on DrJessicaHiggins.com. Click on Podcast and you’ll find today’s episode closer to the top. Again, today’s episode is 268, “How to save and transform a sexless marriage/relationship”, an interview with Irene Fehr.
On the show notes page you’ll also find, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, a photo graphic, and it’s “Shifting criticism into connected communication.” There you can have access to a free guide around how to shift critical language into language that sets up constructive communication that cultivates connection. And I bring this up because so often in the bedroom, as we are relating in sexual intimacy and we’re feeling perhaps some nervousness or vulnerability, and sometimes we do our very best to ask for what we want, or we might point out something that’s not working, and that can also feel like criticism – this can be very tender, so I wanted to support you to consider getting some more tips, resource and support around how to navigate turning a criticism into a request that really sets your partner up to respond to you and be able to turn towards your need.
With this free guide you’ll also be getting lots of other information and access to engage deeper with the material. And again, you can find this on DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on today’s show notes page, and that’s 268, “How to save and transform a sexless marriage”, an interview with Irene Fehr. And again, at the bottom you’ll find the graphic. It’s a couple sitting on a park bench and seemingly at odds, and it’s “Shifting criticism into connected communication.”
Thank you for listening, and until next time, I hope you take great care.
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