Ep #208: Exhaustion Kills Intimacy

How are you doing this morning? It’s like 4 a.m. Hey, hey, hey, and I am here to talk to you Welcome back to the midlife sex coach for women podcast episode 208. Yes, so exciting. Okay, here we are Let’s do it as usual. I’m recording this episode early in the morning. I love being up early. It’s quiet Nobody’s running around actually wrote

while I was attempting to rest, this is new thing, trying to rest here. I say attempting very intentionally because I realize how conditioned I am to grinding, to doing just one more thing, I’m very much a one more thing woman, than one more thing without actually stopping, without resting, without taking a minute, right? So yesterday,

I made a conscious decision to do only things that felt like fun. My podcast to me is fun. I get to talk to you. Things that didn’t have outcomes, things that weren’t necessarily, okay, I was going to say productive, but this is productive. And something interesting happened when I committed to rest, my body relaxed, my mind slowed down and suddenly my thoughts began to flow.

It was not forced, it was not pressured, it was relaxed, and I was creative. The ideas just kept coming. And that’s when I realized rest is not lazy, it’s regenerative. And this small amount of resting made me acutely aware of the load that I carry every single day. And diamonds, I know I’m not the only woman out there carrying a load. So, yes.

We need to talk. We always need to talk. So let’s do some talking. So let’s talk about the emotional load that women carry. So today we’re going to talk about something that almost no one names directly, but nearly every midlife woman feels and deals with. And that is emotional exhaustion. Specifically how the emotional load we carry during the day quietly follows us right into the bedroom at night.

Yes, I say it. We don’t drop it off at the door or our bedroom. It comes in with us like a guest that we did not invite. And it affects your whole life and it absolutely affects your intimacy. So let’s talk. We’re exhausted by everything we’ve already done before the day even ends. And then we wonder, why don’t I want sex? What happened to my libido? Is something wrong with me? I know.

You’re asking some of those questions. Nothing is wrong with you. What is missing from that question is the context, the context of your life. We are comparing our intimacy now very frequently, not always, but very frequently. We’re comparing our intimacy now to our intimacy we had in our twenties and thirties without acknowledging how much more we are carrying, how much emotional and mental load we are carrying.

and how much our lives have changed. We have more responsibility. We have more mental labor. We have more emotional coordination. It’s not just our own lives. It’s everybody around that we’re taking care of too. So let me say this clearly, Diamonds, that you’re not broken. You’re just actually tired. And most women I work with are not just physically busy. They’re emotionally exhausted as well. Mentally preoccupied.

and you’re carrying the family calendar, the emotional load, the emotional temperature, as you say, of the household, other people’s needs, their moods, their health, the logistics. You’re doing the remembering, the anticipating, the managing. Like my daughter came to me with just one pill in her pill bottle and said, I need my prescription refilled.

You know, the night before. So even if you’re resting, your brain is still laboring. There’s still work that you have to do. There is this mental and emotional caretaking. It’s rarely acknowledged as real work. We do all this work. It’s not valued. It’s weighing us down. Your nervous system knows that it’s work. And you know that it’s work.

So then we have to think about what happens when sex becomes one more task. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what happens when that exhaustion shows up in the bedroom. Hello, how are you? I’m super tired, right? I’ve heard stories from diamonds all the time. I love my partner, but by the end of the day, I’m done. I go to bed at nine and he stays up till 11 and then he comes in after 11 wanting sex and I just want some sleep.

I want some rest. So already my sleep is being disturbed. So sometimes I just take one for the team because it’s easier than saying no. And if I ask him to come to bed earlier to accommodate my schedule, he says I’m not being considerate of his schedule. So at 11 p.m. sex feels like one more thing someone wants from me. One more thing that we have to do.

And it’s at a time that you may not want to even be touched. You just want to be left alone and get to sleep. So you can have a whole conversation about it, or you can just roll over and take one for the team. So we need to understand that this is not a desire problem. This is a capacity problem. You’ve reached your capacity, your max. You have nothing left. And diamonds, please understand when your emotional tank is empty,

There’s no room for curiosity about intimacy. There’s not really much thought about pleasure and your desire is gonna be gone. It’s gonna ghost you, right? Sex becomes transactional, performative, obligatory, a duty. That’s what I call to-do-list sex. You put it on your list and you check it off. And so once sex becomes another responsibility, your body’s gonna resist it.

every single time. It’s not going to be on your fun list. It’s going to be on your, ⁓ fine. Let me just get this done list, which that’s not where we want intimacy to be. So here’s something that I really want you to hear. Libido desire does not live in a stressed nervous system. Please listen to this. Desire your libido does not live in a stressed nervous system.

Your body needs to feel safe, not pressured, needs to feel rested and relaxed.

But when you’re carrying the emotional load of everyone and everything, your body stays in this state of hypervigilance. It’s like you’re like, what do have to do next? What’s happening next? Okay, where do I need to go? A vigilant body does not relax into pleasure. If you think about it, it’s like saber-tooth tiger outside the door of the cave, Your body braces.

It protects. It it watches, it’s vigilant, it avoids. You’re not going to relax and want to be interested in sexual intimacy.

You know what? So many women second-guess themselves by saying, I should want to have sex. I should just do it. It’ll be fine once it’s started. But when you push yourself while you’re emotionally or physically depleted, your body keeps the score. Please understand, your body keeps the score. That’s not how you want to initiate sexual intimacy. So over time, that creates resentment, numbness, and aversion.

to sexual intimacy and a shutdown, an emotional shutdown. You start avoiding intimacy and maybe even avoiding your partner. You avoid your partner’s touch. You’re kind of hiding out. And then women think they’ve lost the desire and that something has gone wrong and it hasn’t. You’ve been over giving of your energy, of your body, of yourself.

We need to understand that intimacy starts outside the bedroom. Just like that emotional load starts out this bedroom, we have to do something about it. So here’s the reframe I want to talk to you about today. The solution is not scheduling more sex. It’s not trying harder and not feeling like you need to fix your libido. So many women come to me asking, how can I increase the frequency of sex? And then I ask them, do you actually want sex? And they usually tell me no.

Do you actually want more sex? They’re like, no, no. They just don’t want the complaints from their partner anymore. They don’t want the pouting, the guilt. I’m going to just say it, the mantrums. But this is not just about partners that are penis owners that are male. It happens with all partners in all different types of relationships. Whenever one partner has a higher desire libido than another one,

and the other partner feels responsible for meeting that higher desire, which is not how it should be, then when sex is used as a reward to manage somebody else’s emotions, both people are losing. She gives like a hollow version of herself and the partner feels that she’s not really there. And the solution is definitely not more sex. The solution is less emotional load.

so you can show up as your authentic sexual self. Ask yourself, where am I constantly managing others? Where do I feel responsible for everybody’s emotional well-being? When am I saying yes when my body is saying no? When am I emotionally and physically overloaded? Ask yourself those questions, Diamond. You get to ask yourself. Intimacy doesn’t start with sex. It starts…

with relief, with rest, with connection, with being seen. Sometimes we have to have a conversation. That’s why I’m always talking about this conversation. Conversation and communication matters. You might say something like, my lack of desire may be coming from carrying too much emotional and mental load. I’m honestly feeling exhausted. I feel depleted.

And I want intimacy that comes from desire, not from depletion. So I’m going to need some help from you. And your partner may need context. They might need examples of how you’re being weighed down because they see you doing it every day. So they just think that you can handle it and it’s not impacting you. You need to give them examples of how to decrease the burdens in your life, how to allow yourself to step back and back into your body.

So when your body feels unburdened, when your pleasure matters, when there’s no pressure to perform, then you’re allowed to receive, then you’re focused on pleasure, then you’re focused on fun and intimacy. So sometimes the most intimate thing that you can do is rest and your partner to make sure that you have this rest. Share this podcast with somebody. So sometimes this

Sexiest thing you can say is, need space and relaxation before I can feel close and want to engage in intimacy. Sometimes you need chore play. Let’s just name it, chore play. What happens before the bedroom? Help that reduces your load. What does that look like for you? What does chore play look like for you? For some people, means partners cooking meals. For some people, it means planning the week, having somebody else plan the week for them.

It could mean help with the kids. If somebody doing the dishes, It might mean alone time for your nervous system. Your libido is not asking for more frequency, it’s asking for support. Chore play helps a woman feel seen and understood and cared for, all of which is necessary. It’s a necessary part of feeling safe and relaxed and knowing that they matter.

Women need to feel safe, rested, and cared for for their sexuality to naturally come out. So I’m going to leave you with this. Your lack of desire is not failure. It’s information. It’s data that something needs to change. It’s evidence that your body and your mind need something different. Part of this is recognizing it, and part of it is asking for the support that you need.

your mind and your body are asking for less responsibility, more support, more space, and more choice. And I have to say this, when you ask for it from your partner, they’re probably gonna do something a different way. You have to be willing to handle how they choose to take care of the kids or how they handle the schedule, right? If you want your libido to stop ghosting you to come back, she returns on her own time with relaxation. So get the support that you need.

All right, before I leave, Diamonds, if this episode resonated with you and you’re realizing just how much of a load you’ve been carrying, I want you to know this, that you don’t have to figure it out your own. You don’t have to be all alone. And this is exactly the work that we’ll be doing in our program called Own Your Sexuality Now. Own Your Sexuality Now, and that is January 31st and February 1st.

of 2026, it’s where we slow everything down, we unpack the emotional load, and we help you connect and reconnect with your intimacy from a place of choice, capacity, and pleasure, not obligation or duty. So if you’re ready to stop forcing desire and start understanding your body again, I would love, love, love to support you. You can find all the details on the podcast page on my website.

soniawrightmd.com/podcast you’re gonna see episode 208 207 206 and on that page you’ll find a button for or a link for Own Your Sexuality Now! So thank you all for being here with me today my beautiful diamonds. Just know you’re not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you You just need somebody to help you unpack that emotional and physical load

so you don’t have to do it on your own. Alrighty, you deserve all the intimacy and pleasure. I love you so much. Dr. Sonia out.