Ep #9: Flower Side Chat: Part One

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women Podcast, episode 9.

Female Announcer: Welcome to the Midlife Sex Coach for Women Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello Diamonds. I hope you’re all doing well. We are going to be doing something a little different on today’s podcast episode and also on next week’s episode. I just recently had a flower side coaching, Q&A chat session. And we had such a great time with this session that I wanted to make sure to share it with all of my Diamonds. It’s about an hour long so we’re going to be splitting it up it into two podcast episodes. Part one is today and part two will be next week.

I periodically do these flower side chats because I want to make sure that I’m available to help all my Diamonds in any way that I can. I want you to feel free to ask me any questions that are on your mind. Some of you may be wondering, why a flower side chat? Well, it’s kind of like a fireside chat but I have a huge flower behind me in my studio where I do my coaching. So it becomes a flower side chat. Do you get it?

Anyway, I’m going to put a picture of my studio in the show notes so you can see my flower. I really love this flower because it symbolizes the opening up or the awakening of a woman’s sexuality and how it comes into full bloom in midlife. A woman’s sexuality in midlife is vibrant. It’s alive. It’s beautiful. It’s really amazing. And I want to convey that. And I feel like my flower backdrop conveys that and helps you to understand how amazing you are and how amazing your sexuality is.

Okay Diamonds, enjoy part one of the flower side chat.

Hello everybody, I’m Dr. Sonia Wright. This is the flower side chat, and questions and answers, and coaching session. I like to do these periodically just to make sure that I am available to anybody if anybody has any questions. And also so that people will know kind of what my course Own Your Sexuality, the group coaching call is like.

And we do it anonymously and that you can coach through the chat, which means if you have any questions, you can put any questions that you have in the chat or you can put it in the questions and answers. Or you can always send me an email ahead of time, and actually a couple of people did send out emails ahead of time asking me specifically some questions. And so we can get started. Let me see.

The questions and answers is open if you want to put your question in there, feel free to put your question in there. There’s a section where you can do it anonymously if you like, otherwise you can just put your question in the chat and you can address it to panelist, there is just me, I’m the only panelist, I should say. So feel free to address things specifically to the panelist, if you just want it to come to me. Or if you’d like it to go to everybody, feel free to also put it in as the panelist and attendees, if you have any comment that you want to do in the chat.

Alright, so for those of you that do not know who I am, I’m Dr. Sonia Wright. I am a medical doctor, a radiologist, a pediatric radiologist, in fact. I am a sexual counselor and I am a life coach. And I kind of bring that all together and I am the midlife sex coach for women. And I have to say this is my joy, this is my fun, this is what I love doing.

I love making a difference in women’s lives to help them own their sexuality, to discover it, to grow it, to nurture it, to express it in whatever you want to. As long as you are involving consenting adults and you’re not harming yourself in anyway. I say go for it and enjoy yourself. There is so much shame and anxiety around sex and sexuality that I feel like one of the things that I can do to contribute to make it better is to kind of do away with that. Sex is a beautiful thing and we should be able to enjoy ourself.

So I am opening up the chat and if you guys would like to just answer a simple question as to what brought you here today? What questions could I answer for you? What are your concerns right now in terms of your sex life, sexuality? Whether you’re partnered or solo partnered you can have a wonderful, imaginative, creative, incredible sex life. And so I am here to celebrate whatever way your sexuality shows up and how or whatever way you would like to express it.

Okay, so as I mentioned I do have some questions that were already sent to me. So I’m going to make sure to address those questions. But at the same time feel free to put it in the chat or the questions and answers, any questions that you might have for me because I am here for you. We have a full hour. We’re going to have a lot of fun. I’m a talker, and so I’m definitely here to talk about anything.

Let’s see, Hall Dancer, do you have to be married to join your course? No, not at all, you do not have to be married; you don’t have to be partnered. You can be what I call solo partnered, which is with yourself, which I always say that your best lover and your first love and first partner and your best relationship should be with yourself. So it is not a requirement in any way that you actually be married or partnered to join my course.

We have a lot of fun, the people that are solo partnered learn a lot about themselves and recognize that whether they have a partner or not, sexuality is a normal part of being a human being for the majority of people. And they should be allowed to express it and to enjoy themselves. So that is a great question. And so I will do questions and answers. I’ll also do coaching because I am a life coach. So I am here to – it comes back to the thoughts as well. So if you need any coaching, feel free. And let me see if there’s some more questions here.

Alright, we have a question here. I was having a hard time being attracted to my husband because he gained so much weight. Then I went through menopause and now I have hardly any libido. I tried hormone pellets and they just put the wrong dose in and now I’m scared. Okay, and the question is, I didn’t ask her a question, so to follow up, what can I do? So there’s different areas that we can focus on here. What I’m hearing is that there’s a lack of attraction to your husband based on how he gained so much weight. And so we can address that aspect of it.

In terms of addressing that aspect of it, I would ask you what you would like to gain in your relationship, what is your main focus or what is your goal? If your main focus of your relationship is get back to this place where you are finding your husband attractive and you want to focus on intimacy, then let’s focus on that. Then it would be a matter of looking at your thoughts around the issue of attractiveness and your husband, and what you would like to do with the relationship, where you would like to focus and what is important to you.

So these are questions that you might want to ask yourself in terms of what are you making it mean that he has gained some weight, what does that mean to you? And what is your definition of attractiveness? And is that something that you are willing to change? So as a life coach I focus on the individual. The situation, your husband has gained weight, that’s just a situation or a circumstance. You get to think whatever you want to think about that situation.

But also decide what your end goal is that you would want. If you want to maintain the sexual intimacy in your relationship and if that is your goal then you’re going to have to have thoughts, and feelings, and actions that are going to lead you towards maintaining that sexual intimacy. Now, you have no control over your husband and what your husband chooses to do in terms of if he’s going to gain weight or not gain weight. Where you have the control is over your thoughts and what you choose to do in this relationship.

So that’s where I would focus the energy first, and decide do you want to have a loving committed relationship? Do you want to have the sexual intimacy? And if your result is that you do want to have the sexual intimacy then the next step is looking at how do you want to feel about your husband. And what thoughts would be associated with how you want to feel. So those are places to go with that.

Okay, so thank you for a little bit more clarification. He gained over a 100 pounds and he hurts me during sex. We try different positions because of it. Thank you very much, I appreciate that additional information. Yeah, so now if we’re talking about physically, there is a physical effect that you’re having to deal with then this is also an area where we would have to look into positions as you say, and an open communication.

This is an important part of the whole thing, so, the open communication and talking to your spouse, or to your partner in terms of the effect that this is having on the relationship. And as you say, shifting positions is important, if it’s a matter of the positions that you’re now shifting to are not as pleasurable for you then there may be a component of adding in additional stimulation, maybe adding in vibrators and things like that.

But obviously we don’t want you to be in a place where physically you’re not feeling well or you’re having pain associated with it. That would not necessarily be what we’d want. So we’d want to make sure that you get an idea of what exactly is causing the pain. Is it the extra weight on top of you? Then you’re right, then shifting around the position, so that’s definitely something that needs to be investigated and discussed. So that’s the first part of your question that you asked.

And I do want to go back to, now that you’ve gone through menopause; you’re hardly having any libido. So you mentioned that you had hormone pellets. I don’t know if it’s estrogen or testosterone or some combination of the two. And I usually leave that to the gynecologist because that’s their area. So I would say definitely follow up in terms of sometimes pellets can be very helpful. But it does depend on the dose that they put in there and what they choose to do. And I leave that to the gynecologist.

A lot of gynecologists now are using transdermal patches and things like that. So I would check on that. But if you have pellets that in your body that is definitely something that needs to be followed by a gynecologist or whoever put those pellets in there to monitor your hormone levels. Now, having said that, there’s that side of things, and then there’s the side of things in terms of the mindset around that. So you have the menopause and yeah, I’m not going to lie, sometimes things shift around.

And I’ve talked a little bit about this in terms of libido. And I’m going to talk a little bit more about libido. And so you may have heard me discuss the fact that there’s two main types of libido. There’s more of the spontaneous libido and then there’s more of the responsive or receptive type of libido. And so there’s different times in our life where we can be experiencing different types. And overall about 70% of women tend to experience the more receptive type of libido than spontaneous type.

So let me take a minute to explain what the two different types are. So in terms of spontaneous libido, that’s when your mind is engaged, your body’s engaged, you’re really interested in sex. You don’t need additional stimulation in order to be in that place where you’re interested in engaging in sex. And so that would go under the spontaneous desire libido. Very often society says that this is the more normal type of libido, which it may be for men more so than women. But for women, women tend to be more on the responsive side of the libido.

So let’s look a little bit at responsive libido. So if we’re talking about more responsive or receptive, this is coming from a place of neutrality. And most women are in this place of neutrality either as they age and things change, they shift more into this responsive place. Or if they’ve been in a relationship for a longer period of time, then they may shift more so into this place where they’re more in a responsive type. So when you’re in a responsive type of libido or a desire, you’re starting from a place of neutrality. So you’re neither really excited about sex or not.

You could go either way, you could do the Netflix and chill or you could just do the Netflix. You’re like, I’m good. And in some ways it feels like something’s wrong because it’s not that spontaneous libido that you might have experienced in the past. And so this libido that you’re experiencing now may feel like something’s gone wrong, something has shifted, something’s changed. I’m broken. And I’m here to tell you that you’re not broken, 70% of women have this type of desire. And there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just that you have to approach it differently.

When you’re in that spontaneous type of desire, you’re boom, ready to go. You’re like, “Hey, how are you doing? Oh, you’re looking mighty fun.” But if you’re coming from the more responsive side of desire then you might have to work at it a little bit. And so in terms of working at it a little bit, this might look like – there’s different factors that can lead to you being more interested in sex.

And Emily Nagoski has a great book called Come As You Are. And I will look for this book in a second. It’s in my pile of books over here. But she talks about the accelerators and the brakes. So if you have the accelerators and the brakes, and that’s this place where you might be starting from a responsive type of desire and you want to shift into having an increased libido. So if you’re starting from this place then you need to have an understanding of what your accelerators are or what the things that interest you are.

So if it’s something that it makes you more interested in sex then that would be considered your accelerator. So have an idea, if you’re a person that likes to listen or read erotica and that shifts you into the mood, then that might be something that shifts you into this place where you’re more ready to go and you have more of a spontaneous desire. You could come from a more emotional connection place, and you want to have more of a connection with your partner.

So this need or want for more of a connection for your partner might shift your mind into this place where you’re a little bit more interested in sex. You think about that closeness, the bonding, the way it feels when your bodies are touching each other. And you may shift into more of a place where you’re more having a spontaneous or more interested in sex.

You could come from a place where you have a physical stimulation to your genitalia. That being the case then you might get the physical stimulation to your genitalia or kissing or whatever, some other physical stimulation to your breast or whatever. That might trigger your arousal and your body starts getting aroused. And then your mind clicks in and goes, “Oh, I forgot that I like this. I forgot the pleasure side of things.” And then you might be where you shift into more interest in sex and an increased libido.

So they call it our female or non-linear sexual response cycle. And so there’s different ways that you could shift into that. So those are different things. But there’s accelerators, so if you know that taking a bath makes you interested. I always laugh because I’m a child of the 70s and 80s. So when I smell Old Spice that makes me really happy. That would go as one of my accelerators, so taking a bath, relaxing, maybe having a massage, maybe reading some erotica ahead of time, there’s different things.

Maybe start a little early with a vibrator or add a vibrator into your foreplay session. There’s different ways that you can engage. But just have an understanding and an idea that you don’t necessarily have to come from a place of being ready to go and have the spontaneous libido. You can come from a place of more receptive libido.

Alright, let me see what other questions I have here. You are welcome. Yes. So Mary would like to know, I would love to know your favorite books about sex besides Come As You Are. Well, I’m so happy that you asked me. Let’s look at some of those. So I just happen to have some of my favorite books here, not in any particular order. I love this book; it’s called Curvy Girl Sex. And I love it because it’s body parts, there’s sexuality and then it has a number of different positions in here. And it’s just kind of a fun book. So this is one of my favorite books.

Becoming Cliterate is another one of my favorite books, and that talks about the pleasure gap that’s going on. And in terms of anatomy, these are some of my anatomy books that I love, Vagina Bible by Jen Gunter. She’s fabulous and this book is incredible too. And it gives you just a wealth of knowledge about the vulva, and the vagina, and the perineum region and menopause, just a lot of good information. It’s in this little book and it’s easy to read. It’s called The Vagina Bible, if you’ve got one; meaning if you’ve got a vagina you might want to get The Vagina Bible. So that’s another book that I enjoy.

This one is kind of, it’s another anatomy book and it’s a little bit more on the woo woo side, it talks about the goddess spot and things like that, which I like to come from the woo woo side as well. So, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal, this one is a fun book and it’s by Sheri Winston. So that’s another fun book. And I like this because we don’t talk that much about our vulva. Women don’t know about our own sexual organs. For men that are – or people that are born with a penis, you become intimately associated with your penis from a relatively early age.

But women, our vulvas are kind of tucked in between our lips and we have not necessarily been supported in terms of getting to know our vulva. So here’s my vulva puppet, I call her Iris, and she’s beautiful. And so this is where we kind of look at the structure of the vulva, and we get a sense of – this is the clitoral hood and the clitoris, and the urethra which would be the area that you pee out of. And then your vagina is down here.

And then if we wanted to know where our clitoris is, most people think it’s just this little nub up here. But the clitoris actually has legs that go all the way down deep to your – these are your outer lips and your inner lips. And it goes deep to your inner lips. And so this is my vulva puppet. Hello. And yes, we are going to take a second to talk about my favorite friend, the clitoris.

This clitoris is just amazing. And so if you could tuck the clitoris right in here and understand that, it is a deep, deep, deep structure. Then you’ll see that there’s actually four legs that are associated with the clitoris. And it’s a big structure. So in terms of stimulation, you could stimulate the tip or the glands of the clitoris. But it also goes deep into the inner lip or labia of the vulva area. So that’s something to be aware of.

And let’s see, there’s some other books there and we can go and talk about those as well. Let me see if there’s any other questions.

Okay, so I’m embarrassed to figure out how or which type of vibrators to purchase, and where is the best place to purchase or use with my partner? Okay, now, I’m going to answer the question and then I’m also a life coach. So I’m going to give you a little bit of both because I feel that if I just tell you where to get the vibrators and where to get them, then I haven’t helped you address the mindset around using a vibrator.

Now, we talked a little bit about this structure, your clitoris. And this is a beautiful structure. I love the clitoris because its one function in life is for your pleasure. And so we were all equipped with this clitoris, if you’re born and you have a vulva region, you have a clitoris that’s in there. And if you have this clitoris then you have a right to pleasure and to stimulate. Everybody has a right to pleasure, but you also have a right to understand the structures of your body. And you have a right to stimulate your clitoris and to enjoy yourself in terms of the pleasure.

So when I hear that you’re embarrassed, then I start from a place of being, that’s okay to be there. But you get to choose if you want to continue to be embarrassed or if you’d like to work on that, if you’d like to look at your thoughts and journal around wanting to use a vibrator and wanting to stimulate yourself. You have a right to pleasure, you are made for pleasure. And the structure of a woman’s body in terms of what is pleasurable to her, it’s all on the outside and it’s all on her vulva region.

The clitoris is not inside your vagina. It’s tucked deep to the lips. And so the closer to your clitoris is to your vagina then the more stimulation you could get during penetrative sex because it’s pressing on and stimulating your clitoris. But you do have a right to pleasure, so that being the case I would journal on it a little bit in terms of how you want to feel in terms of being able to access that pleasure, because you deserve that pleasure. You deserve as much pleasure as your partner.

So often we put the focus on penetrative sex because if our partner happens to have a penis then for them having penetrative sex is very stimulating and very pleasurable. But we want to make sure that you have as much pleasure as your partner in this situation. And if it means that you incorporate toys into more foreplay, or during penetration then this is completely okay. So look at your thoughts around it, maybe journal a little bit on it and then see what comes up for you.

And see if you perhaps would like to change some thoughts that you may have around this specifically in terms of being embarrassed. Because it’s really wonderful and natural, we’re made to be sexual beings, the majority of us are sexual beings and it’s okay to tap into that. So if you have more questions about it feel free to put it in the Q&A and in the chat and I’m more than happy to coach further on that.

Now, the other half of it is where can I get these toys and what vibrators are there to purchase? So I’m going to stick it in the chat myself to everybody. So in terms of where to purchase things, and I do have an affiliation, so I’ll just let you know that. But this one is a woman owned toy store, actually both of them are women owned. So one is heartsdesires.com and the other one is smittenkittenonline.com. And if you use the code Dr. Sonia then you can get a discount on there. But those are places where you can look for different vibrators.

There’s all different types, there’s the vibrators and a good one to start with is a Fun Factory Volta. That one’s a nice easy one to start with. And the shape of it’s nice so you can stimulate your whole vulva region. And then you can just place it on your clitoris or any part on your vulva and it’s easy to use and it’s got – Fun Factory products are excellent products. Now, those are vibrators.

Then there’s something else called a clitoral stimulator, and that’s a new one that’s coming out the last three or four years that we’ve been seeing clitoral stimulators. And that might be something to start. And people like the SONA line, and that just directs a little puff of air directly to your clitoris. So that might be something to look at as well. And then there’s a number of toys. Heart’s Desire has a larger selection of toys. And there’s a larger selection of toys for women, and for men, and for couples, and for everybody.

So let me see if there’s any other questions. And feel free to continue to put questions in the chat. Okay, alright. Is there a blowjob for dummies book? I’m scared to look online for fear of an onslaught of crap into my inbox. I don’t really enjoy doing it but maybe it is because I feel so inept as well as having a very sensitive gag reflex. Yeah. And it’s the thing that my husband wants; I am pretty blocked about it. Okay, we’re going to get real on this one.

I don’t specifically have a whole book on it but I’m quite sure there’s – I do tend to go to different – to YouTube and stuff. And you can do it incognito to get information. That’s the stuff that directly has information on it. Now I’m going to talk to you about if you have a sensitive gag reflex, and this is where I’m going to get real.

I’m going to bring out the pencil or the pen here. And if we were to look at this and think that it’s a penis then you can put your hand at the base of the penis and that shortens the length of the penis and that will help with your gag reflex. And you can use your mouth and your hand in unison. You can put either saliva or lube on your hand and you can put your hand and your mouth in unison together and that will protect your gag reflex. So that’s one part of it to look at.

And then in terms of – if you’re pretty blocked about it, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what your thoughts may be on this and feel free to add this in. And I get this quite a bit with clients that I coach. And I work with them in terms of what their thoughts are around it and what’s coming up for them specifically. Sometimes it’s coming up with, because it’s a gag reflex, that’s part of the issue. Sometimes they find that they have beliefs about being a good girl and what that means. So there’s a number of different reasons or different things that could be coming up.

And so we look at the thoughts around that and then having an open conversation with your partner is always a good thing as well, to see if there’s some alternatives. So if it’s the fact that you want to work on this and you want to work on thoughts, then I suggest journaling and thinking about it, or what are the thoughts that specifically come up for you around this area? What would you like your goal to be specifically for this? If it’s thoughts that come up and they lead to fear or embarrassment, just spend some time with that and come from a place of compassion.

So, thank you so much for sharing this. What comes up is tears and honestly I don’t know why. I just feel so sad. Yeah, thank you for sharing this with us because you’re not alone. There’s a number of other people that are dealing with a similar situation, so I want to thank you for sharing that with us. And then it’s okay to have that feeling of sadness. And we don’t have to push it away. We can just sit in that and feel what it feels like for us.

And sometimes we don’t know what the thought is that comes up for us. But if we were looking and coming from this place of sadness what do you think might come up in terms of your thoughts around it? What thought might be leading to you feeling sad? Sometimes it’s a thought that you want to give pleasure to your partner and you feel like you’re not meeting their needs, or you’re not being a good partner because you’re not engaging in oral sex. And this is what your partner would like.

So it’s okay to be in this place of sadness and it’s okay to feel, and to think the thoughts. And we just look at the thoughts. And we’re not going to be afraid. We’re just going to look at the thoughts and we’re not judging. And we’re just going to kind of see where we go with that. So if you want some more coaching on that and if you can think of a thought that comes up for you. And it’s okay to come from a place of sadness, because you’ve probably been dealing with this issue for a while and probably beating yourself up over this issue as well.

And so I’m asking for compassion, for self-compassion for you and to just look at the situation. And we’ll come up with a combination of kind of figuring it out or just looking at the thoughts and not coming from a place of judging ourself. So, okay, I’m going to go back and we had a couple of more comments in here.

My husband cheated on me and I haven’t been able to have sex with anyone for years, as though with that betrayal of my own sexuality died. I don’t know how to revive it. I feel as though sex was taken from me. Okay, I’m going to get real with you on this one. It’s your sexuality and you get to own it. And the question is do you want somebody else to have the power over you? This person is, it sounds like – I don’t know if the husband is still in your life or he’s gone from your life. But you are the one that has the power and you own your sexuality, nobody else owns it.

But you’ve made a choice to kind of give it away to somebody else and now you don’t know how to get it back. It’s a decision. It’s a decision to decide that it is your sexuality. And you get to think about this and decide, do you want to give your sexuality away or do you want to own it as part of you? Because if there’s a part of you that’s blocked off, then that part of you, you’re not expressing. But sexuality is so often connected to creativity. That you’re also blocking off a part of yourself. And you deserve to have access to your sexuality.

So the question becomes do you want to have access to that? And yes, you can work on this and you can get access to your own sexuality. The first place I would start with would be journaling and thinking about the thought I am a sexual being. And then ask yourself, do you think that you have the right to sexual pleasure? And I know that the trust was broken, and the trust in somebody else. But ultimately the responsibility for our sexuality is with ourselves. And the person that you want to put the most trust in would be yourself.

And so I’d also ask you, do you trust in yourself? And would you like to trust in yourself? And how would you like to be able to express your sexuality?

Okay Diamonds, that’s all for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the flower side chat and Q&A session. I’m going to be doing another flower side chat in December as well. So feel free to email me any of your questions and I’ll address them in next month’s episode. Take care for now. Dr. Sonia out.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Midlife Sex Coach for Women Podcast. If you enjoy Dr. Sonia’s fun and caring approach to sexual intimacy, head to soniawrightmd.com to learn more.