Ep #56: The Gift of Allowing

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast, episode 56.

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 am so excited to be here for today’s podcast. And I’m not sure if it’s going to be a short one or a long one. I think it’s probably going to be on the longer side. But I’m going to be exactly accepting and allowing of whatever happens. And you know why? Because I am currently celebrating my birthday week, yes, as I turned 55 I’ve decided that I don’t need to just celebrate a birthday day. It’s time to celebrate a birthday week. And then I think I’m going to kind of extend it into a birthday month. But right now, I am just working on my birthday week.

So, as I start my 56^th year of life I am giving you my 56^th podcast episode. And I really feel like life is just beginning in so many ways. And this is the thing that I love about midlife, that I get to choose my life. I get to choose travel. I get to choose health. I get to choose love. I get to choose new relationships. I get to choose being a mom of a 22 year old and a nine year old. And you recently met my son a couple of episodes back, Julian.

And one day you’ll meet my daughter, Jamieson. And I call her Jamie, and Jamie is just hysterical. She’s just so funny. And I actually have to share something that she said to me the other day because it’s so funny and very appropriate as I turn 55. So, a couple of weeks ago my daughter got bangs, long Lizzo bangs. She has been wanting bangs her whole life. She even wrote a book about her having bangs and what that means to her.

And these bangs are really long, they cover her entire forehead and they go a bit into her eyes. They extend down and kind of cover her eyes such that she has to put a part in them and move it a little bit to the side just to see out of it. But she loves these bangs so much and she’s so proud of them. And she looks so cute with these bangs. And I love her bangs because she’s been wanting them for years. She finally exerted her independence. She told the hairdresser what she wanted, how she wanted her hair cut and that she wanted these long bangs.

And I am all about supporting the goals. So now she has a new agenda. And this new agenda is for moms. So since getting these bangs she wants her mommy to have matching bangs with her. So, the other day she said to me, “Mommy, you need to get Titty bangs.” And I was like, “OMG, what exactly are Titty bangs?” And she said, “Oh, you know, bangs that hang down really low.” And I was like, “What?” She said, “Oh, you know, mom, bangs that hang down really low just like your titties.”

I was like, where did this child come from? At first I didn’t have anything to say. And then I thought to myself, well, yeah, that’s real. I have a size J 55 year old titties and they do hang down. And they’re probably going to hang down even lower by the time I’m done on this planet. So right now, I’m celebrating being in this world for 55 years and starting my 56^th year. And I’m also celebrating my droopy titties in all their glory. And you know what? I did go and get myself some titty bangs so that I would match my daughter. And I’ll put a pic in the show notes so that you can see my new glorious bangs.

So that my friends is an example of allowing and creating something beautiful out of this process of allowing. And today I want to talk to you all about allowing. I have to allow that my titties were kind of droopy and that was okay. And I want to give this on my birthday, on my birthday week and this is a gift of allowing. So, what is so fabulous about this gift of allowing? Let me tell you, it’s everything. And it really is the center of my coaching. I don’t know how many times a day that I say, “Nothing has gone wrong here.”

I really, I need to have a t-shirt that says, “Nothing has gone wrong here.” Yes, I have titty bangs, something like that. But really this concept is nothing has gone wrong here, our minds are in so much resistance that we can’t focus on whatever the situation is. The situation is neutral but we are spending so much time in resistance, in denial, pushing against that which is and focusing on the rejection of reality. And this rejection of reality is really the issue at hand. What if we were to just give up all this resistance?

What if we were to embrace and allow, and just make that allowing part of the journey? Whatever the situation is it’s part of the journey. What would our relationships and our sexuality, and our sexual intimacy look like if we were just able to allow? So today I want to look at some common reasons that women come to me, they want to work with me on their sexual intimacy. And I want to look at it through the lens of allowing. What would it look like if we opened the box and approached the issue from a place of allowing? That’s kind of what I want to do today.

So here are my top 10 most common issues that I would like to gift my Diamonds the gift of allowing. They’re not specifically in any order, just mainly the order that popped into my mind about the most common issues that women come to me. And I do have an issue as well for my male Diamonds that are out there. And of course, this applies to all non-binary people as well. Are you in the mood to see what’s in this box and to just allow it?

So, number one, in honor of my droopy titties here is the first one. My body is not sexy enough for intimacy. This is what I get a lot. I’ve gained weight. I’ve gained COVID weight. My body doesn’t look the way it looked when I was 20 years of age. My titties are droopy. I have a big stomach now. I’m just not sexy enough for sex. I cannot engage in sex because I don’t look good enough. I need to lose 20 pounds first and maybe it’ll be better.

But you need to recognize that your body is always changing. So, can we embrace the body that we have right now? Can we own it? Can we see the beauty in it? Can we think the same way about our body now that we thought about our body when we were 20 years of age? Because the reality is, this is the body we have at this moment. We can do something to change the body if you want to. But I always advocate getting healthy.

And if you’re going to change the body, change it from a place of loving the body first. Don’t change it from a place of abusing the body, or thinking you need to starve it, or workout 20 hours a day or something like that. But coming from a loving kind position, coming from a place of really allowing your body to be exactly the way it is at this moment and accepting it and loving it. And realizing that it’s an incredible temple. It doesn’t need to change in any way. It can be the body you have right now and it can be sexy as hell, 100% sexy.

And all we have to do is to allow our body to be as it is. And then from a place of allowing as opposed for being frustrated and angry, or resentful, or hating our body in some way. But from a place of allowing and loving our body, then we can look and see how we can approach sex and sexual intimacy. Because if we’re coming from a place of loving and allowing, at the minimum allowing our body and hopefully getting to this place of loving our body, then the sexual intimacy just flows.

We’re in such a better place in terms of sharing our body with another person, recognizing how incredible our body is, honoring our body with nutrition and exercise. But it all comes from a place of loving and not from a place of being frustrated, and angry, and resentful about our body. Remember, your body is always changing and that’s okay, nothing has gone wrong.

Okay, number two reason that women come to me is my libido is broken. It has changed, it’s not exactly the way it was when I was in my 20s. It’s interesting how the 20s seem to be the reference for everything. Why isn’t the 50s the reference for everything? That’s what I want to know as I turn 55. Why isn’t the 50s the way I want my body to be? For me it is. So, my libido is broken, it’s changed, it’s not like what it used to be. And you’re right, it’s not, it’s not like it used to be. Your life is not what it used to be, it’s very different.

And all I say is welcome to libido in midlife. And now what? Now you get to choose. You get to choose, do you want that frustration? Do you see this theme here? You get to choose, do you want the frustration, the denial, the pointing and saying it should be other than what it is? Or do you want the allowing which simply says, “Okay, this is my libido at this time?” Yeah, this is my libido. And I can tell you, I have a libido that’s like most women’s, which is more of the responsive type of libido as opposed to the spontaneous type of libido.

And if you’re coming more from this responsive type of libido, sometimes you might have to work at it. You get to decide if it’s something that you want to do. If you want to put that effort in there and do it. But always realize that nothing specifically has gone wrong with your libido. It is just different than the way it was before. Society says there’s only one type of libido which is the spontaneous libido. But that’s not necessarily the case. And the truth of it is that 70% of women function from more of this responsive libido as opposed to this spontaneous libido.

So, if 70% of women are functioning from this place of a responsive libido then definitely nothing has gone wrong. You’re in the majority. You have more going on in your life than you did. And that spontaneous libido may come, it may flow back in and out. It’s kind of like the ebb and flow libido, nothing has gone wrong. You get to decide if you want to invest your time and your mind work on your libido. And I say, of course, 100%, but coming at it from a place where you’re recognizing it is what it is at this moment and you can improve it.

And if you focus on the pleasure and how this is going to positively impact your life, then you can get into this place where you are more in tune with yourself and you’re enjoying your libido the way it is and just recognizing it’s just a matter of knowing what makes me more interested in sex and what makes me less interested in sex and it’s okay to work at this.

Alright, number three, I’m not doing sex the right way. I’m taking too long to have an orgasm, I don’t know all the new techniques, I’m not as good as somebody else. And all this is just different versions of performance anxiety. So, the question becomes what do you need to allow here? And with performance anxiety, we’re so much in our head that we’re not down in our body. We’re focused on it has to be a certain way, I have to do this better. I’m not doing it right, I’m taking too long. I’m not taking enough time.

And it’s just all these, it’s kind of like you’re outside of yourself looking down at yourself having sex and critiquing with a pad and like getting ready to score it. We don’t have to do that. We can allow sex to be the way it is. We can allow our ‘performance’, it’s not really a performance, but we can allow how we engage sexually with ourselves and with another person to be just the way it is. You can always change it and improve it if you want to. But coming from a place of criticizing yourself and being frustrated that something is not the way it should be, that’s just fighting against reality.

So, you get to look at whatever it is that you are in your mind thinking is leading to your performance anxiety. You get to look at it and decide, is this something that I really want to work on? Is this something I want to get upset about? Hopefully you’ll decide, I don’t want to get upset about this. And you can also decide to work at it. I’m not saying that when we allow that we ‘settle’ and we don’t make other choices, you can definitely 100% make another choice, but coming from a place where we are okay with things as they are to begin with.

And we recognize that nothing has gone wrong, this is just going to be part of our journey, part of our sacred journey as we go along this path to learn more about ourself, to have a better relationship with ourself sexually and then to share that with a partner if we choose. But once again, nothing has gone wrong.

Number four, this one is one that’s been coming up quite a bit, which is I can’t deal with or I can’t solve this sexual intimacy issue because it will upset my partner in some way. It will hurt their feelings. Do you think the lack of sexual intimacy in the relationship isn’t already hurting their feelings? OMG, if I had a dollar for this one I would be a rich woman. I would seriously be a rich woman.

We sit there wanting to protect our partners from reality and we just sit and stew in the problem essentially. But we don’t do anything to fix it because we’re too afraid of hurting our partner’s feelings. Partners, if you’re listening here, listen up because I’m telling everybody that’s listening. It is okay to hurt your partner’s feelings. You’re not hurting your partner’s feelings to begin with, let me just say. They are making a choice to have a certain rection and a certain emotional reaction to whatever you may have told them or whatever is going on.

And it’s okay for them to have that emotional reaction. You don’t get to control another person. You don’t get to control how they react to things. And it’s okay, whatever way they choose to react is okay, it is just the starting point. And it can be the starting point to something really beautiful if you’re able to open up and communicate and have those conversations. But when you’re sitting there shut down, lying on your back, just letting them plug away but you’re not saying, “I’m not really enjoying this”, or, “This is not working for me.”

But instead, you’re sitting there thinking about your to do list and what you can get accomplished as soon as they finished. You’re not helping yourself in any way and you’re not helping your partner. And don’t think your partner doesn’t know that this isn’t working for you. I mean they know when it’s working for you and when you’re engaged and when it’s not. So, you’re not protecting them. You think you’re doing them a favor but you’re not. And in the long run it’s going to impact the intimacy, the overall intimacy in the relationship and it’s going to negatively impact the relationship.

So, while you’re sitting there trying to protect your partner from whatever you think he, or she, or they need protecting from you’re not realizing that there is harm occurring to yourself, to your relationship and to your partner. So, either way their feelings are being hurt. Do you want to get to this place where you can openly and honestly talk about what’s happening with the sexual intimacy in your relationship and together or all of you work together to improve that situation? That’s my question to you.

So once again it’s okay to allow your partner to have feelings. You don’t have to protect your partner’s feelings. They’re a grown person. They can have whatever feeling they want and it’s just the starting point. And you all get to work together to figure this out. Alright, that was number four.

Number five, orgasms. My orgasms are just not good enough. Either I don’t have an orgasm, or I take too long, or my orgasms don’t look the way that other women’s orgasms look like. And usually it comes from romance novels, or it comes from pornography or something like that and all that is not reality anyway. Or the way I have an orgasm is not correct. All these thoughts. And this is kind of a subset of the performance anxiety. But I separate out orgasms because there’s so many people that think that they are wrong in some way.

Their orgasms are not strong enough, they’re not having an orgasm, they don’t have it the right way. But our bodies are all different. And so, our orgasms are going to be different too. So, as we look at this, I just want you to realize once again, nothing has gone wrong. Are you willing to accept your orgasms or lack of orgasms as just where you are at this point in time and nothing has gone wrong? And maybe you don’t have a mind blowing orgasm, but you have an orgasm for your body.

Maybe your orgasm flows throughout your whole body. Maybe you just feel your orgasm in your big toe. Each one of us is wired differently and we express, and we feel, and we experience our orgasms differently. And there’s not just one way. Society likes to tell you that there’s one way to have an orgasm, but there isn’t. There’s thousands of ways to have an orgasm and each one of us is individual. Can you allow and celebrate the unique way that you have an orgasm and not think that anything has gone wrong? So that is my question to you.

Question number five, are you willing to allow your orgasm? I know I am but you get to choose for you.

Number six, I can’t ask for what I want in the bedroom during sex. I cannot ask for what I want, or good girls don’t ask for what they want. They take what they can get. And there is this sense that as a woman we don’t have the right to prioritize our needs, or to verbalize our needs in terms of sexuality and sex. This is all about allowing your needs. So once again nothing has gone wrong here. Are you able to allow the fact that you have needs? And maybe allow the fact that some of your needs are being met sexually. And allow that you have a right to ask for what you need and what you would like.

Now, ultimately it’s not somebody else’s responsibility to provide that for you. But is it okay for you to have needs in the bedroom? Or is sex all about duty for somebody else, taking care of your partner’s needs? That’s my question to you. You get to decide what sex is for you, what sexual intimacy is for you and if you have a right. I of course think you have a right to get your needs met. But I also think ultimately you’re responsible for getting your needs met.

And part of that responsibility involves being able to articulate and ask for or making sure that you’re able to provide for yourself. If it means that you need to bring a toy into the bedroom, then bring the toy into the bedroom. There is nothing wrong with that. So, number six, you do have the opportunity, and the ability, and the right to ask for your needs to be met. And I would start by asking yourself to meet your needs. I always believe in self-sufficiency and of course self-pleasure I think is amazing as well. So, start by asking yourself.

So often we say we can’t ask for what we need but we don’t even know what it is that we need. So, start by asking yourself, what is it that you need sexually? What is that you need to feel satisfied? Is it you need somebody to go down on you? Is it that you need stimulation to your clitoris? Is it that you need to be held before, during and after sex? Is it that you need to talk about things? You get to decide what it is that you need and you get to advocate for yourself to get your needs met.

Okay, 100% we are responsible for our own needs. But first we have to recognize that we have a right to have our needs. Alright, that was number six.

Number seven, sexual intercourse is not what it used to be. My sexual intimacy has changed. And maybe it can no longer be defined as penis and vagina sex, or penetrative sex. And so therefore some women believe that their intimacy is at an end. Or we could just allow for the change. What? Imagine that. You could just allow for sexual intimacy to change and the acts of sexual intimacy to change over a period of time.

I have so many women that come to me and they say their partner’s penis is not working so therefore there is no more sexual intercourse. And they allow their partner to just shut it all down. You can allow that the penis is not working. You can allow that sexual intimacy has changed. You can allow that your body has changed. You can allow in any way that sexual intercourse has changed. But 100%, it does not mean that it needs to be shut down. It just means that it has changed.

So, the important part of the allowing and this gift of allowing is allowing that the sexual intimacy has changed, allowing whatever factors to be there to be there. Maybe vaginismus has developed, maybe sexual pain has developed, whatever has developed we go from this place of allowing. And it doesn’t mean that we Pollyanna, be like, “Oh, I have sexual pain now, okay.” No, I’m not talking about that. Take the time that you need to process, to grieve if you need to grieve the loss of something.

Take the time to get to this place of acceptance and allowing of what the sexual intimacy looks like at this point in time. And then you can choose and you can recognize that this is a starting place for you. And from this point forward you’ve kind of erased the board and you get to create it in whatever way you want to create it. But the allowing is the important part here.

This is the one that I promised for all my male Diamonds that might be out there, that listen to this call because they want to understand their female partners if they have a female partner, they want to understand, or just partners in general, if they want to understand what’s going on with them. So, this one goes out to all my male Diamonds. And I do not know who needs to hear this today but you are so much more than your dick. Let me just tell you, you are a human being with feelings, and wants, and needs and you deserve pleasure whether or not your dick works.

So, when this dick stops working, it’s really when all the fun begins, but you have to decide that you’re going to make that choice. And yes, I know that you may have in your mind that there is only one way to have sex and that means to stick a penis somewhere and an erect penis per se. But you need to recognize that having an orgasm and having pleasure is separate from actually having an erection. You can have all the sensations, and you can enjoy yourself, and you can have an orgasm. And you can have an ejaculation whether or not you have an erect penis.

If your penis is not ‘reliable’, that does mean that you close up shop. What it does mean is that you get to know your penis. You get to know the ebb and flow of your erection, because it’ll come, and it’ll go, and it’ll come and that is okay. Can you allow yourself to be more valuable than just your dick? Can you allow yourself to be more valuable than just your wallet? Can you allow yourself to be a whole person that is loved and appreciated by your partner, and wants to touch you and wants to give you pleasure, and wants to be there with you and for you?

Can you get vulnerable enough around this issue of your penis not working so that you can have another fabulous, fabulous 40 more years of intimacy together? And while I’m talking to you I’m looking for a book by Barry McCarthy. I love any book by Barry McCarthy. So, if you can find the books by Barry McCarthy, I will put it in the show notes. He definitely has a book called Coping with Erectile Dysfunction. He has a new book that’s out about Contemporary Male Sexuality. But he is just fabulous. And read his materials and recognize that you are so much more than a penis.

So, you get to allow whatever is happening with your penis and you also get to allow the fact that you deserve pleasure, and love, and intimacy, and touch at every moment in your life. Can you allow that your penis does not work 100% of the time the way you want it to work? Just like as women, we’re allowing the fact that as we’re going into menopause and beyond our vaginas and our vulvas may not be working exactly how we thought it was going to and we make the adjustment and we figure it out. Can you allow that for yourself?

And when you get to this place of allowing you are opening up a whole world. Let met just tell you as a pansexual person, I know a penis, an erect penis is not a requirement for pleasure, and intimacy, and a fabulous sex life. So, can you allow your penis to be just the way it is and still have a fabulous sex life? I love all my male Diamonds and I just wanted to give that message to you.

Number nine, it’s the toys. Toys, yes, of course, of course I have to talk about the toys. The toys are so much fun and so many people are not allowing themselves to enjoy the toys because they have all sorts of questions. Yeah, so toys, can we allow the use of the toys in the bedroom in the bed? Can you allow for the fact that you may be a first time toy user and you’re just learning about self-pleasure? Can you allow for the fact that you may want toys in your bedroom with your partner?

Once again there is no need to get worked up about toys and if your partner is introducing toys into the bedroom. And I wish you could all be here in my studio because I am surrounded by toys everywhere. Because I do an actual unboxing of toys every week in my Your Empowered Sexuality weekly group coaching call. And feel free to join that group if you’d like to. We’d love to have you there. And so, every week I talk about the toys because I want people to understand and to normalize it.

We have so many ideas about good girls, and bad girls, and if you can use a toy, or don’t use a toy, or what that means about you if you use a toy, or what that means about your partner if you use a toy. None of that matters. What matters is having fun, and having pleasure, and then enjoying yourself and exploring sexuality, sexual intimacy, sex just in general. These toys are fun. That’s all I’ve got to say. These toys are really fun. And every week I discover a new toy. And my life is good, I have to say.

And I want my Diamonds’ life to be good too. So, using a toy does not mean something about you as a person. It does not mean anything about your partner as a person or you partners as people. It doesn’t mean anything about somebody’s skill level is lacking. It’s just about allowing toys and welcoming the fun that they bring into the bedroom, or the kitchen, or the bathroom, or wherever you want them. And talk about the bathroom, there are so many waterproof toys out there now. You just get to explore and have fun. Okay, that was number nine, all about allowing the toys.

Number 10, our bodies are aging. Yeah, menopause is real, menopause for women, menopause for men, the equivalent. Hormones are decreasing as we age. Whether we are a woman, or a man, or a non-binary person our body is changing. Maybe we’re not as lubricated as we were before. Maybe now we have chronic hip pain and we can’t necessarily do that position that we did previously. And it’s really about allowing our bodies to be the way our bodies are and allowing the fact that things are changing as we age.

You probably will not have the same sex or have it the way that you did when you were in your 20s. Maybe you need to add a lubricant now. Maybe you need to check in with a pelvic floor physical therapist. Maybe you need to make accommodations for that hip that’s bothering you, or that back. Maybe you can only be in certain positions. And all that is okay. If we can just get to this place of not necessarily lamenting that we have a back problem or a hip problem, or we need lubrication, or our titties are hanging low.

Whatever it is it’s alright, if we can get to that place of allowing, and accommodating, and working with our bodies the way they are right now. And recognizing that, yeah, aging is real. And yeah, it’s going to impact sexual intimacy, but we get to choose how we have it impact. Is it going to be a negative impact because we decide with our thoughts that everything’s gone wrong because we’re now in menopause and we don’t lubricate, and maybe we have pain sometimes? Or maybe we have delayed ejaculation issues, or maybe we have other issues going on.

Whatever it is with our body changing we just recognize that it is okay and we get to allow it, and we get to accommodate it. And we get to use our creativity to make thing actually fabulous, really. If you recall my interview with my client Didi, who was 74 at the time, she has fabulous sex all the time, much better sex than I have. Does she have penetrative sex? No, no, not at this moment. But her sex is amazing. The sexual intimacy that she has made for herself and created while working with me is just fabulous and you get to create that as well.

Okay, and then there is a bonus, this bonus is bonus number 11. And the bonus allowing is for the fact that sex can get better, and better, and better every single year. You get to allow for the fact that things don’t work exactly how they did before. And you get to allow for whatever sexual intimacy issue that you are dealing with at this point in time. And you get to allow for the fact that you get to create the sexual intimacy that you want in your future. And how do you allow for that? You just open your mind to the possibility.

So, a lot of the allowing that I’ve talked about has been about allowing things that are at this point in time, and this bonus one is about allowing for all possibilities and recognizing you have a choice. You have a choice that you can look at things negatively or you have a choice that you can look at things positively. You have a choice that you can allow for a different future than the one that you originally thought of. You have the choice to allow for the possibility of things just getting better, and better, and better. So, you get to allow and to choose, and to make your sex life whatever way you want to.

Okay, Diamonds, that’s all for this week. And I am going out to celebrate my birthday. And I hope that you are having a fabulous day too. I’m actually continuing celebrating this birthday in my birthday week. I’m going to go for a walk. I’m going to enjoy nature. I’m going to spend some time with people I love. So, to all of you, take care and remember to allow this week. What gift would you like to give yourself and allow? Alright, Dr. Sonia out.

Diamonds, how is your sex life? No, really, how is your sex life? On a scale of one to ten how would you rate it? You know I’m all about the intimacy for women in midlife. If you rated the passion in your life as less than an eight then we need to talk, sister. I’m personally inviting you to check out my new program, Your Empowered Sexuality 30 day kick starter. I am so excited about this program. Most of you know that I have an impossible goal to positively impact the sex lives of over a million women. And I am just getting started.

Come work with me for 30 days to kick start that intimacy in your life. Let’s create that amazing, satisfying, intimacy that you deserve. Let’s face it, if you’re in your 40s, 50s or 60s, you could have 30 to 50 more years of intimacy ahead of you. What do you want that intimacy to look like? Let’s get real and talk about what’s going on with your body, your libido, let’s see what we can do to kickstart this intimacy. This program is for you whether or not you have a partner.

If you are a woman who wants to enjoy all aspects of her life then this is the program for you. It finally gets to be your time. So, click on the link in the show notes or on my website at soniawrightmd.com and come join me for Your Empowered Sexuality aka YES, Your Empowered Sexuality 30 day kick starter. I cannot wait to see you Diamond, talk to you soon. Take care.