Ep #128: Sexual Bill of Rights

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast episode 128.

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, how are you doing? It’s early in the morning. I just finished my workout. It’s time to talk to you. I am in that zone. Let me tell you what happened this week. This week the women of my OYSN intimate group met with Dr. Kimmery for her course on Winning at Relationships which is so good because within Own Your Sexuality Now the women are changing and growing. Their minds are being blown. And their partners and their different relationships, family relationships are shifting as well and they need a place to go.

So I was like, “Dr. Kimmery has been doing this for almost 20 years. This is where these people need to go.” And she blew my mind and we talked about Relationship Bill of Rights. And it made me start thinking about how the concepts in this Relationship Bill of Rights, and I’m going to have her on in the next week or so to talk to us about the Relationship Bill of Rights and to talk more about that. But I was just blown away by the Relationship Bill of Rights, how it can be applied around sexuality as well.

And so that’s what I want to talk to you about, some of the highlighted things on the Relationship Bill of Rights. Now, I was trying to find the reference for this. I downloaded the Relationship Bill of Rights from Pacific Lutheran University. I’m not sure where the original origin of it is. If anybody else knows let me know but I just wanted to make sure that I definitely reference the original source of this.

Okay, my Relationship Bill of Rights, so good. Alright, I have the right to be treated with respect, 100%. You have the right to be treated with respect when it comes to your sexuality and expressing your sexuality and in the bedroom, outside of the bedroom, when you’re dating, whatever it is, whatever relationship you’re in. Definitely you have the right to be treated with respect in respect to your sexuality. So please listen to this, I have the right to be treated with respect when it comes to your sexuality, 100%.

I have the right to say no and not feel guilty. This is consent we’re essentially talking about here. I have the right to say, “I’m not in the mood.” And it’s okay to say no. We don’t have to focus on pleasing other people all the time. It’s okay if you’re not in the mood for sexual intimacy, you get to say no and you get to be okay with it. You don’t necessarily have to be bullied or made to feel guilty or made to feel like you’re a bad person if you’re not.

And this goes for anybody in a relationship. Especially since I’m a sex coach for women it goes for women in a relationship but also men and non-gendered individuals. If you’re not in the mood for sexual intimacy you get to say no. We don’t have to adhere and conform to society’s concept of who we are and how we have to express our sexuality and when we express it. Consent is so important here.

You have the right to express feelings without being criticized. This one I find is hard for women. If they express ‘too much feelings’ then society is like, “Women are so emotional. It’s probably their period time,” or blah blah blah blah. You get to just express your feelings and there are no good feelings or bad feelings, there are just feelings and you get to express them.

I have the right to take time for myself. This is so key. So many women come to me and they’re talking about the fact that they’re juggling children, in a stressful job and so many other things, taking care of the house. They’re doing it all. And then their partner’s requesting sexual intimacy and they are just not in the mood. They are coming from a place of being exhausted. And they’ll tell me this so much, they are like, “Dr. Sonia, I am just exhausted but can you tell me how to find more time to have sex?”

I’m going to be like, “No, I’m not going to tell you how to find more time to have sex. I’m going to tell you and ask you how to find more time for you? Let’s start with you. Let’s start with rest. Let’s start with sleep. Let’s start with if you have to go out to your car and lock the doors for 10 minutes a day just so you can get some rest and have some downtime.” That’s what I’m going to start with. I’m not going to start with, “Yes, let’s add to your plate. Let’s get into a negligee and focus on somebody else’s pleasure.” That’s never going to happen in my watch.

It’s not going to happen but what is going to happen is you do have the right to take time for yourself or have the right to feel safe. Now, I talk so much about the zone of sexual safety and this is what I’m talking about. You have the right to feel safe when you’re engaging or thinking of engaging in sexual intimacy. You have the right to say, “What do I need to feel safe in the situation physically and emotionally?” What do I need to be able to talk to my partner or partners about what I would like to do in the bedroom?

What would I need in order to be able to sit down and have a conversation and not feel like my opinion, my thoughts are not worthy or will not be received properly? And a lot of this is yes, having conversation with our partners but a lot of this is about having conversation with ourselves because we are the worst critics of ourselves. So I’m going to ask you to ask yourself, that mean bully person, I’m going to ask you to ask them to stand down and treat yourself with kindness and you have the right to feel safe.

You have the right to feel safe from yourself and your thoughts and obviously physically safe, you have that right, absolutely, and emotionally safe from yourself and from others as well. Treat yourself with kindness and demand kindness. Allow that safety to form because when there is that environment, the zone of sexual safety then there’s also a place for trust grows and allowing for vulnerability. And that makes for some beautiful sexual intimacy.

I have the right to make my own decisions, 100%, you do have the right to make your own decision. I think about this with toys. People would like to bring toys to the bedroom, women in particular but they’re concerned about how somebody else is going to feel. We get to have a discussion with them. I’m not saying don’t respect their concerns but also respect your own concerns. If you know that you need a certain type of stimulation to enjoy sex more and if you get that stimulation you would be more interested in sex then talk to your partner about it.

Talk to your partner about whatever decision you want to make. You have the right to make your own decisions. So often women feel that they don’t have the right to make their own decisions when it comes to their body. And I spend a lot of time when I’m in my Own Your Sexuality Now course, we were just talking about pleasure. And really for women to make their own decisions and to say what they want and to have that respected is huge.

And everything starts to shift when we realize that we have the right to make our own decisions, the right to feel safe, the right to think of ourselves and put ourselves first. I have the right to change my mind, 100% you have the right to change your mind. And don’t be bullied by anybody that says, “Well, women change their mind all the time.” Who the fuck cares? If you want to change your mind, change your mind. This is your life, you get to choose it. You tried something, it didn’t work the way you wanted it, you get to change your mind, that is okay. You get to change your mind, it’s alright.

So often women are like, “I can’t change my mind. I can’t go against what I said I was going to do because other people will be upset.” Do you know, when you free yourself you free other people as well. It’s okay to change your mind. Please, listen to this one, Diamonds. I have the right to ask for what I want. I’m going to repeat it. I have the right to ask for what I want, 100% you have the right to ask for what you want, 100%.

You have the right to ask for what you want in and out of the bedroom. You have the right to ask for what you want. And last night in our meeting, I had the women chant that they have the right for their own sexual pleasure. That they had equal rights for their own sexual pleasure. And I know they are like, “What the heck is happening here?” But it starts with you. It starts with you recognizing that you do have the right to ask for what you want. What do you want? Do you want a certain position? Do you want to come first before penetrative sex?

Not in the mood for penetrative sex, whatever you want you get to ask for. You get to ask for a certain position or certain type of stimulation. Or you can just provide it for yourself but you get to ask for what you want. And it’s okay if your partner gets a little upset. Let them get upset and be like, “Hey, I want to be respectful of you as well, so let’s continue to have a discussion.” It’s okay for asking for what you want. There’s so many women that will tell me, “I can’t ask for what I want.”

But look at it in perspective, they start off maybe once or twice thinking, I can’t ask for what I want, 20 years later they still have not asked for what they want in the bedroom. And now, before it was like, I don’t want to hurt my partner’s feelings. And now they’re saying, “Well, then I’d have to explain from the last 20 years I didn’t really like what we were doing.” You don’t have to explain anything. If you want to, you can say, “My body’s changing and I need a different stimulation or I talked to Dr. Sonia and she suggested I try this.”

I am a 100% down with taking all the blame. If you need to switch things up and you’re not exactly sure how to do it, just blame it all on me. I have no problem with it. It’s okay to ask for what we want. I have the right to spend as much time with my family and friends as I want. This one is key. Now, this one, we do have to balance out. I do say that yes we do have the right to spend as much time with our family and friends 100%. And you also get to have a discussion with your partner or partners and balance that out.

And it goes both ways. If you want to spend as much time with your family and friends as you’d like to. They also get to spend as much time with their family and friends as they would like to. Try to have it balanced here. And I also look at women’s roles overall in the household, look at the role with your partner. Who’s responsible for what? Are there ways to balance this out? And this goes back to women being exhausted because we’re doing three and four jobs in the day as opposed to one.

So I would also say, look at this and balance it all out. Balance your commitments, your time commitment. Make sure that you have time for yourself, yes, have time for your families and friends. But also sometimes if your partner’s upset about you being with your families and friends, they are also not saying what they need, which maybe I would like to spend some time with you too. So have a discussion. Make sure that there is time for your partnership there.

I think I’m going over into the relationship side of things which I will be discussing with Dr. Kimmery soon. It’s always so much fun to discuss things with your partner when we’re both coaches and maybe we just had a fight or something like that. It’s so good because it helps us, we just had a discussion. It’s so good because it helps us. We’re like, “Wow, we really need to bring this to the podcast and let all the Diamonds know about this.” So we have so many different podcast ideas ahead so definitely we’ll be talking about that.

I have the right to feel good about myself and let that one sink in. I have the right to feel good about myself. So many women do not feel good about themselves. You have an innate ability to feel good about yourself. It’s almost like I don’t even want to say anything but at the same time I will. It shouldn’t even need an explanation except that in this society I know so many women don’t feel good about themselves. So many women don’t feel good about their bodies. There’s the media out there.

We compare ourselves to this ideal image or this ideal concept of what a woman should be. And we end up not feeling good about ourselves. You should always have your own back. And very often when I’m working with my Diamonds and they’re not sure how to have their own back then I say, “Okay, do you have a little one, do you have a daughter, a niece, a friend’s child, a little girl? What do you want her life to be like? Do you want her to have her own back?”

And they’re like, “Of course, 100%.” And then I’d say, “She’s looking at you to see what your thoughts are, what your actions are.” Your actions always reflect your thoughts. Are you valuing yourself? Are you feeling good about yourself?

And then one last one is I have the right not to be pressured into doing stuff that I don’t want to be doing or I don’t feel like doing. This one is important too, that you don’t have to be pressured. If we could take this pressure off and I think a lot of it is an internal pressure. If we could be kind to ourselves, give ourselves grace, if we could do that, if we could take that pressure off ourselves and I find that that pressure is usually mirrored or twinned with this people pleasing thing, that you have to do it a certain way. You have to be a certain way as a woman in this society.

There’s a lot of pressure for people that choose not to have children, women that choose not to have children are told that, “You’d be a lot happier if you have kids.” Or, “Why are you not having kids?” I think it’s mainly because there’s a lot of angry people out there because it’s not that easy raising children. And then they see others making a choice not to. And they’re like, “I didn’t even know I had that choice.” And they feel threatened by other people’s choices.

And so they’re constantly telling that person, “Why are you not having children? I don’t understand why you don’t want to get married. I don’t understand why you don’t want to do this.” So there’s this concept of what a woman should be and how she should be in this world. And when you choose something different there’s all this internal fear and anxiety that society, your friends, your family are going to have something to say about it.

When you get to the point in your life, when you realize it’s easier to say, “No, I’m not going to do that”, than it is to do something you don’t want to do then you continue to say no and you continue to say yes to what’s important to you. So for all of my Diamonds that’s listening to this. When we’re talking about this Bill of Rights, about life and sexuality just in general what do you want to say yes to? And what are you willing to say no to? Listen to the podcast, listen to it two or three times and see how these things apply to you in your life. There’s the internal pressure. There’s the external pressure. There’s so many concepts about what we should do and who we should be and how we should show up as a woman, a wife, a mother, a partner, a human being. But definitely there’s concepts around gender lines as to what we should do in this world but you get to release that. And that’s one of the things I love about midlife is you get to that place where you feel like, this is some bullshit.

You kind of look around. You’re like, “I did everything that I was told to do and there is no happy ever after. There’s no payback here. I’m exhausted and something needs to change.” And I love when women get to that point when they’re like, “Something needs to change.” And so I’m asking you, what do you want to say yes to? What do you want to say no to? Are you willing to feel some discomfort as you make this journey? And I see this journey all the time. I see it with the women I coach. I see it with the women in my OYSN group.

It is a journey, a journey back to you. When you look at a little three year older girl, she knows what she wants. She knows what she doesn’t want. But then you look at her at 10 years old and she’s trying to conform to what society has to say. And then we look at ourselves at 40, 50, 60 and beyond and we start asking, “Is this really the life that we want to lead? And it is about getting back to ourselves and having this Bill of Rights, this Sexual Bill of Rights about what we can do and what we can’t do, what we want to do and what won’t do. It really comes down to, we get to empower ourselves.

And this is why I love doing this work is really we are empowering women in so many aspects of their lives. It’s not just about the bedroom.

Okay, Diamonds, so good to be here on this podcast. And because of this work that I’m talking to you about I recognize that it’s something that I can’t do alone and there’s so many coaches out there that don’t exactly know how to coach on sex and sexuality. And we are going to be starting a bonus podcast. The first episode is already out and the other episodes are going to be posting on Friday and it has to do with coaching and revolutionizing the coaching industry when it comes to sex and sexuality.

This should be something that every person that’s being coached on could ask questions and ask to get coached on but right now society and coaching programs kind of have it as a taboo thing. Unless you go to a year-long or two-year-long coaching program there usually is not an outlet where you get trained around sexual intimacy. Well, that is about to change because Lisa Hadlestad and myself, Dr. Sonia Wright are creating a coaching program around women’s sexual intimacy.

It’s called Advanced Certification in Women’s Sexual Intimacy so you can focus on yourself and then you can take that information that you’ve gotten and you can focus on how to be the best coach to your clients around the issue of sexual intimacy. So click on the link below if you want to hear our bonus episodes for Advanced Certification in Women’s Sexual Intimacy. Alright, it’s been a pleasure talking with you today. Dr. Sonia out.

Hey Diamonds, do you want to reignite the passion that’s gone missing from your life? Do you want to want to want it again? You know I’m on a mission to end the emotional pain and isolation that women experience associated with sexual difficulties. And many of you also know that I was once in that place where I was experiencing little to no sexual intimacy in my life. And I kept thinking that there was something that was wrong with me, that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t attractive enough, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t smart enough to fix this problem.

And I was worried all the time that my relationship was too far gone because of this lack of intimacy. Well, you know what? I was right about one thing, the relationship didn’t last. But even though the relationship didn’t last, I committed to doing the work that I needed to do to own my sexuality. And now I have this amazing sex life and it’s everything that I wanted it to be. And I’m also committed to helping my Diamonds by teaching them the same strategies that I figured out in order to revitalize the intimacy in their life.

So, if you want to stop feeling broken, if you want to stop feeling shame and guilt about sexuality, if you want to feel more comfortable with your sexuality and tap into that pleasure then I’m here for you, Diamonds. First of all, know that there’s nothing that’s gone wrong with you. You’re not broken. And you know what? You can solve your intimacy issues. You can let go of that shame and guilt, and you can tap into that passionate person that’s just waiting to come out. Let’s get on a strategy call together and let’s discuss how we can work together and how I can help you.

And know that a strategy call, it’s 100% a safe place, there is no judgment. We’ll talk about your intimacy situation, which is what’s going on right now. We’re also going to talk about your intimacy goals, what you would like your intimacy to look like in the future. And then we’ll talk about how we could possibly work together to come up with a personalized strategy plan for you so you can get the results that you need. So, Diamonds, I’m here for you, don’t wait another minute. Book that consultation call with me today and I can’t wait to talk to you.

You can get that consultation call by going to soniawrightmd.as.me. And the link is also in the show notes. Okay, have a great day. I can’t wait to talk to you. Take care.