Ep #40: Sustained Intimacy

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast, episode 40.

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, hello, hello Diamonds. How are you doing today? It’s Dr. Sonia. I hope you’re doing well. Today’s podcast is going to be short and sweet kind of like me, and also to the point. Most of you know that I have a nine year old daughter who I adore. But I also have a son, Julian, and he’s 21 years old. I actually started medical school when I was 32 and then I realized I wanted to be a mother. And if I was going to have a child my odds were probably best to have one during the academic portion of my medical school.

So I actually got pregnant with Jules during my first year of medical school. And by my second year of medical school I had a baby. I always like to say I had twins actually. I had a baby Juju and a medical school education that I was juggling at the same time. Well, that baby is all grown up now and graduating from college this week. And I’m headed out to California to celebrate this amazing accomplishment. So, Julian is graduating from Stamford University with a degree in biology. And no, let me just tell you no, he does not want to be a doctor.

From the time he was a little kid he was like, “Yeah, mom, no, just letting you know, I don’t want to be a doctor.” He’s really into world ecology and ornithology, yeah, birds. And from the time he was a little kid he had binoculars in his hand and I could always find him up a tree somewhere looking at a bird. And as I watched this little guy grow up to become an amazing man I realized he taught me so much about unconditional love and acceptance.

And he really gave me the biggest gift of all really, the opportunity to be his mom and to love him. So, thank you, Jules, and congratulations on your graduation from Stanford University. Mama is so proud. This graduation milestone, it’s really allowed me to contemplate how relationships change over a period of time. And at one point I would see Jules every single day. We lived in the same house. I was his mom, he was my kid.

And then he went off to college. I was like, “Wait, wait, what? I’m not going to see my baby every single day.” And so I only saw him a couple of times a year. But we still nurtured that connection with calls, and emails, and texts and FaceTime, whatever way that we could.

As we do this deep dive into intimacy in the month of June I want to discuss this concept of sustained intimacy in relationships. As I’ve mentioned in the past, intimacy is about connection and bonding with yourself, and with another individual possibly. Somehow it feels easier to bond with someone while we were sheltering in place. We didn’t have as many activities on our schedule. Maybe you found that you had time to talk with your significant other. Maybe you had time to walk together.

I know a lot of families started a tradition of evening walks while we were doing sheltering in place. But now things have changed. People are getting vaccinated and the world is opening up. So how do we take that intimacy back out into the world and sustain it? Well, we can tackle it from a number of different angles. But when I think of intimacy I actually have a visualization of intimacy, probably because I’m a radiologist and I’m very visual. I actually see the bonds, the threads that kind of get weaved together to make these bonds that connect individuals.

And it’s not just one type of thread that makes up the bond of intimacy. I see several different colored threads that are weaved together to create this bond. And these threads include emotions, intellect, experience, spirit. It’s all different types of intimacy. And all of these different types of threads or different types of intimacy are needed to maintain or sustain the intimacy.

So let’s do a quick journey through several types of intimacy. And remember all intimacy has in common a focus on connection and feeling safe enough to be vulnerable. So first off, there’s emotional intimacy which is the sharing of feelings. People generally talk about hopes and dreams with each other. And they share any and all different types of emotions.

But hopefully this sharing of emotions, this emotional intimacy is not coming from a place where you’re expecting your partner or somebody else to fix a situation or to meet your emotional needs in order for you to feel better. Instead, hopefully it’s coming from a place of just wanting to share who you are, how you’re doing, what’s going on in your life and share that with another person. So, emotional intimacy is about being comfortable with sharing your emotions and vulnerability with yourself and with another person.

Let’s look at intellectual intimacy. This involves sharing your ideas, your thoughts, your opinions, your point of view with another individual. And once again when we’re talking about intellectual intimacy there also has to be this element of safety. You have to know that your opinions will be respected even if they differ with another person. If you don’t feel like your opinions are going to be respected then you’re going to be less likely to share and you’re going to not have that intimacy. That intellectual intimacy is not going to flourish and grow. It’s going to kind of wither and die.

So definitely sharing your thoughts and your ideas, your opinions, this intellectual intimacy, that can be a beautiful experience but also coming from a place of safety.

An additional type of intimacy is experiential intimacy which basically has to do with shared experiences and private memories. And these private memories could be something like a special date night, special vacation time together. It’s essentially experiences with your significant other or with yourself which support and strengthen that bond of intimacy. And you can create more experiential intimacy through creating new activities such as walking together, biking together, taking hikes, watching movies together, cuddling on the couch.

You get to decide how you want to experience this type of intimacy and how you want this experiential intimacy to bind you and to bring you closer.

A final form of intimacy that I wanted to talk to you today about is spiritual intimacy. And this doesn’t necessarily have to be religious in nature, it usually isn’t. Basically I’m talking about when your soul is touched in some way, when the part of you that is not your physical being is tapped into, where your soul or your spirit is activated. And some people say it’s when their higher being in them recognizes the higher being in another person and they connect. And some people talk about it in terms of finding a soul mate.

This spiritual connection feels like it’s on a higher, deeper plane. And it goes beyond logic, beyond emotion, beyond intellect. And you can generally know when you’ve tapped into your spiritual intimacy because you feel an overwhelming sense of joy. And joy is one of those higher emotions that knows that you are connected to your source energy and also other individuals are connected to that source energy. And through that connection you can bond with each other.

So there you have it, you have four different types of intimacy. And you can decide which type of intimacy speaks to you and which type or types of intimacy you’d like to weave together to cultivate that sustained intimacy. But also remember that intimacy is based on a foundation of communication. So make sure that you express appreciation for yourself and for each other because that’s kind of a key component of intimacy.

The highest form of emotions are joy, and love, appreciation. It’s kind of a currency of life and it is the currency of intimacy. So try not to keep it all to yourself. Express the love. Express the appreciation for yourself and for other individuals. And find the small things to appreciate and find the bigger things to appreciate. It’s all important. And definitely look at your thoughts about yourself, and your relationship, and your connection. And that’s how you’ll sustain intimacy.

Okay, once again Diamonds, remember one of the main reasons for being in a relationship is for the chance to experience love, and connection, and that intimate bond. So go out and cultivate that bond. And as we go out into the world, continue to maintain that intimacy and always remember communication is a foundation for intimacy. And then you have overall intimacy and then sexual intimacy is built upon it. So when I’m talking about sexual intimacy I’m always going to talk about general intimacy because if you don’t have the general intimacy you can’t have the sexual intimacy.

Alright Diamonds, till next week this is Dr. Sonia out.

Diamonds, do you feel like you’re missing out on passionate intimacy and amazing pleasure even though your life looks fabulous to everybody else? Or maybe you feel like sex is just an obligation that’s on your to do list right after taking out the trash. Perhaps you would love to get rid of the story that plays again and again in your mind that sex is shameful. Or maybe you just want to want to want sex again.

Well, Diamonds let me tell you the time has come. My Own Your Sexuality Now 90 day program to greater intimacy and pleasure in your life is open for enrolment. In fact I’ve actually reorganized the structure of Own Your Sexuality Now so that you can join at any time. You don’t have to wait for a three month increment anymore. Just think, you can talk to me weekly and get all your coaching needs met in my anonymous weekly group coaching calls. And we have so much fun with these calls and we get the work done.

Best of all, you get a community of other women that are dealing with similar issues. You get to know that you are not alone. So this amazing program, Own Your Sexuality Now includes 12 self-paced modules that lead you on a journey to create the sexual intimacy of your dreams. You start from exploring concepts of you as a sexual being. And then you progress all the way to the point where you’re creating a pleasure plan, a unique pleasure plan for you that ensures that you get the pleasure and the sexual intimacy that you deserve.

And I’m so excited about this, and as a special bonus, Own Your Sexuality Now is going to include an additional three months of weekly group coaching calls and support from me, Dr. Sonia. So click on the link below, Diamonds, or visit my website www.soniawrightmd.com to find out more about Own Your Sexuality Now and to join. I can’t wait to see you all.

Alright Diamonds, that’s it from me, Dr. Sonia out.