Why We Don't Want Sex

help people feel less alone. Tara, could you please start off by telling us a little bit about yourself, what you do, how did you.

with their relationship. So I hold workshops around Australia called Great Sex Matters. I have online courses, so I kind of cover quite a few topics, but mostly my highest selling course is called Sex after Kids, which is all about sort of unfucking your sex life after kids, because it you know, it's hard out there, so this course really walks you through the pathway of how you can

kind of reignite that desire. I've written a book called The Better Sex Project, which is all about my journey from my early twenties to where I got to now, including after having kids and thinking I was just going to be this sex goddess after kids. And I was a bit of a dickhead for thinking that, I admit. So it was a very nice kind of come down to earth moment for me. I had a really bad prolapse and lost a lot of pleasure and just didn't

want to be touched and all of those kind of things. So, knowing what I know and being able to bring my kind of my expertise into a realm that I know so well, maybe a little bit too well, I just wanted to bring the kind of sex coaching that women need and want in this kind of season of their life. And that's that, no bullshit, no fluff. We can have

a laugh, we can have a talk. We don't want to get into this kind of really stagnant sterile therapy type, high stress environment because I think mums have got enough going on. I think that we need actionable tips that are sustainable. We don't need to be told that we'll just have more sex, just schedule it. In because there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that's going on, and I think it helps when you've got somebody telling you go, yeah, I fucking get it. I get how

hard it is. And sometimes you look at your husband you want to smash them in the head with a fry pan and put the kids in the rubbish bin. But we need to kind of do a little tweaking here and there. So yeah, that's kind of me, that's kind of my vibe.

it's a very fun night. And what it does is it just gives you more tools to make sex interesting because I don't know about you, but sex can get really fucking boring after a while. When you've been humping the same guy for a long time, there's not a

lot of newness. So in order to bring back newness and curiosity and exploration, I give you ways to do that in the workshop, and also how to increase your own so you take it from those tiny little micro orgasms or that really fast two second sparks, like really big, full body What the fuck just happened? Blew my mind? I'm now on a different level. Can we do that again in about three weeks time? You know? So it makes sense. That's much interesting.

for some people, that's so great and so realistic. Because I also wanted to ask you because whenever we read anything, we will always see, like you know, good sex is part of a good relationship, and I have one girlfriend out of all of my girlfriends, who is having good, regular sex most nights of the week, she's a psychopath.

satisfaction or sexual satisfaction. Because also, you can be having a lot of sex and it can be unrewarding, or you're doing it for them, or you're doing it out of obligation, or you're doing it with some other kind of belief or from a trauma pattern. But you could also be having sex every two weeks or every three weeks, and it's really connected sex and it brings you guys into a really beautiful union, and it's fun and it's playful, and that kind of sustains you for the next two

weeks or the next three weeks. So whenever we look at frequency, I mean your friend who has sex quite often, that's amazing and if it's.

about talking about anything. And I don't know, I guess I just come across as like I've got big fake titties, So I probably just come across as like really hyper sexual. But I genuinely, and I'm saying to this honestly to you, if you told me you never have to be touched or have sex ever again in your entire life, I would be like, oh my god, Thank Heavens, I do not want to be touched.

and very good at performing. And I have never, I realized, had good sex so because I cannot release the inhibitions or whatnot. And I've had three very long term relationships, and I'd say I've probably orgasmed in my life with a partner maybe twenty to thirty times. And that's a long time, almost two decades. Oh my god, I'm getting on of very regular sex because I've had long term boyfriends and when I wasn't, I was quite happy to you know, I always was having little flings and such.

we grew up with sex being a performance. We were told by the magazines how to have twenty orgasms while standing on your head in the shower, or how to pleasure a man. It was always about what we give to them, that our sexuality was something we traded. We traded it for a nice dinner. We traded it for love, we traded it for a text back, we traded it for a promotion sometimes if that be the case. But we were very much told and sold this idea that

our sexuality didn't belong to us. It was a trading hard. It was something that we did in order to get something outside of ourselves in return. So it makes a lot of sense that you would feel like that your sexuality isn't your own. Yeah, And even if you think about sex, the way that we learn how to have sex, it can be from movies, it can be from porn. We basically get an understanding of our own sexuality and our own pleasure and what sex looks like by the

very people that's job it is to pretend. So we're learning from people who are pretending already. So we never really as women, get a very We don't get the opportunity to form a really authentic sexuality, knowing what we like, knowing what we don't like, knowing what we need, want, desire, knowing that we deserve all of those things. We are not educated in the way that a lot of teens

and young adults are educated now. They're given a much more rounded, holistic view, much more empowerment, much more liberation around it. Yes, we had empowerment growing up, but it was always you can go and fuck like a man, right, And for a lot of women, fucking like a man isn't actually doing anything for them. You know, we don't want to rush in their hot and heavy and get the shit banged out of us somethings. Yeah, we need

different a different way. So it doesn't shock me that you haven't learnt what really is Kelly's true sexuality, What does she need in order to feel safe, Because what I'm hearing is if you're drinking, if you're feeling like you can't let go, that's a safety thing. You don't trust. You don't trust that it's safe to be in your body. You don't trust that it's safe to be sexual. Or

maybe there's been trauma in the past. Maybe there's been and that can range from anything from severe sexual trauma to like a slap on the bum going on the bus when you didn't want it, or comments, hey big tits, blah blah blah blah, you know all of that stuff that makes you go, oh god, that's scary, that's invasive. I'm going to shut that part of myself and I'm going to stuff it right down below so no one can can touch it and I don't have to feel it.

So that safety and allowing yourself to really come into pleasure is important because without safety, we can't trust, and without trust, there's no connection, no connection to your body, no connection to your partner, and then without connection, you won't be able to surrender, surrender to pleasure, surrender to orgasm, surrender to having those kind of experiences that would make sex worthwhile. Does that make sense?

I'm eating it for you. But let's just say, instead of making me or me feeling like I have to eat that tomato, if my husband took that tomato and he chopped it all up and he drizzled bousamic all over it, and he put mint on it, or basil and a nice piece of sourdough that was fresh out of the oven. You can guarantee I'm going to eat that thing like no tomorrow. Yeah, I would devour it. It's the same thing, it's just presented and created differently.

It's using different flavors, it's using different ingredients. So I wonder that if sex felt rewarding, if it felt pleasurable, if you've got to the end of an encounter, sexual experience, encounter with your husband and was like, that felt so good, my body feels alive, I feel or maybe you cry and you release some of this kind of grief intension that you're holding in your body because it's been so long that you felt safe enough to kind of go down into that depth of your body and your soul.

Whether sex like that would feel more enticing if there was no pressure, there was no obligation, it was just simply something that brought you, guys, pleasure, joy, connection, playfulness, release that kind of thing.

overwhelmed by what's going on in your mind? Or is it something that if somebody else, if Chris Hemsworth walked in and started stroking, would you still have that kind of inner battle? Well, I admitted this on a different episode and Luke heard it and was like what.

act is just like ough. And do you know why does it feel like it's a transgression on your space? Does it feel like it sends you into a bit of a flighty response, like a flea or a fight or flight kind of nervous system response. Yeah, like a I freeze up and I'm like, I don't know it, just like I haven't let my husband go down on me for like since before I was pregnant, because I'm just like, oh my god, yuck, like yuk, yuk, yuck, yuck,

chuck it just the whole thing. I'm just like ill, no, please don't.

of desire before it can even flow through you. Yeah, So if there is a touch on your hand or a touch on your shoulder that your brain then determines as unsafe oh, it's going to lead to sex. I don't want to have sex. Now, I'm spinning. Now, I'm going into like overwhelmed with all of these thoughts. My body feels repulsed. Your brain will do a very quick calculation and decide that sex and pleasure isn't worth it

right now, and that it's actually unsafe to you. So it will cock block any type of pleasure or any kind of nice sensation that you would be able to kind of harness as you move forward with the encounter. So when your partner does come and initiate, is it normally your partner initiating.

when you're in a married and healthy relationship. We just we do it right. But if we always have sexual encounters that are for avoidance reasons, like it's been a couple of weeks and maybe you're avoiding an argument, or maybe you're avoiding relationship drift or avoiding something else, or you're feeling bad about yourself that you're not a good partner.

If you're continuously saying yes but really deep down it's a no, then that's going to erode your desire and your pleasure even more so, it's going to make it even harder to access that kind of pleasure and that desire because you're not even trusting your own no. Yeah, really it's a no. But your brain is going, ah, well I should, I should, come on, come on, do it, and your body's like, but hang on. We've been telling you we don't feel safe, we don't like this, and

you're overriding it. Yeah. So I think the first thing that I would do in your sort of particular case, we need to reset the whole sexual cycle. We need to get rid of the pressure, the obligation, the chore. We need to wipe the slate clean and go moving forward. I'm going to create a new sex life with my partner and with myself, one that has the foundation on safety, trust, connection, honesty, authenticity, and that really centers my emotional state, my needs, my desires,

and my wants. And in order to do that, it's about having a conversation with your partner. And when you were saying, Luke would do anything to make you feel comfortable, right like, I like to think that we have good men in our lives. And yeah, they can be total shit back sometimes and not read the room and all

of that stuff. They're not, you know, as great as women, obviously, but they're pretty amazing, especially when you can feel that sensitivity and that appreciation of like what do you need? Like what can I can I help you with? When it comes to your sex life, they're pretty clueless as well when it comes to a female sexuality, almost as much as you know, we're pretty clueless as well. I mean they're more clueless, but we're also pretty clueless when

it comes to our lives. So when it comes to two people trying to move forward, you don't really know what to do because it's like, well, what other kind of sex can we do? What should we do? How should we talk about this? How should we navigate it?

we learned about our own bodies and our sexuality. We weren't told they're amazing pleasure vessels, and this is you know, you can advocate for your own pleasure. Now it's getting better, like I was saying, but not then. So having a conversation with Luke about hey, I like to start with like I feel, I want, I wonder as kind of a framework, because again, sexual conversations can be really tricky. They're hard for everybody, especially when you are wanting to

make change. Yeah, because most of us talk about sex when something's wrong. We don't often sit there and go, hey, do you remember that time we're on that beat each and you know, things got pretty saucy between us or whatever whatever happened. We don't often recount those kind of

stories to us. So when we have conversations, they're laiden with sort of embarrassment and expectation and vulnerability because we're bringing something to the table and we haven't been practicing these kind of conversations, so it's hard, right, But it sounds like Luke's a great guy, so we can kind of be confident that he's going to receive this in a really good manner. And I think it's about talking to him and saying something like, you know what I've

been thinking about our connection. I feel like I might be ready to take some steps to make sex something that is a place where we can find lots of

pleasure and fun and connection. And I want to be able to feel like I can look forward to it or that I you know, not meaning that we have to have sex all the time, but I want to feel excited by my own body and my own pleasure and connecting with you and building sex life that feels good as we age, you know, when Lenny leaves the home and we're still, you know, going to bingo or something, I want to know that I can hold your hand

and we're connected in this way. And then you would probably say something like, so you've done the I feel the I want, And then the I wonder is the invitation to say so, I wonder if you would be willing on doing a thirty day no sex reseet, which means that Luke wouldn't be able to initiate anything. He can initiate conversations, sure, but you'll be the one initiating any physical contact. You'll be the one initiating sex. Not in the first two weeks, You'll be the one sort

of initiating any initiation, if that makes sense. So what we're doing in this experiment is we're removing the pressure that a any touch is now going to lead to more intimacy or sex or interaction that doesn't feel safe for you. We're setting expectations so that Luke knows that actually, you're doing this because you value the relationship and this side of your relationship and you want to create something that feels good and rewarding for both of you that

you have like a commitment there. And what it's doing is it's giving you the opportunity that in those thirty days you're able to start doing little experiments with yourself in a way that feels unhurried, but nobody's watching. You can feel and find ways to reconnect to yourself that feel safe for you. Do you know why Luke reaches for you, why he wants to engage and have intimacy with you in sex.

to feel connected to you. I want to know that you're as into me as you know I am into you. And that's where it can trip up a lot of people because if somebody's saying no, but the other person's like, but I'm trying to connect, it can expiral into a lot of arguments and a lot of resentment, rough and resentment and tricky territory to navigate. It's basically usually the couple wants the same thing, connection or validation, but just in different ways, like love languages. You know, we've got

different ways we've given and receive love. If they're coming for connection, but you actually just go to sex because you know you want to feel good about who you are as a partner. You're not doing it for anything else, You're doing it for avoidance reader reasons. You know you've got mismatch needs and wants out of sex. So knowing that Luke's need, his underlying need and why he comes to you for sexist connection, finding ways that we can up that connection with Luke, but not frequency of sex.

We're looking like, if he had a connection tank, how can we deposit more connection in his tank? So that's filling up, but it's not penetrative sex. It's not even really highly intimate touch on your body. So starting to brainstorm and think of ideas, which might be maybe he just wants to sit next to you at the end of the day and hold hands while you're watching a show or a movie but your bodies are next to each other, yeah, you know, and you're having a glass

of wine. Or maybe he wants to connect with you without any phones or screens or anything in bed and you actually put your phones down and say maybe you text him during the day and say, can we just have a chat in bed tonight. We'll go to bed five minutes early or something. You put your phone down. And when he sees that, it's a shift, a conscious choice to put your phone down. And I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's a true rebellion these days, you know we have it's also much distraction.

and thriving. Yeah. So with Luke seeing you put that phone down, actually sitting together in bed or lying together

in bed, you can either. Also I recommend a lot of couples actually just taking their clothes off and they inbed naked to each other or cuddling if it feels comfortable, because again, that's a high degree of intimacy, but it's often a high level of intimacy that we reserve only if it's then going to go into sex, or if it's then going to mean that there's going to be a hand that slips down and a fondle and a grab and you're like, oh, so it's a very uncomfortable

place for a lot of women because there's a lot of internal pressure, expectation, or a lot of mind stuff going and going okay, where is this going. So if you can set the ground rules and be like, okay, I just want to lie with you naked. I just want skin to skin contact. Remember how when you have a baby, they always put you on the chest, and

they do that for a very particular reason. It's the oxytocin, it's the bonding, it's the connection, it's all of those yummy neurochemicals that kind of get ejaculated through our body. Can do the same with your partner, just skin on skin, And what's going to be really important for you is that you're going to have to bring your nervous system down a little bit by he will help you co regulate that because obviously it's not a trigger for him.

So he's probably really enjoying this touch. Yeah, allow his

breathing to coregulate yours. So you're just breathing slowly, try to kind of notice the skin touching his, the sheets, feeling what you can sense, smell, taste, you know, all of those things here, and then just ask him like, how are you really and he'll tell you a little bit and then go but yeah, really, and he'll tell you a little bit more go yeah, and anything else like really, and even just saying really, a couple of times you start to kind of again un cover that

surface stuff. We go, oh, well, my day was a little bit stressful, or oh, Lenny didn't eat any of the dinner again, can you believe it? And then you go, yeah, but really, yeah, I'm actually pretty tired, Like I've been dealing with this all week, and I got to say, like I'm feeling burnt out, okay, and anything else? Really, Yeah, I think I'm taking it out on you. And I am almost happy that I'm taking it out on you because it's giving me direction.

connection cup is getting filled, you know. And whether he wants to then go and relieve himself a pleasure, But my guess would be that he's actually really fucking stoked with that. Yeah, Yeah, And then I would start looking at things and homework that you would do that would kind of start to unravel some of these kind of long held beliefs about who you are as a woman, who you are as a mother, who you are as

a sexual woman. Where you've got a lot of those beliefs and those messagings from then I would focus a lot on those beliefs and aren't hooking yourself from them? And they can also It's so fascinating, and I really love working with the whole body because again, aroused when desire starts with the brain. Right. So if we've got a belief this is a big belief a lot of women have around, well, he only wants sex, right, And this is you would see in every kind of mum forum,

a lot of kind of thing. It's a very classic trope that the man always wants the sex is always chasing. And when I talk to women about this, I say, well, first off, if it's no wonder that you actually don't even really want to want sex, Because if you've got that message in your mind that you know all they're after for me is for sex, you know, I'm just there.

put in any effort to do this in the first place. Yeah, So we need to change these and make these positive beliefs. So if a belief, say was he only ever wants sex, that can be true. Of course that can be true. And it could also be true that he's asking for sex a lot because he thinks that one in twenty times he asks, he's going to be able to get that. A sales pitch, isn't it. It's like a sales pitch.

It's like, you know, I'm going to keep messaging you until you say, actually, you know what, I do want that essentral oil or something, and it's like, yeah, finally, keep throwing something at the wall enough times, one of the times that'll stick. Why is it going to stick? Or I'm going to get so over it and be like okay, fine, you know yeah, or and again that is sex. But if we take it back to what we're talking about with Luke, is it that he wants

that pleasure from you? Because I mean sex and a vagina of course is really really great, but there are a lot of other ways so he can get pleasure. So what is it really okay? It's that connection, it's that validation suck. He's felt so unattractive since also becoming a parent, and he's wondering, do you still find me sexy? Or does our relationship matter now that we've got, you know, other small, tiny terrorists in the fray? Can I have some of your time now, you know? Or where do

we fitness pitch? Are we going to make it through this? Because I've got three friends that are divorcing right now and I'm thinking, fuck, that's going to be us next yeah. Or the man at work he was saying that his wife like is so grossed out by him, and doesn't you know blah blah blah blah is that us? You know? So they've got their own internal dialogue and beliefs and systems as well, So yes, it can feel like they're chasing us for sex, but what's really going on under that.

The other thing I want to bring up as well is that we often look at this kind of work like it's dire and terrible, Like we think that there's something going to be wrong with us, that's irreparable, that will never actually be able to find the true nugget of our sexuality, that will never be able to feel that kind of sensual aliveness anymore, or that pleasure or feeling really juicy in our body in a way that

feels real and powerful for us. And what I say to women is that I've never met a woman that doesn't have it in her. We are built like that. You know, our clitoris has seven thousand nerve and its We are built for pleasure. We are built to be filled from the inside out with fullness and radiance and sensuality. You know, it's how much you feel when you go for a massage. Or we like to beautify ourselves. You know,

we rub things on our skin. We like sense, we like smells, we like you know, beauty in and of itself. We have a central nature and when we can tap into that and move forward. There's not a woman out there that doesn't have that capacity, or doesn't have the capacity to feel pleasure, to feel desire, to feel like she can turn herself on.

you tell him. Would you say that's disgusting, don't do God?

me feel guilty. Amazing, And do you think there would have been other times as well as you were growing up that you would have picked up messaging that has made you kind of retract from your sexuality or see it as something shameful, whether even you remember Cosmopolitan how the sealed section was always sealed, Yeah, you know, even little things like that was the fact that it wasn't out there?

with your husband. Once you've picked the shame like out and you're sort of taking it out of the garden of your sexuality, for example, you've really got to couple it with moving it through your body. Like that shame that's in your body is trapped with things like contraction and a sort of a denseness and an inability to kind of relax the nervous system to open enough to actually start to even receive any sensations or receive any

kind of intimacy itself. So what I would do, I would start off with you because there's such an undercurrent of not feeling safe and almost like I don't want to say the word repulsion, but a distaste in your

own physicality or your own having physical touch on your body. Yeah. Yeah, So we really will kind of want to go back to treating your body like a newborn baby's body, you know, and giving that that safety and really kind of swaddling her and being like, Okay, we're going to start doing somebody based practices and moving that shame and that greef

or that anger. Like, I bet you're fucking super pissed about the amount of times people have commented on your your boobs or times when somebody has made the wrong assumption about you because you're a beautiful blonde woman, you know, and maybe oh she or she's not smart, or hey, baby doll or whatever it is, you know, so all of those comments and that that kind of shame or maybe that's a self protective thing that you're like, well, I'm going to do this so that they don't see

the real me. So giving that a voice and a space while also connecting to your body by breath and by moving it through your body. So what I usually like to do is, if you're doing it by yourself, you can get like a beautiful massage oil, but something that is not going to irritate your vulva or your vagina.

So coconut oil is really really good. And I would set up and again an intentional space, because ritual and intentionality also creates a sense of safety because we're telling ourselves and our body, Okay, I'm doing this in a safe environment because I'm closing the door, because I have dimmed the lights, because I've got music on that's really good for my nervous system and relaxing, so your body's getting cuses. Okay, this is safe. We're not in the

middle of the park. We're Luke's not here, so he can't see.

You're basically just kind of kneeling up on your knees, but then sitting back, if that makes sense. So your legs are underneath you or save your cross legger, but then you tuck your legs underneath you and you're sitting back. You know the praying emoji guy. You're sort of sitting there like this. I think he's yeah, he's got his hands on his upper thighs and his legs underneath. Be that man. So you hop into the emoji praying man. This is where it's key. So we want some music

that's got some sensual nality to it. We're not listening to Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. We're not any or any any jeez. Yeah, this is funny. On my playlist, I've got some of my beautiful songs, but then just a wiggle song will come out of the blue and you're like, manto no, and I'm like, oh what, I don't know. It's all of a sudden, I'm like, we don't talk about Bruno.

you're moving in like a wave motion. So you put out your chest and you kind of stick out your bum and then you would collapse your chest and sort of move back and then out chest out, collapse your chest kind of shoulders in as if you're kind of hunching. You can actually do it in any kind of way. All I want you to do is just move rhythmically to the music and inhale an out how as you breathe that in how and ex house so just like

you would the ocean, you know. And if you want to go really in depth with that, you can hold and release your pelvic floor muscles, squeeze and release like you're doing a keegel. Right now.

you're just rocking breathing feeling. And then this is the crucial part. I want you to start sounding. Now. This can also feel like okay, we've gone from zero to blow here, but it's a very effective way to start to bring up some of that shame and that grief from a bodily sense, yeah, from like a somatic sense, so that ohh. And imagine as you're breathing out, you're breathing like a black.

now with mushrooms, anything like that. It's been researched at Harvard by a woman called Nicole Proust, and what she's now doing is recommending women with anxiety depression stroke their clitareress for fifteen minutes because what it's showing is that women can re circuit their nervous system because it's all so connected down into the vaginal canal and the polyvagel theory and everything back to this up but it's showing that it has better effects than medication, that it has

better and faster response time at lowering a woman's stress, giving her a sense of well being, for creativity, vibrancy, they've had women in an MRI machine where a brain lights up in the exact area that it is for what you would get if you had been meditating for twenty four hours and you're having a mystical state, right, So our bodies are wired for these experience. What we've got to do is we've just got to clear the

muck to get there. So that breath and using that sound for us to allow to tap into the good stuff. We've got to unfortunately, clear out the pain before we get the pleasure. You know, we've got to detoxify. If you're starting a diet and you wanted to start like having a better gut health or you want to start eating properly, you've got to clean out that the candida or the whatever it is. You want the old stuff out.

running around with a million things in our head. And then all of a sudden we say, okay, pause, stop, you know, like at the whizzard Freeze. Yeah, and now I want you to Feelbody's like, fuck, we haven't felt for the last four years, and now you want me to drop into my body? What does that even mean? So instead of using distractions and sort of anything that we numb or anything like that, it's about retraining that we can come back into our body but also feel

safe in the coming back of our body. Also, if you get really in a jam, sound, it's going to open up that super highway for emotions to come through, for feelings. It's just a very good way of supercharging transformation. So really loud and let it sound authentic, not like ah oh, you want to be like oh from your like you're giving birth.

i feel like I've purged some blief. Now I'm going to hold myself. So you wrap yourself in a blanket and you lie down and you're like, it's safe, I've got you, and you talk to yourself like you're a little girl who's had a really bad nightmare or who's been bullied at school by her own, you know, her own peers, except it's your thoughts that are doing the.

the recognition that you're okay in this body. So after a couple of times of doing that, then I would ty trate that with bringing pleasure back to the body as well, because if your body has felt like a source of resentment, or you're feeling annoyed by it, or you're feeling knocked out of it, or it's not feeling like how you want it to feel, you can form like quite a bit of a not a nice relationship

with yourself. So we're coming in and coming back in and be like, Okay, let's find some ways to bring pleasure back into our system. And we do this a couple of ways, like touch that feels nice to you. So rather than grabbing a vibrator and chucking it on your clip for like one minute or two minutes or something and really just fast for that really purpose driven orgasm and release, we're going to shift and see if we can find pleasure that feels lazy and relaxed, and

pleasure that's we're not looking for a goal. We're not going at it in a way that's you know, or I need to get off. We're actually going in it with a way of how can I go inwards? How can I make pleasure feel good on my body? How can what does my body even like? Do I like my hair being pulled a little bit? Like? How do I when I go for a massage and they pull your hair back?

taken me. So that the occasional pinch, the occasional squeeze, the occasional flick or tweak or things like that can be really good and exploring your whole body like that and really kind of mapping it for going, oh fuck, I didn't realize that I've never asked Luke to pull my hair a little bitter. I've never asked him to tickle my back as we're falling asleep, or I've never asked him to. You know what, I just want a foot massage, and I like a foot massage quite hard.

Little ways that you can explore touch in a way that feels safe, but also that you can start to build the blueprint of your own aerrogenous zones, of your own way that you experience pleasure as a woman. Now the old routine is out. We're resetting. We're doing the thirty day reset, We're doing initiating connection more with Luke.

We are doing the exercises of connecting to your body and physically removing that kind of that shame through your body, letting yourself cry, letting yourself journal, starting to look at the beliefs of why you feel so much shame. What we told, what were your messages bringing things also that really remind you that sexuality is something that gets to be celebrated, that gets to be enjoyed, that it can look like many different things, not just a man on

the top of a woman trying to get off. The idea is not to rush it, not to make something like okay, in this thirty days you're going to be healed, you're going to actually want sex. You may start to even just kind of shift. The only thing that happens maybe the shift of like I'm thinking I might want to want to work. I'm thinking I might want to get the motivation to go a little bit further down

this track. Yeah, you can't rewrite all of those years of conditioning and beliefs in thirty days, But what you can do is start building a new sexuality and a new sex life based on the blocks that truly matter to you, like trust, safety, zero stress, no expectational pressure around it, and at the moment, no one wanted touch

or touch that feels transgressive or unsafe. And you're building, You're going to be building in and moving towards something that feels really good for you, something that you actually get to feel is pretty fucking amazing part of you that you are really excited to develop and explore a little bit more because that makes you feel really really good.

and then you've got more people on your body. We tend to if we're feeling overwhelmed and touched out, move further and further away from it, so that nourishing touch that we can receive from ourselves or from our partner feels like a distant memory because it gets lumped in all that same kind of being touched category. But actually this touch is something different. This touch is supposed to

soothe that overwhelming, touched out feeling. So we're using touch in a different way because we're allowing ourselves to self heal and self soothe and reconnect. It's just also about being really honest and truthfull about your capacity, how much space you've got to allow that to take up in your life at the moment. You know, we come through different seasons where we've got so many balls in the air that adding your sexuality piece can just make it

feel like you're going to drop all of them. We don't want it to be a source of pressure for months out there or stress. We want it to be like when you get to that kind of that space where you're getting a little bit more sleep, where your partner and you are finding like you've kind of have moments of connection. Whether that's at the moment you could just be watching a show or you could be lying in bed with phones, that's still the time still there.

You could just redirect the time, but knowing and owning the capacity for which that you can devote to this kind of stuff. But it is worth having a really honest think and thinking, what is the kind of relationship I want to have at the end of when the kids are twelve, when the kids are thirteen, when the kids are starting to go and have their own lives and identities, what do I want to have to come

back to what's going to be there? And remembering that it's through small steps that we take that can have such big impacts. You know, even just filling up Luke's connection cup and you'll have your own core kind of need and value from him. Knowing what though those things are that makes our partner feel loved makes them still feel like they have a connection to sexually. And that's not to say that you don't get to compromise and be like no, no, no, no once every week is

too much for me. It's just I'm not there with my energy. I'm not there with my attention. I think we need to rejig this and go, okay, where can we compromise and make our sex life something that suits both of us.