Last week I wrote about fetishes, which are a very specific kind of sexual preference. But what about our turn-ons more generally? Why does one woman like it slow and sensual while her sister wants to be thrown against the wall? Why might a person want to gaze into their partner’s eyes during sex, while that partner prefers to close their eyes and focus on the sensations? Why do people like candlelight or dirty talk or tying up or exhibitionism?

The short answer is, we are all impacted by biology, how we are brought up, and the world around us (also known as biopsychosocial). But I will break it down into three main categories: the bonds of attachment you formed with your main caregivers when you were very young, conditioning in childhood and during important relationships, and your personality.

This article will explain attachment. I will cover the effects of conditioning and personality on sexual preferences in my upcoming articles.

Attachment theory basics

Your attachment style, either consistently or in the moment, is associated with what kind of sex you like or want. I don’t want to get into an in-depth summary of attachment theory here, as I think it has been overdone in popular sources. Because attachment styles can change depending on the relationship you are in and over time, I am cautious about overgeneralizing from how someone feels the first time they learn about attachment theory.

What I think is more useful is to be in touch with how you feel in a specific moment, and leverage that to support your understanding of what you might need at the time.

But here’s my shortest version: The types of bonds that a baby forms with its main caregivers help shape how they approach their adult relationships. This can manifest in a more anxious style, where you are concerned your partner might leave you, or a more avoidant style, where you create distance between you and your partner. You can also have neither and be secure, or have a combination of both.

For more information, I trust the brief overview by Psychology Today. For a lengthy review, regardless of what kind of relationship you are in, I like Part 1 of Polysecure.

Your attachment style and what kind of sex you like

I’ll assume at this point you know the attachment basics. Attachment style doesn’t predict sexual preferences, but it can be informative.

Studies have indicated that more securely attached people are more open to sexual exploration and to a wider variety of sexual activities. They generally take pleasure in physical contact.

More avoidant people have shown more interest in aggressive sex, or having some interpersonal or emotional distance.

Meanwhile studies demonstrate more anxiously attached people seeking more intimate gestures and affection during sex. The anxiously attached like cuddling, kissing, and touch more than their avoidant counterparts.

One study specifically looked at the impacts of negative partner interactions on the sexual fantasies of anxious and avoidant individuals. The researchers followed 48 couples over 3 weeks. They found that on days when their relationships were challenging, anxious partners reported fantasies about being helpless or humiliated; for avoidant partners, images of escaping reality came to mind. The study used a broad definition of fantasy as any sexually arousing mental imagery, no matter how fleeting.

What this means for you

I have seen these tendencies play out in many different ways in practice. “Aggressive sex” can look like rough touch, lots of physicality, or animalistic noises, not just BDSM. Escaping reality might be fantasizing during sex, or being in a position like doggy style where there is less personal interaction. More intimacy may be long and slow foreplay, eye gazing, or enjoying spoken words like “cherish” and “precious.” Being helpless can be as simple as giving your partner control of which position you do next, or can be an elaborate role play. Role play works for escaping reality as well.

This in no way means that you can figure out someone’s attachment style purely by what kind of sex they like. Rather, if you notice certain attachment tendencies in yourself, you might want to experiment with some of these behaviors.

I’ll cover conditioning and sex next week!

Sarah is a sex and intimacy coach who teaches people to speak up honestly for their needs while still respecting their relationship. Learn more about working with Sarah here.

Fetishes are intriguing. They manifest someone’s turn-on as a physical object, allowing us to examine our own arousal. This leads to natural questions such as “Why that item rather than another?” and “How does that come about?”

What exactly is a fetish?

A fetish in psychology is a persistent source of sexual arousal from a nonsexual body part or an object: in short, you are turned on by something that isn’t genitals. It can manifest as touching, wearing, smelling, gazing at, or fantasizing about the fetishized object in order to become or stay turned on. It only becomes a disorder if it is causing distress or interferes with a person's life.

As popular culture alludes to, feet are the most common fetish. A study that trawled nearly 400 online discussion groups, encompassing an estimated 5,000 people, found that about half of all fetishes identified involved feet, dwarfing the next most common fetishes (body fluids and body size, each about 10% of fetishes). About a third of fetishes involved body parts or items associated with the body (like clothing, but also everything from hearing aids to catheters). Only about 8% of fetishes total involved an object not associated with the body (the examples they give are dirty dishes, candles, and balloons).

Where fetishes come from

There is no definitive research on how fetishes (or sexual preferences in general) come about. To do this, we would need to recruit thousands of children, measure them on everything from personality traits to life experiences, and then follow them into adulthood while tracking their sexual interests and fantasies. Please let me know if you intend to take this on!

Less robust research, with smaller sample sizes, has found that many fetishes can be connected to childhood, when a non-sexual object is paired with an early sexual experience. In Erotic Mind, psychologist Jack Morin tells the story of a man who preferred to wear a yellow raincoat during sex. The man traced it to wearing a raincoat as a child while riding a toy fire engine, and the rumble of the truck would stimulate him. This would be called conditioning: when sexual excitement is paired with a nonsexual object, and you become conditioned to lust after it.

One research study asked more than 250 gay and bi men with foot fetishes about the origins of their interest. About half linked it to a pleasurable event in childhood, and nearly all said definitively that the fetish was unrelated to anything negative (despite prior theorizing that trauma could cause fetishes). The average age for the positive event was 12, but because so many participants could not identify a single origin, the researchers concluded that many fetishes develop gradually over time. Based on the 89 respondents who shared a specific story, most involved their father or another older man, while a smaller number were connected to mutual exploration with a childhood peer. One example was a boy who frequently massaged his father’s feet; it’s not that this was sexual, as that a loving moment was transferred to sex later in life.

But that’s not the whole story

Still, we don’t fully understand the origin of fetishes. One reason conditioning doesn’t provide the full answer is that many of us might have been stimulated in the presence of a particular object and we did not develop a fetish. Also, it is unclear why some objects are more likely to become fetishized than others, and why the incidence of fetishes varies between cultures. In addition, most conditioning fades over time, or at the least, both the original stimulus and the added object remain exciting, whereas fetishes stick, and in some cases they are the only way a person can get off, even in the presence of genitals.

Another fun fact is that fetishes are far more common in men than women. One study found that 28% of men have some type of fetish, in contrast to only 11% of women. That study also measured sex drive, and found that differences in libido fully accounted for the gender discrepancy.

As an aside, one interesting (but completely isolated) case found that a man who had long been aroused by safety pins had an unrelated partial lobectomy to relieve his epilepsy, and his fetish disappeared.

When I coach people with fetishes

Fetishes are not a problem unless someone is concerned about them. I enjoy helping people embrace their fetishes, and to use them in order to have a more exciting sex life. But if it is getting in the way, we can work on exploring less loaded turn-ons, or combining the fetish with other activities. Someone who suspects they have a disorder should always consult a licensed clinician. Learn more about working with me here, or become a paid subscriber and receive complimentary sessions!

Last week I summarized research on healing after a death. This week I am focusing on how grieving affects our sex lives, and how we can move forward in a healthy way.

Studying people who are grieving is tricky because they are a vulnerable population who don’t always want to be researched. Unless otherwise cited, most of this article draws on Sara Jones, Sara Albuquerque, and Patrícia Pascoal’s interviews with therapists about their experience with clients who have lost a loved one.

Grieving can block libido–surprise!

It’s probably not shocking to learn that people who recently lost a loved one often aren’t really in the mood for sex. In that model I described last week of oscillating between different stressors during bereavement, sex can be one of these stressors. Depending on the person, their loss, the relationship, etc., grievers may feel depressed, emotionally drained, distracted, and/or unusually focused on themselves. They may feel they are the only person going through this particular mourning, creating distance between themselves and others. In the words of a clinician in that study, “sexual intimacy is about connection, and grief is about the loss of connection.”

Some people feel guilty for wanting pleasure when a loved one has suffered. Also, if the loss is greater for one member of a couple than the other (say, one of their parents passed), the non-grieving person may get impatient or insensitive if mourning isn’t quick, leading to resentment on both sides.

Grief may also impact your ability to love, and to accept someone else’s love. You may reevaluate your life and/or your important relationships. In contrast, some people engage in unhealthy or risky sexual behavior to avoid the uncomfortable feelings of mourning.

Sex can help healing

For other people, sex after a loss is life-affirming and comforting. If the griever feels empowered, secure, and accepted in their relationship, sex can help them integrate the experience and move forward. Sex may make you feel cared about, and it may validate whatever emotions you are experiencing, which helps with coping.

Touch can make us feel less alone, come back into our bodies, and serve as a healthy distraction. Some people “want to feel strong emotions” that counter the pain after losing a loved one, said one clinician participant.

Things to try in order to improve sex after a death

Many people who have lost a loved one struggle to express what kind of support will be most helpful to them. They might want intercourse, or a different form of intimacy might be preferable in this moment, like cuddling, massage, or light touch with no expectations. Just like many big changes that life throws us, death can require a rethinking of what intimacy means to us and how we can best have our emotional needs met. This may be temporary or permanent.

If you’re not sure what you want, be patient with yourself and your partner. Accept that intimacy may decline at first, but it will likely come back as grieving proceeds. Building a sense of trust and safety is crucial, especially if those foundations were directly impacted by the circumstances of the loss. If you’re not sure what you need, sometimes it’s enough just to admit that.

If your partner is the one grieving, know that they will experience many emotions, and little if any of it is about you. The process may last longer than you expect, and it is ok to feel frustrated about that. And yet remember that your emotions are your responsibility, and you may need alternative outlets in order to give your partner their own space. Lead with empathy and compassion, and recognize when you need your own time.

“People should respect their own body and what it needs,” says another clinician interviewed. Many people experience shame over their grieving process, but what most of us go through is entirely normal. “The more we talk about these difficulties and break taboos, the better.”

I am a Somatic relationship coach and an expert in women’s sexual wellness. If you’re interested in working with me, click here!

I am an expert on midlife sexual wellness and a relationship coach. This article isn’t strictly about sex and relationships, but I still see relevance. We all go through grief at some point (I happen to be going through it now), and many of the concepts in this article pertain to all kinds of losses, not just death. I hope that my personal reading of scientific literature can benefit you as well.

The myths and reality of the five stages

For many people, the “five stages of grief” come quickly to mind when thinking about coping. Turns out that the five stages, which were developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the 1960s, were originally based on interviews with terminally ill people coming to terms with their own deaths, not mourning someone else. The idea was so catchy that it spread over the subsequent decades, and Kübler-Ross ended up co-writing a follow up specific to bereavement that was published in 2005.

The five stages have not held up in empirical research. Most importantly, grief does not take place in stages, as Kübler-Ross pointed out herself. You might not go through them all, and they don’t have a prescribed order. You might only spend a few minutes in one, or flip back and forth.

But they describe feelings that many of us do experience after a loss, so I will share them anyway. They are denial, anger, depression, bargaining (that’s those “if only” and “what if” statements), and acceptance.

Other Western thinking about grief

A 2009 review of clinical understanding of bereavement identified two phases in a healthy grieving process: acute grief, during which you have emotions and behaviors that are unusual for everyday life, and abiding grief, which may be marked by sadness or longing but is generally isolated to specific moments, especially significant events such as birthdays or anniversaries. You usually move from the first to the second within a few months, though the authors emphasize that “the intensity and duration of grief is highly variable,” both between people and in the same person with different losses.

A 2014 research review found that finding meaning in the death in either a spiritual or secular way is key to a healthy grieving process. This includes two aspects: making sense of the loss, e.g. by feeling the person had a fulfilling life, or by believing we are all on this earth for a predestined amount of time; and identifying benefits of the loss, for example through personal growth. The latter tends to grow over time.

Research psychologists Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut came up with a model in 1999 that describes grief as a period of oscillation between the different stresses of the loss, as well as between that and restorative breaks from grieving. They identified two main types of stress when we lose someone: thinking about what you no longer have, missed opportunities, etc., versus adapting to a new life without the person. The latter can include new responsibilities and skill-building, for instance in handling finances or childcare. Associated feelings can include relief, pride, and anxiety.

Research psychologist J. William Worden proposed instead that healthy grieving can be seen as a series of tasks. I personally like this one because people feel such lack of control after a loss, and Worden’s theory can provide a sense of agency (it did for me). As he says,

Worden’s tasks can be done in any order. They are: (1) Accepting, both consciously and emotionally, the reality that the person is not coming back. (2) Processing physical and emotional pain by acknowledging it and working through it, not denying or suppressing or just “letting go.” (3) Adjusting to the new reality, including your everyday functioning but also the impact on your sense of self, your beliefs about the world, and your understanding of your relationship with the deceased. (4) Finding ways to remember the deceased while also going on with your life.

He says the death of a loved one often challenges three basic assumptions: that the world is benevolent, that the world makes sense, and that you are worthy.

Learning from cross-cultural comparison

Cultures around the world engage in rituals when someone dies. What can these traditions teach us about healthy mourning?

I was hoping to quantify the length of grief based on cultural traditions, but it seems that it varies wildly. Research psychiatrist and anthropologist Maurice Eisenbruch, who pioneered cross-cultural research on bereavement in the 1980s, concluded in his seminal work that there is enormous variation and no universal human mourning period.

In terms of what types of activities help the process, a striking study of 57 cultures worldwide found that 93% of mortuary rituals include the loved ones seeing the corpse, and 90% give the close relatives physical contact through activities such as washing or dressing the body.

A Taiwanese-Australian team concluded that customs converge around the themes of reverence, remembrance, and an enduring bond with the deceased, based on analysis of empirical research on traditional cultures from five continents. The authors see three core roles for ritual in grieving: emotional structure and spiritual reassurance; reinforcement of social bonds; and a framework for contemplating mortality and meaningful living.

A review of evidence-backed rituals used in grief intervention found customs designed to help honor the dead, support the bereaved in transitioning to the future or in self-transformation, reconciliation with the deceased, and saying thanks. Proven techniques included silence, focusing on a ritual performance, reenactment of painful memories, writing letters to the deceased or to someone you blame, and symbolic expressions such as lighting candles. The authors describe ritual as providing space for emotions while also being time-bound and somewhat removed from the actual experience. They emphasize the social aspect and the need for community. They also contrast rituals to our ordinary routines, praising them as a distraction that provides a break from undesirable thoughts.

My story

I lost my father on July 17. He had battled various illnesses for several years, but the timing ultimately was a surprise. I am grateful that he was home with his wife and that he went very quickly without suffering.

The most striking thing to me about my father is that he had a very troubled upbringing, and yet he was remarkably successful at breaking the trauma cycle and raised my brother and me in a loving and stable way. I love you, Dad.

My last post described the jealousy that Victoria’s partners felt when she dated other men.

Jealousy looms over all types of relationships. In my experience, people use it as a catch-all for diverse negative feelings they might have about their partner(s)’s behavior with other people. And I have seen how, for me personally as well as others, unpacking it helps set us on a path toward making it more manageable.

So what does research say about effective coping with jealousy?

First, what is jealousy?

Researchers characterize jealousy in a variety of ways. For me, the most compelling is the idea that jealousy is in fact a combination of emotions, often very deep and overwhelming. Those emotions broadly are: anger, sadness, and most commonly, fear.

A word about jealousy and nonmonogamy

Much of this research comes from nonmonogamous couples. I believe that we gain a more nuanced understanding of jealousy when we consider the experiences of consensually nonmonogamous people, because they are choosing to allow their partners to be with someone else. Researchers examining only monogamous pairs often conclude that jealousy is inherently destructive or a sign that something is wrong, but this is belied by couples who embrace jealousy in the context of otherwise healthy partnerships. Studying nonmonogamous pairs allows us to discover constructive ways to handle jealousy for all couples, not just those in open relationships.

Research on ethically nonmonogamous couples indicates that jealousy is common. It’s not that satisfied nonmonogamous people don’t get jealous; it’s that they accept the jealousy and do not take it as a sign that they require sexual exclusivity.

That said, I firmly argue against the idea that nonmonogamy is a more evolved relationship style, or that nonmonogamous people have figured something out that other people have not. We all have different needs and desires, and we should each curate a personal (or interpersonal) relationship style that best meets them (see also my article on intentional relationships).

Coping strategy 1: Self-care

The first research-backed method for addressing jealousy is to take care of yourself. A primary way to do this is to set healthy boundaries.

Boundary setting is much harder than it sounds (and it already might sound hard). Not only are very few of us taught how to set healthy boundaries, but when we do try, we tend to face discouraging pushback.

I like to think of boundaries as the distance you need in order to love both yourself and the other person (an adaptation of a Prentis Hemphill quote). For jealousy, this may mean stating clearly which actions will lead to you ending the relationship, but it could also mean delineating behaviors that might be less controllable (such as feeling attracted) and how to handle them in a way that does not harm your partnership. Remember that you can only control yourself, and your happiness is your responsibility, not your partner’s.

The corollary is that it is ok to ask for what you need, including reassurance. Some of us see a particular gleam in our partner’s eye or hear a certain tone of voice and get scared or mad or unhappy. In a healthy relationship, we can mention how we feel and ask for what would make it better, even while accepting that we may not always get what we want.

Discussing jealousy in a supportive community can help as well. This could be a friend, online forum, therapist, coach, etc., someone who will not judge your choices but can hold space for your feelings.

Coping strategy 2: Rewriting the narrative

Most of us grow up believing that jealousy is detrimental, and therefore we should suppress it if we want to preserve the relationship. But just like all emotions, jealousy is better processed when we face it.

Research interviewing both monogamous and ethically nonmonogamous people who have experienced jealousy found better coping among those who accept the feelings as normal and let go of shame around them. This improved people’s ability to contextualize their jealousy as just one feeling they have, rather than “being a jealous person” who is defined by that characteristic. It also enables them to reconsider what intimacy really means to them: what they require to feel connected and cared about versus what society has told them they should have.

Jealousy can also be embraced as a signal to be heeded. It might present an opportunity for personal growth, or it could be your intuition telling you that something is wrong in your relationship. It could be a chance to get more in touch with what you need, or to express yourself more clearly.

Is compersion a coping strategy?

People with exposure to open relationships may be familiar with the term compersion. This word was coined and popularized in the polyamory community to describe positive feelings about your partner’s other relationships. In monogamy, it can be expanded to include any type of joy gained from thoughts of your partner being with someone else. For example, you could appreciate their other interests because you value autonomy, or the idea might turn you on even while you don’t want them to act on it (see below).

Despite how compersion is often discussed, it has not been shown to be the “opposite” of jealousy and in fact often coexists beside it. That said, it can be used as a practice, similar to meditation, in which you focus on what brings you joy and develop increasing peace over time.

Coping strategy 3: Open dialogue

Research participants who engage with their jealousy rather than suppress it, including discussing openly with their partners, find more peace of mind and relationship satisfaction. Couples can make sense of one member’s jealousy together, and find a constructive way forward that works for both of them. In fact, one study found that better communication was one of the most commonly reported upsides of jealousy!

Some people also find that jealousy feeds eroticism. You may hate the idea of your partner with someone else, and yet also think it’s really hot. These fantasies can be shared for mutual benefit.

Research on people who practice nonmonogamy also shows positive impacts when the person experiencing jealousy has the opportunity meet the source, that other person who is being perceived as a threat. I believe that this can be expanded to monogamous couples as well. Having direct contact with that colleague you keep hearing about, or that old “friend” who reappeared, may help humanize them and also foster dialogue with your partner.

A four-step process to manage jealousy

Dr. Joli Hamilton, who wrote her dissertation on jealousy, developed a four-step “pattern” to address it. I have used this on myself, and with other people. Here is my summary:

1. Notice what is happening when you feel jealous, including how it feels in your body and what kinds of thoughts you tend to have when it arises.

2. Resist the urge to act immediately. Intentionally slow down so the initial feelings can subside before you accuse, explain, interpret, or take action. Jealousy often activates a fight-or-flight response, which can impede your ability to get at the heart of what is actually bothering you. Use your best coping mechanisms to calm down.

3. Once calm, get curious. List out all the emotions you feel, giving it lots of nuance. Try to pin down the exact moment when the jealousy arose, and question why those words or actions had the effect they did. Be as honest with yourself as possible, making an effort not to ignore the tough parts.

4. Find a growth opportunity. Maybe that’s increasing honesty with yourself, or facing tough truths (see previous step). Maybe there’s a change you want to make in your relationship. Maybe you have some shame you want to shed.

Does this resonate? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments!

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

Victoria had one conventional relationship in college, and naturally assumed it would be the first of many. Then she met Peter.

Peter was ethically nonmonogamous, dating multiple people who all consented to his lifestyle. And while Victoria was not interested in nonmonogamy, she was interested in Peter.

Things didn’t work out between them, but the relationship changed her dating permanently. Peter suggested she read The Ethical Slut, and in it, Victoria discovered validation for what she had always known about herself. She didn’t want to fall in love and have to swear off everyone else for the rest of her life, but she had never believed there was another option. In The Ethical Slut, Victoria saw a new path for herself.

Controlling her own body

Victoria never hid her nonmonogamy; unlike many people in this lifestyle, she did not fear judgment or discrimination. She lives and works in an immigrant community with traditional values, but her friends admire and even envy her.

Victoria always informs men up front that she will never be exclusive with them. They generally embrace the idea at first, perhaps excited that she is not jumping into commitment. But things change as the relationship progresses and she continues to go out with other men. Her boyfriends have gotten angry, or blatantly asked her to stop. And that only confirms what she already knew: that she has no interest in being told what she can do with her own body or whom she can share it with. She feels monogamy is a form of control, and she wants no part of that.

Trauma empowerment

Victoria experienced severe sexual trauma as a child. When she was old enough, she read about survivors who avoided sex while they healed. But she enjoyed sex and refused to believe she needed to give it up. She bristled at the idea of giving the one bad man from her past that power over her present.

In her 20s, her negative experience was consistently triggered during sex. The pattern became familiar: she would have a good rapport with a man, she would be feeling relaxed, then at some unpredictable point after they started hooking up, she would burst out crying. And the men generally responded similarly: they would attempt to console her, they would ask what they had done wrong, they would appear to listen when she said through her tears that it was not their fault. And then most of them wouldn’t return.

But as Victoria came to fully own her nonmonogamous lifestyle, she took back control. Once she felt confident that she could say no to any man at any time—when she fully embraced the idea that no one could place limits on her sexuality and she could always move on if they did—she reclaimed power from her history.

Nonmonogamous motherhood

As Victoria approached 30, she decided she wanted a child. One of her partners at the time, Scott, had the characteristics she was looking for in a good father and co-parent: steady, caring, and creative.

Victoria was clear about what she was looking for. She proposed to Scott that they try to have a baby together, and if it happened, that he move in with her. She wanted to raise her kids in the same house with their father, but she had no desire to live with someone while childless. Scott was not immediately certain, so she gave him six months to consider. She told him that, if he decided against it, there would be no hard feelings but that she would look elsewhere.

Scott agreed at the end of the half-year. And Victoria got pregnant the next month.

There were people in Victoria’s life who pressured her to give up nonmonogamy once she had children. It was as if they had grudgingly accepted it when she was younger, but that they believed she would “see the light” now that she was a mother. She felt tremendous societal judgment for not committing exclusively to Scott. But although she did in fact lose interest in dating when her babies were placing physical demands on her body, once they had weaned, her desire returned. Meanwhile Scott did not date much; he was very introverted and dedicated to his artistic work.

Finding love and submission

Victoria kept Scott as her co-habiting partner and continued to form other relationships that came and went. And then she met Julian.

Julian had an effect on Victoria she had never experienced. It wasn’t just the enthralling conversations and electric chemistry. For the first time, Victoria felt truly safe. And with safety came a desire for submission that was new to her. Victoria was willing to hand Julian the control that she guarded so closely and entrust him to treat it with respect.

This has extended from the bedroom into their connection concerning her other dates. Julian lives in a polyamorous communal home and is honest with Victoria about his other partners. But Victoria found herself going beyond that, and suggested to Julian that she ask him before going out with someone else. She willingly submits to this control that she explicitly granted, knowing that she can always take it away if she chooses.

Scott quickly saw how Victoria felt about Julian. He was hurt, saying he wanted her to feel that way about him. “You can’t choose how you feel,” she told him. They decided to end their romantic relationship, and three years later Scott moved out.

Her friends asked if she would try to convince Scott to stay, but it was important to her that he make his own decision. She requires autonomy to make her own choices, and she wants her partners to exercise the same independence. She was deeply sad about his departure, but she never tried to change it.

Nonmonogamy and the patriarchy

Victoria believes most women would enjoy nonmonogamy, and it’s the men who can’t handle it.

She profoundly feels patriarchal elements in how she is treated, attitudes that go beyond a belief that men can sleep around while women are expected to be devoted to their children. Her partners make an uncomfortable shift not when she fucks other men, but when they realize they are not the alpha in her life. She sees them buying into stereotypes of desirable masculinity. For example, she has had partners break up with her because she dates someone taller, or with a stronger jawline. One man was insecure after three years together because she got excited when an occasional lover would text her for a booty call. “But he’s probably lonely, and day-to-day I want to be with you!” she protested, to no avail.

Changing the mindset

Victoria is unsure what the future holds for her. Julian may be an anomaly, or he could be the start of a new phase of what she is looking for.

She longs for the day when nonmonogamy is more accepted.

But she has seen how negatively people react when women take control of their own sexuality. They try to stop it through their admonitions, urgings, personal rejection, and resistance. She wants people to know her story (and those of others) so they can make the most informed choices for themselves.

My perspective as a relationship coach

I love how Victoria balances control with submission in her sex life, and how that helps her work through her past. I see many people who, for whatever reason, find healing for all sorts of emotional pain and insecurity through sex. Sometimes this is socially acceptable, like finding a deeply caring partner when you have a history of being neglected. Other times it is more commonly judged, like BDSM. But as long as it is consensual and safe, it can bring positive effects.

I also love that Victoria openly raises many challenges of nonmonogamy that women often face silently. The more we can talk freely about societal assumptions, shame, and our own beliefs, the more we can live in line with our own values instead of someone else’s.

Are you trying to repair after a betrayal? I offer personal relationship coaching; click here for more info.

In my last post, after Anne had sex with another man her husband said he could never trust her again. This type of betrayal is generally considered one of the most challenging problems for a couple to try to overcome.

But many couples do get through it effectively. What does science say about what helps?

Empirical research in this area is actually very limited. However, one team proposed a widely cited model for clinical treatment. They tested it on six monogamous couples in which one member had betrayed the other within the previous year. Even though this is a very limited sample, I think it is worth sharing because it resonates with so many lessons of what makes for healthy relationships.

As a result of their treatment model, the researchers found a moderate to large reduction in emotional distress, with greater improvements than those typically reported in successful couples therapy. Interviews with the participants revealed feelings of increased understanding of themselves, tolerance of their partner’s emotions, collaboration, and patience with the process.

Here is my explication of the model. Note that they were writing for clinicians who would provide treatment, not for self-care. Key to this is that romantic betrayal is increasingly considered a form of interpersonal trauma, and is addressed accordingly.

Step 1: Facing the impact

The first stage of dealing with an affair, once the truth comes out, is to have a realistic understanding of the feelings that have come up as a result of what happened.

First, both partners need to do the necessary work to sufficiently calm their emotions in order to have constructive conversations. This may include therapy, mindfulness, boundary-setting, spirituality, physical well-being, and/or social support.

Then they need to honestly examine the impact that the affair had on how they view each other, their relationship, and themselves. We make all sorts of assumptions about ourselves and the people around us, and a major event like infidelity often shatters beliefs that we thought were fundamental truths. These have to be faced head on.

The researchers note that, based on their clinical experience, the person who did not break any agreement nearly always has a need to tell their partner how deeply hurt they were. This requires both partners to have good active listening skills as well as emotional regulation. When done effectively it can increase empathy and compassion. The researchers suggest writing letters to each other under supervision of a couples therapist as one part of this process.

At this point, couples also need to face that most people who have been betrayed continue to get triggered, meaning that the emotions rise up again unexpectedly, for months or even years afterwards. Both partners need to prepare their coping mechanisms for when this occurs.

Step 2: Finding meaning

The second stage involves thinking through what led up to the affair and what effects it has had. Couples should consider the context while making sure that each partner takes responsibility for their own actions and not for each other’s. Areas to consider include what the relationship looked like beforehand, what was happening in their lives, personality factors such as conflict avoidance or fear of intimacy, and emotions that the betraying partner might have had leading up to the choices they made.

By the end of this stage, both partners should be able to explain how the affair came about and have an updated understanding of their relationship, both in retrospect and where it has landed.

The researchers cite two purposes of this that I find interesting. First, it allows the partners to realistically assess future situations and whether they are headed toward the same outcome. This should make the offender more careful and the aggrieved partner less panicky about scenarios down the road that are actually safe. Second, it eases subsequent conversations in which the betraying partner may just want to move on, while the betrayed has a need for further explanation or validation of their feelings. The researchers note that the partner who violated the agreement almost always recovers faster, and both partners need to recognize this fact and resist the urge to shame the other around it.

If the couple is able to develop a shared narrative, it can strengthen the relationship, promoting mutual understanding, helping them blame themselves less for their partner’s actions, and even generating optimism about their shared future.

Step 3: Moving on

The researchers do not take for granted that this process will always lead to staying together. In the final stage, the partners need to decide what is best for them individually, and then find a way to make that work in practice.

A big part of this is forgiveness. The authors say that forgiveness has three components:

1. Coming to a realistic view of the relationship

2. A release from being controlled by your negative emotions about the other person

3. A relinquishing of the desire to punish the other person

You may decide you don’t want to be together even when you forgive. However, if you have forgiven in a healthy way, you are less likely to carry negative effects into your future relationships (or into your current relationship if you stay together).

My thoughts as a relationship coach

People take infidelity more seriously than almost any other relationship violation. It raises many complex emotions about trust, commitment, safety, lovability, and more. Based on hearing people’s stories and feelings, I believe that this is not only due to the importance we place on sexual exclusivity, but also to the shame that society imposes around “cheating.”

When partners stick it out after suffering a severe violation of their relationship agreement, in general I see them keeping it a secret. They understandably don’t want to have to justify themselves and stand up to questions and condescension. But that also means that they have less opportunity for social support and normalizing whatever shame they may be experiencing.

When betrayed partners choose to leave, they often do so from a place of anger instead of the forgiveness that the researchers described. This means that they carry this pain into the rest of their lives.

In our culture, you can have a string of short-term monogamous relationships and be called faithful, but having sex a single time outside of your 30-year marriage makes you a cheater. The unfortunate impact of this stark divide is that people have a harder time doing what feels most in line with their own values. While it is always sad to see the suffering that betrayal causes, I deeply appreciate the opportunity to help people get more in touch with their own beliefs and make decisions from that place.

If you have experienced betrayal, whether as the person who broke trust or the person who feels violated, resist the temptation to act quickly. Spend time getting in touch with yourself and what this means for you, and decide what to do from that place. And please reach out if there is something I can do to support you.

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

Honesty is the best policy

Anne was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness. She was taught that sexual thoughts were sinful. But even before puberty, she discovered that humping her Cabbage Patch doll felt good. To clear out those thoughts, she cut off the doll’s head and threw it away.

Then a friend who wasn’t in the church suggested she hump a cushion instead. Anne passed the information on to her sister, and the two girls would face away from each other while getting off on the bed pillows.

But Anne valued honesty, and she confessed to the Elders. They postponed her baptism, a rite that the Witnesses perform when a person is old enough to make a mature commitment. Unbaptized at age 19, Anne left the church permanently.

Anne had many sexual partners after leaving home. She didn’t believe she was pretty, but she knew she could attract men with her body, and that soothed her ego. She got no physical pleasure out of it, returning to her vibrator when she was alone.

Trying to do things right

In her 20s, Anne broke up with a verbally abusive boyfriend and moved in with her grandmother, surrounding herself again with the Church. She resolved to save sex for when she was in a committed relationship.

Her next boyfriend held her to it, refusing to sleep with her during their two months together. She found herself begging him to fuck her, while he continued to insist she keep her promise to herself.

She met Nathan while they were still together. Nathan was willing to sleep with her, and Anne confessed to her boyfriend, ending their relationship. Eventually, Nathan and Anne got married.

Broadening the definition of sex

Anne and Nathan had hot sex, exploring positions and sensations freely. But Anne still could not orgasm with him. Thinking Nathan would take it personally if she explicitly pointed it out, Anne tried to guide him, urging him to incorporate his fingers or the vibrator into their play. But Nathan’s conception of sex was pure penis-in-vagina intercourse, and he wasn’t interested in finding other ways to pleasure her.

After nearly a decade together, Anne pulled out the vibrator and started using it in front of Nathan. It enraged him. When she suggested he use it with her, he emphatically declined.

Looking elsewhere

During extended travel for work, Anne met Thomas. She found herself flirting with him, and soon they were kissing. One evening they got as far as the beginnings of penetration, but Anne immediately woke up to what she was doing and told him they had to stop.

Although she didn’t want to conceal it from Nathan, she was unable to volunteer the full truth. She told him she had made out with someone, and allowed him to ask questions. For better or worse, he didn’t probe deeply.

Then, five years later, she casually remarked to Nathan in a conversation about sexual harassment that she had once leaned over a man and flirted in what could have been interpreted in an ambiguous way. Nathan suddenly became alert. “Did you sleep with that guy on that work trip?” he asked. Somehow unsurprised that he made the connection, Anne found security in the truth. She confessed the full story about Thomas.

Anne’s sex drive was very low at this point, still recovering after having two children. Nathan took her lack of interest personally, and their relationship was already strained. In response to the Thomas news, he said he remained committed to her, and suggested that they open their marriage. Because she had started identifying as bisexual, he pinned it on helping her explore. Anne had no interest in sex with anyone, but she agreed to the new arrangement.

For a period, their relationship improved. She helped Nathan with dating, looking at the women he matched with on apps and giving him advice. For the first time, she was fully honest that she required the vibrator in order to orgasm. He did not push back, and she felt heard.

Unexpectedly, they started having amazing sex again.

Owning your desires

As Nathan’s other relationships intensified, Anne developed an interest in dating as well. She reached out to Thomas, and flirtatious texting quickly reignited.

She did not hide her reconnection with Thomas from Nathan. When he learned, he declared it a violation of their agreement because he only wanted her to be with women. The double standard angered Anne: he was dating people of the opposite sex, so why shouldn’t she? They had never discussed a difference in who they could date. Defiantly, she arranged to meet Thomas in person, and the sex was phenomenal.

Anne remained dedicated to full transparency, and told Nathan she had slept with Thomas. That was when everything started to break down. Nathan announced that he hadn’t trusted her since he first learned about Thomas. She countered that her desire was the same as his, and that she couldn’t control who she wanted.

Exciting as Thomas was, Anne doesn’t feel it was worth the loss of her family. But she is glad that she acted in her own integrity, in line with what she had agreed when they opened their marriage. She contrasts that with Nathan, who tried to convince her that nonmonogamy would be good for her, instead of owning his own desires. She is proud of herself for standing up to him. And she is beginning her new life knowing that the truth always guides her best.

Familiar themes

Anne’s story contains elements that I see plaguing many long-term relationships: expectations about what sex should look like, ebbs and flows in libido, managing desire for other people, feelings of betrayal. What Anne needed was not to be judged for sharing the truth, and to feel that she was heard. Unfortunately many (most?) of us do judge our partners for what they hold inside, especially around sexual preferences.

Nathan didn’t want to believe that his penis was not enough to make Anne orgasm, despite the fact that less than 20% of women can cum through vaginal sex alone. Nearly all portrayals of sex in media support Nathan’s view, leaving most people ignorant to the extent of real-life variation, as well as how much communication good sex actually requires. Sex may be instinctive, but how to get pleasure is not.

With the exception of a small number of acts, there is no right or wrong in sex, only individual preferences. When you notice discrepancies with your partner, try to halt the inclination to convince them to move to your side—or to force yourself to adopt your partner’s stance. Instead, remind yourself that difference is inevitable and even desirable, and not necessarily a sign of incompatibility.

In my last story, Amanda was viewed as a sexual object because she had many partners and was uninterested in an intimate relationship.

Sigmund Freud was the most influential early voice to say that men see women either as Madonnas or whores, a concept that today many people still take for granted. In its original form, the dichotomy was that men could not conceive of a woman being both sensual and tender. As the theory goes, men can only be turned on by an objectified version of the female form, because a respected partner is too much like their mother. While that may be the case for some men, it is now generally seen as oversimplistic.

But more nuanced versions have been proven in empirical research, and they impact both men and women in multiple ways.

Impacts on relationships

One recent study had straight men and women answer questions that evaluated how strongly they endorse the idea that women are either good and chaste or bad and promiscuous, along with measures of how patriarchal their attitudes are (through questions that probe objectification of women, sexual double standards, preference for hierarchical social systems, etc.). It turned out that men who are more inclined to push women into one of two categories were less satisfied in their romantic relationships, though women with diverse views were equally satisfied.

A separate study of the impact on women’s pleasure found that men who believed more strongly in a split between pure and promiscuous women also thought “other men” (surely not themselves) would be less interested in fulfilling a woman’s desires. These men further believed that women are less entitled to sexual pleasure than men. Women who bought into the dichotomy were shown to devalue their own pleasure as compared to their male partner’s. This suggests that women may internalize the stereotype and feel pressured not to enjoy sex. The researchers make a link to the orgasm gap (men orgasm around 80% of the time during sex, versus women around 50%), speculating that it may stem in part from men who don’t think they need to try to please their partner and women who don’t feel entitled to feel good.

Impacts on women’s psyches

The pleasure-related study above additionally showed that people who divide women into Madonnas and whores also see women looking for hook-ups on dating apps as less moral than those seeking committed relationships.

It’s not hard to imagine the ways women may alter their behavior due to these assumptions. Deborah Tolman’s extensive conversations with adolescent girls revealed their fears of getting a bad reputation and the shame they experience about their desires. And in fact, women who do not follow the prescribed script of limiting their sexual behavior often face “slut shaming” from peers and elders at all stages of life: for having sex in adolescence, for seeking too many partners in early adulthood, for showing interest in anyone but their husband during marriage, and for any and all sexual activity after a certain age.

One study of college students found that more than a third had said no to sex that they actually wanted. Follow-up research showed that this feigned resistance was predicted less by a woman’s openness to sexual activity and more by whether she believed her male partner held a sexual double standard: that is, the woman perceives the man as believing it is more acceptable for men to have sexual freedom than women. The authors conclude that it is cultural context, not personality, that determines a woman’s willingness to acknowledge her own sexual desire.

My thoughts based on what I see

One of the most pernicious implications that I see of the Madonna-whore dichotomy is women who had great sex before marriage, but struggle to orgasm or enjoy sex with their husband. Some of these women (definitely not all) suffer from an internalized perception that they are not supposed to enjoy sex once they are en route to (or experiencing) motherhood. This can inhibit erotic energy, being in their body, and staying present.

On the flip side, I see “good girl” and “dirty whore” fantasies as related to the dichotomy as well. If you grew up being told that “proper” women don’t enjoy sex while simultaneously feeling that sex feels pretty damn good, you probably experience an inner conflict. This may be partially relieved by your partner telling you what a slut you are, and/or what a good girl you are to be doing [name your preferred sexual behavior].

The “easy” answer to both is to shed your shame, though of course this is more challenging in practice. Fantasies do not imply desire to do something in real life, nor do they dictate our values.

And the more we can be honest with ourselves about the ways that we have (inevitably, to some extent) internalized the Madonna-whore dichotomy, and release the shame that it causes, the more we can find sex that pushes all the right buttons.

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

From her 20s to her 40s, Amanda had sex with whomever she chose to. She had partners all over the world, and kept them in what she called a “rotation.” She thought of herself as an empowered single woman.

Today she believes that was a narrative she was telling herself.

Love me for my brains

Amanda is tall and lithe. She was a professional ballet dancer as a young woman. She easily garners male attention.

Objectification of women was common when she was growing up in the 1980s and 90s. It was considered normal behavior when boys would grab her butt in high school. Amanda hated it.

When Monica Lewinsky’s affair with President Clinton came to light, older women advised Amanda, “Don’t be like that. You want men to love you for your brains, not your boobs.” As a gender studies major, Amanda was explicitly taught to be loved for who she is, not how she looks. But when she got her first job out of college, as a receptionist at a male-dominated firm, they told her they chose her because she was “presentable.” “Ha,” she thought cynically, “that’s code for ‘you look cute.’” She was enraged.

Exerting her sexual power

Amanda had one serious boyfriend after college. They dated for a few years, but she lost interest in sex as soon as the honeymoon period wore off. At first she blamed her own libido. Then she started hooking up with someone on the side, and she realized it just wasn’t the right relationship for her. That she was having sex to please her partner, when in fact she wanted to be fulfilled herself.

For the next 20 years, Amanda had exclusively no-strings-attached encounters. She separated sex from love and even from friendship. Sex was only about power.

Her targets started with colleagues, maybe an occasional superior. Over time she increasingly sought men who had more to lose, who held some position of prominence. She slept with married men who were risking their livelihoods. She fucked board members and public figures.

She did not orgasm with a single one of them. Amanda could cum easily on her own—and often did. But an orgasm is vulnerable: you almost black out. It also requires expressing your needs and asking for what you enjoy. For Amanda, intercourse was about exerting control, not giving it up.

All the while, she hated the men she was with. She despised how weak they were, how they gave into her seduction so easily. And her contempt drove her to dominate more and more of them.

One day she drove by a group of high school girls raising money for their Model UN trip by washing cars in bikinis. At first she was horrified, wondering how their parents allowed it. And then she reconsidered: these girls were right to exploit men so they could expand their education in global government; some day they will rule the world and put an end to female objectification.

Patriarchy, Amanda believed, was fueled by structures and norms that conceal men’s weakness. In the moment Monica Lewinsky was blowing Bill Clinton, she was the most powerful person in the world.

Matchmaking

And then, in her mid-40s, Amanda started having panic attacks. Through introspection and therapy, she explored what kind of change her body might be calling for. She decided to move back to her hometown, living closer to nature and to her parents.

She also uncovered a fear: that she was unlovable. Keeping paramours at arm’s distance meant that, while she knew she was fabulous in bed, she had no evidence of whether anyone could desire her for anything else. In order to face her own insecurities and boost her personal growth, she decided to embark on a traditional relationship.

Amanda was not looking for a life partner; she remained open to the possibility of ultimately returning to her single life. But she wanted to go all in for the time being, so she invested in a matchmaker named Helen.

Amanda talked to Helen like she would a friend. She shared her entire history, and Helen did the legwork, using her own network to identify single men who might be a good fit for Amanda. Unlike apps, men are not the business model for matchmakers. Women pay, and men are recruited from the general public.

After a few mediocre dates, Amanda found Robert. Robert had also had a period of dating empty, attractive people that left him feeling unfulfilled, and he shared her desire for something different. He was motivated to improve his capacity for genuine intimacy, a drive that Amanda could relate to.

The hardest work she ever did

Amanda has struggled in face of paternalism, misogyny, and marginalization in her personal and professional lives. Yet she calls her first year with Robert the hardest work she’s ever done. She had to learn vulnerability and compromise. She felt like she was holding a mirror to herself, and examining the parts that she had buried where she thought they would never be found.

She discovered that her years of controlling men through sex had left her with negative associations attached to certain sexual acts. Blow jobs, for example, conjured up transaction, expectation, and being used for her body.

To avoid the triggers, Amanda and Robert agreed that he would never initiate anything sexual. Amanda decides what they will do, and they move slowly, ensuring she feels safe. She has yet to suck Robert’s penis at all.

One time she dug into her fetish costume collection, hoping that it might revive her former sensuality. She kept it a secret, donning a Catholic schoolgirl outfit and coming downstairs to surprise him. Before she even started descending, Amanda was flooded with what dress-up had always represented for her: it was exciting and fun, but playing a role was simultaneously the ultimate barrier to your partner accessing your inner self.

Robert immediately noticed. He told her how sexy she was, and then asked how she felt. “Not very good,” she replied. When he suggested she remove it, she was flooded with relief: it was proof that he wants her for herself and not who she can pretend to be.

Healing

One of Amanda’s outstanding goals is to work through her triggers so she can enjoy the same acts she used to revel in, with a new meaning attached.

Sex with Robert is Amanda’s first experience making love. She doesn’t find it as thrilling as fucking, but she appreciates expanding her ability to be intimate. Many of their most tender moments don’t involve sex at all, like when they cuddle on the couch eating ice cream in front of the TV.

Amanda has told her rotation of men that she is off the market. Some tried to convince her out of it. Others asked if it was permanent. “I still don’t know,” she told me. While she finds many new forms of happiness as half of a couple, her bucket is not yet as full. And maybe it never will be.

Thoughts based on my experience

Amanda resisted the societal norm of serving men, taking advantage of their assumptions about her in order to exercise her own agency. And yet she was still left with insecurities and disruptions to her nervous system.

The range of stories I have heard from middle-aged American women implies that none of us grow up independent of the sexual norms that rob us of full empowerment. Amanda did not fall prey to the expectation that she be a good girl who only likes sex when it is condoned, but the alternative was a sense that the men she fucked were only interested in her sexual talent. Our society (and many like it) struggles to accept women for anything between Madonna and whore, and that pushes us to the extremes without us even realizing it.

The answer lies in noticing the impact that these roles have on us, and making conscious decisions about how we are going to respond to them. Amanda may decide that her promiscuous life is better for her. But if she does, she will be doing it with the knowledge that she can choose how much intimacy, love, and no-strings-attached fun she will have, and it is in her power to shift the balance at any time.

In my last story, I described how Alana deliberately chooses what each of her relationships will include. This is the essence of intentional relationship design.

Intentional relationships are those in which decisions are made mutually, consciously, and deliberately. This is not limited to whether to have children or should you take that job in California; it extends to things that tend to go undiscussed, such as:

• What does commitment mean to us?

• What kind of time will we take for ourselves separately, and what will that look like?

• What kind of emotional connections can we have with other people, including friends?

• What would it look like for our relationship to end on good terms, and can we commit to that if we decide we are no longer compatible?

The idea of intentional relationships is that the partners have open-mindedly explored the available possibilities for what a relationship can look like and have chosen what is best for them in a self-aware and well-informed way.

That does not mean that you reject traditional models such as monogamy, having children, and even buying a white picket fence; it just means that you only do so after considering the other options and weighing each against your own values.

Intentional relationships have not been studied by social scientists, though it is being talked about. Instead of summarizing nonexistent research, I will present different relevant angles.

Fairy tale relationships

Fairy tales are what we tell ourselves our romantic relationships will be like. The broad form is boy meets girl, they fall in love, they get married, they have children, they live happily ever after. There are many details that each of us can fill in---you might be familiar with your own. For me, you live together before marriage, you have a carefree (but not too crazy) time for a couple of years before settling down, you don’t have more than three children. I also have a concept of ideal appearance and demeanor.

A major feature of our relationship ideals is that they tend to have a linear progression: certain things are “supposed to” happen before others, and each step on the path makes the subsequent stages more likely. Thus, if you move in together then you are closer to getting married. I remember when I first got engaged I thought we would wait years before having a wedding, but the constant questions about what the date would be wore me down, and it just seemed easier to start planning (I was young, forgive me).

A troubling feature of this progression is that many people never think about what happens once you get married. Few would argue that nothing ever changes again, and yet even those with an otherwise sophisticated view of interpersonal dynamics can overlook that every long-term partnership is going to face evolution. In fact, many of us strive for continuity in our relationships, as if lack of change is the gold standard.

Myths about what brings happiness

A “Relationship Belief Inventory” was developed in the early 1980s to help researchers evaluate the ways someone believes a partnership “should” function. Three categories of belief stand out for how they portray unrealistic yet very common assumptions about what makes for a “great” relationship: the beliefs that

• anything more than minor disagreement is a sign of dysfunction

• an intense mutual attunement to the point of mindreading is necessary, and

• the quality of the sexual connection reflects the value of the relationship.

For example, users are asked whether they agree with statements such as:

• I get very upset when my partner and I cannot see things the same way.

• I get upset if I think I have not completely satisfied my partner sexually.

• People who love each other know exactly what each other’s thoughts are without a word even being said.

The full list of validated questions is available in this paper. Although some of them may appear far-fetched on the surface, many subtly pervade our standards for decisions about compatibility, long-term prospects, and what is reasonable to tolerate in a partnership.

Be optimistic, but not unrealistic

Several studies have shown that positive illusions actually predict trust, satisfaction, and even continued love over time. However, optimism needs to be tempered by some degree of realism to avoid leading to complacency or even giving up in face of differences of opinion. One study found that people who believe in destiny are more likely to avoid conflict in face of relationship stress and are faster to end the bond over disagreement.

Another study found that people who generally have a positive outlook on life engage in better problem solving with their partners, whereas those whose sanguine attitude is limited to their relationship are less constructive in face of conflict.

The many ways to be monogamous

My favorite book on intentional relationship design is called Designer Relationships. In addition to describing many options and ways to think critically about our assumptions, the book lays out four facets of our relationships, and encourages conscious thinking about how “monogamous” you wish to be in each one. These facets are:

• sexual

• emotional

• social

• practical

Sexual monogamy is usually the first facet we think of when entering into a relationship. While people have difference tolerance---for example, some partners will be faster to forgive a drunken kiss than others---the lines are still pretty clear in the sexual realm.

Emotional monogamy can be much trickier. Not only is there more gray area in emotional connection, but it takes a high degree of self-awareness to stop yourself once you begin falling in love with someone else---not to mention strong self-constraint to separate yourself once it happens. Many consensually nonmonogamous people try to limit emotional nonmonogamy because that is frequently where the complications lie.

Few people expect total social monogamy, but it happens in practice much more than we think about. Many of us (especially those socialized as men) have few if any friends outside our partners. We may have connections from our past, but in many cases we no longer spend time with them without our significant others, or may garner an unpleasant reaction when we do (“Wait, I’m not invited?!”). In the words of Designer Relationships, “for many couples, autonomous pursuits and outside interests are something to be tolerated but not celebrated” [my emphasis]. How socially monogamous are you?

Practical monogamy is things like who you have children with, or who you share a home and/or finances with. Only the most equal-opportunity of nonmonogamous people have multiple partners in the practical realm. Many solo polyamorous people are only practically monogamous with themselves.

What does this mean for an actual relationship?

The sum total of all of this is that there are many more possibilities out there than we are taught. And even though a lot of them are discouraged explicitly or indirectly, they are working for many people right now as I write this.

Most importantly, we can think critically about each of these aspects and more, and then make conscious and meaningful decisions about what works for us. And the more we dig, the more we will discover.

The biggest obstacle that I encounter to people doing this is not awareness, it’s looking honestly at yourself and separating your personal values from the voices telling you otherwise. That often requires facing shame we may have lived with from a very young age.

Based on my experience, it is the people who design (and continually re-design) their relationships who are happiest in the long term.

My last post described Alana, who is in a primary partnership with a woman but mostly dates men in her ethically nonmonogamous relationship. I have also told about Melissa and Christina exploring bisexuality through nonmonogamy.

I have written about research on bisexuality before, covering the prevalence, what types of relationships bisexual people choose most often, and how sexual preference can evolve over time among women. Here I am going to elaborate on the latter point. I am concentrating on women because that is my area of focus, though bisexuality in men has its own set of fascinating questions.

Longitudinal research

Research variously defines bisexuality as having sex with people of both genders, attraction to both genders regardless of behavior, and self-identification.

You do not decide you are bisexual; it is something you discover within yourself. However, people clearly identify with different orientations over time. Dr. Lisa Diamond’s 10-year study of 79 women saw two-thirds change their identity over the research period.

In fact, Diamond’s study found most participants changing identity more than once. And rather than slide along the spectrum linearly—for example moving from straight to bisexual to lesbian—it was more common over time for people to shift toward bisexual or to say they were “unlabeled.”

Why would this be the case?

Diamond posits two possible models: bisexuality is its own orientation, or it is more generally indicative of a heightened capacity for sexual fluidity. She points out that a third possibility that is commonly cited, that bisexuality is a transition stage between straight and gay, is inconsistent with the fluctuations found in her research.

Alternative theories on why orientation changes

Other social scientists have hypothesized that bisexuality is less stable than hetero or lesbian because people are least familiar with it. Young people might assume they are straight or gay in the absence of bisexual role models, or because they don’t understand that they may have attraction to both genders while still preferring one over the other. Then, as they learn more about the possibilities and about themselves, they evolve.

There is clearly a strong social component as well. While homosexuality still brings stigma, bisexuality is even less supported in society. Revealing that you are attracted to men and women often results in continual negative social feedback. Our society is much more comfortable with binaries, leading to statements such as “But I thought you dated women!”

Both with age and with time, bisexuality may become more accepted. People need a strong sense of self to probe the nuance of real-life sexuality, which also comes with age.

What I find most interesting

I meet many vulva-owning people in their 40s and 50s who have attraction to both men and women. They self-identify in all sorts of ways: bisexual, pansexual, straight but with some attraction, interested in women sexually but not romantically, bisexual “from the waist up,” and more. I often hear a lot of tension when they describe it, as if they are unsure whether their preferences are valid, or they are preparing to have to justify their choices.

Some people tell me they always knew they were interested in multiple genders, while others aren’t sure whether these feelings were previously suppressed or evolved over time. Some credit a greater sense of safety in a new relationship that allows for exploration. Others say perimenopause makes them care less what society thinks of their orientation. Some people believe that aging can impact who you are attracted to.

To me what is most important is that you are in touch with what feels good and what doesn’t, and learn to communicate about it so you can have more of the former.

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

Alana felt intense sensuality as a child, but she kept it under wraps. She came from a family of women who faced violence at the hands of men, and she was determined to chart a different path. At age 13, when she felt burning passion with her first love, she promptly told him that from then on, they would only kiss standing up.

Alana was frequently reserved and anxious. She thinks that made her appear prudish, when in fact she was in constant struggle to control her throbbing sexuality. As she got older, she saved sex for men who she could imagine as the father of her children, just in case her other precautions failed. She was surprised that, with the two men she chose before marriage, it was she who consistently had the higher libido.

From a young age, Alana also knew she was bisexual, but she had no real opportunities to explore. She told one boyfriend and he was supportive, but nothing came of it. When she met her future husband, she felt uncomfortable sharing that side of herself, fearing that he might attempt to turn it into a porn scenario for his own benefit. She let her interest in women lie dormant.

Uncovering her own values

Alana’s husband drifted in and out of depression throughout their marriage. Again, her sex drive was much stronger than his. She didn’t understand why popular culture always portrayed women as faking headaches to avoid intercourse, and thought maybe something was wrong with her.

After years of frustration and some open-minded therapy, Alana asked her husband if they could explore other relationship structures. They discussed it off-and-on for some time, finally drafting a relationship contract under the guidance of a nonmonogamy counselor. Then they dove in.

Alana calls this her Juanita period, in honor of her own middle name. She put her hand to her chest as she told me, evoking that part of herself again. It was a time to learn what she liked without trying to uphold values other than her own. And yet she had internalized those rules so deeply that she feared the shift might cause a breakdown.

Alana specifically wanted to experience casual sex. All of her strictures and safeguards had isolated her from carefree, reckless relations. So after she opened her marriage, she reached out to a hot running buddy and they started sexting, which she discovered to be thrilling. They met up in another state to run a race together, followed by a night of NSA pleasure.

And there was no breakdown.

However, it confirmed that seeking emotional connection was not just conditioning for her, it was preferable. The passion was thwarted by a lack of intimacy.

You can’t always get what you want

Another of Alana’s convictions since childhood was that if you never give up, you can achieve anything. She believed that she could fight her way to any outcome she set her mind to.

As time went on, life forced her to readjust her beliefs. Covid, for example, landed her in the hospital even though she had always taken good care of herself. After she recovered, her son began displaying bipolar symptoms and became physically aggressive, mostly directed at her. All of her care to avoid violent men was meaningless in face of her own child.

Another outcome Alana wanted was a life with Malcolm. Knowing that she preferred emotional bonds, this close friend with whom she had long shared underlying passion appeared to be the perfect boyfriend. And in many ways, he was. Their connection was so all-consuming that their first sexual encounter was explosive even though they barely moved. Another time they sat on the floor, only brushing their legs and foreheads together, and it was almost orgasmic.

But the intensity became too much for their lives. Alana was going through divorce, and her son also needed attention. Telling me about Malcolm brought bittersweet tears to Alana’s eyes. She had realized that she couldn’t love her way through this situation, and she had to simply say no.

Relationship by design

After Malcolm, dating shifted for Alana. She turned to apps, and listed herself as bisexual, despite believing that her interest in women was only “from the boobs up.” Her first few dates with women left her feeling indifferent.

But the more she went out, the more she found people—men, women, it didn’t matter—who turned her on. And as her self-understanding evolved, and she formed a primary and nonmonogamous partnership with a woman named Naomi, Alana became more comfortable deliberately choosing what each of her relationships would include. This meant that she considered each person in her life on their own merits, and many drifted fluidly between friendship, romance, and back again.

With Naomi, Alana has a smattering of components of traditional relationships, combined with others that they have designed together. Naomi mostly dates women outside of their partnership, while Alana is generally drawn to men. They live in their own authenticity.

The first time Alana went to a sex club, she was alone. Not interested in hooking up, she spent the night on the dance floor. She loved that she could move as sensually as she pleased in this permissive space. Because sex clubs are based firmly on consent, she was safe to close her eyes and feel her body. Unlike normal bars and clubs, no one touched her, despite the eroticism of the environment. It gave her a new experience of freedom.

For the second visit, Naomi accompanied her. They danced sensually together, and Alana was aroused. This time, the freedom came from the ability to turn that arousal into sex, right then and there. Naomi and Alana paired dancing with fucking again and again, and Alana delighted in the space the club provided to have sex whenever she wanted, wherever she was.

Spreading the freedom

Alana grew up enjoying pleasing others. Her belief in her ability to bend any outcome to her will was grounded in trying to make those around her happy. But now she sees their happiness as their responsibility. As she has accepted herself more, she recognizes that she can support other people, but she can’t control them. She is now continually learning to accept her parents, her kids, everyone in her life for who they are. Herself included.

“When you get in touch with something primal inside you,” she told me, “it gives you a new sense of who you are.”

My thoughts on Alana’s story

One of the most insidious and unrecognized rules that society tells us to follow is that relationships need to look a certain way in order to be successful. In fact, the most resilient and satisfied couples that I work with are the ones who are willing to make conscious decisions about what works for them and what doesn’t, as Alana has, while also facing how challenging it can be to give up what we were taught.

I also love how Alana’s recognition that she can’t make other people happy shatters her people pleasing tendencies. When we try to manufacture the happiness of our loved ones, we take away their opportunity to find their own contentment. It feels like we are helping, and oftentimes we are, especially if someone has been brought up thinking that their happiness is not in their own control. But as humans, we actually need to practice generating our own joy in face of circumstances that seem to preclude it; only then can we have consistent happiness in life.

My last post described the subtle racism in Eve’s relationship with her White husband. I have also told how Charlotte feels fetishized as a Black woman dating. Yet intercultural relationships also present opportunities for enhanced intimacy through curiosity, mutual exploration, and shared learning.

Intercultural relationships are just relationships

First, I want to state clearly that all relationships are cross-cultural to some extent. Even people who grew up next door to each other were raised with different norms and values, and had varied experiences. We all need to navigate our differences in relationships, and many of us thrive on these differences as well.

Intercultural couples are not uniquely different. As one research paper concludes, “every couple is in some respects: (a) like all other couples; (b) like some other couples; and (c) like no other couple.”

So rather than conclude that intercultural couples have some magic spark inaccessible to partners from the same background, I encourage you to take inspiration from these examples and apply them to whatever your relationships bring.

Learning to see things from another’s perspective

Discrimination is sadly part of every interracial relationship. For many White partners, this is their first direct contact with racism.

A series of studies by Adam Galinsky and colleagues examined how taking the other person’s perspective can build empathy among White people for the racist experiences that others endure. They have found that so-called perspective-taking helps Whites take discrimination more seriously, and that Black partners viewed White people more positively when the latter practiced taking their perspective.

Another team found that, in interracial relationships, the White partner experienced less stress if they took the Black or Hispanic partner’s perspective during discriminatory events, and this in turn led to greater commitment and relationship satisfaction.

Thus, as partners become more attuned to the other’s experiences, they feel more connection.

Expanding your world-view

Research has shown that when people expand themselves and how they see the world through their partners, they are more satisfied and committed in their relationships. Moreover, when partners have new experiences together that broaden their horizons, they feel closer, have higher libido, and feel more satisfied after having sex together. Self-expansion has actually been theorized to be a fundamental human motivation that we all have.

And let me reiterate that point: joint exploration leads to more satisfying sex.

According to research, Whites who take their Black or Hispanic partner’s perspective regarding discriminatory events (although interestingly, not vice versa) undergo more expansion of themselves. So navigating an interracial relationship effectively can help a White person feel more committed. While research has not been done, this may also be true for any power differential in a partnership (male-female, straight-bi, wealthier-less wealthy, cisgender-trans, etc.).

More broadly, building a life with someone from another culture gives ample opportunities for a widening range of experiences, which in turn leads to an expanded world-view (and better sex!).

Respecting the other’s culture

Cultural humility is the concept of respecting another person’s cultural background and lived experience while not feeling your own is superior. Obviously that sounds like something you should do in any healthy relationship, but in an intercultural relationship, in which your differences are so visible and you are (probably, unfortunately) frequently reminded of them by the people around you, maintaining cultural humility can be more top of mind.

A 2018 study of 155 people in interethnic partnerships found a positive correlation between cultural humility and relationship satisfaction. The theory behind it is that when your partner acts humbly, you perceive them as more committed to the relationship. A 2026 study confirmed that finding, adding that this is partly because the partners actively engage with each other’s cultural worlds (“cultural sharing”).

A study of 17 self-defined interracial couples in California found that the more satisfied pairs were interested and curious about each other’s cultures, demonstrating respect even in cases where they did not fully take part. The happier partners attributed differences to their personalities rather than their cultures, and saw these in a more positive light than their less satisfied peers did.

Intentional negotiation

When two people were brought up in different cultures, they often have divergent communication styles and norms. In a romantic relationship, these often show up around childrearing, budgeting and spending, and sex and intimacy. Negotiating these differences effectively can deepen intimacy.

One study of 20 individuals in either interracial or same-race relationships found the former more likely to express curiosity and encourage honesty during disagreements, in contrast to hostility and minimizing the other’s position.

The study of 17 couples above found that in successful relationships, the partners created a shared sense of “we,” transcending whatever differences they have. They were comfortable discussing cultural integration and described standing together in face of discrimination and negativity.

How this plays out

Interracial couples continue to face pressures that others do not. But they also have opportunities to build resiliency and commitment. I have myself envied certain interracial couples for their diverse friend groups, the mind-opening conversations, and the unique adventures that they share.

But most importantly, I love the lessons that they pose for all relationships. Every one of the interpersonal techniques I have described can be applied to the most stereotypical, homogeneous couple out there. I love seeing the fascinated expression on someone’s face when they learn something about their partner they had no idea was there. It is amazing to be privy to their excitement when they recall a novel exploit they had together. And I take enormous satisfaction in helping people find empathy for the characteristics of their partner that they might find most unusual, troubling, or even unappealing.

Just for good measure, I’ll throw in one last study whose subtitle says it all: “Interracial daters are more attractive than intraracial daters.”

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

“I once saw a play,” Eve told me. “It was about a boy who thinks he’s a lizard. Over and over, he tries to act like a lizard, but he keeps failing. And then he finally allows his wings to emerge. He has huge wings. He is a dragon.”

Eve’s story has two versions.

The first is about sex. She cheated on her husband, they opened their relationship, he accused her of breaking the arrangement when she slept with a man rather than a woman, they divorced.

The second is about race.

She told me both, the latter only when I asked. We agreed that I would tell that one, because it is not often told, especially to a mostly white audience. Eve is a Black woman. And while she didn’t ever explicitly say it to me, her ex is white.

Financial education

Eve grew up very aware of money. She had family members who were careful to live within their means, and others who were unable to make ends meet. Although she chose a creative profession with little earning potential, she was determined to manage her money well.

No one in her life had learned about financial markets or stocks and bonds. To Eve, investments bring different kinds of returns: sometimes you are paid back in money, other times in services, sometimes just in love. Especially with family.

In graduate school, she was struck by how many of the students, most of whom were white, complained of being poor when they were paying their way with family money. They were all pursuing undervalued careers, but no one discussed the practicalities of how they planned to make it work. Eve kept a careful budget and tracked everything she spent. At one point she had to borrow $7,000 from a friend, and she repaid it within two years while working a low-wage job and keeping the rest of her life afloat.

David was also a creative, but he grew up with an inheritance. Although he wasn’t yet able to access it when they met, he was living on a very generous stipend. Even when Eve and David were committed and living together, they kept their finances mostly separate, splitting expenses 50-50. This continued after they married, all the way until they had their first child. And then, both of them tacitly accepted that David would oversee their finances, and keep Eve in the dark.

Even before that, David took control of any shared expenses. On their honeymoon, Eve had been awarded a $5,000 prize that she was excited to spend on six months in South America. David contributed equally, but maintained the entire budget himself, telling her what she could spend. When she fell in love with a leather bag at a market, beautiful brown and weathered, she spent an hour convincing him to allow her to purchase it from her own portion of the funds.

Unspoken was an assumption that he was good with money, and she wasn’t, nor would she ever be. Her personal budgeting and innovation in finding ways to make ends meet went unseen because he valued the management of large sums in accounts that accrue.

Eve recognizes that this was in part due to classism: a belief that she was too ignorant to understand. It was also sexism (“No need to worry your pretty head about money!”).

But those inclinations were exacerbated by racism. There was an unacknowledged certainty that white people are better with financial matters. And it was one that she had internalized as well. As she put it to me facetiously, “Why would you let a Black person control your money?”

Treating people like family

When Eve’s mother was laid off at age 60 and couldn’t find more than odd jobs, Eve naturally wanted to help her. She and David had a comfortable lifestyle, with money to spare. Investing in the people you love was natural to her, especially when they were reliable and generous themselves.

Eve fought with David to pay her mother to care for their children. Eve didn’t understand why, since they were employing babysitters anyway. But David didn’t want to pay family, even if that family needed money that they had to give.

More than that, Eve’s mother was not his mother. Racism in our society makes us believe that, as a white person, you shouldn’t help because that person is “other,” different from you. We also learn that suffering among Black people isn’t as appalling because they are accustomed to it. That it’s normal for a Black person, especially a Black woman, to work hard and have less money than a white person, so they don’t need help.

When racism becomes abuse

Through all of this, David struggled with alcoholism. When he drank too much, he had a tendency to rail at Eve. He would say degrading things about things she had done or about her body. He would belittle her. While he didn’t explicitly mention her skin color, she doesn’t believe he would have treated a white woman this way. He looked down on Eve because she was Black; because in our society, that is what white men learn. And as he bullied her, she accepted it. She never fought back or threatened to leave.

There is blatant, brutal racism in this country, but this was much more subtle. David is a well-educated man who openly supports equality for all people. Racism is so deeply entrenched that it survives liberal education and honest accounting of history. In fact, because many white people are so convinced of the horrors of racism, they are more likely to bury the lingering bigotry they have, denying it the opportunity to be aired and healed.

Eve lived under this for 15 years. She doesn’t know why she stayed silent so long.

In the midst of an argument during the divorce process, David made a contemptuous accusation: he said that when they first met, Eve had nothing, and everything she has is because of him. He said it with the patronizing confidence of someone who has an innate feeling of superiority. He wiped out all of her love and creativity and resourcefulness and emotional support in a single phrase.

Denouement

When David suggested to Eve that they open their relationship, he said it would benefit her because she was interested in dating women. He did not admit that he really wanted to have sex with other people. When she chose, like him, to sleep with someone of the opposite sex, he accused her of violating their agreement. But Eve knows that she acted in her own integrity, being honest with David and with herself. She sees him having a double standard, treating his own desires as different from hers.

In years of couples therapy with multiple practitioners, before and through this event, only the last one ever asked Eve and David whether race had ever been an issue in their relationship. It was staring everyone in the face, and no one wanted to bring it up.

It is not possible as a white person in this country to talk about race without letting yourself be vulnerable, taking a risk that an attitude you wish you didn’t have might rise to the surface. But just like all kinds of intimacy, you will never make progress without vulnerability. We need to face the trauma that racism causes in all of us, and allow it to heal.

Eve’s empowerment

Eve hates that her family is now split apart. And she fears that her children will grow up thinking that their “white family” has money and their “Black family” does not.

But she now sees how good she is with money. Even more importantly, she has realized her value and skill in a way that she never could while living under David’s disdain.

On the dating market again, she doesn’t avoid white men, but she prepares herself to have those tough conversations. No matter how enlightened the individuals, race is part of every mixed-race interaction, and Eve is now prepared to confront it head on.

Two lesser-known books that changed my perspective on race:

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem

Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, by Emily Bernard

This is the first of a number of articles I will be releasing on various aspects of orgasm anatomy. This week: how your pelvic muscles interact to produce those ecstatic sensations.

I realize that, in terms of sequencing, I should start with the clitoris. But let’s assume that you already know what happens with that, and now you’re wondering how the muscles get involved.

Basic anatomy: the pelvic floor

Humans have 14 muscles in their pelvic floor. People with penises and vaginas have the same muscles, though they organize themselves a little differently around the different parts.

Of these, the pubococcygeus and iliococcygeus muscles are most involved in the contractions of orgasm. The role of the former was first identified by Alfred Kegel, whose name you probably recognize from the eponymous exercises. His 1940s work to help solve incontinence fortuitously revealed that strengthening that muscle intensifies orgasm.

Interestingly, pelvic floor muscles work through both voluntary and involuntary control. As a result, you can squeeze them consciously in nonsexual situations (like right now!), and doing so improves their automatic response when you orgasm. Stronger pelvic floor muscles has consistently been shown to correlate with a better orgasmic experience.

Even though the pubococcygeus and iliococcygeus (part of the levator ani group of muscles in the picture) are prominently cited when it comes to female orgasm, many other pelvic floor muscles are involved as well. For example, the bulbospongiosus muscle, which encircles the vaginal entrance and extends to the base of the clitoris, is key to kicking off orgasmic contractions. The ischiocavernosus muscle helps keep the clitoris erect through it all.

But most importantly, contractions take place throughout this musculature. And that’s what feels good.

In the 1960s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, sex research pioneers, identified muscular contractions as beginning 2 to 4 seconds after a woman says her orgasm is beginning, and occurring at approximately 0.8-second intervals thereafter. But the number and intensity of contractions has not been linked to subjective experiences of pleasure. So while contractions are a key part of orgasm, we can’t look solely at how the pelvic floor behaves and predict how good the person feels.

Research on muscles and great orgasms

As usual, we are lacking in complete research. The 2004 report on “Women’s Orgasm” that formed part of the comprehensive International Consultation on Sexual Medicine stated that “there is no large body of subjects who have had their vaginal muscular activity recorded during orgasm…. There has been little or no advance in the area since these studies in the 80s.” And while that was 20 years ago, it hasn’t gotten much better.

That report did mention that there is “limited evidence” that clitoral vs. vaginal orgasms may engage pelvic floor muscles differently.

And given evidence that different types of stimulation (oral, fingers, phallic object), more body movement (yes, moving your hips rhythmically actually has been shown to make it feel better!), and stimulation in different places (outside, inside, all around) can enhance orgasm, it may be that having more muscles engaged improves the experience. But we don’t yet have direct research evidence.

What this means for your sex life

I believe that you should attempt to engage as much of your pelvic floor as possible if you want, in the brilliant words of Carol Lesser, a vagina full of rainbows. You can’t do this consciously, at least not during sex. That post by Carol lays out prep work you can do beforehand.

Kegels are also proven to help, though many people do them wrong. If you’ve never done a Kegel, squeezing like you’re stopping your pee is a good start. But if you’ve done that a hundred (or a thousand) times, you may need more refined directions. One tip I like is to squeeze like you’re holding in a fart but someone is looking at your butt and you’re trying to hide it: engage internally while trying not to involve your glutes. That’s harder to do, right?! (You should consult a pelvic floor therapist for the best advice on this.)

Another hack I love is dancing as foreplay! Dancing is sexy because it uses the same muscles that make for great sex. So warm yourself up with your favorite song!

When it comes to the bedroom, one reason (of many) that vagina owners tend to enjoy long, sensual play may be that it gives time to wake up all 14 muscles. It’s also a great argument for engaging in a variety of foreplay (touch in all the places!), and for bringing in that vibrator.

And once the penetration starts, changing positions helps keep all the muscles involved. Don’t just let your partner stay in their favorite spot the whole time. If you’re getting bored, your muscles are too.

And if you’re having fun, well, don’t overthink it!

Enjoy!

When Sarah asked me to do a guest post on her Substack recommending vibrators, I jumped at the chance. With over 13 years in the pleasure product industry I have recommended thousands of vibrators, and I still love to hand out tips for first time explorers or for anybody who needs to shake things up a bit.

If you haven’t read Sarah’s fantastic Substack Vibrators: What the research says, I urge you to check it out. Where she has the ‘why’ of vibrators covered, my specialty is the ‘where do I start?’

The latest statistics show that between 52% and 80% of American women have used or own a vibrator.

The best advice I can give anybody who is exploring pleasure products for the first time is to go with your gut. I know how tempting it is to pick whatever your best girlfriend recommended, or to grab that viral toy you saw on Insta or Tiktok—I’m looking at you “The Rose”! But you are likely to have a much better experience if you consider what actually appeals to you. Start where you feel comfortable, explore at your own pace, and trust that you’ll figure out what you like along the way. Read the description, look at the pictures, hold it in your hand (if you can), and keep in mind that a vibrator is your partner in pleasure.

So, let’s dive in!

Never touched a vibrator before and want to dip your toe in gently?

Smaller profile clitoral stimulators or bullets are versatile for singles or couples and can fit comfortably between two bodies. They also make fantastic foreplay aids to help get you in the mood. Try gliding them gently over your neck, the insides of your arm, or your nipples and enjoy the delicious tingles.

Ily Squishy Classic Silicone Bullet Vibrator

• Easy and intuitive controls for first time users

• Squishy and bendable which means it bends to your body

• Comfortable to slip between two partners as a couple toy

• A strong motor that can start quite low and work up, letting you enjoy the build-up

Ily Squishy Silicone Pebble Vibrator

• Fits in your palm and has enough squish to conform to your body

• Broader than a bullet to deliver vulva and all-over stimulation

• Still small and soft enough to slip between two partners as a couple toy

Want something small but with a firmer touch because you like a lot of stimulation?

This worldwide bestseller is for anybody who finds their old vibrator just doesn’t provide enough power or wants something smaller in profile. It is known as the most powerful bullet available.

We-Vibe Tango X Powerful Waterproof Bullet Vibrator

• Extremely powerful motor

• Hard ABS plastic body and classic lipstick shape for pointed stimulation

• A good choice for anybody who has trouble climaxing but still wants something small

• Waterproof for use in the bath

• Can take you from foreplay to orgasm whether you’re solo or with a partner

Want lots of external power and an all-in-one wellness tool?

Wands are still a classic for anybody who wants a lot of power. I love to remind people that they are also excellent relaxation tools that can soothe aching muscles and get the blood pumping all over your body. Even if you never use a wand to orgasm, I still think they’re an invaluable addition to any toy box.

Magic Wand Mini Cordless Rechargeable Vibrator

• An updated, smaller version of the worldwide bestselling Magic Wand with the same amount of power in a more petite body

• Rechargeable for cord-free play (unlike the Original Magic Wand)

• Three powerful speeds

• Pro Tip: If you want to start off more gently, use it above your clothing or over the sheets for a more muted sensation. Some people put a towel in between

Dame Com Ergonomic Waterproof Wand Vibrator with Flexible Neck

• Strong, rumbly motor but not as ‘knock your socks off’ as Magic Wand

• Beautifully ergonomic handle for better each

• A flexible neck to move with your body

• Waterproof for bath or shower play

• Made by women for women

Want internal stimulation to go along with clitoral play?

Rabbits (also called dual stimulators) are designed for that purpose and come in an astounding array of sizes and shapes. I like to recommend these more classic shapes for beginners.

Bunny Kisses Rechargeable Silicone Rabbit Vibrator

• Intuitive to use with simple buttons

• Classic, simple rabbit shape

• Two motors - one on each branch

• Waterproof for bathtub play

We-Vibe Nova Powerful Flexible G-Spot Rabbit Vibrator

• Both branches are adjustable to conform to your specific body shape

• The unique curved outer branch stays in constant contact with your clitoris

• Two motors - one in each branch

• Lots of bonus features like app control, low power alerts, travel lock, and low power indicator

Curious about suction but don’t know where to start?

Although known widely as ‘suction’ toys, this technology actually pushes air out of the opening and onto the clitoris rather than using a sucking motion. This is much gentler and more effective for deep, intense clitoral stimulation, and is great for anybody who doesn’t respond well to vibration. It is also better for someone who takes a longer time to climax or who needs stronger stimulation.

Satisfyer Pro 2 Waterproof Pressure Wave Clitoral Stimulator

• Worldwide bestseller and OG in this category

• Better quality and with better motor and warranty than those Rose toys

• Lots of intensity levels to choose from

• Longer handle for increased reach

• Is a bit noisy but WATERPROOF (this tech is great in the bath)

We-Vibe Melt 2 Rechargeable Pleasure Air Clitoral Stimulator

• Made by Womanizer who invented this technology

• Gentler on the clitoris than vibration

• Slim enough to fit between two bodies for partner sex

• Starts extremely low and increases with a press of a button over 12 levels

• Waterproof and quiet

• Smart silence mode turns the toy off when it’s not touching your skin (optional setting but super discreet)

• Can be controlled and customized through the free We-Vibe app

Have you seen the Rose or the Lemon vibrators that are all over social media?

These popular suction devices have flooded Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok the last couple of years. They are also air pulsation or pressure air devices, like the We-Vibe Melt and Satisfyer. I think of them as a ‘gateway’ to this type of technology, owing to their discreet appearance.

The Lemon Powerful Clitoral Air Pulsation Suction Vibrator

• An affordable option to dip your toe into this style of sensation

• Compact and discreet

The Rose Powerful Clitoral Suction Air Pulsation Vibrator

• Easy to use and intuitive

• Affordable, compact, and discreet

• A good introduction to this technology

Curious about remote control or app enabled vibrators?

Technology has come a long way and naturally it is being adapted into vibrators and other pleasure products. Many companies now create their own secure apps to allow complete customization of your experience, and the ability to enjoy intimate moments no matter how far apart you are from your partner. Wireless remote controls are another way to explore pleasure either solo or with your partner, often allowing greater freedom to experiment with hands-free play.

We-Vibe Moxie + Hands-Free Remote or App Controlled Panty Vibrator

• Has an app and a wireless remote option

• Can be worn in your own clothing for a comfortable fit

• Designed for long distance play or foreplay

• Perfect for anybody who needs a long, slow build-up to pleasure

We-Vibe Chorus Pro Wearable Couples’ Vibrator with Triple Motors & Remote

• The latest incarnation of the original ground-breaking wearable couples vibrator

• One branch is internal and one external so you both feel the vibrations.

• Both wireless remote and app enabled for endless customization

Looking for something new and thrilling you’ve never tried before?

It’s not surprising that new and innovative designs and technology are constantly emerging to keep loyal users interested. If you want to try something unique, here are some new options I love.

Lust Dual Rider Remote Control Humping Vibrator

• Completely hands-free and versatile—including a cordless remote control

• Perfect for anybody who wants external stimulation

• Adds the element of vibration to classic grinding or humping

Romp Reverb Pleasure Air Vibrator for G-Spot & Clitoris

• Combines internal vibration with Pleasure air suction on the clitoris

• An intense and powerful take on the ‘rabbit’ dual stimulation toy

• Waterproof for bath and shower play

• Can be put in place and then enjoyed hands-free

Is there a style that intrigues you? Gives you that happy little shiver of possibility? That is where you should start. Finding the right toy isn’t about trends or hype, it’s about listening to your body and choosing what you feel works for you.

And if you have any questions, post them below or come over to my Substack!

Last week I described Evelyn’s preference for cuddling over sex since going through menopause. A lot of conflicting information circulates about the role of hormones in our libido. Here’s what the research says.

The role of estrogen

Menopause—defined as 12 months after your last period—marks the point when the ovaries have stopped producing estrogen (although other parts of our bodies continue to produce some estrogen). Common impacts of low estrogen include vaginal dryness, pain, and UTIs. During perimenopause, fluctuating hormone levels produce unpleasant symptoms like hot flashes and depression. Estrogen has also been shown to have a direct role in sexual desire. It’s not surprising that all of this can contribute to a lack of sex drive.

However, replacing estrogen on its own has not been demonstrated to have a big direct impact on desire. In the words of female sex guru Emily Nagoski, “A good rule of thumb is that hormones can help with genital/peripheral issues—pain, dryness, sensation, etc.---but not with brain/central issues, and desire is a brain issue.” She cites a study by Lori Brotto (author of the very useful Better Sex through Mindfulness) and colleagues that found that a woman’s psychological profile and life history were better at predicting low desire than estrogen, testosterone, and other hormone levels. Other studies have mixed results on the influence of estrogen as well as hormone replacement therapy on desire, with some showing positive effects and others not.

The role of testosterone

The link between desire and testosterone is more promising. Research has not yet proven whether testosterone itself increases women’s sex drive or if it does so by being converted to estrogen, though evidence points to a direct influence. Testosterone replacement therapy does appear to help.

Testosterone is controversial because it is associated with aggression, big muscles, and other “unfeminine” things. Yet women naturally have ten times or more testosterone than they do estrogen, and the levels start to decline steadily with age starting when women are in their 30s—unrelated to the menopause transition.

Testosterone has yet to be approved for low desire disorders in premenopausal women in the United States, though other countries have made more strides. Even in postmenopausal women, for which testosterone is sanctioned, the US Food and Drug Administration has not signed off on female-specific formulations due to safety concerns. Given the lack of evidence that testosterone replacement causes harm (or major side effects when doses are controlled), women’s health advocates like Rachel Rubin have accused the FDA of shifting the goalposts required for approval.

An international panel of women’s health experts has supported the use of testosterone to treat perimenopausal women with low desire, based on existing scientific data. They note the absence of evidence of safety concerns, while pointing out that long-term data is not yet available. Where no product has been approved for women, they recommend using male-approved formulations at lower doses. They call women’s access to testosterone a “significant unmet need.”

How this plays out for improving desire

I regularly hear women say that their sex drive is decreasing with perimenopause. As better information has flourished about the symptoms tied to hormonal shifts, there seems to be confusion between not wanting sex because your body feels crappy or your relationship isn’t giving you what you want, versus not wanting sex because your body can no longer produce the right signals. I encourage all women to discuss medical options with a clinician (note that none of what I write is medical advice). And I am ready to propose other avenues if that does not work.

Sexual desire is very complex. It is influenced by history, context, partner, biology, socialization, expectations, and more (see also my article on the psychological aspects of female orgasm). When your level of desire is causing you distress, exploring your unique medley of contributing factors can help you decide which to manage, which to accept, and which to change. I am thrilled that we have so many more options now than women ever have had. In my experience, taking a multi-faceted approach to desire—one that may require adaptation as we age—is most effective.

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

I feel like a boy

Evelyn was a natural tomboy as a child. She liked lighting fires and breaking things for fun, and she wanted nothing to do with dolls or dressing up. When her peers started developing breasts, she believed it would never happen to her, because inside she felt like a boy.

But at age 16 puberty did arrive. Evelyn hated that she had breasts, especially ones as large as hers.

Growing up working class in rural England, Evelyn never thought about being attracted to girls. Lesbianism in the 1980s was sometimes viewed not as an orientation but as a feminist statement against the patriarchy, and Evelyn wasn’t that political.

In high school, she began dating a local boy. Because she was embarrassed to go to college as a virgin, she had sex with him. They were both inexperienced and she was too shy to ask for anything, leaving her with a lackluster first experience.

Embracing her identity

After college in the UK, Evelyn became part of a tradition that changed her life: She started DJing and assisting at an annual all-women’s music festival in the US. For the next twenty summers, Evelyn was surrounded by thousands of women collaborating and sharing themselves as they came together to make music. It was a spiritual experience, where Evelyn felt the energy that flowed through all of them.

At the festival, Evelyn saw what was amazing about being a woman, and it replaced the partial repulsion she had felt all her life. It helped her get in touch with the part of her that is female, and learn how it can coexist with the part that still felt like a young boy.

The festival was also full of sex, and it sparked a kind of awakening. Although Evelyn had dated women in college, saying she was a lesbian still felt militant at that time. She considered herself to be bisexual.

At the festival, Evelyn was able to explore, experiment, and come into herself. Even when she was speaking to me years later, her manner shifted as she described her past sexual exploits. She pursued women with confidence and swagger, and she estimates that she has slept with at least 100 women.

Sex, she says, is like being a DJ. You have to read the room to know what will get people dancing. You can’t play techno music if the crowd wants disco. Like DJing, Evelyn is good at sex.

Great sex, no penis required

When Evelyn has sex with women, as opposed to men, foreplay includes talking about pleasure. In part, the difference stems from an ambiguity in our culture about what sex looks like when no one has a penis. Also, when both partners have comparable anatomy, they have a more innate sense of what the other will enjoy. But whatever the reason, Evelyn has found that mutual fulfillment is much more likely between two women, even with someone she barely knows.

Evelyn enjoys this kind of co-creation of eroticism, where you converse in order to figure things out together. It has led her to call lesbians the “chosen people” for having more mutuality in their sex lives than other orientations.

At the same time, Evelyn faces stereotypes within the lesbian community. Because she has close-cropped hair and powerful energy, other women assume she will lead. And though this happens to be true, she attracts some women who prefer that she take their own pleasure without engaging in the interplay beforehand. This excites Evelyn less.

Despite everything she learned, Evelyn continued to date men through her 30s. Then one night, drifting among odd jobs, she found herself working at a vacation camp in France and ended up back in her tent with a male coworker. She was attracted to him, but she thinks it was more that she wanted to have his physique rather than she wanted to fuck it. They stripped to their underwear, but the mood was silly and teasing rather than passionate, and they never progressed to penetration.

And that was the last time Evelyn was attracted to a man in real life.

Nesting

After years attending the festival, Evelyn met Robin. For a few summers one or the other was committed to someone else, but Evelyn asked Robin out the first season they were both single. The initial passion was intense, and the desire to be together remained strong after Robin spent six months with Evelyn in the UK. So Robin proposed, and Evelyn moved across the pond.

Evelyn and Robin had always talked about having a family together, and while Evelyn had no interest in bearing her own children, she did imagine herself as a parent. The next three years became a cycle of hope and disappointment as Robin did IVF. Unfortunately it did not feel like a shared project, instead absorbing the emotional bandwidth in their relationship and sucking the life out of their intimacy. Finally Evelyn’s patience wore out, and she told Robin that the next attempt had to be the last. As fate would have it, they both got their wish: the pregnancy progressed successfully.

Evelyn was prepared to shift gears to motherhood. But things became complicated when she met Emily on a business trip. There was an electric charge between them that she could still feel when she returned home. She and Robin were still not having sex, and Emily made Evelyn feel alive again.

Evelyn kept Emily a secret at first. She told herself she didn’t want to spike Robin’s cortisol and risk the pregnancy. She couldn’t see Emily because the pandemic had set in, so it seemed like a moot point. But after 6 months of hot email exchanges and a longing to be together, Evelyn told Robin about her feelings, precipitating the unraveling of their marriage.

New relationships with others and herself

Evelyn fell head over heels for Emily. The first time they were able to meet after lockdown felt more intense than anything she had yet experienced with anyone. Their sexual energy was in sync and the eroticism was through the roof.

They decided to enter into a nonmonogamous relationship together, leaving space to date other people while still living a plane’s ride apart.

This arrangement has provided Evelyn with both independence and security. Over the past few years, Evelyn’s feelings about sex have ebbed and flowed. She has found passion with Emily and others, but sometimes heavy bleeding during perimenopause killed the mood. Now post menopause, Evelyn often finds she prefers cuddling and deep emotional connection over intercourse. Her last visit to Emily was the first in seven months, and they didn’t have sex at all. She has had to come to peace with this enormous shift in her sexuality.

A body she feels right in

Last year, Evelyn had her breasts removed.

She had previously had them reduced when they were causing back pain and preventing exercise, but perimenopausal weight gain infuriatingly brought them back to their original size.

Evelyn’s insurance covered full breast removal if it was in line with her gender identity. But by this stage of life, Evelyn feels decidedly like a woman. To attest that she felt otherwise for insurance purposes felt like a betrayal to herself.

Evelyn believes that if she had grown up in a different place and time, she likely would have transitioned to living as a man. But she is glad that she didn’t, because she appreciates her womanhood.

Then she met Dr. Perkins. His philosophy was that breast removal can be gender affirming. There are many women who naturally have very little breast tissue, and no one claims they are men. Saying that you don’t want breasts can simply mean that you want a body more in line with who you are.

Friends and family have remarked since Evelyn’s surgery that they hardly notice because they already saw her that way.

Even while she knows who she is, Evelyn enjoys, as she puts it, “fucking with how people see gender.” While she gives off feminine energy, she can play it up or down with her clothing and attitude. She likes that strangers are uncertain whether she is a man or a woman, and that this exposes their nonsensical assumptions about gender roles.

Evelyn sees herself as an older, wise woman who on the inside is still that prepubescent boy that her body had left behind.

Evelyn’s story in context

I loved hearing Evelyn’s story for how it challenges assumptions that people of all genders and sexual orientations hold. Does your body need to look a certain way for you to be a particular gender? How can you hold different gendered feelings inside you and still feel good about how you present yourself externally? And how do the assumptions that our sexual partners make about us based on how we present in ordinary life impact how we end up behaving in bed?

In coaching, I encourage people to get deeply in touch with how they feel so they can remain more unshakably true to themselves. When they do this, many people find that the unavoidable layers of gender socialization society subjects us to impact our self-expression and choices far more than we might think. Becoming aware of the different ways this manifests for us personally helps us to see ourselves not as a particular gender but as a complex human being, each with a unique set of our very own traits.

In the US and many other countries, society teaches girls/women to stay chaste until they are chosen for a relationship, and then to love sex and to orgasm every time with ease (because it’s just that good!). That can really mess with your mind.

My last post described that Sandra can orgasm alone, but when she is with her partner she gets in her head.

There aren’t good statistics on how common this is. Anecdotally, I hear it a lot. But there are so many women who don’t orgasm with a partner for other reasons, such as not understanding their own anatomy or having a challenging history. In this article, I am talking about women who know that orgasm through vaginal penetration alone is uncommon, who willingly bring their vibrator into their shared bed, who are with a partner who is trusted and safe, and yet climaxing in their partner’s presence continues to elude them. Unfortunately science has not isolated this population to date.

Here are the facts about the psychology of female orgasm as it relates to these cases.

The idea of responsive desire

The traditional way that psychologists have thought about orgasm in all humans is that we feel sexual desire, then arousal, and orgasm comes after that. Around the turn of this century, science started to see female (and maybe male) orgasm differently.

Dr. Rosemary Basson first published the model of responsive desire, which follows a less linear path. Women (and, she said, possibly men too) may be open to sex for a reason other than sexual desire, such as emotional connection or physical benefits like relaxation. This willingness can lead to being in an erotic situation, and then the brain can focus on and process the sexual stimulus. This can lead to sexual excitement and pleasure, which only then triggers desire for sex itself. As erotic intimacy progresses, arousal and desire can reinforce each other if given sufficient time. Orgasm may or may not follow, and its presence or absence may or may not impact her level of satisfaction. The next time around, she will be more motivated for sex if the experience was emotionally and/or physically satisfying.

All of this is visualized in what becomes a roughly circular system of arrows, incorporating physical, emotional, and relationship aspects:

Source

Early in relationships, it is common to feel so-called spontaneous desire, where erotic ideas pop into your head and you have a desire for sex. While this does continue for some, for most people socialized as women it is not sustained. Emily Nagoski, who popularized the concept of responsive vs. spontaneous desire in Come as You Are, estimates that about a third of people with vulvas primarily or solely experience responsive desire.

The stress that gets in the way

What kinds of things prevent us from orgasming? The simple answer is, we get in our heads. Research has drilled into what that looks like in practice.

A recurring theme in orgasm research is excessive need for control. People with perfectionist tendencies may apply these in the bedroom, leading to stress and frustration. This can happen both independently as you struggle to orgasm in order to uphold some internalized societal expectation, and through pressure from a perfectionist partner who expects orgasm for similar reasons. An extensive 1970s study of the interplay between personality and women’s orgasm found that many women who cannot climax also displayed more need to control their situation, especially when it involves high arousal.

Other thoughts linked to challenging orgasms are fear of failure, sexual abuse, and feeling uncared for. And more generally, any type of distraction (noises, work concerns, errand lists) has been shown to correlate with less consistent orgasms in women, overriding touch that under other circumstances would raise her arousal.

In the words of prominent orgasm dysfunction researcher Dr. Julia Heiman, “sexual arousal requires enough ‘relaxation’ to take in sexual stimulation and enough ‘tension’ to respond with arousal and orgasm,” recognizing that relaxation and tension are both very specific to the individual.

If your relationship is strained in any way, all of this is compounded. However, women orgasm in all kinds of relationships, good and bad, so what counts as difficulty and whether it impacts your climax is very personal. Even when things seem to be going along swimmingly, we may be internalizing pressures from our partner without realizing it.

Overcoming those thought patterns

Science is lagging when it comes to helping women who have trouble orgasming. A 2021 article reviewing available literature concluded that treatment methods have changed little since the 1980s. Another statement comes up again and again: more research is necessary.

But a few methods have been demonstrated to be effective. The most proven for orgasm is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which helps change thought patterns through awareness and redirection of irrational ideas. As stated by an international committee appointed to explore orgasm disorders in women in 2004, “Anxiety can serve as a distraction that disrupts the processing of erotic cues by causing the woman to focus instead on performance-related concerns, embarrassment, and/or guilt.” CBT gets to the root of this anxiety.

Sensate focus, which I have covered in the context of sexless marriages, is a set of exercises grounded in the concept of touch that is entirely without sexual expectation. Progressing gradually through the practices with support from a clinician can help build the trust and comfort necessary to quiet an anxious mind during sex, especially if fear is involved in some way. At first, the only goal is to enjoy the sensations. As the therapy continues, couples are coached to communicate directly about what is pleasurable. One study found that sensate focus improved women’s orgasms both upon completion and at a 3-month follow-up, based on their responses to a questionnaire that asked about orgasm frequency, difficulty, and satisfaction levels.

Another study explored how well women could sense feelings and sensations in their bodies and how that relates to orgasm. It found that women who were more tuned into how comfortable, uncomfortable, or neutral a sensation is had more frequent orgasms with a partner, and those who had a greater belief that they can trust the feelings in their bodies got more satisfaction from their orgasms.

Another therapeutic approach is to get curious about the patterns that the couple engages in within the relationship. If one partner is anxious, it can help to explore boundaries and how to communicate about them, or develop language and habit to express preferences about what is most pleasurable. This isn’t about either partner being at fault or more in need of change: the emphasis is on the relationship as a system that is more than the sum of its parts. Dr. Heiman emphasizes identifying what the orgasm means to each partner. Often it is both desired and feared on some level, and understanding this dynamic can help make sense of why it is happening.

While changing the physical technique you use has demonstrated mixed results, there is some evidence that engaging in a variety of sexual behaviors—oral and vaginal sex as well as manual stimulation—increases ability to orgasm as well.

My own observations

As I mentioned, I have repeatedly encountered women who struggle to orgasm when with a trusted partner, even when masturbation comes easily. Once we have eliminated the possibilities of lack of desire, poor technique, physical limitations, etc., we are often left with past history and how that may be creeping into the present, even when a woman is with an entirely new lover. Allowing orgasms to flourish can require a patient process of unraveling shame or safety concerns, combined with allowing yourself to let go of the situation and feel into your body.

I have also seen women get completely shaken out of orgasm challenges by a very intense connection with a new partner, but this doesn’t always work (plus I can hardly recommend that every anorgasmic woman simply sleep around until they find the right lover!). When it does happen, it seems to be a happy congruence of the lovers getting aroused by highly complementary behaviors (touch, movement, anatomy, vocalization, etc.). If you don’t want to change your lover, it can help to get more in tune with which sensations and scenarios really do it for you, and learn to communicate them to your partner.

As stated in The Science of Orgasm (my personal bible on the topic): “It is important for women to know that they are in charge of their own orgasm; they can have an orgasm, but no one else can give them an orgasm. Women are responsible for their own pleasure and satisfaction.”

May you all orgasm after reading this article!