00:00

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. Today, we are doing episode number 337, "Sense of Self and Our Sexuality." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. 

00:24 

Well, hey there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. I am just as always so glad to be here to share this information with you, and so glad to have you here. Before we start, I want to just touch base on three things. First of all, I have started doing every second Tuesday of the month, something called Talk with Tanya. It is a free webinar. So the next one happens December 10th, which from the day this comes out is tomorrow. So I would want you to come to this. It's free. It is just an opportunity for you to get on a Zoom call with me. We're just going to talk about anything that you want to talk about. You can talk about your dysfunctional relationship. You can talk about my previous dysfunctional relationship. You can talk about my current really amazing relationship with Sione. We can talk about our sexuality, what we're going to talk a lot about today. We can you can dig deeper into any topic or concept that you like that I've talked about, that you want to know more about. How do you improve it? How do you dig deeper into it? Anything you want. It's just kind of a free for all. It's just a talk with Tanya. Like, let's get together and chat. It's like a good friend time. So we're going to be doing that. 

01:33 

I promise you it's not a sales thing. If you want to know a little bit about coaching, I will tell you, but this is not an upsell at the end of the call. It really is just an opportunity to connect with you, to answer your questions, to help you incorporate this information better into your life. So go to tanyahale.com. Go to the "group coaching" tab, and there is a place where you can sign up. You just put in your email, and you will get an email that has the link. for it and hopefully I will see some of you tomorrow. That happens at 2 o'clock Eastern which is 12 o'clock Mountain time. So that's the first thing. 

02:12 

The second thing, I have two classes that are going to be starting in January and they are also up on the computer and ready to go. They are under "group coaching" also. So they both start January 8th. They're gonna go for nine weeks and the first one is called "Mindset Reset" and this is where I'm gonna go back to a lot of the basics. We're going to talk about growth mindset, fixed mindset. We're going to talk about the thought model. So we're going to be talking about circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results, how all of those work together, how you can use the thought model to become more aware of what's going on for you. So basically just all of the mindset stuff that I talk about and that I work with my clients and with myself, really get you a solid foundation of all of that. 

03:01 

The second class is going to be called Relationship Reset. And this is where I'm going to be going through a lot of the basic foundational concepts of what it takes to have a good, strong, healthy foundation. Foundational relationship, I don't know. So, but it's gonna be great. And you can show up, you can come as a couple, which means that would be two of you signing up for the class, or you can come as any individual. It's available to anybody who wants to have a better relationship, who wants to understand how to apply these specific relationship tools that I have better. And this isn't necessarily even just a marriage partnership relationship. This can be with your kids, this can be with people that you work with, your parents. It's just all things relationship. Let's talk about some of the basic foundational elements. So those two are out there, both limited to 10 people a piece. I want to keep those classes small. And I would love to have them filled up. So if you and a friend wanna jump in and do this together, I think it's really great. If you can't make it to every single class, then I do send out replays of the classes so that you don't miss out on the conversation. 

04:17 

And then the last thing I wanted to talk to you about is, this time of year, usually between Christmas and New Years, I do what is called an end of year review. This is something that I made about, I don't know, eight or nine years ago, and I love it.  Every year, it just helps my whole year to get really, really clear. And it also makes the direction that I want to go very clear as well. So it's just a review that I'm going to be sending out on my email the last couple of weeks of the year. So if you would like to get that, make sure you go to my website as well, tanyahale.com, and make sure that you are signed up for my "weekend win." That is just the email I send out most weekends, usually Friday, Saturday, or Sunday and I'll just share some good information with you. But that year end review is something you're not gonna want to miss. It is a fabulous fabulous tool, so go make sure you get those things done. 

05:16 

Let's go ahead and get started. Alright, so if you have been following along the last several weeks you know that we have been talking about sense of self in many different capacities and I think we could probably do several more weeks...but I'm gonna make this my last one. We probably will come around and revisit it in different concepts and in different ways later on but after this we're gonna move on to a couple of holiday podcasts. So this is the last one that I have scheduled and we're talking about sense of self and our sexuality today. 

05:48 

So, sense of self is just such a foundational topic for every aspect of our lives. And the stronger our sense of self, the greater our capacity to show up loving and kind, to be self-aware, to be able to self-confront, to see where we are engaging in unhealthy ways and then to make the necessary adjustments to clean it up. When we struggle with sense of self, we live in a constant state of fear, of insecurity, of overwhelm, of feeling as though we're never good enough, strong enough, or worthy enough to belong. So I hope that you've listened to all of these sense of self episodes, even if you don't think they apply to you, like the dating one or the marriage one. Those may not apply directly to you, but I hope you go back and listen to them if you haven't, because there will be info that will help you to solidify your understanding of what our sense of self is and how you can strengthen yours. 

06:40 

So today we're going to be talking about our sense of self and our sexuality. So I haven't talked a lot about sexuality on this podcast, but even so, I believe that leaning into our God-given sexuality is a valuable part of our sense of self. And I'll be a little bit vulnerable on this one and talk about some personal things. And hopefully it doesn't make you too uncomfortable. I'm totally okay with it. So if you want to come to the Talk with Tanya and discuss a little bit more about this tomorrow, then show up. Let's do this. 

07:11 

So back in episode 294, which is called "The 90-Day Relationship How To," I talked a lot about these concepts, so we're going to do it again. But if you didn't listen to that one because you thought it was about dating and that didn't apply to you, I would suggest going back and hitting it because it was really good. And I shared in that podcast and also in the interview that I did with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife last year, about a year ago, about my own sexual awakening. And I'm going to touch on it again here because I think it's really pertinent to understand in the concept of our sense of self. 

07:47 

So growing up I feel that I had some pretty healthy ideas about sexuality although it wasn't spoken about openly in my home. My mom was good about checking out factual books with pictures about sex and leaving them around the house. That was how my mom gave us "the talk," so to speak. And also I would occasionally see some lingerie and I would catch her and my dad making out in the kitchen. I had the sense that sex would be a good thing and my mother saying things like her and my dad's sex life was really great, right? So I thought that sex would be a great thing. And I realize that that is very different than many people. I have worked with someone whose dad would jump in front of the TV every time kissing would happen and he would start extolling the evils of being sexual. And I'll tell you, she has had some work to do for sure. But I didn't have that. My parents were more open that way, in some ways, right? They didn't talk about it, but it was there. 

08:51 

And in high school and at college, gosh darn it, I loved kissing boys. And I looked forward to having sex and I didn't really have any fear or weirdness around it, except with my religious beliefs that I was committed to waiting until marriage to have sex. And there was a lot of fear-based teaching around having sex before marriage. So you see already the dichotomy that I'm dealing with, right? I didn't have fear or weirdness around having sex and liking to kiss and all of that kind of stuff. And then all of the fear-based teaching that I got around in society and in church. So it's kind of this strange place where you're experimenting with sexuality, kissing and that kind of stuff, and having healthy thoughts about it, but also being taught in a religious culture about how horrible it is to engage in before marriage and also that it's kind of naughty, right? 

09:46 

And women in our generation received such mixed reviews about our sexuality from society. One, we were taught that we were to be desired above all and that being desired was a huge part of our worth as women. So we needed to be beautiful and sexy. We needed to dress in ways that drew attention because being desired, being wanted by men, was super important. That was part of our worth as women. And then we were also taught that we were to be virtuous above all that was virtuous. We were taught lessons about the flowers by the side of the walking path that were trampled on, about the chewing gum that nobody wanted once it had been chewed, and about the board with the nail holes that could never be restored. All of so many fear-based stories that we also heard about how it would be better to be killed by an attacker than to have them steal our virtue, our virginity, through rape. 

10:43 

Um, so wrong, right? Like, I look back on that and I can't even fathom teaching that. But that those were ideas...now those were not taught by my parents but those were stories that I heard through the grapevine, all around the place. And then there were the stories that if you got pregnant outside of marriage you would be sent away silently to have a baby to give it up for adoption and then secretly return with shame and dishonor and all of that. So all of these two sides are sometimes referred to as the feminist version of the madonna whore complex. So the confusion in women with the messaging that we need to be as virtuous and clean and non-sexed as the Virgin Mary while also being the sexual temptress, the one who is capable of driving her sexual partner out of his mind. 

11:34 

Then, amidst all this confusing messaging about needing to be sexy and desirable and also be an untouched flower, we also got the message that we were not to desire sex because that meant we weren't spiritual, and the world and the Church, I think, put spiritual and sexual on opposite sides of the coin. And also being taught that we were the gatekeepers for sexuality because the men in our lives weren't strong enough to say "no," so we had to always be the ones to set the boundaries and know when we had gone far enough. We had to be that person. We learned to keep our passions in check because somebody needed to, and it was our job as the woman because, as we were taught, men just couldn't do it. Like, their sexual drive was way too strong for them to handle. Which is completely false, by the way, but it was what we were taught, right? It's what I felt like I was taught anyway. We were also taught that we were the gatekeepers for spirituality in our marriages and families. We were taught that women are more spiritual than men and that they, the men, need us to keep them growing, that they needed the priesthood to make them equal to us spiritually, and that they were lesser than us spiritually because they were so sexual, right? 

13:02 

Is any of this ringing true for any of y'all? Because these are all things that I was taught. So much of this was of these ideas were slight covert concepts, but I know that for me, I heard them and I took them very seriously. My desire to be in alignment with God was very strong, and I believed the narrative I was being fed, that being overly sexual would detract from my connection to God. And it's also confusing, and especially to a young 20-something who has all of these narratives in her head, both sides of this conversation. But I wasn't even able to realize or acknowledge that they were all there. I couldn't have voiced most of that. And the fact that they were so many of them in opposition to each other. And just for fun, let's add one more. That once we get married, it is our job to keep our husbands happy, meaning to keep him sexually satisfied. Otherwise, he will turn to pornography or even have an affair because he's not getting his needs met at home. Or he'll just get really grumpy and ornery and miserable to live with if he's not getting sex several times a week. Anyone else? 

14:23 

Okay, so then sex also starts fitting in this obligation box, our list of to-dos. Something that is our responsibility. Something that is for the man and not necessarily for the woman. Because remember, the woman who desires sex is seen as the whore, right? She's a slut. And then we get married. And for me, this was my first experience with sex. We start off with this crazy dichotomy, messy, miserable dichotomy of ideas. We go from sex and even petting or masturbation being forbidden. And then with one quick wedding ceremony, we're all good to have sex. And it is a rough transition for many women. 

15:14 

Here's the pattern that I saw with myself and that I had been seen with my clients when sexuality is part of our discussion. All of a sudden, sex is a free-for-all. And with all of this confusion in our heads to lean into sex or not to lean in, and many of us not having a lot of sexual experience, it's not that confusing for the young man for many reasons that we won't get into today. And he just now sees that he gets to have legal sex whenever he wants it. And this causes a lot of problems, often  within a few months of marriage. I think most of the people that I have listened to talk to in coaching calls that I've listened with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife or in friends that I've talked to with myself, with other people. Within a few months of marriage, the woman, grappling with all of this confusion, can start to feel unsafe. She starts to feel like she's being used. And this can happen because as women, we are very relationally driven, meaning that we generally like to bring things back to relationship. 

16:20 

And if a young husband is just enjoying that he gets to have sex whenever he wants and he pushes that agenda and the young woman has the belief that she is obligated to have sex when he wants it and she can't say "no" even though she's not feeling relationally connected then she ends up having duty sex and begins to build resentment around it. The relationship piece often gets put way to the side partially because we don't know how to communicate about sex and then sex becomes a huge issue in our marriages. And once resentment starts, sex becomes a battleground and a woman can feel very unsafe having sex. We have to realize that women often have resistance to sex not because we aren't sexual beings, because we are, but because our brain is seeking to protect us. 

17:17 

Now, it may seem strange to think about needing protection from sex with our husbands, but let's look for a bit at some ways our brains view this protection. For a woman to have traditional penis vagina sex with a man, they sometimes call that PV sex, right? She is literally allowing him into her body and she is engaging in a very vulnerable way with someone who is bigger than her, often physically bigger than her, and generally stronger than her. He could overpower her at any moment and physically hurt her, and sometimes they do. He could be abusive and she would be very vulnerable to that. And our primitive brains do not like vulnerability. They do not like to feel as though we are being put in a dangerous position, and they will push back with protective strategies, strategies such as resisting sex, deciding that we don't like sex, or thinking that we would be better off without sex, or even having a physical revulsion to sex. 

18:31 

So many women in our generation do not step into their sexuality for these types of protective reasons. And it makes sense. If sex has not been a safe space for us, when we started having sex as a young twenty-something and our husbands would engage physically and didn't understand how to connect emotionally as well during sex, then the relational part of our brains, the part needing emotional connection would be unconnected to and we would start to feel unsafe. Our brains would start to equate sex with being unsafe, and we would start brick by brick by brick to build a wall of protection, and for many of us that meant shutting down our already fragile sexuality. And then sex becomes that battleground in so many young marriages and we don't understand why. I know I just figured it meant that I wasn't a very sexual person, which was fascinating because when I was younger I thought I was. And I just thought, "well maybe I just don't like it as much as I think." 

19:36 

As part of the growth I experienced in my divorced dating years was figuring out my own sexuality. I listened to a podcast where a woman talked about how important it was for women to be well fed, well rested, and well sexed. And I heard that "well sexed," and I about jumped out of my chair. Well, sexed? What in the world did that even mean? It was as though, literally, I felt like God dropped a brick on my head when I heard that and said, "hey, girl, pay attention." A woman needed to be well-sexed. That was important. I had no idea. My sexuality had never really even been something that I had considered much before this time. Sex had been a part of my life in my previous marriage, but my sexuality had not really been considered by me. 

20:41 

So I took that brick, that wake-up call, and I started listening to a lot of podcasts. I started listening to Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, another podcast called "Sex for Saints." "Get Your Marriage On" was another one, and those three are all LDS ones, and then another one that was not LDS called "Foreplay." And I started reading things online, both religious and not religious. And I started reading books, and I started learning some things. So probably for me, with a lot of the previous conditioning that I had struggled with, I came to realize that I was created to be a sexual being. My sexual desires were God-given and not just a side hustle. It was significant for me to learn that the clitoris has more nerve endings by two and a half times than the glands of the penis. The clitoris has an average of 10,280 nerve fibers, and the penis has about 4,000. Our capacity for sexual pleasure is greater than a man's because of that, as well as we can also orgasm for a longer period of time, and we can also have multiple orgasms in the same sexual experience, something that men's bodies cannot do. So our capacity for sexual pleasure is greater than a man's because of that. 

22:10 

So another piece of information that cracked the door open even more was the idea that while a penis has three functions, urinary, sexual, like a transfer of sperm, and sexual pleasure. The clitoris has one function, sexual pleasure only. God gave me a clitoris, and the only purpose of it is to create sexual pleasure. And through this kind of information and the podcast I was listening to, things really started to click for me, and it made me to start rethinking my own sexuality. God created me to be sexual. That is part of who He wants me to be. It is part of my coolness as a human being. I was really starting to understand that my sexuality was an important part of who I was created to be. And maybe I couldn't fully become who and what I was sent here on earth to do without embracing my sexuality. 

23:20 

So embracing our sexuality doesn't mean we have to be sexually active and have sex all the time or even ever. But I do believe that being a part of who we are, we need to figure out how to accept our sexuality in whatever situation we are in, however we want it to look, meaning whether we are sexually active or not. We get to decide what our sexuality looks like for us. And with all of this learning, I started viewing myself as a five-sided UFO. Okay, so imagine this little circle-ish kind of thing that flies, right? But this has five sides. So four sides of me, my spiritual, my intellectual, my emotional, and my physical sides of me, they were strong. I felt like they were capable. I felt that they were growing and progressing. They were powered up. They were off the ground. They were working really hard to get me to grow and to soar into a stronger and a better me. And then there was my fifth side, my sexual side. And it was like literally grounded. 

24:31 

In fact, I would say it was tethered to the ground. It was keeping the rest of me from being able to grow and progress. I realized that I needed to figure out my sexuality rather than just deferring to the old ideas of not understanding it, of having conflicting ideas, of believing that I just wasn't sexual. And especially since my divorce, I had stopped even thinking of my sexuality. And to be honest, I don't think having sex with someone even crossed my mind for several years since I wasn't dating. And I for sure didn't miss it from my marriage and all the baggage that it carried in that space. 

25:13 

To be honest, in my previous marriage, I really did try hard to show up sexual, but all of the beliefs and the lack of safety made it hard for me to show up fully engaged. So though I would show up physically, I wasn't engaged in having a good sexual experience and I had a lot of resentment built up around sex. I wanted more from sex, but didn't even know where to start. I didn't know what was broken. And I couldn't have had a conversation about it with my previous husband, and he seemed just as perplexed and angry about our sex life as I did, but for very different reasons. And we fought about that a lot. And I do believe that once a young man grows up a bit, this young 20 something year old man who gets married and sex is just a free for all, that he does hit a point where he wants more from sex than just a sexual release. He does want more emotional connection, although because of his own societal teachings, he may not understand that that's what he wants, and he can't verbalize it. The whole emotional side of men, societally, they've been taught to turn all of that off, and so wanting an emotional connection is not something that they really even can comprehend, because they've been taught that they can feel anger, and they can feel okay, and that's kind of it, right, for most men. 

26:40 

So, often men think that more sex will solve the problem of them not feeling connected. When more sex just makes the woman feel more unsafe and disconnected, and without the understanding behind what's happening, both sides become more and more entrenched in their side of the struggle, and then sex becomes a very hot topic issue in the relationship. Or, it becomes a cold topic issue that we ignore and pretend doesn't exist and that we're just contemptuous about. And either way, without good vocabulary, communication skills, honesty, and some really hard work, it's a point of contention that drives us farther and farther apart, and often is part of the reason for a divorce decision. And sometimes a marriage will go years and years without sex, and though sometimes the woman is so happy not to be having to be obligated to have sex, it will have a significant impact on the emotional intimacy of the relationship, which the woman often knows that she craves. Because emotional and physical intimacy are not exclusive of each other. It's not like they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. To have one, you have to have the other. They are intricately connected. 

28:07 

Okay, so we've covered a lot of ground just building a framework for our struggles around sexuality. So now let's see how all of this fits into our sense of self. If part of who we are, who God created us to be, is sexual, then for me it stands to reason that I need to be connected with my sexuality in order to have a strong sense of self. That's not to say I can't be confident or empowered without tapping into my sexuality. I think I was confident and empowered for a lot of years, even though I wasn't tapped into my sexuality. Just that I will be so much more able to step into my God-given power and capacity to contribute to the world when I also have a strong sense of my sexuality. 

28:57 

So remember the five-sided UFO. If my sexuality is grounded, though the other parts of me might be off the ground and doing great things, they are also held back by my underdeveloped sexuality, which ultimately keeps me tethered to the ground and also impacts my sense of self. I think that what most of us do is backwards. We let our sexuality, our struggles with sexuality, determine our sense of self rather than having our sense of self develop our sexuality. And this right here is the crux of this discussion. We need to figure out how to let our sense of self develop our sexuality rather than the other way around. For example, we may struggle for many of the reasons that we've talked about really feeling sexual, and we let that determine the way that we think and feel about ourselves. 

29:56 

We may think we're not good enough, that "there's something wrong with me," that "I'll never measure up since my husband is never happy enough with who I am sexually," that "I should be more sexual," or that "I should like it more." Our sense of self takes a hit when we have these types of thoughts, because all of them are saying "there's something wrong with me." And in this way, we are letting our sexuality dictate our sense of enough-ness. If we come in from the other angle, we may say, I'm smart, I'm capable, I'm strong, and gosh darn it, I'm going to figure out my sexuality. Then we let our sense of self dictate our sexuality rather than the other way around, just as we might do if we wanted to step into greater spirituality or emotionality or intellect to grow and progress. 

30:48 

In this instance, we want to learn how to connect with the sexual part of us more. Us being a sexual being is not only an important part of God's plan to bring His spirit children to earth. It is also a very important part in us learning how to become our whole and complete selves. God could have created our bodies with the ability to create life without any sexual pleasure at all. And yet, He didn't. He made our bodies with the capacity to experience pleasure during sexual relations, even when life is not being created. 

31:33 

When I can give myself a lot of grace in understanding why I may be disconnected to my sexuality and also tap into my strong sense of self to figure it out, then I can start creating the change that will bless my life. The stronger my sense of self, the more confident I will be in looking at myself and my relationship from this different lens, from the lens of figuring out my sexuality, of seeing where my beliefs may be a bit skewed from things that I was taught when I was younger or from experiences that I have had that have negatively impacted my views of sex. 

32:10 

So if you're in a space where you feel in opposition to your sexuality, a strong sense of self will not be intimidated by questioning whether you might be wrong about it. Maybe there is something that you're missing. Okay, then I'll figure it out. And let's be clear, I'm not saying that this isn't a scary or difficult place to explore. I remember in my first marriage that sex was such an emotionally-charged conversation. I remember driving in the car and just, we were not generally yellers, but I remember a couple of yelling fights about sex. And I'll tell you what, it can feel for me, as a woman, it could feel like it's the last holdout of power that you might have. But I think for most of us, that's just not true. And as we start stepping into our sexuality more, with cleaning up our thinking around it, we actually step into greater empowerment and we circle back into strengthening our sense of self even more. That does not mean that we have to give in to a sexually abusive situation or that sex is still for the man or any of that stuff. We have to start stepping into a place where our sexuality is for us first and foremost. 

33:37 

So just this last week, I was listening to a coaching call about sexuality and the woman that was being coached was struggling so much in her sex life with her husband. And she said, "I wish it was my favorite thing." And I thought that was so fascinating. Many of us went into adult life wanting sexuality to be a good thing for us, and we still want it to be a good thing for us. We want to be able to enjoy having sex with our partner. We had hopes and dreams at one point that sex would be a great part of our grown-up lives. And then the challenges surrounding sex overtake us, and we start to believe that things that just aren't true about our sex or about sex and our sexuality. We struggle to communicate about sex with our partners. We seem to have different ideas about frequency and type. And because we feel so completely unsafe and don't  know how to discuss this when we're both so emotionally charged, then sex or our spouse becomes the villain in our stories and we become the victim. 

34:44 

And victims, as we've talked about a lot on here, get stuck in the problems rather than looking for the solutions. But the stronger sense of self, the greater capacity to question our beliefs, to choose to rethink our attitudes and ideas about sex, the more empowered we will feel to take charge of our sexuality, to decide that we can and will show up differently, to define for ourselves what sexual intimacy means. And when we have all of that, we can start moving into solution mode, into being the hero of our own story. When we choose to see our sexuality as an amazing, positive thing, something that God gave us to progress and step into our greatest selves rather than something to fight against, to hold in derision, and to argue about with our spouse, there's a lot that we can learn and a lot of growth available to us. 

35:44 

In my previous marriage, as I've mentioned, our sexual life was a battleground for us. And mostly because I didn't feel safe and he didn't understand that I didn't feel safe. And if there's a most vulnerable place in our marriages, sex is it. But because of so many wrong ideas about sex being the opposite of spirituality, about it being dirty and wrong, about it being something that wasn't for me, but that was only for my husband, I had a difficult time stepping into it. And it eventually became a place where I felt I had to protect myself, not only physically, but also emotionally. And also at some level, my power and my pride were also at stake. And I really do believe, however, that if we are to grow into our greatest capacity as women, that learning to live with, accept, and even embrace our sexuality is vital. Even if you don't have a partner to work through this with, I think we really need to feel comfortable with ourselves being sexual people, beings, being sexual beings. right? 

36:52 

Stepping into my own sexuality started after my divorce and I am just so glad that I couraged up and did the work. I had cleaned up so much of my thinking and worked to step into my sexuality all before I met Sione and it made a huge difference in how we interacted and in the intimacy we have been able to create. I still have lingering belief systems and ideas that pop up from time to time and they become a point of discussion between Sione and me. Part of the emotional intimacy that we create is founded in the vulnerability to discuss all things sexual between us and the willingness and vulnerability to be sexual at many different levels. Our emotional intimacy and our physical intimacy are intricately connected and both allow us to step deeper and deeper into the oneness that we are seeking to create. 

37:47 

And one last point about our sense of self and our sexuality. Many women think that if they don't have spontaneous libido or sex drive, that there is something wrong with them, that they must not just be sexual. It can cause them to question whether they are sexual or even if they should look into it further or if they should just ignore it. Well, here's some good data for you. Did you know that 70% of women don't have spontaneous libido? Most of us women don't walk around having sexual thoughts all day as men are want to do. Instead, those 70% have what is called a responsive libido, meaning that we can become sexually aroused in response to engaging in some level of physical intimacy. And we often don't engage because since it's not spontaneous, we think we're not sexual and it's not coming easily. And so we just choose to ignore it. This is different than most men and definitely different than what we see in movies or read in books, what Hollywood has done for us, right? So our standard for what makes us normal can be very skewed. 

38:59 

And that can impact our sense of self when we have disparaging thoughts about ourselves, thinking that we should be different than we actually are. ,I found that for me, I rarely have spontaneous sexual thoughts about me or my husband in the course of a day. In fact, having my menopausal hormones checked, I found that I have zero testosterone in my system, which is what impacts our libido. So zero libido for me. So how in the world do Sione and I have a great sex life if I don't have a libido and I'm not all resentful and angry about it? Because I don't wait for sexuality to drive me. I choose to drive my sexuality. I've learned that having a sexual relationship with him is super important. to me. And so I choose to engage. Not for him, but for me and for us. And once I engage because I desire closeness and intimacy with him, then the physical arousal occurs. 

40:07 

In men who, shocker, were exclusively studied for many years, they found that the sexual cycle was desire and then arousal. That's not the whole cycle, but those are the two I want to talk about. Men felt desire and then they felt arousal. So  in more recent years when they finally thought, "huh, I wonder if a woman's body might be different?" Shocker, this kind of stuff just burns me up, right? They did a study and guess what they found? They found that women have arousal first and then desire, the exact opposite of men. What we see in movies and reading books is generally the men's desire and then arousal cycle instead of the woman's arousal and then desire cycle. 

40:54 

So I found that for me, first, I desire emotional closeness with my husband. So I choose to engage in conversation, in banter, or play that creates arousal. I choose to kiss him and touch him. When he gets home, I try to make time to give him a big hug and a big kiss. I choose to dance with him in the kitchen when our song comes on. I choose when I walk past him and he's doing dishes to drag my hand across his back or across his butt, right? I choose to tease him and to make sexual innuendos while we're making dinner. All of these things feel emotionally intimate to me, and they help to create the arousal that then leads to desire for me. 

41:41 

So if you're waiting for your libido to make you want to have sex, you might be waiting a very, very long time. And what a shame when some good information and some courage to figure out your sexuality could serve you and your relationship very, very well in this life. Having correct facts about sex, educating yourself about how your body and your libido work, and choosing to figure it out and step into your sexuality is a very important part of who you have the capacity to become. Use your strong sense of self to courage up and figure this out if you're struggling. 

42:31 

A couple of books I would suggest are "Come As You Are" by Emily Nagoski. "She Comes First" by Ian Kerner. And "Becoming Cliterate" by Laurie Mintz. And some LDS Sexuality podcasts that I would suggest are "Conversations with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. And she also has a paid podcast called "Room for Two," which is less than a hundred dollars a year. Such a great great deal. The podcast called "Sex for Saints" by Amanda Louder and a podcast called "Get Your Marriage On" with Dan Purcell. When you have a stronger sense of self you will be more able to step into your sexuality and the stronger your sexuality the more whole your sense of self. 

43:18 

I really believe that stepping into our sexuality is a beautiful brilliant part of growing up. Okay what do you think? A little vulnerable on my part. I shared some some personal stuff but I really really just want you to understand that this is a piece of who we are. It is a piece of who God created us to be. And if we can learn to make peace with it, if we can learn to step into it and accept it and even embrace it, we are more whole as a person and our relationship has the power to become more whole as well. 

44:09 

Okay. If you would love some personal help from me to find out how to strengthen your sense of self or even how to figure out how to step into your sexuality more or any of the other things that we've talked about, I would love to chat with you. You can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can sign up for a free consultation, 90 minutes, where we do some great coaching and then we can talk about coaching as well and see if it's a good fit for you. Promise I'm not a hard sell, that is not my thing. I will give you the facts and then if it works for you, it works for you. If it doesn't, that's okay too. In the meantime, you will have gotten some great coaching. 

44:54 

Also, if you are enjoying this podcast, I would love for you to talk about it with your friends. Tell your friends that there is good stuff here. Leave me a review. If you use Apple or Spotify, I would love to have you leave me a review. It is a great thing to help other people find this podcast and that's gonna do it. I hope, my friends, that you have a great, great week. I hope some of you join me for Talk with Tanya tomorrow and also check out the classes that I've got. I think that if the timing works for you, I think that you would love it and enjoy it and it's a great stepping stone into one-on-one coaching if that feels a little bit intimidating for you. The classes are great. Have an awesome, awesome week and I will talk to you next time. Bye. 

45:42 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to  your best self ever. See ya.