In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik, MD is joined by Dr. Kate Balestrieiri to explore the complexities of sexual relationships and ...

how-to-deal-with-your-partner39s-body-count-explained-by-a-sex-therapist

How to Deal with Your Partner&#39;s Body Count, Explained by a Sex Therapist

what about when you're with a partner who has experienced mismatch so someone has a lot of Partners or has had a lot of Partners and the other one doesn't and for whatever reason one partner feels some way and the other one feels the other way and that really affects their sexual relationship yeah I see this a lot um and it's interesting because there are a lot of folks who will either on one end prioritize having a lot of Partners and see that as a really positive thing then there are some folks who see that as a negative thing and same with people who don't have a lot of Partners there are some people who think that's really important and other people who will see that as um something that is working against them right in their Dynamics so one I think it's so important to again remember subjectivity and what is the meaning that you're both placing on the this history that you have or don't have right and I just think it's super super important to remind everyone to remember that you are cre creating new experiences every time you are sexual with a person so whether you've had 30 Partners or 100 Partners or two partners what you're doing with that partner in the moment is new in that experience for you both so try to see it as something that maybe Builds on knowledge that you have from other sexual experiences or that your partner does but it's something that you are like living here and now in the moment and can you stay in the present tense with with each sexual experience that you have and communicate when you're afraid or when you're nervous about something or if you don't know how to do something and your partner does and talk about the meaning that you're making about whether or not your partner does or does not have this experience and how it's shaping your fears about pleasure or your fears about how your partner is going to appraise you or how you might be appraising them yeah we talked a lot about communication it's hard to talk about sex we don't learn how to talk about sex so how do you talk about sex well I think you just start right and it gets uncomfortable and messy and awkward and then you keep going and it gets easier and easier I don't know about you but when I first got into this field I was a lot less comfortable talking about sex and now that I do it all the time there's really nothing I can't talk about right yeah but not everyone is in this work and so it can be really scary to feel like you're going to touch on something that's going to hurt your partner's feelings or maybe blow up a pocket in your relationship or say something that might shift the way you see yourself or the way you believe people will see you so it can be really scary but once you just start doing it you realize that it is a little bit easier than maybe you thought yeah and it gets easier every time as you mentioned I think people think I'm just going to have this one talk and it's going to fix everything and it's not right and just realize like no one taught us how to talk about sex like we didn't learn that in school and you don't know how to your partner doesn't know how to so you're navigating new treacherous Waters and you're sort of like there may be times where one person shuts down and you just got to stop and come back another day you know um are there times when you feel like there's there's no coming back like the communication is so poor people are too shut down or too maybe have prior traumas or other things that are making it very difficult for people to progress well in the therapy I would say that's up to them right if they decide it's too much they can stop it any point in time and and they I would hope that they would also have the kind of relationship with their therapist where they might be able to say hey I need to pump the brakes a little this is slow therapists want to know that if you're feeling flooded and you can't or don't want to move into an area of exploration it's good to tell your therapist that I think the same is true with partners and if you have a healthy Dynamic together or dynamic that is healthy enough right I don't like to use this like binary language of healthy or unhealthy but healthy enough where you can say say to one another like I need to take a break from this topic for a week a month six months right can you just honor that with each other and you might decide I can't it's really important to me I need to move forward but that's a relationship impass that definitely warrants exploration but if the relationship is super important to you you don't have many choices other than to honor where each other are coming from and what your needs and boundaries are yeah yeah and that's hard it's really hard but I think just talking to your partner if if you were the one receiving that information and saying look this is really important to me I will wait for you but if you feel like we could talk sooner that would mean a lot to me sort of responding in a way that respects them but also know it's like this is really important to me and I like because I love this relationship where I love us together I'm willing to wait for you and not like making them feel guilty about it but sort of saying like I'm doing this cuz I love you but I would really appreciate if you could think of me and as you start if you start feeling more comfortable sooner I'd love to talk about it sooner yeah yeah I think it's also important if you're the person getting that that break sort of Pumped in your direction to say what do you need from me in this time is it helpful if I don't talk about this this or this is it helpful if we see a therapist together is it helpful um to have other kinds of support right and really like lean into the process in a way that feels good for the person who does need more time or more space so let's talk about cheating why do people cheat I'm sure you've seen many people who've been on the receiving end or the giving end of cheating um in your experience why do people do it well there's a couple of reasons people cheat sometimes they are looking for something they're looking for a connection to a part of themselves that they can't seem to access anymore in their current relationship or they're looking to feel something new that maybe they can't experience with their partner because their partner either isn't willing or isn't able to join them in that exploration sometimes people do it from a place of resentment they do it from a place of entitlement or trying to kind of find a a a Reclamation of power or worthiness um if they're feeling one down a lot in their partnership sometimes people do it because their partner isn't willing to join them in trying a new Kink or a new kind of experience and they want that experience really really badly um sometimes it's a place of insecurity and you know I think there there probably are numerous other reasons too but those are the main ones that I hear do you think people when they cheat it's just like it just happen in the moment like that's what you hear sometimes right like it's just a one time thing I it didn't mean anything do you think that that's that's there's a possibility to truth to that well I think what could be true about that is that maybe it doesn't mean anything about how much they care about their partner right if especially if something like alcohol or other substances are involved that alter someone's decision making or their impulse control but I think it's really important to recognize that if you're in that place where you're sort of unhappy and you're thinking about it if you have a um a moment or a lapse it's going to be that much EAS easier for you to justify like an oops right but typically cheating requires a lot of planning it requires deception of some kind or the obfuscation of facts or truths and it if it's happening on an ongoing basis I don't think you can justify and oops it just happened yeah are there differences between men who cheat and women who cheat the reason I ask is because when you look at biology uh during a sexual encounter there is some data that women have more bonding Tendencies with the hormones they release they tend to bond with the person they they had intercourse with and people can obviously turn that off so to speak they can try to psychologically push that away uh but there is sort of that that emotional bond that sometimes tries to occur whereas uh maybe not so much in men although I think there's still some of that in men so do you see differences in the reasons between men and women I feel a little bit differently about that story about the bi the biology um pair bonding is something that people of all biological sex and gender can experience because of oxytocin vasopressin as you know right and certainly people born in female bodies do have more available to them but there's so much socialization and context that goes along with the story of being socialized as a woman that create for women um a quicker path from that that physiological response to the story about what it means and I think men are socialized in very different ways so they have that a similar physiological response but they are conditioned to stifle that differently whereas women are conditioned to experience it and make meaning around it a lot true I mean there are differences in the brain so when you look at like when the brain lights up during orgasm and how quickly that comes down we see that the all the sort of the the dopamine and all the positive sort of hormones last a little bit longer in women than they do in men so there is a little bit of true variation in addition to of course the socialization that plays a role yeah yeah there's no doubt that there's differences in the biology in some ways but I think that they are really Amplified and there's so much more meaning attached based on how we're socialized and because of how we're socialized I think that can play a role in the different reasons that people might cheat but at the at our core I mean a lot of women cheat for the same reasons that men cheat they want to feel something they want to feel desired they are tired of partnering with someone who feels like a dependent so they want to experience a different kind of interaction a lot of men feel like they if they are soul providers um they feel like wow I'm doing a lot for the family and I just need an escape or a release but we have to remember that culturally we also have this expectation around like sex so a lot of men men want to be sexual as a way to demonstrate their masculinity Not all men of course but for a lot of men this is a really important unconscious motivation and so when they are thinking about being sexual sometimes it's not about I want to be in relationship with these other people but it's more about I want to feel like a man and doing this makes me feel that way now that's not a justification but understanding that can help to understand how there is sometimes like an identity component that factors into the motivations for cheating now women have that too but I think it's a little bit different they want to be doed on they want to be um cared for they want somebody to show up with some energy that feels like they are being the the focus they are being focused on right I think that you know there's some crossover but sometimes those are the ways that it can be different yeah it's really sad that we get to those points where in your relationship you either don't feel like a man because you're not valued sexually I guess or as a woman you don't feel desired and uh the center of someone's attention um you mentioned in one of your podcasts that you were on that like boredom is one of the big causes of low desire um that you think people don't realize yeah absolutely I mean again Emily nagoski just covered this in her book come together if the sex that you're having is not sex that you're really excited about the desire that you feel to be sexual isn't going to be there cuz why do you want to have sex that isn't great sex but mediocre sex can be great too but I mean more often than not if you are feeling sort of bored in your life bored in your relationship under stimulated sexually it's going to take a toll on on your overall vitality and your overall energy around being creative and being vibrant and leaning into those sort of physical sensations of pleasure

Dr.

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