You've learned a bit about me. Now it's time to think a bit about you. I'll talk about the range of sexual concerns that come up in my practice. Sex therapy isn't all about crying—yes, there can be tears—but there's laughter too. Sex has been such a serious and scary topic for such a long time. It's time that we see sex as a gift... one that helps make this short time on earth a pleasurable one. Plus, our first listener question: how to tell your monogamous, heterosexual partner that you might want to have your first same-sex experience?
Show Notes
00:26 What is a sexual narrative?
01:02 Sexual facts Vs interpretations
01:44 Adding flexibility to your sexual narrative
02:24 Sex therapy topics that come up in my practice
02:38 Fear of sex
02:48 Arranged marriages
03:13 Open relationships
03:23 Low sex relationships
03:26 Affair recovery
03:53 Sex addiction
04:37 Gender Journey
04:41 Sex therapy clients and their personalities
05:25 Talking about sex can bring relief
05:52 Sex gets easier to talk about the more you talk about it.
06:21 Fertility treatments and sex
06:38 Aging and sexuality
07:10 Erectile Disappointment
07:44 Pro erection medication
08:18 Questioning your sexuality
08:45 Sexuality on a spectrum
10:12 Low sex or sexless relationships
11:09 Illness and sexuality
13:14 Do you have curiosities about sex?
13:58 Confession booth question: I love my girlfriend but I think I may be bisexual. What should i do?
15:11 Hard conversations about sex are important and can be helpful
16:19 How to have healthy hard conversations about sex
18:28 Benefits of sex therapy
19:07 Send in questions to michelle@getsome.ca
19:47 Produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios.
20:04 Follow me on Instagram at GETSOME_Podcast
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Michelle: My name's Michelle Fischler, and this is GETSOME.
[THEME MUSIC]
[00:00:15] Michelle: You've heard my story. Now it's time to think about yours. Your relationship with sex will always be evolving. A sexual narrative is your sexual story, so, the story that you've carried with you through your entire life that has tried to make sense of your relationship with sex and who you are as a sexual being.
[00:00:44] Michelle: When we look at those sexual narratives, you'll often find that beliefs about sex that you have, and especially the ones that actually don't make you feel very good, or it can bring up feelings of shame are less based on facts than they are on interpretations. When we reflect back on what these beliefs are, they're often something that was told to us from family or through religion.
[00:01:21] Michelle: Or just through experiences that we've had that have either been traumatic or upsetting. And so, when people are able to look at those beliefs and recognize that actually, in fact they're not, facts. It can give a lot of space for people to have flexibility and to have options when they think about what they want their sex life to look like moving forward.
[00:01:56] Michelle: I've seen this knowledge really free people up and it changes their sexual narrative from one that felt oppressive to one that has hope. And so now it's your turn. Here's my episode called Coming into Yourself.
[00:02:23] Michelle: I'll tell you a bit about my practice. I see people five days a week, full-time. I see people who maybe haven't had sex before or are afraid of having sex or maybe haven't been in relationships before. I talk with people who their marriage was arranged and they didn't know a whole lot about sex, and so we kind of get them to a place where they have a better idea of how to look at sex so that it can bring them pleasure, and that it's not just about making babies. I also see people who are in monogamous relationships who are thinking about opening up their relationship. I see people who maybe have been in a very low sex marriage and then there's been a betrayal of trust or an affair, and now they are like, really committed to working on their relationship to protect it from something like that happening again.
[00:03:41] Michelle: I see people who think that maybe they have a well, what they've been told by either their partner or what they've read on the internet, that they think they have a sex addiction. We talk a bit about what that means to them and what they're hoping for and trying to figure out if it's just the fact that they have a high sex drive or are they using sex as a way of coping that's causing problems in their relationship. I also see people who have kinks or fetishes and they want a better understanding of what it means, like can they change it and how do they talk to potential partners about it as well? I see people who are in a bit of a gender journey and they're trying to figure out how they best identify within their body and what they wanna do about it, if anything.
[00:04:51] Michelle: I think that I have the best clients ever. Maybe they've never been in therapy before, and the fact that they have the courage to have their first therapy session be about their sex life is impressive. And I've also found that a lot of my clients are really kind and many of them are very, very funny.
[00:05:25] Michelle: And so, there are times where we just break out in laughter and sometimes it's talking about really painful things. That combination of laughing and being able to talk about sex is not a bad thing, cuz we do wanna shift it to a place where it feels a little bit more playful versus painful. And then my favorite is when, you know, a couple of few months down the road where sex is just so much easier for them to talk about.
[00:06:06] Michelle: Like it just really warms my heart. I also work with people who have either had fertility problems in the past and it's really impacted their sex life or they're currently in fertility treatment and are really like trying to find this fine balance of trying to get pregnant and not completely fuck up their sex life, or maybe it really has completely fucked up their sex life and they want to unfuck their sex life.
[00:06:38] Michelle: I also speak with guys who are getting to a point in their life where maybe they were very sexual in the first half of their life, who never really had difficulties with their erections and are coming to terms with the fact that their penis doesn't work the way it used to, and trying to figure out, they can get to a place of acceptance, but I think in order to get there, it's almost like a bit of grief at that loss and then also realizing that, oh my God, you've just only lost one instrument. And I like to think of sex as an orchestra where there's lots of different instruments that you can pull on at any point in time. And so, yeah, I mean, maybe you're not going to have a hard penis all the time, you know?
[00:07:44] Michelle: Or maybe like once in a while you'll take a Viagra or take an injection and you'll have a hard penis for that evening, but, other times there's like so many things you can do. So we talk a little bit about that, and then I talk to people who are questioning their sexuality. I love that work. It's really fulfilling. It's courage, right?
[00:08:08] Michelle: Like I think a lot of people come in with this fear that if they think something about themselves and there's an interest that they have, that if they say it out loud, I think they think therefore it means something. Like, it either means that they're gay or it means that they're bi or whatever. And I always say to people like, it doesn't have to mean anything.
[00:08:38] Michelle: Right. It just is what it is. We try to just see our sexuality as a bit of a spectrum that is really fluid, right? So yeah, like, do I have guys in my practice who are hetero? Identify as hetero or in hetero relationships and like to suck cock once in a while? And you know, they're totally freaked out as to what that means, or worried about what somebody else thinks that means, right, rather than it can be whatever they want it to be like.
[00:09:28] Michelle: They can still be hetero! They can be whatever the fuck they want. Whatever you wanna call yourself, you call yourself. I don't fucking care. Right, but we have these binaries, like how we understand as humans is we understand things through categories, right?
[00:09:47] Michelle: So, people are always quite quick to think that you need to fit in just one box. And I think, well, especially with sex, I don't know, I just do not see it that way. I see it more as like, not categories, but a rainbow. I see couples, people in relationships that haven't had sex with each other in years.
[00:10:20] Michelle: Usually something's happened. If somebody gets so fed up, they can't take it anymore, and so they say like, either we actually start working on this and talking to somebody, or I'm gonna leave. People will come into me in those situations, or, yeah, again, if there's a betrayal. Or some kind of connection that one partner has gotten. Or another way to manage the no sex/ low sex relationship is somebody might bring up the suggestion to open up the relationship. So I see people working through some of that stuff. I see people who have had illnesses that have impacted their ability to experience pleasure through penetration, feeling like their bodies changed and grieving that, and trying to find a way, to, in some ways create a new chapter for themselves in their sex life.
[00:11:42] Michelle: And what I love so much is when I have people that are in their eighties that I see who are struggling with sexual concerns, it gives me so much hope. I mean, I know that you can have sex until whenever you want, depending on how you define sex, right?
[00:12:10] Michelle: Like, sex in my mind is so broad. I think that oral sex is sex, and I think that manual stimulation is sex. I hope to gawd I'm still doing that. And I don't mean like God, G-O-D, like God, G-A-W-D. I hope to gawd I'm doing that in my eighties, nineties. Fuck, as long as I want to be doing it, that's it. If I come to a point in my life where I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm good, I think I'll be totally good with that, but I'm certainly not there right now and many of the people that come into my practice aren't there either.
[00:12:57] Michelle: Now that I've told you a bit about me and I've been a little bit silly with you, I wanted to talk about the title of this episode, which is coming into yourself and have a bit of fun with it.
[00:13:14] Michelle: Like what would be really important for you? Where do you wanna be? Where do you wanna go? What are you curious about? Maybe you're having tons of sex and that is awesome and you're just listening to this show because you think the topic of sex is as cool as I do. And then maybe there are people out there who are really struggling.
[00:13:40] Michelle: And this podcast is for you too. This podcast is for everybody. I think now it's time for the confession booth.
[00:13:58] Audience Question: Hi, Michelle. I've been in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship with my girlfriend for 10 years. In my own personal therapy, I've realized that I want to experience being with another man. I'm not sure what this means, like if I'm bisexual or heteroflexible or what, and think that exploring this might help me figure things out. I love my girlfriend and have no desire to end our relationship, but worry that if I tell her she's gonna think I'm gay, which I don't think I am. Do you have any suggestions for how to start this convo?
[00:14:29] Michelle: First of all, I think it's wonderful that you've found a therapist that you felt safe with and that was able to support you in figuring this out. I would say that it's probably some of my most rewarding work, just allowing people to sort through these feelings without worrying about my judgments and opinions, or feeling like they need to take care of me and assure me by censoring themselves so that they don't come out of the work feeling like, here's one more person that planted the seed that my sexual journey is wrong.
[00:15:11] Michelle: Your sexual journey is your sexual journey and nobody else's. And yes, sometimes this means having conversations with someone that you love and sometimes there's even the risk of your partner not being supportive, and you know what? They are allowed to feel that way because maybe it doesn't work for their life story of how they imagine their life to be.
[00:15:44] Michelle: And I think in these kinds of situations, it's really good for both people to have a choice, yourself included, as to what kind of life you wanna have. So my suggestion is that now that you have a clear idea of what it is that you're wanting through your therapy, I would suggest setting up a time to talk with your partner about what you've learned.
[00:16:19] Michelle: But start by reassuring her that this isn't about her at all, and let her know how much you love her and that you are crazy attracted to her, and that you want your relationship to keep growing. Put that in there first. Also reassure her that you haven't made any plans to move forward at this point and that you wanted to hear from her and allow her to ask you questions.
[00:16:54] Michelle: And then the two of you with time can decide if you wanna stay together while you work through this and try to find a place that feels good for both of you. And also reassure her that she doesn't have to make a decision right away. You have been working on this for months in your therapy and your partner's only hearing about it for the first time now, and she's likely gonna need some time to just process it. And if the two of you are really struggling through this, I would suggest that she consider reaching out to a therapist who is affirmative to people living in different ways, whether it be open relationships or people who don't identify as being heterosexual. And the reason that I say this is because I've had people tell me they have gone to therapists with very similar situations and the therapist has told them that their partner's likely on their way to being gay.
[00:17:59] Michelle: This is not true. They have no business to be saying this to you. This is not their journey. It is your partner's journey. Your partner is the only one that knows. There is no magical formula that you don't know about and that your therapist does. And if your therapist says that there is one, they're completely full of shit and you should fire them.
[00:18:28] Michelle: And if the two of you are having struggles having this conversation together, you should consider reaching out to a sex therapist or a relationship therapist. And the best way to do this is to set up a phone conversation with them. Especially if they didn't come to you through a reference and be very open about what the two of you are going through and the support that the two of you are needing and just see how they respond.
[00:18:59] Michelle: Everyone's got a different personality and you just wanna find the right fit for both of you. You are all so awesome. Please send me questions that you have to michelle@getsome.ca. I love answering them and I'll pick questions that are similar to some of the concerns of the people that come into my private practice, which means that if I'm getting them in my private practice and I'm getting them from you, my listeners, that there's probably quite a few people that can relate and that it will help.
[00:19:37] Michelle: I hope you enjoyed GETSOME. If you'd like to listen to more episodes, subscribe to wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
[00:19:47] Michelle: This show is produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios. If you have show ideas or a question you want me to answer in an episode, email me at michelle@getsome.ca and don't forget to follow me on Instagram @getsome_podcast. You'll get insights on sex and sexuality, dating tips, and behind the scenes between episodes.
[00:20:16] Michelle: Thank you for listening.