Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: The biggest issue I'm hearing is that you have a partner who isn't really willing to collaborate with you to make for a better sexual experience. I hear that that's creating a lot of frustration for you and really affecting your arousal.
You're listening to love and libido with me, your host, doctor Emily Jamia. The goal of this podcast is to educate and inspire. My hope is that you will learn tools to create connection and cultivate passion both within yourself and in your relationships. Here's what's coming up on today's episode.
Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody. Today I am going to answer two subscriber questions. The first has to do with sex during pregnancy, and the second has to do with coping with erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation with a partner who isn't really willing to collaborate to make sex better. And then finally, I'm going to share a subscriber submitted story about the effects of poor sex education and his comfort in initiating sex. Let's get started. So our first question came in anonymously through the website. Here it goes. We found out I was pregnant four months ago. Since I have become pregnant, my boyfriend has not had an orgasm during intercourse. He can reach orgasm with us doing other things, but for some reason, not when having sex. We used to be fine and it was never a problem. What could be wrong? Okay, thank you first, so much for sharing your question. There are so many nuances of sex during pregnancy. A lot of people assume that women may be more affected because they're the ones that are pregnant, and certainly they are to varying degrees. But assuming you're in a heterosexual relationship and you have a male partner, men can be affected too. And so my first question to you would be, what are his feelings? Things about you being pregnant?
My first thought is that maybe he feels a little uncomfortable with the idea that you have a baby growing inside of you and he's ejaculating very close to that area where the baby is growing. Some people get kind of hung up on this.
I'm also wondering if maybe it would be helpful for him to go to a doctor's visit with you so that he can hear straight from your doctor about sex during pregnancy, assuming, you know, you don't have any reason why you shouldn't have sex during pregnancy. Sex can be really healthy during pregnancy. I always encourage couples to maintain an active sex life during pregnancy, assuming there's no limitations by their doctor. But you can continue to do most things during pregnancy that you were doing before you got pregnant. And intercourse and ejaculating during intercourse is certainly a part of that. And so I just wonder if maybe he heard from the doctor, him or herself, that, you know, that might make a difference.
The other thought is if he, for whatever reason, just can't get over the fact that you're pregnant and it's just making him too uncomfortable to think about ejaculating inside of you, then this may be an opportunity to adjust the kinds of things that you're doing sexually. And I hear you saying that he can have an orgasm doing other things, and I'm really glad to hear that. I am a huge proponent of the importance of adaptability when it comes to sex. You will hear me talk about this all the time. I have a whole module about it in my online workshop.
But will having a willingness to adapt to ever changing circumstances is so important. And it may be that just while you're pregnant that you do other things that help him have an orgasm or reach climax that don't include intercourse. If for some reason that's just something he can't really get behind or doesn't feel comfortable with, I definitely think it's worth exploring. I think the more you talk about what's going on and create space to hear his feelings, the better off you'll be and the more likely that eventually he'll feel more comfortable with it.
But if for some reason he just can't, then that's okay too. And it may just be that while you're pregnant, maybe you limit that aspect of your sexual interaction and instead use it as an opportunity to try new things. And hopefully once you have the baby and things go back to normal that that can be reincorporated as a part of your regular routine. Another final point I want to make is that it's so important that you have a very neutral response when he maybe expresses frustration about his inability to ejaculate. When you're having intercourse, a lot of times the determining factor about whether an occasional hiccup remains just a hiccup versus evolving into a full fledged dysfunction or larger issue is the partner's response. And so the worst thing you could do is make him feel bad about it or shame him for it. And I can tell just from the tone of your email that that's not happening. But just for anyone else who might be listening, I think that's so important to keep in mind. So I wish you the best of luck with your pregnancy, and I hope that some of this advice helps.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Good luck.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Our next question came in anonymously. Through the website as well. Here it goes. I have erectile dysfunction coupled with very low sex drive and premature ejaculation. I feel frustrated when I feel like I can't make my wife wet and ready. She never wants to use lube either. I get soft when I'm trying to put my penis inside a dry vagina. Sometimes I have difficulty getting aroused in the first place. Even imagining women with perfect bodies can't get me fully hard sometimes. I've started to use pills for help, but there is no medical reason I should need pills and would rather not use them. Sometimes pills don't work either. Okay, this is a great question. So first and foremost, thank you so much for sharing your experience. I know that a lot of people can probably relate to what you're sharing.
Okay, so let's hit this one issue at a time, because there is actually a lot packed into this very short question. You begin by saying you have erectile dysfunction, low sex drive, and premature ejaculation. So it's important to know that a lot of factors can contribute to our desire to have sex. If you're experiencing any kind of dysfunction or frustration during the sexual experience, the chances that you're gonna want to keep doing it go down. And the biggest issue I'm hearing is that you have a partner who isn't really willing to collaborate with you to make for a better sexual experience. I hear that that's creating a lot of frustration for you and really affecting your arousal. It's not. I think a lot of people, both men and women, but really women in particular, can have this idea that men should be able to get an erection whenever, with whomever, and under any condition. And it's so important to know that the body does not work like that. And I hear that it's frustrating to you and maybe kind of a turn off to try to enter her when she doesn't feel very wet or aroused. And the fact that she's not really actively participating during the experience can also affect your arousal. That's probably leading to your erectile difficulties. By the way, I really don't like the word dysfunction.
I think that difficulty is a much gentler word. And truthfully, if you're able to get erections when you masturbate, which I assume you are, because you say there's no medical reason why you need pills, then you don't really have a full fledged erectile dysfunction. Now, you could technically be diagnosed with what we call situational erectile dysfunction, meaning that it's only happening in the situation when you're trying to have partnered sex versus solo sex.
But even then, I think because we can identify clear reasons that are external and contextual, as opposed to something physical, that difficulty really is just a better word. So I'm going to say erectile difficulty from now on.
So you've got this erectile difficulty, which is probably creating some anxiety, because a lot of people have anxiety when they're unable to get an erection, and anxiety can then lead to premature ejaculation. Or sometimes if you do get an erection, you want to make sure you don't lose it, or you're so afraid that you're going to lose it that you come too quickly. And so I think that if we're looking at what's causing what here is kind of them happening in, like, a chain of events, you have a partner who's not very actively participating or doing much to help with your arousal, which is causing frustration, which is probably leading to your erectile difficulty, which is creating anxiety, which is leading to premature ejaculation. And the whole thing is kind of making you not want to have sex. So I think that's what's going on. Now. You say that she never wants to use lube either. Um, a lot of times, people assume that when you use lube, it has to go, like, around the outside of the vagina. But I wonder if she'd maybe be more comfortable with you applying it to your penis. That could actually make a really big difference. So I don't know if she's just not wanting to use lube at all, or she's not comfortable with using lube on herself first. But I wonder if maybe you put it on your penis, if that might help a little bit. And I'm really thinking that it's going to be important that the two of you talk a little bit more about how you can work together as a team to have a better sexual experience.
This is a team exercise, guys. I don't want to say team sport, but you have to be team players when it comes to sex. Depending solely on one partner to lead the show or drive the boat or be in control the whole time is going to make for kind of a lousy sexual experience.
I always like to use the analogy of a three legged race. If one of you in the partnership is having an issue, you're not going to move forward. So if one person stumbles a little bit, you have to turn towards your partner and find out what you can do together to get them back up on their feet again so that you guys can make it across the finish line.
And the same thing applies during sex. I. You know, if she were writing in, I'd really want to know what some of her reasons were for not wanting to use lube.
You know, a lot of people think that having to rely on lube means that there's something wrong with them, and there isn't. I tell people all the time that we would not have stores on every other street corner, lined floor to ceiling with every variety of lube and vibrator and sex toy if there wasn't a market for it. It is not uncommon at all for women to feel psychologically aroused, but not be very physically aroused. Or the converse can happen. Sometimes women can appear to be very wet and ready and physically aroused, but psychologically, they are not in the mood. And so a lot of women think that if they're not automatically matched up 100%, that there's nothing that they can do about that or that there's something wrong with them. And I want. If she's maybe listening to this, I want her to hear that there's nothing wrong with her.
In fact, women have a really high degree of arousal. Non concordance, which is when. How turned on we think we are doesn't necessarily match up with how turned on our bodies are, and Lube is our friend. So I think that the more open she could be to using lube, and maybe that's. You guys just start off with using it on your penis first. That. That may help.
And then also talk about how you can work together to help you become more aroused.
If maybe historically, what helped you stay aroused was entering her vagina. Maybe this is an opportunity to focus more on oral sex or manual stimulation or even anal play. There are so many things you can do sexually that might really turn you on. And so it's important that you talk to your wife to see what she might be comfortable with if she's just a no go on the lube.
The other thing I'll say about the lube is there are so many different kinds of lube available. There are water based lube, silicone based lube. I wonder if maybe she tried a lube in the past that she didn't really like before. And it's important to know that there are a lot of options out there. There are, you know, even using more, quote unquote natural things like coconut oil can, you know, make people feel a little bit more comfortable. So it's really important that you try a few things and then see if maybe she ends up liking one more than the other. I hope this helps and I wish you the best of luck.
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Okay, our final submission is actually a story or a confession as I like to call it. This person didn't really have a specific question, but I think shared his story based on my most recent episode which was about sex ed in 2022. Here it goes. I am a male and I am now 23 years old. I hadn't had intercourse until I was 20. Insect the instructor emphasized how life ending STD's are and involved a lot of pictures of the effects they had. This caused me to have a deep fear of getting an STD and abstinence was the sure way of not getting one. They also very much emphasized how terrible sexual harassment is and never differentiated sexual harassment and flirting. I'm not unattractive. I would always get comments from girls about being cute, but would always leave it as a compliment to avoid being viewed as a sexual predator. It took a girl literally taking me from a party by the hand, handing me a condom and taking me to her bedroom for me to get the hint that she wanted to have sex. I still struggle to initiate, although I have learned that it is easier to be honest about what you want. Consent is important, but it shouldn't stop you from being able to communicate. Oh, my heart just goes out to you. So if you're just tuning into this episode and you didn't listen to my last episode with Doctor Logan Levkov, definitely go back and check it out because it is all about how to avoid this from happening. So the issues that this young man describes are so common in for people who are young adults and adolescents. And these issues are especially prevalent for people who received abstinence based only sex education or sex education that was really fear and shame based, which it sounds like his was. We cannot rely on sex ed that focuses only on the negatives and don'ts. In my discussion with Doctor Lovekov, we talked about how important it is not just to coach kids on how to say no, but also to coach them on how to say yes. Sex is not you would never teach someone how to drive and only teach them about the things that they shouldn't do. I think this goes for anything we're trying to teach our teenagers. If you're going to learn how to do anything, you don't just learn the don'ts. You learn the do's as well. But for some reason, when it comes to sex, there's such an emphasis on the don'ts. And kids have to learn how to say yes. As this young man says, he doesn't really understand or didn't understand the difference between sexual harassment and flirting. And that is something I hear all the time. People have become so fearful of potentially crossing the line into non consent that there's no kind of romance anymore for a lot of people in connecting romantically or sexually.
Don't get me wrong, like, we need consent, but we also need to learn how to flirt. We need to learn how to pick up someone that we might be interested in. And there is such an absence on these very fundamental relationship skills, in part because of our sex education system, but also in large part because of technology and how teens rely so much on, you know, swiping left or right. And this really goes into adulthood these days as well with dating apps. Again, they have been great in a number of ways, but I think they've also caused a lot of problems. I mean, how many of you can think about what it would be like to be out at a bar and to just pick someone up organically? And that's how my husband and I got together. And I tell people our story, and people are like, oh, my God, like, how classic that he picked you up at a bar. And it's. It's kind of sad that that's considered, like, classic, almost old school because that kind of thing just doesn't happen anymore. But one of the things that really attracted me to him was how confident he was about just coming up and striking up a conversation with me and flirting a little bit. It was very gentle. I didn't feel threatened at all, but he had pretty good game. And I hear that this person just doesn't even know how to flirt with someone of the opposite sex because there's such a fear of not. It not being consensual. And so I think that we have to work. If you're a parent listening to this, then I really hope that you'll think about it when you're educating your own children. If you are a young adult listening to this, then I think it is so, so, so important to put yourself out there in the real world.
To practice striking up a conversation with a stranger. There is no shortcut to it. One of the things we talked about in the episode was how a lot of people say they won't try any of this until they know how to do it without it feeling awkward. And if you're waiting for that, you're going to be waiting forever, because the only way you'll build confidence is by pushing through the awkwardness. It sounds like from what you're sharing in your story, that maybe you're starting to do that a little bit. I really want to encourage you to continue to put yourself out there, you know? And I think, especially boys, we have to teach how to read body language. I think that there's a lot of differences in how we socialize our children based on their gender expressions. So a lot of times, girls are taught to pay more attention to body language and nonverbal cues and boys aren't. And he says here that it took this girl literally dragging him by the hand and handing him a condom for him to even get the hint that she wanted to have sex. She may have been sending him all kinds of non verbal cues, but he didn't pick up on them. Or maybe even if he did, was so afraid of putting out any sexual vibe because that might have been perceived as being pushy or as her seeing him as a sexual predator, that he just cut off this very natural part of himself.
Attunement is also something I talk a lot about in my online workshop. I have a whole module on how important it is to learn how to tune in to what's happening in your own body and how to tune in to what is happening in the bodies of people around you. You always want to fall back on verbal consent, but I think there's a lot to learn from what we're picking up on in people's body language. And so for the person who sent in this story, I really want to encourage you to start paying a little bit more attention to people's nonverbal cues.
A great way to do that is to go out to a restaurant and just sit back and kind of watch the way people are interacting with one another across the table and see if you can identify which. What groups of people are there where you're picking up on a little bit of sexual energy or flirtatiousness versus what people are there who may be like at a business lunch and start to kind of notice what they're doing. That might indicate one sort of energy versus the other. I want to thank you again for sharing your story because I know a lot of people can relate to this. I wish you the best of luck as you continue on your sexual journey. Thanks again for sharing. That concludes today's Q and a episode. If you have a question you would like answered on the podcast, visit levinlubedo.com and you can share it there through the website. And if you have a story you would like to share, whether it relates to a topic I've discussed on a recent episode or you know, I'm going to talk about in an upcoming episode, same thing. Visit the website. Share your story. I am just such a big believer in the importance of hearing from people just like ourselves. I think that's one of the best things we can do to connect with one another and to relate and to learn. And that's really the goal of this podcast. So thank you to my subscribers who shared today, and I look forward to answering more of your questions and hearing more stories here on the Love and Libido podcast. Until next time.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Thanks again for listening to love and Libido with me, your host, Doctor Emily Jamia. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and drop me a five star review share with a friend who might find it interesting. As much as we can learn from experts, nothing makes us feel more connected than hearing from each other. If you have a story that relates to today's episode, or just a general question about sex or your relationship, visit loveandlabiedo.com and I'll share it on an upcoming episode. Be sure to visit my website, emilyjamia.com to see my latest blogs and to check out my online workshop. Subscribers to my podcast can use code halfoff. Finally, you can follow me across all the social media channels for daily sex and relationship tips. Dremelie Jamia, thank you so much for tuning in.
