This is the Ask a Sex Therapist podcast, helping you change the way you look at sex. I’m Heather Shannon, and in a world full of sexual censorship, I’ll give you the raw truth about pleasure, intimacy in your relationships, and enjoying your body. Because it’s time for you to Ask a Sex Therapist.

 Hey, everybody. Welcome to another exciting episode of Ask a Sex Therapist. We have a new guest with us today. Eric. Um, and Eric, you might have to help me with your last name, but I’m going to try it.

Eric Fitzmedred.

Rude. Fitzmed rude.

Max Medred is a therapist specializing in relationship and sexual issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. His specialty is helping men improve their sex lives by learning to regulate their emotions, removing sexual entitlement, and honing their sexual consent and negotiation skills.

Fitzmedrude has a PhD in clinical psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He is polyamorous and bisexual and lives with his wife of 23 years and his life partner of 6 years in San Francisco’s East Bay area in California. So welcome Eric, it’s lovely to have you here.

me. I’m really glad to be

Yeah, the end of that bio is pretty juicy.

Yeah, it’s always nice to put a little bit of humanizing touch in there, right? I’ve

mean it’s also nice in our field because it like tells people you’ve been on your own journey, like you’ve worked through some things, you know. Yeah, so that’s pretty

gotten to the point where, in the right context, I share with people that Um, you know, I’m a professional, but, you know, in many ways, some of my greatest qualifications as a therapist include that my 21 year old talks to me about relationship issues and, and wants to live near me. I must be

That is a

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and I feel the same way, like we have to go through so much formal training as therapists and sex therapists, and, but when I think about what actually makes me good at my job, it’s really none of the formal training. I don’t know how you feel.

I mean, I think there’s, um, It, I think it’s the combination, right? It’s the formal training and then integrating that into how am I gonna live? You know, it’s one thing to learn about, um, you know, principles of relationship and like you’re supposed to manage your own emotions, but then learning how to do it yourself is what helps you.

Actually teach other people how to do that.

Right. This is true. Yeah. It’s like, right. The things that I think have really helped me is probably 13 years of being Buddhist and mindfulness training, you know, going to lots of my own therapy and coaching. Um, I do think a lot of the trainings that I’ve done post like master’s degree have been really helpful, but, um, I do, I think it’s so much of our personal development and like, we can only help people sort of to the level that we’ve gone ourselves.

Yeah.

not strictly true because if we can also help people past where we’ve been, then humanity can keep moving forward and they’re not all dependent on the previous generation advancing as far as it can.

Hmm. Well, that’s true. They’re all, I feel like they’re always going to take it to the next level. Yeah. But just maybe after they’re done working with me.

That’s fair.

Yeah, they might just, you know, and I think that’s so true. It’s like, we’re kind of standing on the shoulders of the people who came before us in our field too. So, um, it’s very cool that way. So, okay, let’s talk about male sexuality. So how did you get passionate about this topic and decide to, to kind of focus on it?

apropos to that intro, I had problems with it myself.

Okay.

Um, I’m inherently, um, uh, relatively high desire person. I’ve been a high desire person in a lot of my relationships. Um, I had a couple of affairs in my relationship with my wife a number of years ago. Um, and normally. I am, and I really want to be an ethical person.

I’m ethically minded. I am conscientious. Um, I have, I, you know, I think about the ethics of like, you know, what, how much plastic am I buying? Like, I, you know, that, that also.

Like you’re really trying

I’m really trying. And so, um, you know, I had, uh, my, my first two affairs really close back to back,

hmm.

and I was really shocked by this.

It’s not who I wanted to be. It’s not how I want to be in the world. And it really jump started me into, um, the kind of, uh, me search process in my graduate program. I was in my PhD program at the time, and I started really trying to understand why did I do that? How can I regulate myself? Um, how can I make sure that this never happens again?

What do I need to do, uh, in the relationship differently? Do I need to ask for differently? And that is a big Big part. I mean, I was already a little bit moving already towards sexuality, um, as a specialty and relationships as a specialty, but it definitely jumpstarted that process. And, um, you know, a number of years later, 12 years after my first two affairs, I had another, um, that wasn’t physical, but it was relational and over the internet and real, um, with real emotions.

And again, I hurt my wife. I hurt my fair partner deeply. And, um, I’ve been in this process of trying to figure out like how to integrate this experience of being a high desire person, socialized as male and moving through the world as a male. And it has given me a leg up on how to support my clients with some of those experiences.

I think I’m also,

Yeah.

I hope appropriately humble about my faults and flaws in that process.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that. Um, and I kind of think it’s not something that’s talked about enough, like the challenges of being high desire. Um, personally, my desire is pretty variable, so I feel like I’ve been on like both extremes. Um, so it gives me a lot of empathy. Um, but Yeah, I, I certainly have friends who are kind of in the same camp as you, where they’re just like, when I have my swings where it goes really high, I’m like, is this, how do you feel all the time?

And they’re like, like, this is very challenging. Like, how do you focus? Um, so what have you found to be effective? Like with, you know, your clients or

Yeah. Um, the biggest thing is really taking responsibility for that experience. Understanding. Okay. I’m a high desire person. You, my client are a high desire person and that experience that you are having. Is not in any way an obligation to your partner. And, you know, I have a lot of clients, um, you know, my practice is centered in the San Francisco Bay area.

Most of my clients are politically liberal. Most of my clients are educated, um, explicitly feminist people. But one of the things that they are, the high desire partners often end up encountering is an implicit entitlement that they encounter. Well, I’m in a relationship with you. Especially if there’s a monogamy, you are the person with whom I am supposed to fulfill this aspect of my human experience.

And so I’m supposed to bring that desire to you and you’re supposed to Be open to that. And those assumptions are false, um, in a relationship, uh, even in a monogamous relationship, our partner is not obligated to fulfill all of our, um, sexual desires. They are not obligated to be responsible for fulfilling our desire for human sexual expression. It’s important that we take responsibility for expressing and regulating that desire on our own. And so it’s one of the reasons that a core part of my book is helping men figure out how to masturbate. Most men masturbate, but not very many men masturbate in a way that is emotionally fulfilling, emotionally self satisfying.

Yeah.

And so, uh,

I, I hear that from my male clients a lot too, where sometimes there’s this feeling of, Yeah. Uh, compulsion, you know, or just using it to like regulate stress, um, or feeling guilt. Um, and even, you know, friends I’ve talked to who have a really high sex drive are also like, you know, something wrong with me.

Am I just going to be like this creepy old man eventually is like trying to hook up with other people, you know? And I’m just like, wow, okay. There’s a lot here.

well, and as you bring in that element of shame, that’s a very common experience for men about our sexuality, whether we’re a high desire partner or not. Um, we have a lot of cultural scripts that men only want one thing, men are dogs, men are pigs. The narrative about men’s sexuality is largely negative.

And so internalizing that as shame that causes us to desperately want to be seen as a good man, as a good person, as a good partner, as a good lover, and also grappling with the realities often of a high desire experience or just sexual creativity, kink, um, and desires that may not match our partner’s desires that we then experience shame about.

Yeah. That, that makes so much sense. And I do think it’s really important for us culturally to start separating those things. Like you kind of said at the beginning, like you can be an ethical, and this is regardless of gender really, but you can be an ethical, lovely person and volunteer and reduce your plastics, like you said, and have a really high sex drive, you know, and maybe have a lot of sex and maybe have a lot of sex with a lot of people, you know, like there’s a lot of different ways to approach it, but it’s like, okay.

Sex is not defining your character or your morality, you know, um, just because you like sex. Now I do think, like you said, you’re still responsible for how you’re approaching sex, right? And the ethics of that. So what have you kind of found either personally or with clients is like the right balance when you have a really high drive?

I think, I often will talk about two different things. There’s, uh, a lot of the people that I work with have a desire to be a kind of person. So, I want to be monogamous. I want to be ethical. I want to be in this relationship. I want to fulfill my partner’s needs, and I want to be a partner that they desire. But they don’t as often look at the questions of the way I will often frame it as their nature, um, and grapple with that nature. Okay, you’re, you know, I can come back to myself as a personal example, you know, after my third affair, where I thought I had everything really locked down and dialed in, you know, for 12 years.

Yeah. And that third affair, it took me so off guard. It was, I was not looking for it. I was not trying to find it. And the moment that that possibility came in for me, I immediately latched onto it. And I was in the middle of it going, where are my ethics? Let me try to find them. Let me try to stop this.

And I, I couldn’t let go.

Mm hmm. Mm

I, I wasn’t. living in alignment with the nature that I had of needing more connection, having a capacity for more love. And after I ended that affair, my wife and I were grappling with that and kind of going through the healing from that. I raised again the question of an open relationship because that was the, what need I needed to grapple with in my life.

Now that’s not necessarily true for other people who have had affairs, but It is important to look at what is missing, what is left out, what isn’t being regulated, what needs to be integrated in order for you to be a living a whole life so that parts of yourself that you have cut off aren’t sneaking their way in through your behavior and hidden ways

Yeah. That’s, that’s really well put. And I talk a lot on the podcast about internal family systems. I don’t know if that’s an approach you use at all.

not, it’s not one that I’m really well trained in, but what I know about it seems very consistent with how I talk about this stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we, we talk about exiled parts, you know, and kind of like, Ooh, this part of me is bad or this part of me is causing problems, socially unacceptable. Let’s just banish it.

and especially in a conversation like this, um, to use that phrase right, the exile part may not even be sexual.

Mm

relational. It might be a part of you that doesn’t know how to relieve stress. It might be a part of you that doesn’t know how to connect to other human beings in vulnerable and intimate ways.

That’s why I have a big section in my book about helping men develop friendships and community with other people so that your partner isn’t the only person and so that sex isn’t the only way that you know how to be in connection and community.

Right. Right. And I think, you know, you talk about patriarchal wounds as well. And, you know, I think what you’re describing is a patriarchal wound, you know, I think men are socialized to kind of be like, suck it up. Don’t cry. You know? And I’m like, y’all have just as many emotions as the rest of us, know, like you’re allowed to feel them.

we have just as many emotions. We have just as much need for human connection and we’re socialized to believe that emotional intimacy is equivalent to romantic intimacy and sexual intimacy. And that means that especially in a context of Internalized homophobia, even if you are heterosexual, you become afraid of intimacy with men.

You don’t know how to open up. You don’t know how to share your wounds and difficulties at work or in life when your parents are dying or figuring out how to be a good father. We need connection and community with other people, including other men, in order to be whole human beings.

Yeah, that’s, it’s so true. And I do feel like our culture has kind of given men like one path, which is like, you can find a woman and you can date her and have sex with her. And that’s how you can feel close. And so then it does put a lot of pressure. On that, you know, when there, when there’s no other pathways and, you know, again, I see that with clients of all gender, but I do think it’s just more pronounced.

I think women are encouraged more to like form other relationships and be these social communal creatures and even define ourselves that way. Um, and men, it’s kind of like, you know, be strong, be stoic, figure it out yourself. Don’t ask

And even when. And even when men do have male friends, they may not open up emotionally, right? They get together and they do the sport, or fishing, or whatever it is. But you know, the stereotype, the trope, is that he comes home from a guy’s weekend, and she asks him, oh, you know, how is Jim’s mom? I heard she was going through some, some health issues.

And he’s like, Oh, we didn’t talk about that. Well, what about Jim’s, you know, work? Isn’t he going through, Oh yeah, we didn’t talk about that. Well, you know, what about his kids? Oh yeah, we didn’t talk about that. When we don’t talk about that, when we don’t know what’s going on in our friends lives and when they don’t know what’s really going on in ours, we become lonely together and all of that gets put on our partners, which is a big part of the nuance that ends up creating sexual pressure.

Yeah. So I did want to circle back to the fulfilling masturbation thing that you said too, because it sounds like that was one of your tools, um, that kind of helps men, uh, regulate and kind of take care of some of their own needs. Um, so what, what is fulfilling masturbation?

uh, one of the things I always like to start with is, Hey, I’m not trying to pathologize anybody’s other ways of masturbating, right? If you’re, um, you know, masturbating for two minutes in the shower, just to relieve a little bit of physiological tension, there’s nothing wrong with that. Um, if. If you’re masturbating and watching porn and that’s within your relationship agreements and you are comfortable with that yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But what I describe is a process of eliminating other distractions and being with the emotional arc and the physiological sensations of your own body, including a process of cultivating anticipation, a little bit of foreplay, and extending pleasure. With yourself so that it isn’t just a functional process But it is an act of self love and I’ve got a number of different steps and a concrete Exercise in the book to guide men through that.

I love that. And I also, I don’t know if we named the book, but the book is called the better

Yeah, the better man a guide to consent stronger relationships and hotter sex

Cool. And it’s just like all about the stuff we’ve been talking about. So if you guys are listening to this, we will link to the book. If you’re like, what is this book they keep talking about?

Um, that’s cool. So you kind of give people like a structured plan. I like what you’re saying about it. Um, like foreplay with yourself, you know, and kind of like building anticipation, because I think as sex therapists, like we always tell couples to do that, you know, like build it with each other. But like, I do think with ourselves, it’s often like, what’s the quickest, easiest, least effortful, like way and, and I’ve done that too.

I’ve also fallen into that where I’m kind of like, Why am I not like kind of almost like being nicer to myself with, with solo sex? You know, like I’m not being the best partner to my own self

And if you think about some of the most satisfying partnered sexual experiences, you know, listeners may recognize things like, you know, feeling weak in the knees, feeling that open and kind of loose feeling throughout your body hours, or maybe even a day later, and a lot of the kind of functional short term masturbation or masturbation that’s focused on media.

I mean, I find in, in my work with my clients, I find it doesn’t create that same fulfilled, relieved depth of emotional experience, but a self loving process that draws the pleasure out so that it is full body and really, um, comes in waves of intensity is a whole different kind of experience.

it is. And I think that’s nice, you know, um, because, you know, I don’t know. Again, I also feel like do what works for you. Like that’s so much more important really than like anything that we’re saying. It’s like if it’s working for you, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, you know? But if you want to try something new and if you realize like, oh yeah, sometimes I do feel kind of unfulfilled or like I’m just going through the motions, then like try

Yeah, exactly. And you know, the, the lovely thing that can happen when you become erotically sovereign in this way, you are capable of fulfilling your own erotic desires. You know, that you can give yourself an emotionally, physically, and, um, satisfying orgasm. then that also shifts your dynamic when you’re approaching your partner.

You know, it’s the difference between, will you please have sex with me? I need an orgasm.

Yes.

me? And like, The dynamic shifts, right? Pleasure is about to happen in the bedroom. You can be a part of that, or it’s going to happen without you. And, you know, it won’t be the first time that that shifts things with your partner, but it might be the fifth time where you’re like, I’m going to go knock my socks off.

Would you like to join me? And finally your partner’s like,

Right.

maybe I do want to find out what’s going on. Maybe I do want to

It was happening.

Note it removes a lot of that background pressure for the partner to be the one who fulfills all of those needs. And then the partnered, yeah, the partnered experience now becomes additive.

Right. Right. And I mean, I don’t know if you’re into the law of attraction, but I’m very into that. And we also talk about that in the podcast and it’s like, yeah, The energy that you’re approaching your partner with, you know, when it goes from like a very low vibration of like feeling desperate and like sex is scarcity or like something is wrong with you or like this is too much to manage, you know, like those are all going to be like pretty low vibes.

And then when it shifts to like, I am like a fulfilled person and like I’m like owning my sexual energy and like this is fun and like, it’s fun by myself. It could be fun to share. You know, it’s like a whole different energy. And when you just. You know, raise your vibration when you take care of yourself, when you become more of your best self.

First of all, that’s really sexy. Like everyone’s attracted to that. And then also, you’re just going to have way more fun and probably just be a happier person.

that’s, when it shifts from scarcity, this is what I need, to an offer, this is what I have to share with you. If you would like to receive it, the dynamic entirely shifts.

Right. Cause people, you know, I’m sure a lot of us have felt this way, but sometimes I feel like, Oh, everyone just wants a piece of me and I got to do this for this person and this for this person. So when your partner is also coming to you with that energy, you’re just like, I just can’t, I just like can’t even

Especially in relationships where there are children, and one partner is doing a lot of the primary caregiving for the children, that scarcity, uh, approach, and that scarcity oriented initiation comes across as just another needy person who wants my time and my body, and it’s, it doesn’t come across as there for me.

Right. Right. And so, I mean, I also want to say this is like, legit emotional work. Let’s not pretend that it’s going to be just like snap your fingers and you’re there and you’ve magically transformed yourself in your sex life. But, um, I think it’s very possible.

it is. I think there’s also, you know, especially for a lot of men, there’s an arc that we have to go through to recognize our wounds in patriarchy, to recognize the difficulties that we have articulating our emotions and talking about our emotional relational needs, because we haven’t been even been trained to be aware that we have them.

Um, And then we need to retrain ourselves. We need to re educate ourselves. Well, I thought that if I just worked hard and succeeded and achieved in the world, that that would create desire in my partner for my body. And

Oh, how interesting.

Oh, okay. What, what does? Oh, it’s emotional and relational content. Oh, it’s my presence.

Oh, that reframes for me my entire expectations of what I need to be doing. And, you know, coming into an understanding of actually how desire gets cultivated in a couple, that it, that it’s about it. The experience of pleasure that

hmm.

to be attuned to your partner’s pleasure as well. And you need to be interested in creating that with them in order for them to be interested in joining you on an ongoing way for your pleasure. Um, those kinds of reframes then build on all of this work that we’ve been talking about.

Yeah, yeah, it is. It’s powerful. And so I mean, obviously, if people are listening to this, they’re already several steps ahead of the average person. Um, but one of the other things you mentioned that I thought was really important, um, to talk about was like challenges with consent.

Yeah,

I talk about consent too much, and I’m okay with that.

So, that makes me feel good, actually.

yeah.

Um, why, why is consent so important and foundational?

I mean, um, maybe especially to the person who might be feeling like you talk about it too much. Let me introduce right away how I talk about consent in a little bit of a different way. So the first answer is what I call low bar consent, right? Consent prevents sexual assault and worse. It prevents you from getting a poor reputation, damaging your relationships with your partners, and ending up alone.

It prevents you from being experienced as the person you don’t want to be. But I also like to emphasize the value of what I call high bar consent. Consent at its best doesn’t just prevent negatives. Consent is a facilitation process to create the greatest amount of desire. We’re talking about not just preventing negative feelings, but figuring out how to help your partner’s eyes roll back in their head and their toes curl. Consent. will make you a better lover. Um, consent will help you get the sex that rolls your eyes back in your head and curls your toes. So if you’re wanting something more, consent is the pathway to it. And it also eliminates a lot of the Well, it eliminates the guesswork. You don’t have to try to read the other person’s mind, you don’t have to operate on two dimensional ideas of what women want.

You can operate on the three dimensional or four dimensional reality of

Mm hmm. Yeah.

today and how that might change twenty minutes from now.

Yeah, right. I love that. You know, it’s like, it’s like a dance in that way. It’s an ongoing sort of moving alive

Yeah, as the music changes.

Right. Right. Right. And maybe all sorts of things can happen in a dance. You might get tired, you might injure your ankle,

Laughter.

you might have to sit down.

Yeah.

So I think it’s, I think it’s a good analogy actually.

But, um, but yeah, I feel the same way. And I think that, um, yeah, sometimes we hear consent and I think it can just be like a loaded word. Um, maybe I’ll have to invent a new word. I don’t know. But, uh, but yeah, it’s like, it’s. It’s fun. It should be, it should create fun. It should be like the container creating of

Yeah. And, um, I also like to emphasize consent is a skill. And so if you feel like it’s awkward and weird, it’s probably because you’re still in the process of learning that skill, which is a perfectly acceptable place to be and just keep going.

Yeah.

And, and if that’s where you’re at, like, again, just remember.

The low bar and the high bar here. So if it’s awkward and weird and difficult, it’s still preventing the low bar negatives and still orienting you to the high bar positives. So if that’s the cost it takes to not be experienced as a predator, that seems worth it.

Yes. That seems like so obvious when you frame it. That is like, of course, yes, of

Yeah.

Um, And I also like to say awkward is intimate.

yeah,

You know, what if we just like lean in a little bit to awkward? I can be

well, but also right back to patriarchal wounds,

Yeah.

Um, or being or coming across as uncertain, not knowing, not coming out of the box proficient. These are all things that violate masculine norms. We’re supposed to be the perfect lover out of the box who reads her mind and knows exactly what to do.

You know, and the reality is that we don’t and

Yeah.

we have a choice. We can either confront that reality and use consent to navigate it.

Mm hmm.

we can navigate that reality fumbling around in the dark and wait until we bump into furniture and hurt ourselves in our apartment.

Oh. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s true. And I mean, I think what, hearing what you’re saying, it’s kind of like the traditionally masculine approach, the way people are socialized to me prevents people from being great lovers, you know, and so the work is kind of like, how can I unlearn everything from how I was socialized and find like, and I think this is again, regardless of gender, um, to just, you know, Find her authentic path forward and communicate with each other, you know, but it’s like, if I have one guy who’s like, I’m just going to try stuff, I’m going to do what works with the last lady I was with, you know, and then I have another guy who’s like, Hey, what do you like?

Hey, how does this feel? What works for you to get off? I’m just like, it’s like, who do we think I’m going to pick? You know,

Yeah.

it’s just, to me it seems obvious. So it’s just like, but it is, it’s, it’s vulnerable being a guy and kind of saying like, I don’t know exactly how to please you

Yeah. And I want to acknowledge that, um, that, As a man dating, you will encounter people of whatever gender you’re dating who will put that back on you, who will say, well, I just want you to know, who will say, I don’t want to have to have those conversations.

true. That’s the issue too.

and that’s a real experience. And instead of, okay, well, let me go into that mode, man, I want you to really think about.

Is that safe for you? Does that feel like you are protected in that situation? So how are you gonna experience the highest pleasure you can experience? How are you gonna not experience expectations that you didn’t know about that you couldn’t live up to? How are you gonna be protected in that situation from the person saying, well, you should just read my mind?

And then you tried, but then of course, it’s, You can’t read minds, so you didn’t read minds. And, and so

Yeah.

one of the reframes are really invite men to think about is consent is for you. It’s there to protect your

Mm hmm.

desire to not get an STI. It’s there for you to protect your desire to not find yourself with a pregnant partner.

It’s there to protect. You too. This is not just

A hundred

yes, but we’re not used to thinking that way We’re not used to thinking that we need to be protected that we are worthy of protection We’re used to thinking that consent is there for us to protect our partners from our desire, but our desire is beautiful and Delicate because we’re so used to being shamed about it.

Well, it’s also not always The guy being the one who has to like ask for consent because another thing, I’m sure you’ve encountered this too, but one of the things I’ve learned through being a sex therapist is that like it’s almost like men aren’t allowed to give consent. Like it’s very fucked

Yeah. We’re, we’re expected.

had, yeah, it’s like men are supposed to always want sex. They’re supposed to like instantly be hard and stay hard if you just like breathe on them. And You know, if there’s any kind of relationship, they’re just supposed to go with it, you know, and I feel like I’ve had male clients that are kind of like, I didn’t, you know, it was a really bad experience.

I didn’t feel like I could say no. And I’m just like, the fuck, like, what, why are we doing this to men?

Yes.

You know, like men can also say no. And it doesn’t mean that you’re not, you know, if a man says no to you, it doesn’t mean that like, you’re not attractive or desirable or even that he’s interested. He might still be interested and feel like.

We’re just not there yet.

Yeah, and I’ve worked with men who are the low desire partner in a heterosexual relationship, and it’s not that uncommon, actually. Uh, it’s really not. But we aren’t used to thinking that way. We aren’t used to being aware that that possibility could exist again, like any other gender difference, right?

There’s more variation within genders than there is between genders. And so the odds that you find yourself with a high desire female partner is not that unusual guys.

I mean, I think it’s almost 50 50 in the cases that I see. It’s like pretty close

Yeah, I’ve estimated it about 40, 60, but yeah,

Okay. I could see

yeah, but it’s, it’s not that divergent. It’s close. Yeah. Yeah. I, I haven’t seen any research about it, but I’d love to.

Mm mm. Yeah. I think there’s some cases, um, with people who are assigned female at birth who were, you know, menopause and hormones. And then like post birth, I do some work with the peanut app. And so I have a lot of like new moms where, you know, the estrogen has tanked, the testosterone has tanked the breastfeeding.

So there’s like biochemical reasons, I think, um, why drive might be lower, at least at certain stages, um, of life. But yeah, so I think the 40, 60 makes sense. to me because of that. Um, but the more we’re talking, I also feel like so much of this is about gender socialization, you know?

And, and so, so much of correcting these relationship problems is about undoing that and coming into, uh, alignment with the reality of the emotional, relational, multi dimensional beings we all are.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It’s just like, like, why are we, don’t put yourself in a tiny little box

You don’t fit.

or don’t, don’t let anyone else put you in there either. Just kind of, you know, and so even like we’re talking about with partners, if a partner is kind of like, well, you should just know what to do or, you know, whatever it is, just be like, Hey, this is not how we’re going to operate.

We’re going to communicate. And I know that might be new for you, but this is how I do things, you know?

And, and being able to realize like, whether that person’s physically or romantically relationally attractive, if they’re trying to hand wave consent with you, that’s not a safe partner for you.

true. Yeah. No. But it’s, it’s tough because it’s like there’s also got to be room for people to learn. So I think like seeing like, is this someone who’s like, Oh, I kind of don’t know what to do right now. This is different, new for me, but okay, we can talk about it. I guess, you know, like if someone’s open, you know, I think like, you know, work with them to the extent you’re

Absolutely. I call that the Build A Bear model. Like,

that’s cute.

there’s so much work to be done to get us to a place of having the skills as a couple to bridge our cultural divides, to bridge our erotic divides, to bridge just, you know, the nuance of any two humans that, that you want to look for a person who is engaged in the learning process.

Yeah.

Learning you.

think so too. Yeah, someone who’s engaged in it, or at least open to it, and like wants to go on that journey with you. Um, cause it is some

Yeah, yeah, we’d like to. The myth is that if we love each other and we find each other hot, then it’s all easy. And the reality is

my gosh. You guys want to like squash that myth, smash it to pieces. Um, cause that one, that one is like, becomes some of my toughest clients, you know, it’s like sometimes people will come to me and they’re just kind of like, we’re not having sex and this, this, this has happened. And so in my mind I’m like, Well, it makes sense that you’re not having sex because this, this, this has happened and right.

So we need to work on those things. Um, and they’re just kind of like, well, when I was younger, you know, it was just so easy. Or like when we first met, I’m like, yeah, but you know, I think it creates this, um. Like laziness almost, but it’s like, uh, there’s this belief that it should be easy and it’s like, Hey, it might be easy when like you’re single, you don’t have kids, you’ve got disposable income.

No, one’s got health issues yet. But I mean, if we approach our sex life, that it should be like that our whole life, like you’re gonna run into some issues,

sure.

know, if you’re not willing to dig in and work through some

And that doesn’t mean that it’s always hard work all the time, right? We go through phases where we have to, um, We have to rewrite our sexual and erotic scripts with each other. Okay. You know, the knees don’t bend at that angle anymore. I need this pillow. I need this help. I need, you know, whatever that is.

And once we cultivate the adaptations to that script, it can, we can enter new phases, uh, where it’s easier again, where it seems free flowing, where it feels vibrant and comfortable. And then we will encounter a new point of difficulty in the future. We need to get used to those ebbs and flows in long term relationship.

Yeah. That’s, that’s amazing. Um, and to kind of bring it full circle, like, what have you kind of found to work for you? So, I mean, you mentioned like these affairs, obviously you’re still with your wife, so it seems like you guys figured

Yeah, we did. Um, I mean, you know, just to kind of help listeners with the transition after that, that third affair, um, I offered a path that I thought might be sustainable for us to stay monogamous. And she said, well, I, You know, I had come to identifying as polyamorous some time before and she said, well, if you’re polyamorous, we should probably just work with that.

She’s inherent. Yeah, I know. She’s pretty amazing.

Wow.

and again, right. Working with nature, she had that capacity. She’s inherently a low jealousy person. Um, and so we tried that out and, um, and that’s how we got to where we are. I mean, Also kind of anticipated what I would need in that openness. I kind of knew correctly or anticipated correctly that what I would want is a second life partner.

I dated. a couple of people, a few, um, but not very many, um, and found somebody that I thought might work as a longer term partner. After

Okay.

weeks of dating, we decided that I would not have new partners while she and I tried to see if we could make a long term relationship work. And now,

Okay.

you know, years later, we have a house and I live with both and, um, Yeah, so, you know, my specific content path will not be any other person’s,

True.

but I, but what I have found is that working with my nature and with the nature of my partners has led to a situation of ease.

Yeah.

last night we had family dinner with, um, my wife, our three kids, and my other partner. We just got back from a trip abroad, all six of us, um, celebrating my oldest graduation from college. And it seems stable and comfortable knock on wood. So

That’s kind of

yeah, it is.

Wow. Okay. Um, do you think, you think a lot of people find themselves in these situations where maybe one person’s a higher desire. One person maybe is more oriented towards polyamory than the other. Like, do you think that there’s usually a path forward like you found or do you think sometimes people are just, you know, fundamentally incompatible?

again, I think it, it really comes back to these elements of nature. You know, sometimes we discover in our relationship that we are now different people than we were. And these two people don’t work in a relationship. And if that’s the case, you need to acknowledge that I’ve worked with a lot of difficult couples who love each other and are kind and are trying to make something work that won’t, um, and it,

I think that’s important to

Yeah, and like I said, it works not just because I accepted my polyamorous nature.

It works because my wife was inherently a person with low jealousy with a capacity to lean into that with me. Um, it works because she makes it work as much as, um, as much as I make it work. Um, and my second partner also had to fit into that equation. Um, in terms of her kindness, her openness to accept the package of my wife of, you know, 18 plus years when we got together and my

That’s a lot for a new person to kind of be like, you’re now getting a partner, a wife,

Right. I mean, imagine, imagine coming into being a stepmom in that situation, but also you’re going to live with his not ex and all the kids and, and try to dovetail into that parenting challenge.

Yeah, she’s, she must be amazing.

Both of my partners are freaking amazing. Yeah, I am,

Yeah, you got lucky.

And grateful and very clear this is not me that is making this work all the time.

Well, I had to be at least a little bit, you know,

It is a little bit me, but it is not all me. Yeah,

Yeah. But I think what you’re saying is, is so important. It’s good to like have hope that like, Hey, things can work out in a lot of surprising and delightful ways. And also sometimes it’s not meant to be, you know, and that was, um, one of my experiences with a former partner, we did couples counseling and we weren’t married.

We’d been together a couple of years and the therapist was kind of like, My goal is for you each to thrive, whether that’s like together or separate. And it just kind of gave me this permission. Cause I think sometimes like, uh, as someone who’s like determined and a therapist and we can help people and we can transform.

And I kind of had this, like, we can make anything work attitude. And like, looking back, I’m like, we were so obviously not, you know, I was really trying to make it and force it. Um, and so I do think that’s important for people that reflect

yeah, it really is. And I think that if both people are kind and loving, if both people can imagine something in an open relationship that would benefit them as an individual, then Um, whether that’s them dating other people and having sex with other people, or just the fact that my partner is, and that frees me up to something that I have wanted.

Right.

that’s the big key that I see is, what is in this for you? What are you gaining out of that opening process? Because if you can’t identify that, then I think it’s much harder to find the sustainable pathway.

Yeah. That makes so much sense to me. Um, because then it just feels like you’re just sacrificing for the other person, um, in an imbalanced way. Um, yeah. Which I’ve seen, I’ve seen

seen people do that.

to do that.

Yeah, and it, in my experience of working with people that are doing that, they typically are miserable and keep wanting to stay in therapy because they’re miserable. And, and I keep, eventually I have to say like, you’re miserable because you’ve chosen something that doesn’t work for you.

At least that’s what it looks like, that’s what you are saying.

What you’re

Therapy won’t solve that for you.

Right. Right. Yeah. Sometimes we just need to look at like what makes me happy and am I doing that? Yeah, that’s simple. Um, well thank you so much for being here, Eric. This has been a really, uh, fun and, uh, eye opening conversation. And, uh, I’m excited for people to check out The Better Man.

So tell, can you tell us where people can find

It’s available on major booksellers online. Um, it’s available on Amazon You can find it on a link to it on my website, which is dr. Eric Fitz comm dr eric FITC calm

Okay, cool. And we’ll link to that too. So we’ll put your website and, um, the Amazon link, uh, in the show

perfect. Thank

thank you so much for being here. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll catch you next week.

  Thank you for listening to the Ask a Sex Therapist podcast. Got a question about spicing things up in the bedroom? Find the answers you’re looking for in my Dirty Talk Guide, a free resource for my podcast listeners. Grab yours now at heathershannon. co forward slash dirty talk. Again, that’s heathershannon.

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