Changes In Desire, Arousal & Intimacy No One Talks About - Dr. Michael Bader

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Have you lost your libido and can't find it?

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Then this episode is for you.

Now I'm going to try to keep the intro really short now

because I just want to jump right into the interview.

This is just a second episode that I recorded with psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Bader.

And I have a link to the first episode in the show notes.

You can go check it out there.

I highly recommend you listed that one first because he gives the background as well.

And I found Dr. Bader so fascinating that I just had to have them on again.

And I usually don't interview men when it comes to sex.

But he came highly recommended.

And I just, I loved his book called A Rousal,

which explains like the thoughts in our heads and what's happening during sex.

And sometimes the thoughts in our head, these,

so he calls them fantasies, are a way to get more aroused.

And sometimes it's just totally out of control.

I'm kind of horrified by it.

I'm like, why am I head going that way?

But it makes us enjoy sex better.

It's crazy.

He explains all of this.

So we took an even deeper dive into this episode.

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Look through the newsletter or go to the show notes here.

It's jam packed with symptoms, strange symptoms.

I try to explain them.

I go through some of the Metapods research.

Things that are coming up these days.

Some new podcast episodes, loads of things in there.

But I try to make it as bullet point as I possibly can.

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there's a membership group that you can join.

It's, it's private.

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It's very safe space or you could share some of the most intimate things

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You are now listening to the hackmineage podcast.

The show that brings you guests for the women going through the Metapods journey.

I'm your host, Zora Benemou, a gerontologist,

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Because Metapods is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

Okay, well,

it's a real pleasure to have Dr. Michael Bader on this show again.

I'm so excited about this. Welcome.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me again.

Yeah, I just couldn't stop speaking with you.

It was so amazing that first episode that we did,

we covered a lot.

And so I will have that link in the show notes

so everyone can go and listen to it and catch up.

But this time I would really like to take a deeper dive

into some of the topics that that we went down.

We went, we covered and then if we can't give some really practical tips

that women can actually start using today.

And we talked about guilt and shame and these are the big roadblocks

to having a real real pleasure in midlife.

And so let's maybe put the woman

who is in Perry and post Metapods into contacts.

And we're thinking about someone in our 40s, 50s, up to 60s.

Can you explain what are the three most common reasons

that women in midlife feel that guilt and shame?

But I think we have to separate the response to that into two buckets.

One is the personal private legacy history

and sources of guilt and shame that she feels

from her own growing up in her family.

And I want to return to that in a minute.

And then the other is the sources of guilt and shame

that are in the social world

that have to do with how women are identified,

socialization, people's perceptions publicly

of a woman that age.

So there are different sources of guilt and shame

that come from each arena.

But let's just take the personal one first

because this is a little bit more difficult, I think,

to explain, but it's fundamental to understanding the ways

of which we inhibit sexual excitement.

Is that all of us have some residue of guilt and shame

from our growing up?

It's almost part of the human condition.

And it has to do with the fact that as children grow up,

they're attached in their families for security,

for actually for life and death,

dependent on the authority of their family

and in their ability to adapt to their family.

And that is to fit into the rules of the road

that your family lays down

and protecting those connections and attachments

is of utmost importance, developmentally.

So what does that mean?

So when you leave home, you leave home your 18,

you go to college, it means leaving the attachments

that have been so vital to your whole psyche.

And the idea that you might feel separation guilt

is just hardwired into the situation.

We all feel a little bit of that

or if we do better than a loved one,

we feel a little bit of survivor guilt

and that's almost part of the territory of being human.

And then if you think about shame,

we grow up in a herd that we depend on being able to fit in.

And if the herd judges us to be wrong, inadequate,

defective in any way,

it is a profoundly harmful feeling that we have.

That's shame is how we appear in the eyes of the other.

So we all have those feelings.

And then what I have discovered is that

and they are often not conscious,

but that what I found is a regularly interfere with

and inhibit sexual excitement.

And the one concept I want to make sure

that I add to the mix that's important

is I use a concept called ruthlessness.

And I say good sex, maximum sexual pleasure and excitement

requires some element of ruthlessness.

And people take umbrajada

because it sounds like I'm saying that aggression

or hostility is a necessary part of arousal.

And that's not what it means at all.

In my psychological tradition,

ruthlessness means to be without concern.

It's what babies experience

and toddlers vis-a-vis their mothers,

which is they take from the mother

and they don't take with a high regard or concern

for the effect of their taking on the mother.

That's what this guy in England,

Donald Winnecott called ruthlessness.

So I say in sexual excitement and desire,

there is an essential dimension of it

that has to do with using the other as an object.

Now, that's tricky territory, isn't it?

Because objectification is harmful.

We know that and it's been critiqued up and down

and should be.

But somebody described to me,

a woman said to me,

look, when I climax sexually,

I feel like it's a wave that builds and builds and builds

and then crashes on the shore.

And I don't want to have to worry

about whether the shore can take it.

So you want to be able to use,

but use and not harm the other person.

Now, good sex,

it also, we know,

depends on empathy and intuition,

reading the other person's cues,

being able to figure out what the other person needs,

all that good stuff that we know in our culture is important.

But this other element is also necessary for arousal.

And if one,

now here's the punchline,

if one feels undue concern

and care for the other,

the object of your desire,

then this ruthless part of your sexuality

can't be expressed and experienced

and excitement is diminished.

Same way,

if you feel too ashamed and defective in fear,

that state of being is incompatible

with maximum sexual arousal.

So we see these affective states

that undue worry and guilt about hurting you,

the shame-based sense of being inferior

and helpless and rejected.

Those states are both universal,

to some degree,

unconscious and always playing a little,

throwing a little bit of shade on sexual exuberance.

And we create sexual fantasies

in order to negate or counteract those affects.

And what happens when you counteract them,

you're able to express desire.

So those are complicated things.

Then you have to add one fourth thing

just to make this incredibly complicated.

Now you have the social judgments

about let's say women in their 50s and 60s,

postmenopausal women are not supposed to be sexual.

There is a phrase they call some women MILFs,

M-I-L-F,

which we don't have to say what that means.

Some women have turned that into a badge of honor,

but mostly it's disparaging.

It's saying you're an older woman and cheesy

or just you stand out because you're someone

I would like to have sex with

as if that's a rare thing and almost violates a code.

So a woman has to deal with that burden

also of socially being told in effect

that A, they're not the 25-year-old Cosmo model

in terms of beauty, desire and allure.

That's the shame part, right?

Is there in all of us,

but in women in this category.

And then you're not supposed to want sex.

You're not supposed to go out hunting for sex for God's sakes.

In fact, if you were telling your children

and grandchildren about your masturbating last night

and what you thought about,

everyone would become psychotic

and you'd be thrown into a mental hospital or something.

Why?

Not just because those levels of sexual detail

are usually forbidden from conversation,

but because you don't want to see your mother

or your grandmother or your grand aunt reveal

that she has those fantasies too.

Why are we like that?

Are there any cultures that don't?

That seem to break that?

I mean, I don't know in terms of erotic desire,

but certainly some of it has to do

with incest prohibitions.

I know it sounds a little psychoanalytic wacky,

but it's like you don't want to see your mother

as someone who's going around wanting to get laid all the time

or have sex or your grandmother for God's sakes.

So there's this sort of familial prohibitions

that have to do with that,

I think that have to play into it.

As well as the entire social industry

and capitalist machinery that has created

certain standards of beauty and behavior

that you see everywhere in every magazine,

every TV and show and movie.

And as a woman ages, she doesn't fit that bill.

She knows it.

Source of what?

Source of shame, little bit.

You can fight against it or whatever,

but it is still cooking around in the background somewhere.

Yeah, who wants to see their parents,

but we know that older adults do it plays an importance

on sex and arousal and desire,

but in our brains and especially our younger brains,

you just don't make that association or you say,

that's not supposed to happen.

You don't, yeah,

and I guess it's a sort of protective mechanism as well.

And okay, there's a reason for that.

But then the fallout is,

then we put a label on a woman of a certain age

or a man of certain age,

like you're not supposed to do that even older men.

Oh, you're a dirty old man.

You know, is it because if she wants to be sleeping with somebody,

we can't put these labels on these people

because then I could see where the guilt and the shame

and can come from.

And this is society placing this on us, right?

Absolutely, absolutely society.

And you think about the 1950s.

Now that's when I was born,

early 50s and post-war America men came back from the front.

Women had been working like my mother had been working

as a bank teller during the war.

The men came back and took those jobs.

And the women were basically let go

and were told, in effect,

the idea was that they would now raise families

in relatively alienated, isolated suburbs

apart from their kinship networks.

And there was a generation of millions of families

that were built on that foundation of a mother

who was supposed to derive all of her self-esteem

and worth from being a mother.

And as the 50s went on, of course,

you had people like Betty Friedan,

write books, The Feminine Mystique,

where she talked about the suffering of those women.

She called it the problem with no name

because they couldn't define what it was exactly

that they were suffering from.

But what they were suffering from was this

domesticated housewife mother fixation

that the culture had of her being a perfect mother.

So what was my point?

My point is there was a generation of women

who grew up in the 50s,

who were at a level of distress and unhappiness.

That was widespread.

Now, the question comes up in my own work

is that the children of these mothers

who had a lot of other traits,

this is generalizations 101.

I just, there's tons of individual variation.

But as a generalization, I think it's true.

And a generation of children grow up then

with the experience of very unhappy mothers.

Girls and boys have to see this in different ways.

So what do you do when you have an unhappy mother?

You worry about her?

You feel some guilt about doing

saying anything that might make things worse?

You feel sorry for her?

There's a part of you because you're a child

who feels even responsible like you're supposed

to help mommy feel better.

Now, you think about that psychic state

in induced, you might say,

in a whole generation of the children of these mothers.

They grow up with a lot of guilt.

It's not the traditional Jewish mother guilt,

but it's a kind of guilt that comes from the experience

of having unhappy parents towards whom you feel responsible

and for whom it's vital,

you're it's vitally important

that you figure out a way of getting along

in this relationship.

So you become a caretaker,

you become somebody who it's hard to leave home.

Sometimes when you leave home,

you sabotage yourself, have to come back.

It's hard to have more of the good things in life

than unhappy parents.

We call that survivor guilt.

So I'm just describing the vicissitudes of the ways

that we become guilty, worried caretakers.

And then, oh boy, that makes sex hard

because it's difficult, if not impossible,

to get excited if you have a relationship to the other.

That's a caretaking, empathic,

healing, even fixing, worried relationship.

And guess what happens in long-term relationships?

Exactly that.

I get to know you so well from the inside out.

I get to know almost when you're going to finish a sentence

where that intimate.

I can feel what's going on.

I can look at you and you look at me

in a certain way and I can read your moods.

All right, and that's not abnormal.

That's a good, intimate, long-term love relationship.

However, if ruthlessness is part of good sexual desire,

I can't be comfortably ruthless with you

because I'm worried about you.

And I care so much about the impact

of my words and actions on your interior life.

And an old psychoanalyst once said to me

after a conference, he said,

I've been doing couples therapy for 60 years.

He said, you know, it makes a good, successful marriage.

So what's that?

When they love the other person

for the way they're different

and that violates the normal wisdom is,

oh no, we fall in love because we share so much.

But he was pointing out this thing

about seeing the other person as an other

that he thinks is an important part of healthy love.

And I agree with him.

And it's also part of healthy sex

because if the other person is separate from you

is over there in a sense,

like a sturdy, independent, other agent,

then you don't worry as much about hurting them

with your desire,

with your wanting to use them,

with your selfish needs.

Is there not something you have to feel guilty about?

Yeah, it's crazy

because there's two different things

that are going on that we want in a relationship

and what we want in the bedroom.

And I guess maybe this is why people have affairs

and things happen and not.

But there was a question I sent to you earlier

and it was about Esther Perral

and she's a psychologist very well known

and she has a book called Meeting and Captivity.

And she calls this central tension of long-term relationships

since we're on this topic of long-term.

This was a great time to ask.

So she says that love seeks closeness and security.

While desire thrives on distance, mystery, and autonomy.

So couples want that safety, predictability,

emotional, attunement, and the erotic excitement.

So how in the world are we supposed to make this work?

Are we close or are we far?

Are we distant and mysterious

or we know each other's thoughts

and finish each other's sentences?

You see what I mean?

Yeah, I do.

With a natural course of sexual excitement, desire,

and a long-term intimate relationship

declines over time, period.

It does everywhere.

And it is exactly what Perral is talking about.

It's a function of intimacy.

But you see, if we say intimacy

somehow contributes to sexual boredom,

that doesn't make sense on the surface.

Until we look at what does intimacy

make difficult in sexual in the bedroom?

And what I'm saying is exactly this making this point

is that we want to abandon ourselves

and surrender someone to desire and pleasure

when we're in the bedroom.

And I'm going to be a little bit blunt here and,

but not too much.

But just to make sure that we understand

that in the intimate moments of sexual arousal,

the choreography and the fantasy life and the experience

contains at its best a certain letting go, doesn't it?

It's like let go and just let the cat out of the bag.

Okay, now if you let the cat out of the bag

but you worry unconsciously or not

about whether that cat is going to hurt the person

you love and you need and are attached to for your soul,

then guess what?

You're not going to let the damn cat out of the bag.

Is this also a little bit of ruthlessness

when you say cat out of the bag and letting go?

That's exactly what ruthlessness is.

It's like I was trying to find metaphors for it

but the woman that had the wave on the beach

or the letting go with abandon

or I think I might have mentioned last time

that I had a woman in treatment

who was a well-known feminist theorist

and she was very well-known, proud of it,

written a lot but she came and just seen me

because she had sexual fantasies that were bothering her

and making her feel ashamed.

The fantasy was making her shame

which was that she would be taken

and made to have sex with the janitor on her desk.

Somebody she didn't know, a big guy would throw her on the desk

and just ravish her.

And she reported to me and said,

that turns me on, I don't get it.

And it violates my whole sense of feminist principles

and the way I live my life.

But see, here was the thing.

It was actually a fantasy that dealt with her fear

of being too strong.

Her fear of being too strong.

Yes, her guilt about being too strong,

about her capacity, if she let it out of the bag.

Her belief was she hurt whoever she was with,

the man she was with, it went overwhelm him,

castrate him, make him feel burdened.

It would, but if she had a fantasy of this powerful man

being sexually ruthless with her,

then she could be ruthless,

experienced ruthlessness back at him.

She should not have to worry about hurting him.

He wouldn't worry about hurting her.

So when you get into the details of these fantasies,

you can see that they almost always involve some way.

The person is trying to disconfirm the gate overcome

some kind of belief or feeling in the guilt family

or the shame family.

That otherwise is getting in the way of their libido.

Yeah, we covered this so well in the first episode.

And your book as well,

the story of this woman exactly you're talking about

and so many stories.

I'm just amazed the things that happen

and go through life and interfere with their sexual life

from their pleasure and people come to seek you

because they're trying to find answers like,

why does my brain even go there?

I don't know why and feel guilty for having the thing

or perhaps, yeah, they're just people who can't have sex

with their own wife or because of so many norms

and social pressures or things that we grew up with.

And it reminds me a little bit about,

so I imagine different cultures have different problems

as well and what you're doing is looking

at mostly North Americans.

And I just, it reminds me,

there was this one sleep specialist

that I remember speaking to in Hong Kong,

but she was English.

And her client was from,

I don't remember which culture,

but where there was multiple marriages, okay?

And the woman was having sleep issues,

probably sex issues too, we don't know

because her husband said,

now she needs to take a second job

so he can have a second wife.

So you can imagine this psychology in there

and it's just an example of different cultures

must have a whole other can of worms

that could be really interesting to try to understand.

Really interesting because the social narrative

that we live in and in many ways are shaped

by these expectation monogamy.

And let's say you were visiting a community

where they practice polygamy.

So the social norms very different than ours

would be very threatening to most of us in various ways.

But none of that bears on the question

of how they get sexually excited or not.

So let's say you're one of four wives.

Now that can impact you in every way you can imagine

but how does it impact you in the bedroom?

In other words, does it contribute

to the conditions under which you can get sexually aroused

or not?

And I would say it would have to impact

but I don't know exactly how it would.

But of course, you know, these expectations

that are around us that we grow up in,

the rules of the road, so to speak, of a culture,

infect every part of life and have to intrude

in the bedroom, but still the issue of sexual desire

and letting the cat out of the bag question

is I think going to be there regardless of the culture.

How the culture navigates it

or it creates conditions under which it can get addressed.

I'm sure it's really highly varied.

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Now let's get back to the show.

Let's then give some practical tips

as I'm thinking about the woman who is struggling,

whether it's because, I guess it's very different

if you're in a long-term marriage.

Like you said, this dichotomy,

how do you even deal with this?

And it sounds like part of it is being able to get rid

of those feelings of guilt, shame, fear.

And then being able to let go or sense of ruthlessness

and then have that, I guess it's like an ebb and flow

because your partners could be going,

we don't know what's going through his or her head

or whatever that is,

but you wanna have this connection during the sexual act

and you wanna have the experience

and if you're togetherness,

but at the same time when you say letting go

and not sort of carrying so much worried

about the other person, it doesn't mean you don't care.

I can see where it doesn't become a problem.

Like how do you navigate this

and how would that be different for a woman who's?

How do you not care about the person you're with?

I mean, if you hear me say,

well, the problem is you cared too much

about the person you're with, you care about how they feel,

the solution must be to not care.

No, you can't not care.

That's why there's a tendency over a long period of time

and an intimate relationship for a sexual arousal

and desired and diminished, right?

So what can you do?

Well, one thing we haven't talked about is do you masturbate?

So when you think about sexual health,

your show has pioneered discussions

about hormone replacement therapy

and we know diet, exercise, sleep are all parts

of creating the physiologic conditions

under which you can experience desire.

But of course, now you're still up

against these inhibitory roadblocks.

So as a number of things,

depending on the person that I would suggest,

one is if we come to understand that they feel

they can't date, let's say, because they're ashamed.

They have an expectation they'll be rejected

for their age and their body, okay?

Then I've explored with them the history of that,

how they acquire that painful judgment

about themselves being defective.

That's what I call a pathogenic belief.

It's not based in objective scientific reality.

They're not actually defective.

So psychotherapy helps uncover some of these beliefs

and exposes them to the rational light of day

that someone can start to modify those beliefs.

Or they worry that they're in bed

and their partner is gonna be burdened

by having to take so long to help them orgasm.

It takes so long for me to orgasm

and I'm so worried that Bob is gonna,

it's just boring to him.

So that's guilt.

Or pressure that you have to go fast.

Well, it's pressure, but it's plays on your inclination

to feel guilty like you're supposed to be the girl

who's pleasing Bob all the time.

That's your job.

Bob's welfare matters more than yours.

You're supposed to take care of old Bob over there.

But maybe that's something that you can work to undo.

Like you don't have to take care of Bob.

Maybe Bob should just take care of himself in bed

a little bit more.

So that doesn't even care.

And we're making these stories in our head

that he really cares.

Like we're worried about him.

He's not exactly right.

It's exactly right, of course.

And you can even, if you have a certain kind of relationship,

you can even talk to Bob about this a little bit.

You could say, Bob, I just want to surrender

to the pleasure of this great moment

and not have to worry about you.

Is that okay, dude?

I mean, that's silly.

You would probably, most people wouldn't have that conversation,

which you could in some situation.

And then that would just make your irrational worry

more explicit and you could change it.

And, but the other thing is that it also has to be okay.

Now, this is more complicated to not feel

a lot of sexual desire.

You see, because we have a critic up here.

I think of it as standing on the balcony,

looking down at the dance floor.

The dance floor is the choreography of everyday life.

And we're up here on the balcony trying to look at it.

But up here on the balcony with us

are some pretty harsh critics.

And one of them is saying, you're too old to date,

your ugly, your body isn't what it was when you were 25.

Don't even try, just stay home and watch TV.

That's a critical shameer up here.

That makes sexual excitement pretty difficult, right?

Or don't go out here robbing the cradle.

You look ridiculous.

You're an older woman looking for a hot guy or something.

Come on, act your age, act your age.

The shaming voice from the balcony over and over again.

So, one of the things that a woman could do

either in conversation with privately listening

to your podcast, talking to other women being in a group,

going to a therapist is to try to redress

and lower the noise of this shamer

that's always looking at her and finding her wanting.

And then the other thing is that she's supposed

to be a caretaker, isn't she?

As women are bred and evolutionarily inclined

to be caretakers.

And there are so many forces that socialize women

to do it and that make that appealing to women

to do just that.

But you know what, being a caretaker is great for love.

It's not always so great for sex.

And that's what we were talking about before.

If you are committed in veteran caretaker

and that's what you do,

it's hard to get really turned on

and really just let the cat out of the bag.

And then people develop, why I asked about masturbation

is that I would ask a woman that says,

I have no sexual desire to say,

well, do you ever masturbate?

Now, of course, there's a lot of prohibitions

against masturbation as well.

That's not an easy road.

If she says she does, then I would ask her

if we had enough trust to tell me about

what she thinks about when she masturbates

because that's a sexual fantasy.

And once we learn what it is,

it opens the door to understanding

so much about her

and about the dilemmas that brought her in to see me

to begin with.

It's one of the tactics,

a lot of the sex parts I've interviewed

is before you even go into the bedroom with someone else,

figure out what you like.

And that includes, that requires masturbation

or what feeling yourself, what turns you on,

and that whole exploration.

So it kind of, I guess one of your patients was saying no,

I don't know if that would be one of the solutions

is because how can you tell your partner what you want

because part of the solution is saying,

have that communication that I like it this way

and out that way, but if you don't know what you want,

then how is he gonna, or is she gonna ex-guess?

That's really interesting.

So you can find that out a little bit

through masturbation or watching certain, I guess,

porn websites that have a menu of things

that appeal to you.

Nowadays, of course, there is not a single sexual fetish

or interest that isn't findable on the web.

It's extraordinary as anyone who does it knows.

And so that's a very interesting invitation

for someone to say like, what turns you on?

How do you know?

What did turn you on?

And here's that trick to the question though,

is that some, we'll say, some women will say to me,

I don't think of anything when I touch myself.

I just think of my own body

and I feel the pleasure of my own body.

All right, so there's no mentation,

there's no storyline up here, right?

But then it's like, oh, wait,

but what kind of men are you attracted to?

Who's your poster boy?

Who's the, who's even the Hollywood guy

that you think is just so hot?

Once you start talking about sexual preferences,

you're in the world of sexual fantasies.

It's the same thing, exactly the same thing.

Yeah, a guy I saw was drawn to,

there is a type of modeling and imagery

in women's magazines.

It's called heroin chic.

That's an odd name, heroin chic.

And it's a young woman who looks kind of,

who's advertising something, clothing, cosmetic something,

but she looks very worn out and desiccated,

like she's really just recovering from a bad night.

And you think, well, what's appealing about that?

Huh? What?

And in this guy's mind is that she's already damaged.

I don't have to worry about damaging her.

Well, crazy.

And so it's like all of a sudden,

oh, I don't have to worry about damn sure.

Oh, I guess Fred, because you do worry about damaging a woman.

Oh, yeah.

And then once you get that question on the table,

you've opened up a door to the whole psychotherapy, actually.

So do you see any themes in this women in midlife

are going through in terms of the source of their issues

or is it just too varied like everybody's so different?

Well, it's universal in the sense that they're afflicted

with something in the family of affects and beliefs

that I'm calling guilt, worry, responsibility, omnipotence.

And they have residues of feelings and beliefs

in the family of shame, rejection, inferiority, and helplessness.

Now, those I'm going to look for those themes

and then added on to that are all the social judgments

about women of that age are not supposed

to want to have any kind of sex, much less dirty sex

or much less ruthless sex, mon.

So I think you have impinging from the outside every magazine

and then you have an internal life that's highly varied

but has to do with those two families of inhibitions.

It's also really complex in a sense

that only psychoanalyst can actually pick these apart

and go help you dig out the reasons why

because I think as I was listening to your book,

I was like, God, I guess that makes perfect sense.

I would have never thought that could be the reason.

Yeah.

So for women who's listening now and she's thinking,

oh yeah, this kind of resonates with me

and I think it has to do with my mom or my religion

or my whatever, where do you think she should start

in terms of to unpack this?

Yeah, that's a good question.

That's very difficult to answer

because it would be something like this.

It would be like, okay, if you had in your mind

that Bader was onto something when he said guilt and shame

were the two families of things that hold me back

and that my preferences and fantasy life are attempts

to overcome those two things somehow.

That's a big first step.

It's like if you were to just think about it

almost pragmatically.

Okay, so you start with I like tough looking women.

You'd have to actually do a little self interrogation.

That's not easy.

What do I like?

What do I like in the world?

Who am I attracted to?

What stories turned me on have appealed to me?

But let's say you do that and you come upon this conclusion

that let's say you're a woman and say,

I really like tough looking men,

men who seem rugged, independent and strong.

They look that way, they feel that way.

I may even sense they are that way in their life.

You say, oh, that kind of appeals to me.

So then the thing is you don't have to get rid of that.

Like that's fine.

That's like a source of attraction.

That's just normal fine.

Enjoy yourself.

But if your question is what does that mean,

then you take the next step and you say,

well, how does a rugged, tough, independent man

make me feel safe from the threats posed by guilt and shame

or shame, one or the other.

That's the next question.

You say, oh, well, maybe a tough rugged man

is somebody I don't have to worry about.

Oh, so I worry about my male other, huh?

What do you worry about?

I worry they're welfare.

I worry if they're happy.

I worry if they like me.

I worry if they don't seem calm and comfortable

with their skin.

I worry about these guys normally.

Oh, okay, well, I can see how the fantasy

and the preference of a tough rugged man

then makes a lot of sense for you, doesn't it?

Yes.

Now, that's not an easy process to go through.

And at the end of it, what does it get you?

It's like, okay, that's why I like tough rugged independent man.

Yeah.

But it might also tip you off to,

oh, I worry about men too, damn much, don't I?

I worry about burning them, being stronger than them.

I'm supposed to be one down and make their egos feel good.

Oh, I'm supposed to flatter and make them feel like big shots.

That's my job.

Now you're into a world where you could make some choices

and not feel that way.

Not easy, boy, no, it is not easy to not feel that way,

because the world expects you to feel that way,

but it's possible.

How long does it take for you to help someone decipher

and pull some of these things out?

Some people I've been seeing for eons

and we never talk about anything involving

their sexual fantasy life.

And then I have some people that have come in

and in one session, I can propose at least a hypothesis

about what's going on in the damn bedroom.

And that's because I get a little background

and if the person tells me some details

about their sexual fantasy life or behavior,

then I can very often decode it and link it

to something that might even be a topic for,

wait for it, therapy down the road.

And I can do that quickly if I get details,

but it's very hard to get details

because most of us, we are not used to talking

about the details of our sexual fantasy life with anybody.

Yeah, you heard stories.

Even our partners, right?

Yeah.

People that go, I really like it when you hold me down

or see, I think some version of dominance, submission,

Saddle, masochistic, fantasies are very common

and they're forbidden.

They're forbidden in any age group,

but in older or middle age or older women,

I think it's something that if they were to be put

in a truth serum chamber and they had to be,

and they masturbated and then they had to describe

what it was that they thought about during the time

they were masturbating, often it would involve themes

of power, dominance and submission of some kind

because those fantasies are antidotes to feeling guilt.

And it's like your brain is trying

to have a workaround for you.

It is because the theory here is not that radical

is that we can only feel these sexual desire

if it is safe to do so.

Just like in therapy, you're not going to bring up

painful, intimate details of your past

until it's safe to do so.

In sex life, in sexual life, you can only experience

around so if it's safe to experience it

and then the obvious question is,

oh well, what makes it unsafe, guilt and shame?

So our minds are very creative.

They just say, oh, I still want to feel pleasure

because we are wired to want to feel pleasure.

We don't have to take some super drug to feel,

to want to feel pleasure.

We don't have to have a part of our brain

electromagnetically stimulated to want to feel pleasure.

It is hardwired.

We want pleasure.

But a lot of people may find pleasure in risky behaviors,

let's say, overeating, over drinking,

that I guess get that dopamine head.

And so I think we are hardwired.

Why do some people go to those ways to find pleasure

rather than, okay, I'm going to work on myself,

my sexual pleasure, because I guess it's easier

to eat something, I don't know.

No, it's true.

I'll tell you one thing I have told patients.

And also, when I teach, it's one of the things

that I teach.

I say, look, they're working through the human mind.

We can make it seem all complicated

and abstract, into Freudian, Metatherian.

But there's a simple way of describing

what gets people who see me into trouble.

One thing, they come in, they have a complaint.

Some symptom, they're feeling unhappy at work.

They're obsessional and make lists and they're ADHD.

The human mind is motivated to avoid suffering and distress.

Okay, it doesn't seem like a news flash, right?

Our minds are always predicting threat and danger

because it's evolution.

It helped us survive our brain

and our brains are always predicting the next thing.

And I know it's silly, but if I turn around like,

I know I'm gonna see that door, right?

My mind predicts what I'm going to see when I turn.

My mind's are always doing that.

So our minds are always predicting

not just that there's a door, but predicting like,

if I go into this door, I might be embarrassed.

Or if I ask her out on a date, she might reject me.

Or if I really do this to her and badge,

she'll feel like I'm dominating.

There's a prediction of danger.

And then the mind says, oh no,

we're not gonna feel that danger is thing.

We're gonna do something else to not feel it.

But the thing we do to not feel it

is often the thing that causes us pain.

I use this silly example of someone who is radically

agoraphobic, can't leave the house.

His wife drives and forces him to come see me.

He experiences danger out in the world, doesn't he?

That's the danger.

So what does he do?

His solution is to stay indoors, make sense?

But staying indoors is ruining his life.

And that simple model is what happens

with almost everybody that I see in therapy.

So with sex in the bedroom,

we are always anticipating,

because we know ourselves danger of some kind,

the danger that I'm gonna hurt you,

the danger I'm gonna burden you.

My needs are gonna make you feel bad.

I'm gonna be too selfish.

I'm gonna expose myself to your judgment,

that you're gonna hate me, reject me.

I'm just like, I'm panimining it,

because obviously we're not always thinking

those big traumas, but those are always there.

So those voices make it impossible for me to get aroused.

And I gotta figure out a way to work around it.

And I encourage my patients to figure out ways

to work around it.

So you like the idea of dominating your husband,

being the top, and he doesn't like it.

The reason you like to be the top

is because you have this thing that has to do,

again, guilt and work, guilt,

that if you're strong, you're gonna hurt the other person.

So when you have a domination fantasy,

you are strong, but the other person gets aroused.

You know what I mean?

This is the key to bondage and discipline

and Saddlemaskistic sexual is that on both parts,

they get to experience the,

let the cat out of the bag, ruthless,

aggressive, selfish force of desire,

but they don't have to worry about injuring the object.

I wonder if the generation now, a younger generation,

because in your, and I thought about this,

because in your book, you had a young 27 year old man

have an issue, we've just got married,

he can't have sex with his wife, he's blocked.

And it seemed to be, and I have a son, who's 27,

and so I'm always thinking, oh, this generation,

it seems like this younger generation

is having less sex than maybe my generation

or even older, I don't know.

But I'm wondering if there's any kind of,

it seems to the world, especially in the US,

it's very PC and very feminist and very,

to be, and this was part of his trauma,

it was difficult to overcome,

because he learned you shouldn't be treating a woman like this,

and you shouldn't be taking advantage of her,

and his wife was, I want to have sex with you,

but she also had some sexual abuse or something,

and you don't want to be careful,

like, is there anything that you think

is going to happen to this generation?

Why you describe it's very important that we can say

that the woke sensibility that has to do with everything

from respecting boundaries to sensitize in yourself

to power, objectification, gender asymmetries,

and all that, you could say,

you have as a principled, value driven moral universe.

You could say, that's the one I want to live in,

and you can see that there are elements in that

can actually affect you in the bedroom,

and the one you mentioned is the main one,

actually, is the idea that,

I just said, well, we could oppose objectification,

but see, there's an element of objectification

that I think is a necessary part of ruthlessness.

Now, that's weird, but it's true.

I think that there's something,

because it's the let the cat out of the bag thing,

man, I don't want to have to worry about you,

like, I want to have you be a thing

that I can for just that five seconds or that minute,

that I could use for my own pleasure selfishly

and not have to feel like I'm ruining your life

like I'm a domineering abusive, aggressive, sadist monster.

And so these things do actually sometimes conflict,

and then you have to have some negotiation, don't you?

Because there's really a sexual fantasy you might have

if you masturbate, okay?

But then in the real world,

you have to negotiate that fantasy

with another person, don't you?

So I had a woman in treatment whose fantasy was two guys,

a three-way, two guys and her,

is say, well, how does that solve the problem of guilt

and shame?

Well, two ways at the same time.

One is, she's getting double the attention.

So attention is an antidote to shame and inferiority,

all that.

She's getting double the attention.

And she doesn't have to worry about wearing one guy out

or hurting one guy, because he's got a wingman.

He's got a, he's part of a troop, you know what I mean?

Now, that isn't an argument in favor of gang sex

or anything like that.

This is a fantasy we're talking about.

And I think it's so important to distinguish the two things.

I was on a TV show years ago with about porn

and with a woman who had written a book

about how destructive porn was to relationships.

And I guess they had me on thinking I would defend porn,

which I wasn't.

But what I did say was,

what if a guy gets excited by a porn

that in which there's multiple men on one woman?

It doesn't mean he wants to go home and gang bang his wife.

Yeah, I know.

So it seems clear with all the fantasies

that you've had in this story.

Like, yeah, that's what's so troubling.

Why people feel shame for having something

that they would never do in real life.

Oh, never in a million years.

I mean, after the show that producer came up to me

and said, oh, you know, there was a lot of,

people were disturbed by your interview.

And I said, why?

So because you used the word gang bang.

I said, this is a show about porn.

You have a section on porn.

He said, well, it's a morning show.

It's a women and children watching.

But my whole point was that if you,

that what you get turned on by in porn

isn't what you want to take away as a script

and rewrite it at home with your partner.

Although there's overlap, it's not the same thing

because sex in the real world has to be negotiated.

Obviously with someone else.

So it's not coercive.

The person's not really a thing.

Ready?

You can have a kind of wishful.

I use you as a thing, kind of element of sensibility.

But in reality, the person's not really a thing.

I remember the last question I had in my head.

You mentioned something about women don't need to feel full pleasure.

If she, I guess if she doesn't want to or it's not.

I'm guessing it's because you said that it's,

we feel so much pressure that we should feel arousal and pleasure.

I mean, it would be great.

I think a lot of women want that who is listening.

If you're listening now, then you probably do.

But maybe you said it's okay to not want to.

And that's so important because you might take away

from the show that they think we should go home and masturbate.

No, that might be interesting experiment.

But the other thing to know is just this.

That if you have the freedom to be fully self accepting

and not shamed in any way confident about the fact that,

yeah, I'm still a good person who loves my partner

and I don't have sexual desires.

First of all, you don't say that in public.

It's embarrassing, blah, blah, blah.

But if you can make that be okay,

then you have the freedom to actually explore

moments of sexual desire and attraction.

If you get off your back, the idea that you're supposed to

because I can tell you that in groups that I'm in,

when couples who've been together a long time,

if the subject of sex comes up,

everybody makes some embarrassed indication that,

well, that's an old memory or that's not high on the menu

or some throwaway line that suggests,

yeah, we don't have sex, but we're not gonna talk about it

because it's something mildly embarrassing about it.

Like we're supposed to be in heat all the time.

And we're not and we are not.

Then we might have the freedom to explore

what we might like to do on occasion

to give ourselves and our body's pleasure,

which is one of the things our minds and bodies desire.

Yeah, it's a tactic that's been recommended

by other people I've interviewed where you in the bedroom,

you just explore no intent to orgasm or have penetrations

more about exploring what they do.

And it's okay if you don't.

That's a good point.

That brings this right into the sex therapy world

where that is a common recommendation.

It's just lie with your partner.

Touch each other in a way that is pleasurable,

but there's no expectation what,

in fact, it's formally declared.

This is not about anybody coming to orgasm.

And if you're a rouse, great,

and if you're not a rouse, great, that's fine.

And it's to inoculate yourself

and expose you to the possibility

that your body can experience some pleasure.

Yeah, it's a good,

it's I think it's a good recommendation.

It's a good place to start if you want to,

it takes that pressure off that a lot of women may feel

like have to keep up or,

but I want to work on this and not.

And I always think there's a fomo going on.

Me, I'm like, there must,

there's a whole world out there.

Maybe I don't even know about.

And I'm curious,

and the kind of curious person says,

yeah, that's why even though I kind of would say,

well, it's for me personally,

it's not just, okay,

let's just keep it.

I'm a biohacker who wants to optimize health.

Why?

What if you were referred to as a milk?

Do you find that flattering or degrading?

It's a bit new in the big,

it's kind of like, oh, you find me attractive.

I'm like, oh, it's a compliment,

but at the same time you go,

well, wait a second, and you calling me old.

It's, yes, and no.

That's very interesting, isn't it?

Both parts of it, yeah.

Yeah.

It can be both.

It can both.

For me, it's not very clear.

The initial is, okay, I'm attractive,

but then you're like, yeah.

Well, I'll just give you one quicky vignette

that one of my first patients

when I was in psychoanalytic training.

His sexual fantasy,

when he was a teenager,

was having sex with a friend of his mothers

in a secluded place on the beach near where they lived.

The analyst I was presenting this to,

of course, thought this was the edipus complex,

and really it was the boy's sexual desires for his mother.

And he was completely wrong.

It what it really was, he had a mom

that was like one of these moms I described in the 50s,

was quite unhappy.

Okay, unhappy mom.

Now, in the sexual fantasy,

he's with a younger, slightly younger friend

with his mothers, who's sexual

and wants to have sex with him.

So now we have an older woman

who is sexually alive and not depressed.

So if somebody's sexually excited

by definition that communicates, I'm not hurt.

I'm not suffering, isn't that me?

So in a lot of pornographic fantasy,

everybody in the scene has to be turned on

because the excitement communicates.

No one's being hurt here.

No one to worry about here.

Everyone's having fun.

Everyone's having fun.

No one's suffering here.

No one has to be taken care of.

It's incredible.

I love the analysis, I guess, of things

that we never even thought of.

And I think it could be very helpful

for the women who are struggling right now

in this time of life.

And who want to have their sex life

or want to find pleasure,

just maybe not knowing how.

They've already tried the creams and the gels and HRT

and all the lubricants and the toys.

And that's why you're here

because you can give some insight.

So before we wrap up,

is there any advice that you would give a woman

in midlife where she could start right now?

I think one of the things is

if she can find some place, a friend, probably,

they're probably not her partner,

where the subject of sex could be brought up in some detail.

And what I mean by in some detail

is not just throw away lines like,

yeah, I'm not having any sex

or I haven't wanted to have sex in a year or something like that.

But we're actually, she could learn what it is

that interests her.

Now, that could be through conversation.

It could be as we said earlier

through masturbation and pornography.

It could be just with self-reflection

is that there are things that can give you pleasure.

It doesn't matter whether they're weird,

off the block, unconventional,

unseemly for a woman, it doesn't matter.

There are things that can give you pleasure.

They have a right to have

and that you have a right to not seek out at the same time.

And if there are things that are interesting to you

and pleasurable,

then you should sort of take a little bit of a dive into

what those things are, what they feel like.

And if that eventually ends up in a situation

where you can act them out with a person in the world,

great, if not and they remain private, that's fine too.

So that's what I would say.

Wonderful.

I will thank you so much.

Dr. Michael Bader, I have your links to your website

and your book.

I think it's fascinating.

And if anybody needs to reach out to you,

how are your contacts in the show notes?

And so I really look forward to talking to you again.

And thank you so much for everyone

who's listened to the very end.

And I hope this has been helpful.

And thank you, Dr. Bader, for-

Thank you, Zora, for having me on.

I love your show.

It's really important.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

See you next time.

Bye, yes, bye.

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