How Sexual Mindfulness Can Increase Intimacy with Dr. Chelom Leavitt

In today's episode of It Starts With Attraction, we talk all about how important sexual mindfulness is, how to practice it, and how it can increase intimacy between you and your spouse.

Today's Guest: Dr. Chelom Leavitt
Dr. Chelom Eastwood Leavitt grew up in Yakima, Washington with seven sisters and one brother. She attended BYU as an undergraduate in Economics and then went to J. Reuben Clark Law School. One the first day of law school Chelom met David Leavitt and they married after their first year of law school. Chelom practiced family and estate law for years and then returned to get her Master’s degree in Marriage, Family, and Human Development. In 2010 Chelom was invited to be a Fulbright Fellow in Ukraine and teach in Schevshenko University in Kyiv. She also ran a research study in Ukraine on how religious and secular traditions were associated with couple and parent-child relationship well-being.

Chelom Leavitt received her PhD from Penn State. She is an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University. She studies healthy sexuality in committed relationships and focuses on how mindfulness during sex may be associated with positive outcomes for both men and women. Dr. Leavitt’s work on sexual mindfulness included an intervention to teach couples how to be mindful during sexual experiences. This research taps into how the sexual experience is full of meaning, emotions, as well as physical sensations.

Additionally, Dr. Leavitt’s examines how women experience and contribute to sex differently than men–and that’s great for both women and men! Dr. Leavitt’s recent publications include cross-cultural work on sexual mindfulness, women’s sexual response cycles, and a study examining the role of orgasm in sexual and relational satisfaction for men and women.

Chelom and David Leavitt have been married for 31 years and they have eight children ranging from 29 to 4 years old. Four of their eight children are married and these wonderful couples have brought Chelom and David four granddaughters.

Link to Dr. Leavitt's website: chelomleavitt.com

Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships

Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com

Take the Attraction Assessment

Thanks for listening!

Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes

Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and leave a review!

WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!

Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!

Transcript

0:30

There's a process to falling in love. And it starts with attraction. Join Kimberly beam homes and our special guests as they discuss how to become the most attractive you can be physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, or as we refer to it. Working on your pies will teach you how to have better relationships and become more attracted to others, and maybe more importantly, to yourself. It starts with attraction. And it starts now everyone, I am so excited to dive into this episode today with you. I want to let you know on the front end, though, that this is an episode where we talk very openly and frankly, about sex. So be sure you are in the right location. There's no little ears around you put those air pods in, so that you can listen to this conversation without worrying about who else may hear it. But I'll tell you this, it's it's not vulgar or anything like that. We just talked about sex between a husband and a wife in a very open in a very frank way and I know that you will get a lot of value from it. Let's dive into this episode. I'm really excited to talk today with Dr. Shalom, love it. She is an assistant professor out at Brigham Young University where she researches sexual function, sexual mindfulness, and the connections between sex and relationship well being and I know that my audience is going to love this topic. So we're gonna dive in on how can we be more present, accepting and non judgmental when it comes to having better and healthier sex lives in our marriage? Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Shalom lovin. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, you know, I mean, I think one thing that people face across the world, really is that we feel a little heightened anxiety and a little judgmental of ourselves or our partner during our in our sexual relationships. And, you know, what we, what we know is that anxiety is the enemy to arousal. And so, slowing down, being able to be a little more mindful, less judgmental, more aware of the moment seems to be a really good antidote for those who are struggling with any of these, you know, troubling issues in their sexual relationship. And what's interesting is from my research, and we've done a few interventions, kind of watching couples after we teach them about sexual mindfulness, watching them for months into the into the future, as they practice this is that even well functioning couples can benefit from this, this presence of being mindful during their sexual relationship. I love that. Tell me a little bit more about the research that you've done. So have these been studies? What's What have you been researching in these studies? I always love hearing more about that. Yeah. So we've we've kind of approached it from, you know, a number of perspectives. First of all, we did some survey research where we asked people, you know, how would you judge yourself on these items? And then we kind of, you know, did the statistics and saw what the associations were between these different variables. And then we did some longitudinal work, where we followed people as they answered these different questions. And we found that sexual mindfulness seems to be a really important component for sexual wellbeing, not just sexual satisfaction, right? Not just like, oh, yeah, that was a good experience. But even as basic as how frequently they have sex, how frequently they kiss, how frequently, a number of different sexual activities occur, but also how consistent their orgasms are. So we're talking about sexual functioning, as well as the connectedness and the satisfaction that come along with the sexual relationship. And then to kind of be a little more thorough, we did an intervention where we recruited some couples who were in committed relationships, either cohabiting for a year, or married. And we then taught them about more nuanced elements of sexual mindfulness. And we had them rate themselves before this intervention and then afterward, and then we followed them for about six months, every couple months, asking them follow up questions on all of these different items. And what we found was that there was a huge increase from before and after the intervention, and that increase stuck with them through the remaining money. It's that we followed them. So this is something that's long lasting, right? This is a change that couples can effectuate in their relationship, and it sticks. What do you think is the biggest thing that either a man or a woman is looking for? When it comes to them saying my sex life is satisfying? So is it the orgasm? Is it the, you said a bunch of different things that you were looking at? But what's the most important thing that people are hoping to get out of it? Well, you know, I'm not gonna pretend that I know what everybody thinks. But I can tell you in general, what we have what we've learned. And men and women are different, which shouldn't surprise anybody. But men place a little more importance on the frequency, and the orgasm consistency. And so what we know is that that's a little more of a linear relationship between those two attributes, and sexual satisfaction. Okay, for women, it's a little different, and it's a little more complicated. Women do care about those things orgasm and frequency. But maybe a bigger piece of their pie is that it also needs to include relational quality, right, relational, flourishing, the emotional connection. And again, it's not that that's unimportant to men. It's just that these other elements seem to be a little more weighted when it comes to sexual satisfaction. And so sexual mindfulness, let's talk about that. Let's talk first about what it is. And then secondly, why you believe sexual mindfulness led to an increase on so many of these measures things. Yeah, well, so sexual mindfulness really has two components, it's being more aware of your present moment. And also being less judgmental, of whatever the experiences that you're having at the moment. And when we apply this to sex, it's a little more difficult than like, I think, I think this trend of mindfulness is kind of sweeping, you know, the world, and everybody's trying to be a little more mindful. But mindfulness in my daily life is quite different than mindfulness. When I'm engaging in a sexual activity with my partner, I feel heightened anxiety, I feel more judgmental of my own body, we start being a lot more critical, once we're naked, and trying to share you know, this very intimate experience with with another person. So being mindful during sex is going to be more difficult than being mindful in my everyday life. So what I tell people is, start off with being mindful in your everyday life, right Get, get a good understanding of what it means to meditate, to slow your mind down for maybe just 10 minutes a day. We know from research that 10 minutes a day of meditation seems to have a significant impact on how well people are able to be more intentional, less judgmental, and more aware of their circumstances. So then we have a few activities that in our interventions, and in some of my, in some of my work on my website, we start to kind of give little activities that people can try to practice being mindful during sex, right, like one really good activity is called hugging to relax. And, or a mindful embrace. And here, you're fully clothed, actually. And you're just standing on your own two feet. And you just have this loose embrace with each other. And you're focused on your breathing like you would during any normal meditation. But you're also aware of how it feels to be in proximity to your partner, what, what sorts of thoughts or feelings does that bring up. And then after you've, you know, kind of done this, this hug for about five or 10 minutes. You, you can then talk, right? This is just all silent. This hugging to relax is done in silence. You're just introspective. And then once you're finished with it, you can just debrief with each other what what was that like what came up for you? What's interesting to me is how powerful something that simple is for partners who maybe have some underlying anxieties or tension or other issues that they haven't brought up maybe it's even joy, that they just kind of have suppressed and haven't really let that be expressed. So that's just one way we kind of encouraged a number of different activities for couples to slow down this process of physical intimacy, and really start paying attention to the details to the nuance of what's going on during this interaction. What's so interesting is that, you know, we'll hear statistics like men can go from start to finish in a sexual experience in five minutes. And I think, well, you know, that they can, right physically they can. But at what cost? Right? Are we really missing a lot of the tender connections that could be shared during that experience. And when we slow it down, not only are we giving space for those sorts of connections to occur, but we're also helping women who take a little longer in their arousal process. So there's a number of reasons that we know, sexual mindfulness will contribute to the emotions the emotional connection that you feel. But for some people as important, the physical functioning during sex, let's talk about sexual dysfunctions too. So erectile dysfunction, vaginal SMIS, different things like that? how can sexual mindfulness help? Or do they help? Yes, things like that, that a couple may be experiencing? Yeah, you know, we have some really good research out there, Laurie Broto. She's a Canadian researcher. And she's actually done a number of studies looking at women who have sexual dysfunction, and all of those that you just mentioned, and others, right, low desire, low arousal. And what we've found is that this process of slowing down, particularly for women, helps them reconnect with their body, so that some of these problems, but particularly low arousal, and low desire, seem to kind of fade, right, they have less of an issue with these dysfunctions. Sometimes with pain, right? When we're feeling pain during intercourse, our participants will still report that there is a level of pain, but that it has diminished and doesn't seem to be as dominating in the sexual experience. So they are enjoying sex more. And the pain has diminished somewhat as well. And then any effects for men? With Yes, eye activation or anything like that. Yeah. So again, I myself have not done this research yet. But what we do know some other researchers have looked at both erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation, which are the two big ones, the two big sexual dysfunctions for men. And what they have found preliminary results, these were small samples, but preliminary results that this really has a significant effect on him. Again, because especially with erectile dysfunction, we know so much of that is actually not physical, although some part of it is it's a lot of it is psychological. Right. And same with premature ejaculation. We're getting way too aroused way too quickly. And that's difficult to pull back. And once men are in that pattern of feeling like they're not quite in control of it, it seems to just be a downward spiral. Right? So sexual Mindfulness helps people slow down this process, get a little comfortable with these intense emotions of intimacy, which is often the cause of a lot of the anxiety is that we are a culture that is not comfortable with deep intimacy. And so when we get into these relationships, for truthfully, we want to have that we're very uncomfortable, and we're not skilled at being able to engage in really deep intimacy. Yeah, I remember when I was going through my training as a marriage and family therapist, I had a supervisor who was very heavy in EFT so they Emotionally Focused Therapy. And she talked about how kind of her like big goal for all of our clients was to be able to look each other in the eyes during orgasm. And how difficult that is even for couples who have been married for decades. Yes. Right. And so to your point, it's so right, like, there's a lot of vulnerability, especially in that kind of moment. Yeah, and it's terrifying, terrifying for a lot of people. And I think what this does is help people break that down. Right, the first time you tried to be mindful during sex, it's probably not going to go perfectly. In fact, it might even kind of create a lot of, you know, giggles that's what a lot of pee they they just start laughing. It's like, this is ridiculous. We can't, we can't slow it down like this. And so they have to try a few times. Right and, and understand that there's a purpose behind what we're act as an act, asking that this practice has, you know, kind of a slow build. And that that's what we're looking for. You know, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Dr. David snobbish. I love his work. And he actually has a chapter you what you just said reminded me of this, he has a chapter on eyes wide open sex. And that's really what we're talking about. Can we openly acknowledge that we want to be intimate in every way, emotionally, physically, spiritually, right, in every way, we want to be open and intimate with this person. Most people would say, yeah, no, that's, that's too scary. That's hard. And those that want to, they're going to have to learn some skills to get there. Right? Absolutely. So you've given us some ways that this can look in just pre sex type stuff, right? Hugging to relax, or the mindful embrace that you talked about? But what, what does this look like? Or what are some tools and tips or practices we can use actually, during sex that it looks like to slow it down and be my sexually mindful? Yeah, so you know, one thing you can do is as you start to touch and you know, during foreplay, don't rush foreplay. So often, our goal, what we're thinking in our head is, am I feeling enough arousal to achieve orgasm? Right, orgasm is the goal. And if we can take that off the table and just say, what does it feel like to just be naked with each other? And to just touch here or touch there? And what does it feel like to touch? And what does it feel like to be touched? And can I describe that? And can I like, sit with that feeling? Not expecting, you know, the next step, right, the the heightened arousal, can I just kind of sit with arousal in whatever stage of you know, the, the sexual response cycle, whatever stage I'm at? Can I just sit with it? And what we notice is that, that people who are mastering this process of slowing down sex, like I said, before, you know, all the research shows better sexual functioning. But it also shows more emotional connectedness, more satisfaction, of course, better communication about sex, right? How many couples struggle to say, this is what I like, I like it when you touch me this way, or I like this position. But they're just to shut down to even really talk about those things. Yeah, absolutely. And then what about during orgasm? So is there a part of sexual mindfulness where you're, you're seeking to, like, increase the time that someone is in orgasm, or no? Yeah, well, you know, that's not something I focus on. In my research, what I do notice is that more sexually mindful people are actually Well, women in particular, are multi orgasmic. And so I think that the quality of their orgasm certainly is improving. But what we have measured is that the consistency of orgasm is improved for people who are more sexually mindful. That's good. So let's talk about the different levels of interest in sex. So typically, and historically, women tend to have the lower desire over time, men tend to be classified as having a higher desire, of course, that can shift but how can couples manage when there's one that has high desire and one with low? Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right, it is so common, and how you describe it is the typical scenario, although we know in 25% of couples, it's the woman who's the higher desire. And what's interesting about that is women feel a little shamed if they have higher desire than their spouse, right? Just, it just doesn't seem quite as socially acceptable, right? But no matter who is the higher desire and who's the lower does Tyra, and like you said that might change throughout your life course. One really important thing is to just honor what each other is feeling. And what I love about sexual mindfulness is that it gives you the space to say, to be curious, instead of judgmental, right, instead of saying, Why are you always wanting sex? Or why do you never want sex? Right? Instead of making those judgments? It gives a little space for you to say, I wonder why sex seems to be so important to you, or why you desire it so often. Tell me about that. Right? And it may be that the man if if it's the typical case, that the man is just feeling like that's really how he expresses his love. And that knowing that a partner can say, Oh, I get that, that that makes a lot more sense. And I don't feel as much pressure when that's the message. Or if the man's asking the woman, why don't you desire sex, what it might bring up, is that there's been some unresolved issue that maybe enough, weight wasn't placed on her reaching orgasm. And so if she wasn't as consistent reaching orgasm, sex becomes a little monotonous and irritating even. And so you may discover things like this, when you slow down this process and really honor what each other is feeling without judgment, right? Instead, replace judgment, judgments, antidote is curiosity. And that's what I really encourage couples to do, instead of getting irritated at how different you are, kind of celebrate that and be curious about it. I love that. I love that. And it seems that in different areas of relationship in marriage research, this this there's a thread of curiosity throughout. When you are curious in communication and conflict and sex, it just kind of seems to be the hidden ticket. Yes to being able to work things out. Hmm, I think you're right. What about ideal frequency? So a better way to put that is what is a healthy amount of? of? How often should a couple have sex? Yeah, it's kind of the healthy number there? That's a great question. And, you know, my typical answer is always well, it's really up to the couple, right? Because some couples are, have, both of them have high desire, and so they're going to have sex much more frequently. Some have a little lower desire. But then, you know, we talked about those who have different levels of desire. What's interesting is there's been a little research done on this, what is the ideal amount of sex, and what what this research found was that sex, frequency of sex is kind of as far as its connection to satisfaction to sexual satisfaction, it's not linear, like, the more sex I have, doesn't mean, I'm going to feel more satisfaction, as I increase the frequency of sex, it's actually a curvilinear relationship, which means at some point, I'm not benefiting by having more frequency. And what that little bend is, seems to be for most couples, right? This, these are averages. For most couples, the ideal amount to have is one time a week. And after that, you might have small increases, but then it levels off, and you're not really getting any benefit from it. Where this is particularly important, is when one partner is having way more sex than they want to have. Right? Because that's actually decreasing their satisfaction. So again, every couple has to sort this through for themselves. But, you know, about once a week, you should probably, you know, be wondering if it's less than that, is there something going on in the relationship that we need to attend to? In my research, when I am doing survey research and just asking, you know, 1000s of people questions about sex. We're always very careful about weeding out those couples who haven't had sex for the last 60 or 90 days, that indicates that there's something seriously going wrong in their relationship. Right. So I guess I would, I would just give these big wide boundaries to couples and say, if you haven't had sex for a while, check out what's going on in your relationship, because something's up But if you're having sex at least once a week, then probably things are going pretty well. Would you have insight into what are the things that you think are typically going on when a couple hasn't had sex for two to three months? Yeah, I would say there's some sort of emotional disconnect, right. And that that can be caused by all sorts of things. It can be a power imbalance, it can be unresolved conflict, it can be that things have gotten really monotonous in their personal relationship because of external things, you know, maybe a new job that's taking all your time, or children or whatever it is, there's all sorts of things. But it's a big flag for us to pay attention to, if we want this relationship to stay strong and healthy. So you're saying, Actually, you didn't say this? I'm asking, would you say would you say? Would you say that it is important to the health and strength of a marriage to have a strong health and strength of the sex life? Like do though you're Are you saying that those two has to go hand in hand? Well, I would say that generally, they go hand in hand. Now, you know what, I've interviewed lots of couples and couples who have had health issues, maybe someone's going through cancer treatment or some other issue. And there are long periods of time where yeah, one or the other, or both, just physically are not up to that much energy. And so can you do other things to make sure that you're that you stay close? In that most intimate kind of relationship? Yeah, there's way you don't have to have penetrative sex, to maintain your sexual reconnection, your sexual relationship, but you do have to talk about it. And that's generally where couples start breaking down is something goes wrong. And we just ignore it. And then we kind of tamp it down, and the next layer gets added on, and we tamp it down. And then pretty soon, there's a pretty big wedge between us. And if we don't want that to continue to grow, we've got to just say, okay, timeout, it's time for us to reset, something's happened here. Let's reconnect. And, you know, the biggest indicator is, how do we feel in our sex life? Hmm, that's good. There's a great quote from Esther Perell, a therapist, and she says, Tell me, the kind of lover you are. And I'll tell you the kind of person you are. Right. And so I think a lot of things are happening in sex, that are good, you know, little microcosms of what's happening are happening in our larger world. And so we we really do want to pay attention to our sex life as a pretty important barometer for the rest of our relationship. So this brought to mind, you know, there's a book out there, I guess it's called she comes first. And there's so there's like a lot of there. In some spaces, there's a lot of emphasis on focus on the woman, because she might tend to have lower desire, you know, all of those things. And if you can make her happy, then you'll have a better sex life. But let's talk about the balance there. Like DO WE ARE WOMEN focusing enough on making sure that their husbands are having a great experience during sex? Right, like, how does that kind of play in? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure we can swing to either extreme. Typically, in our culture, for the last, you know, recorded history that we have on this topic, it's been pretty male centric, right? Sex has been about pleasing men. And I think what we've seen in the last 20 or 30 years, is women speaking up and saying, yeah, when we only focus on men, women don't have time to even feel the arousal that they need to feel. And so I think we, we've note, we've seen this swing that we need to pay attention that women have longer, they need more foreplay, they have longer arousal periods. And so to take that into account, maybe let's focus on her first. But definitely men are feeling arousal as they arouse their wife in general. Now, if he needs more specific attention, or a different position, or some sort of different activity to make sure that he's feeling pleasure and satisfaction, then yeah, we need to also focus on that. This is what's so interesting about sex. It's not about one person and And when we start to make it about one person, it becomes really imbalanced really fast. And so both people have to consider the other person, I always like to say, sex is other focused. And if both of us are other focused, both people are going to be happy. Right? As we think about the just couples that are in different stages of life, so we've already mentioned, there's the young parents that are, you know, probably busy and careers plus busy with young kids, it's hard to find time, for date nights, much less, you know, having sex. And I don't know, I'm trying to think of other air like empty nesters you would think that maybe they have more time, and have they grown apart so much that the relationship isn't there to support it. So what are some tips that you have of how couples can keep first of all their sex life of priority, but then second of all, to keep it from becoming stale to keep it creative and enjoyable over the decades of marriage that they're together? Yeah, you know, Sue Johnson, who you refer to her emotion, focus therapy, talks about that, when we slow down, and really enjoy each other's body and mind and spirit. There is a universe of potential in every moment. I love that because we if we only have 10 minutes to be with each other, and we just want to hold each other and create that connection, super. If you're a young family, and you've got kids knocking at the door, and there's not a lot of alone time. I remember one couple who said that their solution was they set their alarm for two in the morning on Saturdays. And they would wake up at two in the morning and have a couple of hours, just focused on each other before the kids woke up. You know, and so that's a really great example of how they prioritize it. That's probably not going to work for everybody. But you know, I mean, we can be creative. Maybe we ask inlaws to come and babysit the kids for a weekend and we just go prioritize being with each other. empty nesters who have grown apart, potentially, or another problem that, you know, midlife people face is that their bodies have changed, right, we don't function the same way we did when we were in our 20s. And so learning again about each other, and how to please each other. I mean, being other focused, is the, you know, the match to this fire that we're trying to create. When I focus on my partner. And he focuses on me, that creates this energy of, particularly if we're taking it slow. And we're not just concerned about orgasm, because orgasm may be a little less regular in midlife. But if we can focus on just being with each other, and talking about how we value, this alone time, how we value pleasure for each other, those are really important elements of just making sure that thread doesn't get broken. That's so good. Dr. Shalom. This has been such an important topic to talk about. And I could keep asking you a ton of questions. But and we didn't even get to how to talk to your kids about sex, which I know on your website you have some information about. And that's another thing. So perhaps we'll have you back in a future episode to talk about that. But we will, we will link in the show notes to a couple of things. First of all, your website, you have some articles there things that have to do with sexual mindfulness, couples, relationships, women's sexuality, teaching kids about sex, so we'll definitely provide that for the listeners. But then you also are a contributing author to sexual wholeness and marriage, and to the book a better way to teach kids about sex. So we'll link to both of those as well, your courage listeners to go and get those. What are some final things that you'd like to say to the audience? You know, I think we've said it, but I will just reemphasize prioritize sex. It's important for your marriage. It's important for any long term relationship to really connect. And the truth is, sex really helps you grow as an individual. And as a couple, right? It challenges you to dig down into the kind of this scary part of who you are. That's a little nervous to open up and be completely vulnerable with another person. And that is so healthy for our development. Yes, I love it. Great conversation. Appreciate your time so much and look forward to chatting to you again, hopefully soon about how to discuss this with our kids, which is a huge topic in and of itself. Thank you, Kimberly. All right, here are my key takeaways from this amazing interview with Dr. Shalom, love it. And I always love talking to researchers, because they're so close to the subject matter that they are just wealth of knowledge that the general population doesn't tap into. They're too focused on influencers and, and people who haven't actually done the work with real people and understand the data and the evidence behind what's going on. So all of these words are pure gold, you guys, this is fantastic. My first key takeaway is the one line where Dr. Shalom said that anxiety is the enemy of arousal. If we go in to our bedrooms with our spouse, and are just anxious about the process, or maybe about ourselves, our own body image, that's the enemy of arousal. And so this whole concept of sexual mindfulness is so helpful, not just in how we show up in the bedroom, but also how we change the way that we think about ourselves and think about our body and show up personally, to the sexual intercourses that we have with our spouse, it has to start from within us, which is another reason that the pies are so important. Because if you already have low self esteem or poor body image, then you're going to be bringing that as an anxiety into your sex life. When you work on your pies, it helps increase your self esteem, so that you have less anxiety and ultimately, hopefully, a better sex life with your spouse. Fantastic. My second takeaway is that curiosity is the antidote to judgment. So if you're judging yourself, what you did what you said, what you didn't say that you wanted to, or all of those things that can happen. Be curious with yourself of what was holding me back. Why did I not feel safe or comfortable enough in that moment? And how can we move together, the husband and the wife towards being able to be open enough that we can have some of those conversations so that judgment can go away? But that judgment is similar with the, with your relationship with the two of you and your actual sexual experience? Be curious, ask your spouse, what is it that you enjoyed? What could have been better? What is something you would like to do that you haven't? And instead of judging, be curious. And the pro tip here is that that curiosity is true for every other area of your relationship where you're bringing judgment into it. And then my final key takeaway is make your sex life a priority. We all hear this. We hear it about date nights, we hear it about those parts of it as well. But your sex life really does have a correlation with your marital satisfaction. And that's part of the research that my dad did Dr. Joe beam in his PhD work, where he was studying the correlations and causes of marital and sexual satisfaction. And guess what they are related. No surprise to any of us that are married. But guess what, we're going to be married for decades. That's the goal right at marriage helper. The goal is that the marriage lasts a lifetime. And so in that lifetime, we're going to have to spruce things up, we're going to have to prioritize, you're going to have to do things to keep the sex life healthy, so that the marriage can also stay healthy, and vice versa. I'd love to know your key takeaways. leave a review, share this with one of your friends. Ideally, a friend of the same gender, it could be a little awkward to do otherwise. And maybe even share this with your spouse. If you have a healthy relationship. You have a good interaction talking about your sex life and this could be a great conversation for the two of you to listen to together and debrief together as well. Until next week, stay strong