Episode 123: How to Have a Fulfilling Sex Life, Even as a Busy Parent with Janna Denton-Howes
/For this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to talk about something a little different: how to keep the fire of our relationship with our partner burning. To help me in this conversation, I have my dear friend (truly, we are besties!) and colleague Janna Denton-Howes. She is a women's Desire Coach and she's going to talk to us all about how we can stay connected and enjoy our couple relationship, even as busy parents.
*One disclaimer: Janna is a desire coach for women married to men, and she lists this as her area of expertise, not to be heteronormative but because it reflects her own lived experience and she wants to recognize that the struggles in this area for folks with other identities may be very different than her own. That said, I carefully reviewed this episode and I do believe, regardless of our identities, that we are all affected by the cultural soup of misogyny and patriarchy that can make it so hard to want and enjoy sex and intimacy with our partners. So, if your lived experience is different than Janna's and mine, it is my hope that you will listen in, take what feels aligned and leave the rest. And please know that you are seen, held, loved and supported here.
Here's a summary of our conversation:
What can women do to increase their desire without “just doing it”
How to keep intimacy alive in a long term monogamous relationship
How to be the leader of the sexual experience in the partnership
How can you talk about sex with your husband without making him feel bad or getting defensive
How do you maintain a healthy sex life with kids and a busy schedule
If you are struggling to keep the intimacy with your partner and would want to have more support, visit Janna's website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook. She is also starting her own podcast, called Wanting it More, which will be coming out soon!
Book recommendation: Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson
Discover how to desire sex more, even if you'd REALLY rather just read a good book or get more sleep!
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen! I'm here with another episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here and listening with me today because we are going to talk about something that is a little bit new and definitely exciting for the podcast. Here with me today, I have my dear friend and colleague in the relationship space, Janna Denton-Howes, she is a women's desire coach expert. She's going to talk to us all about how we can stay connected and enjoy our couple relationship, even as busy parents. So Janna, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Janna: Well, it was my experience, I really struggled with wanting or enjoying sex very much for probably, I mean a good 10 years of my marriage And I'm heading into 20 years in December, so…
Laura: Yeah, congratulations.
Janna: Thank you. I got married very young, I was 17 and it wasn't because I was pregnant or any weird cult was happening, it was, it just happened and I was really excited to become A young mom and it was just something I wanted to do. So we struggled with sex for the first, I mean like I said about 10 years, but it really started right away and it wasn't something I was anticipating would be a challenge in relationships, I thought, you know, communication or something like that would be the big one and I really had nobody to talk to about this and so it felt really lonely, I felt really broken, I felt like there was something wrong with me and so about five years into a lot of fighting, we went to a counselor and we started the journey of trying to figure out, I mean originally I thought how am I gonna fix myself, that's really, really where I headed because that's what society was telling me, you have low libido, low sex drive.
There's something wrong with you and you need to figure that out whether it's hormonal or I don't know, there weren't a lot of answers for me and I really tried hard. I read all the books, all the people workshops, I was desperate because it was really the one thing in our relationship that we just couldn't figure out. And otherwise we had a lot of fun together. We were pretty good at our communication and we had some children. In the meantime, we had enough sex just to basically procreate. Well actually I trained as a marriage coach and I started working with couples and I started to gain my confidence to kind of deviate from the advice that I had been given up into them, which was, it's good for your marriage. Just kind of force yourself just try to get into it and
Laura: Take it till you make it.
Janna: Make it till you make it, spice things up try, I don't know, lingerie or roleplay or whatever it could be fantasy, all the things we hear and none of it worked. It just kind of left me even feeling more empty and unsatisfied. So I grew in my confidence and I decided, you know what I know enough now to pull from different theories and modalities and I figured it out and it was amazing and I felt so much freedom and the biggest thing I found out was there was nothing wrong with me at all. There was just a lot of things going on with society and also the environment of my sexual relationship as well.
Laura: Thank you so much for sharing your story and I think what you're saying is so important. I think it's a really important message that we share because I think people in general in this society but women specifically get told that we are broken so much, particularly as we transition into motherhood and you didn't have birth a certain way, You're broken U. P.
After you had a baby, you're broken, you weren't able to have a baby and needed to adopt. You're broken. You know, you don't want it from your partner, your broken. We get this message over and over and over again. And I think it is so important that we hear from lots of different sources and lots of different people. There's nothing wrong with us that we were never broken in the first place, but maybe even the system, the narrative is what's broken.
Janna: That's everything that's wrong. There's nothing wrong you nothing wrong with me. And when we get into that space of being able to just listen to ourselves for the first time, you know, to be able to trust our intuition and really connect with ourselves how the answers come pretty quick.
Laura: Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm having this like meta moment too because this is what I talk about in parenting. So many people come to me seeking the answer, wanting me to be the guru, show them the way I want everybody to start getting in touch with themselves, start listening to themselves, start trusting themselves and you're telling me it's the same in the desire and sex world.
Janna: Exactly the same.
Laura: So can you just tell me what are some of the big misconceptions then? So I know what some of the big misunderstandings that parents have about child development and parenting. What are some of the like the misconceptions that we might have about desire and how to keep intimacy alive in a marriage in a long term monogamous relationship that many of us are in choosing to be in, although I do recognize that I do have a poly community who listens to my podcast. So not everybody is choosing a monogamous or one partner relationship.
Janna: So the biggest one I think is that men are the holders of the sexuality and not only the holders of their sexuality, but the holders of female sexuality as well. If you uncover just the simplest narrative in any romance novel, it's the guy comes in with all his what's the word suave, suave, I don't know there's something there and he makes her quiver with delight and she just doesn't even know what's happening and she's not leading and he just is basically explaining to her, not even explaining, but just using her body and is the know er of everything sexual and you'll see that in romantic comedies and it's everywhere when you start to open your eyes.
And so what ends up happening is that I find I work with a lot of very empowered, very strong women who are lawyers and doctors and have accomplished a lot in their lives, have really been able to have to fight the forces of patriarchy in the outside world and yet in there in the bedroom, they aren't able to do that for themselves. And it's because that culture conditioning is so strong. So the first thing I ask women to do is actually become the leader of the sexual experience.
Laura: Okay, and so what does it look like then to be the leader of the sexual experience in the partnership?
Janna: Well, you start off with the man doing nothing saying nothing, requesting for nothing, just laying down and enjoying whatever may come to pass. And so we start maybe just with the woman placing her hands on her husband's chest and feeling his warmth and figuring out what she wants to do next. Does she wanna press down hard on his manly muscles and feel that resistance?
Or does she want to put the backs of her hands on his soft skin and feel his chest hair and delight in that. Does she want to smell his neck And he just relaxes and doesn't make requests? Doesn't grab, doesn't grope doesn't comment and provides a safe structure for her in order for probably for the first time recognize that she is a sexual woman and she has pleasure capacity.
Laura: Oh, why don't tell me more about that term? That pleasure capacity term? I feel intrigued.
Janna: Yeah. Well, you know, as women that were told to really prioritize productivity over most things, right? What did you do today is the question we ask each other or ask of ourselves. We feel guilty by the end of the day, we haven't gone through our to do list. We feel like failures because we can't figure out the latest productivity hack or the Pinterest board or the blah, blah, blah, right? Yes. But and sadly we're in a pleasure deficit I think chronically as women and we're struggling.
And one of the major ways we struggle is in the sexual experience because we're trying to go in at like negative 160 we're just gonna go into this experience and we're just gonna buzz our way to orgasm so we can feel successful and productive and her husband, we can provide for our husbands. And so even our orgasms are for them, it seems like so that they can feel good about their capacity and abilities as that man that they're supposed to be so prioritizing our everyday pleasure outside of the sexual experience is where we start the easiest way is through extracting through our five senses.
Laura: So tell me what that looks like then in everyday practice. So if we're talking about outside of the sexual experience, just increasing our pleasure in general, what does that look like for? You know, I mean most of our listeners are women for so a mom who's maybe at home with her kids right now.
Janna: Okay, so let's do it right now. You and I so just scan your five senses so something to smell. So I'll pick up my tea earl gray tea with almond milk.
Laura: I just ate a piece of pumpkin pie so I'm gonna smell the plate.
Janna: Sounds good. Sounds a little sweet. I can smell the burger mont in there. We could do our touch sense. So I just got these fuzzy new slippers which I really enjoy. Some kind of wiggling my toes around in the slippers
Laura: Have on a very soft sweater that's very nice to touch.
Janna: We can look open our eyes and look around and see something that delights us a color we like. Maybe it's the sky. I'm going to rest my eyes on this beautiful lamp that I have that diffuses the light just beautifully.
Laura: I am noticing a book that I love. Hold Me tight by Sue Johnson.
Janna: Oh, you know, I love it too. I figured you did. So you can go through all of your senses how that didn't take very long. We didn't have to pay anything extra or spend amounts. You know, big amounts of time. So pleasure is there all its available to us? It's a resource that we can tap into which will recharge us, increase their creativity and also help us transition into the sexual experience easier. And when we build that muscle being able to extract pleasure, we can experience the sexual experience. But a whole new level. Isn't that narrow defined box that we've been given to enjoy sex through?
Laura: I love this idea too, that this is that we can build capacity. The act of experiencing pleasure. Deriving pleasure is a skill that we can build that we can hone, that we can cultivate within ourselves.
Janna: Yeah, absolutely, yep. And what you're really combating specifically in the sexual experience when you do this is that for goals that we're told. So goals for orgasm and penetration. We are combating, worrying about what our husbands are thinking about us as we moan or hum. I love to hum that's part of my pleasure in the sexual experience. You know, if I'm worried about what my husband thinks or that was a legitimate sexual experience or is he having a good time? Is he bored? Is this not intense enough for him? That's going to get in the way of my experience. So, we really do have a lot to combat and no struggle against sometimes.
Laura: So, wait, are you saying that when that kind of those thoughts start rolling in that you hummed kind of quiet them?
Janna: Well, just humming is something I've learned that I really enjoy because it brings vibration throughout my whole body. And actually when I hum my vulva hums with sounded so cheesy. But it's true. I actually.
Laura: Oh my gosh! Our throats and our public floor are very deeply connected.
Janna: Very connected. And I enjoy humming with my husband. But the layers of cultural messaging that I had to get through to get to the point where I could number one recognize that humming was a reel pleasure for me
Laura: Like a legitimate pleasure
Janna: Like a legitimate pleasure.
Laura: A worthy pleasure.
Janna: A worthy pleasure. Because I don't, I've never seen a couple do that before. Grey's Anatomy have, you know, show to pick on when it comes. Yeah, right. There's, there was no model of that. I had no one growing up or even all the professionals I saw that said, hey, you know, trust yourself. You'll find some things that are delightful for you and then having to request that from my husband. That's also a huge thing that I have to overcome. So it takes work. But man, is it worth it?
Laura: Yeah. Okay. And so for those of us who are at the beginning of this, we talked about that one of the first steps is just increasing your daily experience of pleasure. What is the next step?
Janna: Well, one potential next step would be connecting with your body and that can feel a bit overwhelming because again, we have a lot of cultural messages that tell us that our bodies are shameful that they're not adequate. That they're disgusting. That they're for men's pleasure and not for our own. That you don't want to be seen as to lose. I'm thinking of an expert, I don't know, S. L. U. T. And but at the same time, you don't want to seem frigid. A lot of women have never even seen their pelvis before or know what it likes, never had any compliments given to her.
Yes, I talk about Elvis in the third person, so I really help women try kind of wade through those real uncomfortable moments with their own bodies to get to a place of maybe not even acceptance. You know, maybe acceptance is actually quite a big leap for us to expect of ourselves, but maybe to neutral. You know, maybe it's not. I love my gorgeous bum, maybe it's I have a bum, I have dimples on my bum, you know, or I have a vulva, or I have pubic hair and you know, maybe we can get a little bit to the positive side, which is, wow, she's beautiful and she's a source of creativity for me and she's worthy and it's okay what I'm doing right now. I'm learning, you know, if you're learning about your body in self exploration that this is what mature, sophisticated women do we learn about ourselves.
Laura: I feel like you are rewriting the messaging like part of the work is coming to understand what messages did we receive about ourselves about sex about our bodies growing up and examining whether there are ones that we truly believe whether they're ones we want to embody ones that are serving us which ones to let go, which ones to re bright, and this is what we do in conscious parenting all the time. It's exactly the same. But this is conscious partnering. And I mean just being conscious, like self knowing too, like deciding for ourselves. Like we get to choose how we think about ourselves, how we think about these relationships. I think it's a powerful thing to be able to do, but also hard and tricky.
Janna: It's hard and tricky. And we have to go back to not our fault.
Laura: Yeah, I think that's so important. You know, there's this great show on Netflix, Sex Education. Have you seen that show? It's a British show.
Janna: I haven't. No.
Laura: But you definitely need to watch it. But there's this scene where there's a girl who is it's very stereotypically, you know, blonde, big chested, you know, just you know, the sex symbol and she has had a boyfriend and who and she's just engaged with him in sex in a very stereotypical, like porn, exemplifying way, you know the way that we think about in like mainstream, like this is what sex is and then she gets another partner who is like surprised by how she's so performative in sex and that for sex for her, it seems like it is a performance and not about pleasure and has a partner who again encourages her to spend time figuring out what she likes and then come back to him when she's ready.
Like, there's a piece of that way you were talking about before, that Men are the keepers of the knowledge. You know, men need to give her mission to do those things. But like, I mean like she does, she goes, she spends like seven hours with herself figuring out like, and I think about like, what would have happened if somebody had encouraged me to do that at 17. You know, like how different my life would be.
Janna: Right? I have two daughters are 11 and 12 and so I'm already starting this with them just by touch that we share. So for example, I was stroking my daughter's hair the other night and I stopped, I realized that wasn't something she asked for and I hadn't asked consent to stroke her hair. So I just stopped and said, do you want me to stroke your hair? Does this feel good? She said, yeah, So I stroke and I thought that was a good opportunity.
I said, would you like me to just put my hat over your hair or really scratch your scalp and get in there just like, oh, scratch my scalp. Do you want me to do it with the pads of my fingers or my nails, I'll do it with your nails. And she demonstrated what she wanted. I thought there we go, that is the beginning of it for her that I'm talking about pleasure. Like, oh yeah, that feels good. Like it's a good thing to feel pleasure. And also there's options for pleasure and she is in the driver's seat.
Laura: Wow. I mean that's a beautifully respectful interaction that you had with your daughter. I mean I have interactions like that with my kids all the time. You know, because consent is incredibly important to us in our house, unexpected touches are unwanted touches or not. We do our very best not to have those happen. That's purposeful because I've been touched without consent because we just are like unwanted hugs and kisses and then other bigger violations. And I always want my kids to know that their body is theirs and they get to choose had never made that connection that we're also teaching them about pleasure and
Janna: That's what's missing in sex education for kids. And I see it with the woman I work with, You know, 2030, 40 years down the road from their childhood and they were just told the whole time just don't do it, but never had the pleasure training or the mentorship. That pleasure is a really great thing to experience and have. And also like we talked about earlier, it is kind of a muscle that you need to develop.
Laura: Yeah, well you need to hone. I feel like I'm having like a lean in moment. I feel like listeners are gonna want to know a little bit more about this. I think that sometimes the word pleasure has a meaning that makes us shy away from it a little bit, especially when we think about our kids experiencing pleasure. And I mean, and so like the idea of, like, sensual pleasure, which really, I mean, all it is, is feeling deeply and intensely like it has nothing to do necessarily with sexual pleasure. We're talking about pleasure in general, right?
Janna: When I was creating my methodology, if I should use the word pleasure, because I was very aware that it can create that kind of cringey kind of squeamish feeling. But the reason why that happens is because female pleasure, sexual pleasure has been so shamed. And that's why we're getting that squeamish feeling. We have to be very clear about where that messaging is coming from. It is not truth, it is not reality. And so what I decided to do was reclaim that word instead of shying away from it.
So I've reclaimed the word pleasure in my life, and my daughters now are able to use the word pleasure. This food brings us pleasure. This hug brings us pleasure. This sky brings us pleasure because we are sexual beings. We're sexual beings from the moment we're birth from the moment we're conceived, we are growing our sexual identity and our sexual pleasure. So of course we have boundaries and of course we don't engage in sexual experiences with our children, of course we don't but engaging with them their whole selves and me as a whole self, woman is really healthy I believe.
Laura: I think and I think it's important to be clear here. So this is something that, you know, I used to teach sexual development at the college level and my students were always very surprised to hear that sexual development starts when people are born. You know, they always have a sexual identity, even children.
And this does not mean this is a point that's uncomfortable for people to consider because and rightfully concerned about healthy interactions with kids with good boundaries with kids around this. But like, I mean this is one of the reasons why we're so uncomfortable when we find out the kid's been touching themselves or you know, which is all normal and healthy and a part of having a body, I don't know, I think it's important just to know that just like fine motor development starts at birth.
You know, just like cognitive development starts before birth because your brain is growing before birth, you know, like just like gross motor development starts, you know, just like language development starts at birth, you know, even before because maybe is here before too they become accustomed to sounds and have sound preferences, those things all like this is just another aspect of development that goes through your whole lifespan.
Janna: Yeah. And I often think of, like you mentioned what if we were given the right education like that? I had been taught these things well, first off, I wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing because I wouldn't have struggled so much. So, you know, there's that. But what a difference if I had gone into my first sexual experience, feeling connected with myself trusting my intuition, knowing that the experience, expecting the experience to be pleasurable, that it was me that I had all the words and all the understanding. I mean, it would have been absolutely a different experience and would have transformed my relationship with my husband from day one.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I think so. And let's bring it back then to the here. Now we have, you know, if we're partnered with someone, we're in a marriage we're together, we're working towards kind of figuring out, pleasure figuring out comfort with those things, figuring out, kind of stripping away programming and messaging and narratives and deciding for ourselves what it is true for us. What about those conversations with a partner?
How do we bring a partner into this? I know, like, my partner has done a lot of learning alongside me as I'm learning about these things for myself. You and I we're not that average ladies here, you know, and I guarantee we probably don't have average partners either. My like, that was a prerequisite for my husband, like when we got married, I was like, you're gonna need to go to therapy with me probably a lot. Is that gonna be okay with you? Because otherwise I don't think we can get married. You know, like, I mean, that was like, we're gonna get to see couples therapists a lot just for fun sometimes, but the average partner who wants things to get better, like how does that conversation start?
Janna: Yeah, wow. I have seen the conversation start in such, such a variety of ways, but really where it needs to start as establishing safety for the women and when I say safety, we get it as women, we walk through a dark parking garage and we carry our keys a certain way or we navigate through the space to be always under the light. We understand safety. And what I found in my relationship in really great, healthy, wonderful marriage is is that there is a lot of unsafe feelings surrounding the sexual experience that we think is normal.
So it's normal to kind of want to swipe your hand or your husband's hand away, or it's normal to kind of delay going to bed because you don't want to navigate the sex conversation or it's normal to kind of inwardly cringe when he calls you sexy because you really don't like it or anyone, he stares at you when you get undressed. I've talked to hundreds of women and their experiences are very similar. So it starts there. What are you really excited? And it's 100% yes for you. And what is? I don't really like it kind of a maybe. And what's a no. And if it's a maybe it's a no, because we are conditioned to push ourselves.
Well, he likes touching my breasts so I can deal with it. Or he wants me to wear lingerie. It's not terrible. We're going for an enthusiastic Yes. And that's where you start. And sometimes the conversations are easy. Your husband says, wow, thank you for letting me know. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable and I'm safe. I am here to do this thing with you. We're a team and we got this and I will do my best. Please remind me if I need reminders.
There are other husbands who struggle more with this because patriarchal world because men have been taught that their wives bodies are theirs because misogyny because culture, also because porn. So it depends on where you're at in your relationship and also where your husband's at, if he's going to really get on board with this or if he's gonna struggle and you know, there's other factors too. He may feel like he's kind of criticizing him. So he might get defensive or he might feel like he's not doing a great job as a husband. So he'll feel like a failure. And people do funky things when they when they have those interpretations? So it's definitely a conversation that needs some navigating.
Laura: Yeah. And so where do people go to get support then in having those conversations?
Janna: Well, I'm sure we both have some great book recommendations we can offer in terms of boundaries. And in terms of attachment theory for marriages, you mentioned, hold me tight is a great resource, counseling, coaching therapy, getting support. I mean, this is a little bit customized, right, figuring out your own interpretations how to ask for reassurance around that. And so yeah, it takes time.
But where you start is with yourself figuring out those enthusiastic yeses and those maybes and the nose and knowing that you have bodily autonomy that you are worthy that you don't owe your husband any sexual favors or any access to your body that consent does not end with? I do. So you've got a whole whole bunch of women behind you, you know, who are navigating this and it's tricky landscape.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. And so then what about, you know, the folks who are here, they want to have this intimate connection with their partner and perhaps even miss the intimacy that they had before. The physical intimacy, the sex that they had before kids, They want to be with their partner in that way. Again, or even in a better way, and a healthier way. In a deeper way. Where do they start? Like how do they figure out, you know, like, like the path for them.
Janna: Well, you start by scheduling some experiences to have together. If it's not scheduled often it will happen? You know the things that we prioritized our on our calendar and again, we're up against the cultural messaging that sex has to be spontaneous and spicy to count that we have to follow that formula, the media formula where we bust through the door frame and frantically unbutton each other's clothes and do the groupie thing and the kissing thing and the panting and all that. It's all, it's all performative.
That's all for lights, camera action and where I find some magical, intimate, deep moments happen is when they're scheduled. So we have what are called exploration dates on Sunday mornings and we set aside about two hours for them and we're intentional. I eat breakfast beforehand cause if not I have little blood sugar and I'm not fun to be around. We make sure we've got Great Loop available in any other AIDS. We want good condoms. My husband has a shower, we lock the door.
The kids know that this is our alone time. They now know we're having sex because they're 11 and 12 and that bear the conversation has gone. They like to ignore that fact though. So we let them do that and don't force it on them that mom and dad are having sex now we still say we're having our alone time and it's intentional time to be together? We talk about our week? We, I ask for reassuring questions like, do you think I'm a good mom and I’m a good wife?
Do you think I'm a successful business owner? Are you proud of me? All the things I want to hear? We start very slow with massage and I like just to be naked now, but I used to like a nice cotton tank top and some shorts on and we follow my pleasure through the experience and he is the responder to that. And in that way we have the most connected, intimate sex that we've ever had and after going for years of having no sex at all. I now genuinely think finally of our sexual experiences. I miss them when they don't happen and I'm the one to say, hey, you know, we're a little busy this weekend. Let's make sure we get this on the calendar. So with anything, you got a great space, right? Got a great space to allow it to happen.
Laura: That's so helpful. Thank you for being so open with kind of how it works for you. But what about those of us who just don't want it, Don't think about it. They feel too tired. They don't, they're overwhelmed. They're, they're touched out as it is. You know, we just don't want to be, you know, together with their partner that way anymore.
Maybe they used to maybe they never really did like what is, But then we have these again, these messages that we should, you know that we should, there's this pull and we love our partners, you know, so we do want to be close to them and have a healthy relationship. Like what if desire isn't there.
Janna: You know, this whole idea of desire that it happens first and then we're gonna get into sexual experience. You know, if you think about anything you really love to do, like I love rollerblading on the sea walk with a good podcast or tunes do I really crave that rollerblading before I go into it and I just wanted to run out to the car and zoom down to the ocean. No, I'm like, ah I think I'd really enjoy it. I just want to sit on the couch or the weather isn't that great. It's a bit breezy out or my foot hurts a little bit. So why do we expect for us to feel like this around sex? It's because that's what we're shown were shown spontaneous desire.
So there's actually two types of desire and one is spontaneous, which is that kind of lightning bolt to the genitals that I was describing, like, oh my gosh, I have to just hump a dorm right now. Like I gotta call my husband home from work because I'm just gonna explode or there's responsive desire, which actually most of the women that I serve have and I have, which means that your, your arousal is cultivated within a safe, comfortable reassuring environment and accepting environment. So I'm saying that what I have done and helped hundreds of other women do who are exactly in that position that you just mentioned, not wanting. It is just creating a space for the opportunity for pleasure.
The opportunity for connection and not feeling like there's something broken or wrong with you. If you don't feel like your valve is on fire before it happens. But it can happen gradually and furthermore. The pleasure is all around you. Doesn't have to just happen in your genitals. It can happen just through the warmth of his cheek against yours or listening to his heartbeat or holding his hand or smelling his hair or giving him a foot massage and feeling his big, strong feet. I don't know, my husband has very large feet. It took a long time to massage.
You know, so we have to be so aware of these narratives around sex drive. So create the space for yourself, be the leader. So there's safety. Focus on extracting pleasure, not going for goals like penetration and orgasm and stay connected with your body through breath, through humming, singing through even looking at your vulva in a mirror during the sexual experience and both delighting and how beautiful she is.
Laura: I think those are lovely. You know, the mere thing I think is fine for me, but probably surprising for others. But it's funny both of my girls at one point or another, when they were maybe like 2, 2.5 asked for a mirror. And so they both have mirrors in their rooms that are for the express purpose of being able to see their whole bodies.
Janna: You have given them such a gift.
Laura: Oh yeah, I mean, gosh, you know, it's so funny. My oldest is eight. And so we're reading the book. Sex is a funny word right now and she knows more about her body right now when she's eight, then I knew about it. I think when I was like 22 maybe, Like.
Janna: I mean with my girls, how many women like FY you're not alone if this is new information for you? But there's two holes, there's the you're laughing because I've spoken to like 45 year old women who didn't know this. There's the baby comes out of that's also where the period blood comes out and where the penis goes in, there's another hole where your pee comes out of you're re throw opening. It's kind of surrounded by this kind of spongy. I always think of it like coral.
I always think it kind of mine anyways, kind of looks like coral and that's actually erectile tissue. So it swells up when you get aroused and it's not a g spot, It's actually a tube of erectile tissue that surrounds the urethra, which will get direction. So there's so much to learn about your body and its miraculous and amazing and just one more fact because I love it because we were talking about forming your sexual identity or your your genitals are being formed like right from the beginning.
But at seven weeks gestation, the female genitals stay on the same track as they were. And actually the male genitals are a deviation of where the female genitals were headed. And I always love that because it just demonstrates to me that we are just different parts organized in different ways and so we all have value. It's not the almighty penis that has the most value, is that both genitals do.
Laura: I think it's important to have conversations too around how genitals don't necessarily determine gender or even necessarily genetic sex, but yes, the parts that were kind of on track the form of vulva and clitoris and all those parts, they're kind of the path and then the penis and testes and all of those things kind of development branches off given certain chromosomal and genetic inputs, right as we're developing. So, I mean, there's so many good things to discuss on this topic. Was there anything else you wanted to share with us?
Janna: I think that's probably good. I think having a frank and open conversation of pornography is really critical in your relationship. I have found over the years of working with couples that if porn is in the picture, it will really impact the sexual relationship in a variety of ways. So I actually was my personal experience, I found out my husband had a pornography addiction after 15 years of marriage. So that was definitely a time that I look back on.
It was the scariest time in my marriage because it was such a huge learning realization for me, but I'm so grateful for it because not only was I able to figure out how to heal from porn for both of us, we did it in a very kind of unique way, but also watching somebody heal from it and the huge improvements and changes that happened over the course of a year. So having a good conversation about it is really important.
Laura: Yeah, thank you for that. So where can people go and find you and follow you and get learn from you?
Janna: So I'm on Instagram, I'm doing my best over there Laura.
Laura: I'm trying to get her to do more like reels and stuff.
Janna: Kind of an intimidating place for me. So I’m at jannadentonhowes.com. No hyphen and also same on Facebook. I do weekly Facebook lives and if you'd like to get on my email list and also get some more customized support, you can take my quiz. That's the four desire fixes quiz. So it's just a few questions that you answer and then at the end you get a video that is customized to the your best next step and how to fix some of your desires. So that's jannadentonhowes.com/quiz.
Laura: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your expertise with us and I hope that as we move into, you know, raising these kiddos and raising ourselves alongside them, that we can have healthier intimate relationships for all of us.
Janna: Me too. Thanks for having me Laura.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!