You're not trying to get your child to be a reflection of you. You are invested in them being okay. In the process of knowing them, it's actually facilitating them getting clearer within themselves.
In this episode with Dr Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, we are talking about all things midlife and beyond, talking about how unique this time of life is for women and how under-discussed it is. I think a lot of women are really not prepared for the changes that kind of pile on you all at once, from the mid 40s, 50s and beyond. I especially wanted to talk to an expert who is a specialist in talking about sexuality, and that is Jennifer. So this is a great conversation. Jennifer talks about her own lived experience and shares some really great examples that I think you'll find helpful in understanding and navigating this life transition. If this is what you're going through, or if it's your mother or a loved one or a sister, I think you're really going to enjoy it.
Letting your child be who they are is the kindest thing you can do for them, but also for yourself. It allows you to go and find the self that you can be now that you are no longer in that earlier identity.
Dr, Jennifer, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, my pleasure. Dr, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is an LDS relationship coach and sexuality coach with a PhD in counseling psychology, her teaching and coaching focus on helping individuals and couples create greater connection and passion in their emotional and sexual relationships. In addition to her private practice, she has created five empowering and highly reviewed online courses. Each course was designed to give individuals and couples the tools requisite to creating healthier lives and stronger intimate relationships. Dr Finlayson, Fife also offers many workshops and retreats where she teaches these life changing principles in person, she is a frequent guest on podcasts on the subjects of sexuality, relationships, mental health and faith. She's also the creator and host of room for two, a popular sex and intimacy coaching podcast. So thank you so much for being here. You are a busy woman, and we are so grateful for your time to have this fun conversation. Yeah, my pleasure. Well, so we're going to dive right in. We are talking all to women here, because that's what we do here, and especially we're going to focus on women as we mature. So really looking at women in their 40s, 50s and beyond. Of course, I think a lot of this will apply to all women of any age, but I think that sometimes this age has some unique elements that maybe don't get discussed as much. So will you start us off there? Tell us what you think is so special about this? Should we say middle age, this, this, 40s and 50s and beyond as we mature, what are some of the things that come up in your experience with women that are pretty unique to this time when we look at relationships especially,
yeah, well, as a post menopausal woman myself, who was a bit shocked by the amount of kind of loss and disorientation that comes during that period, and then talking to friends of mine, clients of mine in a similar period that I think I did not fully anticipate it or understand how it would be. And I think first of all, from just a kind of broader developmental frame there midlife is an important part for men and women, in some ways, how I would describe it is all of the ideas you had about what you would be able to control or create or Solve in your youth, right? Which is valuable. It's why you did the things you did, the dreams, the ideas about what you would contribute, that in midlife, I think there's often a crisis of power, like this sense of like, I'm not as capable of controlling things and making things go the way I wanted as I thought, my parents are dying or have gone, you know, my my adolescents or young adults are not making choices in the way that I would have thought was best for them, and in fact, now they're talking about the things I did wrong. Yeah, my marriage, you know, now the kids are gone, is not as robust or solid as I thought. My sexuality. You know, as a friend of mine said, like, my sex drives gone down, my teeth are falling out, my parents are sick. Like, who thought of this? Okay, yeah. And, you know, it's a very relatable feeling, like, this sucks. This is hard and and I think for women in particular, especially women who have elected to be home with their children and their kids are now have left or are leaving, and then they have a partner who is like at the top of his career or something, this can be especially devastating or disorienting, because they have spent their. So much in the support role and the service role of others, and then everyone's kind of like, thank you very much, and they're moving on. And you're like, wait a minute, my sense of who I am and what I have to offer is crashing. And so women often go into an identity crisis that can be really disorienting and destabilizing, because it's like, Who Who Am I? I remember my mom actually going through this. She raised eight children. They left the home, and I think she was like, I don't know who I am. I don't know what my life is really about at this point. And so I think there's another element where I think women often have learned and have naturally gravitated towards a kind of self sacrifice that's very valuable, right in parenting, or at least it certainly can be. And there is this sense of I am depleted, or it hasn't gone so well for me, or, you know, I feel taken advantage of. And there is a little more of a kind of rebellion initially that can lead to something stronger that has kind of lost faith in the sacrifice everything model and women can often grow into a much more boundary, stronger sense of self, and I don't mean defensive, guarded and closed off. I mean literally more able to be at peace in their own skin, make choices that they can live with better in their relationships, and often that crisis is what drives that strength into our 50s. So I'm speaking really broadly, but it can be a really devastating time for some women, but it can also be a springboard into a much happier life. The happiest people on the planet are 50 and older, so Well,
I think you said that all so well, and it's definitely something that I have seen in my practice. As people come and say, Hey, can you fix my hormones? And as we start talking, it's it is the hormones and it is the physical destabilization. But man, it's more than that, and there is this intricate connection between the physical changes that affect the psyche and the psychological changes, but there's also the relational and interconnectedness of the psyche and the psychosomatic changes that then affect the body, and so really trying to deal with both of those, I also hope that listeners feel heard and feel seen in this the idea of midlife crisis, I don't think is necessarily something that a lot of women relate to and feel like I'm having a midlife crisis, so I just feel like it's the wrong label. Yeah, but the idea of having everything you just described kind of exploding or imploding in our lives feels very scary. It feels very out of control. It feels like, well, what even is the point of all of it? Or who am I and what am I supposed to be doing? What do I do from here? Yeah,
absolutely. Yeah, the stereotype of a midlife crisis, we often think of a man getting a sports car and girlfriend, and we kind of have that in our minds. But yes, this this sort of reorientation of life that I think men and women can both go through in their own ways. Yeah,
well, we're going to talk first about sort of the interpersonal work, the the self discovery and and then a little bit about relationship, and then we're going to move into sexuality, because I do think that is a really big role that not a lot of people know how to counsel about. So I want to take advantage of your expertise and really diving into that. But let's first talk about the individual, and then the relationship. So what does the individual how do we get ready for this? How do we prepare for this? What can we do to ease this transition When Everything Feels like it's probably out of control? Is what feels like the biggest issue, whether it's parenting adolescents, taking care of aging parents, having a relationship, figuring out our career or lack thereof, or repurposing. What do we do to try to ease that transition? Are there a few things that come up for you in
truth, like, I often think nothing prepares you for the second half of life, like being in it, nothing prepares you for parenting like having a baby. I mean, so I'm not saying that there. You know, nothing prepares you for marriage like marriage. So that is to say, a lot of times it just takes being in it to really learn from it, because that's where our brains grow the fastest and the most. I think we can probably benefit from taking some of the judgment out of it and the fear out of it, by normalizing and having better education about the fact that this is a part of life. But most people don't concern themselves much with that when they're in their 30s, because they're like, that is like, that's for like, older people, yeah, you know what I mean, like, like, I'm sure. No, I didn't think about people used to always say you should treat your body like this for later in life. And I just like, oh, that's never gonna happen. I don't know. It's just there's a sort of fantasy, until you're there, and then you're like, Oh yeah, I guess it did happen.
I think that's so true. And so I love that you said normalizing it and really expecting it, not with dread, but just understanding that like by when your kids start moving out of the house, and when you're you start getting towards towards This age and this life transition that you just hopefully it doesn't shock you, because I think that's what's so destabilizing. Now, one of the things you mentioned before was this idea of being really clear about who you are and understanding your sense of self. Will you talk about, how do women, especially in this age group, maybe, how do we approach that, and maybe some of the ways that we get it wrong? You know, what are some opportunities for us? Well, one thing I
would say is, the more rigid our sense of self is, the more it can hurt going into this stage. So that is to say, if you have multiple identities. And what I mean by that is, if you, you know, got a degree and you worked in a certain field, you also have had children and you've been a mother, you've also have a rich friend group, you know, if you have a lot of ways of relating to who you are, I think that's a buffer in this stage, because when people can have a much harder time is when, you know, I have no identity outside of being a mother, and now my children are all gone, or, you know, I remember listening to Arthur Brooks talk about this, like his full Identity. He's an author. He full identity was being a French horn player, and then he started losing his skill because of an injury, and so his whole sense of self came crashing down with it. So sometimes, if we've kind of put everything into one identity or one way of thinking about who we are, that can be especially challenging for us, but the primary shift that happens is this sense of what we can actually control, achieve, solve, do, gets challenged by the fundamental loss that's A part of living. And so I think that's the shift we have to tolerate, that we can be the world's best parent and still have children who have challenges. We can be, you know, the most capable in whatever career we've been in, but still see that we have limitations or liabilities or haven't been able to do everything we wanted to do, or that it affected other domains in our life. So I think, though, that the primary shift that we're going through is, how do I belong to myself while tolerating what I don't have control over? You know, a lot of my friends and myself, like saw our kids in young adulthood struggling in ways you wouldn't expect them to struggle, or choosing paths you wouldn't expect them to choose or want them to choose. And it's very easy to go into a place of self blame and like, I somehow did something wrong, and I should have. And I mean, I'm all for people taking responsibility for whatever is their responsibility, but what we're really doing, often in that mode, is pretending we're responsible for things we're not pretending we have more control than we do, not tolerating the loss of actually launching a child into The world and really letting them sort out their path, because it does belong to them and part of our challenges, it's hard to to tolerate what we don't have control of. It's hard to tolerate loss, but it's also it's hard to be a self that feels limited in her capacity, yeah, limited in her efficacy, and yet, when we get better at being compassionate to ourselves, settling down in what we actually can do and can't do, we actually can find a tremendous amount of freedom. Right? Our anxiety can actually go down because we're not trying to solve things that are not ours to solve, but it is a shift, and there's loss in it and it it takes some real compassion towards ourselves and compassion towards others that we love.
I just want to restate that again, because I just think it's so important this you just painted this picture of what happens when we're younger, in our even in our adolescence, and then in our 20s and our 30s, that we're setting these goals and making these plans and and feel so on top of the world and feel so powerful. And that's supposed to be that way. That's how we're supposed to feel. And it's. Point, some of us sooner, some of us later, we start recognizing that, oh, shoot, I have no control over anything except me. And I think that feels number one, like, Well, how do I accomplish all these things that I've spent decades thinking about? But number two, it feels like, Well, how do I be happy? Then, how do I feel happy if I can't control anything about my life? Will you talk about just that finding, maybe that inner happiness when it feels like I can't control my husband? I can't control my kids? Yeah, I can't control, you know, anything else around me? What does that? Because it's a balance, right? It's a balance of letting go, and what you called grieving and mourning, that loss of control. But with that, there's a blossoming, right? There's a yes, there's something that happens internally. Will you talk to that a little
bit? Yeah. So I think, you know, the the downside, of course, is saying, you know, my child may struggle, and there may not be much I can do about it, and that's hard, you know? We just love the idea that we can solve everything, or that if we try, we should, yeah, and that we should, and that it's a reflection on us if they don't. And you know, we're taking on and I would I say people's anxiety always goes up whenever they're trying to control something they can't control. Yes, you know that sense of panic and vigilance and so on. But then, while there's a loss, let's just stick with the child. Example of saying, like, it's not mine to control, and not, I don't mean in, like, a resigned, resentful way, like, Well, screw it. Good luck out there, you know, like that. But like, I can you'd actually frees you up to love better? Yeah, it frees you up to say, well, it is your path, but because I can let go of the idea that it's mine to solve, I can actually love you, care about you, understand you, because I don't have to deal with the sense that I am the problem, or I have something I need to do, and so there's a greater ease in it. There's a greater freedom in it. It's like I've I've done my job, and now what can I do that makes life what do I actually have control over? And how can I make my life richer and better with a clear understanding of what is my responsibility and what is not. And so I think that when people make that transition, first of all, their adult children feel closer to their parents, because they feel like I can be myself and I can be known to my parent, and she's going to be okay and I'm going to be okay, but also, like they get clear about what is theirs to solve, rather than mom always popping in there, trying to give advice, trying to micromanage it. And so it actually can be deeply liberating. It's, frankly, I recommend it highly
better. I totally agree. Will you give us just a little hands on? Because what I see in my interactions with women is, I don't think there's a lot of women who necessarily push back against that, but I think there's a lot of women who are like, I don't know how to do that, like, one of the common examples I see is parents whose kids go away to college or move out or whatever, and then come home, and there's been some values difference. You know, maybe it's a political thing, maybe it's a faith or religious thing, but maybe it's a they come back with, with a partner and that was unexpected, or or piercings, or, you know, whatever, yeah, tattoos, or, like, whatever it is, there's been this, this sense of values difference. And I think the other example is when children are engaged in something adult children are engaged in something that feels truly dangerous, or life, yeah. And the moms are saying, like, what do you want me to do? Like, not worry about that. Not Yeah, yeah. So give us the hands on, like, what do we actually do?
Good? So those are two different things. Like, if you think your child's actually doing something that's dangerous, if your adult child's doing something that's dangerous and or bad for them, we'll put that aside for a moment. Let's just go to the first one where they're like, engaging in behavior that is different than the way you taught them, different than what you think is wise or good, and you may even be completely right, okay, like you've got, you know, 30 years on your child, and you may well see things more clearly from life experience. But I think it really helps to first of all remind yourself that when you were 20, you were trying to sort out who you were,
and needed to sort that out, and you needed to do it exactly
is 100% your work. And frankly, I think 30 years ago, we were in a better position societally, because society tolerated that autonomy better. I think in this kind of I generation, as we've talked about it, there's a lot more of a sense of parents kind of hovering and being told that we ought to. Yeah, and, you know, having fewer children, but then feeling like our sense of self is residing in these couple of children, where, when you had, you know, 11 kids, you had no time for that. And so, so I think we've gotten progressively more fixated on our children and overly involved in a way. Now, I don't mean you don't care about them and you don't know them, but trying to, like, shape every choice they make is bad for them, and it's bad for you. So I think it's like remembering like this is on them, they have to sort it out. And the more I hover and get involved, the more I'm gonna push them into rebellious energy, which is not good for them. You know, even if they're rebelling against you, they're still in reaction to you rather than who am I and what can I really live with? So the big goal is knowing them and accepting them. You know, hey, tell me about your tattoo. Why? What you know? Why'd you decide to do it? And I think it's pretty, or whatever. Yeah, you know, they already know that you wouldn't do it. They already know that you it's not your favorite thing or whatever. You know, just but like, look, it's not on me, it's on you. And if you want your kids to make the best judgments, it's much more likely that they'll do it in that setting of acceptance and understanding than in you trying to, you know, leave articles around about why tattoos are bad for people or whatever.
Yeah, so instead of focusing on what you're afraid the the 20 steps down the road, or what this means about their future. You're never going to be able to get a job because you have a tattoo on your neck. Or, Yes, you know, whatever the thing may be, instead of focusing on 10 steps ahead, you focus on, I'd love to get to know more about you. Good for you for saving your money and going and getting that or, thank you for sharing that with me. Thank you for showing me and really making it about the relationship instead of about their future and their outcome
Exactly. And I think it can help to say, how would I relate to this person if they were my friend's child? Yeah, okay, because when it's sometimes, oh so much easier.
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know, my own son, when he was going through a difficult time, I would like constantly kind of be trying to give him the right answer. Quote, unquote, I would never have done that with an adolescent client. I would have been like understanding, helping them think through it, but because it was my own child, I I couldn't, I couldn't settle myself down enough to just listen and understand. So I think it really, you know, I've often said that to myself, just imagine, this is someone else's child. Well, I'm going to be much more curious, much more validating. I'm not going to be bossing them or telling them what to do. So I think that's really helpful. And then similar to that is, rather than, you know, my kids will often call me and they'll tell me something's going on. I'm telling you my desire to be like, oh yeah. Well, definitely do that. Don't do that.
That desire doesn't go away. Oh my gosh. I'm like, people pay me for my answers, like I have them okay, and it doesn't mean that I don't ever give input. But when I'm doing good job at this anyway, I'm saying, Well, what do you think about that? What do you think's worked well for you? You know, in the process of knowing them, it's actually facilitating them getting clearer within themselves. Yeah, yeah, when they feel understood, you know, then they're much more likely to tolerate input from me. If I feel like it's would be valuable. I mean, not even just tolerate like, if they feel understood, then I might say, you know, I think what you're doing makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I can imagine this is also true. They're more receptive to it because they don't feel like you're just trying to get you, you're not trying to get your child to be a reflection of you. You're invested in them being okay, yeah, and so. So I think those are all ways of disentangling our sense of self from our child, and it's hard work, and a lot of people don't do it, they will continue to hover, micromanage, be over, involved in their children's adult lives, married lives, in a way that's not about love, but about my sense of self. Still resides in you, and so it's it's a paradoxical thing, because it feels like a kind of disinvestment, but like letting your child be who they are is the kindest thing you can do for them, but also for yourself, it allows you to go and find the self that you can be now that you have are no longer in that earlier identity.
Gosh, I feel like we should just have that last paragraph, that last sentence, and just replay it over and over, in that like the goal is not to find who necessarily Mallory is as a mother, but who Mallory is. And part of that is that I have children whom I love deeply, but but but my identity is not that my child does X, Y and Z. My identity is my identity regardless of what anyone else in my life does. That's me, that's that's who I choose to be, and the others are part of my life, but not that's where I am. Yeah, that's right. And I think this is a period of both discovering elements of ourselves that that have been latent, that we didn't know about, that in another context, couldn't emerge. And it's also about creating. I think sometimes when we're too focused on sort of discovering we we don't see the more creative self defining part of it. You know, my mom always cared about healthy eating. That was just something that was a passion in her from a young age. And so when she raised the eight of us, she was very, you know, we didn't have a lot of sugar in the house. She was always thoughtful about high nutrition, food. Well, when we all left, this passion continued to matter to her. And then once we were at a farmer's market, and there wasn't anything healthy there to get, like, you know, you could get raw potatoes, but you couldn't get any snack food that was healthy. And she just thought maybe, maybe I should come and sell this healthy snack food that she used to make. And so, you know, she was in her 70s at that point, but she went and started creating this product, putting it at farmer's markets, putting it in grocery stores in we're in New England, in New England. So anyway, it was like this was about finding other dimensions of herself. Even later than that, she started dancing, you know, so my mom was a good example of how to keep for I mean, she certainly went through loss, disorientation, grief, self doubt, you know, but she also used it as a fertile ground for growing and expanding other aspects of herself and continuing to live her life was richer, but so was everyone in relationship to her, richer for her continuing to develop other parts of who she is, who she was.
I love that example so much. And the world needs more of us to live in that, you know, the world needs more of us to be really beautifully developed individuals than it does need people to be really intense mothers. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not devaluing motherhood at all, but we need to be that, that most developed part of ourselves, and not to be to know everything that our child should do in their future. Yes, that's right. I want to shift gears so we have plenty of time and talk about now relationships in this phase of life. Sure, let's talk briefly about sort of the the changes that happen, pros and cons, and then we'll, we'll move kind of quickly, then into the intimacy part, because I want to give plenty of time to hear about that.
Yeah, so you'll probably know more about the the biological changes, but yeah. So there are changes in estrogen levels and testosterone levels, and so people can experience a shift in their sex drive, as can their male partners, you know, or their partners. So I think that the body is often not operating as easily and as quickly around sexuality as it maybe has in the past. And not to mention, I think for women, you know, hot flashes, just more mood swings, your body changing. I think women's sexuality is is often very connected to the sense of being desirable. And we can have such rigid ideas about what that is culturally that that sense of like I don't like how my body's changing, I don't feel attractive. So those kinds of shifts can definitely impact how we feel. And then when we see, you know, our body not responding as it used to, we can have an emotional reaction to it that actually makes it worse. So I've told this story before, but like when, right as COVID hit, my son was going through a hard time, and I was hitting menopause, and so there was just like, kind of loss and uncertainty everywhere. And I really, in some ways, I didn't necessarily know. I really feared that menopause was going to mean my sexual desire would necessarily go down. And so I remember like, feeling like, oh my gosh, I just don't feel any arousal. I don't feel it in the way I felt it in the past. And oh my gosh. Like, you know, my brain was taking me to, like, We're toast. We're not going to make it. It wasn't quite that bad, but it was kind of like this sense of loss was everywhere. And so because I was having that reaction, I think it was a downward pressure on my eroticism. Because, you know, when we're in our anxiety and our fear, then it pushes down on desire. And I remember saying to my husband, like, I don't feel anything, and I keep not feeling anything, and maybe, maybe, maybe we're done, like really, but I was just sort of expressing my despair, and he just said, we're going to be okay. No matter what we have each other, we're going to be okay, and it's all gonna be all right and like, because I knew that that was sincere, and I believed him, it like just took the fear off. And then what was so interesting is, even though I found myself needing to work with my body a little bit more, I still had so much more impact on my own arousal and my sexuality, even though the biological aspect was shifting. So I think that there's maybe a lot of what I'm saying, but I think often with loss, there is desire can plummet. We might be confronting issues in our marriage that we hadn't seen before, or maybe we tolerated before that were a problem. You know, the kids are gone, and now you have to kind of confront the marriage in a new way. So I think there is, again, not just a disorientation of self. There's this biological aspect that can shape our relationship to sexuality and intimacy, and then our marriage may be going through its own reorientation, and all of that's going to be destabilizing. So the destabilizing part is normal. The question may be, how, what am I going to learn from this? And how can I create something better for me? Yeah, in all of this disorientation, exactly.
And so if we kind of go back, because you just said so many wonderful things, there are these different elements that really contribute to these changes in our sexuality. One is definitely just full on, physical, biological, physiological, that the tissues aren't responding the same way, and that's definitely something we've had. Other episodes on that we treat it that's that's a fixable thing by and large, as improving vaginal dryness, improving comfort during sex. I think the second thing that you mentioned is oftentimes the physical, the esthetic part, you know, maybe our skin is starting to not be the same. Maybe our breasts don't quite look the same as they used to. Maybe we don't feel, you know, as comfortable in our bodies. And then that can snowball and say, well, and he's not able to have an arousal. He's not able to have an erection as easy as he could. So he must be. He's not attracted to me. It's because I look terrible. That's what it is. And so it becomes this really negative snowball, yeah, 100% not to mention the hormone changes that change our brain, which cause us to perceive it all. More snapshot, you know more more on a dime, where we're not seeing things through the rosiest of lenses, we're seeing things through the fight or flight lens. And so I definitely think one of the things that you said was this physical change, and then also understanding that your partner is very likely having physical changes, and those are very often treated medically or in other ways, but there is this reciprocal relationship of the emotional side of things, then can feed back onto the physical side of the physical side worse. So breaking that down tell us also about, then more of the interrelational things that happen with intimacy around this age. I think there's so many, I don't think we talk about it, and so I think most people have no clue what their friends are going through, necessarily, in detail. And so tell us about some of those that come up for for me in my clinic, it's things like, I'm tired of being on the receiving end of life. I want to be in charge of life. And that spills over to sexuality, of like, I've just been laying here doing what you want me to do for 30 years, and I'm over it. Will you talk about maybe that? Yeah, then some other things that come up. Yeah. So if you just even look at the patterns of men and women's relationship to themselves and each other, there's often a crossover that happens about this time of life, like, if especially people that have lived in a more traditional orientation to family life. You know, I saw it happen in my parents, where, I think coming out of the disorientation that my mom and dad each went through in their own way, I think my father felt this sort of crisis of his relationships. He'd done all these things, accomplished, all these things, but he wasn't really close to anyone. His children didn't feel warm as warmly towards him as they did towards my mom, and I think he, you know, and he was getting negative feedback from many of his kids. So my father then started to go into some crisis of self, and started becoming a warmer, more. Supportive, kinder soul. My mother's crisis led her to start doing things like doing the farmers market, starting to dance, you know, just starting to endeavor in different ways. And my dad was there at the farmer's market, supporting her, helping her make the food, you know, doing. So there was this kind of shift that happens for it happened in their marriage, and happens in many marriages where you kind of develop the other half. For women, this is often about, wait, hey, my sexuality, my pleasure. It matters, okay, like, I'm tired of always serving your needs, quote, unquote. I mean, that never goes well, and that should get fixed it at age 20, but, but nonetheless, a lot of times, women are started to be like, You know what? I'm over this because I feel like I've given up so much, and it is time for me to take myself more seriously and and that can look like a negative thing to some people. It can be a very, very positive thing, because a couple can actually become more intimate. Men who are maybe accustomed to like being the sexual machines, or just that their bodies are going to do what they want that's not there for them in the same way. And so what actually happens, or can happen in later stage, sex is just the marriage gets more intimate. First of all, couples, often in this second half are renegotiating their relationship. They're dealing with feelings and ways of being that have not been working for them, or that they need to have shift, and men become more capable of intimacy, and women become more capable of intimacy. And what I mean by that is that it's one thing to just lie there and kind of, you know, tolerate your husband's sexual needs. That's not intimate, okay? Yeah, it's more like, like, here I am. This is what matters to me. This is what I want. That's more intimate men being more able to show the underbelly, more able to be in a body that doesn't always respond they want the way they want to. And so what couples that are having good sex in the second half of life, are learning to do is to spend more times just with each other in their bodies, not demanding that it respond in the way that they want, not as in much reaction to their bodies if their bodies disappoint in some way, and yet more freedom to truly be themselves. Less apology. That's the greatest thing that happens in your in your 50s, you know, if not earlier, is less apology. Yeah, for being who you are, for being a human being, for being in a vulnerable body, in a vulnerable reality, just to be alive, and being more able to just accept yourself and accept your partner, that's where the really good sex happens. So what advice do you have for people? Because I'm sure there are going to be people who are saying, I don't even care about sex like I have zero sex drive. And of course, that's okay if someone decides that they don't care about sexuality as a part of their lives, but for someone who feels like I feel like life would be better if I did have a sex drive. Obviously we're working on that from a medical standpoint, but what? What advice do you have from a from your standpoint of, yeah, what if I have no sex drive, but I'd kind of, I'd like what you're describing, but I don't even know where to start.
Yeah. Well, the thing I teach a lot is something that Dr schnarz used to teach. I studied with Dr schnarz for about a decade, and he would talk about the fact that we want to belong to ourselves more than we want to be sexual. So being true to ourselves is the most important thing, and so when it makes sometimes people are saying, I don't even want to deal with sex because sex has been so connected to losing themselves, right? Or they've never integrated it into their sense of self to begin with. When women are wanting to find it, it's that they kind of can feel that this has been so much about you, I haven't been able you know that they want to belong to their bodies and their pleasure, their capacity for pleasure, they want to reclaim it for themselves, because they intuit that there's a self betrayal in not belonging to this part of themselves. And I don't mean that they're having sex maybe in the way that they've been taught that they should. I don't mean that they're out producing sex in the way that maybe they've been told they're just more at peace with their own capacity for pleasure. They're more at peace in their own skin. They're more accepting of their bodies, as flawed as all of our bodies may be like, they can just accept pleasure. They can surrender into it more they can be given to without a feeling of guilt and apology. They can receive better and so sometimes, well, for many women, I would say, making peace with their sexuality is a form of really making peace with themselves and not living apologetically. So many women feel. In their younger years, the objectification of sexuality that that being desirable, that being what a man wants, is something that they're supposed to offer. But it's it can be in a way that feels divided from their own sense of self. It's like a way of earning a self. And so the healing is about reclaiming this as a part of being who you are, not to earn a self, but to more fully be yourself. And so that healing is the most important thing, whatever it looks like in terms of actual sexual behavior, we're way too focused, sometimes on orgasm and even intercourse, rather than more deeply valuing the sensuality and sexuality of life. And there's so many ways to express and to enjoy that part of being human. So I think in some ways, the body not operating as easily as it did when you're younger, kind of opens you up to A and the deeper acceptance of ourselves and of each other can open us up to a richer exploration of all that I love that so much. I from a medical standpoint, often what we're encouraging in this situation is self stimulation or self exploration. You counsel primarily women and and couples who are in a more conservative religious background, where there's, there's some weirdness around that, there's some questions maybe around that, what is your advice of how to explore that intimacy in a way that still feels true to your values or true to your sense of self, but also getting rid of some of the shackles of like right and wrong, gross and clean, yeah, you know, some of that that comes along with it.
Well, there's so much to say on that front and see if we can do it quickly, because there's just so many layers, you know? I mean, I think part of the reason is we just fear our sexuality in general, or we fear it feels immoral, yeah, like if we touch our own genitals, that there's something inherently indulgent about that. And you know, of course, people can relate to their sexuality in ways that are indulgent and are bad for their souls and bad for their partnership. But I'm not sure it's as simple as whose hands are on whose genitals, for example. I think it has more to do with, you know, what am I doing? What impact does it have on me and my sense of self, and what impact does it have on my relationship? And so, you know, especially people who've gone through trauma, especially people who are, you know, needing to belong to their own, you know, needing to sort out, for example, how do I have an orgasm? How do I get better at having an orgasm? Right? They need to take it out of the expectations of a relationship, to sort out something about themselves, so they can be more at peace with themselves, so they can be more able to be in a marriage. And I think that's a very valuable reason and a very valuable process. So when I'm working with people who are religious and have some fear around that, I really just am inviting them to think about what is the actual impact. You know, a lot of times we're like, oh, well, missionary position sex is the right kind of sex. Well, there's lots of dark things that happen in missionary position. So it doesn't necessarily make good or good, right? It's like, what am I actually doing? What impact is it having on me, on you, on us, and so helping people to see what it is, what we're aiming for, and what actually makes us belong more deeply to ourselves is good for our souls and is good for our relationships. That's really what should determine our choices?
Yeah, I I'm so glad you explained it that way. I think one of the worst favors we do to ourselves, culturally and through history is by actually oversimplifying sex. It's it's not that simple. You know this idea that, like, don't have sex until a certain point, and then you'll both magically know exactly what to do and pleasure each other and create intimacy and also be happy in a relationship and like, it's so, so complicated. And I think the idea of you mentioned, you know, if you haven't had pleasurable sex, that's a lot of pressure to put on your partner to be like, Okay, keep trying until you figure out what works for me. Oh, by the way, you can't actually tell that it works for me unless I feel comfortable sharing that with you. So just keep trying. You know, I think we have to bring ourselves into it and to say, Who am I and what am I, and what richness does this bring to my life and to get to know our bodies and to understand the pleasure and if anything, that should make us more sure of ourselves, and also be able to, then in an ideal couple's relationship, bring ourselves to that relationship and say, like, I want to share this with you, because this is one of my most intimate parts, and I would love to have that with you, but to think that intimacy is only about us showing up and being a receive. Member of a sexual act, or a or a performer of a sexual act is just so oversimplified and can be construed a million different ways.
Yep, and will always make sex undesirable. Yeah, right, because we, when we desire sex, we feel free to be ourselves there, yeah? And that's just like the defining experience that I feel free here, and I can be my erotic self and I can share it with you. That's what we are ultimately going for, and that if there's any goal, it should be that not about a particular behavior or outcome Exactly.
Well, thank you so much. This has just been so great, and I love to keep talking, but we'll wrap up. Tell me if you have one overarching message that you would love to share with women along this this topic, will you? Will you give us just a couple more sentences of your your wisdom? Well,
I would say that as women as a group, we have both a strength and a liability in our ability to understand and discern what other people want, you know, and that that is a strength, because we're able to give so much, particularly as mothers, and it's also can be our liability that we're overly attuned to what others want, and it starts to cost us because we're not being true enough to ourselves in those relationships and the crisis of midlife. If that's the right way to say it is that it often is making us start to say, I need to lean into this other part, what's best. I don't mean what's best for me at the cost of my relationships, but how do I attend to who I am in a more wise way, in a way that's better for my peace of mind and for peace in my relationships. And so just to say that disorientation is uncomfortable, but there's a real gift in it, and you know, if you can learn from it, you will have more peace in the later years of life. You will be more at peace with being human and be more able to gift your life and the world with who you are. So it's a hard process, but it's a worthy process. So well said, and such a wonderful, wonderful gift for people. I hope people find this helpful. Will you tell them where they can find you? Sure you can find me on my website, which is just my last name, which is Finlayson, hyphen, fife.com and I have just a lot of resources. There a free podcast, which is conversations with Dr Jennifer, a couples podcast where I'm working with couples around these issues around sex and intimacy, on room for two, and then other courses and resources there. So yeah, is there a specific course that that would be best for this? Well, yeah, the women's art of desire, course. So it's about helping women in their relationship to their sense of self and what is at the core of our sense of desire now, and I don't just mean desire for sex, although that's part of it, but it's desire in our lives, how to live in more attuned to who we actually are. And then I teach a lot about women's sexuality and women's eroticism and all that. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing their insights and time with us. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening, we couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her.com, YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice. You.
