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DR. MIKE MORENO: Welcome back to Wellness Inc. I’m Dr. Mike Moreno taking a deep dive into all things wellness after over twenty-five years of practicing medicine. I’m fascinated with anything and everything that can help you feel better, live healthier and become the best you possible. I’ll be interviewing the most cutting-edge experts in the field of wellness and exploring new innovative technologies to help you live your best life. At the end of each episode, I’ll give you my weekly treks, my top tips for you to use right away. Remember to subscribe for free rate and review my podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Well, buckle up, everybody, for today’s show, we’re going to be talking about something that I actually haven’t talked about before. We’ve done a lot of shows about COVID 19 and how it’s affecting all of you in terms of your physical and emotional health. Well, today we’re going to be talking about how your sex lives may be impacted specifically. We’re going to look at the issue of desire in the time of COVID. Everybody’s like, Oh, great, this is going to be good. We have with us, we’re fortunate to have with us, just the expert to help us do that.
Our guest today is a licensed psychotherapist and nationally recognized sexuality counselor who specializes in sex therapy, couples therapy and working with individuals on a range of relational issues for the last 20 years. He regularly appears and is quoted in various media. And he’s the author of the bestselling book She Comes First. I know this book, and he has a new book called So Tell Me About The last Time You Had Sex, which he says is the question. Get this the question that he often asks at the start of his sessions. We’re so happy to have you here today, Dr. Ian Kerner. How are you, Dr. Kerner?
DR. IAN KERNER: I’m good, Mike. So, tell me about the last time you had sex, I’m just kidding!
DR. MIKE MORENO: Why did I know that was coming? Listen, I mean, I love that you do that. It’s like… wow. You’re going to get your bang for your buck, right off the bat here. You know, sex has been, with this whole pandemic, this whole thing going on, people cooped up with each other, people are actually having more sex, less sex there. I mean, what!? As far as COVID in this pandemic, what are you seeing right now in your practice?
DR. IAN KERNER: You know, it’s really interesting, I mean, obviously, COVID is sort of becoming the new norm, and as we were getting going with COVID, I really thought that people would be having more sex because I always hear people complaining we don’t have time for sex. We’re on different schedules. We’re always tired at different times, people have commutes, and they’re doing things with friends and colleagues. Now, in an age of COVID, you really do have the time for sex and you’re not commuting. So, I would have thought that people would have been having more sex. In fact, I’ve really been seeing the very opposite, you know, for the last 9 or 10 months.
The main complaints I’m getting in the main sessions I’m doing with couples are about mismatched libidos, low desires, sex ruts, couples not having sex for weeks, even months. So, I would say the biggest issue I’m seeing is that is low desire, basically.
DR. MIKE MORENO: I think it’s interesting because for a lot of people when you have more time, which I don’t know, I’m going to put myself out there and probably get myself in a lot of trouble, but for a lot of people, when you’re around someone as much as we’ve been around each other and our loved ones and our significant others, you start to pick up on things that maybe you didn’t really recognize before, and now they drive you nuts, and it becomes a turnoff. Maybe there are things that have the opposite effect. I sort of get and I sort of see where just because people have more time on their hands when the rest of their world is just in a frenzy because of what’s going on, it really kind of mentally and physically affects people. How do most people deal with this? What do you, what do you see most often?
DR. IAN KERNER: Well, I see couples coming in with low desire, mismatched libidos a lot lately, and you’re right, that can be for a lot of different reasons. I mean, sex, I like to say that sex is sort of like the stock market. When you look at it from the big picture, it goes up one day, it goes down the next day, but when you get near experience and really close to what’s happening, there’s like a million intersecting little variables that may be contributing to that. I think it is the same with sex and desire.
There are biological factors, there are psychological factors, there are relational factors, and that’s always the case, and we can talk about those factors, but I think COVID has been like a hotbox, like an incubator of all those factors, you know? So, for example, if we’re looking for a biological lens, you know, exercise is huge for desire, right? You feel good, you exercise, you’re releasing endorphins, you’re getting all that vascular and blood flow through your body and your self-esteem goes up because you worked out. Well, people are not really working out nearly as much. They are not getting to walk as much. They are not getting to move around as much. So that’s, you know, that’s a factor that would always be the case.
Now in this age of COVID, you know, I think it’s amplified and increased and the same thing, for example, with diet, I mean, people are really largely maintaining pretty poor diets right now. They are ordering in a lot, at least here in New York, which is great to support restaurants, but you know, that hits the waistline. It also makes you sluggish. Again, so much of sex is about self-esteem. So, if you’re not eating right, if you’re not dieting, if you’re not exercising, your self-esteem is going to get hit and that’s going to affect your desire.
DR. MIKE MORENO: You know, this is true with both men and women, and I think it’ll be interesting to get your thoughts on this, but listen, we live in this physical world, right? We all want to look good. We all want to appear appealing to our significant others. So, I think it’s important. I mean, you touched on some things. I’m like going nuts over here because you’re spot on. Especially when you talk about erectile dysfunction and issues with that, and believe me, we’re seeing a lot of these things and I always tell people, listen what you eat, how hydrated you are, which is a big thing, right? A lot of people, they are stressed out they are drinking caffeine. They are dehydrated, they are drinking alcohol, they are further dehydrated, they are not drinking enough water.
When you get an erection, let’s just be quite honest here, it’s blood flow. Blood flow is drawn into the penile vein and you get an erection. That’s how it works. It’s that simple. If you think of a river going down, down through some grassy area. As the river dries out that main river, the tributaries start to get less and less and dry.
What happens is when you don’t have that rush of water, that main area, you start to dry up areas and you lose the vegetation you lose the erection is the same thing. It’s about bringing blood to the penis and getting an erection. So, diet is obviously important. Exercise, I think, is the most important and hydration is a big one.
Let’s go through a few things. First of all, let’s talk about the 3 areas when we’re considering sexual desire. Let’s talk about those three categories, those buckets.
DR. IAN KERNER: Right, so we did talk already a little bit about the biological, and you mentioned something really interesting about erectile impairment and the tributaries and the blood flow into the genitals. You also have to think now if we move to the psychological bucket that people are dealing with a lot of anxiety. I think people are dealing with more anxiety consciously and unconsciously than they normally do.
There is a lot of stress around money and employment and around vaccines and being contagious. Anxiety triggers little spikes of adrenaline. I mean, that is the purpose of anxiety, to alert the adrenaline system to get us aware of a potential threat. But the first thing that adrenaline is going to do and you’re going to know this better than me is it’s going to direct blood flow towards the heart so that it can run towards the feet and towards the arms and away from the genitals. So even going into sex, a little anxious, a little stressed out in your environment is already going to hit your sexual function in terms of the anxiety.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, that is true. You see these young guys. I mean, I’m 53. I’m no spring chicken, but you see these young guys come in and they struggle with erections and they struggle. They tell you this. I think, gosh, when you’re this young, if you’re doing the right things for yourself, physically, you exercise, hydration is a big one. I think that is absolutely one of the most critical things and exercise and how you feed yourself, but there is a huge psychological thing, especially in these young individuals. When you talk about blood flow, I love your analogy to the stock market. I may have to use that from time to time. It’s so true, but I think psychologically, once you get in your head about this and you can’t perform, or you don’t have the desire. Man, you’re setting yourself up for a real problem.
DR. IAN KERNER: You know, you’re really right, Mike, I mean, I’m seeing more cases of erectile impairment with guys in their 20s, guys in their 30s and, you know, COVID aside, I think something to do with porn, something to do with sort of the general locker room talk and something to do with just not really being educated, to feel comfortable talking about sex. It just sets up a vicious cycle. It creates so much performance anxiety that they are not present. They are not in their bodies; they are not in a flow state. Again, as soon as you start to get a little panic during sex, as soon as that anxiety kicks in, that is going to hit your erection very quickly.
So, I work a lot with guys and it’s and it involves mindfulness. It involves communication. I’m a big believer in scaffolding with medication. I think the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] like Viagra and Cialis, and the generic versions are fantastic for helping a guy who has that psychological anxiety with some of that blood flow. So, really for any sexual issue, whether it’s desire, arousal, orgasm, just general sexual function, we have to take an integrated combination approach. We have to look at biological, psychological, relational factors, the whole kit and caboodle.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, it’s interesting because a lot of men will come in and say “well, I’m having a problem with my erection”. Here’s what guys will always say, cracks me up, “things aren’t great in the bedroom”. I love when they say that I’m like… you mean, is it the curtains? Is it the bedspread? You know what is it that’s not great in the bedroom? But you know, guys, I don’t think are as comfortable and you made this point because you have this sort of presence that you have to maintain, right? I’m the guy. I’m the macho one or whatever it is. I think, we sort of get caught up in that. Once you start going, it’s like running downhill, right? You start running downhill. Eventually, your feet can’t keep up and you’re going to fall flat on your face. So, I think it’s important. I think it’s the whole honesty with yourself and with your partner.
DR. IAN KERNER: I totally agree. The thing that I love about doing couples therapy and the reason I love doing sex therapy with couples is because you can really get them talking about topics that they’ve never talked about. So, you’ll have couples who have been together for years. They can talk about kids, real estate, in-laws, families, dreams, disappointments, but then they lie in bed next to each other, sort of in a state of silent desperation, because of shame, because of not having the language, because of feeling like they should meet certain gender roles around how they perform, and they’re just not communicating so. I love when I can just help couples sort of open up this topic and start to talk about it.
DR. MIKE MORENO: So let me ask you a question, so how often when you see a new couple first visit, how often do they walk out of the office like not happy with each other initially anyway?
DR. IAN KERNER: No, you know, Mike, it’s kind of funny because it’s almost the opposite because I try and get couples to talk about sex, not in terms of their complaint, but in terms of the solutions they want to see. So, I want to hear about the problem, but I also hear about the sex they want to be having, and I want them to open up and feel safe to start to almost fantasize a little bit in the office or really offer up to their partner what they’re interested in.
So, it’s actually it’s liberating, it’s relieving. Sometimes it’s a little sexy. So some- you know- it’s funny- my most popular spot in my practice is Thursday and Friday nights at like 6,7, 7;30, because couples almost want to have a date night afterwards because they feel so good and liberated. So, they’re going to come to my office. They’re going to talk about all the sex they want to have with each other. They’re going to like, go get some food and wine, and then they’re going to go home and have sex.
DR. MIKE MORENO: So, going back to the stock market, right? You take one piece of time there and listen, it’s not always perfect. It’s like anything else, no matter how good or bad you are at something, you’re going to have good days and bad days. It just doesn’t matter. But I think people get caught up in this idea that and again, I’m just I’m saying that when things aren’t right in the bedroom, does the partner tend to think what is going on? You’re normally all over me and you’re not. What is the deal? Your mind goes to like, are you cheating? Is it this? Is it that? Is it me? Have I gained weight? Are you not attracted to me? I mean talk about opening up a can of worms. I mean, how does that whole thing go?
DR. IAN KERNER: Yeah, that’s the hard part. I mean, for example, you mentioned infidelity, you know, infidelity is traumatic. It’s a horrible thing for anyone to have to go through, but it’s doubly hard when you add lying on top of infidelity that makes it two or three times as bad. So, to now take a sex problem where you don’t necessarily feel desired or you don’t feel attractive or you’re not having orgasms or you’re ejaculating too quickly or not at all, and you’re not talking about it. The silence compounds the whole problem because it never gets talked about, so it just becomes an area that you’re allowed to like, fester over and ruminate over. So I really do think that is again, we are just being able to talk about this topic really comes into play.
The other thing that I’m seeing a lot of during COVID that you mentioned is people being cooped up, right? People are on top of each other right now. They are enmeshed. You know, when we’re out there working, we’re getting dressed, we’re looking good, we’re getting validation, and now we’re staying home and we’re in sweats and we’re in our pajamas and a lot of a lot of especially women; I hate to generalize, but I’m hearing a lot of women say, why should I have to look good or dress up? I should be loved and desired exactly the way I am. We’re in a relationship right now. I shouldn’t have to play these games of like putting on lingerie, but you know, I think continuing to like, add a little spice, add a little adventure, a little unpredictability, still trying to look good for each other that plays a big role in sexual attraction, you know?
DR. MIKE MORENO: You know, so this is funny that you say that because, and this just happened last weekend. It’s the same thing. I can’t go out to a restaurant; I can’t go out, so what do I care what I look like, right? And so, that’s me being Mr. Selfish, so my girlfriend shows up and she looked amazing, right? Dressed up, the makeup, the whole thing. I got her this thing for Christmas, she does her hair with or whatever… she’s all excited and she was all done up and I was like shirt, shorts, flip flops. Total loser… Right? So, she comes in and I’m like… Whoa! I go “You look great!”. And she’s like, “Yeah, you know, I thought I would dress up”. Now, we weren’t going anywhere, we weren’t even doing takeout. We were just going to make dinner like we have been for the last several months.
I felt so bad, so I quickly went and cut my hair and tried to make myself look presentable, but it’s totally true, like you say, it’s with women. It was with me this time because I was like “Wow”. So that dynamic and I think it’s interesting because I don’t know, have this pandemic or COVID not happen with this ever happen?
DR. IAN KERNER: Right. So, Mike, I want you to think of desire like a car for a second, there is an accelerator and there is a brake, right? The accelerator is all the things that turn you on and move you forward and give you that acceleration through arousal and the brake is all the things that turn you off and stop you from getting aroused. So, when your girlfriend shows up looking great, she’s actually putting a little bit of a foot on the accelerator. When you’re looking like crap or however you’re looking. I don’t know if you’re stepping on the brake, but you’re certainly not adding an accelerator. I think right now, in this age of COVID, there are more inhibitors, more turn offs, more brakes, more reasons not to get sexually going than there are accelerators. So, I love that your girlfriend is just intuitively figuring out what she can do just to keep things moving and keep things going? She’s being resourceful. Instinctively, and I think that’s what we all need to be doing.
DR. MIKE MORENO: No, yeah, let me tell you emotionally, I’m 53, going on 13. She is so wise, and I learn a lot from her. Not just with this, with so many other things, but you know, guys are tough. You know, it’s like peeling through that layer of the onion to get to what is really going on. I’ve always kind of been like that growing up in a big family, but I was the youngest of seven. My brothers and sisters were so much older. I really grew up this kind of an only child, so I was kind of like a mama’s boy, as they say. I really was. My mother and I had a tremendously tight bond.
Guys are tough. Women are just better with putting it out there. It’s like, sometimes it’s uncomfortable. I mean, how do you do that? How do you get couples to open up? How do you get them to kind of communicate, whether it’s the guy or the girl or the guy and the guy, the girl, and the girl, whatever it may be? How do you get people to come to that common place and go “okay, yeah, I hear what you’re saying”?
DR. IAN KERNER: Yeah, I have a little bit of a process and a session. I always want couples to come in and start to talk about the problem that they’re experiencing and start to really put some meat on the bones and walk around it, and I try and create a safe environment, but the end of that couple of months, things are actually better between the two of you sexually. Like, what does that look like? If I were a fly on the wall? What would I see? Tell me specifically what it’s going to look like for sex to be better between the two of you, and I might hear about the things that they’re missing, the things that they want. I might hear about the emotional connection that’s lacking. I might hear something that is coming up from the past in terms of history that they want to vacate and get rid of. Then that is really where that question that I said, so tell me about the last time you had sex comes in.
Once I know sort of what couples do during a sexual event, so much is revealed in that you know how they’re getting turned on, how they’re not getting turned on, where their sexual personalities are complementing each other, where they’re not. S I do have a little bit of a methodology for getting couples to talk, and a lot of that is going to be in my new book.
I think the main thing that I would say if I was going to give your listeners a tool, I would say that, you know, sex is a vulnerable topic, right? There are real vulnerable feelings like, I feel rejected, I feel neglected, I feel unattractive. Those are vulnerable, vulnerable emotions. But yet when we talk about sex or we don’t talk about sex, we’re kind of engaging in defenses. We might get angry or irritable or avoidant, and so we have to get rid of the sort of the usual kinds of ways we might interact defensively, you know, just sort of like complaining about something or yelling across a room or criticizing. So, I would say empathize, get in touch with your own vulnerability and [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that up to your partner and allow your partner to mirror that back to you.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, I think it’s the vulnerable aspect. I think that is such a big thing for all of us. no one wants to put themselves out there because for fear of being hurt or for fear of hearing something that…whoa, that’s how you feel? But I think that communication portion is so critical. I’ve been seeing the same therapist for 20 years now. I go to her for a lot of things. This is my one on one, but I’ve also gone to a couples therapist and it’s a completely different situation completely. It’s not just about sex.
I would always joke around because that’s what guys do, we try to joke around to take the sting off of things, but I would always tell the therapist when I walk in, “I’m like, you know, listen, I’m going to get my money’s worth of you out of you today” because the wheels are coming off. So, I think, we as guys and people, everybody has their way of sort of way taking that step in that direction. But I think it’s important to recognize what your partner’s cues are or to be more aware of your partners.
When are they saying, “Hey, I need this from you, I need that”. And it may be about sex or maybe other things, but do you find people use sex as a tool, as a tool to punish, as a tool to reward? I mean, how do you handle that and how often do you see that?
DR. IAN KERNER: I think that sex can be a beautiful form of healing, it can take us to a place where words cannot and it’s interesting the couples who have sex 3 times a week, which is frankly rare in my practice, they don’t have higher levels of relationship satisfaction than the couples who have sex once a week. So, there’s something about that number, just being sexually intimately connected once a week that really has a healing effect. I really try and get couples to make that a habit, to make that a routine, to make that a ritual, to show up with willingness to do that, even if they don’t always have the desire to go for the healing aspects of sex.
But certainly, people can use sex and destructive ways as well. They can withhold it; they can use it in terms of return for favors. So yes, sex gets you in a lot of different ways, and some of them are negative. It can also be so positive. You know, they say when sex is working in a relationship it’s 20% of an overall good relationship, but when sex isn’t working, it becomes 80-100% of the of the relationship. So, I really try and get couples to make a healthy ritual out of being sexually connected in the way that they would care and respect and create rituals for each other parts of life.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, so how do you approach that? Going back to your point about once a week, what if people are going to say that doing it 3 times a week or 4 times a week and it’s sort of diluted in a sense, I guess is maybe is how I would use it. So, when it’s diluted like that, how do you get couples to say, “Hey, yeah, you know, we’re not having sex every day this week, we’re going to just do it once a week, but it’s going to be more meaningful”. Like how would you get someone to do that?
DR. IAN KERNER: Well first of all, you raise an interesting issue, which especially with men, I’m seeing a lot more masturbation, which I’m very sex positive on masturbation, positive. I can even be porn positive about ethical porn in the right context, but there can be too much of a good thing and sort of squandering the libido that you might otherwise have for a partner. I’ve been doing this work a long time and again I hear a lot, when I asked somebody to tell me about the last time they had sex, I hear a lot of what I call sex scripts, the sequence of interactions and behaviors that couples engage in and across the board Mike, one thing that I’ve observed is that when couples aren’t getting the most out of sex, when they’re getting bored by sex, when they’re not looking forward to sex, it’s often that sex has lost a sort of a psychological dimension, you know, in the beginning of a relationship. It is new. It is the person is somewhat unknown. It is exciting. We are still exploring each other, but once we really get to know each other, it is not about just spicing things up with new positions or lingerie. It is really about opening up your sexual and erotic personality and getting into psychological stimulation.
For example, there are women who can fantasize their way to orgasms and have just a thinking orgasm without any touch. When I am working with men who have erectile disorder and we do not know if it is completely physiological or psychological in nature. I might ask them to fantasize or watch something sexy without ever touching themselves. They can get very full erect, sometimes within a few minutes, so that tells you that just psychological stimulation is so important in creating arousal. So many couples just they’re not talking during sex. They are not being sexy during sex, they are not sharing fantasies, they are not opening up their desires, and they’re not creating a playground out of sex. That is when sex starts to get boring and it starts to get repetitive or diluted.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Let’s talk a little bit about desire frameworks. Tell us a little bit about desire frameworks and then how can that be helpful to understand?
DR. IAN KERNER: Sure, I think that that can be very helpful, especially in the age of COVID. We already talked about accelerators and brakes and wanting to sort of reduce the brakes and sort of increase the accelerators. In general Mike, there are two desire frameworks.
The first desire framework is called a spontaneous desire framework, and many men are in that framework. That is the framework we see in the media. Basically, spontaneous desire is two people see each other across a room, cut to them having passionate sex. It is the idea that sexual chemistry just manifests, and all it takes is a single sexual cue. A look, a glance, a tasty piece of flesh to get that whole arousal going. In fact, for a lot of people, that’s true, and especially for men. You know, they say sometimes think about sex 50 times a day, 100 times a day, 1,000 times a day. Men often are very good at sort of metabolizing a single sexual cue, very quickly and experiencing desire and wanting to have sex.
Now, women and I am speaking generally, but I am not meaning to generalize too much, there is another desire for it, which is responsive desire, which means a single sexual cue does not turn you on, or does not get the ignition going, doesn’t make it happen. It has not to say you do not notice that. You do not say, “oh, that is sexy”. It just doesn’t arousal platform in the same way. So, in a responsive desire framework, you need kind of a buildup of sexual cues. You need those sexual cues to percolate and simmer and then desire emerges.
So, if you’re home and it’s COVID and you’re a guy, you might still be feeling a lot of desire because, hey, my partner is still sexy. There she is, coming out of the bathroom or the shower looking cute. You know, I’m ready to go because I’m in a spontaneous desire framework, you know? But if your partner is in a responsive desire framework and yeah, you’re sitting around in sweatpants and there’s dishes in the sink and the place is kind of a mess and you’re not doing anything sexy, then that person might never get to the feeling of having desire. They might not even miss desire because the environment has not created the preconditions for desire, responsive desire to emerge. That’s when sometimes we see that clash of desire frameworks if that makes sense. Spontaneous partner just as ready to go and a responsive desire.
DR. MIKE MORENO: It makes perfect sense, and I think it comes down and you said this when we started talking at the beginning, you’ve got to communicate, and I really think that that has to be at the forefront. You know, people are different. We have different experiences in life that make us who we are in our ability to communicate or not communicate. It’s variable. But when you are with your partner, when you have sort of decided to be with a person, sex becomes a very important thing.
I think that understanding how you think and why you think the way you think. You know, I always say this jokingly, guys are idiots, we’re idiots. I’m like, I’m a guy. What do I know? I’m an idiot because we think and again, it’s not to generalize, but a lot of us are just, that sort of generalization that you said, where you gave that perfect example, I’m ready to go, how can you not be ready to go?
I think we have to look at everything, and I think that is the work that you do. I think obviously the guidance that you give so many people and very successful guidance, I think it’s important that communication step, it’s talking about it, though, right? I mean, really just bringing it to the forefront.
DR. IAN KERNER: I appreciate that. It’s also recognizing that sexy doesn’t necessarily have to equal sex. Especially in this age of COVID. Don’t lose what I call the erotic thread or the sexual thread just being able to drop into a little bit of a sexy space for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute. Then and then go back to your computers and go back to work, but don’t lose the erotic energy that you can develop in between having sex.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Well, listen, we could probably talk forever and a day on all of this stuff. I’ll tell you, you know, we’ve been struggling with this pandemic and with so many things, but take away the pandemic, life is still very difficult. I can tell you right now that for a lot of people, it didn’t take a pandemic for issues regarding sex to be a problem or cause problems in relationships. It’s sad because you bring 2 people together, if you are not going to talk about this, you can lose a very beautiful or potentially beautiful relationship without coming to this. Pandemic or not.
This is a problem for many people, and I think having someone like you to go to is critical and that that first step is critical. I really, really thank you. Thank you for taking time to talk to me and to our listeners.
DR. IAN KERNER: You got it. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.
DR. MIKE MORENO: So where can people find you?
DR. IAN KERNER: Yeah, I know the best place is to find me at my website, www.IanKerner.com. There’s a lot of information up there. There’s links to my books and to social media channels. I also just say, you know, you don’t have to see a sex therapist or couples therapist to open up the conversation.
DR. MIKE MORENO: Appreciate it, thank you so much for everything.
Dr. IAN KERNER: Thank you.
DR. MIKE MORENO: That’s it for today, great stuff, really good stuff. Now let’s get to today’s RX. Where do I begin?
I got to tell you that the thing that stuck with me most that Dr. Kerner said, is that sexy does not always equal sex. I think it’s important for us to realize that. I think that really sticks with me. I think the idea of intimacy is not always just the act of sex, so sexy is not always sex.
I think the other thing is that it is sex as a vulnerable topic. I think being open and communicative, it’s important, but I really think reaching out to someone and he makes that point that it’s not just about going to a sex therapist, it’s talking to your doctor, it’s talking to somebody, but opening yourself up. It’s a very vulnerable topic. I think the sooner you are more vulnerable and put yourself out there, the more likely you are to have a better relationship, not just sexually, but as a whole.
So that’s it for today. Don’t forget to subscribe for free, download, and listen to Wellness Inc. with me, Dr. Mike Moreno on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Follow me on social media @The17daydiet. Thank you.
The Wellness, Inc. with Dr. Mike Moreno podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as a replacement or substitution for any professional, medical, financial, legal, or other advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast does not constitute the practice of medicine or any other professional service. The use of any information provided during this podcast is at the listeners own risk for medical or other advice appropriate to your specific situation, please consult a physician or other trained professional. Thank you.
About This Episode
On this episode of Wellness, Inc. Dr Mike Moreno interviews psychotherapist, nationally recognized sexuality counselor and author of the upcoming book “Tell Me About the Last Time You had Sex” Dr. Ian Kerner.
The two discuss the surprising impact Covid has had on many people’s sex lives. Dr. Kerner explains the three buckets to consider when it comes to sexual desire, how to get out of sex ruts, the impact of stress and anxiety on sexual performance, and how understanding desire frameworks can be helpful in staying connected to your partner.
Dr. Mike and Dr. Kerner talk openly and share personal stories about vulnerability, communication, and being sensitive to your partners needs.
Connect with Dr. Ian Kerner:
https://twitter.com/iankerner
https://www.facebook.com/IanKernerLMFT
