Ep. #71 Recovering a Relationship after Cheating with Dr. Tammy Nelson

[Angel Donovan]: Hi Tammy, thank you very much for making your time available today.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Hi, thanks for having me.

[Angel Donovan]: We like to start the interview by getting to know you a little bit better – a bit more about your own life, what you’ve been up to. Let’s have some quick overview of your background. How did you get into this area of relationship and sex advice?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Sure. Well I am a couple’s therapist. I'm also a board-certified sexologist and a certified sex therapist. I started off being a psychotherapist; I've been a psychotherapist for several decades.

My training as a couple’s therapist was interesting because even in my graduate degrees and all my programs and my post-graduate degrees – I have a lot of letters after my name; it’s a little compulsive, actually – they never talked about sex. I just found that fascinating that you can be trained as a couple’s therapist, to work with couples. Partnered couples, married couples, gay, straight – it didn’t matter; they never talked about sex, and I found that actually kind of insulting.

What I realized was that a lot of the theoretical models were all geared towards this idea that if you work on the relationship, the sex will fix itself. And I really disagree with that. I actually believe that it works the opposite way, that if you work on people’s sex life, the relationship will fix itself.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. So when was this?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well that was – I've been training since the ‘80s, so that was in the ‘90s. In the late ‘90s, I did my graduate work and then in the early 2000s I got my PhD in Sexology. The reason I did that is to really integrate my work with couple’s therapy and sexuality, to really teach people and learn and work with people in a way to talk about sex to change everything in their relationship.

And that it’s communicating about their sex life and their erotic fantasies and all the things that make people feel passionate and alive will also make them feel in love and make them feel juiced up, and make them feel happy, and make them stay together, and make them have long-term, committed partnerships, or at least make them have happy relationships while they’re in them.

What I found was that it wasn’t so much about sexual function. It wasn’t about giving people a pill or changing the dysfunction in the relationship; it was really about how to create sexual relationships that work. That’s sort of how I got a little obsessed with writing books and articles and e-books and everything else that I do now about sexuality.

[Angel Donovan]: Great. And so did the sexology course itself cover that, or did that cover more of the – how would you say it – technical aspects of sex and then you built on that? Just to be interested so I know what kind of courses were out that time.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah, it’s such a good question because when I was looking for a PhD program, a lot of the programs had closed and the ones that were left were research-based and driven primarily by the pharmacological companies. So they were all looking for ways to develop what we call the “Pink Viagra” – the Viagra to give women to increase desire and arousal, which, by the way, they’ll never figure out.

So it was very hard to find a program that was really geared for relational issues, and the program that I went to did talk about couple’s therapy, but I also learned a lot about how to work with sexual function, how to work with anatomical issues – which I didn’t know about; that was not my background, medicine and anatomy, so I feel like I got a really good medical background as well.

And then I was able to take my counseling background and my training in couple’s therapy – I've trained in what's called Imago Therapy; it’s a type of relationship therapy – and integrate those two things in my book.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. So Imago Therapy is the way of communicating, basically, so you don’t trigger each other, so you can have real conversations without it turning into fights all the time. I'm summarizing in modern, urban language there.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: [Laughs] It’s a great way that you put it – it’s a way of having dialogues with each other where you actually feel heard and you can validate each other’s feelings and create some empathy. I think it’s a great way to create a structure to actually talk about sex.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, let’s talk a bit about that a bit later in the interview, because I think that’s something that we don’t often talk about and these little tools are very useful in terms of being able to communicate about things, because it’s true – people get defensive quite easily in these kinds of situations too

So just to finish off with the background part, where are you at in life? How old are you? Are you married, or – what is your personal background to this?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: I am older than you would think, but I'm still very young at heart. I'm married; I have four kids – two from my husband’s first marriage and two from my first marriage; this is our second marriage. We also have a really active and integrated sex life that we believe that we use as sort of a training ground for my books and my lectures.

We believe that we can’t lecture people on things that don’t work [chuckles].

[Angel Donovan]: Right, of course. So you practice what you preach, basically.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: That’s also a great thing. I know in your books you talk about monogamy, the continuum between monogamy and open – completely closed and open – from a [unclear 08:19] sexual standpoints. Are you happy to say where you designed your relationship to be?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah, there's a whole continuum and a range of monogamous relationships, and I think we would describe ourselves as suburban monogamy.

Suburban monogamy means that you have a very monogamous relationship but maybe with some open sexual behaviors, and we can talk about that when we talk about the sort of continuum of monogamy. What it means, I think people define monogamy in so many different ways. We’re not polyamorous; we don’t have outside sexual partners that are separate from our relationship, and that is a whole, new phenomenon with other people.

But I think a lot of people have monogamous relationships on the surface, and then when you find out what they do on the weekends you might not think that that’s not monogamy. Although I think it gets defined in a myriad of ways and it’s not really up to me to define other people’s monogamy.

[Angel Donovan]: This is a fascinating topic, because as you said, it’s a continuum and the more experience you have or the more you’ve learned about it, you see a lot more detail in that continuum – lots of little steps rather than –.

What we’re told is basically there are two versions or maybe three versions, if you consider everyone is having an affair, is kind of in the middle of something. This is a topic we’ve brought up quite a few times from different perspectives, and I think today we’re going to look at it from another perspective on you have to actually think about how you define your relationship rather than just following what you thought you were supposed to do without really thinking about it.

So the topic we’re looking at where you’ve written your book, The New Monogamy, is based around an event which is that there's been some kind of an affair event, which has triggered a crisis, which has triggered the need to start rethinking the relationship and moving on from there.

In one point in the book you say that going forward in the future, you think no one’s going to be able to have the kind of standard monogamy relationships we've been used to previously and we have to think about this stuff a lot more. Potentially we’re going to have to evolve the way we have marriages and these kinds of very long-term, serious relationships. Could you talk a little bit about how you see things changing?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yes, I'm happy to. I think this is the first time in history you can cheat on your partner lying in bed next to them. We have a whole new definition of monogamy. I mean, you get married and you don’t say, “I promise to love, honor and tell you about all my Facebook friends and let you know when I'm tweeting too much with one person over another.” It’s a whole different definition of marriage, of committed partnership.

For over two decades now, we’ve still had the same amount of divorce in our culture; we’re still hovering at around 50%. But so many things have changed. We’re getting married at 28 instead of 18. We’re defining monogamy in a whole bunch of different ways. People know what polyamory means: “poly-” means “many”, “amory” means love – many love.

So we have this whole different language around marriage. I mean, we’ve never had the variety of possibilities that we have now. And it’s different than swinging in the ‘70s or having an open marriage. George and Nena O’Neill wrote this book Open Marriage in the ‘70s.

I think, today, our focus on being parents and taking a village to raise our children, there are a lot of things that are similar, but things that will definitely change the way relationships look going forward out of necessity. Like I said, the technical piece of our lives, the sort of multi-attentive way we look at life, has changed the way we have this extended adolescence, so you don’t wait until marriage to have sex anymore because you're 28 instead of 18, so that’s changed marriage.

There were a lot of different ways to experience variety and excitement without breaking your monogamy bond. Pornography has never been as accessible as it is now, and perhaps people are using that to stay monogamous. It’s just a whole, different twist on Internet monogamy that we’ve never had before.

So we can define it in ways we’ve never had to define it before. If that’s the case, if there are so many different kinds of relationships, we have to talk about it with your partner because there's this implicit assumption that your kind of monogamy is the same kind as mine.

And I can tell you – I know you're in Spain right now; I'm on the East Coast of the US. I can tell you that I've traveled all around the world talking about this stuff and working with couples and working with other therapists, and I could tell you – even though there are all these different beliefs about monogamy and relationships and fidelity and sex, everywhere I've ever gone, the one common denominator is that people talk about sex the least with the person they're actually having sex with. And that’s what I think is the difference. That’s what we have to change going forward.

[Angel Donovan]: The least that they're having actual sex with.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: They’ve talked the least about sex to the person they're actually having sex with.

[Angel Donovan]: That’s crazy. If I think about it here, there's a standard that’s definitely the opposite of what we try to put out on this program [chuckling].

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Exactly!

[Angel Donovan]: But if I think about it, at the mainstream, that’s a very true insight you have there, unfortunately. And it’s been like that for a long time. Hopefully it’s changing a little bit; it is getting more open. You can just see by the media, they're more open about talking about sex so hopefully some of that’s getting picked up in relationships a bit naturally.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: The work that you're doing – and I think talking about sex in the media or talking about sex in general is different than talking to someone that you actually are having sex with. And having the skills to be able to communicate what you want, what you need, what you desire, is a whole another thing.

The stuff that you're doing, the stuff that I'm doing, the stuff that’s beginning now I think is crucial in changing the way that we do relationships. And it decreases the risk for real hurt and betrayal because explicit monogamy breaches start long before somebody actually hurts each other’s feelings. There's an implicit problem that happens long before someone cheats on each other.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. In your definition, there's always a reason why the affair comes out. Basically you're saying that someone’s needs aren’t getting fed, aren’t getting met, in the relationship, and then eventually they have to go outside of the relationship. Is that in basic terms?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well I think it’s not so much their needs aren’t getting met, because that kind of implies that the person being cheated on is at fault, so it kind of blames the “victim.” It’s more that something’s got to give – if somebody is creating a trauma or shaking up the relationship in that way, it’s because something was going on in the relationship that needed shaking up. It doesn’t happen by accident; it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

[Angel Donovan]: I think there are different types of – because you talked about the exit, and there are certainly some people who use an affair as a way to get out of relationships, avoiding the conflict of having to tell someone. It’s a funny way to do it, but I think this is very true. You cause this crisis event if you're having an affair and the partner discovering it, and then they basically finish with you. They did the job for you instead of you having to do it.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Exactly.

[Angel Donovan]: So that's one thing. It seems like a whole bunch of ways that the affairs can come up; I was wondering what you thought because a lot of it seems to be – do you think 100% are due to the relationship and issues that can be fixed in a relationship, or do you think that some people are basically in “affair mode”?

They are either born that way or they’ve learned to be that way, and it’s just something that they naturally do. They find it difficult to change that behavior or change that style even when they’ve decided to get married or have a long-term relationship at one point, but a couple of years or few years into it they decide, “I don’t know; I just feel like having an affair” or “I'm just feeling like I have to see other people.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Mm-hm. It’s a great question because I think some people have affairs for what I call “can openers” – it’s a way to get out of the relationship and to avoid having to open their mouths and say, “I want out.” Sometimes you don’t even know; it’s an unconscious thing. Your body tells you before your head even knows, and that’s a “can opener.” That means, the relationship’s over.

Other people, when someone says, I'm just not built for monogamy or I'm just not monogamous, or they say “Monogamy is just not natural for people,” I always get this image of us being born like apes when people say “Monogamy is not natural for humans.” We’re not born knowing how to use a fork either, or pee in a house for that matter. We have to learn these things.

And so I think of monogamy as sort of the same way. Maybe we’re not genetically predisposed to automatically know how to be monogamous, but we learn. It’s a choice; it’s a choice that you make. It’s a practice. It’s like yoga or meditation.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, and it’s something – if you're going to decide, it should be a rational choice that you’ve decided, that it’s going to be a healthier lifestyle for you. It’s going to be something that’s going to be good for you. Because some people, obviously they don’t think about this very much, but maybe it’s not a good type of relationship for them.

For instance, I can give you people who tend to be more dopamine-driven, so by excitement. Many types of monogamy might just not fit their biology; they might always need a bit more excitement and it could be difficult to get that type of excitement in a monogamy, unless the other partner’s going to add a lot of adventure despite being in a monogamy.

Have you come across these kinds of biological cases like that?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well, I think people use that as an excuse as well. I think you can be a high venture type person who can create a really exciting sex life. Those are people that, if you want to create a really adventurous time, you can do that in a monogamous relationship or not – it has nothing to do with monogamy; it has to do with your imagination.

Some people are just developed mentally, delayed sexually, and so they're so still in this adolescent mode where even though they say they want to be committed in a partnership, they're still acting out this unfinished business from their adolescence.

This idea of being a sex addict I don’t really buy into. I think this is sort of an excuse for an uncontrollable behavior. If you have a compulsion to repeat a behavior, we certainly treat people who are obsessed and can’t control themselves, and so they repeat something over and over even after it’s hurt them or other people.

But the idea of being born to have repetitive infidelity, they just can’t be in a relationship, that also means that you're still in that phase of your life where you can’t decide and you need perpetual acting out experiences. Or you need to at least tell your partner, “I'm not ready for a commitment.” And so there are a lot of different types of affairs, and you're absolutely right – no affairs fit into a category. There are no three reasons that women cheat, or three reasons that men cheat. I think there are many different kinds of affairs as there are people.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, yeah. It’s very complicated and it’s about relationships at the end of the day. Do you find it’s different between women and men, the types of reasons they tend to have affairs?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Anthropologists and sociologists get asked this all the time, and they’ve done some research on why men cheat and why women cheat. The research is hard to get because infidelity is based on dishonesty, and so a lot of people lie to the researchers. But women have a tendency to downplay – [chuckles] yeah, that’s funny.

Women have a tendency to downplay their affairs, and men have a tendency to brag, and that’s just because historically women have suffered much harsher penalties for infidelity than men, and there are still three or four countries where you can get burned alive, stoned to death, lose your head, ostracized. Up until recently, you could lose your children in a divorce – not get custody, not get alimony.

So it’s difficult for women many times, even in our progressive country now, because we get labeled. And so women will sometimes downplay it but men will overbrag about their prowess and their infidelity.

There's a piece of it that has to do with getting your emotional needs met, that for many women they think will have affairs to get their emotional needs met. But statistically, it’s been shown in the research that we do have that men will cheat on their committed partners when they feel like they're not being appreciated.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, and I'd say the opposite [clear 20:26] if a woman is sexually frustrated. I think she doesn’t like to talk – like you said, there are biases in the studies because they don’t like to talk about it. But I think women can get pretty frustrated sexually as well if they don’t have a good sex life, and same reasons [clear 20:39].

So I'm not sure how different it is between the men I know stereotypically – as you're saying, the woman is supposed to be more emotionally-driven and the guy is more sex-driven, but I think it’s closer, a lot closer than we stereotypically think.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: I absolutely agree with you. I think you're absolutely right. I think that’s very insightful, actually. And I think that a lot of people will have affairs to stay in their marriage, so they may be getting a lot of their needs met or even most of their needs met, but they find a parallel relationship because it gives them that sexuality that they need, or gives them that appreciation, or gives them someone that looks up to them, or fills the need for sensuality, or gives them that kinky dopamine rush that you were talking about. But they get everything else that they need so they don’t want to give up their marriage, and it allows them to stay with the partner that they have.

[Angel Donovan]: Yes. The other thing I wanted to touch on is – I think I brought this up in previous podcasts – I've known quite a few guys that basically it’s a bit about the age thing that you were talking about, that people tend to get married or they tend to get into longer term relationships later, so we have a larger adolescence or a period when we’re experimenting life through to 28, or even 30s, 40s to some people.

Like with everything in life, we get set in our ways and if you’ve been living this single – basically kind of single, dating, polyamorous, more casual dating lifestyle for 30 years, it might be a little bit hard to change just on a dime and start going, “Okay now I'm going to be completely monogamous, and I'm going to forget all these behaviors have been programmed into my neural synapses over time and their pretty deep grooves.”

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: [Chuckles] Yeah, I think that’s very true. Particularly, for things like pornography, I always get couples in my office and she says, “He’s been cheating on me. I walked in on him masturbating to pornography; he must be a sex addict!” And he looks at her and says, “Are you kidding? I've been doing this since I was 11!” [Laughs]

[Angel Donovan]: Right. Most guys talk about that stuff. A lot of women would call that cheating.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Right. Because to her, it feels like you're having a sexual relationship with someone that’s not me, and not to be facetious [clear 22:39] but frankly, the way that she looks at it from her perspective is “When we got married or committed in a partnership, you basically lost the right to touch that penis, because now that’s mine.” [Chuckles] And so I don’t feel like touching it tonight, so therefore no one’s going to touch it.

[Angel Donovan]: That’s crazy.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: [Chuckles] And from his perspective, this is something that’s totally private and separate and disconnected from our relationship, or compartmentalized I should say, and has nothing to do with you. Absolutely nothing. And from her perspective, “You don’t understand – everything has something to do with me. If it has to do with sex and your penis, it has to do with me,” and therefore she doesn’t understand that it could be compartmentalized and really not take away or siphon off desire from their relationship.

Now for many men, it does siphon off desire from the relationship and then it is a problem.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, of course. It’s also interesting to just talk about masturbation on its own. Is it the porn plus masturbation, or is it masturbation on its own also? Because I think a lot of the girls, if I'm talking about masturbation with them, I don’t think that has really shocked many girls.

In fact, a lot of girls these days probably expect you to masturbate – maybe not when you're in a relationship with each other a lot, but I'd say most girls expect that and I kind of expect it of the girls. Although some of them always deny it.

But do you see the porn as the mode of [clear 23:55] focus, or is it also about masturbation?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: I think that in our society, it’s the masturbation that’s the primary problem, and the porn is secondary. But it depends on if the porn is just for masturbatory imagery, or if the porn – because they have a fetish or a paraphilia that they can’t share with their partner – or the third reason, is what I call zip code porn, that they're actually searching to meet someone else online, like on a webcam or –.

[Angel Donovan]: Oh, right. What's that called, zip code – zip code porn?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: [Chuckles] That’s what I call it, zip code porn.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay. Why zip code? Because the girls in their webcam on the same location, or –?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Because you can type in your zip code and find someone in your area to actually meet in real time.

[Angel Donovan]: Oh, they meet in person.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah. At first you might send pictures of each other, or you might chat online, or you might have a webcam, mutual masturbation, but eventually the idea is to meet in person. So things like Adult Friend Finder or those kinds of websites, Ashley Madison, where you meet other people who are married as well in order to just have sex relationships.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, so that’s what we’re talking about. That’s zip code.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah, it’s what's zip code porn, as I call it.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, zip code porn. Cool [chuckles]. When you talk about the whole affair thing, you break it into three separate parts: you have the emotional, sexual and the dishonesty. Could you talk a little bit about the importance of each?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: When we’re talking about someone having an affair, it is important to define what you actually mean. Because when couples come into my office, when they come in for an intensive – so I see them for a day or two – because they're really in a crisis and they need sort of an intervention to decide how are we going to fix this going forward if they want to stay together.

To really define which is the part for you that’s the deal breaker, or that’s making you crazy or that you're having the hardest time with, because there's the outside relationship, and that’s the emotional piece. Is it someone that you paid for sex, or is it someone that you have an emotional connection with at work that you see every day, more than you spend time with me? What's the emotional piece? Is it someone that you’ve been complaining about our marriage to online for a year? Where are you wired in to this person? Because that emotional connection might be more painful than even the sex that you're having with that.

And then the second piece is the sexual connection. Are you doing this mutual masturbation thing online, or have you been having sex with a man? And now I have to figure out, wait, are you gay or are you just having sex with a man, or does that mean I’ll never satisfy you? There's a lot of trauma that goes on about that, and confusion. What kind of sexual relationship are you having? Are you having sex with them in a different way than you are with me and can we ever have sex again? All those questions come up.

And then there's the dishonesty piece, and there is a whole continuum there too because there's a big difference between discovery and disclosure. Did I find it on your laptop and did you deny it when I found that email that said that you loved that other person? Or did you come to me and say, “I really messed up; I had this one night stand with this person when I was at a conference, and we really need to work on our relationship”?

So there's this whole piece around dishonesty and how well you'll recover from an affair depending on what's the part that really triggers you. Maybe you can get over all of it, but you can’t get over the fact that they lied to you when you looked in their face.

And the last part really about that is there's a big difference between not telling your partner because you're trying to save their feelings and you really don’t think it’s necessary to tell them, “You know seven years ago, I made out with someone in a bar.” That’s much different when they look you in the eye and ask you, “Did you make out with that person?” and you say no. There’s a big difference between lying directly and just avoiding the conflict.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, lying by omission.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah, does that make sense?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, it does. In my past sometimes there's been a conflict for me. I'm very transparent, but sometimes if you don’t want to hurt the girl unnecessarily, sometimes you're like, “Well there's no point in saying anything about this; we’re going to break up potentially anyway” or whatever. “Why would I make it worse by saying that this was involved as well?”

There’s a bit of an ethical values dilemma or something; I guess everyone should figure that out for themselves what they feel most comfortable with.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Mm-hm, right. These are the kind of things that I think should be negotiated when you first get into a relationship. What honesty do we want? Do you come home and tell your partner every time you see someone hot on the street and get turned on? I mean, some people have that kind of relationship where if you’ve been flirting with somebody you should come home and tell me. That’s a slippery slope.

For other people, they're like, “Are you kidding? If I saw someone hot in the grocery store every day, I'd be coming home all the time and have this conversation.” That’s something that you negotiate in a relationship, and you talk about it. You have that kind of transparency about how much transparency is healthy for us.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. For most people, that’s unnatural and that’s kind of the problem. And that’s probably why your book is about affairs. It’s a good way to get into it because you're forced into that situation and to start talking more openly.

But my guess is most people that I think I know – that most people, I've heard they just feel it’s unnecessary, they feel awkward about it and they're not used to this type of communication – open communication – about all these issues. And this seems like a lot of work upfront when maybe they think things are okay.

I think there's always that as well, they're like, “Well we’re okay.” Especially when you first start a relationship, we don’t need to talk about this until we’ve had negative experiences where it kind of blew up because we didn’t have that, and then we have to learn from our mistakes.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Mm-hm. And frankly, if you're going to have a new kind of relationship where you might possibly have a little bit more fluid or flexible monogamy, you have to have those conversations upfront so that you can have the harder conversations later on.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, and they’ll be easier [chuckles].

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah [chuckles] much easier.

[Angel Donovan]: Much easier, yeah. So it’s about a new way of approaching it. I'm just not sure how people first get into it. I think by educating people about the fact that it’s a continuum between monogamy and polygamy, and what have you learned socially or culturally isn’t necessarily exactly what's going to be a best fit for you.

That encourages a conversation in your head and you're going to be encouraged to have that conversation with people when you first start with them. I think the biggest problem is ignorance, or people just not even thinking about it.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well I think the biggest problem, yes, is ignorance, but I think it’s also conflict avoidance and it’s assuming that your partner wants the same thing that you do.

I also think it’s developmental. Maybe you don’t have these big conversations in the beginning, but if you're going to be in a long-term relationship with someone, you have to keep renewing this conversation.

I mean, we renew our license every couple of years; why wouldn’t you renew your monogamy agreement with your partner? It’s kind of silly, not to have a conversation about, “Okay, what's changed? Now we’re having kids, what's changed? Now the kids are older, what's changed? Now the kids are out of the house, what's changed?”

It’s like developmentally checking in with your partner, “What kind of sex do we want now? Do we want to go to a sex club and check that out and check out other people? Do we want to look at porn together? Do we want to try something different?” These are conversations that happen that keep your sex life and your passionate connection alive, or your start having them with someone else. That’s when problems start.

[Angel Donovan]: There is that kind of laziness and going on autopilot mode, which, I think, when you got a busy life, work, pressures and other stuff going on – perhaps more when they're married because they'd have that structured life. They’ve been put in this structure that’s not supposed to be broken, so maybe it makes them a bit too comfortable and relying too much on that structure, rather than realizing that it’s a relationship that can break just like any other relationship at any time.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: And so I have a couple of suggestions. One is, I see couples that come in for two different reasons, basically. One is neglect. There's really two parts of a relationship: there's companionship and then there's eroticism.

So your companionship is the day-to-day management of the business of your relationship. It’s “Where do we get the pizza? Who walks the dog? What do you want to watch on TV? Who brings the kids to the bus stop?” – if you have kids. That’s the day-to-day companionship roommates of your relationship.

You might be great roommates, but if you don’t work on the erotic piece of your relationship, you're going to feel like you're just roommates and you can’t just assume that if you're good roommates and you don’t fight and there's no conflict that the erotic piece will fall into place. You might love each other, but if you don’t have the erotic piece, you're not going to feel like you're in love with each other.

The erotic piece is the passion; it’s the aliveness. It’s the “I love each other” piece that made you get together in the first place. You probably could pick a better roommate; that’s not why you got together. You got together for the erotic piece, the in-love piece.

The other reason that people come to me is for some kind of a trauma to that in-love piece, like a betrayal, like affairs, or illness, or something – something breaks in there. So you could go on your relationship – if you’ve been neglecting that erotic piece, you're going to come in and sit down in my office and say “I love my partner but I'm just not in love with them.” Or you're going to come in and say, “Oh my god, one of us really screwed this up and now we’re not sure if we can stay together.”

[Angel Donovan]: Okay. And is that exactly the same for men and women?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. Gay, straight.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, that’s even more interesting, yeah.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Pods [clear 32:56] [chuckles].

[Angel Donovan]: Right, so everyone, basically everyone.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yeah, and so I have one intervention. I have a couple of things, so I'm going to leave people on your podcast with a couple of things they can do to change their relationships so they don’t get into the neglect and hopefully avoid the trauma.

So the first thing – and you can challenge me on this, and I hope you will – is that everyone should have a sex date once a week. And I don’t mean just “Okay, we go out to dinner and eat rich food and drink wine” because you're not going to have sex when you come home; you'll be tired. Nobody does that. Everyone comes home and they're tired.

You have to carve out an erotic date once a week, and it has to be the same time every week, but it has to be a really sacred space. So you come home every week, 9 o’clock, Friday night – let’s just say that’s on your calendar – and you do it no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you're mad, if you hate each other, if there's something better on TV, if you're tired, if you're sick, if the kids are up. 9 o’clock has to be sacred every Friday night and you have to turn off the TV, you have to light the candles and change the sheets and turn on the music and take showers.

I don’t care if you have intercourse, but you have to do something erotic and push the edge every Friday night at 9 o’clock, and there are several reasons for that. People say, “Well, it’s not spontaneous.” Well you could be as spontaneous as you want, but you have to plan it.

If you're married or you're in a long-term relationship, you're not going to come home and sweep the dishes off the kitchen table and say, “Take me now.” You just not. You're tired – you have to walk the dog, other things are going on. You need anticipatory eroticism, especially women.

Women have to feel aroused before they feel desire. For men, desire comes before arousal; for women, they have to feel aroused before they feel desire. And so anticipatory arousal means that on Wednesday or Thursday you're telling them, “I can’t wait to see you naked on Friday night.” On Friday morning you're saying, “I'm so hot for you thinking about Friday night.”

After a few weeks, what happens? A new neurological pathway is carved into your brain, and even if you're mad at your partner, you're still thinking, “Oh I should shave my legs. Maybe I’ll buy new lingerie.” Stuff starts to get reinforced.

If you have an orgasm Friday nights at 9 o’clock, that’s the highest behavioral reinforcement that the body can experience. Pleasure is the thing that gets reinforced, and now you have this neurological pathway – you're going to want to show up at 9 o’clock whether you feel like it or not.

[Angel Donovan]: You said that you should be pushing the edge each time, which I think people find it difficult. Or after several years, they're like, “Okay, how do we push the edge now?” Have you got any suggestions on the approach to continually kind of pushing the edge and what kind of things work?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yes, well that would be my second suggestion. When you try to change your sex life, you don’t say, “I don’t like it when you do this,” or “I hate it when we do that,” or “I'm so bored with this,” or “We never do that” because then people get frustrated, defensive and depressed.

We don’t point out what's not working. You don’t say, “I hate it when you go to the left”; you say, “I love it when you go to the right.” The key and the secret keys to the kingdom about changing your sex life are always using appreciation.

And so the beginning of that conversation and the way you start doing more and more edgy things and adding adventure to your sex life is you start up by talking about what is working or what has worked in the past, what you want more of, and then you talk about what you'd like to try. So the way this sounds – and your listeners can write this down, and also at the end I’ll give you my website and my email so they can contact me and I’ll send them this in a worksheet form, or they can contact you and you can give it to them.

[Angel Donovan]: Great! We’ll also put the links on the page.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Okay, perfect. So it would sound like, “One thing I appreciate about you is ___” and then “One thing I appreciate about you sexually.” That’s really important because it opens the frontal lobe for people to hear what comes next.

The next part is, “One thing we already do that I would like more of – and that might be something you did ten years ago when we took a shower together; I want more of that.” Or “When we used that massage oil; I want more of that.” Or “I’d really like to have sex standing up again. I want more of that.”

You’re working on something that’s already doing it for you; you're just expanding on it, and that’s really, really important because whatever you're doing that’s right – and I'm sure there's something that's working for you – you're expanding it and doing more of it. And whenever you do more of what already works, you get more of it. Whatever you appreciate, you always get more of that.

And then you say, “And something I’d like to try.” Be careful about sharing that fantasy. Letting your partner know – there's a difference between taking something into action and just sharing something that you're curious about because you think it’s hot to talk about.

You might say, “One thing I'd really like to try is maybe having a threesome, but I'm not ready to take that into action but I think it’s hot.” Or you could say, “One thing I'd like to try is tying you up to the bed. I'd really like to try that. I really would like to take that into action.” So there's a difference, but basically, just sharing something that’s already working that you want to do more of, and then something you want to try.

[Angel Donovan]: So I notice that you always say, “I.” It’s yours, coming from yourself to the other person. What would you say about saying to the other person, “What do you think of this?” “What do you think of anal sex?” for example.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: See, I would do the appreciation and then I would switch and have the other person share theirs, and then once both of you have shared, then you can talk about how you feel about the other person’s fantasies. Because once you start saying, “What do you think about this?” then the other person has time and space to go into their reactivity. If you're just holding the space to hear the other person’s fantasy, you don’t have to react. You don’t have to say “yes,” “no,” “I don’t want to – that’s gross. I’ll never do that” “Okay let’s go. Let’s go to the hardware store.”

One of people’s biggest fears is not so much that their partner will say, “Ew, that’s gross,” but their partner would say, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s go call the neighbor right now and tell her to come over.” Sometimes we just need some space to be heard and to let that sort of sink in a little bit and to not have our partner react. We don’t want a reaction; we just want to say it and have that be a little holding space before we do anything, and just let the energy be in the room.

Just talking about your fantasies could be really hot, and all that erotic energy now is in that erotic space in between you. You're not talking about taking the dog out; you're not talking about the kids – you're just in that erotic space between you, and that’s what you want, is you want to bring all that erotic energy there, and it’s great. Maybe you don’t do any of it, but now you're just hot for each other because you're talking about it.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, and you’ve got more topics to talk about in the future as well, as we expand these conversations, yeah. Would you say it’s very important to be open to your partner’s ideas? Obviously, you shouldn’t be judgmental as you’ve already explained, but is it important to be open to trying things out for the first time?

Maybe you'll decide afterwards like, “Oh I don’t feel comfortable with this” or “I prefer we do other stuff in the future.” Do you think it’s always important to try it at least once or have that kind of open mindset?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well, I mean, if your partner says, “I'd really like to drive a nail through your penis” –.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, [crosstalk 40:03] that’s very extreme there [laughter].

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: I don’t think you need to be open to everything. What I do think is that you should develop what I call sexual empathy. That means “it makes sense to me that that would turn you on.”

How can you get to the place where it makes sense to you that there's a turn-on there for your partner? I’ll give you an example. I have one couple who, he really wanted to get a swing to hang from the ceiling where he would sit in the swing, and she said, “There's no way in hell I'm getting a sex swing. It’s going to ruin our ceiling; it doesn’t turn me on. I don’t understand it. I can’t get any empathy for that.” And so I asked him to tell her more about what's hot about that for you, and he said, “To be honest, I've spent my whole marriage with you worried that I'm going to crush you.”

He was a really big guy, and he said, “You know what? It always hurts my knees and my elbows and my shoulders, and the thought that I could be suspended and not have to worry about crushing you and it wouldn’t hurt my knees –.” And she started crying. She was like, “Oh my god, now I get it. It makes total sense. That would be hot for you – to not have to worry that you would crush me; to not have to worry about being in pain.” And she said, “I totally get that that would turn you on.”

She said, “I still don’t want the swing, but I could have sex with you in the pool, and we could be weightless,” and that’s what they do now. And they're totally into it.

To get to that place of empathy, if you don’t understand what's hot about it for your partner, then you don’t really have any other options except to keep asking them, “Tell me more about what turns you on about that.”

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. Coming straight out of the gate and asking lots of questions doesn’t really open them up to talking about things very easily. Going back to just how you said like talk about your own feelings first and some other things [clear 41:48] and I think their leading the way enables the other person to start sharing more.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Mm-hm.

[Angel Donovan]: I agree. So I wanted to touch on the Imago process, because I think it’s a great way to get out of jail, like get out of trouble sometimes, when there are arguments and there's conflict, and there are things – or just misunderstandings and things going on, whether it’s in the bedroom or in big conflicts like affairs and other things that everyone comes across. So how does the Imago process work?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Imago therapy is based on a theory and a book written by Harville Hendrix called Getting The Love You Want. It’s really recognizing that there's no coincidence that you're with that person you're with, and that we choose someone who really will finish off our childhood wounds, basically.

Basically, you choose someone who you really need in your life to learn some really important stuff about yourself. The idea is, when you have a conversation with someone that you're in conflict with, they're really teaching you something about yourself. But it’s really hard to hear when you're mad at someone; it’s all about them.

A lot of couples come into my office and they just say, “Well if you just fix them, then we’ll be fine.” [Chuckles] And Imago is a way to have a dialogue with your partner, similar to the one I just described.

Because Imago never really talked about sex, I wrote Getting The Sex You Want so that you could use Imago to talk about your sex life and change your sex life. That dialogue that I just described, the way you would do it in Imago dialogue would be to say, “One thing I really appreciate about you – maybe I’ll tell you now – you're a great interviewer.” And so you would say back to me just exactly what I said to you. You'd say, “One thing you really appreciate about me is I'm a great interviewer.” That’s just called mirroring, and it’s just a way of actively listening to each other.

What you wouldn’t do is say, “Oh, so you really appreciate that I showed up? You were late and I showed up.” Try not to twist things around. We normally don’t really listen to what our partner says. When it’s halfway out of their mouth, we already have our retort and we’re already defending ourselves.

So it’s just a way of sort of slowing down the process, and then being able to say to our partner, “That makes perfect sense that you would think that because I know that you really appreciate a good interview,” or “I know you’ve done so many of these and it must be really a relief for you to finally have someone that could do it well” or whatever. Validate each other’s feelings.

And the reason that’s important is because most of us really need to know that our partner’s really hearing us and they're really present, and they're really getting it. That’s just a very small piece of Imago, but it’s part of that process that we use in therapy.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you very much for that overview. A couple of things we always round off with – first of all, who besides yourself would you recommend for high quality advice in this area?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: If you're a gay man or you think that you're in a relationship with someone who’s having sex with men but you're not sure if they're gay, Joe Kort who’s in Detroit, I think, is an expert in that. I always try to refer people to people who are specialists, sort of in a niched area.

[Angel Donovan]: Could that be bisexuals as well?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Exactly. I think he’s very good. And then if you want to look into becoming a sex therapist, you can go on the AASECT website – it’s A-A-S-E-C-T, which is American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists – to find out more. I provide CEs and supervision for them, so you can always contact me directly to ask me more about how to do that. Or you can go on my website.

[Angel Donovan]: Just out of interest, has that been growing, that organization?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yes, it’s growing rapidly. I think more and more people are interested in sex therapy and sex education and being a coach. They also have sexological body workers, which I don’t know too much about, but people that are massage therapists and help people really sort of get in touch with their bodies and how it works.

[Angel Donovan]: There's also sexual surrogacy or something, where someone will have sex with you to help you redevelop your sexual skills?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yes, sexual surrogates. A surrogate is different than a prostitute; surrogates are legal and they will have a certain amount of sessions with you, particularly if you're having a dysfunction or if you're handicapped.

[Angel Donovan]: So those [unclear 45:53] help out there, basically.

The final question is – we've asked everyone this question. Ever since the first episode, I think it was. What would be your top three recommendations to help men get better results with their women partners as best as possible? If we’re thinking of the highest impact things.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Mirror back what they say so they know that you're listening to them. Empathize and validate them, and be really conscious. Be a man who is consciously working on himself. I think women have a little higher standards today [chuckling]. They are more attracted to men who are conscious and awake than ever before.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. I think everyone’s standards are going up, and it’s making things difficult [chuckling].

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well, it should even out eventually if everyone’s standards are higher then they should all meet each other [chuckles].

[Angel Donovan]: Well it depends if our standards are above our own standards, if you know what I mean. If you look on the online dating scene, I kind of get that impression. If you look at their match.com profiles and things like this, it seems like [unclear 46:49] dating. A lot of people are quite frustrated with that process, and I sometimes think it’s kind of a matter of standards or any interesting comments, feedback on those comments right there? [Laughter]

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well I met my husband on match.com, and that was a while ago, and I think it’s changed dramatically. But I do think that it’s an important measure because if you meet someone in a bar and you're sexually attracted to them, it’s too late. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been in prison seven times or they have three wives or three husbands – once you're sexually attracted to someone, you have no meter of discrimination.

So I think meeting online will always be a better way, because you could put your list in first and discriminate. And then if you meet and you're not attracted, you have a friend for life. I still have three guys that I'm friends with that I met before him, but there was no sexual chemistry. But then if you meet someone and they have everything on your list and you're hot for each other, then you have everything.

[Angel Donovan]: I think that’s a great point. A lot of advice out there says that you should hook up pretty quickly if you want something to have chemistry, but my more recent experience is, if you want a longer term relationship, it’s good to just be friends for a while than actually kind of force the issue.

Like you said, online dating tends to do that a bit more naturally because you’ve got that online chat, as long as it’s not on Tinder [chuckling], which is kind of the opposite these days. But you can actually do it offline. If you meet someone, you can slow down the process. It’s something I was experimenting with over the past years, like I'd literally go on loads of dates over a couple of months, and I just wouldn’t take it anywhere because I just wanted to see where the friendship would go first. So there's that option for people if they hadn’t thought of that as well.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well I wish you good luck!

[Angel Donovan]: Thank you very much for your time today, Tammy. It’s been a great talk. I enjoyed it very much.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Well thank you and thank you so much for having me.

People, if they want more information, they can go to www.drtammynelson.com. It’s D-R-T-A-M-M-Y-N-E-L-S-O-N (dot) com. And you can email me through my website and I'm happy to send you any of the information that I mentioned, including the handouts. It’s [email protected] to contact me directly.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate it today.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, excellent. Are you using Twitter or anything like that?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yes, and you can find me through @drtammynelson on Twitter, and also on Facebook. There's a Getting The Sex You Want page, and I have all the little things –Pinterest and all that other stuff. I have no idea what they are, but you could find me on all of that.

[Angel Donovan]: But the main one sounds like Twitter and Facebook, right?

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Yes, yes.

[Angel Donovan]: Alright, great! Thanks, we’ll put that in the show notes as well.

[Dr. Tammy Nelson]: Thank you so much!