Flora McCormick: [00:00:00] All right. I'm so honored to have Lindley Gentile here, who is a licensed therapist and expert in working with couples and women and lives in Austin, Texas. And we aligned and connected years ago now, been like almost four years. Now you're doing an exciting new venture that's just building on all of your past experience and expertise.
Tell us about it.
Lindley: Absolutely. It's so good to see you, Flora. I started a new business, um, around six months ago called Austin's Couple Concierge. And I decided to do this concierge approach, which is really a wraparound approach. Myself and my business partner, Jess, we work as a team and we do multiple individual and couple sessions a week.
So they have access to us throughout the week. We're honoring both the individual and the couple. And most importantly, they have, um, on call access. Couples are in and out and about. Six [00:01:00] weeks and that to the life that they've worked so hard to enjoy. So it's been fun. It's fun for me It's fun for my business partner and it has been really fun for our couples But I I thought it would be so great to talk to you today about one of the number one topics We tackle in the concierge business.
Oh
Flora McCormick: my gosh, please. Yes, we
Lindley: would I want to talk about intimacy today One of my most favorite, most fun topics to tackle with couples is empowering them to still have fantastic and pleasurable sex lives, even in the stressful child rearing years. It is possible.
INTRO: Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast.
Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing. To parent with kindness and firmness at the same time, and [00:02:00] give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective. And for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome.
Lindley: And so what we find is a lot of couples who come to see us, they are very stressed by a desire discrepancy, right? And a desire discrepancy. Simply defined is when one partner wants more frequent sex. Or wants to put more time and energy and creativity into their sex lives, um, than the other partner. It is a normal relationship phase.
In over a decade of doing this, I've never met one couple, not one single couple in over a decade, who has not gone through a desire discrepancy at some point in their relationship. [00:03:00] So the first thing I want to do is just take the shame out of it, like, hey, yeah, you're in like a growing pains part of your relationship.
It's no big deal. Right? Yeah. Let's get you a solution that works. So that failed solution we were talking about, that's really common for people to put in place is the caregiver solution. Have you ever heard
Flora McCormick: of this? No. Yes. Tell me more. The caregiver solution.
Lindley: Yes. The caregiver solution. So. I want you to picture, um, I want you to picture the female coming into my office and telling me, you know what, my husband, he gets passive aggressive.
He's stomping around the house. He's making these little quote unquote joking comments about how it's been forever. Um, and he's moody. And you know what? It activates the caregiving part of my brain. It's sort of like when I'm observing my child have a tantrum or be moody, right? It tells me, uh oh, this is a [00:04:00] problem that I need to fix.
Right? So the most common failed solution is the lower desire partner will often start having sex out of obligation. Oh my gosh. They will now make it a chore or a caregiving task. And I don't know about you, Flora, but like I've got two kids, they're in two different directions and all the extracurriculars, all the school events, all the things.
The last thing I want to do at the end of a long caregiving day is now take care of one more person's needs. Totally. Now I have to take care of my partner's needs. Well, obligation kills desire. Totally the number one killer of desire, right? So now over time we have coupled it with need and duty. And over time, our desire will drop further and further and further and further.
And this solution we put in place [00:05:00] has actually been much more harmful. Okay. I can't wait
Flora McCormick: to hear what's the solution. Number one.
Lindley: Yes. Okay. Number one. I tell women only say yes. to sex you want to have. Like you
Flora McCormick: let your yes be yes, then your no be no. Be more aligned and genuine with what you feel.
Lindley: Absolutely. We only want to say yes to sex that we're going to go and take pleasure from. We do not want to say yes to obligation sex because we need to start uncoupling it and realigning sex to pleasure and desire. And you're right. No can actually be a gift, right? It can be a gift to ourselves. And it's a gift to our partner.
They know when we're not into sex, right? They know when we're checked out and somewhere else in our head. And so it's really no, can be a gift for both of us, and it gives us a chance. Um, my biggest passion, biggest passion in couples therapy is [00:06:00] teaching couples that sex is not about need. It can never be about need.
It's not to confirm love. It's not to confirm intimacy. Sex is only a playground. It's a playground that two people travel to, to have fun together, to escape the adversity of life, and to show up and take pleasure for themselves.
Flora McCormick: Yes. I love that because I, I think a lot of couples, like you said, back to the obligation thing, it gets into this like reward system or tit for tat kind of like, you know, they feel as though I'm going to give sex because I've asked you to be with the kids an extra night for me to go out with my girlfriends or something.
And, and like this redefining, it's not about that at all. It's this playground. Um, it also makes me think, I'm sure you're going to get to this, but like, this sounds like it's about communication too, like listening to [00:07:00] yourself first to be able to know if your no is no or your yes is yes, right? That takes a little bit of actually stopping and listening to ourselves, which I think women often we struggle with in the midst of like, no, my job is just to take care of everyone.
But I know in my own road of intimacy with my husband through having kids now, eight and 10, the communication was so big. And I mean, you know, embarrassed to say it, but it, you know, took me till my late thirties to even feel more comfortable to say things I want. Yeah. I don't know. I think of these stereotypes too.
Like you said, the end of the day always seems like the stereotypical, when a couple has sex and like, I'm not a night person. So it took listening to myself to be like, let me be clear. I keep kind of shutting you down and it's not the overall drive. It's like, here's where in the day or in the week I have more natural, like spontaneous, authentic drive.
And, um, yeah, [00:08:00] guilty to have to admit that, but then it opened up so much. Okay.
Lindley: I tell all of my female clients, I'm like, listen, at some point I'm going to sit down with an anthropologist or some sort of researcher. And we're going to talk about, I know there's data around this, but in 10 years, Never have I met a woman that likes to have sex at the end of a night, at the end of a day, in the evening, in the night.
No one. Never. It's never happened. They're all, I mean, I'm sure you've seen the memes on social media where the woman flirts and sends erotic messages all day and at night. She's like, don't even come near me. Totally. That was me. So. I tell women first and foremost, it is normal to not want to have sex at night.
I'm sure there's an evolutionary reason we don't want to, right? But advocate for sex during the day, sneak a lunch break at home or sometime in the morning, right? Totally okay to not do it at night. But in regards to the communication, I find that it's actually two part. It's between each other and it's within [00:09:00] self.
So I came up with this very easy three part recipe. Okay. So we've already normalized desire discrepancy. We have already said that sex is not going to be about obligation. It's only about pleasure, right? And we're not going to say yes to sex. That's other than pleasure. Now we're going to work on creating an environment that is conducive.
to pleasure and eroticism. Okay. And the way that we create that environment and we get out of the tit and tat is, um, a one, two, three recipe. So the first part is, um, we really want to make sure that the care task. feel fairly balanced. Okay. We do. I
Flora McCormick: know every mom listening to this, but sorry, also dads are like, yes.
Lindley: Yes. So there's a unique part of female sexuality that we don't find in male sexuality. For female sexuality, we actually need a buffer away from care. [00:10:00] task from caregiving duties. We have to have a buffer away. It's different parts of our brain. Um, so we can't go directly from rocking a baby down at night to engaging in eroticism.
It won't work for us. So in order to have that buffer away, I'll often tell the males, Say hey, what can you take off her plate? What can we do to make sure that she has got enough time to have this buffer away to go take a hot bath, to read a steamy novel, to really feel like she's connecting to the woman behind mom and wife?
So that she can crave pleasure and communicate about her pleasure. Mm hmm. I had a dear friend's husband text me a while back and he was like, hey, I really want to mix it up You know with my wife. I what are some like really cool things I could do to like surprise her and turn her on like what is like the newest things in the sex therapy world?
And I said, [00:11:00] why don't you send her a text and say Hey baby, I'm going to relieve you of all tasks this evening. I'm going to take the kids here. I'm going to feed the dog. I'm already going to have dinner done and dishes put away. And all of this is going to be off your plate because I just want you to be able to relax and connect to yourself.
Oh my gosh. Every woman
Flora McCormick: listening to this is turned on right now. And yes, exactly. Uh huh. Like what? This is
Lindley: not what I was expecting, but she texted me the next day and she was like, work like a charm. Yeah. Okay. Second part of the recipe is, um, and this seems to blow people's minds, but non sexual intimacy and sexual intimacy are tethered together.
They are tied together at the ankles. So oftentimes, um, one partner will come in and say, I want more sex. I want more exciting sex. I want more erotic sex. I want more passionate sex. I want it up here. I really want our sex up here at this [00:12:00] level. And I'll say, great. Now, how is your non sexual intimacy? And they're like, Oh, well, I mean, I, I mean, you know, well, we can, we can not raise the frequency and, um, pleasure and energy in our sex without significantly pouring into our non sexual intimacy.
Okay. So I always tell people. Saturate your relationship in non sexual intimacy. This is going to create that environment that is already conducive to eroticism, you know, spontaneously happening. So that might be flirty text, right? That might be sharing loving memories. That might be, um, talking about your dreams together, your goals together.
This could be, um, non sexual touch. I tell people, make sure you have five, six, seven times the amount of non sexual touch [00:13:00] as you do, um, have touch that leads to sex, right? Yeah. So we really want to make sure we are nice and connected at all times. This is going to allow us to raise our sexual intimacy.
Flora McCormick: Totally. I love that. And I know it can be hard to tangibly do those things like you're saying of how do I, um, spend time with my partner emotionally. And one thing that I liked a few years ago was looking at questions to ask kids to, um, have dinners go better. Like, would you rather this or that? And stumbled across like a list of questions to ask your partner.
And printed those out, took them on a date night with my husband and was so surprised at how much emotional intimacy that like revved up between us because it gets hard, right? Again, we're talking about like parenting with little kids and it's so easy when you spend time together to just be so business oriented.
Are [00:14:00] you picking up the kids? Am I? What are we having for dinner tonight? Are we seeing your parents this weekend? And so it takes something really tangible, maybe like a list of questions to like break out of the mold to be like, oh yeah. You know, I think, well one of the questions that stood out to me was like, what was um, your favorite date we ever went on that you wish we could recreate?
And I was surprised. Oh, I love that. Like the date that he really loved. And then he was surprised by something that we did that I really loved. Um, and then simple things like what was something embarrassing that happened to you in high school? Like just kind of brought us back emotionally to that like beginning of dating when you're learning new things.
You can feel after years that there's nothing else to discover, but there can be. You just,
Lindley: I know. Absolutely. I love that you just mentioned that list of questions because I tell people we are constantly changing. It's awesome to update the math you have Believe me, there's new roads built. There's other roads that have closed.
There's new parks being put [00:15:00] in, right? Like, continue to update that map of your partner. And that
Flora McCormick: newness keeps them attractive. Like same, one of the questions was like, what's like, um, a goal or dream you would love to be able to achieve in five years. And my husband's was, he wants to be able, he would love to be able to spontaneously play a bunch of pop songs on the piano for like when guests are over.
And I'm telling you, Lindley, my husband is like a dentist from Montana. Like this is nowhere on the radar of something I would have ever pictured was in his like dream map. But it made me so attracted to him. Like, oh, that's such a cool random fact about you. I never would have discovered without this question list.
Lindley: Yes, you get to see the partner in their aliveness and aliveness is sexy. Yeah. Okay.
Flora McCormick: So part one, part two, what's the
Lindley: third? Part three is initiate well. So as we were talking about earlier, what happens [00:16:00] is couples tackle their entire day. They, they tackle bath time, bedtime, everybody's completely worn out.
And, um, couples will tell me that they just roll over towards each other in bed and they're like, okay, you want to do this thing?
Flora McCormick: Real effective.
Lindley: Real effective, right? So, I tell people, um, famous sex therapist, Esther Perel, she often says that foreplay begins when the last sexual encounter ends. Right? So she says we should be weaving in foreplay and initiation throughout the day, right?
Don't wait till the end of the night when everybody's exhausted. Now we're going to put this really pressure filled question, um, you know, in this one single moment, but we can weave in initiation throughout the day. I'm really thinking about this part of you. I'm thinking about this thing we did. I would really love it if we could try that again.
Um, and Astaire also [00:17:00] says. If you want the fantastic, spontaneous, throw me up against the wall type of sex every now and then, you really need to be having planned sex too, which couples will often say, What? We have to like put it on the calendar? This is so lame! But I find that we schedule out everything else in our lives.
Yeah. We schedule out everything else in our lives. Why wouldn't we, right? Um, doesn't have to be all the time, but why wouldn't we make sure that we clear a space and that we've opened up time so that we can connect in that way? And she says, the more you're having this planned sex, um, the more you're already used to or in that pattern of going to the playground with your partner and spontaneous sex is more likely to occur.
Flora McCormick: Interesting. I totally would not have thought of that, but that makes so much sense. I mean, yeah, I'm always talking about in parenting, make agreements in advance [00:18:00] because the most stressful or one of the most stressful things is the constant deciding it. Do I have to say a yes or a no? And like you said earlier, if I'm trying to have that authentic yes or no, um, Like, I guess maybe it's agreeing in advance.
I'm more likely to have an authentic yes, you know, on a Monday morning that, um, we're home and the kids are at school. So
Lindley: yes, and we've, we've planned this space. I've gotten rest. I feel connected to myself and my body. I'm ready to go to the playground in this window that we've planned.
Flora McCormick: Yeah, setting a play date.
I like that. Oh,
Lindley: I love that. I'm going to have to take that. I'm going to take that one for my social media set of play date. So I find, you know, when we can normalize discrepancy and we can, um, uncouple sex from obligation and we work on this recipe to create an environment that's more conducive to sex.
We really don't have to go 10, [00:19:00] 15 years, those stressful child rearing years, with bad sex lives. We don't. Yeah,
Flora McCormick: and that's my favorite thing is redefining these, like, memes that we see online. Like, hashtag, like, you know, marriage or sex is just non existent in these early years. Or, like, I like to talk about, like, oh, my kids are just awful and I'm gonna hate, like, all of these early years.
It doesn't have to be either one of those. It just does. It just takes a little intention and working with an expert to know how you can quickly have those recipes and ingredients for more thriving, more fun and joy. So if someone wanted to follow up with you, Lindley, um, do you serve people outside of your area there in Austin?
How could someone connect with you?
Lindley: Absolutely. We have coached couples in New York, California, Florida, really all over. Um, so we do offer virtual service and it works really nicely, especially for our super busy couples. Um, and then I just [00:20:00] created a fresh Instagram, um, Austin couples concierge. She can find me there.
Also, we have a website, austincouplesconcierge. com.
Flora McCormick: Fantastic. Oh my gosh. I'm so grateful. I know this will serve a lot of families listening, um, to, you know, you know, stir the pot a little bit on intimacy and some ideas to be starting to improve it. So thank you so much for your time. You're
Lindley: welcome. It was fun.
Flora McCormick: Can't wait to see you next week. And as always, Take this week as a new opportunity to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time So that parenting can finally feel sustainable