On today's episode of WNYC's popup advice show, David Furst, host of Weekend Edition on WNYC, leads an advice call-in conversation about sex, and the role it plays in our relationships and our personal development, with certified sex therapist Sari Cooper, Founder & Director Center for Love and Sex NYC. Listeners call in with questions and their advice for navigating intimacy and physical connection.
Note: You are listening to the podcast version of a live radio show. The call-in number only works between 1 and 2 PM Eastern, while the show is live. Some music that was part of the live broadcast has been removed from the uploaded program due to license requirements.
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David Furst: Welcome to Please Advise, a popup advice show from WNYC. I'm David Furst, and I'm your host this week on Please Advise. Quick bit of housekeeping before we get started. Please Advise is now available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts. Go ahead and give us a follow if you want to get all of our shows sent straight to your device every day that we are on the air.
Tomorrow, we want to talk about how college students are doing. Therapist Matt Lundquist will share advice on moving through the challenges and anxieties of having a kid in college. Or if you are a college student and need support or have advice, we want to hear from you. Then on Wednesday, we're getting into masculinity. Dr. Niobe Way will give us advice on raising a son in the era of the manosphere.
Today we are talking about sex and intimacy. The term sex recession is being used to describe the current American sexual climate. The General Social Survey found that the percentage of adults ages 18 to 64 having sex at least once a week dropped from 55% in 1990 to 37% in 2024. Some researchers say this decline largely represents young people having less sex than previous generations. That's the data. Listeners, we want to know what's going on with you. Maybe your partner isn't as interested in sex as you are, or maybe you are struggling with your own decline in desire. Maybe you're back in the dating pool for the first time in years, and you want to know what the norms are around sex and dating.
Call or text and let us know what advice you may need to cultivate intimacy in your life. This is a sensitive topic, so we invite you to use a pseudonym if that makes you more comfortable. Please join this conversation. Call or text us with questions and with your own advice at 212-433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Here to help us is a certified sex therapist, licensed clinical social worker, and the founder and director of the Center for Love and Sex, here in New York City, Sari Cooper. Sari, welcome to Please Advice.
Sari Cooper: Thank you so much for having me.
David Furst: Listeners, once again, join this conversation. You just call us or text us. 212-433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Sari, let's start with, how did this become what you do? How did you get into this?
Sari Cooper: Well, people ask me this all the time. I came to New York from Canada many moons ago to attend The Juilliard School as a dancer. I danced professionally, pretty much in this neighborhood with modern dance companies. I was a choreographer. Then, when I decided to transition, I had fallen in love with this idea of, or this field of systemic family and couples therapy, where people learn looking at a couple or a family behind a one-way mirror. I thought, "I've been looking at bodies and reading nonverbal education, communication my whole career." I thought, "I could do this."
I had someone in my family who also had a mental illness. I was really interested in becoming a therapist and a couples therapist. I went back to school, and I went to graduate school, and then I went to postgraduate school to study family therapy. Nowhere did anyone talk about sex. Having come from this avant-garde, modern dance, downtown New York world where people were open about their orientation, they were open about their identities, people talked about sex, I thought, "There's something wrong here. How are we supposed to be trained to ask couples about their sex life when no one's talking about it?"
I started my private practice, and I started asking couples, "How's your sex life?" Boy, did I get answers.
David Furst: You get answers. Like I said at the beginning, it's a sensitive topic. Some people may have a reluctance to give those answers, but once people start talking--
Sari Cooper: Well, once people are asked, so the research shows, both in the medical field and in the field of marriage and family therapy, there hasn't been a lot of studies done, but the studies that exist show that unless a provider, whether it's a medical provider or a therapist, initiate the conversation about sexuality, the patient or client will never bring it up on their own.
David Furst: I'm interested in that. I know you had a lot of training between being a dancer and choreographer and being this therapist, but do any of your skills that you learned being a choreographer translate?
Sari Cooper: Definitely. As a choreographer outside of the ballet world, in the modern world, we make up movements that don't exist or don't have names. When you're showing a dancer what you want, you can show them, your arm shouldn't be here, it should be like diagonally up. Your hand should be facing front as opposed to facing in. All these nuanced details can be named, and they can be described.
If you think about having an optimum or satisfying or a pleasurable sexual experience, having language or being able to have the confidence or the terminology I created, the model I created, sex esteem to tell a partner, "No, actually, if you move just a little bit this way or if you can soften your pressure just a little bit." People don't, A, have the words, nor do they have the confidence or the esteem to be able to communicate that to a partner.
David Furst: I want to come back to that concept of sex esteem a little bit later. I want to come back to something that I talked about right at the very beginning. This is the idea of the American sex recession. We heard about that survey. Is that something that you have seen signs of, something you hear about?
Sari Cooper: One of the things that a sex therapist sees pretty frequently in their offices, in our office, is when individuals and/or couples or partners are dissatisfied with the amount or frequency of sex, or they're in sexless relationships. Yes, we see that quite a bit. There are so many contributing factors to that, I think, depending on your age, your relationship status, how you feel about the sex that you had or have been having. We could go in a lot of different directions. I do think that Gen Zers seem to be having less frequent sex.
This latest study out of the Kinsey Institute seems to point to the fact that many of them are still living with their parents, or they're not making enough money to make them feel like they can go out and have a proper date or traditional date, if you will. That's one hypothesis.
David Furst: Interesting. Well, we would like to welcome you to this discussion. If you have questions, maybe you have your own advice. The number to call or text is 212-433-9692. Let's see here. We're getting some texts and calls. We have a text here saying, "My biggest struggle is finding a healthy relationship where it feels safe to have sex."
Sari Cooper: We have to feel relaxed. Safety is the number one foundational thing to have, safety and trust, physical and emotional safety. So often I hear people talking about the fact that online dating people misrepresent who they are. Lots of ghosting goes on. It really up-levels our nervous system when we continue to have these experiences where people are not behaving in a way that we can feel relaxed around. You do have to feel relaxed in order to trust somebody and to be vulnerable with them. I think there's that piece, and I think there's a toxicity that people have had in relationships.
We do a whole sexual assessment, if you will, sexual history, and I call it a biopsychosocial, sexual, spiritual history. Because I want to know if someone has had a traumatic experience, certainly growing up. I also want to know if they've had traumatic experiences just in their dating and relationship. Many people have.
David Furst: If you want to join this discussion, 212-433-9692. We're talking about cultivating healthy sexual relationships and intimacy. Let's take a caller right now from Nassau County. Welcome to Please Advise.
Caller 1: Hi.
David Furst: Hey. Do you have a question or maybe just a comment?
Caller 1: Well, I'm married a long time, and we don't have sex anymore.
Sari Cooper: Can I ask you a little further questions?
Caller 1: Yes. Just don't get too intimate.
Sari Cooper: I won't. I'm wondering what age group you're in.
Caller 1: Septuagenarian. I just turned 70.
Sari Cooper: Happy birthday. Right. I asked that question because I think every life stage has its own kind of developmental challenges. I think if you've been in a long-term relationship, people take each other for granted, number one. They stop doing the romantic flirtation thing. They probably even stop going out on dates. Then there's the physical, biological, medical stuff that goes on as we get older. Many people see changes in their sexual functioning. If you're a male person with a penis, you have maybe issues there, either through problems with erections, problems with ejaculations. Contributors to that are medications and medical problems.
Then, if you're a female person, what happens around menopause is estrogen does a deep dive. For many in that generation of 60 and 70-year-olds, they miss the boat on getting hormone therapy because the guidelines at that time were misguided and told women that they shouldn't use hormone therapy. When you don't have hormone therapy, you get more irritation, potentially in your vaginal walls. Penetrative sex becomes painful. If you're in pain every time you have a sexual experience that involves penetration, you're just going to avoid the whole kit and caboodle, if you will.
One of the things I say to my couples is, can we first of all get you to a doctor who's going to help you with the pain because you shouldn't be in pain. Let's take all the painful experiences off the table, and can we go back to square one and start having some intimate experiences that are pleasurable for each of you? It could be anything. It could be massaging each other. It could be bringing toys into the bedroom. It could be taking turns. Sex is what I call a wide umbrella. Under that umbrella are a lot of behaviors, not just penetration.
David Furst: Does that help? Is that what you wanted to get to during this call?
Caller 1: Well, I just don't feel like I'm attracted to her sexually anymore.
Sari Cooper: Sometimes I think when we're used to relying on certain sexual or erotic cues, for example, many men are very visually oriented. As our bodies change, so does our partners. Sometimes you have to develop different areas of interest that are erotic turn-ons for you that might not be solely focused on the visual.
David Furst: I have a question for you, following up on that. Is decline in sex necessarily a bad thing? Rather than focus on reports of frequency, is there something we can instead do to move toward a more positive, healthy relationship?
Sari Cooper: I think it's an excellent question because it's not only about frequency. We want to talk about quality. Sometimes people are not having a sexual experience that they actually like, or they're showing up, and they're just going along with it, and they've been doing that for years, or they're showing up and performing. They're actually not connected to their bodies, and they're not embodied. I do think that for people who have a difficulty with how their partner looks, they have to actually start to consider a wider array of boosters, if you will, to boost their erotic desire either on their own or with their partner.
David Furst: Well, we want to hear your questions and your advice. We have a lot of texts and calls coming through. Right now we'll get to as many of them as we can. The number to call or text is 212-433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. I'm going to read this text because it's picking up on some of what we've just been hearing about. This texter says, "This has been an issue for me and my wife. When we were dating, we had sex three or more times a week. Then she got pregnant, and sex dropped off, and that caused us to argue. She explained later that her libido was more like once every two or three weeks."
I'm reading here, "I felt duped, so we compromised on once a week, and we're pretty good about it. For her, I think it feels like a chore. She says she enjoys it, but it's something I really look forward to throughout the week. That difference in attitude can be a drag."
Sari Cooper: Thank you so much for your text and your honesty. I think there's so much embedded in this, David, because, A, one of the strengths of your relationship to the caller, the texter, is that you came to an agreement. You negotiated an agreement that was based on your different levels of libido and interest. That's a positive. Congrats on that. Now, the second part of this is one of the things you look forward to, you're enjoying it. The challenging response I would give you is, it sounds like your wife is doing this maybe more for your enjoyment than for her own, and is that okay?
I actually think that that's a gift that she's giving you, but I recognize the longing that people have for when it was new, when it was novel, right at the beginning of the relationship where both people seem to be as into it as the other. Frankly, you might want to sit down and ask her what might give her pleasure. Maybe actually massaging her feet. That may be for her, the most pleasurable thing you could do for her once a week. That's my shorter answer to a much broader question, but it's an excellent question.
David Furst: We're talking about cultivating healthy sexual relationships and intimacy. Let's hear from Mary in West New York. Welcome to Please Advise.
Mary: Hi. Thank you. Thank you for getting to my call.
David Furst: Yes, go ahead. Do you have a question?
Mary: Oh, great. Yes, I'm 63. My husband's 71, and we just had sex this morning. He'd kill me if he knew I was on the radio. I'd say we're about once a week, maybe twice a week. The thing is that it's about being creative. In that first caller he really made me think about it can't be the way it was 20 years ago. It just isn't going to be. I appreciate your guests talking about your body changes and this and that, but for me, it's about being creative. Whether we use, like, she was talking about toys or massage or whatever. I think just so everybody gets your cookies. It doesn't matter.
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David Furst: Gets your cookies. I like that. Thank you.
Sari Cooper: Well, I love the fact that you brought food into it, because I love to cook and I'm a foodie, and I use that actually as a model for people, my clients, because sometimes all you're interested in is having a salad. [laughs] I do think you have to be creative, and I think you have to be honest with yourself and your partner that you're not the same age. One of the things that dance helped me with, David, you asked me earlier about being a dancer, is that if you're an athlete or if you're a dancer, you have to wake up every morning and deal with the body you were dealt with in that day.
I always say, some days I wake up, and I could do three pirouettes in my ballet class, and then some days I could barely balance. Having that kind of mindfulness and compassion and empathy for yourself as well as your partner and being able to say, "Oh, what are we in the mood for today? What are you up for today? What am I in the mood and what am I up for today?" Is a really honest way of approaching sexuality.
David Furst: Well, we're talking about salad and cookies and healthy sexual relationships today. Before we take a break, I have to read this text. "Married 40 years to the same person. We have sex almost daily. We are totally vanilla. No toys or anything like that. We just like it. To keep my son from cringing, you can call me Dalia."
Sari Cooper: Hi, Dalia. Thank you for calling or texting in. That's great. I do think that it's a negotiated dance, and the fact that you can both be intimate and both be creative and decide what you want to do. I don't think you have to apologize for being vanilla because I think you're into what you're into, and there's no judgment there. That's one of the foundations I start with in sex therapy with any new client, because we come in-- Most people come in with a lot of shame. Oh, like they have to feel like, "Oh, I'm not kinky," or, "Oh, I don't want to have it that often."
There's apologies that are coming in, and that's from shame. That you somehow, you have to live up to some sort of expectation you are who you are and if you can show up with that sex esteem or develop it, you'll have more pleasure, you'll have more real intimacy. That's authenticity.
David Furst: I got to say, I read that as proud vanilla, but that's a great comment. We're going to continue this discussion. We have to take a quick break. You're listening to Please Advise, a popup advice show from WNYC. I'm David Furst. Our guest today is the sex therapist Sari Cooper. We want to hear your questions and your advice. The number to call or text 212-433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.
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David Furst: This is Please Advise, a popup advice show from WNYC. I'm David Furst. Our guest today is Sari Cooper, a sex therapist and the founder of the Center for Love and Sex here in New York City. It's great to have you with us today, and we would love to welcome you to this discussion. The number to call 212-433 WNYC. You can use a pseudonym if this is a topic that you're feeling a bit anxious talking about. We'd love to welcome you to this chat. Again, the number is 212-433-9692. You can also text, so keep that in mind as well, 212-433-9692.
I want to come back to that idea that you're talking about sex esteem. Can you expand on that, what you mean, and how that factors into what you do in your practice?
Sari Cooper: I think that was somewhat born out of my own experience as a mover, a dancer. I had to actually feel it, what I was doing from the inside out. Yes, there were mirrors in ballet class, but as a modern dancer, it also was how it felt in your body to do a certain movement and that's how you remembered how to do it. I felt like when I got into this field, and I've been a therapist for 25-plus years, but I've been a sex therapist for 17 years. I felt like so many people kept excusing themselves and not being connected with their bodies.
People will commonly say I'm in my head. What that means to me is my body and my mind are separated, and I can't actually feel anything because I'm so worried and I have all these ruminating thoughts in my head. I'm worried about how I'm being perceived. I'm worried about is my body going to work okay. Is it going to feel painful? Is it going to actually feel good? Do I have a laundry list of household chores that I have to take care of? Because what's going on right now is not very interesting to me. One of the things I felt was sex esteem is from the inside out. It's not from what society tells me I should be.
It's listening to getting into that little voice inside yourself going, "Oh, what is it that I'd really, really love to try," or "What is it that I'd like to feel like?" Or, "Where do I want to go in my erotic mind and have a field day today and escape the day-to-day responsibilities of my life?" Because in the end, I think our erotic life and our fantasy life is like a playground. It should be like a playground. Kids have recess, they can do whatever they want. Sometimes I'll ask somebody, when you were a little kid before, maybe you got into sports and it was about winning on a soccer team or something, but did you ever play let's pretend? Whatever your gender was.
Let's pretend meant that you had to be serious about who you were in that role-play, if you will. It wasn't really about winning. It was about the sheer delight of playing with your friends in this made-up world. I said that's where eroticism can take you.
David Furst: Thank you for that, and let's take another call. Let's hear from Manny in Park Slope. Welcome to Please Advice.
Manny: Hello. My partner and I are both baby boomers in our mid-70s, and we certainly took advantage of sex, drugs, and rock and roll back in the day. We have a, what they call an LAC relationship. Living alone together. Anyway, we have experienced what nature usually does when you get to be around our age, but it didn't stop us from being intimate. There's a lot of, I guess, extended necking and petting you might call it, but it's very intense, and it's very satisfying. It's not the usual by-the-book kind of sex intercourse. It's something different, but in my opinion, and in hers, equally satisfying.
David Furst: This is a great call. I want to hear what you have to say about this Sari, because what is the usual by-the-book, first of all? Right?
Sari Cooper: Right. Well, it's what we're fed in the media and films and series. Which usually feature, by the way, younger people, doesn't feature people in their 70s. Thank you so much, Manny, for your call. I also love the fact that you brought in living alone together, which people who are older, who aren't raising children, have chosen for themselves because it gives them a little space. It's almost like having a dating relationship. They can have the intimacy when they're together, and then they can miss each other. They can actually have like that space of wanting and longing and missing.
As far as finding other behaviors or encounters, that is actually sex. People feel embarrassed about, "Well, we don't have sex." No, that's sex. I think people shouldn't feel embarrassed about what they do. Necking is sex. Holding hands can be sex. Certainly, people who have older bodies, they're not represented actually in the media, and certainly not older women. That is a problem, actually, because older women feel like they're invisible once they go through menopause. The fact that you can actually feel erotic and sensual. Yes, you're not dead. You're very much alive. Your body is capable of so much pleasure at different ages.
David Furst: You're listening to Please Advise here on WNYC. If you want to join the discussion, 212-433-9692. We're speaking with sex therapist Sari Cooper, and I want to read this text here writing in to say, "Widowed father of three adult daughters here. I am blessed with a passionate, adventurous partner of similar age in a relationship where we communicate comfortably about sex. My daughters do not appear to center sex in their relationships to the extent that we do. Or maybe I'm just not in the loop. Is there a healthy way for parents to encourage a sex positive dialogue without grossing out their grown kids?"
Sari Cooper: What a great question. Yes, well, I think you always have to ask permission. You can say, "I read this article," or, "I listened to this podcast, and it had some really cool ideas, and I'm wondering if you'd be open to me sharing it with you." It's always important to ask permission because otherwise it feels intrusive. Then if they say yes, you just send them something small, and then you can say, "Hey, would you like to talk about this podcast? I was wondering if it resonated with you," because otherwise you don't want to come across as lecturing. You're still their parent. You're still their father.
I think that you can ask permission, "Oh, I read an interesting article. I'm wondering what you thought about it. Do you want to have this dialogue with me?" They may say no. A no is a no.
David Furst: Respect that.
Sari Cooper: Yes.
David Furst: Let it go.
Sari Cooper: Let it go.
David Furst: Well, let's hear from CJ in New Jersey. Welcome to Please Advise. CJ, are you there?
CJ: Hi.
David Furst: Oh, hello.
CJ: Yes, I'm here. Hi. Am I on?
David Furst: You certainly are. Do you have a question?
CJ: Yes, I do. This is an incredible conversation. I really appreciate you guys taking my call. I've been with the same person since I was a child. 47 years. Not married. I'm incredibly loyal. I've never cheated. I have no sex. I haven't had sex in maybe 30 years. Not touched, not holding hand, not anything. Is this like a deadly sign that I should at this age, be running for the hills before I'm never able to eat the cookies or to have all the stuff you guys have been talking about, not even watching a movie, not doing anything. I agree with what you guys are saying.
Last thing I'm going to say, I agree with what you guys are saying. Intimacy is intimacy. It doesn't have to be the young stuff. It doesn't. I used to be a dancer, too, so the body is not so bad, but there's no sex going on at all. I mean, zero. Nothing. Please help me. That's it. Thank you, guys, for taking the call.
David Furst: Thank you so much for joining this discussion today.
Sari Cooper: And being so vulnerable. I think that you're bringing up a term that was developed, I think came to the fore during COVID, which is a term called skin hunger. I don't think it is a real thing. If you think about the first thing we do when babies come out of their mother's bodies is that we put them skin-to-skin against their mothers, because that is the way we calm our nervous system down. Just because we get older does not mean that we still don't crave that. Sex and intimacy are part of skin-to-skin contact.
I think that I would inform, or I would invite you to have this conversation with your partner and say it in a loving way to say, "I'm dealing with skin hunger. I really miss being touched, and I really miss being connected with you. I just wanted to open up that discussion with you. Are you willing to have it with me?" You have to tread lightly. It sounds like you haven't had this conversation, which is actually a conversation that people come to sex therapy to have because it's such a tender, vulnerable conversation, especially when it's gone on for years.
I might just say, David, one of the changes that has occurred in my long career as a couples therapist is that in the early years we wouldn't talk about consensual non-monogamy. That's something that has really opened up in the last, I want to say, 10 to 15 years. It is a discussion that maybe has been led by younger people, but not-- There are a lot of people who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, who come into sex therapy because they want to discuss the opportunity to have a consensual non-monogamy agreement.
It could be because one person wants to be sexual and they don't want to end their life without being touched again or having pleasure, and the other one doesn't. Or it could be that they want to explore other facets to themselves and they want to do it in an ethical manner.
David Furst: That's an interesting discussion that I'm sure is a tough, very tough one to begin.
Sari Cooper: Maybe or maybe not. Sometimes people come in, and they've already done some of their due diligence and homework, and they've listened to podcasts, or they read books. It becomes more challenging when then one partner says, "Absolutely not, I'm not into that, nor do I want that." The other partner is like, "Why can't you just even consider it and understand why it's important to me?"
David Furst: We're getting a lot of calls, and I want to try to get to more of them, but I want to-- Because a lot of what we're hitting on here is really resonating. I want to read two texts quickly and get you to comment, "For Please Advise, I recommend to the dad who feels duped to think through what he is doing to make himself attractive to his tired and amazing wife. Yes, the foot rub, but also the dishes, the afternoon off, the weekend getaway, and just being a nice guy. Ask her what she needs to feel human and beautiful, and the attraction will follow."
Then we have another text, anonymous, "Husband and I are in our 40s with two small kids, five and two and a half. I used to be into sex but after kids body just feels different and zero interest. We talk about it every now and then, but it feels like all of the other to-dos are more important, including sleep. What should we do?"
Sari Cooper: Wow, those are two big questions. Let me start with the second one first. I think that, as I was saying earlier, every life stage has its challenges or perks, and having children and having birthed children and raising young children, I always say, "Oh, you are in the thick of it." The lack of sleep. I always think of sleep as the foundation of good mental health, and if you're not sleeping on a consistent basis, you're not getting enough sleep-- I actually wrote a sexistine blog years ago. What do women moms want for Mother's Day? They want a weekend where they can just sleep, and then you can talk about having sex.
David Furst: I like that weekend as well. Let me just, for the record.
Sari Cooper: [laughs] It's not just moms, right? I'm saying moms because she's talking about how her body has changed. Yes, there are hormonal changes that go on when you have a child. I would actually encourage you to go to your gynecologist and talk to them about your lack of libido and hormonal changes. I don't know how old you are, but you could be also in the early stages of perimenopause, which affects our sleep, it affects our ability to sometimes think straight, it affects our libido, surely, and it can also affect our vaginal lubrication. All of those things have to be discussed.
I'm heartened to hear or see and be part of newer discussions and more open discussions about perimenopause and menopause, where that used to be a shameful secret. I would encourage a good discussion with your doctor and also find a way to have dates that don't have to cost a lot of money. If you have family around, great. Ask them to come in, and take the kids away, and have a day date at home, and make your home, make your bedroom a sanctuary. That's what I say to people.
Get rid of the toys in the bedroom. Get rid of the computer that's reminding you of work in the bedroom. Really create a lovely three-hour or four-hour day date where you have more energy, hopefully where you can nap, and then you can do something that's for each other, and it can be whatever you want it to be.
David Furst: We're speaking with Sari Cooper, sex therapist and licensed social worker, founder of the Center for Love and Sex in New York City. Let's take another call. Peg in Princeton. Welcome.
Peg: Hi there. What a fantastic program. It's exactly what I've been thinking about for probably about four years.
David Furst: Wow.
Peg: I went through menopause, and I lost my libido. I lost my interest in sex. Meanwhile, my husband's taking something for testosterone for other reasons. I'm thinking his sex drive is up, and it was a mismatch, and I just went along with it. The pain of having penetration was a factor. We talked about it, and I talked to my gynecologist, and I'm on the hormone therapy and no pain whatsoever. I still have no interest in sex, but we have sex on Saturday night, and it's a thing, and my husband loves it, and I love taking part in it because he likes it so much. I'm not about reaching climax or anything like that because I'm not interested in it anymore.
David Furst: Peg, thank you so much for calling. Sari, do you want to--
Sari Cooper: Yes, thanks, Peg. This is a beautiful depiction of what sexuality can become as we get older. The fact that they came to an agreement and they scheduled it a lot of people go, "Oh, I don't want to schedule sex. That's so unsexy." Actually, you can get your body ready, you can look forward to it. It can be really fun. The fact that she's saying, "It's not really for me. I'm entering, I'm willing to enter this sexual experience because I love my husband and I want to give him this gift."
David Furst: It still sounds like a positive experience.
Sari Cooper: It's a positive experience. It's also a great example, David, of what we sex therapists called responsive desire, where it's not intrinsic spontaneous desire where it comes from your body, and there are tingles and your-- No, I'm responding to the fact that I love my husband and sex is really important to him and he's important to me, and I can do this for him and we're both happy.
David Furst: We have to take a quick break. We have a lot of calls. We're still going to get to a lot of your calls and texts. This is Please Advise, a popup advice show here on WNYC. I'm David Furst. We're also here with Sari Cooper, a sex therapist and the founder of the Center for Love and Sex here in New York City. Back in just a moment.
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David Furst: You're listening to Please Advise, a popup advice show from WNYC. I'm David Furst. Our guest today is the sex therapist, Sari Cooper. It is great to have you with us today. Thank you, everyone, for joining this discussion. We're hearing from a lot of you today. We're taking your questions and your advice, and we're going to get to some more phone calls. Let me hit a couple of these texts right now.
Here's one. "As a 45-year-old, newly divorced mom of two, I have found a sexual awakening through study of power dynamics and BDSM. It's helped to reprogram my ideas around masculinity, femininity, role play, and rituals, and how important these are in creating eroticism both in my general life and my sex life."
Sari Cooper: Great. I'm glad you brought up BDSM and roleplay. Similar to what I was saying earlier about when we were kids and we're playing let's pretend, one of those erotic pings that I ask people about, which can widen and broaden one's sexual palette, if you will, is the idea of power exchange. People will always say, "Well, I'm not into that kinky stuff." The way I introduce it is that every single thing that you're interested in has a long spectrum, a wide spectrum. Even if you like someone to initiate the kiss, that's power exchange. You're saying, "I want you to come on to me because I find that really sexy."
You can take that to a more extreme, where there's role play, where there's restraints, where there's blindfolds, where there's what we call sensation play. That's a whole spectrum of what's called bondage, discipline, sadomasochism, and domination and submissiveness. That's a whole sphere that people can explore. I always say, sometimes you're more kinky than you think you are.
David Furst: Well, I want to get to some more calls, but I have to read this text. Here we go. "Men never consider how they have changed since the relationship started. They often become insensitive jerks, and nobody is attracted to that. Also, if they need to be reminded how to do things and when to do them, it's like having another child around, and no woman is attracted to a child."
Sari Cooper: Wow. Those are two different things. Let's take the first part of it, which is that you actually have to put some intentionality to wooing or seducing. People do a lot of that when they first start dating, and that goes by the wayside. Well, now that we're partners, I don't have to do that anymore. Well, part of that erotic buildup and turn-on was all the wooing and the seducing and the writing a little note or sending a little picture. Whatever you agree on turns the other person on. If you stop doing that, it goes flat, and it becomes a mechanical exercise. Then the second part was, remind me, David.
David Furst: Let's see. If they need to be reminded how to do-- If they need to be reminded how to do things and when to do them.
Sari Cooper: Sometimes--
David Furst: Some communication can be helpful also.
Sari Cooper: Well, here's the thing that I think they're getting at. In heterosexual partnerships, when they're having children especially, there's still this pressure on the woman to be the manager of the family and manager of the house, or it could be another gender. If there's one partner that's taking the emotional labor of putting everything together and reminding people and telling them when they should show up at their child's recital, that is exhausting. It's depleting. I appreciate the idea of, like, you feel like you're a parent of your partner, and sometimes that's an indicator of some other different wiring that the partner might have that has never been assessed before.
Certainly, people come into sex therapy because of the sex piece or the erotic piece, but then they discover there are some other psychiatric or psychological issues that have never actually been addressed. This idea of having to be the caretaker of your children, who are actually children, and the partner, that puts a damper on being turned on by them.
David Furst: We're going to get to a few more of your phone calls, I promise. Let's take one right now. This Salvatore in Queens. Welcome to Please Advise.
Salvatore: Hi. Can you hear me?
David Furst: Yes, welcome.
Salvatore: Yes, hi. I know my partner, it's not like when we first met, when it was just stars and just bangs, booms. I'm still compassionate, and I still want to be intimate. I do have friends that have absolutely lost complete sexual attraction to their partner. I mean, zip, nothing. They don't even want to think of having sex with them, but they still love them very much, and they still want to be in a relationship with them, but they do not want to have sex. That's just become such a huge issue.
The question is, do we have to remain attractive to our partners the rest of our lives? Are they going to fulfill every in need that we have, or is there some other way that we as human beings can develop a relationship where that's not going to be necessary? We can be with other people and still be in a loving, committed relationship. Sorry, [unintelligible 00:44:29]
Sari Cooper: No, I love this question. Thank you for it. I think that there was this expectation, and still is, that if you love someone, you're always going to be attracted to them. That is not necessarily true. I think people, yes, for many people there was the, as you call it, the stars and booms at the beginning of relationship. Actually, for some reason, for some people, they don't get married because of chemistry. They get married for a whole host of reasons. They were a good person, they loved the person. They wanted to build something with them.
I do think it is an important conversation to have and being honest with one another without-- People don't have this conversation, David, because they don't want to hurt their partner's feelings. I don't think it's written in stone that you actually have to be attracted to the person for the rest of your life or you have to have sex with them for the rest of your life. You do have to have a compassionate, safe conversation to decide and negotiate what you might want to do going forward. It's courageous too, by the way, to have that conversation.
David Furst: A great call. Thank you so much for calling in. We'll get to another call in just a second. Let me quickly read this text here. Picking up on that theme a little bit, but in a different direction. "My partner and I are late 30s. She has been having body image issues that make it difficult for her to get into an intimate headspace. I think she looks amazing, but can't convince her of that. Is there anything I can do to help her see herself the way I see her?"
Sari Cooper: Oh, what a beautiful question. I don't know the person's first name, but I think you're getting right at the heart of what I was talking about earlier around sex esteem. Sometimes you can say to a person, "You're beautiful, I love your body. I want to be with you because I find you so attractive visually." It doesn't sink in because they themselves don't feel it from the inside out. You can't help someone unless they start doing the work themselves.
Negative body image, negative self body image is a big problem a lot for women and heterosexual women, especially in our society. We're given a lot of media information about how what's perfect and how we're supposed to look, and what's beauty.
David Furst: No shortage of that.
Sari Cooper: I think she has to do some work on her own, to be honest, to develop her own sex esteem. I'm glad you're a loving partner, and you want to help her. That's what she needs to do. Frankly, doing some movement that feels good for her where she can actually be more embodied and not worried about what it looks like, like going to a dance studio without a mirror or going some-- A physical thing that she loves to do that makes her connected to her body. That might also be helpful.
David Furst: Let's take another call. Erica in Brooklyn, welcome to Please Advise.
Erica: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
David Furst: Welcome. Do you have a question or a comment? We can hear you. It's breaking up a little bit. We'll try.
Erica: Thank you so much. I heard you guys talking about non-monogamy earlier in the call, ethical non-monogamy earlier in the show. I've been identifying as polyamorous, ethically non-monogamous for about 13 years. I just want to say I know it scares a lot of people. Personally, one of the ways that it's helped me in my life is that, it has helped me really turn myself into my own primary partner and has given me an opportunity to really fall in love with myself.
David Furst: Well, I want to let you have a chance to respond to that-
Erica: [crosstalk] for my own life.
David Furst: -only because the call is breaking up a little bit and we just have about a minute left. Do you have a moment to respond to that?
Sari Cooper: Yes, this is a deeper conversation, and I'm glad you brought it up. In order to practice, as you-- I think of it as a practice of polyamory, you have to do a lot of in-depth work about your own jealousies, about your own desires, about how you can love more than one person in a very authentic way. You have to develop good communication skills. To do that, you do have to have a good sense of yourself and compassion for yourself because you're going to have bumps in the road like everyone else. It's not like all roses and rainbows. You're in relationships if you're polyamorous. All of those take a lot of investment of energy, time, and love.
David Furst: Picking up on some of the things. I've just got a text here. Let's see here. "Great discussion. Today we're married for 20 years and have a super hot and fun sex life. Our biggest secret is that we are polyamorous swingers and like to play with other partners together. This keeps our sex life fresh like it was on day 1."
Sari Cooper: It's a very common statistic that people in midlife are the people who are more likely to become swingers and practice consensual non-monogamy in that way, which is a different thing than the earlier caller did. Great for you. I'm so happy for you that you found that for yourselves.
David Furst: We have a lot of questions. We're not going to get all the time for. We're going to have to continue this discussion on a future show. Excuse me. Let me say your name properly. Sari Cooper. Does that sound correct?
Sari Cooper: That's it.
David Furst: Thank you. Founder of the Center for Love and Sex here in Manhattan. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Sari Cooper: Thank you so much for having me. This was great.
David Furst: Coming up tomorrow here on Please Advise. Matt Lundquist, founder and clinical director of Tribeca Therapy, joins us. We'll be checking in with college-aged young people and their parents, offering advice around the transition into adulthood and independence that is coming up tomorrow here on WNYC. This is Please Advise. Thank you so much for joining our discussion today.
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