People Pleasing In Bed | Szn. 4 Ep. 13

Dr. Jen Kennedy· Host0:00

[upbeat music] Hi, it's Dr. Jen Kennedy. I'm a sexologist and couples therapist. The Pleasure Project is about sex and relationships. That includes desire, dysfunction, dissatisfaction, exploration, toys, and trends. Sometimes I'll enlist other experts, sometimes it'll just be me. We'll increase your insight and enhance your pleasure, so tune in. [upbeat music] You probably don't have a libido problem. You have a self-abandonment problem. If your sex life feels tense, mismatched, or confusing, if one of you is always pursuing and the other is always pulling away, it might not be about desire levels at all. It might be people-pleasing, the subtle ways you override your body to keep the peace, the ways you say yes to avoid rejection, the ways you initiate to avoid abandonment, the ways you perform arousal you don't actually feel. Do that long enough and something critical happens. You stop knowing what you want. This episode is about the disappearing self in intimate relationships and why adaptation kills desire, so tune in. [upbeat music] So sometimes the biggest problem in your sex life isn't communication, it's that you don't actually know what you want anymore. We often think that desire issues are just about libido. Like, I get calls all the time, "I don't have libido," or, "I have high libido or low libido." But actually underneath that, many times what's actually happening is conflicts about something that's a little bit more subtle.