Sex Help for Smart People Evolves to The Desire Gap Podcast: Unpacking The #1 Issue I See

This episode is all about why I'm making a change in this podcast, including why that is going to be extra great for you as a listener. In fact, you're going to get even more of my focused expertise, aimed at the issue that affects 80% of people in relationships at some point: libido mismatch. I'm keeping all the no-nonsense, research-based, caring content you know me for. What you also get is laser-focused expertise on desire differences— the issue that touches virtually every other sexual and relationship challenge people face. 

Here's why this matters: most marriage and family therapists have zero training in sexuality, leaving couples seeking help for their biggest relationship issue from professionals who are under-prepared. Most couples wait years before addressing desire differences, often making the gap harder to bridge.

I've been on both sides of desire differences myself—zero desire periods where I felt broken and ashamed, and times as the higher-libido partner, when I felt  constantly rejected. My partner and I worked through both scenarios using the exact methods I teach clients, and we're now having the best sex of our lives.

You'll hear transformation stories like my client who went from painful obligation sex twice a year to genuine pleasure and stronger communication in three months. I also preview upcoming episodes and guide you through a reflection exercise to assess your current relationship with desire. Whether you want more or less sex than your partner, feel rejected or pressured, this episode will help you understand why you're not broken and give you specific steps to start creating change immediately.

Get my free guide: 5 Steps to Start Solving Desire Differences
(Without Blame or Shame), A Practical Starting Point for Individuals and Couples, at https://laurajurgens.com/libido

Find out more about me at https://laurajurgens.com/

Transcript

0:01  
Welcome to the desire gap podcast. I'm your host, Dr Laura Jurgens, and whether you want more sex than your partner or less, you are not wrong, and your relationship isn't doomed. You just need better tools to solve the struggles of mismatched libidos. That's what we do here, so welcome, and let's dive in.

0:23  
Hey, welcome to

0:26  
episode 87 and a pretty big switch. I am really glad you're here, and I want to welcome you to what is now officially the desire gap podcast we are making a change, but let me just reassure you, this episode is going to explain why this change is great for you, whether this is an issue you have right now in your relationship or not, and I think it'll also help if you've been a long term listener and you're like, wait, what's all this about? You're going to really get a sense of why I'm doing this and why it's going to be great for you. So I want to start though with you know, something that might blow your mind or might not surprise you at all. I'm curious. Roughly 80% of couples experience some sort of desire discrepancy that is feels problematic to them at some point in their relationship. 80% of people have run into a libido mismatch are in it right now, or have had it in the past, or will have it in the future. And the thing is, it's not just causing frustration in the bedroom. It's actually a leading cause of breakups, divorce and one of the top reasons that couples seek counseling. But the crazy part, here's the really crazy part, the vast majority of marriage and family therapists and regular therapists have little to no training in sexuality. Yes, even MFTs Marriage and Family Therapists licensing requirements for MFTs don't mandate sexuality training none, and it's a real bummer for a lot of therapists. And in fact, I have a lot of therapists who are clients. I have a lot of therapists who are friends, and I hear all the time from them how frustrated they are about not getting sufficient training in this area, in sexuality. And most therapists get maybe a few hours in a graduate course, if they're lucky, and couples, people don't know that. So if you're not a therapist, you don't know that. This is partly why I have a bunch of therapists as clients, because they do know that. And so they come to a specialist, but most people don't know so they are showing up for help with this really painful issue that's causing a major struggle that might they feel like might even be leading to a divorce, and their therapists are unprepared, and sometimes they're lucky, and their therapist is also really honest and admits that they can't help, rather than sort of winging it or giving some poor advice that is uninformed, right? But even if they do have a really great person who's willing to admit that they can't help under the pressure of somebody's pain, which can be hard, right, people just feel hopeless and they don't know where to turn then, right, unless that therapist happens to know about me or one of my colleagues who's really good with this issue, and it's just so disappointing that that is where we're at with sexuality in our culture, that people who are out there trying to help people with their emotional well, being with their relationships most of the time do not have the tools To actually be helping them with this huge problem. So I know, you know, frankly, not that many people, even sex therapists, deal super well with libido mismatches. And I know because I talk to those people too, and I also talk to their clients, and it is a such a common problem, and then there's so few people who actually deal with it well. And the reason, even sex therapists often don't know how to deal with libido mismatch very well is because of the particularly the way that they're trained. A lot of them are trained in more sort of pathological issues, or to really focus on sort of past origins of sexuality issues, and that can give people sort of a why I might have high desire or why I might have low desire, but doesn't really help them understand how to kind of solve those challenge with their partner, right? And so. For those of you who've been listening to sex, help for smart people, I want to reassure you up front here that I appreciate you so much. I know I don't know you personally. Most of you, I know a couple people who listen, but the vast majority of you, I don't know you personally, but you may feel like you know me, and I feel like you know me, and I want you to know I really appreciate you, whether you come every week to listen to this podcast, or whether you drop in occasionally, and I have thought a lot about you and deeply about you, and I feel like this new focus is going to serve you even better, even better than the sort of more general ideas behind sex help for smart people, and so I'm not just changing the name here, I'm really giving you access to more of my specific expertise that has worked for couples with mismatched libidos. I have had such good results with my clients and with individuals who come even when their partner's not ready to take on this issue a lot, it's amazing what one person can do in this kind of dynamic. And I've been on both sides of the issue. I've been I've had periods of virtually zero desire, where I felt disconnected from my own body and kind of emotionally like ashamed and somehow sexually broken, and I've also been the higher desire partner, feeling constantly rejected and really frustrated, sexually frustrated and emotionally frustrated about like, how to connect with My partner. So using the same methods that I work with my clients, on my partner and I worked through both of those scenarios. And so I know these approaches work, and I know it firsthand, and then I've also worked with all these clients, and I want to make sure you get access to the very specific expertise that enables all of this to work, because it's not a fluke and it's not random stuff you're going to find, and you know, chat GPT is not going to be able to tell you, and I don't see it in any book out there at this point. So someday this podcast will probably evolve into a specialized book on this topic. But right now, you get it as this podcast. And so, I mean, I had just an example. You know, I had a client the other day, Randy. She started working me, with me when she had zero sex drive, and she said, these are her words. I'm just gonna quote her. I felt less like a woman with each day My marriage was suffering.

7:42  
And you know what she said was, after three months working with me to using somatic approaches, releasing some of the trauma that she had, and rebuilding her relationship with desire, and really rebuilding communication with her husband, and then I worked with her husband too, to help him understand what was actually going to work for her, and what, you know, help him release some of the the stored up anxiety and angst and pain and everything that was contributing to this dynamic, her sex drive returned her marriage, she said, and this is a quote, my Marriage is stronger than ever, and this is what's possible when you have someone who actually knows how to address the nervous system patterns and the body based blocks, the somatic blocks that create desire differences. And that means both the really high libido partner and the low libido partner. There are nervous system patterns of for both of those situations, and there's emotional dynamics with both of those situations that are really important to get to the root of, and not just sort of pretend that it's just this relationship, because it's not people have this problem with one relationship, they break up, they get out of it, and they wind up with the same damn problem with their next relationship, because they think it's their partner, but it's not, or they might leap from one relationship to another in an effort to kind of keep that early relationship Juju going, The sort of spark that you get when you're in the like, sort of fantasizing that everybody's perfect period, you know, the first few months of a relationship, and then they can't hold a long term relationship because they don't know how to get through this challenge. So this shift is really about for the podcast, the desire gap topic, it literally covers every sexual challenge that people face. So we are still going to be talking about topics like opening, relationships, fantasies, toys, touch, literacy, consent, competence, kinks, emotional needs. Things, communication breakdowns and how to solve them, right? De shaming, I'm always here for that right, and all of those things connect back to how we navigate our different individual needs and our sexual desire. So when you think about this podcast, I still want you to think about it really holistically, because this problem having slightly different or massively different desires for sex than your partner, it really encompasses everything about human sexuality in so many ways, because in order to get to the root of it, we really have to understand what does turn you on? What are your needs? And to be able to communicate them really effectively in a way that doesn't create defensiveness, that doesn't blow up in your face, right? All of that, those communication skills, it's just connects back to everything, right? And that's the way we move forward. So this shift isn't just about helping more people find me, although it is about that too. I really want people to know that I'm here to help with this issue, because, you know, you hear it all the time. You be at a restaurant, you be out with your friends, people are constantly complaining about either wanting more sex or less sex than their partner all the time. We've all been there. I've been there, and I think a lot of times we're externalizing that we're like complaining to our friends about it, because we literally don't know where to find

11:35  
help. We don't we don't have an

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obvious resource. So I really want to be that obvious resource. But it's not just about that. I want to help people find me, and I also want to help you get the focus content on an issue that touches every other sexual challenge you'll ever face. So instead of just sort of general sex advice, you're getting specialized expertise on something that you will run into if you're not in it right now, you will run into it at some point in the future, and you may already know that you've had that issue in the past, right? So that is what I'm here for. I use, as you know, if you've been listening for a while, you know, I use somatic or body based approaches that work with your your entire body, not just your mind and your thoughts, right? But we need to think about our mind and our thoughts too, because our brain is a really powerful sex organ, so we do that too. But desire also lives in our body, and that's where real change happens is like in how we relax into our own erotic selves. So speaking of all the things that are coming with this and the new podcast name and the change, I'm just really excited about the episodes that I have planned for you. We are talking about things like how to start those hard conversations without them blowing up. How to say no, without your partner feeling rejected. Why you need more touch that isn't foreplay, and how to figure out the kinds of touches that you need, whether it's for foreplay or not. How to Get out of the obligation guilt spiral, how to turn yourself on so that your partner doesn't actually have to carry that whole load. We're going to talk about the ways that ADHD intersects with both high desire and low desire. And this is like, I love that topic. It's so close to my heart and my experience. And you know, we'll even talk about how to navigate opening and when to think about opening relationships as part of the solution for desire differences and when it's like a real bad idea to go that direction first, or at least until you've tried a bunch of other stuff, and at least until you've set really set yourself up really well for success. I'm also going to be rolling out a listener Q and A Form pretty soon where you can submit anonymous requests. In the meantime, though, until that's live, email me directly. I genuinely want to know what you're thinking and what you're struggling with. I would like to know you better, right? You get a sense of me from my voice in your ears, and I would like to know you and how I can serve you better. So shoot me an email you can use Laura at www.Laurajurgens.com make sure to spell by last name, right? J u r g e n, s, right, L, A U R, A, J U R, G, E, N, S, and I've always got this stuff in my show notes, and so it's pretty easy to find. 

I'm also going to be adding special reflection questions to my emails that go out to my newsletter list. So if you're not on that, you will want to grab that, get on it and. You'll get some additional reflection questions related to the podcasts. I don't send a million emails. I don't spam you. When you sign up for my list, you won't get like, 19 emails in the first week, which I hot tip that happened to me once. It was actually a person who I really respect, but I signed up for her emails and I got 19 in the first week, and I was like, holy shit girl, like, you need to back off. That's not me. I do not do that. I won't do that for you, but you will always be able to opt out anytime you want. So give it a try. I think you're going to want to stick around because, I think, because I don't actually use AI to write my emails or anything, they're from me, so I think they're kind of great. But you know, Hey, you are invited. And then also another thing that's coming down the pike is a blog is coming soon for those of you who love written content, like me. So if you are a person who actually likes to maybe you do love it in your ears, but then you also like to be able to have a reference or like something that you can read or share easily that is coming too, and so I will announce it here, but you'll also get it directly, a link to it if you're on my email list. So you want to do that. The other awesome thing is, right now, I have a special free guide that I'm giving everybody who's signing up for my email newsletter right now, and so you will want to get this. This is a really important starting place if you have a desire gap with your partner. So this is going to be exactly the place that you you will want this guide to where to start solving your desire gap. It's five steps to solve your desire gap without falling into blame and shame. So you're going to want to get there, all right, and so that's kind of like news that's coming up, stuff that's coming up, episodes that are coming up. And I just want to welcome you. I am so glad you are here. I am so glad you are going to stick with and I hope you're going to stick with me through this desire podcast journey. I think you will really enjoy it. You're going to get the same loving evidence based help and, you know, loving call outs for me on stuff that we all need to be called out on, too, but it's now going to be focused on this issue that is really the key underlying so many people's struggles with their intimate life. And before you go today, I just want to leave you with a really simple but powerful exercise. Whether you're partnered or single, just take a moment to check in with yourself about your current relationship with desire. Here are some questions that you can use to help yourself with this check in. How do I actually feel about my current level of sexual desire right now in my life, so say, in the last two months, not how you think you should feel, or how your partner wants you to feel, or what some magazine article told you you should feel, or was normal for your age group. How do you feel right now about your level of desire? I want you just to take a moment and sit with like, What is my relationship to that? Know where you're at, because I promise, you have a relationship with your own desire, and you have some sort of judgment about it. It could be good, it could be bad, it could be neutral, it could be some, you know, somewhere in the spectrum right, of horrible to wonderful. So you have that relationship, whether you're acknowledging it or not, and so I want to invite you to bring it out into the light. What is your current relationship to your level of desire? How do you feel about it? And there's no right or wrong answers. It's just information, and it's just to help you understand your starting point as we dive into this exploration together. All right, I'll see you here next week. My wonderful listeners, thanks for being here. Hey. So before you go, I have some more free help for you. If you are okay with sharing your email, I will send you my free guide, five steps to start solving desire differences without blame or shame. This is a practical starting point for individuals and couples. You can opt out of my emails at any time, but I think you'll want to stick around. I am not a spammer. Go get it at www.Laurajurgens.com/libido. Make sure to spell my last name right and the link is in the show notes you.