High Hope, Low Desire

Ev'Yan: Okay. It's been so long since I've done a podcast. I don't even know if I know how to do this anymore. Okay.

Hey, everyone. I'm Ev'Yan Whitney. I'm Ev'Yan Whitney. I'm Ev'Yan Whitney.

I don't remember this being this hard. Like, why does it feel this hard? I'm rusty. I feel really rusty. Like I'm not able to, I guess be the kind of podcaster that I was before a year ago. Like, who was that person? How do I get her back? Okay, let's do it.

Hey, long time no see. Can you believe that it's been almost a year since I announced that I was taking a break from this very podcast. So many things have happened since then. So many changes. And I have a lot to catch you up on. But I guess I should start with a why I'm here. And why it is you're hearing my voice and your speakers right now? Because you're probably wondering, does this mean that she's back now? Is the podcast hiatus officially over? Or is she about to crush our hopes? Again?

Well, this is hard for me to say? Because I just I really don't want to disappoint anyone. But yes, the podcast is coming back! Yay!

I've missed you guys so much. And also, I got a little tired of being accosted by folks constantly asking me, "but when's the podcast coming back, though?" So I'm getting back on the saddle. I know that I mentioned that one of the reasons I had to press pause on the podcast was because the amount of work needed to produce it was a bit too much for me. And that the only way I'd come back is if I had help like a producer or an editor, something like that. I'll spare you the boring details. But what I will tell you is that while I haven't officially hired a producer or editor, not yet, I've got some new systems and boundaries in place that will help my workload significantly, hopefully keep me from burning out, fingers crossed. So things are moving in the right direction. And I'm feeling really hopeful about the future. So there's that.

Let's see what else is new. Oh, you might have seen that the podcast has a new cover. I had some beautiful sensual photos taken of me a few months ago, by my amazingly talented friend Celeste Noche. And the cover you see now features one of the pictures from our shoot, we took a bunch more and I'm really proud of how they turned out. So if you've been missing seeing my face, you can see the rest of the photos on my site, sexloveliberation.com. What else, I've been teaching a lot of online and in person workshops lately about sexual self portraiture and taking up space with your body, which has been an absolute blast. I was featured in Cosmopolitan recently regarding my work, which was amazing as well. I've also been on a few other people's podcasts in the last year. One of my favorites was when I went on Tea with Queen&J which is one of my favorite podcasts. And there we talked about black sexuality on episode 141. So you should listen to that if you haven't already. Mostly though, I've been keeping pretty busy with client work and continuing to dismantle sex negativity and sexual shame, while also trying and honestly sometimes failing to balance all of that hard work with fear, self care, and taking breaks from the internet, particularly Instagram, which I haven't been able to get off of lately.

In the last year, not one day has gone by that I haven't thought about you, or this podcast. So I'm really excited to be coming back and to share more thought provoking and affirming discussions about sex, sexuality, and empowering yourself in this realm of the erotic. To get us started on this new leg of our journey. And since you've been so patient with me as I've been getting my shit together. Today, I'm sharing a snippet of the series of essays I wrote back in January about what it's like to be in a relationship when your libido is very different from your partners. So I was inspired to write this series after stumbling upon a very popular TED Talk from someone who was giving everyone in the audience a cure for women with low desire. I go into this a little bit more in the series, but hearing her talk flooded me with so many memories of my own sexless relationship, and what it was like for me at that time. So in the series, I explored that and I also shared my own cure for low desire. Based on my own process of healing, and the kind of regimen I give my clients who are struggling with the same thing. Here's a little taste of back.

[EV’YAN READS EXCERPT]

They say that the person with the lower sex drive controls the sexual relationship. And I found that to be very true, for me. We weren't having sex because I wasn't wanting or willing to have it. And in that way, it only made sense that the troubleshooting fell mostly on my shoulders. So I began to search for cure for my sexual dysfunction. This entailed reading a lot of books, one in which I first heard the term sexual anorexia, which frighteningly pathologize what was happening in my relationship, and gave it a new sense of directness that made my stomach sick. It also entailed some not so helpful advice. There was the advice to pop a Viagra pill before sex to help jumpstart my missing libido. Because it apparently also works for women. There was the advice to get my testosterone levels checked, because the reason men don't ever have a low libido, which is completely false, by the way, is because they've got more testosterone. So upping my testosterone levels as a woman would help my lack of desire and mean that I would be able to want and crave sex the way a man does. There is the idea that I was asexual, a person who simply does not experience sexual attraction and therefore does not experience sexual desire. And truthfully, I tried leaning more toward that one as an explanation for my lack of desire, but just couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't quite right. So I kept looking. There was also the outlandish suggestion that the reason that I had a lack of desire for sex was because my sacred chakra was blocked, and that in order to unblock it, I needed to do tantric breathing exercises every day, while sitting on a Shiva Lingam stone in order to release and renew my sexual center, a super bizarre route I thought to go in at the time, although these days I'm more willing to see the validity of it. But I digress.

The one nugget of wisdom that stuck with me most though probably because it was the simplest was that the way to cure a sexless marriage was as easy as practicing that popular motto, I needed to quote, just do it. In order to just do it, I needed to override my body's habitual no for sex, and force myself to have sex any way. The more I did this, the advice promised, the more I would create a kind of muscle memory with my brain and vagina, reminding it with every lackluster fuck, hey, you like this? Remember? They said that it would take several times of doing this before I saw results. But I was to stick with it and try to push aside any feelings or thoughts or beliefs I had that kept me from saying yes to sex, mind over matter in a sense. It seemed to make sense. So I tried it. And surprise, surprise, it didn't work. It actually did more harm than good. So I went back to the drawing board and back to suggesting an affair for my husband, as I waited to be fixed.

[READING ENDS]

To listen to the rest of the series and to hear my advice for low desire sexless relationships, go to sexloveliberation.com/lowdesire. The Sexually Liberated Woman will be back with new episodes very soon, like within the next few weeks, so go subscribe via Apple podcast, Stitcher or SoundCloud so you don't miss the next episode. And if you would like to support the Sexually Liberated Woman and help keep it going, you can now donate to this podcast monetarily. You can do that by making a one time donation directly via paypal at paypal.me/sexloveliberation. Literally any amount you give helps. Thank you so much. I seriously could not do this without you. Okay, I will be back very, very soon. Take care. And yay for the podcast coming back!

[SINGING]

I just did podcast for the first time in a year. I feel really proud of myself right now. And I hope that people will still continue to listen to my voice. I would really really like that. A lot. La la la la la. [LAUGHS]

Oh, but seriously, yeah, I did it! Whooo!