Eps 234: Examining Female Sexuality with Leah Carey

Subscribe to the Podcast

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Hey, joyful, courage, community, I just wanted to give you a heads up about this week's show. I am really excited to share the conversation with you. It's another one of those conversations where I made the outline and then I started talking to my guest, and we just meandered into new and different territory, and this particular guest came on to talk to us about female sexuality and sex after kids, and we get into some pretty interesting topics. It's definitely not for the ears of your children. So if you are streaming this podcast through your home speaker system, you might want to wait until you can take a walk or drive alone in your car or pop in some ear buds and listen while you're doing some other task, because we do get into some conversations around sex working and some pretty graphic details just around healing our own sexuality. And I know you're going to appreciate the conversation, I just wanted to give you a heads up so that you weren't caught off guard with your children's ears listening.

Hello and welcome. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and aren't afraid of getting super messy with it. I'm your host. Casey awardee, positive discipline trainer, parent coach, and in the trenches of the parenting journey with my own two teenagers, each week, I come at you with a solo show or an interview. You can be sure that the guests on the podcast have something important to say, and I am honored to have you listen in as I pick their brains about what it is that they are passionate about. If you are a parent looking to grow while walking the path of parenting, if you're open to learning new things, if your relationship with yourself and your kids is something you are interested in diving deeper into, then this is the place for you. After you listen, I would love to hear from you. Head over to iTunes and leave a five star review, letting others know what you love about the show, or feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected] I love hearing from listeners, and am always quick to respond if you want to be sure not to miss any of the happenings going on with joyful courage, join my list. You'll stay updated on the podcast and events that are happening for parents, both online and live. You can join the list at WWW dot joyful courage.com/join. Yay. So glad you're here. Enjoy the show. Hi, listeners. I am so excited to welcome this week's guest Leah Carey to the podcast. Leah is a sex and intimacy coach who helps women shed shame about their sexuality and communicate about what they really want in the bedroom, rather than just tolerating what they're given. Her clients learn to embrace their sexuality no matter what it looks like. She is the host of the podcast good girls talk about sex. Sexual freedom is a subject that is deeply personal to Leah, because she spent most of her life being a very good girl. Most of the sex she had was either boring or painful, but she endured it because she didn't know she was allowed to ask for anything different. Having taken her own journey to sexual freedom, she is now passionate about breaking the silence fear and shame around women's sexuality and pleasure, and redefining what it means to be a good girl. Hi, Leah, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast. Hi

Leah Carrie 3:58
Casey. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Casey O'Roarty 4:01
Yeah, tell us a little bit more about your journey of doing what you do,

Leah Carrie 4:05
sure. Well, I am sort of the most unlikely sex coach you could possibly imagine, because really, until the last few years, I was terribly, terribly repressed myself. And I actually think that that's kind of why people are drawn to me, because they can sense that this is like really, really deep, true work for me, that I'm still very much going through. So I grew up in a home with a father who was he he wanted to be a good father, but he had no skills. He really had no idea what he was doing. He had been in his own abusive childhood. Just didn't have any guidance and what it meant to be a parent, and he was. Is he was an alcoholic, he was emotionally abusive to me and my mom, and he was also sexually inappropriate with me, which just to be really clear about what that means in my particular case, with one exception that did not include him putting his hands on me. It was all verbal. And I want, like, it's really important to me to make that distinction, because for a long time, I didn't actually believe it was sexual abuse, and I know there are a lot of other people out there like me. So my dad would talk to me sexually about my body. He would talk to me about his sexual relationship with my mother and how unhappy he was with it, and he would speak to women who were not my mother sexually in front of me. It was a lot. It was really, really confusing

Casey O'Roarty 6:03
at the same model, right? Especially as a model, this is what it looks like. Yeah,

Leah Carrie 6:08
exactly. And at the same time that all of this was happening, so like sex, was this just this energy that was up in the air all the time, around us, or around me, at the same time, he was looking at my 11 and 12 and, you know, teenage body, and telling me that I was getting fat, I was getting ugly, and that no one would ever be attracted to me. So sex was this thing that was always there, that was supposedly interesting and that I should want to sort of understand. And at the same time, I was told that it was not available to me, that no one would ever want to be with me, so I should just shut all those hopes down. And what that led to was me basically shutting down completely. I didn't have my first serious boyfriend till I was 25 and that was also the first time I had sex. And I chose a series of boyfriends over the next 10 years who were varying degrees of emotionally abusive, because I thought that's all I could get. You know, I was fat and ugly and unlovable, and so I should take whoever came along, even though they were assholes. So part of that relationship structure was also that I was so curious about sex, like I had been sexualized at a very young age, and so I was deeply curious about it, but I didn't think that it was available to me, and so I Just sort of gave in to whatever those partners wanted. I never asked for what I wanted. I'm not even sure that I could have told you what I wanted, but it was definitely not what they were giving me. I was just, you know, I was the quintessential lay on your back and wait for it to be over. Because in large part, it was really painful for many, many years, I believed that it was painful because I was somehow inherently broken, like I was physically incapable, or there was something terribly mentally wrong with me or something. It's only recently that I realized, Oh, I wasn't turned on, so I wasn't lubricating. Oh, geez, there was nothing wrong with me. It was, I mean, it was physically painful because I wasn't present my body, my needs, my emotions, were not being taken into account. And so I didn't have my sexual awakening until I was 42 years old, at which point I discovered, not only is it okay to be as interested in sex as I've always been, but it's okay for sex to be pleasurable, and it's really, really okay for me to ask for what I want.

Casey O'Roarty 9:17
Yay. Well, what is, how did you get there? Like, how did you go from one place to the other?

Leah Carrie 9:24
So I went on what I thought was going to be. It was an extended, solo road trip around the United States. And as far as I was concerned, I was just going out to see the country. But while I was on the road, I had the opportunity to go see a woman who called herself a tantric massage therapist. And this was super, super scary, like I walked as I was go. This was in Manhattan, and as I was walking toward the apartment. Hard

Casey O'Roarty 10:00
building New York or Manhattan Beach California. Oh, Manhattan New York. Okay, okay, okay. Because all of a sudden I just had this hilarious visual of Manhattan Beach California. And I was just like, of course, the tantric massage there. But you know, Manhattan New York makes sense too. No,

Leah Carrie 10:16
it was Manhattan New York, and she worked out of an apartment building. So, you know, I'm walking up to the door, and I was, if anyone had looked at me crooked, I would have been ready to run out the door. You know, like I was, I was trembling, I was sweating, I was so frightened. Um, what called you

Casey O'Roarty 10:39
to that? Like, what led you first? Yeah, like, how did you? I've never even heard of a tantric therapist. I don't know what that means. Did you?

Leah Carrie 10:48
I didn't exactly. So about a year before this, I had had a sort of long distance I had met this guy on a long distance or on a dating app, and he was long distance, and so we were texting, and he was sort of teasing me about the things that he wanted to do when we got together. And mind you, I am still completely shut down at this point, but he starts talking about how he wants to he's really into tantric massage and tantric sex. Okay, and so, you know, I have lots of time before we're going to meet in person, so I start researching it, and I'm like, Oh, this sounds really interesting, because all these sites that I'm reading about tantric massage suggest that they can help women to undo old sexual trauma and help you to have like sensation that you've never had before. They can basically help to unlock the trauma so that you can feel sensation. And I was like, if that's possible, if that's real, I'm in right when the guy came to visit, what I discovered that he meant was that he wanted to massage me and then have sex, which is totally different, but at least it opened my eyes to, yeah, this idea. And so when I went out on this road trip, I was like, I'm I'm going to just check it out and see what it is. It was an extremely intense experience, and I'm really glad I did it, and I'm really glad I didn't know what exactly I was walking into, because I might not have done it, but basically, she did this three hour session with me, and to answer the question that people are probably wondering, yes, I was nude. Yes, she did touch my erogenous and zones and my genitals, including internal penetration, but none of it was like she was not moving sexual energy. She was allowing me to feel my own sexual energy.

Casey O'Roarty 13:08
Oh my gosh, that's fascinating. Yeah. And

Leah Carrie 13:10
I realized that may be a distinction that's hard for some people to understand, but it's actually really, really different. She was not trying to, quote, unquote, get me off, or even to turn me on. She was touching me from a sort of, I don't want to say clinical, because she was more involved than that, but there was no sexual energy coming from her at all.

Casey O'Roarty 13:35
Wow, that's fascinating, yeah. And

Leah Carrie 13:38
so I got to have this experience of feeling sexual energy run through my body, and I wasn't being required to channel it towards somebody else's pleasure, you know, like there was no reciprocation required, and so I got to just feel it, wow. So we get to the end of the session, and she sits me down, and she says probably some of the most profound words anyone has ever said to me. She looked at me and she said, You're not broken. Hmm, there's nothing wrong with you. She said, I like you know she has worked with hundreds of women's bodies. She knows what the typical sexual response looks like. So she could say to me, and I could believe her that my body did all of the things that happened during the turn on and sexual response. She said, the fact that you're not feeling it yet means that there are still some emotional blocks to be worked out, but your body is completely able to feel and respond. And that was. The experience that sent me on this journey.

Casey O'Roarty 15:02
Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

Leah Carrie 15:05
Yes, yes. It is

Casey O'Roarty 15:07
like, I don't really know what's a follow up question. I don't really know that's amazing. And what a gift that there's people out there that are supporting women, does she? Is it? I mean, do men get to are there men out there that I'm assuming men also have their own journeys too, with trauma? Is tantric massage, something that's for both genders? Do? Absolutely, practitioners usually work with one or the other or both. I'm

Leah Carrie 15:38
not sure if practitioners generally specialize in one gender or the other. It's entirely possible, I just don't know. But for for people with vaginas, it's generally called a Yoni massage, y o n, i, and for people with penises, it's generally called a lingam massage, and those are the Sanskrit words for vagina and penis

Casey O'Roarty 16:03
got it so listeners, if you didn't catch the memo at the very top of the intro, you might not want to listen to this show with your kids around, and if you have been sorry, but this is so interesting. You know, I just did an audio summit that was focused on it was called Sex Ed for parents of teens. And I put it together because I wanted parents, myself included, to just feel ever more informed and confident and calm around supporting our kids through their sexual development, because they're all going to go through sexual development. They you know, sexual development starts much sooner than any of us realize. You know, there's toddlers in the back exploring themselves. That's sexual development, and how we are in relationship with our kids through it, and how we respond to what comes up and the conversations and the or later on, things that we maybe quote, find out after the fact is super important. And I'm listening to you talk about your dad, you know, and how much of an impact he had on you because of the way that he embodied and verbalized and presented sex to you. And so I want to know more about the work that you do, because it sounds like just hearing about healing our own sexual trauma and coming to a place of really being in the pleasure of sexual, of sexuality. You know, one of the side effects is going to be that we are going to be ever more sex positive

as we raise kids, yeah. So you have this whole awakening, right? And so how do you get into working with others, and what does your work look like? Yeah,

Leah Carrie 18:01
so as I was going through this journey, and what happened was I was, you know, I was on the road for I had given myself about a year to be on the road. I ended up being on the road for about six months. Again. I thought it was just a road trip. I ended up having all of these experiences. It was Eat, Pray, Love, it kind of was, except that it was sex, sex.

I started putting myself out there for for adventures, and so I, you know, I turned on my dating apps, I allowed myself, for the first time, to consider the possibility. I was not yet convinced of it, but I allowed myself to consider the possibility that people might be attracted to me just for the sake of me, not because I was giving them something, not because I was fulfilling some need or or hole in their life, you know, because I was just passing through cities and towns. So it's not like I was getting into a relationship with anyone. And so I remember I had started working with this body image coach, Jesse Kneeland, and I had met a guy through an online dating app, I think I was in Washington, DC, and I went out on a date with him. And you know, we had a nice vibe. If I had been living there, there's no way in hell I would have gotten into a relationship with him, but, you know, we had a vibe and so and we talked about seeing each other again, and I talked to Jesse The next day, and I said, Jesse, would it be awful if I saw him again and I had sex with him, and. Yeah, and I'll never forget her response. She said, I'm really interested that you phrased that as, would it be awful, instead of, would it be fun, right? I was like, Oh my God. Like, you know the little head exploding emoji, like, right? I have only ever been thinking about this as some like moralistic thing. And so from that point of view, I started looking for adventures to have. I was very careful about vetting. That's like a whole other conversation. But I, you know, I was very, very careful. I always made sure that I had friends who knew where I was going and had all the information about the other person and all of that, but I allowed myself to see women. I allowed myself to have a threesome, you know, I allowed myself to do these things that I had always been curious about, and eventually I landed in Portland, Oregon, which is where I've now settled, and there's an organization here called Sex positive Portland, where I began to take classes and actually learn what consent means. I had spent my whole life thinking that consent, that I was giving consent for all of the sex I had been having because I wasn't saying no, right? It turns out that's not what consent means at all. Consent is an active and enthusiastic Yes, yeah, and I don't think I had ever given an active and enthusiastic yes in my life,

Casey O'Roarty 21:42
completely. You know, road trip,

Leah Carrie 21:43
except until I started choosing these experiences,

Casey O'Roarty 21:49
yes, road trip sounds like an awesome, enthusiastic Yes. To me, it

Leah Carrie 21:53
very much was. And I also, you know, had the experience of getting myself out of some situations that were not enthusiastic yeses, and learning that it was okay for me to take care of myself and to not give in to something, you know. So there was so much that I learned, and through this whole time, had a group of female friends or a group of writers, and I was writing about each of these experiences as I was having them. And like sorting through my emotional responses and what I was learning and what I was letting go of, and all of this. And at the beginning, I prefaced every one of the entries at the beginning as like, if this is TMI, please feel free. You don't have to read it. And the responses were all, it's not. TMI, please tell us more. Oh

Casey O'Roarty 22:46
my gosh, I know. Did you write a book? When is the book coming out? Yes,

Leah Carrie 22:50
I have a manuscript. Yes. As I was telling my stories more and more, what happened was these women started telling me their stories in return, and I recognized that we all want to be having these conversations, but they're so rarely a place to have them, because we're all so afraid of being judged. Yeah, and so that was what led me to start the podcast. Good girls talk about sex where I literally like, it's not an interview, it's not a rather an expert show. It's literally me interviewing women about their sex lives. So it's just us getting to have these conversations that we all want to have, but we're not having. And then eventually people started coming to me and wanting advice and and coaching and so now I've, I have also begun doing that,

Casey O'Roarty 23:45
yeah, because it seems like our society is really confused, right? Because on one end, it seems like we're super over sexualized, but it can, you know, like I'm thinking about, I didn't really do any deep dives into the debate about the Super Bowl halftime show. Yes, when I initially I didn't even watch it, I watched like the YouTube video, and I was like, Damn, look at those women, and I love the Spanish flare. And then I didn't realize that there was this whole conversation happening about how sexual it was, and that that it was a bad thing. And then I also have kids, right? I have teenagers, and anyone with, pretty much anyone with a teenager, right now, it's funny in my communities as people's kids age into, like, 12, 1314, you know, every few months there's a post that's like, Oh my gosh. Who has kids that's listen that are listening to this mumbly trap rap? So there's this whole genre of music that the kids are loving, and it's like, you know, they're like, sound I call them SoundCloud rappers, or they're like, the face tattoo guys, and it's extremely explicit. It sexually explicit, as well as explicit drug use, you know. And I'm like, and what I always go back to is like, you know, I loved I was a hairband girl in the 80s, you know, Warren and Motley Crue, and they were also extremely explicit. They just had a knack for metaphor. Realize what it was that I was listening to, but these guys, you know, today, there's no metaphor. It's straight up out there. So there's that, and then it feels like it's either over sexualized or super repressed and uptight. Yes, and that space in the middle, which I think you're filling with your podcast, and I'm really excited to listen to it is really well, it's not slippery, but we think it is. Why do we why? Why? Why is it so hard to see that to have these conversations and to be honest about what we want and honest about what we're what's happening

Leah Carrie 25:58
because we've pathologized sex. We've criminalized sex. We've made it and we've, I don't know how to what the fake word would be for this, but we've religified sex, you know, like we have taken it and made it mean all these things that it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, to go back to what we're talking about before the woman who I saw for this tantric massage, and your response was, wow, we're so lucky that there are people in the world who do this. I 100% agree with you. Couldn't possibly agree more with you, and she is a sex worker, like we need to be super, super clear about the fact that the people who are doing this kind of healing work that we desperately need are also some of the most marginalized people in our communities. So

Casey O'Roarty 26:54
when you say she's a sex worker, where I immediately went was like, Oh, is she a streetwalker on the side. What do you mean? She's a sex worker. That's just where her work falls under the umbrella of if you are, what do you mean

Leah Carrie 27:09
if you are a person who works with people's bodies and moves sexual energy, you are a person who is a sex worker, which means that largely your work is criminalized. You don't have any safeguards. So this woman who's doing this deeply healing work for me, if the situation were different and I had and I had assaulted her, she would not be able to go to the police and press charges, because the police would look at her and say, basically, well, you're a streetwalker, so we don't have time for you.

Casey O'Roarty 27:48
So the massage part gets thrown out exactly all of

Leah Carrie 27:52
the healing work. And frankly, I think that sex workers are actually really crucial, because we have a huge proportion of our society is living inside a lack of touch bubble, like there are so many people who because they don't have the social skills, or they don't look right, or, you know, whatever, there are a lot of people in our culture who are not getting The amount of touch they need, and this is an actual neurological issue, and the way that we can help them is providing access to touch through people like sex workers, and yet we have criminalized sex work.

Casey O'Roarty 28:38
Hey, Hi, sorry to interrupt. I know this is a really crazy interview. I hope that you're enjoying it, but I wanted to let everyone know that I am going to be starting a new parenting with positive discipline six week online class, and I'm just four weeks in to the class that I'm currently teaching, and I'm really excited to get started with a new group. We are going to begin the week of June 15, the date and time has not been set. I actually have a poll in the live and love with joyful courage Facebook group asking parents which time works best for them. There's a bedtime, Pacific Coast time, there's a bedtime, East Coast time, and then there's a morning time that I'm throwing out there. I want to know when you want to take the class, what times work for you. Cost is $150 per household, and it goes for six weeks, and it's really, really powerful. We meet on Zoom, we have group discussions, we do experiential activities. It's totally positive discipline, mindset as well as you know what you can expect from joyful courage, which is mindfulness. And that personal growth and development that I talk so much about on the podcast. So if you're feeling like you could use some guidance around bringing more positive discipline into your home, or if you feel like you know, I just really need a little bit of a tune up, or if you're just looking for some more regular conversation around parenting, this is the perfect thing to sign up for. The class itself is geared towards kids that are five to 12, but I'd say if you have some older four year olds, it would be useful for you, and if your kids are in those early teen years, I also think that you can easily adapt what we talk about in class to meet the needs of your household. So I really hope that you join me again. Jump into the live and love with joyful courage Facebook group, if you're already there, go to the top where the announcements are and vote on the time that works for you, or times if more than one time works for you, because I'm really just looking to figure out best time to put out there so that the maximum amount of us can gather. Yeah, positive discipline, parenting, six week online class. Check it out. I will share the link to register as soon as I have decided on date and time. Yay. Thanks. Back to the show. I'm listening to you, and I'm hearing you, and I I am getting what you're saying. And I'm also thinking about like, because, and I'm guessing you're gonna this is what you think too, like, so because of the criminalization of it, that's what feeds into things like human trafficking. And you know, all the people that fall under sex workers aren't necessarily making a conscious decision like this is how I want to serve and help people.

Leah Carrie 31:55
Absolutely, sex work is a completely legitimate choice, as long as it's a choice, right? As soon as somebody is being coerced or kidnapped or otherwise forced into sex work, then it's no longer sex work, then it's trafficking, and that's a huge issue. But it's a it's different. And I like I've just taken us off onto this long tan. I know.

Casey O'Roarty 32:21
I do have a question, are there places where sex work is seen as a healing service and treated as such?

Leah Carrie 32:33
The Norwegian countries are really interesting because they see human sexuality, as as you were saying earlier, something that develops very early on. So they start doing something that we would look at and say is, you know, scary sex ed they start doing in kindergarten or even preschool, with their kids teaching them, and which,

Casey O'Roarty 32:58
by the way, doesn't mean listeners, because I think it's really, I've read a lot about these other cultures, and it's like people immediately hear that they're not watching people have

Leah Carrie 33:09
sex, right? They're not even talking about sex at age three. They're talking about totally age appropriate stuff, like, if somebody touches your body, like, yeah. First of all, here's what your body looks like, and here's how it's different from other bodies, and here's how it works, like, age appropriate stuff. And then at that age when they're like, hey, you've got one of those, and I've got something different. What is that? They talk to them about it, instead of making them go out behind the shed and play doctor, and then, you know, telling them that they're in terrible trouble when they are right with their pants down. But then they also are talking to them about things like consent, again, totally age appropriate. If somebody hugs you and you don't like it, you're allowed to say no stuff like that,

Casey O'Roarty 33:59
and here's how you respond exactly, exactly. A huge but his ego gets so bent out of shape, and it's like, well, maybe we should teach people how to receive a no

Leah Carrie 34:12
Exactly. So do you want to hear the way that I respond to no's Yes. Thank you very much. So this is something that I learned through my time in sex positive Portland, the way that you respond to and know is by saying thank you for taking care of yourself. Hmm. And it does two things. First of all, it lets the other person know that you respect their decision and you're not getting all up in your feelings and like taking it super personally, but it also reminds your own brain that this is a choice that they're making for their own needs and comfort, and it is not a rejection of you. Mm. Hmm, love that. And so if we can, like, if we're talking about kids, if we can start responding to their note like, I'm not talking about the two year old temper tantrum, no, right? You know when, when you ask them for a hug, or if you ask them for something sort of innocuous, and they say no, if you can start thinking about responding in this way, thank you for taking care of yourself. Thank you for recognizing your needs and voicing them. Thank you for paying attention and really figuring out what you want. That can really begin to reshape dynamics, especially around power and control, which are huge with teenagers, yeah. And it will help them to feel more in control of their bodies, their choices, and they will begin to understand that thing that I never understood until recently, which was consent means enthusiastic Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 36:00
yeah. And by the way, listeners, what we're not talking about right now is oh, so we just let them say no to everything and say thank you. Like everyone calm down. That's not what this is about, right? So what them to help out around the house. We still like, they're still Yeah, but also recognize, like, if you're getting a lot of no's perhaps reframe the question, but that's another podcast. So I'm going to pull us back to your work with women, and specifically with moms, women that are moms. What are some of the biggest sexual issues that show up that you're finding in your work?

Leah Carrie 36:40
So the biggest one that I hear, because I talk to a lot of moms of younger kids, is my sex drive has never come back after I had the kids. What's wrong with me? Like, did my body somehow get broken by pregnancy? Or am I going to Forever After, have to give in to sex with my husband so that he feels taken care of, even though I don't really want it. And again and again, I dive into this conversation, and we get a little deeper, and what we almost inevitably discover is not that she wants to never be touched again. It's actually that she wants to have more sex than they're currently having. She just needs it to be different sex. So the kind of sex that most of and I'm going to make some really broad generalizations here, but the kind of sex that most of us were socialized and conditioned to have was extremely partner focused, where we are giving to our partner. We're either giving we're touching our partner to give them pleasure, or we are receiving our partners touch in order to give our partner pleasure. So if they're touching us, we're moaning, we're writhing. We're basically performing pleasure for our partner. Again, this broad generalization, it's not true for everyone, but it's true for a lot of people, the kind of sex that so okay, if you have, let's say, a five year old and a toddler. You're tired like, let's just, let's call a thing a thing. Your energy resources are zapped, and by the time you get to bed at the end of the day, there is very little left in the tank. And the last thing you want is for your partner to come up and be like, Hey, baby, now it's my turn. You're like, yeah, you're feeling frisky. Yeah, I already gave all of my energy out. And the reason we feel that way is because our expectation of sex is we're going to have to give more energy out the kind of touch and sex that women in this position want to be having is the kind where they are receiving energy in Yeah, so it's more nurturing touch, it's slower, it's probably a little bit calmer, but Not necessarily. And it's very focused on her pleasure and her being able to relax and receive. Unfortunately, this is not something that most of us learned as the proper place for a woman in the sexual act,

Casey O'Roarty 39:36
right? Well, you don't see it like you don't, right? Yeah, and, you know, and I have a teenage daughter, and it's an interesting, you know, we've had a, well, I would say we've had a couple conversations, but really, we've had a couple situations where I talk fair and I feel like, you know, I feel like I'm pretty sex positive. I don't have. Too many hangups I want her to know, like that she can receive pleasure and what it and but, and when it comes, when the metal meets the road and it's time for the conversation, all of the things that I think I want to say are really awkward, and don't neces and I think and the awkward is fine. And I would say to parents, like, who cares? It's going to be awkward. Like, live through it. And something, I think that energy, when the awkward energy shows up, it takes away from what it is that I want her to know. I think I don't know this is just kind of top of mind right now, as we're talking but, yeah,

Leah Carrie 40:39
so I think that the thing that I want to impart to mothers, specifically who are really concerned about providing a sort of sex positive home for their children, is that it's really not about what you teach them, it's about what you model for them.

Casey O'Roarty 41:00
Thank you. Yeah.

Leah Carrie 41:01
So if you as a parent, I'm not speaking to you. Casey, I'm saying you as a general parent, I'm receiving

Casey O'Roarty 41:10
it. Leah, saying, Just carry on.

Leah Carrie 41:15
If you as a parent are uncomfortable with your body and uncomfortable with your sexuality, and you walk in on your teenage son masturbating, your response is likely to be, Oh, my God, Put that away. We don't do that. That's nasty.

Where whereas, if you are somebody who has sort of integrated the fact that you're okay with pleasure, and that pleasure is positive and lovely, you're likely to walk into that room and say, Oh, didn't mean to walk in on that, right? And I'm really glad that you're learning how to take care of yourself and take care of your pleasure. And we do this behind closed doors, because it's important that we not be sexual out in the world without other people's consent, but as and that's something that I think you can say to little kids.

Casey O'Roarty 42:19
I love how you worded that. Say that again, it's important that we're not

Leah Carrie 42:23
it's important that we not go out into the world and and spread our sexual energy without other people's consent. Yeah, I love that. But whatever you do within the confines of your own bedroom, awesome. Go to it and you're going to have more access to that way of responding if you've done some of your own internal healing work around how you feel about sex and sexuality for yourself, that when I say that they are much more likely to to follow what We model. That's what I mean. It's not that I think you need to be out with your partner in the you know, in the living room, right? That's not what I'm saying at all. Nobody wants no not really. But if you're the kind of couple who is affectionate with each other out in the kitchen. You know, as you're you're making omelets in the morning, and you put your hand on your partner's back as you walk by, that's going to transmit, transmit to your kids as this is what a healthy, loving relationship looks like, and this is the kind of energy that I want to have in my relationship, versus, if you're the kind of couple where there's a lot of tension around sex and you know, and it could just be tension in your life that gets brought into the bedroom, you know, if you're fighting about the bills, unless you the two of you really enjoy angry sex, If you're fighting about the bills, you're likely to bring that tension into the bedroom and have a lot of resentment and anger in the bedroom as well. And then that's what your kids see. Is all those resentments piling up and the friction and the tension. Because we'd like to believe that stuff stays behind when we close the bedroom door and go out into the world, it doesn't. Yeah, it just doesn't.

Casey O'Roarty 44:22
No Well, and what I love that I'm hearing you say too, and what I know for myself to be true, and I'm guessing, if it's true for me, it's probably true for others, is when there is a lot of affection and loving touch throughout the day, I want to have sex. You it works out, you know, I mean, and I also think that it's so easy in a partnership. You know, my husband and I have been together. We've been married for 20 years. We've been together almost 25 that's a long ass time, and it is not the same as when, you know, the Summer of Love 19. 95 where we could get enough of each other, right? And, you know, I want my kids to see 2025, years in, there's still affection, and there's still care. And I think it's easy to kind of become complacent with that, just with life, but I think it's worth bringing you know, I think it's worth the effort, because I know too I'm kind of the instigator of not the instigator, but I'm my love language is physical touch. So if I'm waiting around, I'm going to be disappointed. But if I'm, you know, if I'm putting my hand on his back, if I'm making an effort, and he's very affectionate, too, but, you know, not also. And this is more relational than it is sexual, but, but maybe it's all connected. Like, sometimes I think it's really easy in a partnership to start to add up the points. Like, well, I was reaching out to you all day yesterday, and, yeah, you haven't reached out to me at all today, and I don't want to be the initiator, and it's like, let go of that, because it's only creating suffering. Like, if you want it affection, like, Give it, give it, to get it.

Leah Carrie 46:11
I absolutely agree, yeah. And, and, to your point, I don't want to suggest that if you are not somebody who's comfortable with physical affection that you have to like suddenly become comfortable that is not a consensual, you know, like that's not the way that this works. But if you are an affectionate person, if touches your love language, then what we're talking about is very appropriate. If you're not someone who's super affectionate, that's okay. You can still be doing the work and modeling for your kids what a healthy, consensual, loving relationship looks like. And one of the ways that I think is really great, like you were just saying, if I get touched through the day, I'm more likely to want sex. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about when, when I hear women say, I want a different kind of touch, what they're often saying is, I don't want it to just be like, wham bam, Thank you, ma'am, right? I want to, yeah. I want it to just be like, relaxed and gentle, and I have something on my website, if you're okay, I'll share it with listeners at Leah carey.com forward slash three minutes. There's an exercise called the three minute game, and it's super simple and fast and easy, and it helps you to start getting in touch with this kind of touch with your partner. And it's like I said, it's very simple. If you have toddlers in the house, you can still do this because it only takes three minutes.

Casey O'Roarty 47:52
I'm intrigued. And I have teenagers.

Leah Carrie 47:57
So Casey, I'll use you as an example, what's your husband's name? Ben. Ben. Okay, so let's say that the two of you are going to do this. Ben lays down on the bed and you Casey sit next to him and say, How would you like me to touch you for three minutes, and it may take him a moment. Hopefully you've talked about this in advance, so that he knows it's coming out of nowhere. And this isn't a total shock, but it may actually take him a minute to think about it and to even begin to understand what that question like, how to respond to that, because it's not something that we're used to hearing right? And I should also say that you can in your conversation beforehand, you can set boundaries. So you can say, like, for the first few times we do this, we're going to keep genitals off the table or something, or we you can even stay clothed the first few times you do it, if you want. So you say, to Ben, how would you like me to touch you for three minutes? He thinks about it, and he says, I'd really like for you to stroke my face and run your hands through my hair. Like it can be really super not sexual. That's

Casey O'Roarty 49:15
really super not sexual because my man is completely bald. Oh, bad

Leah Carrie 49:22
example.

Casey O'Roarty 49:24
Oh, I like it. Rub his head like the magic meatball, nice.

Leah Carrie 49:30
So if that's what he wants, you set the timer on your phone for three minutes, and you do it for three minutes, and during that time he can just relax into it. If he's like, Oh, this, you know, I thought that's what I wanted, but turns out it's not. He can say, Ah, I think actually, I'd like for you to stroke my chest instead whatever. But he gets whatever he wants for three minutes within the boundaries that the two of you have set when the alarm goes off. Yeah, you switch places, and Casey, you lay down, and Ben sits next to you and says, How would you like me to touch you for three minutes, and you get to tell him anything that you desire within the boundaries that the two of you have set. This is, I said that this is an easy exercise, because the actual mechanics of it are super simple, right? It can actually be really challenging for those of us who are socialized as female to even begin to recognize how we want to be touched. Yeah, and so it may be a little challenging to answer that question the first few times, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with you, if that's the case. But the more times that you play this game, and it is something that you can do many, many times, and there's a second half of it, I'm only telling you the first half because because of time, but, but this is the part that I think is so important for us to begin with, because we so rarely ask our partners what they want, or if we do ask them what they want, we're asking them sort of like, what is the thing that I can do for you so that we can both get excited and go for it, right, right? Right? As opposed to, what is this thing that would make you feel loved and nurtured just by virtue of this touch

Casey O'Roarty 51:32
that's so dreamy, right? When we find ourselves in these really long term partnerships? You know, foreplay, making out like I don't have not made out, right? Really long time, you know, because it's so fun, it's so fun, and so I really appreciate this just as a way of being intimate without, like you said, wham bam. Thank you, ma'am.

Leah Carrie 52:01
Yes. So many of us, again, those of us who are socialized as female, so many of us have been taught that as soon as somebody comes toward us with any sort of hands out, and even if it's just in their eyes, you can read it in their eyes, as soon as they come toward us with their hands out, that immediately means sex, and we have to bounce check them out exactly, okay, yeah, and you have to respond to them in that way of either yes, I want to have sex, or No, I don't want to have sex, and then risk hurting their feelings and all the awfulness that comes with that. But if we can reframe this for ourselves and remember that there can be touch that doesn't necessarily have to lead to sex, and that sometimes does, but it helps us to be much more present and allows the whole thing to be much more organic and ultimately, much more fun.

Casey O'Roarty 53:02
Well, what are some other resources that you have on your website? Tell us a little bit more about what you offer, sure.

Leah Carrie 53:08
So right now we're recording this in the middle of pandemic, 2020. So weird. Yes, we are no. So one thing is that I'm I am really concerned right now about people who are sheltering by themselves and not getting any touch, because it really does do funky things to our brains. There are some neurological and emotional issues that happen when we don't get the touch that we need. So that is concerning to me. And on the other hand, people who are sheltering in place with families are potentially getting overloaded with touch and with demands on their attention, and that is concerning as well. So I have put up on my website like a quarantine special where, if you're having issues that are specifically related to quarantining, shelter in place, the amount of touch you're getting or not getting, how you and your partner are navigating this together or not together. I have a coaching special that's just short term. It's less expensive, because I think it's really important that we address these things in the moment, because we don't know how long this is going to go on. Yeah, and it could, I mean, I think we've probably all heard the stories about domestic violence situations that are getting worse because people are locked in together. I am not qualified to work with domestic abuse issues, right, but I do think that we need to handle these things in, you know, more standard. Relationships so that they don't get to that level of tension and awfulness. So that's there. Also my podcast, good girls talk about sex.

Casey O'Roarty 55:13
How long have you been podcasting about

Leah Carrie 55:17
I think we're coming up on a year and a half soon. Awesome. So yeah, are

Casey O'Roarty 55:21
you a weekly a weekly show?

Leah Carrie 55:23
I actually just moved to weekly, so I had been doing every other week for a while, but now I think, similar to the model you're doing, I do an interview one week and then a solo show, telling some of my own stories and answering the most frequent question that I get from people. It's not a specific question, but pretty much every question I get boils down to some version of, am I normal? Like, I want to do this thing. Am I normal? I don't want to ever do this thing. Am I normal? Like, what's wrong with me? So I started inviting people to call in their Am I normal questions, and I'm answering them on the podcast. And then also, as we are recording this, just today, I launched a new YouTube video series where and there are three episodes a week on Tuesdays where I am interviewing people about their pandemic experiences as it relates specifically to their touch needs. How is it affecting their sex drive? Because this is important. I want people to hear that for some people, stress can depress your sex drive, and for other people, stress can jack your sex drive up. So if you're in a couple where one of you is really has a depressed sex drive and one has a jacked sex drive, that can cause a massive amount of tension and lead one or both of you to think that the other one is bad, broken, wrong, perverted, whatever. It's not the case. It's just that you've had opposite responses. And so I think it's really important for us to be talking about that. So that's what the YouTube video series is, and

Casey O'Roarty 57:14
people can find that by going to your website, yes, and

Leah Carrie 57:17
if you want to go directly to YouTube, it's youtube.com, forward slash good girls

Casey O'Roarty 57:23
talk nice. Well, where are you on social media?

Leah Carrie 57:28
I am on social media. Also. Good girls talk on Facebook and Instagram. And I have a private Facebook group where people can ask questions and talk about the things that they don't want to talk about out in on a public Facebook page. Yeah, what's that called? That is also called Good girls talk.

Casey O'Roarty 57:48
And you could, instead of

Leah Carrie 57:50
the page correct,

Casey O'Roarty 57:51
got it well, in the context of everything that we've talked about today, what does joyful courage mean to you.

Leah Carrie 58:01
I love this question. To me, it means figuring out what we really, really want and asking for it. Courage is, I think, figuring out what we want and and being willing to admit that maybe somebody else is interested in giving to us, and the joyful part of that is sharing it and believing that maybe we could get it. And, yeah, I really don't want people to be walking around like I was for the first 42 years of my life bullying, believing that I was just supposed to accept whatever I was given and I wasn't allowed to ask for anything more. And since I have learned a new way of being, my life has changed dramatically in the best possible ways. And so I want that for everyone.

Casey O'Roarty 59:02
I love that. Thank you for your work. Thank you for sharing. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Leah Carrie 59:09
Casey, thank you so much for inviting me and for the work that you're doing in the world.

Casey O'Roarty 59:18
Thank you so much for listening. It is my great honor to create this show for all of you. Big thanks to my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper, for his work in making the podcast sound oh so good. If you're interested in continuing these powerful conversations that start on the podcast, become a patron by heading to www.patreon.com/joyful career. Courage. That's www dot, P, A, T, R, E, O n.com/joyful, courage. For $5 a month, you will have access to a private Facebook group where I do weekly Facebook lives on Mondays and interview recaps on Fridays, plus. Us. It's a great way to give back to the show that gives you so much. Be sure to subscribe to the show. Head to Apple podcast, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Play wherever you are listening to podcasts, and simply search for the joyful courage podcast and hit that subscribe button. Join our communities on Facebook, the live and love with joyful courage group and the joyful courage of parents of teens groups are both safe, supportive communities of like minded parents walking the path with you. If you're looking for even bigger, deeper support, please consider checking out my coaching offer. Www dot joyful courage.com/coaching. Is where to go to book a free explore. Call with me and we can see if we're a good fit. I'll be back next week. Can't wait until then. Big Love to you. Remember to find your breath, ride it into your body, take the balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be okay.

See more