Greetings Foreplay listeners! We are so excited for today’s episode, featuring Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz, a clinician and sex researcher that broke the code on the key components to magnificent sex. In her book of the same title, Dr. Kleinplatz breaks down the findings from her studies and shares what makes lovers great. She is a mentor to our hosts and continues to train therapists around the world to help lovers have better sex. We are honored to have her as a guest on this episode.
Our conversation investigates how you define intimacy in your relationship, exploring your erotic cues, and being embodied during sex. Equally important and exciting is that sex can get better as you age and could be the best sex yet! Listeners will walk away feeling encouraged and excited by this interview. We all have the capacity to be magnificent lovers and Dr. Kleinplatz has the science to prove it!
Here’s Dr. Kleinplatz’s book ‘Magnificant Sex‘. Her website is here.
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Transcript
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Announcement [00:01:52]:
The following content is not suitable for children.
Laurie Watson [00:01:57]:
Welcome to Foreplay sex therapy. I’m Dr. Laurie Watson, your sex therapist.
George Faller [00:02:02]:
And I’m George Faller, your couples therapist.
Laurie Watson [00:02:04]:
We are here to talk about sex.
Advertiser Announcement [00:02:06]:
Sex.
George Faller [00:02:06]:
Our mission is to help couples talk about sex in ways that incorporate their body, their mind and their hearts.
Advertiser Announcement [00:02:14]:
And we have a little bit of.
Laurie Watson [00:02:15]:
Fun doing it right g listen and.
George Faller [00:02:18]:
Let’S change some relationships. Super excited Today to introduce Laurie Watson is a huge mentor, has had influence on both of our careers and she’s taking the time today out of a crazy busy schedule to be with us. So we feel so honored.
Advertiser Announcement [00:02:34]:
Yes, thank you Laurie, for being with us thank you.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:02:37]:
The feeling is mutual. I’m really excited that you decided to invite me here just before Valentine’s Day.
Advertiser Announcement [00:02:44]:
Right?
Advertiser Announcement [00:02:46]:
Happy love day, Right? Exactly.
George Faller [00:02:49]:
Just some of the background. I mean, Laurie has been a sex therapist for a while. I’ve been a couples therapist for a long time, but I, like a lot of couples therapists, didn’t work so specifically with sex, which is kind of crazy if you think about it for many years. And as I started to get into with some of Laurie’s influences, one of the early works I came across is, is your work with Great Lovers. And I think it is so informed how having a healthy target of what great sex looks like I really think has been such a major contribution to the field. So I really want our listeners to kind of hear some where it came from and just, you know, the heart of this research that you’ve done.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:03:37]:
Thank you.
Advertiser Announcement [00:03:38]:
Dr. Kleinplatz is in Canada, in Ottawa, and she’s written Magnificent Sex and we will post that on our website. And both George Faller and I have loved this, the book as well as her research on this. So please, Lessons from Extraordinary lovers. How did you decide to do this research?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:04:01]:
Well, many years ago, I had an undergrad student named Dana Menard who kept on asking in class as I was covering the research. Yeah, but Cosmo says this or Maxim says that or online it says this and you know, what do you mean that what makes sex fulfilling is whatever I said. Well, you know, if you’re really serious, you want to know more, why don’t you join my research team and apply to graduate school? And now Dr. Menard did. Exactly. And we spent the next seven years studying people who self identified as having really wonderful sexual experiences. Some of them were people in their 60s, 70s and 80s whose sex lives just grew richer over times. And they had been with each other.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:04:59]:
The inclusion criteria was that they had been with each other for at least 30 years, though on average it was about 50 years.
Advertiser Announcement [00:05:06]:
Wow.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:05:07]:
But my own experience had taught me that as you get older, if you’re doing it Right. Your sex life improves because you do have to reinvent sex. And with aging, with chronic illnesses, with disabilities. So I wanted to interview those people and we thought we would also interview other outliers to see what they would have to teach from their position outside the box. And if you’ve read the book, you know that one of the cool findings was that both groups described their best sexual experiences in ways that were utterly indistinguishable.
George Faller [00:06:26]:
It’s amazing. Were you expecting going into it? I mean, I think mainstream public opinion is those minor components that you talk about, lust, chemistry, attraction, desire, like that would be the driving force behind great sex. Were you expecting that? Were you surprised when you didn’t see that?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:06:44]:
Or those things really get a relationship off the ground. But after that, they’re not what sustain a relationship.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:06:56]:
And they’re certainly not what makes sex deeply fulfilling, mutually enriching. So yes, if you’re standing across a bar and you’re looking for who to meet, the person you find attractive might be the person you’d walk towards. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to want that person 15 years from now, right? Probably a bit, but not that much. Was that things like orgasm, intercourse, penetration, and the whole range of sexual activities also turned out to be completely irrelevant.
George Faller [00:07:37]:
Amazing. And it’s just mind blowing when, when, when we were exposed to that research saying it’s just. It turns the world upside down how most people think about it. We have actually done podcasts on, on, on this. But do you want to review just those eight major components that both sides. Right. The extreme and long term relationships are saying exactly the same thing. You know, when multiple forces is saying the same truth, you know you’re onto something.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:08:05]:
Oh, I’d be happy to. So we discovered that there were eight major components of what we eventually came to call optimal sexual experience, or for short, magnificent sexual, which were very different from what is described as great sex in the media. And the first one, we say first because it was really the one that people mentioned first and ended up being not only an important component, but also a facilitating factor, was being completely embodied and absorbed in the moment. A lot of people have understood that, or rather misunderstood that as mindfulness. But if it’s mindfulness, it’s a really, really high level of mindfulness. Not the stuff you’d get in a yoga class or a mindfulness based CBT workshop, because there, what you’re really focused on is only what’s happening in your body. And what we discovered was this is a very, very high level of being absorbed in the moment while also being component two completely in alignment with your partner. It’s hard enough to be present when you’re doing yoga, but it’s a lot harder to navigate being completely absorbed within while also completely connected and in sync with your partner at the same time.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:09:43]:
So those were the first two.
George Faller [00:09:44]:
And would you call that. That would be like flow state when you’re completely absorbed. Okay.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:09:52]:
Yes. It was really interesting. So many of our participants recommended the book Flow by Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founders of positive psychology. And yet we see no reference to flow in the sex therapy literature.
George Faller [00:10:07]:
Right. We did have Emily Jamay on. She said she had reached out to you, who it just has come out with a book on flow and sex. So hopefully your influence is spreading all over the place.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:10:17]:
Oh, I love her work. I recommend her book strongly. Great, great.
George Faller [00:10:22]:
All right.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:10:23]:
The third component we called deep sexual and erotic intimacy, where pretty much nobody used the word love. So I thought it was really cool. Maybe reflects the deficit of the English language, because we’ll say stuff like, I love ice cream. I love my dog. I love snow days. This is a snow day.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:10:46]:
And that’s really different from I love you. It’s the same word. So our participants talked about deep mutual caring and respect and liking. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’ll see couples in my office, and they’ll be saying, I love you, sweetie. And clearly what they really mean is, I hate your guts, but you’re forcing me to say words.
Advertiser Announcement [00:11:11]:
Right. And people stay in a love relationship for many reasons, but they don’t necessarily like each other. But this part, they were friendly. They liked each other as well as having that deep commitment, which is a.
George Faller [00:11:28]:
Better definition, because even when I teach, I’m like, intimacy, it’s such a vague word. Nobody really knows what it means. But as you’re trying to unpack that, you’re saying, you know, when you respect and like and care for your partner, that kind of creates this. This intimacy.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:11:43]:
Oh, George Faller, I really like the way you said that. Absolutely. I tell couples when they walk into my office and they first say, you know, we’re here because we’re having problems of intimacy. My usual response is, I don’t know what that word means. Could you please not use that word in my office again and find another way of describing what your problem is? Because everybody means something different by it. And then they just sort of sit there for a second. They say, we’re having problems in bed. Oh, okay.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:12:11]:
Great.
Advertiser Announcement [00:12:12]:
Tell me more, then you can help them.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:12:15]:
As long as I know what it is that they mean by what they’re saying, I’d be happy to help them. Sure.
Advertiser Announcement [00:12:20]:
Right, right.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:12:22]:
And then our, our fourth component, which also turned out to be one of our seven facilitating factors, was deep empathic communication. I know you know what that’s about at the relationship level because you’re both eft therapists.
Advertiser Announcement [00:12:38]:
Right. But at the sexual level.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:12:41]:
At the sexual level, it was not only about deep empathic verbal communication. It was, it was also about.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:12:51]:
Touching with empathy and allowing yourself to be known through touch. It’s like the old Frank Sinatra song, I’ve got you under my skin.
Advertiser Announcement [00:13:02]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:13:03]:
That’s nice.
Advertiser Announcement [00:13:04]:
Beautiful.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:13:04]:
It’s like letting somebody touch you in such a way that they can actually feel you. I mean, I deal with so many women who have pain on intercourse and it’s like their bodies shut down.
Advertiser Announcement [00:13:17]:
Right.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:13:18]:
And close.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:13:20]:
And, you know, if your partner’s been critical of you, if your partner doesn’t really like you, why would you let your body be opened by another person?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:13:31]:
When you don’t feel the care and appreciation, your body would obviously lock that other person up.
Advertiser Announcement [00:13:41]:
Sometimes I feel like the vagina is smarter than the woman. You know, like that her body is responding to a deeper truth about how she actually feels about this person.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:13:54]:
Yeah. And bothers me that so often, you know, women are offered dilators which teach them how to open and close their muscles on command rather than, wait a minute, let’s listen to the wisdom of her body.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:14:10]:
If it’s closing. Talk about what the message is from within.
George Faller [00:14:16]:
It’s so important.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:14:17]:
And the same with dog penises.
George Faller [00:14:19]:
Yeah.
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George Faller [00:15:35]:
All.
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George Faller [00:16:06]:
It’s so important to just emphasize we pay a lot of attention to the verbal communications because there’s such a lack of that between partners. But when you’re talking about under the skin. Right, this non verbal communication, it’s another critical factor that is often ignored.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:16:24]:
Yeah, I mean, I speak to so many men who say, I don’t really feel that I’m being touched when my partner is touching me.
Advertiser Announcement [00:16:33]:
It’s.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:16:33]:
It’s all.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:16:35]:
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. It’s like my partner thinks she’s just polishing a piece of wooden furniture. And no, it’s like she doesn’t even notice that I’m shriveling as she’s touching me.
Advertiser Announcement [00:16:51]:
Yeah.
George Faller [00:16:51]:
I’ve taken of the karate kid. Wax on, wax off.
Advertiser Announcement [00:16:58]:
I love that you’re sort of describing touch as its own pathway. You know, it is communicating. It is a place of empathy. It isn’t a substitute for words. It is a connection right there.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:17:15]:
Absolutely. You know, when someone’s touching you with intentionality, with real focus on how the two of you can be on in sync through touch.
George Faller [00:17:30]:
Awesome. All right, what’s number five?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:17:34]:
It’s about authenticity, being genuine for your therapists out there. You know, when we talk about empathy and then genuineness, we’re way back in 1954 with Carl Rogers. What are the important facilitating factors for therapeutic effectiveness?
George Faller [00:17:57]:
Right.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:17:58]:
So, yeah, letting yourself be yourself, which again is hard enough even when you’re alone.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:18:07]:
Looking at yourself metaphorically or literally while you’re naked in the mirror. But the sixth component is about vulnerability and surrender, which means allowing yourself to be naked emotionally with someone who matters looking right back at you. And where you’re sharing that mutual vulnerability and surrendering to each other in the moment. And that in turn leads to our seventh component, which was about interpersonal risk taking exploration.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:18:50]:
Here people started using metaphors like holding hands while jumping off cliffs together, being willing to use erotic intimacy as a vehicle for personal development.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:19:04]:
And when you put all of those first seven components together, what we ended up with was the eighth component, which was about transcendence and transformation. And I know that sounds kind of touchy feely, but we would have people who would say to us at the beginning of the interview, you know.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:19:25]:
Do you want to talk about the touchy feely or that down and dirty? And we’d say, you know, we’re here to learn from you. Tell us whatever. Well, I’m going to tell you that. Down and dirty. And 15 minutes later they would say, be saying. And then I experienced the white light of God when we kissed. And it was a moment that made me feel connected not only to my partner, but to every person who’d ever lived. And a sense of oneness with the cosmos.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:19:55]:
And it’s like, wow, this is very cool.
Advertiser Announcement [00:19:59]:
That’s incredible. That’s incredible. That, that they would even open up and share that kind of depth with you about their experience is incredible.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:20:09]:
If I live to be a thousand, this will be one of the great blessings of my life to have conducted these interviews with Dana.
Advertiser Announcement [00:20:16]:
Yeah, I’m sure, I’m sure. What an honor to hear people open up like that.
George Faller [00:20:23]:
Well, we talk a lot about. I’m always wanting to unpack that word too, when we’re teaching the transcendence, because it does sound so weird. People often disconnect God of the possibility of that with sex. Right. There’s like a boundary around it. And yet, you know, so many great lovers feel that sense of becoming something bigger than themselves. And as attachment theorists and we look at romantic love and the attachment system of, you know, emotionally sexually caregiving. Like, if you think about a mutual orgasm, I mean, it is everything in flow at the same time.
George Faller [00:20:56]:
I mean, your care given to your partner, you’re receiving from your partner, you feel the intimacy, the emotional connection, you got the erotic energy. I mean, everything is opening and humming along. No wonder why we feel this kind of expansion. That’s so beautiful. I loved your words, how they. How your couples described it.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:21:12]:
The feeling is mutual. I love how you’re describing it.
George Faller [00:21:17]:
Yeah, so that’s.
Advertiser Announcement [00:21:18]:
You’ve lived an extraordinary life to have done this. And you’ve brought to all of us kind of this understanding and now you’re helping couples actually experience this, this optimal sex, this way of being with each other. I’d love to come back after our break and talk a little bit about this work that you do. And then recently after Covid, you took it online, which is amazing, making it so accessible for people.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:21:49]:
I’d love to tell you all about it. Okay.
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Laurie Watson [00:22:42]:
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Sara Jane Case [00:22:45]:
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Addy, talk to your doctor to see.
Laurie Watson [00:23:47]:
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Advertiser Announcement [00:23:53]:
So, Peggy, tell us. You know, if a couple is coming to a group. It’s actually a group therapy with other couples talking about sex. People sign up to do this, huh?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:24:05]:
They really do. And I wasn’t sure that they would at first, but if your practice is anything like mine, I’ve spent most of my career having a waiting list of over six months. And I would call a couple after months on my waiting list and say, I have an opening. And they’d say, great, but we got divorced six weeks ago. Oh, no. And I felt so horrible. And I thought, all right, what if I can help couples quickly and do it in a way that will cost them a lot less and get rid of my waiting list all at the same time? I thought, why not try couples group therapy? And wasn’t sure if couples would be willing. But much to my amazement, they were more than willing.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:00]:
We never asked them personal questions about their sex life in group therapy. In fact, we tell them, if you don’t want to say a word for the entire eight sessions, you don’t have to say a word.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:13]:
But very quickly, people start talking. And.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:18]:
As you know.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:21]:
People feel so alienated in a culture where sex seems to be part of the dominant discourse.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:29]:
And where public discussion of sexuality is really out there. But people feel.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:38]:
So sad and defective because they have trouble talking to each other alone. I think that’s true for everybody. I think the public openness is a mask for the private discomfort.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:25:53]:
Around talking about what we want with our truly intimate others.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:26:00]:
So we thought we would try it, and it worked. And we’ve now been doing it for over 10 years and started publishing about it.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:26:14]:
In 2018.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:26:18]:
And.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:26:20]:
I mean, we had two big questions. We’d studied people who are having really wonderful, fulfilling sex lives, and it was a question of, you know, could we take the lessons we learned from the extraordinary lovers, use them to help people who are struggling in their sex lives to enhance their sexuality? And by 2018, we were already asking, okay, so we’ve figured out how to apply these skills and these lessons. It turns out that this wisdom was transferable. Would what we were doing as therapists also be transferable? And so we started training therapists, first in the US and Canada, and now internationally. And it turns out that we can teach therapists all over the world how to provide this group therapy to couples who are struggling in their countries.
Advertiser Announcement [00:27:21]:
So, great. Tell us, like, in a session. What does it look like? What do you. How do you start them? You’re not asking them intimate questions about their sex life. So how do you start them off? And is it a. You know, do you talk about the eight lessons from Extraordinary lovers? And then they just start to riff on that and they start to share, or how does it go?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:27:47]:
Well, each session is quite different from the next. We have more or less a plan.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:27:53]:
And we were getting so many trainees saying, you know, could you provide case illustrations of what the groups actually look like that we wrote a chapter on it in my latest book, New Directions in Sex Therapy, where six of the members of my research team described what it’s like actually doing it. But I would say one of the most important lessons we got from the people we came to call extraordinary lovers was they didn’t start out that way. We had asked everybody, as part of our interviews, you know, when did you come to begin experiencing sex of this caliber? And were you just born this way? You know, did you do something right? Did you happen to fall under a lucky star? And they all cracked up laughing at the stupid question, saying, no. This took years of devotion and intentionality. And if you’re doing it right, it shouldn’t feel like work, but it definitely requires effort. And when we asked, at around what age did you start experiencing this? The majority of our participants said somewhere in midlife.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:29:06]:
So 40s, mostly 50s. And that gave us hope.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:29:12]:
So in our first session.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:29:16]:
We tell them that in the people that we interviewed who were having really fulfilling sex, that got better over time.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:29:24]:
The first thing that they did in the journey towards developing more fulfilling sexual relationships was to unlearn everything that they’d learned while growing up. So we spend our first session talking about, what did you learn that you think stands in your way? And most people are more than happy to talk about how the sex education they got in school was terrible.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:29:49]:
And that their parents didn’t talk much about sex, from which I always ask, well, what did you learn from what you were never told?
Advertiser Announcement [00:29:56]:
Right? And it’s still a message.
George Faller [00:29:59]:
Laurie shows a great video of her working with a couple where, you know, the husband has all this pressure and stress. And Lori asks, you know, do you know what percentage of women have an orgasm during intercourse? And he’s like, oh, I don’t know, most of them, right? And Lori’s like, no, you know, less than 20% of women can have her orgasm during intercourse. And it felt like the weight of the world was taken off this guy’s shoulder. I mean, it’s just amazing what good information could do for people’s physiological responses.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:30:29]:
I couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:30:32]:
This episode is brought to you by. Whoops.
Advertiser Announcement [00:30:36]:
I’ve got a box of Cheez It.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:30:37]:
Crackers staring at me and I just wanted that irresistible Cheesy Crunch. Sorry, that was a total snackcident.
Laurie Watson [00:30:43]:
Mmm.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:30:44]:
What was I supposed to be talking about?
Sara Jane Case [00:30:46]:
So salty.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:30:47]:
So crunchy. So cheesy. Whoops.
Sara Jane Case [00:30:52]:
Lost my train of thought.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:30:53]:
I’ve heard of brain freeze, but brain cheese?
Advertiser Announcement [00:30:56]:
Mmm.
Sara Jane Case [00:30:57]:
I’ll just have one more cheese at.
Advertiser Announcement [00:30:58]:
Cracker and then I’ll get back to it.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:03]:
Welcome to Walgreens.
Sara Jane Case [00:31:04]:
Looking for a holiday gift?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:06]:
Sort of.
George Faller [00:31:06]:
My cousin Freddy showed up to surprise us.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:09]:
Oh, sounds like a real nice surprise. Exactly. So now I have to get him a gift, but I haven’t gotten my bonus yet.
George Faller [00:31:15]:
So if we can make it something.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:17]:
Really nice but also not break the bank, that’d be perfect.
Sara Jane Case [00:31:20]:
How about a Keurig for 50% off?
George Faller [00:31:23]:
Bingo savings all season?
Sara Jane Case [00:31:25]:
The holiday road is long.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:26]:
We’re with you all the way.
Sara Jane Case [00:31:28]:
WalGregreens offer, valid November 26 through December 27.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:31]:
Exclusions apply. And it also helped to get rid of some of that shame to have people in their first session to hear that they’re not the only ones who have sexual problems.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:44]:
And that these sexual problems are not strictly situated within, but come from sex negative upbringings.
Advertiser Announcement [00:31:53]:
Right.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:31:54]:
People learn so little about how to talk openly, not only about their fears, but also about their wishes. Right.
George Faller [00:32:06]:
So you’re giving them a lot of good information and some good coaching to point them towards a healthy target. And when they come up a little bit short, they have blocks to change. Like, they just bring that in. How do you work with that?
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:32:20]:
Well, no, we don’t actually point them towards a healthy target. We never point them towards anything.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:32:26]:
Our goal is to help them look within.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:32:32]:
And to find the remnants of the glimmers of the dreams that they had before they’d ever even had a partner.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:32:43]:
Even people who’ve said, you know, sex is not what I expected, and I don’t understand what all the fuss is about, and if I never had sex again, I wouldn’t miss it. They all remember something about the day they had their first kiss. They all remember something about what they wanted within at a time when they were probably still virgins and knew they wanted something more. There was something exciting. And if you can help them recapture.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:33:17]:
Something of what that wish looked like from long ago, then rather than having to meet some kind of external.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:33:26]:
Standard.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:33:28]:
They can Find what they’ve always wanted, what’s always been their heart’s desire.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:33:35]:
And also by getting more in touch with their own bodily felt experience. So we never point them towards anything. We let them look within. Does that make sense?
George Faller [00:33:45]:
Yeah.
Advertiser Announcement [00:33:45]:
So beautiful. So beautiful. Yes, it does make sense. It’s. We were just teaching some therapists about sexuality in Nashville and we were talking about helping them see the erotic glimmer. And we were actually using those words. And I’m so pleased to hear you say it, like, because people, even very shut down, withdrawn people sexually, they, they, you, if you listen, they do have this erotic glimmer inside of the longing for what they wanted, for the excitement of what they had seen in the past or felt in the past. It’s.
Advertiser Announcement [00:34:21]:
It’s present.
George Faller [00:34:23]:
How to grow those glimmers. I love that imagery.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:34:28]:
I mean, that’s, that’s why the COVID of Magnificent Sex has.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:34:35]:
Depending on what you see, either a sunrise or a sunset coming up from behind a mountain range where people see rays of light across new peaks. New peaks, new peaks, where each set of peaks emerges from wherever you are Right. Now.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:35:00]:
Those were the images our participants way back used to talk about. And it’s the same for the couples we’re dealing with in group therapy now who say.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:35:14]:
What’S this desire for? Well, we’re going to help you discover what you would find worth wanting. I mean, one of my mottos has become sometimes low sexual desire is evidence of good judgment.
Advertiser Announcement [00:35:31]:
Absolutely.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:35:34]:
And I want people to be enabled to say no. That kind of sex really is not for me. But what I would like is.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:35:44]:
Fill in the blank.
George Faller [00:35:49]:
I’m going to end with that imagery. Right. It’s so helpful to think about catching those glimmers. And it’s the glimmers that lead you towards the sex that’s worth wanting. Right. And a lot of our listeners, that the metaphor of that sunrise or sunset, I think is just a beautiful gift to give them to say, like it. It is so critical if you can hold on to those glimmers and if you lose them, it’s not the end of the world. You just got to do the work to go inward, to start kind of rediscover them because they’re there.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:36:18]:
Right, right.
George Faller [00:36:22]:
Well, Peggy, we really want to thank you for joining us. Hopefully this is just the start of a connection with us. You know, you’ve been such an influence in our work. And I continue like you’re still producing this research, a new book, and however we can support you. And, you know, we’re in your corner.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz [00:36:41]:
Well, the feeling is mutual. Thank you so much for having me here today.
Advertiser Announcement [00:36:46]:
Thank you. Thank you for being with us and thanks for listening, y’. All.
George Faller [00:36:50]:
Keep it hot. Everyone call in your questions to the four play question. Voicemail. Dial 833-MY-4 PLAY. That’s 833-MY-THE- number four play and we’ll use the questions for our mailbag episodes. All content is for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for therapy by a licensed clinician or as medical advice for a doctor. This podcast is copyrighted by Foreplay Media.
Laurie Watson [00:37:15]:
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