A Sex Therapist Answers the Questions Women Are Too Embarrassed to Ask, with Alex Robboy
We talk about self-care, balance, and burnout—but not about sex.
In this honest, funny, and deeply grounded conversation, certified sex therapist Alex Caroline Robboy, founder of The Center for Growth, joins Danielle Davies to talk about desire, shame, and reclaiming pleasure.
With decades of experience helping women and couples navigate intimacy, Alex breaks down what great sex actually means—and why it’s less about performance and more about connection.
Together, they explore the realities of female sexuality, from perimenopause and libido changes to communication, curiosity, and rediscovering joy in your own body.
Together, Danielle and Alex talk about
💥 The 60/40 rule—and why great sex starts with putting yourself first.
💬 How shame and silence disconnect women from their own bodies.
⚡ Why “chemical sex” isn’t about performance, it’s about connection.
💪 How perimenopause and libido changes affect sex—and why grace matters more than libido.
❤️ Why intentionality, communication, and curiosity are the real keys to pleasure.
If you’ve ever wondered where your desire went—or if it’s even okay to want more—this episode will help you find your way back.
🔑 Key Takeaways from This Episode
The best sex is 60% about you—because pleasure is contagious.
Communication isn’t just verbal; it’s sensory and responsive.
Your drive never disappears—it just changes form.
Prioritizing pleasure is an act of self-respect, not indulgence.
Growth comes from trying one new thing at a time.
Listen to ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture & Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New conversations every Tuesday.
Full Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly cleaned up. It may contain small errors.
House. Hi, I'm Danielle Davies and you're listening to Roar, a show that amplifies the voices of women breaking barriers, leading change, and making real impact. Keep listening for bold ideas and stories that inspire you to find your voice, and make some noise. Hi everybody, I'm Danielle Davies, your host of Roar. Today we're diving into a topic that doesn't always get talked about honestly, but touches almost every woman's life, sex.
My guest, Alex Caroline Robboy, is a certified sex therapist who's been helping people and couples navigate intimacy for decades. She's the founder of the Center for Growth in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Georgia, where she and her team specialize in everything from depression and anxiety to relationships and shame. But Alex's specialty is sex therapy, and she isn't afraid to go where no woman's gone before. Alex has spoken on national platforms, led workshops at bachelorette parties, and built a career helping people connect more deeply to themselves and their partners. What I love about our work is that it's not about gimmicks.
It's about honesty, resilience, and giving women permission to advocate for their own desires. And that really connects to what ROAR is about. women helping women and making space for voices that often get sidelined. So, I'm thrilled to have you here today. Welcome, Alex.
Thank you for having me today. We're thrilled. So, let me just let me just start here. While your work helps both men and women have better sex. Historically, even in pop culture, the story appears to have been framed as women having sex and men enjoying sex.
So, how do you reframe those conversations so that women's needs and experiences take center stage? Because obviously women should be enjoying sex, too. Agreed. So, the way I love to frame sex is, you know, you're having a really you're a great sex partner for yourself and for others when you are 60% focused on yourself and you're meeting your own needs and 40% aware of the other person. So, it's the 6040 rule.
It's the 6040 rule, but you've got to be the 60% because when you're having a really good time, it's contagious and you can bring other people into your energy, right? I mean, nobody goes down on you because you taste good the first time. They go down on you simply because they want to pleasure you. And if it works, they learn to love that taste and love that experience of it. So the more you are putting yourself out there and really going after meeting your own needs and expressive, the more fun it is for everybody else.
Okay, I'm going completely off of what I had planned to say. So let me ask you a question. Obviously, you're dealing with women of all ages. You're dealing with couples of all ages. And when you do deal with women because there is like this perceived notion in the world of like you know you see movies you see even if you if like people talk about porn how porn is not really representative of real sex right so then you go to regular movies or something like that where you see that and you know real life is not the movie.
So, how do you help women even put that focus on themselves when so many women seem to talk about, you know, things they have to do? This is what I hear from different women that I know. So, I'm just curious how you turn that focus back to them so that they're even relaxing for themselves. I know I know women who haven't even taken a bath or, you know, enjoyed a good book in years because they don't have any time. So I'm curious how you help them reframe that as something for them.
So I think you're just bringing in right now a much larger conversation which is choice. And we all have a very limited number of hours on this earth, right? We have 24 hours in a day as women, as moms, as you know, wives, as worker bees. We've got limited free time. And the first step is really deciding how do you want to use your free time, right?
Maybe that means I need to sleep. Maybe that means I need to eat. Maybe it means I need to have a conversation. So whatever you need to do, you need to do. But if you decide to take the time and say, I'm going to prioritize being in my own body and I want to enjoy my own self.
Now we're having a different conversation. And that's where I start with telling people like close your eyes. Allow yourself just to be completely aware of being in your body and the experience of touch. so I don't care if it's your own hand touching yourself. I don't care if it's somebody else touching you, but just connect with your body and pay attention to what feels good.
Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. I was going to say this actually leads into my next question perfectly because where we often talk about like women's health in terms of fertility or menopause or mental health but sexual health's often left out of the conversation you know it's almost like we're like and that's another thing but it's not so what happens when we don't include it I think we start to live a little bit of a scattered life a disconnected right it's like don't have sex. Don't do this. And now I'm pregnant.
What do I do? Like it's really your sex drive is just part of being. It's sort of like eating, right? It's it's a natural force. You need to have sex to make the world continue forward, right?
I really believe that orgasms are nature's way of encouraging you. And so I feel like everybody's having sex because of the pleasure and people are scared to actually acknowledge what's happening. So sometimes you got to just dive right in and acknowledge the joy of touch just like the joy of connecting with somebody sometimes is the laughter. It's the emotional connection. It's knowing that we're it's a shared space.
So it's your own body. Enjoy it. I do. Do you feel like and I feel like there are and I want to say what but you're the expert in this so let's pivot this and say do you even feel this way that there are like some systemic or cultural barriers keeping women from experiencing satisfying sex lives. So every culture throughout time and history has rules and regulations around procreation.
I think it's a little bit of a different conversation. you know, there are some religions that very much script the time and place that one is supposed to have sex, when you're supposed to have enjoyment around sex, when you're supposed to abstain from it. I mean, there's just rules and regulations, but you can say the same thing for food, right? Everybody eats because it's exciting, it tastes good, it's fun, it's nourishing. There real reasons, but there are always rules and regulations around it.
So, I don't even want to make it a positive or a negative. It just is. Got it. Got it. And it But it's even in just I feel like our modern culture again, I feel like the focus isn't necessarily on like you said, it's for pleasure.
And nobody's actually talking about that part. So, or maybe some people are, but not so many people because it's taboo. And you know, too much pleasure in excess can lead to problems, right? There is such a thing as sex addiction. There is like I'm having so much fun playing that I'm never working.
Everything can be problematic when it's too much pleasure. And what that exact amount is I think is very person specific. where you are in your life. You know, if you've got five children, you're working full-time. There's too many pressures to be having this amazing sex life as opposed to I've got no children.
I'm working part-time. But also the idea of like this is part of putting ourselves first as women like even or as humans, but in particular women who I feel like take on that mental load a lot of the times. Like it's part of prioritizing yourself. Like we shouldn't be like that's the first to go. I know so many women in marriages who are like that's like that's like not even part of the conversation.
Like that's just so I think a lot of reasons why people don't prioritize it is they're not having great sex. You might be having good sex, but when you're having chemical sex with somebody, it just automatically moves much higher up in your need to have. just like if you don't really enjoy working out at the gym, that starts to go away when you get busy. But when you become passionate about something or you're really connected and you're seeing the full beauty of it, you're not going to let it go. You just said chemical sex and I never heard that term.
What's the difference between good sex and chemical sex? A lot. So, a lot. Okay, go ahead. So, chemical sex is I can only compare it when you have like two people that naturally run a five minute mile starting to run together compared to being with some a five-minute mile runner and a 10-minute mile runner.
Like that chemical sex is you're coming at it in the same way, the same place. Your body's naturally vibe together. You have that emotional connection. It's almost like, you know, your hurts are the same. your internal wiring just naturally line up.
So you're almost intrinsically knowing how to read the other person. That's chemical sex. So is chemical sex reliant on a chemical sex partner or is can you have chemical sex with? So for example, say it's two people in a monogous relationship. They can have chemical sex and they could also sometimes have good sex or I guess perhaps bad sex.
But what I'm saying is it is it partner reliant or is it experience reliant? It's partner reliant. Okay. Everybody can have good sex. That's practice.
That's experience. You can make things better. You could have moments of phenomenal sex. Chemical sex is it's almost effortless. It's like the person you walk into a room with a therapist and there just some people like you're like, "Oh my god, you get me.
You're asking questions I didn't even know I needed to be asked. " Okay. It's just that you just walk in and that's that. So, you can't teach that because that has to do with the relationship. But how could people who are in a partnership or in a relationship have better sex where they're at?
So, I'm glad you asked that. I am so glad you asked that. That's my favorite question. " And it's all about communication. We somehow think in the world of sex communication is like honey, you know, touch me to the left, touch me to the right.
I'm like, you are never going to get to good sex using words because you have to learn how to disconnect your brain from the experience. And you got to train your eyes to be looking and seeing the other person's nervous system. You can see someone responding and reacting. You need to be able to hear someone and sense like is their breathing increasing? Is it decreasing?
Are they panting? Are they moaning? Are they groaning? You've got to read their the body lang the language verbally. You need to get a little bit creative and experimental and just shift your touch maybe a quarter of an inch, maybe just a little bit of the pressure or the speed.
And then you've got to observe the other person's responses. You might want to give them forced choices and say, you know, do you want A or B and try two different things and force someone to give you some kind of feedback. but again, there are so many ways to communicate. " But if you're just moving along and moving your fingers closer and closer or doing something, their body might tell you a different story. Well, that is very enlightening and I really think that nobody who hasn't been to a sex therapist would actually know this information like that they could iterate it.
So, thank you for that. And let me along those same lines, let me ask you if there are any myths about women in sex that you'd like to debunk. A major one is that women don't have a sex drive. Let me tell you, all women have a sex drive. And what it kind of cracks me up, women are always coming into my office and they're like, "Okay, my boyfriend is having or my husband is having me come in here because sex is a problem.
" And you know, what do I do? How do I get a high sex drive? And I'm looking at them and I'm like, are you kidding me? You have a sex drive. You know what you want.
You are wanting to connect, right? So, it may not be coming from this physical place where you're like, I need to be touched, but you have this drive to want to please. You have this drive to get closer. And for a lot of people, that's the entryway into having a really healthy sex life. It's that emotional experience.
It's the give and take. It's the reason you take the garbage out for somebody else. It's the reason you, you know, change your kid's diaper. You're not craving this stuff, but you get so much pleasure from seeing your kid happy and you want them to do well and you enjoy it. And it's the same way with sexuality.
So, you women have drives. Everybody has a drive. We want connection at the end of the day. Well, all right. Now, I have another question that I wasn't planning on asking, but it absolutely lines up with this.
So, a lot of the women that I speak to are around my age or the people who are listening are around my age. So, they're often dealing with pmenopause, menopause, even chemical or surgical induced menopause. So, a lot of that comes with the changing of our hormones. And so, the loss of sex drive seems to be like a legitimate a more legitimate issue. Do you have anything to suggest to those women?
Well, it's funny that you say this because I was literally just yesterday talking with this woman who was sharing how she's going through pmenopause and it's a topic that kind of caught her off guard. people really hadn't been talking about it or she didn't comprehend the complete dysregulation that her body was going through and you know sort of the memory lapses that sort of similar to like pregnancy where you just information just goes out of your head or you see your body changing you have suddenly these wrinkles and you don't feel like yourself anymore and I look at this as like your sex drive is there, your sexuality is there. It's just sometimes when you're disregulated, everything goes off. And we're so trained to think there's something wrong with me or to discount our bodies that we automatically shut it off as opposed to just giving oursel grace to say, you know what, it's a stage. Maybe my drive is a little bit lower.
It doesn't mean anything about what tomorrow's going to be like. Just like, you know, some days you're hungry, some days you're not. Like it depends on the level of exercise. It depends what's in front of you. You know, it's giving yourself grace to not overthink it and just allow your body to show up the way it wants to.
Okay. Okay. All right. That makes a lot of sense. And I think like we're all so when that all happens by the way in par menopause, you know, I was at a conference once and a young woman was clearly not anywhere near parmenopause was on stage and she was talking about why she was so excited about the conference and all the things we were going to learn and she's like because you know I don't want to go through menopause because at the same time you're you know your hair's getting thinner and you're getting wrinkles and you're whatever these things were.
" Like the whole thing is one package. It's completely It's like I feel like women get go through a couple different stages of their lives hormonally. And so it's a it's a huge shift and it's it's a not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a new thing. So it's interesting to position it like that and give yourself a little bit of grace because it's a timing issue. It is timing and it's also it's your relationship to yourself, right?
I mean, you're not going to be as vibrantly pretty in the same way. And if you're sitting there being upset or mad or fighting this stage, you're just going to have too many negatives where if you can embrace this new place and the gifts that come with it, you are much more open to exploring and experimenting. And I can only put it this way, which is when you're 18 Mhm. and you decide you're going to go running, you just get out there and you go running and it's no big deal. When you are 65 and you're like, I'm going to go out running, you probably have to warm up for like half a year first.
Maybe you're starting with walking a very, you know, like one block, two blocks and building up to this place, even though your brain tells you should be able to just run. So, does that mean a 65-year-old has to grieve running and like it just doesn't happen anymore? No. It means you actually have to have a different relationship with your body and you have to give it the room to grow into these spaces. And sometimes you actually have to make a very active decision to say, "I value this.
I want this and I'm going to lean into it and things aren't going to feel the way that they used to feel. I'm going to be open to this new experience of it. Quick pause to thank all of you for listening. You may have noticed that Roar sounds a little more polished this season. That's thanks to my producer who's responsible for making this third season sound as good as it does.
com/roar podcast. Your support truly makes all of this possible. And now let's get back to the show. How does that play against you know men obviously for women who are having sex with men you know they're not going through that right I mean their bodies are declining in other ways and I don't mean that menopause is just fine so beautiful anymore come on I mean we're all changing and that's fine but theirs is they change in a different way and so maybe they're how does it com how Does it compare to what a man's going through? do they have to mentally prepare themselves for that run in the same way that maybe a w a woman does when we're talking about it being their sex lives?
So, I just [clears throat] think culturally women and men are growing up in different cultures with different expectations. We've got different physical bodies. The conversations that people are having look different. So, it's really hard to compare and contrast because it's just different. Just like even if I were to look at a very specific man and a very specific woman, they're not even going to fit these cultural norms.
So, I'm much more comfortable saying that it depends on the history of the sex life that you've had before you meet your partner and with your current partner as to the conversation that you need to be having. because you know maybe their drive is way higher, maybe your drive is way higher. You know, as a sex therapist, I see plenty of men coming into my office saying, "Oh my god, I have an erectile dysfunction or I can't get it up anymore. I'm waxing and waning. " And it's creating havoc in their sex life.
So, it's not it's not just a female problem. It's just that women are getting dinged for it of like I mean that's the joke. Well, women never want to have sex or my husband always wants it and my husband's like running chasing me around the house. But I'm like, these are communication problems and this is like been building for years. And so if you've got someone that isn't reading your signals correctly and you've gone through this major hormonal shift and you're just not feeling it in your body, you've just shut down and you don't even have a good dialogue or a good way to dialogue with your partner about this.
Got it. Okay. I like and thank you too for like being willing to just talk about like the nitty-gritty part of sex, but also the larger picture part and the dialogue and communication and relationship that go into it because that they are obviously so intertwined. I mean, while many people are single and doing whatever, a lot of people are in relationships. So, they're, you know, want to improve that as much as they can in their lifetime.
So, but let me let me back up to another fun part of sex. You explained to me before that you sometimes go and do workshops at bachelorette parties, which is, by the way, totally fun and disarming and like what a fun bachelorette party, but what but obviously there's also a deeper message. So, what are you hoping the deeper message women take away from those kind of experiences are? Oh, how to have a really fun time in the bedroom, right? I mean, this is such a big component of your life or could be such a big component of your life and it's shared exercise.
It's shared connection. It's the glue in some ways that can help you weather the storm of a major fight. And some it's easier to teach people ideas and ways to connect to themselves and others before you have the problem. And you just start off with good habits, right? It's like it's like exercise.
If you just grow up, it's like flossing, right? But I mean, it's like if you grow up just like exercising your whole life, you never have the experience of getting out of shape. So when you break your leg, it the healing process is much easier as opposed to someone that's never exercised and it's totally out of shape and now they break their leg to get back to health is so much harder because your body isn't even wired for it. I love that. I love that.
And what is the response generally when you do that? like our people at bachelorette parties. I mean, you know, there's all types of people at bachelorette parties and you have like everyone from your sister, your future sister-in-law to maybe your mom to friends you've known your whole lives. " Well, so when your mother-in-law is in the room, it is a different workshop in terms of how much I'm sharing versus eliciting from other people because there really are some boundaries. Like I, as much as I'm open about sex, I am not talking to my child about the orgasm I had yesterday.
Like, sorry, no thank you. I do not want to go there. And if they're having an orgasm, I don't need those details. I really, like, please, like, it's on you. like I have a whole staff.
You can talk to anybody else. So boundaries really are critical. So I do shift up the dynamic. But what's lovely about a bachelorette party is everybody knows on your wedding night you are supposed to have good sex. You're it's supposed to consummate the marriage.
So we finally have a sanctioned place where we are allowed to talk about it. We're encouraged to talk about it. and it is the male version of a bachelor party where they're going to the strip club except now we are doing it in a communicative way. It's group oriented. I'm really focused on teaching women how to connect to other women and learn skills from each other because if I can start the dialogue then I am successful.
And if we happen to get one or two tidbits of new information, maybe I'm going to learn something and not just them. Good. Good for you. Good for you. I love this.
And well, let me So, so let me back up to like very big picture in the world. We talk about a lot of advocacy at ROAR. So, the fact that, you know, maybe the person who creates a breast cancer awareness fund is doing it because she herself has struggled with something. " It's usually in response to something. And I find a lot of women have created really amazing things in response to something.
but sexual empowerment can be one of the most radical forms of advocacy for women. And I think stepping into that and I noticed by the way when I did go to like a fem conference there are a lot of younger women in the sex tech space and that's great to see and you know here are the older women in the background like woo. but how do you see sexual empowerment playing a role in women's broader fight for visibility and agency? I think it's really taking ownership of your own body and your own pleasure, right? There are so many ways in which women have been conditioned to nurture other people, put other people first.
It's like you're supporting your spouse growing up. You're supporting your children and you're nurturing them. Sex, it's all it's all the eye. It's the one time you are encouraged to be hedonistic and making it all about yourself. And when you really connect to yourself and put yourself first, you're unstoppable and it starts to permeate in every direction.
I love that. I love looking at it like a power move, you know? I mean, for lack of your much better words. But and you know you mentioned this before but to do that what about when women are in that survival mode of nurturing you know having young kids having older kids any taking care of their parents it is a lot of that nurturing role falls to us as women I hate to be so you know divisive and say oh it doesn't fall to men but it just traditionally seems to fall to women and that's kind of what we've been conditioned here in the US or the world. do you have more tips and strategies for people to pull out of that survival mode?
I know you said before like close your eyes, like be present. Are there any smaller takeaways that people can utilize? I feel like the biggest tip that I could give somebody who is striving to have a better sex life is to write out what is it that you would want the other person to do for you. And then see if you can borrow each of those skills and just initiate it for yourself. I'm not sure.
Let me try that again. Thank you. Sorry. I was like, can you say it again? Thank you.
So, you know, so the tip that I want to tell people if the question is, what do I need to do to get more in touch with my own sexuality and really lean into myself, I think it's can be very challenging to start with a focus on yourself. and I would have a much easier time saying,"Well, I wish my husband would have lovely conversations with me. I wish my husband would clean the house so that I have the time. I wish my, you know, I wish this guy would start a conversation with me. " and write out for yourself what is it in your fantasy world of what a good sex life might look like and what is everybody doing to make it happen.
And then every day make yourself do one of those behaviors that you were envisioning somebody else doing. So it's sort of like take it's becoming highly disciplined, okay? and being proactive in doing something yourself. Okay. So, I don't making any sense.
Like if you're saying what I really want is my husband to walk down the street with me and hold my hand. So then what you do is you initiate that. Is that correct? Like then I start I ask him to go on a walk. I go out of my way to take his hand.
I become the proactive leader in this with the idea that whatever I initiate, if someone's invested in getting to know me, they're likely going to mirror back whatever I'm doing. " Right? It's like it's repetition. It's just practice. It's like if I am always cleaning the house and then for a couple of days it's dirty and I stop doing it, the other person's going to get a little uncomfortable and they're going to just start picking it up.
That just happened. Yes. Yes. Yes. But also, and you know what, when you say it like this and you're like, you have to make it a practice, I feel like that's something we're not we don't really talk about like you just you people just assume you should be going and having great sex, but when you when you use the running analogy, too, like people have great runs, but they don't necessarily start off that way.
It takes practice and it takes, you know, conditioning and listening to your body, knowing your body, taking care of your injuries, like whatever it is, icing, just you. Yeah. It doesn't just magically happen. Just like if I want to be having this highly connected spiritual sex where it's just lovely and like the stars align, I need to schedule it in my book. I don't I'm not going to tell my partner that I've scheduled it, but I'm going to schedule it maybe three times a week and for maybe a half an hour and then I'm going to like make myself incredibly available and I'm going to try to maybe take their hand.
I'm going to engage them in a conversation. Now, they might not even come home. So, maybe that half an hour didn't anything. Maybe ended up having this deep conversation. Maybe they asked me to like work with them on filling out the tax form, but I've given them a half an hour of undivided attention so that they're going to have the experience that I matter and this because it's not an afterthought.
It's a you're a priority. Yes. And when you feel like you're a priority, you feel someone's attention on you. You feel them reaching out to you. You feel that energy.
And when you feel that energy, you're much more likely to relax into it or want to match them or run with it. m. " Never. I'm so sorry. Did you ever used to watch that show years?
I mean, this is so long ago. I actually can't believe I'm thinking about it. Dharma and Greg. Remember that show Dharma and Greg? Did you ever see?
So, if anybody ever saw it, it's like a very, you know, sort of uptight caricature of a guy married to this very, you know, hippie-esque like lovely freespirited woman and they are married and it's, you know, an against all odds kind of marriage, but they're very happy and they have great sex. But she finds out that he's actually been planning the sex every week because he so wants her to be happy. And he like he has like three different rotations like pirate night, you know, like whatever it is. what I feel like one really was pirate, but maybe it's like bath night. Whatever the theme is, he circulates them and she thinks they're having just like this great impromptu sex life, but he's really very organized and methodical and you know, he doesn't tell her this, but he's made that effort.
Yes, 100%. Yeah, I mean, you named it. It's like maybe I've had a glass of water with a lot of ice cubes that I just happen to have by my bedstand so that I have ice that I can play with that night or maybe I've got like this hot tea. So, now I've got warm water to play with. It didn't accidentally happen to be there.
Okay. So, now you've got these are these are plans people that you've you can your drinks can be used for other purposes. So plan at your will. Let me ask you another question. So obviously because you know we're talking about this as like even the broader scape.
So you know do you ever I'm sure you do hear one of the one of your things that you said you know that is not really true is women don't have a sex drive. But do you ever hear like the flip side like you see some very miserable person and you're like they need to go have sex. like somebody needs to go have sex and just release and feel good and be happy and then and you know there's all kinds of pop culture references to this like somebody's skipping around the next day and everybody's like we know what happened like it's very obvious but it just goes to show that good sex in the most simplest terms good sex can make for a better world yeah you're happy just I mean I put in the same way like a really good run it's endorphins. So what would it look like if we treated women's sexual fulfillment as a core health issue instead of just like a private concern? Yeah, the world would be a better place.
And let me tell you, I think most men who are actually married to the woman are going to be way happier about it and women are going to be way happier about it. We just have to make sure that you're not feeling pressure, right? Because there is a funny line where it's like if it becomes too much of a concern and you're like why are you not having good sex and why are you not engaged in your body? It's like can shift to one more task and you can just overload somebody. So I'd love to see it be very driven internally as to how do I get the most out of my life?
How do I want to express myself? what's going to make me feel good as opposed to other people saying this is what you need to be doing. Well, and that's interesting too because you know that's another thing about having it you know people I know women who are like I have to do XYZ, have sex, get the groceries, blah blah blah. It's an obligation. And so in some ways, yes, it's a priority, right?
" But you're not prioritizing yourself and you're not prioritizing the experience. You're just prioritizing the task. The task you're prioritizing the act as a task. And you also have to like, you know, figure out where that masturbation should fit in. Like where do I have time for myself?
Where do I get to, you know, am I taking a shower and am I touching myself? Is it when I'm putting myself to sleep? Am I touching myself? like touch is a critical part of life and you know what form do you want to make it happen? I don't even have words because I just went into different directions.
I was about to say what about women who are not comfortable with that and then I also was thinking about when you said touch like they even you know didn't they do an experiment what kind of experiment is this a billion years ago hopefully before we had ethical standards in place where they didn't hug or touch these babies like they fed them and they you know they were fed and they were changed but they were not hugged and cuddled and cuddled and all of this stuff and those babies did not thrive. So yes, touch is a like for people who are like this is not really that important to me. This isn't an important aspect of my life. Like it will potentially prevent you from thriving and being living your best life. But then now let I'm just answering my own question, but then let's shift back to what about women who are uncomfortable with that?
uncomfortable with that kind of I just keep thinking of like when I was a kid and just like the taboo conversations about sex and even periods you know when I was a kid it was so much different than it is now and I'm sure that when my mom was a kid it was it was different then so we've got you know multitudes and generations of women alive at the same time and it's different for all of them you know I would like to think that the younger generation is a little bit more in tune with themselves. I hope that every generation gets more in tune. " So, I feel like this is where I have the advantage. If someone's coming to my office, they've identified there's a problem. So, when there's a problem that they're saying, "I need to fix," they are open.
So, from my end, I don't really care if it is your partner that's masturbating you or if it's yourself. Like, I can work with either one because touch is touch, which is right. Which is a very different statement than I'm out and about on the street or hanging out with a friend and a friend is like, I'm not comfortable masturbating and I'm single and I want to have a good sex life. Right? They're coming to you and they're and you know, I think it's must be interesting from your perspective because a lot of people do a lot of things that their doctors tell them to do.
So, you [snorts] know, if your doctor's like, "You need to ice this six times a day," that's what you do. If your doctor's like, "You need to go home and masturbate," you're going to do it because you're fixing a problem, right? And you're not calling it masturbation. Like, I mean, I go out of my way to be like, "This is not masturbation. This is to help you figure out how to have an orgasm.
This is not masturbation. This is getting to know your body. And as soon as we figure this out, you're not going to continue doing this behavior. This is just a gateway. Ah, okay.
All right. That's got to be a profound use of a statement and a changing of words, right? I mean, I put in the same way as like I am gay, I'm bisexual, or I am straight. And sometimes I have sex with another woman. But got it.
Both are I mean it's all the same behaviors. It's just a different language set as to how we are packaging what we're actually doing. Well, and I think you know that's part of that's pretty much what you've said about the whole thing. It's it's the intention around it. You know, in terms of saying set the 30 minutes aside and, you know, be intentional.
Put it in your planner. maybe, you know, have a glass of wine if that's what your thing is or just like mentally get yourself in the in that mode. It's the same thing as like these languages, these behaviors. It's the surrounding bits that all I guess make things better. You just named it.
I could not have said it better. Try borrow. What? I borrow you. Absolutely.
Anytime. Anytime. so let me ask you one last thing and then if there's anything we didn't talk about and you wanted to pipe in, tell me. But if a listener walks away from this episode remembering one thing, and maybe it's a 6040 rule, but if it's one thing, what do you hope that it is? To try one new behavior every week, not more.
Because if you do too many things at one time, it's hard to really understand the impact. And you might theoretically run out of ideas. But if you're just trying to shift one thing every week, it's very achievable and you're going to create the experience for yourself that change is always happening. So you're having a different relationship with your body. And if you're with a partner, they have the experience that you're always growing and being creative.
Same reason like when you go to the gym and you lift weights, you're not doing the identical workout every week. You're always shifting it little by little. I love Can you give us an example since it's not the gym? Yeah, of course. so if it's with myself, maybe one week I'm going to masturbate using in the bathtub and I'm going to use the water faucet, the water coming down to go over my clitoris and to just experience those feelings and I'm going to use heat.
Maybe the following week I'm going to focus on cold water. Maybe the following week I'm going to use a washcloth as I'm touching myself. The following week, I'm going to use just my hand and soap. They're very distinct sensations that are going to allow me time to explore and get to know myself. If I'm with a partner, maybe one week I'm going to always I'm going to always be one step behind them and I'm only going to follow their lead.
maybe the following week I'm going to try to initiate and I'm going to put myself on queue like every five minutes I'm going to try something different no matter how much I like the activity. Or maybe the next week I'm going to try to push myself to use language and I'm going to try to do sexy talk. The following week I might try to do some dirty talk. The following week I might try to do more like games or activities in the bedroom. But it's just I'm going to take one thing and I'm going to just shift it up.
so my partner feels like it's a new experience or I feel like it's a new experience because it really is a new experience. Alex, that alone was a wealth of information. And as somebody who is not a sex therapist and is not always having these conversations, I'm not sure if you can see my eyes bugging out of my head, but I'm so grateful that you are willing to share this information and that you do this and you and you were willing to come on here and share it. I'm going to sneeze. but I think so many listeners are going to have a lot of good responses to this and really get a lot from it.
And we talked before about possibly doing another kind of session where it's like a or session another kind of interview where it's a Q&A. So, we'll have to we'll have to see how people feel about that because I feel like pe you could be on the phone for 10 hours. People would ask you so many questions. And it would be really fun though to hear because you are such a great advocate for good sex and you are so well spoken and you're so very like matterof fact about things that make other people blush. So thank you.
Oh, you're welcome. But you've been a pleasure and the piece that I really want to hammer home to everybody is everybody has a gift to give when it comes to talking about sex. Like there's no such thing as being an expert, right? We've all had our own experiences of sexuality and we can teach each other. It's not a secret.
It's it's supposed to be a dialogue. That is awesome. Thank you so much. I am going to let you go now because otherwise I will go many more questions. But Alex, thank you so much for being here.
Been an honor and I look forward to talking to you later. A huge thank you to Alex Robboy for taking us somewhere we don't often go to a real conversation about sex, intimacy, and what it means to actually feel connected. My next guest is Gifty Enright, international speaker and author, and we're talking about balance, burnout, and the myth that women can have it all without losing their minds in the process. In the meantime, make sure you're subscribed to Roar wherever you listen so you don't miss a thing. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week.
I die.
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