Does sex in your marriage ever feel like a race toward intercourse or orgasm? Dr. Lisa Elieson calls this “baseball sex”—rushing around the bases instead of enjoying where you are. In this episode, she joins Dan to explore sexuality as a creative art: something two people build together, moment by moment, without knowing exactly where it has to lead. You’ll learn how slowing down, letting go of a predetermined outcome, and making room for each partner’s unique desires can reduce pressure and create more pleasure, connection, and play. They also discuss the anxiety both higher- and lower-desire spouses may carry, why emotional safety matters, and what it means to become emotionally as well as physically naked with your spouse.
Want more practical help creating intimacy that works for both of you? The 2026 Intimacy Vault includes our brand new interactive Intimacy Menu, along with Dr. Lisa Elieson’s Common Gender Differences in Desire and more than a dozen other resources for deeper emotional and sexual connection. It’s only available through September 30, so explore the Vault while you can.
Other Resources:
Learn more about Lisa on her website
Check out our couples retreat coming up this spring!
Check out our intimacy and relationship apps!
Guest: Dr. Lisa Elieson
Dr. Lisa Elieson is a Licensed Professional Counselor and AASECT-certified sex therapist based in Texas. She specializes in helping couples navigate desire differences, strengthen communication, and rebuild emotional and sexual connections. Dr. Elieson is known for her practical, down-to-earth approach that blends research-based relationship science with sensitivity to conservative and faith-based values. She is the founder of Hidden Lakes Counseling, adjunct professor, counselor trainer, and the author of The 3 Keys to Great Communication, a workbook designed to help couples develop healthier, more productive conversations. Through therapy, teaching, and speaking, Dr. Elieson helps couples move out of stuck patterns and learn how to work on difficult issues—together.
Disclaimer: The opinions and values expressed by guests on the Get Your Marriage On! podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and values of the host. Appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of the guest or their products by Get Your Marriage On or its host. While we work hard to bring you quality and valuable content, listeners are encouraged to use their own best judgment in applying the information or products discussed on this podcast.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
Lisa: [00:00:00] when couples get caught up in what I call baseball sex where they’re
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: run the bases as fast as they can and get a home run,
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: taking the time to really savor how it feels to be on first base
Hey, friends. If s*x in your marriage is starting to feel like a race to the finish line, sometimes it’s rushed, goal-oriented, kind of routine sometimes, maybe more about performing than connecting, Or if s*x has quietly become one more thing to get through, then this episode is for you.
My guest has a name for this trap, and once you hear it, you’ll recognize it in a heartbeat. The good news? There’s a completely different way to be [00:01:00] together, and it’s more creative, more sacred, and a lot more fun. My guest today is Dr. Lisa Eliason, and I am just delighted to have her because Lisa is a dear friend of mine, a fellow s*x therapist, a fellow believer, and one of the warmest, wisest people I know in this work.
She’s got her PhD, and she wrote her dissertation on s*xual desire and differentiation. So she brings both a big heart and real depth to everything we talk about. She thinks about s*xuality in the same way I love to: as something good, sacred, and deeply human.
And this conversation is such a rich one. You’ll hear why overthinking is the enemy of good s*x and why so many couples get stuck in what Lisa calls baseball s*x, racing around the bases instead of savoring where they are.
And she unpacks something really beautiful, that great s*x is a creative expression of who you are, best shared in the safety of a committed, trusting marriage.
And you’ll wanna stay to the end because [00:02:00] she thinks of s*xuality as a genuine creative art. She even gives couples drawing assignments in her sessions, and she shares how marriage is the one place actually designed for that kind of freedom.
So if your s*x life has felt rushed, routine, or just stuck, take heart. Lisa will help you slow down, get out of your head, and rediscover intimacy as something creative, sacred, and alive, the way it’s always meant to be.
Before we dive in, I wanna let you know that our in-person couples retreat registration applications are now open.
This is next April 2027. It’s a beautiful setting in southern Utah. It’s where most of the state is cold and snowy still, but ours is spring and beautiful and sunny. Not only is the setting perfect, but you’ll be joining a few other couples in a intimate setting to talk about something very intimate between you and your relationship in a completely safe, non-exposing way.
And we do it [00:03:00] through teaching. We do it through activities. We make it really fun, and we also offer private coaching as part of it too. You can find a video in the description below, a link to it on YouTube, of what previous guests at our marriage retreats have said about their experience.
This is something you won’t wanna miss, and applications are now open. So go ahead and apply now.
Dan: Lisa, I’m so happy to have you on the Get Your Merge on podcast. how are you today?
Lisa: to be here,
Dan: that’s great. Good, good.
I wanna talk about maybe two or three practical ideas you have to help couples have a better sex life today. How’s that sound?
Lisa: topic.
Dan: Good? Mine too. Great.
Lisa: a cool job I have where I get to talk about sex all day. You too. Like what a fun,
Dan: yeah.
Lisa: job.
Dan: That’s great. It’s a, it’s happy work. It really is. Joyful work. I, I think,
Lisa: It really is. It really is fun and such. You know, I find this space, I [00:04:00] think where, where mental health and faith and relationships and sexuality all meet is such just a lovely space to work in and intellectually a terrific journey, but spiritually a terrific journey too. and to help couples, you know, as I sometimes mention, like I don’t study a lot of things and I don’t know a lot of things, but this is the one thing I study. So I’m, I like, I don’t cook, I don’t garden. I study relationships and sexuality and how it works. This is it.
Dan: that’s great. Good, good. So speaking of your studies, you’ve done a lot of study, in fact you have your PhD and your dissertation. You came across something interesting. I think you were telling me a little bit about it.
Lisa: I
Dan: I wanted to deep dive on that.
Lisa: was so fun. So I wrote a dissertation about sexuality and, um, sexual desire and differentiation. I know you’ve in past podcasts, talked about differentiation. I don’t know if probably should review what that
Dan: I
Lisa: first before we launch
Dan: do.
Lisa: how it fits into the dissertation. Exactly, exactly. And I [00:05:00] know you do a beautiful job of describing it, so I want you to share your thoughts. Here with me. But how I describe it is, I think a differentiation as the balance of separateness and togetherness and relationships that we always need some degree of being who we are and then some degree of being a couple. So I often think, um, we have to balance this emotional and cognitive process and balance how we show up for togetherness and separateness in relationships.
Dan: Got it.
Lisa: Yeah, like I, I almost describe it like a, uh, like if we’re standing on a log in the river and to get balance, we have to constantly shift.
Dan: Yes.
Lisa: in relationships shifting between togetherness and separate. Create a stable relationship. so generally speaking in the mental health world, to have low differentiation, to not have good balance essentially,
Dan: Uh huh.
Lisa: would be associated with mental health challenges, like typically low differentiation, not balanced, , would be associated with increased incidence of depression, increased incidence of [00:06:00] anxiety disorders like you generally expect in as a clinician, low differentiation to be correlated with mental health dysfunction. Okay?
Dan: Yep.
Lisa: and, and that was my master’s thesis. That was the one of the things I showed. Low differentiation is correlated with depression symptoms. so roll forward. I go up to my dissertation and I decide, well, I’m gonna study differentiation and sexual desire. Now, according to the DSM, low sexual desire is a disorder. I don’t have a diagnosis in there. And we clinicians argue this all day long, but technically the DSM does not have a diagnosis for high sexual desire. So may be maybe some bias there. And that’s a debate among people all the time, and maybe the next DSM will change that. But here’s where we sit today. that’s the diagnostic manual for those who listen and don’t know what the DSM is. It’s a diagnostic statistical manual for clinicians about how they diagnose things. okay, so I’m, I go and propose this hypothesis that there’ll be a correlation between differentiation [00:07:00] and desire. And because we expect disorder to often be associated with low differentiation, then the hypothesis would generally be low differentiated people will struggle to experience sexual desire. Okay. , Come to find out, I do my research, uh, project and, you know, we surveyed hundreds of people and the, we have two different surveys. One, measuring sexual desire, one measuring your level of differentiation. And we come to find out that actually low differentiation is correlated with higher sexual desire.
So people who
Dan: really?
Lisa: differentiated are more turned on essentially, and that is totally not what you would expect in the counseling literature. So I’m like, okay, I really don’t know how to interpret that. yeah, crazy. Um,
Dan: that’s not the result you wanted?
Lisa: the result you wanted or expected. And I know, you know, people are, clinicians are like, what? Every, everybody out there in the world is probably like, who cares? But we do care about sexual desire, [00:08:00] so here’s where it becomes relevant. so I go back and I think, okay, well, lemme try to figure out what’s going on by looking at the subscales of this, this instrument for differentiation. And the thing that was skewing my results was the emotional reactivity was, um, apparently there was a correlation in, uh, how emotionally reactive we are, how much we can attune to our, our feelings and move with them,
in the realm of sexual desire, actually the more we can do that, the more it increased desire, the more our partner could do it, the more it increased our desire also. So it worked
Dan: Oh, okay.
Lisa: and cross relationally. Um, that apparently people find it sexy when their partner is able to emotionally respond to them. so yeah, totally like weird, crazy result. But that’s what, that’s what it showed. So I go back and start thinking about what that might mean from a spiritual framework. And here’s where it started to really resonate with me was, if we think about the parameters the Lord has put on sexuality,
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: [00:09:00] has given us directions as a good loving parent would, and if we know to go and move through the world that everybody around us, it could be dangerous to be emotionally reactive, then if the Lord’s going to set up one place on the planet that it is safe to do that, then he’s gonna need some parameters.
Um,
Dan: Hmm.
Lisa: I think of like that, what the Lord’s done is kind of like as a parent, when we teach a toddler to paint or cut with scissors for the first time to do something very creative, we don’t hand them scissors and let ’em run around our house. all cut their sister’s hair and poke their eyes out. We put some guidelines in place because we love
Dan: Thank goodness. Uh
Lisa: and so we set ’em at the table and we give ’em the sheet of paper and scissors and we say, okay, here is where, and here’s our, our parameters.
Here’s where it’s safe for you to create with this really powerful instrument in your life where you won’t hurt people.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: we let them create whatever they want on that paper with those scissors or the paint or whatever. It’s um, and I think that’s kind of what the Lord did. He [00:10:00] said, I’m gonna give you this really powerful creative tool in your life
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: not just bring children in the world, but to bond couples together. we’re gonna need some safety parameters around it for you to really lean into an emotionally reactive sense of self. ’cause if we don’t, then it becomes dangerous. Um, and, and I, I didn’t think of good sex as a very creative expression of self. It’s, it’s sharing who you really are. What feels good with your body, with another human being.
And it’s best done in the safety of, of a relationship with somebody you trust who knows you. I mean, to be known. We hear the voice all the time. But what if it’s not just a euphemism? It is somebody you feel like you can truly show up as your honest self with, and they can show up. With you and you, and you’ve already established this trusting relationship with each other, where you can have, like, to me, marriage relationship is like the one person on the planet.
I’m gonna get real with that. I’m really gonna share the good, bad, and ugly of [00:11:00] who I am that will know how to hurt me more than anybody else, but also know how to love me better than anybody else and vice versa. And so
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: very vulnerable space of that trust that we have for each other where we truly, truly care about each other’s wellbeing, maybe that is the safest spot to be able to let go and lean into our emotional reactivity of what just feels good and sharing it with somebody else, you know, who we love and respect and who loves and respects us.
That is such a sacred space that could create. I mean, as we see in the world, a lot of times the problems that develop when we’re trying to create that sexual desire in a place where we don’t have that safety.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: quite honestly, I think a lot of our low desire people lose their desire when they try to, fake it, spend a lot of time in duty sex.
They actually develop anxiety with their sexuality ’cause they’re really not getting to express who they are with their partner. And really when you express something as vulnerable as [00:12:00] sexuality, I think you want somebody who you feel like is gonna accept who you are,
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: know, and no matter what your body does and what weird things are interesting to you, that they still are gonna find that loving acceptance to at least talk about it. if it may not be something that that’s practical or possible to do. They could at least share who, who they are and talk and have discussions around it. So, yeah. Whew. like that was a long journey of how emotional reactivity can feed our desire to. But that, but that also ties right back in with a lot of the literature will correlate like mindfulness exercises where you kind of lean into your body is reacting to something to relax, correlates mindfulness or sensate focus with increasing sexual desire.
And those are all exercises and trying to lean into who we are and share it with someone else.
Dan: got it. So what I’m hearing from you is don’t overthink it.
Lisa: [00:13:00] Overthinking is often the enemy of good sex. I mean,
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: that, yes, and uh, gosh, when couples get caught up in what I call baseball sex where they’re
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: run the bases as fast as they can and get a home run,
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: taking the time to really savor how it feels to be on first base or just to be where they are.
and really dialing into the, the sensory experience of all five senses of, of a kiss or a handhold and that’s one of the things that I find. With my low desire people will kill desire is when they’re like getting to first base and their brain starts to project of, oh my gosh, I gotta be ready to perform an orgasm 15 minutes from now.
Dan: Uh, clock, Uhhuh,
Lisa: And it’s, and it’s losing the flow of what feels good right then. Um,
Dan: mm-hmm.
Lisa: so it kind of gets us into another topic I know we wanted to talk about was how art, you know, how I use art sometimes in therapy to talk to people about this idea of expressing self?
Dan: Yeah, let’s go there.
Lisa: yeah, so I, I tell ’em if I put, you know, [00:14:00] two people or 10 people or whatever in a room and I told ’em all to draw a blue house, I would
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: 10 different blue houses based
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: of each person and their creative expression.
And I think sexuality is kind of that way too, where everybody’s expression of sexuality is very unique and and vulnerable part of them. But you can imagine it, the more parameters I put on what you have to draw for your blue house. less it is an expression of you and the more it is a more, it becomes work and you’re just now executing the task of printing blue houses work
Dan: Yes,
Lisa: fun.
It’s not sexy generally for people. Um, ’cause it doesn’t get the creativity to it. And so appreciating other people’s artwork and the uniqueness of it is, is an important part of relationships. So an exercise I sometimes do with couples I’ll give ’em both a piece of paper and I give ’em both a pack of markers and, and I might, let’s say I might give the guy the blue and green markers and the girl, the red and yellow markers or something.
Sometimes I mix it so [00:15:00] that they have different packs. So that as a way to metaphorically express everybody comes to their table in a sexual relationship with different tools and different parts of who they are. that’s unique to them. And then I’ll have ’em take their piece of paper and they take one marker outta their pack, and they draw one line and they get like, you know, two seconds to draw their line.
And
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: papers and, and they just keep going back and forth using the marker only once until they’ve used all markers in their pack, right?
Dan: Okay.
Lisa: draw a line and then you move your paper to you, pa you switch papers with your partner, and then they draw a line on with, on their, on your paper. And at the end you’re gonna have two different artworks,
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: Um,
Dan: uh.
Lisa: so at the end is the time you can draw a title of what is your artwork? What did you create here? Uh, and, I learned this exercise from an art therapist and I was in a training. And when I got my artwork back at that particular time, I titled it, Jacques Takes a Day Off. Because it looks like a French chef to [00:16:00] me, holding a kite. But, but at the moment that I drew the very first line, I couldn’t know I had a French chef. I had no idea what I was creating because I would need the input of the other in order to know here’s what we’re gonna end up with and it’s in the transaction and the exchange of our creativity that we suddenly discover where we’re going. We don’t always know where we’re going from the beginning. and so that’s where I’ll tell couples, okay, now that you’ve drawn it, you see you can title it and now you know what you have. but in the beginning of a, of many sexual interactions, you don’t often know that we’re gonna move to penetrative orgasm.
We just know we’re trying to have pleasure and a good experience in sharing who we are. So I, I had a, a couple once who I do this exercise with them, and it was kind of funny, and I’m not sharing anything confidential here. I’ve changed enough story that you won’t know, but the, the person, um, like let’s say the, the guy sat down and he got his piece of paper.
Well, and the first thing is the guy goes, [00:17:00] I don’t know what to draw. What do I draw? And I’m like,
Dan: yeah.
Lisa: you just draw. I the only direction was on the paper with a marker. That was it. But you hear the anxiety of initiation when people have to be vulnerable enough to share creative parts of self. There’s that anxiety of initiating a creative expression initiating that we see in sexuality. And then
Dan: We second guess ourselves,
Lisa: we
Dan: is it gonna be good enough? What if I mess up and I don’t like it?
Lisa: and really the right when it’s art is that you put yourself into it. There is no.
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: necessarily other than building that trusting safe space with your partner. and that’s the paper, so to speak. Here’s the paper, here’s the markers. The Lord’s given us rules and guidelines of how to build it, but then we get to build. and then another couple, once the husband sits down and first thing he, he has, he draws the first mark on his paper before she’s drawn anything and he draws like a mountain and says it’s going to be a mountain. We’re drawing mountains.
Dan: I’ve [00:18:00] decided this is what it is.
Lisa: decided we’re drawing mountains. And I thought, okay, I think I know what’s wrong with our sex sexuality,
Dan: Uh.
Lisa: that if we’re showing up sometimes and, and expecting our partner just to accommodate what we’re planning to draw. Our fantasy life, then there’s no room for them to share what they want on that page or what speaks to them.
And there has to be room for both people to really create a good sexual interaction, um, room to share and have an exchange of what feels good to each bodies.
Dan: got it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dan: So I think about the man with the mountain, that would totally be me with the end in mind.
Lisa: Right, right. And here how he’s trying to manage his anxiety. He may be a little uncomfortable with the freeform expression of just, we’re gonna be on the moment and experience pleasure. Um, and the anxiety of not knowing it’s gonna go, but it’s the not knowing that actually sometimes makes it really fun.
Oh, as I [00:19:00] described with baseball sucks. You know, why would pe nobody pays money for T-Ball because T-Ball sucks. We all know
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: get a hit, they’re gonna get a
Dan: So predictable.
Lisa: In
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: for the Rangers even in a bad season,
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: because it’s unpredictable and we don’t
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: know that a first base is gonna be a home run, and that makes it exciting. So, yeah. So yeah.
Dan: it’s almost like
Lisa: when you draw mountains right outta the gate?
Dan: they’re double mountains, just to be clear. It’s an innuendo, but, uh,
Lisa: Well then if she is as feisty as many women out there, she’s like, oh, it’s not gonna be mountain when we’re done,
Dan: that
Lisa: but that’s not where we’re going.
Dan: I, I like, I like this art metaphor because what I’m learning from you in this is, it’s this ability to really be in the moment and to kind of go with the flow moment to moment.
Lisa: I find especially people who are struggling with, biological things [00:20:00] in general, if they’re struggling with finding their desire or struggling with sleep, know, that, that many of these biological things even go in the bathroom is often a process of letting go more than holding on. so like we don’t actually put ourselves to sleep. What we do is set good conditions for sleep. We brush our teeth, we put our pajamas, drop the lights, and then we kind of lay down and fall into it by letting go.
Dan: Gotcha.
Lisa: sexual desire kind of works the same way that there’s this, this letting go process to really. Connecting in the moment with what feels good to your body. And so many people I talk to haven’t asked themselves what feels good to their body in so long ’cause they’re so busy trying to accommodate what feels good to someone else’s body.
Dan: So last night I had a coaching session and the woman, uh, it was a great session. I, I walk away so inspired every time, like it fills my cup having these types of conversations. But
Lisa: yeah.
Dan – May 2025: it, the conversation in our, as we were working through it, uh, came down to, [00:21:00] um, an experience she had recently where, , she and her husband had sex.
But it was really like, looking back, she, she could have either taken or left it. Like, it
Dan: wasn’t.
Lisa: with her, it was just,
Dan: No. And she’s like, but this is really the pattern in us. I said, okay, go back.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently by that interaction? She said, well, if I, if I could, I would’ve had a voice, I would’ve just suggested we lay down next to each other.
We could be both undressed and just with no strings attached,
Lisa: Right.
Dan: a conversation. That, to me, would really fill my sexual desire more than anything else. And throughout this, there’s a strong thread of, uh, the sense of freedom.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: You know, like un decoupled from a, a sense of obligation, or I need to guess what he wants and whatever.
And that ties into what you’re saying here. There really is [00:22:00] a letting go process. I like that. Like a lot of, even our biological processes are a letting go. Even good, good sex starts with a good letting go, experie.
Lisa: go and being in the moment and just what your body experiences.
Dan: Yeah. Without, and, and that to her is tied to a very high sense of freedom. She’s not connected or shackled to some sort of a expectation she has that night.
Lisa: Right. Well, it sounds like she intuitively knows what is kind of her turn on that her body really likes that free space to just be snuggled up with each other.
Dan: And then she second guesses herself immediately right after that.
Like,
Lisa: Because
Dan: oh, but that’s not sexed.
Lisa: that she thinks
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: to fit,
Dan: right?
Lisa: it as really an important part of sexuality.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: that, and, and, and it allows her, like, as she, in that space, it, it would allow her to just be present in the moment and to turn off the mental noise that a lot of women carry of like, uh, how do I [00:23:00] explain? Like if you’re laying in the bed. Trying to go to sleep, but you’re thinking about the dishwasher and work tomorrow and other things.
If
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: is in the kitchen or at work when I’m trying to be in the bed, that’s gonna be really anxiety provoking because my brain is too far from my body. The farther my brain gets from my body, the more anxiety provoking it will be. and so becoming very mindful and present. And so she just wanted that moment to really just feel her partner’s touch that the texture of it, the, the temperature of it, just to feel it the safe space without having her brain to kick into overdrive on what she has to perform
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: and not worry ahead into the moment of is this, am I going to be enough?
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: You know, that that might be an important arousal cue for her later on down the road.
Dan: Yeah, it would be good. And, for his part. He is in baseball sex mode. He is like, okay, all right. Okay. Okay, we’ll undress. We’ll look at each other and talk. And then
Lisa: And.
Dan: my [00:24:00] turn, it
Lisa: Exactly
Dan: mm-hmm.
Lisa: the same problem we have, right. With T-ball, right? You’ve got someone on the sideline going, run, run, run, run, run the whole time, gotta get a second, run a third, and, and they’re directing and before you know it, you trip and fall halfway between because you’re just so keyed up and flustered.
You can’t even think
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: be
Dan: yeah.
Lisa: and play the game,
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: where you are in that moment. Yeah.
Dan: all right. What if, what do you counsel couples where, . The art that one wants to draw, includes things that other person does not want to participate in,
Lisa: Well, couple
Dan: which is common, I would think.
Lisa: common.
Dan: Every couple has
Lisa: people, and
Dan: things.
Lisa: gonna be important part of, of a married relationship and, and or what I call a covenant relationship. Let me preface that. ’cause I think sometimes people get married on paper and not in spirit the way the
Dan: Yes.
Lisa: And so
Dan: Yes.
Lisa: I actually think the paper is supposed to represent a covenant is how the Lord intended,
We have [00:25:00] this trusting, caring, relationship where I actually don’t wanna harm my partner, but I also want to get my needs met and I’m gonna share who I am with them, but I don’t wanna do harm to them.
Dan: Right.
Lisa: so, so I think that, that, that’s what I described. It’s more the covenant marriage than just a marriage.
Dan: Yes.
Lisa: ’cause it’s more than just a piece of paper. But, sorry, I digress
Dan: I’m glad you brought that up, because a covenant marriage is something you build throughout a lifetime too. It’s not a,
Lisa: you build.
Dan: it’s not something, oh, we’re there. We achieved it.
Lisa: our paper, now we’re ready.
Dan: Yeah. Uh
Lisa: and you, I mean, we’ve probably in session talked to people who got the paper and they don’t even know their partner.
They don’t know what their partner’s kinks are. They don’t know what things are weird about them, like, or what things are great about them. I don’t know the whole spectrum of the person yet.
Dan: mm-hmm.
Lisa: but it is totally normal in married life that we’re going to have, uh, fantasies that maybe aren’t my partner’s thing. Okay. That’s normal. Um, I, I describe that like I can, you know, our fantasy life is very different than what we want in [00:26:00] reality. Often. Um, I describe it like, I can fantasize about wanting to drive a Lamborghini, but that doesn’t mean I want the car payments or I want the maintenance work, or I want the baggage that comes with a Lamborghini. so to recognize, first of all, our fantasy life and what we want in reality are two very different things because the reality of things comes with a different essentially than the, the fantasy. As long as it lives in my head, can be wonderful, you know, but. So, so I’ve often talked to couples about don’t get scared that the fantasy means we have to go live, that we don’t, we can talk about it.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: but also recognizing that when I’m a single person, I get to make decisions based on what matters to me,
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: So I describe that as variable A, what matters to me is the thing that makes my decision for me. But once I entered into this covenant relationship, my math had to get more complicated. I
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: solve most problems with A plus B equals what we’re going to do. so my math is more difficult, but I also [00:27:00] get to be in a partnership.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: from how we’re gonna have sex to how we’re, what car we’re gonna buy, to where we’re gonna live, I have to think about variable a me, here’s what matters to me, plus variable B.
B, what matters to my partner equals how decisions are made.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: So to now think in the bedroom, that’s how that has to work. We’re we’re. Accommodating both people as an important instrument of connection.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: just account for my own needs. I, I argue that if people make single decisions too long, they will be single. the way you stay married is by making married people decisions, which is harder math,
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: more rewarding. Um, so it’s like, so they, so, you know, in the sexual fantasy realm, it can’t just be, we do the fantasies that I like and not the fantasies that they like, or vice versa. We have to talk and work together until we both find things that give us both pleasure,
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: I mean, if my kids were going on a play date, I would never tell one of my children, you have to [00:28:00] play the game your friend likes all the time. It’s hungry, hungry hippos every day or forget it.
Dan: Uh,
Lisa: And sexist play for adults.
Dan: uh.
Lisa: so you kind of think like the communication becomes important and that you’re able to talk to your partner. About what is meaningful to you, um, in a non-shaming way that it’s safe to say, Hey, here’s my thing I’m fantasizing about. And them to be able to hear it, but also realize, hey, it’s okay for them to say that doesn’t work for me, or Here’s why it doesn’t work for me. Um, remember in my training, hearing a kind of a funny story about that, uh, I don’t know how much I can share here. I dunno how PG 13 your show is, but a funny story in training about a guy who particularly had a fantasy about, um, ejaculating on his partner space. And she didn’t particularly like that fantasy. ’cause guess what? Women don’t really orgasm that way. but the, yeah, I know it’s surprising,
Dan: crazy.
Lisa: [00:29:00] but the thing that was, the reason she didn’t like it was ’cause it hurts her eyes when he did that. It would get in her eyes and it would sting. And so the two of them talked about it and she realized, oh, I could do that. I just need to put swim goggles on.
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: it worked for both of them. And they could live the fantasy in a way that they’ve understood what’s important to both of them in that story. And they didn’t try to convince the other to be different than they are. They tried to make room for both of them in the relationship to be who they are and to show up together in a way that both of them could enjoy an interaction. Yeah, it
Dan: So there,
Lisa: funny to go, okay, well it’s one way to work it out,
Dan: how do you get the goggles? I’m coming soon.
Lisa: And hey, if she’s good with that, then more power to her. Um, but I also think that, that she had the accomplice to go, here’s what, where my problem is. Here’s what I can do, here’s what I can’t do. I care about what you want. You care about what I want. Let’s find what works together.
Dan: That’s a good creative process to work [00:30:00] together.
Lisa: And a lot
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: couples get so scared that they’re gonna be judged or scared what their partner’s gonna say, that they quit talking about it, and then they, this, that isolation starts to grow.
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: I, I tend to think the Lord made, um, people’s bodies different for a reason. And pretty much every relationship the planet is gonna, at some point in their married life, come to a difference in desire or a difference in how they wanna have sex.
That is part of the purpose of life. So either God has an incredible, uh, sense of humor and he is just really entertained by watching us fight it out. I suspect his people are more intelligent than that, um, that he may, he designed it so that we’re different. So that requires us to work as a team to create really good sexual interactions. And when we’re not working as a team, desire tends to fall apart. I almost think what’s happening in the bedroom is a barometer for what’s happening in the relationship
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: and it, and it’s a good measure that we need to create change [00:31:00] somehow.
It’s a growth exercise,
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: and figuring out how do I share who I am and the vulnerability that comes with sharing who I really am. But also like, like with my couples, where I have one person come in and normally they’ll present because they’ll come in and go, my partner doesn’t wanna have sex. They have low desire, they have sexual anxiety.
Can you fix ’em? Is often how it starts. And we do certainly work on that, but I find they often come into my office with a partner who has high anxiety. Also about, I am anxious if I don’t get sex when I want to have sex. What does that mean about me and the world and my self-worth and our relationship? And I find that both are experiencing anxiety. They’re just generally only talking about one person’s anxiety.
Dan: Because one person’s more visible and the other’s less.
It’s, it’s more covert for the other. Yeah.
Lisa: that. It’s often they’re like, Ooh, my low desire partner is broken in some way and has anxiety.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: well, so does the high desire partner. They’re often, I mean, if, if it wasn’t that they were anxious, then they wouldn’t be in my office.
They’d [00:32:00] be like, okay, we’ll just live how you wanna live. It’s fine.
Dan: Uh,
Lisa: The fact that they’re in my office is because they’re anxious about not getting sex when they need it, or connection when
Dan: yeah.
Lisa: or lots of things. there, which I think that often when people are really anxious about that, it’s ’cause they’re missing a really deep connection with their partner. That, that feels wonderful to them. They’re, they’re reaching, when they’re reaching to try to have sex with their partner who’s struggling with sexuality. They’re reaching for connection really.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: how I explain it to my low desire women often, but sometimes it’s men, imagine if, like a lot of times those, as you were describing this woman who wanted to snuggle on the couch,
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: A lot of times what they’re doing is reaching for connection in a different way. Um, they may be reaching for connection through let’s snuggle and talk and let’s share ideas and, but it’s just another form of connection where high desire persons reaching through for connection by doing an activity together, which is [00:33:00] sex
Dan: Uhhuh,
Lisa: Ment tend to bond through doing activities together. So it’s often our male partners reaching there. And how I explained that to the solo desire, female partners, they said, if you imagine like if your partner comes home from work and you wanna tell ’em all about your day and all the cool things that happen and you’re excited to talk, and they come in and go, oh, I’m pretty tired. Can we just chill out? I’m just exhausted. Work’s been hard. Well one, once or twice you’re gonna be okay with that. You’re gonna go, okay, it’s a long day. Let’s go to bed
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: be fine. but about a month of that, you’re gonna start to go like, do you not care about my day at all?
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: start to stress you out. And so I, I tell ’em to help them imagine what’s happening to their high desire or partner in the stress they’re feeling. You have to imagine if you take whatever your primary connection medium is, if it’s talking, if it’s snuggling, if it’s sexuality, and imagine your partner being too tired to show up there regularly and how disconnected you would feel.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: it is that they just never have the energy to talk about [00:34:00] your day, you’re gonna go, well, don’t you care about my day? Or if they show up to talk about your day and they’re staring at their phone the whole time and looking at the game on the tv, well, imagine what that would look like if you were trying to have sex and your partner’s looking at their phone the whole time.
And what, looking at the tv, you would not feel like they’re really into.
Dan: Right.
Lisa: about your day or in the bedroom, you would feel like, okay, you’re not here and fully present with what I’m trying to do. Yeah,
Dan: Do you find too, like the anxious higher desire spouse, who looks for sex craves that sex? Sometimes it’s because they’re looking outside of them to fill a hole in them
Lisa: yeah.
Dan: they ought to be feeling themselves in other ways too,
Lisa: Absolutely.
Dan: when it comes to like their self-esteem or how they feel about themselves.
Lisa: that sometimes they’re using sex for validation of their own identity of who they are, which people have sex for their own expression. Like if, imagine if you got validated by watching me eat. Well, that would be kind of odd, wouldn’t it? Instead of [00:35:00] recognizing that I’m
Dan: unless I made a delicious meal for you and you like
Lisa: some, you know, quite honestly, some women do that. They’re like, you have to eat because that makes me feel self worth. And you’re like, I’m not even hungry. But how stressful that will become when they’re using sex for validation instead of connection. Um, and it can, it’s connection when you’re both able to share what matters to you in that moment. that woman’s able to say, you know what, I’d really like to snuggle right now. Um, it reminds me another cultural problem we sometimes have is we as a culture have kind of defined sexuality as male penetrative orgasm. And so, I mean, how many times don’t watch porn for variety reasons, but culturally we’ve kind of like he orgasm, we’re done. It’s kind of been conversation for a long time,
Dan: A couple. How do you know when sex is finished? Oh,
Lisa: right.
Dan: had his, he ejaculated it
Lisa: we’re done.
Dan: over. Uhhuh?
Lisa: and we kind of defined it in this very narrow process of what at best is like a 15 minute process when really sexuality, [00:36:00] I tend to think that one sexual interaction begins with the last one left off. And you’re on a constant buildup phase to release phase. So think of as the orgasm moment is the release phase of what is a sexual interaction over possibly days, over a long period of time, of flirty energy of, I say, uh, uh, it’s easier to get a boil off a slow simmer that we need
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: all the time, um, of, of really connecting in a variety of ways.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: Actually, I, in a training presentation I do, I present, um, I talk about sex. I show it like a giant ice cream sundae with one of those ice cream bowls, you know, holding it like the cone Bowl, holding it. And I, and I describe it, I go think of sex like this.
The bowl, the waffle cone bowl is the intimacy that we share with a partner that holds all the different flavors of we have sex. There’s lots of different ways that we are intimate with people. and so all the different ways we might do that with our partner. And then the little cherry on top might be the times we get [00:37:00] orgasm.
But there’s so many other pleasurable moments we can be enjoying with each other that will feel comforting and validating to people.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: We just have to watch for them and really share. And, and quite honestly, her partner, you never know, you’d have to ask him, but a lot of men will tell me the fact that she was craving to be held.
He would’ve loved to know that, to know that she was desiring him this. And you know, like so often I hear from a high desire partners that they want to be desired. And it’s not just this desire for orgasm, it’s just desired for anything,
Dan: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Lisa: they wanna be held. I mean, it’s not just baseball sex.
They don’t wanna run the bases either, but they’re trying to get to this connection they crave. Unless, as you describe, um, when you have people who are trying to use sex for validation, like, you know, you know, they’re trying to use it to make themselves feel good, not to share a connection, creative moment with their partner.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: [00:38:00] You know, so two different ways, I guess, if people have sex to validate themselves versus. To really share an experience.
Dan: That’s good.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dan: Wow. This is complex, but completely on point. This is fantastic. There’s so much to this. It’s very, yeah.
Lisa: It’s such a cool topic. I study. I just love
Dan: Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. I did martial arts when I was young. I did a lot of martial arts, a lot of karate competed, uh uh, national tournaments. And as you get better and more advanced, it’s not that you’re learning new moves,
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: it’s that you’re incorporating a lot more things at one time.
Like when I was first learning, it’s like, oh, gotta remember to hold my fist in a certain way at this certain height
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: my hips are doing this. And while my legs are, it is like I had like a hundred things I had to keep in mind all at once while doing it was hard.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: But as you practice over and over, uh, you get, [00:39:00] you, uh, you get better at the little nuances that make for really good form or really good martial arts to be really present in things.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Which leads me to this next point.
Lisa: Okay.
Dan: You leave our listeners with a black belt sex tip, something super practical. Let’s say they’ve, they’ve covered the basics now they’re at, now they wanna just take things to the next level. What’s one thing a listener could do to this podcast
Lisa: Oh
Dan: for fun to add to their re.
At things that they may not think about. Usually maybe getting goggles, I
Lisa: you
Dan: dunno, but like
Lisa: That’s one that most people haven’t thought about. Quite honestly, I hadn’t thought about it until I was in my training. I was like, oh, that’s a, that’s, yeah.
Dan: that’s the thing.
Lisa: that, um, and it is challenging that being able to. Lean into being able to, to begin to think of sex as pleasure. Not, it’s not a destination of orgasm, it’s a destination of pleasure.
Dan: Yeah.
Lisa: and that we want to have a good time with each other and [00:40:00] really be sure that we’re both experiencing what it feels like to feel good, um, in our bodies. Like sometimes people will, will say to me, oh, sex was a failure. And I’m like, how was it a failure? Like the only way it could be a failure is if you didn’t have a good time.
As long as you had fun, then it was good. Um, I’m like, to me the only bad sex is non-consensual sex, which isn’t sex at all. That’s violence. So I’m like, as long as you both consented, then it’s kind of a good, better, best thing.
Dan: That’s a good way to look at it,
Lisa: but I think often being able to leave room for that, you know, the thing that your partner, like, something like 70% of women find it sexy when somebody touches their lower back. ’cause they walk past ’em in the hallway. And I find most men don’t know that. Like, and,
Dan: huh
Lisa: and the women aren’t telling ’em, Hey, here’s the thing that you think is sexy, might not be the thing I think is sexy. And the thing that my body craves might not be the thing that your body craves.
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: to talk about ’em and not be afraid of that real emotional intimacy that comes [00:41:00] from sharing where you’re at. Even if where you’re at, like for our low desire people, I’ll tell ’em you’re feeling anxious when they touch you, okay, lean into telling them about that experience.
Don’t shy away. ’cause what happens is sometimes they’ll, that low desire person will show up physically and be far away spiritually and mentally. Their soul is far, but their body is there. And so it’s not
Dan: You draw to me with your lips, but your heart is far from
Lisa: And so I’ll tell them
Dan: Isaiah. Uh
Lisa: Yes, exactly though I’ll say, when your physical is struggling, lean to the emotional like,
Dan: Okay.
Lisa: and share, Hey, here’s what’s happening to me emotionally.
And let them be there for you and for the other partner to be able to learn. Hey, tell me about that. Don’t just fix it, but share it and express who you are and let me know you make room for that person to be known. So that, that being able to really look inward and say, here’s what speaks to me, what speaks to you, and let me leave room for that.
And then we’ll decide together what we’re gonna do. Um, and that together [00:42:00] space. So there’s so many cool things that people could be doing, but, but often that’s the sexiest part. When somebody can bear their soul. kind of talk to people about intimacy to sometimes think of it like walking that when you can’t lean on, when, when one leg is struggling, you don’t double your weight on it, you shift your weight to the other one. know? Like if you’ve been doubling down on that physical and the knee’s not working, then maybe shifting deep into the emotional for a little bit can help shift the weight off of the physical so that it can shift back. And
Dan: Gotcha.
Lisa: that leaning into telling your partner, Hey, here’s I’m, I’m anxious about this, or, Hey, I’m anxious about us not having sex.
Here’s what that might mean for me.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: You know, sometimes I’ll tell ’em, go pull the feelings, wheel off the internet and share just one word feeling with each other. Sometimes,
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: you know, we’re very good often at sharing our thoughts and we fail to share our feelings in relationships
Dan: Yeah. And learn how to speak emotionally is so valuable for couples. We do a lot of that at our,
uh, marriage retreats and, in our coaching program and things like that too.[00:43:00]
Lisa: yeah,
Dan: It’s helpful.
Lisa: yeah.
Dan: All right, so I, what I’m gathering is one black belt sex tip is recognize that my, what I find sexually interesting or arousing may be very different than what my wife finds and what she finds.
Lisa: different.
Dan: Yeah, it’s uhhuh. It’s different than mine. And, uh, it’s not one is better than the other, but it’s really like learning to listen and
like pay attention to that and expressing it. Like, no, this is really important to me. When you touch the small of my back, when I walk past you in the hall or whatever, it’s
Lisa: Or just, and it is funny ’cause like learning, like it’s easy to overlook when they’re saying, oh, hey, can we sit and talk? Like thinking, oh, well, you just never wanna have sex, but not realize that maybe sitting and talking is their arousal cue. And that’s
Dan: yeah,
Lisa: helps feed that, that
Dan: the arousal.
Lisa: they’re asking for that because they know they can’t get to step six, they can’t get to third base if they didn’t pass first base. And their first base happens to be sitting and talking about their day,
Dan: So don’t discount your arousal cues,
Lisa: [00:44:00] right?
Dan: lean into your intuition. You probably know what it is.
Lisa: You know, what makes you feel connected?
Dan: Yes. You know what it is. So trust your intuition and lean into that.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Dan: work with your spouse to make room for that. To be a part of your, uh,
Lisa: I describe it like, we have to be able to get naked physically and emotionally. We can’t
Dan: Uhhuh.
Lisa: get naked in one arena. And sometimes people really struggle to take their emotional clothes off
Dan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa: be emotionally naked in front of somebody.
Dan: And I like how you said if the physical is struggling, lean more into the emotional, if the emotional starting, you can lean more into the physical too. Like understanding
Lisa: They work
Dan: the work.
Lisa: and you have to shift your, that differentiation concept. You’re shifting your
Dan: Yep.
Lisa: between the two all the time in order to stay stable.
Dan: That’s good.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dan: Where can people go to learn more about you and your work and your practice?
Lisa: I practice. Okay. Um, I’m licensed in many states, but my in-person practice is in North Texas at Hidden Lakes [00:45:00] Counseling. so places you can learn about me is I have a website, lisa eliason.com, that talks about all my projects. I have book on Amazon, so, um, gosh, I am on Facebook at Dr. Eliason, Dr. Lisa Eliason, sorry, at Dr. Lisa Eliason. and then my practice, practice where my office is, is at Hidden Lakes Counseling.
So that’s on@hiddenlakescounseling.com. You can find me there, but if you’re like, Hey, I can’t remember not, I can’t remember all those details, just tell me where you are. I would say go to lisa eliason.com and you will find links to all the things I got my hands in right now.
Dan: Great. Good.
Lisa: it’s kinda my depository for all things where to find me and what I’m doing and what I’m writing and where I’m speaking, and just wherever my stuff is.
Dan: Very good. Awesome. Well look to having you back on the podcast again sometime in the future. This has been a great conversation.
Lisa: fun. Thank you for inviting me. I love this topic. I could talk about it all day. It is so much fun. And I love the work you’re doing [00:46:00] for couples. Dan, keep it up. They need it so much. Um, yeah, keep going. Like all of you and the work we do, all everybody out there who’s struggling to make their relationship work, keep the struggle up because that is so important for our defined growth in our lives.
So keep going.
Dan: Yeah. Well thank you very much.
Outro
Holy cow, wasn’t that such a great conversation? I love Lisa’s energy and her passion. Anyway, thank you for listening. Please share this podcast with your friends, and now it’s your turn to go get your marriage on.
