Renee Yvonne [00:00:01]:
Hey, everybody, it's Renee Yvonne. And today I have another question that I'm going to answer from one of our listeners. And the question is, can I give more advice on how to get in the mood when I have very little interest and how can I reconnect with my partner? This is a great question. It's something that I work with people on all the time. And so I'm going to give a few suggestions on this and let's see how it goes. All right, everybody. So first of all, I want to welcome you. If you haven't been listening, this is your first time here.

Renee Yvonne [00:00:39]:
Rather, this is the Pleasure Years podcast. This is the podcast for people over 50 who want to reconnect and reignite the passion in their relationships. And I'm Renee Yvonne, the certified self sex counselor. And today I'm going to be doing Q and A. And if you have a question that you'd like to ask, please use the form in the show notes to submit your question. And I am happy to answer those questions. I typically answer them here and I do them anonymously. Notice I didn't say who this was from, but I answer them anonymously.

Renee Yvonne [00:01:14]:
And in some cases I will do a YouTube video because sometimes it's easier to show it than to talk about it. Okay, so this question about more advice on how to get in the mood when you have little interest. And this is something that can happen to any couple at any time. You've been together for a while, you've had children or work has gotten in the way. Just things just happen. Life is lifing, right? And so sometimes what happens is that the intimacy gets put on the back burner. And that can be detrimental, of course, to the relationship. So I want to give a few ideas, a few tips on what you can do to get in the mood when there's not a lot of interest there.

Renee Yvonne [00:01:57]:
So if we were in a session and this is one of those things, I'll end with that. We were in a counseling session together. One of the things I would ask is, why don't you have very much interest in it? There could be a variety of reasons. So it could be something as simple as we just have different work schedules. I'm tired. We've been up, you know, dealing with a remodeling of the home is taking a lot of our energy from us, or, you know, we've been working a lot. That's taking a lot out of us. So it could be something simple like that.

Renee Yvonne [00:02:30]:
Just life. The other thing could be, and this I think happens for a lot of people. They are asexual and they're, that is a thing people just, that's not their jam. They're not motivated by sex in any way. And so sometimes you might have to explore that part. If you just, if you're like, you know, I could go pretty much the rest of my life not dealing with this. That may be something to look at that you just may be an asexual person. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Renee Yvonne [00:02:57]:
You just have to figure out how to embrace it. This, the third reason could be that there, there could be some trust issues. There may be something that has happened in your relationship or outside of the relationship. Some people are dealing with trauma from previous relationships and that is creating an atmosphere in your relationship of not having a lot of interest in sex. And so what happens especially for, for some women if they've been in men, I'm going to say if you've been sexually molested in a way, it can make you shut down and not want to have any sexual relations with people. So once you kind of rule those, those out, right? Let's say you rule those out, you're like, I'm not asexual. I love getting it on. I haven't had any trauma or I have, but I've dealt with it.

Renee Yvonne [00:03:49]:
It's not that we go back to the first one, which could be just life is just in the way. And that's one we can definitely work with. So let's look at that. So one of the first things you can do is to explore touch beyond the bedroom. Explore what it's like just to like, go dancing, do yoga together, go for a hike, cook together, do some things that bring you close together that are outside of the bedroom. Then you start talking, you start laughing, you start touching, and that way you're kind of getting in touch with each other again without the pressure of I've got to perform, I've got to do all these things that make this my partner happy. Okay? So think about how you can explore touch beyond just being in the bedroom. The second thing is to, I'm going to suggest, is to engage your senses.

Renee Yvonne [00:04:41]:
So we think about being sensual. Being sensual means that you're engaging your senses. That's the, the root of it. And so this could be something like lighting candles, lighting fragrant candles, lighting massage candles, which you can then use that oil to pour in your partner's and, and give them a nice massage with that oil. It could be using massage oils and the scent from that. It could Be. It could be, sorry, Using some type of fabric to rub it across your partner's skin. Maybe is velvet or something very soft and furry or maybe a silky.

Renee Yvonne [00:05:26]:
Okay, so in doing this, what happens is you're engaging all of your sense. And those things can feel really good. The touch might feel good. The sight of the low candlelight might turn you on. The scent from the massage oil, the massage candles can be very inviting. So this is another way to kind of get in the mood when you're not really in the mood. The third one is to experiment with fantasy and role playing. I have a blog post I'm going to link to this, and this is.

Renee Yvonne [00:05:56]:
This one is kind of fun because it takes you out of yourself and sometimes it's fun to pretend to be somebody else. And you can get really into this. You might decide, you know, to buy a wig or costume and the two of you dress up and you just act it out. It doesn't have to be scripted like a Hollywood movie, of course, but you can play around with this. So you could do some, you know, you can make it kind of fun. Like maybe you. You're going to go look at a house and you say, you know what? We're going to pretend like, you know, you're the realtor and I'm the person looking to buy the house. And in order to get the house, I've got to perform a favor to you, right? And so you could just make this.

Renee Yvonne [00:06:36]:
You can make it as fun or as you want. You can pretend like you don't know each other. This is something that my partner and I do. I walk up to him and go, hey, are you here by yourself? And he's like, no, you know, like, who you here with? You know, we'll play around like that. And so that can be fun to do. It, you know, provides laughter. You kind of giggle a little bit, gets you in the mood. So experiment with fantasy and role playing.

Renee Yvonne [00:07:01]:
The fourth one is to experiment with erotic content together. So I'm going to put another link in the show. Notes. Lelo is a. They sell sex toys, but they have a little portion on their website where they do audio erotic stories. And this is something that you can definitely play around with, listen to it together and see if it gets you in the mood. You could do videos, of course, if you're okay with looking at porn, but you could also do educational videos. One place I suggest you look instead of looking at, like, porn that is commercially available online.

Renee Yvonne [00:07:47]:
That's probably not the right word, but very staged you might want to check out a site called Make Love, Not Porn. And it's real regular people having sex. So the bodies aren't perfect. You know, it's. It's regular folks having sex and film it. And if you're so inclined, you can also be one of those regular people. They pay. They split the profit for people that way.

Renee Yvonne [00:08:12]:
So you might want to look at that. I'll put that in the show notes, too. In fact, let me make a note of that. And then there is. So that may be another way you want to look at. Or you could go to your local adult shop, you could buy a book, read those erotic stories together, and that can get you in the mood. The last one I'm going to mention is sort of next to last one I have. One more is to schedule sexual activity with each other.

Renee Yvonne [00:08:40]:
Now, a lot of people think this isn't romantic. I hear this all the time, like, oh, Renee, that sounds unromantic. And my answer is always no. What's unromantic is not having sex for a long time because you're waiting for, like, romance to just, like, pop out on you. That's not how that works. And so sometimes you need to take the time to plan an evening together. And it can be exciting. It's kind of like when you plan a trip and you, you know, you two, let's say you're going to.

Renee Yvonne [00:09:08]:
You're going to Greece. And you're like, oh, my God, we're going to Greece. And you buy the tickets and you find a hotel and you figure out what you're going to do. That excitement builds up, right? You get on a plane, you're excited. Like, everything is exciting. And then you get there, right? But there's a whole lot of stuff that's going on before that that brings out all of the excitement for you. And so that's what you want to do here. So before, let's say, you say, okay, we're going to have sex Thursday night at 8pm you block your calendar.

Renee Yvonne [00:09:37]:
Nothing else takes precedence over that. But between, I don't know, whenever you decide that and Thursday, think about what you can do. Okay, we're gonna have dinner together. I'm gonna buy this lingerie. I'm gonna maybe get a toy or something for us to play with. Maybe I'll buy some candles, you know, maybe I'll get new bed sheets. And so you think about all the ways you can make this particular night special, which builds up your excitement. Okay, so those are five suggestions I have to help get you in the mood when you don't have a lot of interest.

Renee Yvonne [00:10:10]:
And the last one I'm going to say, and this is the bonus one, is to sign up for my pleasure prescription counseling session. Now let me tell you a little bit about that. This is the perfect time to do it. I'm testing it out. I'm looking for five couples to test it out at a very low price. It's 197 after January 31st is going up to 597 in exchange for this low price. What I'm looking for are testimonials and reviews on how it can be tweaked. But people mostly to say, hey, this really helped me.

Renee Yvonne [00:10:42]:
My, my wife and I are doing great again. My husband and I are back on track. I'm looking for those kind of testimonials and I'll have that in the show notes on how you can sign up for that. And so what you get with this, these sessions, is two 90 minute sessions. We're going to talk about all the things going on on your relationship, what you want to change, where you want to be, how you want to get there, how we can help you. The second thing that you get unlimited email support. So in between the two sessions, you have 90 days to do this. In between those two sessions, you're going to email me how things are going.

Renee Yvonne [00:11:20]:
If you need something tweaked, we'll tweak it. You'll get one to three pleasure prescriptions. And pleasure prescriptions are kind of similar to what I did here. They'll be more customized to you though. So for instance, if you come to me and you say, you know, Renee, we're dealing with erectile dysfunction right now. I'm like, okay, here's, here's what we're going to do. Here's the prescription that we're going to do for the diagnosis of erectile dysfunction. And I'll come up with the steps you need to take the prescription on how to overcome this or how to live with this.

Renee Yvonne [00:11:53]:
And then lastly, you'll get a 30 minute follow up session with me. And during that session, what we'll do is talk about what worked, what didn't, and how we could tweak it. The sessions though are really important because I'm not only going to counsel, but I'm going to teach. And so a lot of things that happen in couples is there's just a lack of education about the pleasure anatomy, not just regular anatomy. Like we all know this is where my butt is. And I know where my penis is, but there's a lot of parts that we're not paying attention to that can help us in our erotic life. And that's what I want to talk about. That's what I'll teach about.

Renee Yvonne [00:12:29]:
And then we'll also discuss what's going on in your relationship and how we can make it better. So, again, it's 197. It'll be that price until the 31st. And it's going up to 597. Right now, I'm looking for five couples to help make that happen. Okay? So I hope I answered the question. If you have questions, please feel free to submit it in the link, in the form, in the show notes. And in the meantime, I will see you next week.

Renee Yvonne [00:12:55]:
And remember, pleasure never gets old. Bye.