← Highest Self Podcast®
Highest Self Podcast®
589: How To Have A Spicy Love That Lasts Forever with Sex Expert Dr. Cheryl Fraser
01:30:50
💭What if I told you that your spirituality and your sexuality aren’t separate but deeply intertwined? That your pleasure, passion, and connection to your body are just as sacred as your meditation practice?❤️❤️ The feminine thrives...
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- [00:00]
A
Why is it that you're so excited, you're having amazing sex and then all of a sudden there's things that just feel more important.
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B
There are three key areas to a great long term relationship. What I call the three keys to passion. What are they, Cheryl? Well, you can maybe have a shit hot sexual encounter. I'm not denying that at all. But for depth and breadth, maybe spirit and meaning and transcendence, you need all three. There's an entire turn on from toes to crown chakra to be explored and get lazy. When's the last time you licked the back of your partner's knees? Everybody. Wow. Just saying.
- [00:37]
A
Do you have any practices to maintain sexual polarity and build intimacy and connection?
- [00:44]
B
Sexual charge is very difficult to maintain. But there are two types of sexual desire and this is not caught enough. The first one is the one we all love.
- [00:53]
A
And that's just Flow, surrender, let go.
- [00:56]
B
Chest flow, surrender, let go I'm the one I've been waiting for Trust Flow.
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A
Surrender, let go Chest, flow, surrender, let.
- [01:05]
B
Go Trust, Flow, surrender, let go I'm.
- [01:08]
A
The one I've been waiting for. Welcome back to the Highest Self podcast. My name is Sahara Rose and on this podcast I love to take spirituality and make it modern, fun, grounded and relatable, especially the more feminine approach. And if you're wondering what is the feminine approach and how is it different? Well, the feminine path is the path of the body, the path of the womb, the path of dance, the path of emotions, the path of feeling, the path of love, sexuality, food, pleasure, children, earth, the void, darkness, all of it. It's all comprised in one. It's the path of being alive. In Vedic spirituality we say tantra to weave with, to be one with all. And that has been the path that I have been on. I know if you're listening to this, you likely are on that path of, of wanting to be with all the things. And sometimes you can find yourself in all of the noise and all chaos. And it's like also finding that north Star as well, and finding that stillness and that yin and that yang within yourself and finding harmonies between your energies. And it is a lifelong practice. And I feel like there are time periods in our lives that we're heartbroken. It's like all of our emotions and time periods, we're like fully living our dharmas and, and so much in between. And, and that's what I love to bring on this podcast, all different experiences and personally interview teachers of myself, people who I look up to, people who I learn from. And today that's who you're going to learn from in this episode. So a year and a half ago I was on the S Factor retreat, which is Sheila Kelly's incredible healing through embodiment and dance retreat. And I'll link her episode below. And there was this incredible speaker there, Dr. Cheryl Fraser, who you're going to hear from today. And I was like, when I'm older, this is who I want to be. Like, this is who I want to be. Like, God, this is my North Star.
- [02:56]
B
Like, I don't know what's going to happen.
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A
I was like, like six months out of my divorce, like, not really sure. And I was just like, she is so fucking co. Like she's just herself. And she wrote this book about Buddha in the bedroom and bringing Dharma with sexuality. And she gave us the homework of going home and having a pleasure practice. And I was like, yes. And she was just so amazing. And I started listening to her podcast and reading her books and I was just like, I need to have her on. So this has been over a year in the making and I'm so excited because I honestly find it so rare to find like female pioneers that we can look up to. This really is such a male dominated space and I feel like in our spiritual, you know, world we really look up to a lot of like more masculine characteristics and we kind of look down on sexuality. And I really love how she's interwoven the two. She is a clinical psychologist, a bestselling author, she's worked with the likes of Tony Robbins and Jack Canfield. She. But like more than that, she's just so freaking cool. She's like the mom, the grandma you wish you had. And I'm like so excited to ask her questions today on preserving passion in long term relationships, the different pillars of sexuality and why Sometime you're like, why is the passion gone? Or why am I turned on by this person? It's cuz something else is missing. She had a divorce ritual of releasing her first husband and I'm really curious to learn more about that. And we'll see where spirit takes us. And before we drop into this episode, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast. That is the best way to stay up to date on the latest episodes. We've got this in video format so if you're just hearing my voice, be sure to also watch our fabulous outfits on video as well on Spotify, YouTube or the Apple Store. This is the best way to stay in the flow with future conversations. And also Allows the podcast to reach more people. So hit subscribe so I can keep vibe with you on all future episodes. Now let's get into this one. Without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Cheryl on the High Self podcast.
- [04:54]
B
Hello, darling. I might have to take you to task for the grandma comment, but I love you.
- [05:00]
A
I mean, if only I could be half of the swag that you have. It's so freaking amazing, so inspiring. And it's just like, yes, like a sensual alive in woman. It just gets better with time.
- [05:10]
B
Yes, it absolutely does. If you don't cut yourself off from your source, from libido, from spirit, from heart, from living in alignment with your depth and also not thinking. It takes a lover to make you complete few things like that.
- [05:27]
A
Preach, preach, preach. So I'm curious for you, as you know, a psychologist and coming from this clinical background, what was it like for you even talking about sexuality? Because I know a lot of women listening to this, they would love to share more about this, but they're afraid of the judgment. So how has that journey been?
- [05:43]
B
Well, it's interesting. I was always really, in a healthy way, really interested in sexual pleasure and who we are. My very first vibrator was my Snoopy electric toothbrush. And I tell you, a dog isn't only a boy's best friend. And I started a solo sexual masturbation practice fairly young. I don't really know when. 10, 11, 12. And it just was this thing I discovered that had so much obvious physical pleasure and joy, but without ever being caught or shamed. I didn't grow up in a household that had a particular religious or other. You know, I wasn't getting messaging directly that this was bad or naughty, but just from being alive in North America, insert other cultures here. I felt shame about this glorious thing I was doing. And I remember it's at the time I had braces and I had this terrific orthodontist. And don't worry, this is not a creepy story at all. It's a lovely story. He was a delightful guy. And you go to get your braces tightened, which really hurt back then, and he be playing like the yellow submarine song of the Beatles and dancing around and we all just loved him. And here I was having this internal wrestle as a girl about this sexual pleasure practice I discovered, which I figured was, you know, uniquely mine and no one else knew about it. And I started giving myself this story of I should stop. Because if anybody knew I did this, they would judge me, they would think I was disgusting. And so I Used him as he's such a great guy that I want his admiration. He's such a sweetheart. If he knew I did this filthy little thing on my own, he would think less of me. And it breaks my heart that without any objective shaming that so many of us get, I still had just soaked into my little sponge, like, being that maybe this was dirty or wrong. So that was kind of the beginnings of what became a real interest. I had a gorgeous losing my virginity. I chose someone, dated him. He was five years older, waited till I was really ready. I mean, blessings on this guy who I still adore and thank him for everything and his kindness. But we were madly in love. He was 21, I was 16. And we were making out for hours. You know, back when you had a rule that you weren't going to go below your collarbones and just all of your eroticism and all of your joy was on your lips and your tongue, and you could be every nerve ending alive with sensuality and desire. And eventually I was comfortable with him and it was all led by me. Here's the thing, Sahara. I've heard so many female losing my virginity stories, and I've never heard one as beautiful as mine. And I think it's because I had an awareness of how sacred this was, as well as really fucking hot. And so eventually, because I was good at having orgasms and I loved my clit and it was a good thing, he would eventually, when I invited him to, he would go down on me and give me oral sex and give me great orgasms. We didn't have intercourse for another couple months. So I was slowly yielding and offering and inviting. And he was such a freaking sweetheart. He never pushed or asked when I was ready, like crawling the walls ready. That's where we had intercourse. And it was great because he already knew how to make me come and sex was already fun. So all of that leads to fast forward. You know, in my teens and twenties and thirties, eventually I go to school for psychology, and then eventually I go for clinical psychology. After a few other pathways into almost medical school, I got because I was interested in the medical side and all sorts of stuff. And after 13 years of university education at the best institutions, I didn't get a single class in sexuality. You can be and everybody buyer beware. If you're looking for couples therapy for you and your relationship, just be aware this is not a diss on the profession. I love the profession. The vast majority of couples therapists have no training in sexuality. Think about that. You're going for help with your romantic relationship and you're with someone who probably isn't comfortable talking about sex, does not have the training to help you with everything from premature ejaculation or pain or low desire or no desire. So I kind of got a little pissed off about that and went for a postdoc in San Francisco and got some training there, but I had to seek it. So in all of that, I always like to teach. Like you, I have an improv background, an acting background. I used to have a full time radio show giving love and sex advice way back in the day. And I just wanted all of us to hear reliable science based real data about why your long term relationships are harder than you think. It will be that when we fall in love, it's so easy. Not always, of course, but it's really easy to be attracted and interested and talk for hours. And I wanted to do my best to crack that code. And there weren't the answers. I couldn't find the answers. So after grad school I was a really highly awarded student and I was expected to go be a professor in an Ivy League school and instead I just got a backpack sister and I went to India and I went on a Buddha dharma search and was going to various retreats and went to teachings with his Holiness the Dalai Lama, where I split my time between looking at the Dalai Lama and being lit up by this deep Tibetan teachings and staring at Richard Gere, the actor who was also there. This is like in the late 90s and Richard Gere was my crush from anybody old enough back from office in a gentleman days. And so I'm like spirit, sexuality, enlightenment, real life. And that journey is what has eventually brought me around to where I am now. I just turned 60, girlfriend, and now I can see in this last decade how to bring deep grounded Dharma in your language, your soul's purpose in Buddha Dharma, which is such a close cousin to everything you do. You know just the nature of reality. Who am I on this planet? And that's a not me, but that's for a whole different podcast, isn't it? Where we get into non self. And all of that led to how can we effectively be in the world and live a secular life, ideally with love and passion, with a human if we desire it, but also not lose sight of the bigger meaning of life. I don't know if that made sense or not, but that's a little bit.
- [12:10]
A
Of it made all the sense, so deeply resonating. So let's be real, when you're hanging out with your girlfriends. We often start talking about romance, steamy experiences, things that get our heart fluttering. And the truth is, as women, what really turns us on starts in the mind. We need a story. We need a love story. We need the notebook or maybe a Court of Thorn and roses or 50 shades of gray or whatever your flavor is. And when I hear some of these stories on Dipsea, I'm like, like, these women who wrote these stories are creative and I am obsessed. So if you haven't heard of Dipsy, it is an app with over a thousand spicy audiobooks, all crafted by a team of professional writers and top tier narrators. Whether you're looking for a rugged cowboy or a Scottish sailor, bay royalty or the God of Rogerslan, that's what I'm looking for. You'll love the characters that you find on Dipsea, so they have a really easy to explore app. You can search your favorite romance genres like contemporary historical, dark sports, western romance. The list goes on. And for listeners of the show, Dipsy is offering an extended 30 day free trial. When you go to dipseastories.com Sahara that's 30 days of full access for free. When you go to D I P s e a stories.com Sahara and you can find that link in the show notes.
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B
So trust your intuition, trust your inner wisdom, trust you in the guidance.
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A
Let's talk about long term relationships.
- [13:38]
B
Yeah.
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A
Why is it that across the board, you're so excited, you're having amazing sex, you start getting comfortable, you start nesting and then all of a sudden you're too full and you know. Yeah, there's things that just feel more important. Right. And then you find yourself like, you know, a friend of mine, I remember when she was single, she was like, sara, I think I'm addicted to my vibrator. And I was like, it's okay. And now she's like, sahara, sometimes I pretend to be asleep so my husband doesn't try to have sex with me. And I'm like, isn't it so funny? Like how we shift? So what is going on here?
- [14:09]
B
That's all the things. Basically all of my work is the attempt to answer that question. Answer it in ways that are relatable, that makes sense to people and that they can run with. I run a three month program where I teach what I call the three keys to passion. So passion triangle. If you're watching this on video, I'm making a triangle. Sahara's doing it too. And so I want you to visualize a triangle. If you're not seeing the video and that there are three key, key areas to a great long term relationship. And by the way, this may surprise people, when I say long term, I mean more than just a handful of years, more than two or three or four years, right? Because you can certainly have a big crash in these three areas. What are they, Cheryl? Well, I call them intimacy. That's the base of the triangle. On the left side you've got thrill and on the right hand side you've got what I call sensuality. Let me describe these briefly for everybody. They can obviously go elsewhere in my work to learn a lot more about it because we have certain things we want to focus on today. So when I use the word intimacy, I'm not using it as a euphemism for sex the way we often do in English. It's a fine way, you know, to say we were intimate last night. I use the word differently here. I'm talking about psychological, emotional, relationship, intimacy. So I'm talking about deep, rolling, wandering conversations that last for hours. I'm talking about the kind of conversation we're already having where you're starting to learn more. The depth of someone and find out what lights them up, what their fears are, what their greatest moments and what their greatest hopes are. That deep, meaningful conversation that often comes a lot easier when we're dating. My first date with my now hubby, we talked for four hours and it was like, there's gonna be a second date. I had another date set up after him and that guy was like, 30 minutes, I'm outta here. But anyway, so intimacy includes that, but it also includes a lot of really fundamental, basic, you know, blood and guts aspect of being in relationship. Communication, conflict resolution. Do you have ongoing neg of repeating arguments that's the same like laundry list of the greatest hits of our mutual resentments and you end up in that argument. You don't know how the hell to get out of it. Probably your childhood and his here, their whoever you love, however you love, partner their childhood, are having a little party above your heads with each other while you two big ass grown adults are like, why the fuck are we fighting about this again? Why is this petty stuff driving us apart? So we got to really look at that, figure out what it's about, where it comes from, what the depth is and how to truncate it when it starts to happen. I teach people a timeout technique that when we're getting flooded and we're irrational, we can at least step back. It's way harder than it sounds, but get to where you can stop the carnage and to become an expert at repair. I have a podcast episode I call Apologize like a mofo. Like really learn how to apologize, but not like I'm sorry, but death, where I own this. I am better than this. You are owed more than this. How can I do better? So that's some of what I put under the intimacy side of the passion triangle. There's a bunch more, but basically, how emotionally, psychologically, and communicatively close, adept, skillful, and wholesome are you? The second side. This one's really easy and you can answer it right now. When I say, what do you miss the most about falling in love? Name some of the things that are so easy and fun about dating someone you're excited about or falling in love. What do you miss?
- [17:38]
A
Ooh, the butterflies, the excitement, the hope. The desiring to be closer and closer and merge with that person.
- [17:47]
B
Yes.
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A
The mystery, the fantasy. I mean, there's so much. It's the best drug on earth. It is the best drug on earth.
- [17:56]
B
It's like the world's greatest roller coaster ride. Enjoy the hell out of it. I love falling in love, but the roller coaster is going to pull into the station and then you got to look at the next step. So thank you. That was a gorgeous answer. Ask that question. What do you miss about falling in love of tens of thousands of people in my free workshops where they come learn this stuff and they say all those things. Butterflies is in each and every one we remember. Right. So thrill is all of the things you just said. The excitement, the interest, the attraction, and also girlfriend, the effort, for goodness sakes. We wore better underwear, all of us. And we put effort into planning how to tantalize or impress or light this person up. You. You don't. Well, if you do, I'm not going to date you a third time. But you generally don't phone it in on the second date. You think of something interesting or different or. My first date was a blind date. Whole hilarious story to that one day. And the second date he said he would plan. And he gleaned from our four hour beautiful breakfast conversation that I was eating vegetarian at that time and that I loved tea. And so he found in Chinatown, on Vancouver island, in Victoria, he found a vegetarian cafe that did high English town. I mean, that's effort, right? He listened, he planned something. So that's thrill. And everybody listening relates to it right away. And here's the part that breaks my heart. And I also want to give people a loving kick in the Ass. Here is, what are you doing about that? Now, if you're in a committed relationship, a chosen committed relationship, come on, when's the last time you lit your partner up with an exciting out of the box date? Even if they get home and they're tired and they look kind of run down, you're like, baby, hey, put on your shoes, we're out of here. And you know, take them bowling or something. But the element of novelty is why it was so easy, which you understand when we were falling in love or dating, we made the effort, it was new, it was exciting. Well, after five years or 55 years, we need to learn to create or recreate a new type of thrill with our partner by being very intentional. I teach a lot, mate. Make love intentional. Make your love life a hobby. Okay, here's another skill testing question for you. Love. What are the aspects of a hobby? Like, what defines a hobby? What makes it different from work? What would you say?
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A
Something you're doing merely out of pleasure, that you're not trying to monetize.
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B
Bingo. You're such a clever monkey. Exactly. We do it because we want to. We don't get paid for it. And with a hobby, if it matters to us, everybody listening, underline that one. If it matters to us, we make the time for it. It right. If you really love golfing or surfing or making bone china or learning how to cook new recipes, you make time for it. If it matters to you, there's always time for what matters the most. But when I ask this, all these couples, they say, and I say, I want you to be really honest, write down how many hours in the last seven days. Everybody listening can answer this in your head right now. Did you prioritize your relationship like it was a hobby? And then I get all these, these chagrined, shifty eyed looks and they say like maybe half an hour, say right when you were trying harder, how much would it have been? And it might have been five hours, 10 hours? Look, we've all got insanely busy lives. Self created, by the way, we might want to look at that. But within that, do not tell me there isn't time. Because there's time for social media and there's time for Netflix and there's time to see your best friend when they come into town. All of which are not bad things. But we've got to revive and recreate the thrill. So the third, third side we got intimacy, communication, depth, connection, spirit, emotion, psychology. We've got thrill, falling in love again with the one you're Already with is how I like to say it. And then we get to sensuality, the third side of the passion triangle. And again, you can already tell, like you, I'm a wordsmith and I use words deliberately, not in a lazy way, as best I can. I call the third side sensuality as opposed to sexuality. And your listeners will relate to this. But other people, this might be a head scratch in that sexuality is depending how you define it. But if we kind of say how it's generally defined, that would be, well, things that lead to some sort of orgasmic type pleasure or turn on in some way sensuality in you. Because you're so lit up in this dimension, especially with your recent journeys in your life. You share so beautifully on this show. Sensuality is also stroking your finger down your palm. I mean, do that right now. Now with focus. Yeah. How's it feel?
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A
Orgasmic?
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B
It's yummy, right? And again, I do this with a lot of couples or meditation teachers. I also teach Buddha, Dharma and meditation retreats. And I say, how did it feel? And they say it felt really intense. It felt really pleasurable. It felt lit up. And I say, so what was the special sauce like? If they scratched their palm absent mindedly, it wouldn't feel that way. And I point out, again, this is not news to you. It's simply the power of attention, mindful attention to that touch that makes it an erotic turn on. So sensuality is everything from holding hands to draping your legs over your partner while you're watching a movie. My couch is designed for two people to cuddle on. I don't want to be in two separate parts of the room if we're watching a movie. And it's all the way up through all things erotic, sexual, your kink, your play, your deepest, darkest, gorgeous, dark sexual energy. Simple love making. Simple snuggling naked before you fall asleep asleep, having a shower together. So it's a spectrum of sensuality. And a lot of people are very limited in their definition of their sensual life to not even maybe hugging or snuggling or kissing goodnight or holding hands. Or like when we drive anywhere, whoever's driving, let's say my sweetheart's driving, I'll generally have my hand on his knee or the back of his neck. We love to touch. So one of the first important things I do that maybe came more naturally when we were dating, when the touch of his hand on yours was like. Or her hand was yum. But it's to become deliberate, make your sensual life a hobby and way broaden your definition. So many couples are barely making love at all. And when they do, it's what I call nipple. Nipple, crotch, good night. Bang, bang, boom. Most people relate to that phrase when I use it, and that's not a bad thing. But essentially it means I touch you here, you touch me there. We have our little routine, we've got our dance. Ideally, it leads to turn on and pleasure and orgasm for one or both people, that's not a bad thing. But it's fricking lazy. It's so lazy. And when you were making love to the same person, everyone's circumstances are different. But speaking in broad strokes, earlier in your sexual life, you probably tried different positions more, touched the back of their knees. When's the last time you licked the back of your partner's knees? Everybody just saying there's an entire turn on from toes to crown chakra to be explored. And people get lazy and complacent. So those are the three sides. And if we're focusing on sexuality further in this conversation in a bit, I just want to remind everybody I'm going to make a kind of a bold statement, I guess. You cannot have a great sexual and sensual life unless you're also attending to the other foundations of a relationship. You can maybe have a shit hot sexual encounter with someone. I'm not denying that at all. But for depth and breadth, maybe spirit and meaning and transcendence, you need all three.
- [25:36]
A
So beautifully said and they're so interwoven. So why is it, and there's a plethora of reasons, I'm sure, that this happens, that you know, you love this person and you enjoy having sex with them, but why is it that we stop prioritizing it?
- [25:52]
B
Yeah, in a word, complacency and lack of novelty. How often do we hear this phrase, and I think it tweaks at our heart whenever we hear it or feel it or utter it, it. I love them, but I'm not in love with them anymore. So a few things and you know, I'll go over some groundwork that may be familiar to some but won't be familiar to all when we're in the falling in love phase, essentially. And some people might not love hearing this, it's not very romantic. We're just back to being Neanderthal cave people, you know, I mean, in a hetero cisgender dynamic. And I love all love, whoever you are, however you love, you are welcome in our living rooms right now. I did my PhD research in combating homophobia. So far in this life, I'm heterosexual. Who knows what happens? So whoever you are, however you love. But for this cave example, I'm going to use a cisgender heterosexual. You got the cave guy, and he needs a chick with big hips to make cave babies. He doesn't consciously know that, but the Darwinian imperative is saying, must pass genetic material on. So there is that laser focused, I will have her, you know, and we all still kind of like the fantasy of being picked up, thrown over his shoulder, and marched into the bedroom to be ravished, providing it's consensual and we're in the mood and our yonis lit up. But anyway. And then we've got the female, who essentially, again, not cognitively knows. She needs a strong man to get a cave for her. And the cave babies. We are, you know, so many hundreds of thousands of years past that. But there is some of that going on. And that crazy falling in love ride of the best drug ever. Part of it is conquest, part of it is the lure, the chase, the wooing, the courtship to lock it down. We know that. But in the cave days, what happens after that? Did he keep bringing her like little cave flowers all the time? Shit, no. They had babies. He went and slaughtered animals, and she hoped they didn't starve. The whole dynamic shifts from pursuit and novelty to, ideally, connection, contentment building the next phase of our lives the way you and I both did in our first marriages in around our late 20s, it's, you know, mortgages and careers and whether or not to have children. So the natural evolution of relationship, and this is the bad news, don't shoot the messenger. You've all probably experienced it in your own way, is it's really hard, hard to keep that hot falling in love feeling going. But because we don't even know it, we don't even try. So what I teach people is how to often regain it. I'm not often lucky enough to work with couples that are pretty early on. In my. In my workshops and in my course, it's more. People are like, shit, I love them and I'm not in love with them. We haven't made love in forever. I don't even want to. I have no desire. So there's part of the reason. Psychological, biochemical. There's a flush of all the yummy hormones, you know, about oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin and bonding hormones when we're attracted and falling in love. No step beyond cave people there. We also have this wonderful thing, this cognitive frontal lobe that if you can hear these teachings from me or someone else, if they're out there and go, okay, it's normal and typical that those things start to fade in terms of their urgency, in terms of the them grasping us and shaking us around like your little doggy with a squeaky toy on a holiday morning. Like you are in the grips of that kind of focused, passionate attention and it starts to fade. And then a lot of us misinterpret that as meaning things like, oh, maybe they're not my soulmate. Can I just tell you how much I despise the concept of the soulmate?
- [29:41]
A
Let's hear it, Dr. Cheryl.
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B
Oh, my good God. So if anybody doesn't know, it actually comes from this, and I get it mixed up and I apologize. It's either Socrates or Aristotle. I kind of think it's Aristotle, but I'm not sure we want to quote our sources, right? And they came up with like, we're talking in the old Greek, guys scratching their ass, sitting around in togas. They came up with that the soulmate that were born half a person were half a soul. So we're desperately and sadly wandering this vast planet because somewhere on this planet is the other half of our twin soul. And we can only be complete if we find them. That shit. Oh my Lord, it's so damaging when people say, I found my soulmate. I say, good luck with that. I hope you have found a complex, imperfect, fascinating, flawed, amazing human being who's got the guts and blood and willingness to try to walk the path of long term love with you. Because that's freaking romantic. I accidentally found the half of my broken soul at a dance club and without that, I'm not complete. That's a terrible setup.
- [30:50]
A
But they're always at the nightclub, right?
- [30:53]
B
Yeah, there you go. And maybe they are, but they're not your soulmate. Because all this crazy gorgeous stuff you and I are commiserating on of the lust and the attraction and the locked and loaded, there is some biochemistry to that, but you can have it with someone else later. And actually, I think that's super romantic. I think it's way more romantic that I choose you because there's some really cool stuff going on and I think we've got what it takes to build on that. And I'm aware that I could build on it with other people who would also be fascinating and draw me in certain ways to choose and to say, you're not necessarily this soulmate nonsense, but you're a complex person to build a lifelong love with if that's a model that appeals to each of us, that's amazing. The danger of the soulmate is when we hit a year in, 18 months in, maybe three years in, you know, oh, I'm just not that super excited and jumping up and down when you come home anymore and I love you, but it's kind of blah. People fall into a thought trap, which is maybe you're not my soulmate. So maybe we're fundamentally entrusted couple due to some cosmic Aristotelian craziness that means I should now look for the person who is right for me. And that of course, it's a loop I've certainly been in. I'm not judging or shaming any of us, made all the mistakes, but flip that on its ass the way I like to do and say, kill the soulmate and save your relationship. Look at this perfectly imperfect person. And because I mainly work with people in longer term relationships, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, they're saying, can we recreate what we used to have? And I say, because I'm the bad news bear, because I speak truth sister, no, you can't recreate what you had because you'll never be that new to each other. But the great news is you can co create a new type of thrill, a new type of falling in love, of lighting up both sexually and being interested in your partner's day and say, hey, how was your day? And that takes you deciding to refocus on this amazing human standing in front of you without a wake up call. Ideally, we all get them often because we're not doing this very well and that's okay. The wake up call of my best friend's husband just died. I was just with her before I flew down here. That's a wake up call or a seismic event in the world. The war in Ukraine, 9, 11. That wakes us up and we suddenly look at each other and say, I love you. Oh my God. We don't have forever on this planet that we're aware of past lives, future lives, or not. For this one, I don't know how much time we have or an affair or a diagnosis or a biopsy that you get back. The scary news. I don't want us to wait for a wake up call to begin to see our partner with fresh eyes.
- [33:50]
A
So beautifully said. And I wonder in your perspective, do you feel that there may be a number of. Maybe we don't use the word soulmates, but people that we have spiritual, like karma with like a dance to do. Do you feel there Is any spiritual component to it or do you think it's like merely a matter of we get along with this person, there's a biochemical thing going on. Like I'm curious.
- [34:15]
B
Your right, right. I love that question. And now I'm going to switch hats and sort of come out of the closet about my binary nature. Much like you, I, I teach a lot of relative of profound helpful truths the way you do. But I'm also a hardcore Buddhadharma person. I do three and four month retreats, completely off grid, completely silent study in Tibet, in India with my teacher. Like you, I have an extraordinary spiritual lineage behind me. So in the relative sense, which is profound and we all live in the relative world. It's partly we have a connection here. If we take spirit out of it for now, although it's never out of it, but they're interesting, there's some compatibility, there's some sexual chemistry, there's interest and I think we can make a really interesting life together. But then on the deep, high, broad level that I don't always talk about because some people just aren't that ready or interested and I meet them where they are. But your listeners, you done a very nice job of having them ready to hear that this certainly there can be a karmic connection, certainly there can be some unfinished business or new business or this person is there where we can grow and co create something together. And it doesn't mean we need to be together forever. I had one spiritual guide in my life many years ago and they said they define soulmate differently than I do. And it was beautiful. They said, yeah, a soulmate is someone you meet and you've got something really important to teach each other. Hopefully you learn it fast and you get the fuck out. You get the lesson, you rework that trauma, you bow to each other and you move on. So maybe it partly depends on how tuned in to different wavelengths we each are at different parts of our life journey. And what I mean by that is if you're in a relative fantastic place in your life and you're not really tuned to spirit, then the similar idea of stuff to work out together also works from a fundamental western psychological level. Right. I've got some traumas in this life, childhood, how my parents were culturally, the things you speak about so beautifully. And we may meet someone who's kind of broken bits match our broken bits in a way that we resonate and that's not always bad at all. It can be very empowering to teach each other and love through that but if we want to bring in deep Dharmas, deep spirit, interdependence, working out karmic patterns, then yes, I certainly believe there is an aspect of that. So we can explain it and work with it on the relative level or the absolute level of emptiness of any real phenomena. And there is no real Sahara Rose or Cheryl Fraser. We are constellations of sensations, perceptions, mind, consciousness, and this life patterning that looks like a package we call Sahara Rose and looks like a package we call Cheryl Fraser. And actually we are mind, spirit, Dharma, emptiness. And when we move away from our conditioned stories and patterns, we are, to put it another way, one all connected, all in one large, beautiful melting pot of interdependence. But that's a little bit hard to teach people who are looking to date more skillfully, right? But I love to dance in both waters. That's where the book which is raise some eyebrows. The book Buddhist Bedroom. I teach the four noble truths and fundamental Buddha Dharma. And I help a very relatable way, common sense way to people. And then I teach them the passion triangle and I weave between the two. I think Sahara a lot like the really important work you're doing. I call it Stealth Dharma. What I do is it's in sort of everything I teach, but often it's very subtle because it's not necessarily skillful. As a teacher or a leader or someone attempting to help people ask deeper questions, to bang them over the head with it and potentially have them pull away from language they don't understand or ways of talking about the world that feels so far fetched. And again, I think you do it beautifully in your own way is how can we bring deep teachings of reality, spirit and depth into a secular world? In a way that I believe you and I share the opinion people are hungry for it, but they don't have a language for it. The name of my podcast is Sex, Love and Elephants, which just sounds like a quirky, fun podcast topic. But elephant there means what you would call Dharma, your soul's purpose. What I would call the elephant of awakening. So it's in there to say we're going to talk about your romantic relationships and give hopefully some help, some solutions. But under it all is you're on the back of an elephant. And that elephant is slowly, gradually moving towards full awakening. It's already awakened and you're on its back. And the analogy is you're the monkey, that's the ego that's freaking the fuck out and trying to steer the elephant and telling it what to do and Throwing moldy bananas at it as we try to control life when actually we're on the back of the stream of awakening or the soul's purpose. So I hope that helped a bit. I mean, we could Talk for like 57 hours on this topic.
- [39:30]
A
You know, as I'm listening to you speak, and I know a lot of people listening to this, they're like, that sounds so amazing. But I don't find a lot of men who are deeply spiritual, you know, to have those kind of like intimate hours, long conversation with that can meet me in the spirituality who are also so monogamous. Because men in the spiritual space today are choosing more like open polyamorous relationships or just not even wanting to be in partnerships. I'm seeing just a lot of men just aren't interested in it right now for whatever reason. So I'm finding so many women like myself are like, yes, I'm so craving that. But I am not aligning with the men, and I know that they exist. So I'm curious what your take on that is.
- [40:12]
B
First of all, out, and I'm sorry, because that is you may well be caught up in a, you know, certain zeitgeist of the evolution of the planet and the evolution of human beings. And I'm sorry to hear, because I'm not in the dating game currently. We've been together 11 years. I was in the dating game a bit before that. And I'm a different generation than you. I find that sad and intriguing. I now want to get out there. I want to get out there. Let's go somewhere. Let's go to like a spiritual retreat or something and interact with.
- [40:42]
A
Good luck.
- [40:43]
B
Interview these guys.
- [40:44]
A
I can tell you any experience. It's like, I mean, I ask them why, and I find a lot of men find relationship to be a distraction to take them away from their purpose. But also men in their 30s, a lot of them feel like they're not where they want to be in their lives, right? Mostly financially, but even sometimes in like a personal way. So they're like, I'm not ready for a relationship. So this is why there's the rise of the situationship right now, which is basically like. Like we're hooking up, but we're not going to really talk about it. And I'm not going to talk to you every day so you don't get emotionally attached to me, as if that's the thing, you know, and then this weird vagueness and then woman. Because it's like either celibacy, which is the path I'm on or having some sort of intimate connection, even though it comes with the confusion and oftentimes disrespect it. So I'm finding a lot of women are, yeah, just having a hard time. So I'm curious, any advice that you.
- [41:36]
B
Have, have, don't waste your time on those guys unless it's empowering for you. Unless women listening especially, or maybe in your 20s and 30s, if it's empowering to you to explore with some delight and joy some more casual sexuality, I don't have any moral or any ethical problem with that at all. But if you're connected with spirit and your genitals are connected to your heart and mind. We were chatting just for a few minutes before we started, started recording. And I said how, although I grew up with it, just as I've said about Snoopy and the things I had a very strong, positive, healthy sexuality and great turn on very easy orgasms. I have had barely any one night stands, maybe two or something. And I went, matt, that's not for me. I like it when my sexual joy and depth and bread and passion and kink and delight is also, also moving and weaving with my heart and with my soul and with my, my big old brain and with my spirit. So I would have to get out there and I'm intrigued to, to find out what these men are thinking and not thinking. And I think it's sad, I think when we compartmentalize and we maybe see a committed relationship as some old fashioned ideal, I mean that is earned fairly, but, but presumably none of us want necessarily the pairing our parents had. But I just think it's not very imaginative to think I am not there yet to then engage in the deepest, scariest, most profound personal growth, epic journey in the fucking world, which is to attempt to walk a path of longer term love with one person. Because that's when you are going to meet your shadow. I love. There's a Buddhist teacher, an American Buddhist teacher, Joseph Goldstein, and he says if you think you're enlightened, spend a week with your family. And I take his quote and I up it a notch. If you think you're enlightened, try to walk the path of long term love. So good luck and I'm being a little playful here and I sound a little bitchy, so I apologize for the bit of bitchy, but good luck getting fucking close to enlightenment and getting awakened and becoming spiritually adept not in interrelationship. We can all go to the mountain sister and get a hut. I've done it and I will do it again. And where you can get to in your consciousness and your growth and your meditation and your understanding of the universe to switch some languaging here, you come down off that mountain, you're going to be triggered by your shit that is not yet purified. And that's what my darn root guru told me. This is back in 2012. I had just completed a three month really deep lockdown retreat on a Tibetan practice called Vajrayogini. You might be familiar with it, but she's a Tibetan deity archetype that is wearing a necklace of 52 severed heads which represents cutting off the 52 defiled mind states. She's naked, her yoni's on display, she's red, she's baring her teeth, she's dancing with a skull cap filled with menstrual blood. Bitch has it going on. And I've been in that retreat for three months. And I had an interview with my teacher toward the end and I was asking him about taking lay vows to be be a layperson, but ordained and as a Tibetan layperson nun. And he said, well, we could certainly contemplate that, Cheryl, but you know, are you in romantic relationship? And I said no. Because in my mid-40s I chose to be celibate and to not date. And for the first time I felt like I was fulfilled solo. And that had not been my journey till my mid-40s. It was always a deep longing for depth, partnership. And I said to him, him llama Mark. I said, I'm not in relationship. And he said, why not? Which was not what I expected him to ask. I went into this final interview with my teacher on that retreat with like these really esoteric, deep, profound, possibly show offy meditation questions. And instead he's asking me why I'm not in romantic relationship. And I'm like, so I had to go deeper. And I said, well, because when I'm in a romantic relationship, I'm kind of crazy. Like, my clinging comes up, my attachment stuff comes up. I can get like kind of messed up in my head. I am so much happier now. I'm calmer, I'm not rattled all the time. And he said, huh? And he said, well, you know, Cheryl, relationship can be a really important part of the path. This is my Tibetan teacher. I'm like, okay. So I blew that off. Blow off your guru's advice at your peril. And I blew it off and went on to my esoteric meditation questions of depth and profundity. Then my dear friend was driving me back Ontario, the cabins where we'd been in this deep retreat for three months. And she said, so, you know, how did it go with Llama Mark with your interview? And I said, oh, it was great. I asked him. Esoteric bullshit, crazy stuff. And I said, yeah. And it was weird. He asked me about am I in relationship? And when I said no, he said, you know, Cheryl, relationship's another part of the path. I said, we were just chatting. And she said, oh, no, the llama doesn't just chat. That was a teaching. I'm like, fuck off. And she says, no, that was a teaching. I'm like, whatever. Three months later, I meet the guy I'm now married to and I meet him not looking. I'll keep this really brief, but I'm a writer as well, and I used to write columns for print magazines regularly every month. And back then I was writing for a magazine on sex, love and relationships once a month. My editor said, I want you to do an article on Internet dating in your 40s. And this was 12 years ago. So it's just before the apps, probably Tinder or whatever the first one was, wasn't out yet. So we're talking old school Internet dating, eharmony, buffalo time, match.com, plenty of fish. So I'm okay, great. I'd love to tell women in their forties how to Internet date. So because I'm a good journalist, I wanted to do my research. So I went on all those sites and I quickly sent up a really quick profile because I wasn't looking to date. And you know, if you're really looking to date, you should spend some time on that profile and put up all the pictures of you and your cute dog. I just put up one recent picture from the weekend before. I wrote a very quick profile. I'm a pretty good writer, so it was quirky and fun. I guess put it up there so that I could quickly search men five years younger to five years older and get a flavor of that, that particular site. Right? Is it hookup? Is it marriage minded? So I could be an informed person as I guided these women about the different things. The next morning I went to cancel all my free profiles because just like today, you can, you can set up a profile for free, but they want your credit card and if you don't cancel it, they charge you. And on one of them there were five emails that had come in overnight from five different men. And I read them. I went, son of a gun. I would go on a date with four of those Guys like one of them had studied Buddhism with Thich Nhat Hanh in France. They were really fascinating. Whatever. Talked to my editor that day and she says, well, you must go on some dates. I said, no, I must not. I'm not looking. She said, but you're single. It's not disingenuous. You're not being unfair. Fair. Long story short, I went on five dates for the article. My now husband was the fourth date. And on that date he said, so what are you looking for? I said, well, honestly, I'm not like I'm really happily solo. I'm not looking. I don't think I want to be in relationship again. He said, that's really interesting. Well, if you were to be in relationship, what would that look like? And I think said, huh, Well, I guess on the off chance I met someone really fascinating and interested in some of what I'm interested in. I guess I would like potentially maybe long term monogamy, but I wouldn't want to live with someone again, I don't think so. Maybe we spend three or four nights a week together, we travel, we do things. He says, huh, that sounds really good. And then there was a second date and then the rest is history. So the moral of that story is I don't even know anymore, but life. Look how we have ideas of what we want. We think they're soulmates. So back to you and all of your just my heart's breaking for the women of your generation and generations. Those guys that are thinking they need to not be in relationship because they need to be spiritual. Listen to my guru. Relationship is a very important part of the spiritual pass. Get the hell off the mountain some of the time. Get into the blood and guts of of your triggers. I don't mean to be negative, but in your romantic sexual relationships, your triggers are going to come up, your dynamics are going to play out. It is an almost unbelievable opportunity for growth, for compassion, for self awareness. You want to meet your ego and have it bitch slap. You fall in love and try to keep that going. So any guys that have the sense to be listening to this podcast, first of all, yay you. Secondly, tell your other dumb butt friends who think that the spiritual path needs to be accomplished before you get on the path of relationship that it's wrong. And honestly, maybe you need to date older, you know, and guys with some gravitas who are not as, frankly as insecure. And I'm not trying to be unkind at all, but as insecure as a guy who's like No, I gotta have my money together and my whatever together, you know, move on. Know how spectacular you are. And now let's also talk about the fact that girl, you're scary, right? You're absolutely beautiful. You're exploring profound depth in your sexual liberation and joy for yourself. You're successful, you make money. That is not an easy thing. Guy needs good dick to be with that. And that's what you need because you've identified that this time and maybe forever. You're looking for the male energy that comes with a penis. And that's freaking fantastic. But it is not easy easy. I sure as heck, in that dating profile it was all honest. Except I didn't say. I'm kind of a well known sex and love expert. Yeah, can you imagine who I would have got responding? And I didn't use my real name because they could have googled me. Everything else was true, but it was a ways in where I said, actually, you know, one of the things I do. And my now hubby's like, well that's not intimidating at all. He's like, I'm gonna be in bed the first time with you wondering, is she rating me? And he had a laugh. But he also had had the cojones it took to step into that. Oh, he is out there. Or many of them are out there. And circling back to an earlier thing we were discussing, I would say there are many interesting humans, in this case men that would have. And it's, it's a bit arbitrary, but people find this really helpful and I found it helpful at times. I was actively dating. I call it the 7 out of 10 end list. So I want everybody listening to write down all the things you want in a partner and a relationship like and go back to it. Write more, write more. Maybe there's 20, maybe there's 30, maybe there's 40. Some of them are fanciful and fun. Like, you know, they're a multi millionaire who runs a non profit saving every street dog on the planet. That would be one of mine. And then go back to that list and whittle it down to your 10 most important, right? So the millionaire for me is going to go, but loving animals might not. And then of that 10, that's your 10 out of 10 list. That's your fictional soulmate list. The guy who has all of them doesn't exist. But what exists are a lot of quality men or a few quality men who have, let's say, seven out of ten of those qualities. And the next list I want you to make Is any non negotiables on your list of 10? For most of us, there's maybe one or two or three. Three non negotiables on that list. The rest we could probably negotiate. It might be if one wants monogamy, monogamy. That they're interested in a monogamous long term path. It might be for those people who know that children are a very important part of their potential future path. It might be that they want a family, but there should only be 1, 2 or 3. Is everybody listening? How many? Only three non negotiables. Everything else is somewhat negotiable. And that can get us out of the perfect person who meets all my needs. Because even if you meet someone who has nine or 10 out of 10, that'll shift pretty soon because they'll grow and develop and move in different directions and maybe they didn't want a family and now they do or et cetera, right? So we get very stuck in finding the right person. There's no right person. There's a right path path and that's of growth and courage and communication and thrill and sensuality and willingness to learn. And it's hard. It's hard.
- [54:18]
A
Do you feel that us being on the spiritual journey can be enough to inspire him to partake a spiritual journey or that's more dating for potential?
- [54:29]
B
That is a really intelligent question and it may surprise you that my answer is yes, it can inspire him. And if it's a true inspiration, that you are the gateway to his elephant, to his spirit, to his dharma soul's purpose. That is extraordinary. But also, let's give a deep bow of ouch to dating potential. So either or. But honestly, and I have permission from my sweetheart to share anything I share about our relationship or I wouldn't share. He on our first date, he flirted around a little bit of spirituality. He had an interest in Wicca for a little while and kind of the more natural earth stuff, but more of a flirtation and a curiosity. And I told him, you know, whoever I might fictionally be with, because remember, I'm not looking, would need to be okay with me disappearing now and then for three months and being completely unreachable when I do long deep retreat. There's no text, there's no nothing. It's complete lockdown. Me and my mind. Maybe my teacher, if I go see them. And he's like, wow, that sounds really interesting. What's that about fast forward? We've been dating maybe about two months and I was going over to visit with my My dharma teacher, my Tibetan teacher. And I said, hey, I'm going to see my teacher. I'm going to spend a couple days at his cabin. You're welcome to come. He said, that sounds really interesting. So then my sweetheart and I sit down for breakfast with my teacher and two of his long term students that are friends of mine. And you know, there's certain protocols and things, and you kind of just go, hey, teacher buddy, how the hell are you doing generally? And so my sweetheart asked my teacher a question after breakfast. My teacher said, you know, do you have any questions? And my sweetheart said, you know, well, what about ayahuasca and what about this and what about that? And we're all like, oh, fuck no. He did not just ask the teacher about ayahuasca. And like, our toes are curling. I'm like, oh, I'm so, like, whatever. So my teacher, teacher kindly and patiently answered his question. And then my guy kept asking another question and another question and two and a half hours later, the conversation was finished. And that the three of us, my two friends and myself, were just sitting there with our, our jaws metaphorically on the floor. Because when Mama Mark got up and said, it's been lovely meeting you, please come back for dinner if you like, and went off to do something else, my two friends leaned forward and said, did you hear what he just taught your guy? I said, he, yeah, my guy's sitting there going, I have no idea what that meant. And they said, he just laid out the entire path of awakening of Mahamudra in two and a half hours to this guy. I'm like, I, I know. And we go back to the cabin and my sweetheart, I said, you know, what did you think? He's like, I didn't consciously understand most of it, but I have never felt like this in my life. Fast forward 10 years later, he's taken. He's with the same teacher and does deep, profound work and has done six month retreats with that teacher. And he and is a dedicated practitioner of Tibetan Buddha Dharma. I could secretly hope that would happen. Never in a hundred years did I think it would happen. But what I knew I needed, Sahara. And what you know you need, if nothing else, this is huge. That if you find a man who meets you on so many levels and their spiritual path is different, or maybe it's a smaller part of their gigantic being. What you need is someone who applauds you, supports you, celebrates you, and says, you go, girl. You do the things I. I am 100% behind you. I will never Stand in your way. You elevate me by elevating yourself. And that's what I hoped to maybe get with the guy I married because it was pretty clear he was going to be a cheerleader and never stand in my way. From the first date when he's like, I think that's amazing. You away for three months off grid. That's really unusual. Whereas I dated a couple of other guys in those five dates for the article that were like, I would never want to be with someone I couldn't talk to for three months. I'm like, perfect. Next. So I'm answering a lot of these without a definitive answer because we're being too authentic for that. There isn't the, oh, no, don't do that. It would depend on the guy. You might be his portal. The way I was karmically also for my guy to meet his teacher on this life so far, like, wow, what a blessing.
- [58:38]
A
Yeah. We never know what soul contracts we have with people.
- [58:41]
B
I love that. That's a beautiful way to put it.
- [58:43]
A
Yeah. And of course, if someone's interested in you, I find as spiritual woman, you kind of attract two types of people. Like people who are curious about spirituality for themselves and people who want the healing. You know, like broken. Broken. Great, let's get into my traumas. You know, and then it's like, oh, he could be so great if I just, you know, helped him do breath work and heals inner child and this and that and that. And then we like take on like a student and.
- [59:09]
B
Right.
- [59:09]
A
You know, and blocks us from actually sharing our dharma with the world. Because now we're so focused on healing this one person.
- [59:16]
B
And it's also generally, as you would understand, very bad for the feminine energy, masculine energy, sexual dynamic. If you're his teacher, not even an official way, but you're his teacher, nurturer, guide, leader to a large degree. I hope we all do that for each other in smaller ways. It's one of the beauties of learning and going through partnership. But it's it. It. To put it very bluntly, and I know you'll relate to this, if you're helping him too much, you don't want to him. Right. It changed the dynamic in a way that whether it's masculine feminine polarity or the need for feminine to respect masculine in a beautiful way, a co created respect. But to look at your guy and go, you know, he's all that. Even if I make way more money than him or he's got a really simple job that he Enjoys, but he's all that. I respect my guy and I'm not talking about an ugly type of lack of respect. But when we're in a power dynamic around being more of a leader teacher to an extent, that is too much. It's really hard to bring that into the bedroom in a way that works. Again, there can be exceptions, but overall, yeah.
- [60:28]
A
How can a woman, if she has found herself in the mother or healer role in her relationship, unwind that to recreate the polarity?
- [60:37]
B
That's a great question. It's something I struggle with and I'm going to call all of us out here if we find ourselves in a mother nurturing leader role. How much of it was that our partner consciously or unconsciously asked for it? And how much of it is that we're being a super over controlling, good for nothing bitch. Like, no, don't do it that way, do it this way. Because we may have certain strengths at any humans of any genitals and any leanings we might have certain strengths. Strengths. I'm really good with planning, detail and execution. It's why I'm an entrepreneur like you. We can juggle so many things and bring an idea to completion and so that's a superpower. I have to be careful. I don't overbear my sweetheart or my friends or the beautiful people I'm lucky to have work with me in my business and micromanage them, control them and assume my way is the better way. So when we're in that dynamic, and I'm really pleased you brought it up because it's a super common dynamic I see in couples all the way from their 20s to their 70s, where the woman says heterocouples here for this bit. She says, I like to the organizing, I'm the planner. He kind of comes along for the ride. He might be a super sweetheart who's more than happy to do the list I give him. I don't want to keep being the one who creates the list. But I'm in this beautiful privileged position where I get to work with so many men. And when I used to be full time private practice, up until I started the couples business 10 years ago, I work with a lot of police officers, a lot of soldiers, a lot of really men's men in individual therapy as well. Because if you as a, as a shrink, if you have the privilege to work with one police officer and they like you, they're a bit like cockroaches. They tell all their friends. So I have this idea, they go back to the precinct. And they go, hey, so Fraser, she's all right. And they're like, really? Yeah. She doesn't wear hippie dresses. And like you like, I don't know what, she doesn't ask you how you feel. Okay. And they all come see you. So I had this gorgeous window into the masculine mind and the amount of men solo or in their coupledom I've worked with that have said I do try to help. And she tells me I did it wrong. I finally just stopped putting my foot forward because she shoots my suggestions down. And that is the other part. So all the women listening who tend to find themselves in that role, you may be co creating it. And then where can you start stepping back? And guess what? I always teach your partner's not wrong, they're just different. If your partner wants to do it a certain way, how about step back? And I even hate the way that we say this. Allow him, I mean, listen to that. Listen to how condescending that is. Allow your partner to do it their way. As opposed to, I often say, loving the perfectly imperfect person standing right in front of you. I am a control freak. It's one of my shadows. It's something I do not love about myself, but at least I know it's there. And when I find myself over controlling my guy who's pretty go with the flow and pretty chill, so he'll often just kind of let it ride. And I wish he wouldn't, I say, you know, tell me, you know, cheryl, back off or honey, enough already, I can do this. And he's like, yeah, it doesn't bug me too much. I'm like, and I love that. But to help me grow, if you're able to say, hey, hey, you're being, you know, I can do this without you. Love that helps me pull back. So great empathy for that dynamic. I can find myself in it. But part of that is the growth. Part of that is stepping back. I think like a great parent would do, stepping back and giving your child space to make their own decisions, mistakes and learnings. Even if you have more wisdom on that particular thing, maybe to shut the hell up. You know, a great coach won't tell a great client. Like the coaches in your, in your wonderful business. They won't tell a client, I hope, and I'm sure they won't because they're trained by you. Like, here's how you should do it. We might occasionally point a flashlight so that a different hallway is illuminated for that client, client, partner, child to see. There may Be a possible highway down here you might want to explore. I don't know if that's of interest to you, but that's very different than saying no. No, what you need is to shut the door on all those hallways and go this and become a this and do this and you'll be fine. Talk about disempowering. And it's also crap because unless you're a fully awake human being, and I'm not, unless you're a Buddha in this lifetime, and I'm not, you don't know someone's path. You might have some great wisdom to share to help them explore, but their path is something you and I can guess at and be curious about. But it may go in a different direction that we could have never seen because it's not our path.
- [65:30]
A
Do you have any practices that you do with your partner to maintain sexual polarity and build intimacy and connection?
- [65:38]
B
Yes. And let's take this. There's a few things I would love to get out because whenever I speak, I want to get this out to reassure people and audience. This may not apply to the some of the younger generations, but sexual charge is very difficult to maintain and people who've been in a relationship for more than a couple of years know that. So some facts and figures to reassure people that they are normal. I often say the three most important words I ever get the privilege to say in the realm of sexuality is you are normal. People fear that they're the only ones struggling first. First is there are two types of sexual desire and this is not taught enough. The first one is the one we all love. And that spontaneous desire, that's where we are easily turned on. That's where, you know, you kiss good night and you're not meaning to make love, you're really tired, you kiss goodnight, but your tongues touch and suddenly, wow, there's all this gorgeous turn on and desire and arousal and you end up fucking like bunnies and it's amazing and you sleep even better. Spontaneous desire, especially in the earlier times we were talking about earlier in this conversation, thinking about your partner can turn you on physically or mentally. Anticipation, all of that is in the realm of spontaneous desire. Now, there's a terrific researcher called Rosemary Besson. She's part of the University of British Columbia Sexual Medicine Research Unit. And she's one of the first people to talk really beautifully in her research about the second type of desire. This is for men, women, LGBTQ, trans + whom error, which is not spontaneous desire. The yummy, easy one that I miss too but responsive desire. And responsive desire as the name implies, is where you become turned on in response to something that can be thinking, we should probably make love. It's been a long time. It can be I am zero turned on. Babe, would you hand me my vibrator? It can be a number of things, but she says, and I love to quote this of Basson's work, she says the majority of longer term couples start making love from a place of sexual neutrality. What does that mean? It means they start making love when neither of them is remotely turned on. Now that is not something we talk about much. This is not something that is normalized. So everybody, I'm normalizing this. It is normal if you're not very turned on very often anymore. And this can be in your 20s, it doesn't have to be when you're older. So that's the context I want to lay out first. The second thing is that sexual desire discrepancy is really common. Common across any phase of any given relationship. That your desire, your horniness, your desire for how often you want to make love can be mismatched a little bit. I'd like to make love every day. You'd like three times a week. A lot. I'd like three times a week. You're okay with on my birthday. And again, this is a really painful thing. That is so typical and so statistically common. I always want to lay those factoids out for everybody. So fast forward me and my sweetie. He's 58, I'm 60. And like is not uncommon in the, in the female sexual development. Everybody's different. But sometimes, reasonably often during perimenopause and menopause, for example, there's a real change in sexual desire and shutdown. Of course that can be at any phase of the life cycle. It can be through pregnancy, through post child. So many factors can affect our sex drive, psychological work fatigue. You were a jerk to me today. We've been picking at each other, we're worried about our kid. But for me, I had this gorgeous, alive sexuality that was very quite easy for me as I've described until I hit menopause at 52 and Sahara, it's like a light switch was turned off. I was always had more sexual desire than my partners in a beautiful way, not in a huge way. But if anybody was like, I have women made love in a few days, baby, it would tend to be me even more than my red blooded gorgeous male partners in my various long term relationships. So I end up going from easily turned on, easily horny pretty easy. Spontaneous desire, even in my 50s to it's not there. And also changes in orgasm. Where orgasm used to be a 9 or a 10 out of 10 of intensity, it was like, like a 3 or more like a little bit of a sneeze than a wow. So that's context for everybody listening at any generation that spontaneous desire is one thing that we tend to think that's what desire should feel like. And it's easy and it's fun and it's the best thing ever, the roller coaster. But it is pretty rare for that to maintain in long term relationship. Then there's the other things I've now mentioned that can really get in the way. So what do you do with that? What kind of practices, what practical things? And this is where I'm glad there's not a basket of tomatoes and a live audience because they'd be thrown at me right now. I really want everybody to start scheduling sex to put it on the calendar. And then of course the tomatoes come and the cries of that's not very romantic. And I say, you're quite right, it's not very romantic. But you know, it's not romantic never having sex. If something's important to us, we make time for it. Back to the hobby we talked about earlier today. And so, so one thing my sweetheart and I do that I kind of never thought I'd have to do because it would just be like, oh, I'm kind of horny. And even if he wasn't, I'd be like, babe, let's do it. And he's like okay. But now we set aside a certain day of the week and a certain time. That, that is our sensual date. And if we have more than that, great. But the sensual date, back to that quote. The majority of long term couples start making love out of sexual neutrality. I will be dead honest because this is going to be reassuring for people. Sometimes we'll be like, oh, I wanna, you know, it's 2 o'. Clock, we said 2 o' clock Sunday or whatever. We're gonna have a sensual date. I'd way rather walk the dog or watch a show or you know, go out in the garden. But this is a date, this is a commitment. This is making our love life a hobby. So we might have, we've got this steam shower I had built when I had my, my house built. And I was single at that time by choice. Choice. But I thought eventually I may have a partner and I want a really great. I love to shower with my man. So it's got two shower heads, so the poor guy isn't like standing out in the cold while the woman hogs all the hot water. And it's a steam shower as well. So we'll have a steam shower. We'll soap each other up, we'll kiss, we'll snuggle. We may or may not get super turned on yet, depending where the bodies are at. But it's this intimate sensual connection. We slow down. We're both Buddhist meditators, so we might do as we did earlier when you and I just touched our hands and it was really mindful touch and it lit you up. And then we'll move to the bed and we'll keep playing around and at some point the bodies will cooperate. It may not be for half an hour. So if everyone's like, oh shit, that's what I have to look forward to. I want to flip that on its head the other way. To work with lower desire and lack of novelty leading to less spontaneous desire is to do what is more touted in our culture, which is to move on to someone new, right? And that will work for a while because novelty is a huge turn on. And spontaneous desire, if you have an affair or you end a relationship and consciously move into another relationship and it's new, you'll go, wow, I have all this spontaneous desire. It must have been that the last person wasn't the right person. Fast forward 18 months and you're going to likely be in a similar slide with the new person. So you can do serial monogamy every year or two or three or five. Insert your data here, move on to someone new so you can experience spontaneous desire again. But then where is that long term spiritual journey? Where's that long term my past demons dancing with your past demons. And what's it like if we can through a decade or two or three or four, say, let's make our sexuality precious, let's co create a type of novelty together. And that might be going to a fetish club for the first time ever in your 40s or 50s and going to the wild side a bit and sparking things up. It might be watching great erotica together. It might be learning to slow down and kiss for 15 minutes the way we used to when we were teenagers. I would make out with that beautiful first man that I lost my virginity to. Mindfully and consciously and beautifully. We would kiss, like we said earlier, half an hour, an hour, two hours of eroticism from the collarbone up. What would it be to mindfully do that with your Partner. Now, people are often not aware that it's possible. They're often frankly really lazy because it takes effort and it's much easier to just kiss and be turned on and have great sex. I love that occasionally it still happens. For people who are in longer term relationship, even in your 20s where it's like, you know, yeah, I'd rather pretend I was asleep. Like your dear friend who probably isn't that old. If my hubby is kind of reaching out for sex, she told you, what would it be to say? How can we become playful again? How can we redefine our sexual journey together? How can we talk about it? People aren't talking about it. I'm just finishing an article called how to talk about the Sex we're not having and that's a lot of what I'm sharing right now. A, you are not normal. B, there are biochemical, psychological and relational and life and health and fatigue and being worried about your business reasons. C, you need to get conscious and mindful and not rely on spontaneous turn on. Because I say spontaneous lust in a longer term relationship is a bit like spontaneously hoping your teenager will clean out their room. It's not that likely to happen. If it does happen, enjoy the hell out out of it, but don't count on it. So occasionally my sweetheart and I are spontaneously horny and we have a great sexual session. We're like, that was so great. It was like the old days. But we don't count on it and wait for that to happen again. We consciously co create a sensual date. We consciously bring ourselves and our minds and our hearts and our fantasy and our desires to the bed and say, well, we may not be the horny little bunnies we were a decade ago when we'd make love three times a day. When we were dating in our late 40s, I was 49, but we can co create something great now.
- [75:56]
A
I feel when you're in a long term relationship with like your person, you kind of take it for granted and you assume, well, if I just have sex with someone else, I'll feel the same sparks as I did with this person. But you felt it with that person and take it from me, being single, trust me, they're actually not. It's quite rare to find that level of like connection and that desire and that hope that it could be something more. It's so unique. It was like that unique portal that led into the relationship. You'll never have that specific thing again. But even in the Kama Sutra they say that actually sex becomes better over time with that person because there's a deepening of the love and there's a deepening of just the devotion that you have to that person that you want to wash their feet and paint a picture of them and like all of these things that just simply, you know, there could be a different type of hotness from a total stranger who you just met, but it's not that deep loving devotion that I feel like especially a lot of women deeply need and desire to feel safe enough to even have an orgasm.
- [76:56]
B
Yes, yes, a thousand million percent agree. And what we're talking about is like conscious relationship, conscious sexuality with the effort, the intention and the focus that it takes. And people are so misguided by media and romance novels and porn and all the messaging and all the bullshit and all the like, you know, play hard to get and all that shit. Oh my God, it's exhausting and not really having the conversation we're having about, hang on a minute, is it really old fashioned or lame or my parents model or Cheryl Fraser because she's older than me's model to have one person person. Isn't that kind of boring and not liberated? Huh? Well, it is the way we're doing it. But what you just said from the Kama Sutra and beautiful wisdom teachings. Yeah, if you're doing it boring and it's what I call marriage incorporated or if you're not married, relationship incorporated. We're running the business of us and we're hopefully doing it pretty well. The mortgage gets paid, the dog's getting to the vet for their annual shots, the kids are getting some green food food hidden in their smoothies so they actually have nutrition. That's fantastic. But where are you and I? Where are you and I? We're doing it so poorly that what you just quoted about the concepts from the Kama Sutra is not happening. We're not washing each other's feet with devotion. And that isn't referring to some masculine dominant, feminine washing his feet bullshit, but more the soul's devotion. As I know you know, we're not edifying, we're not driven to want to paint a picture unless we're in the beginning of falling in love. Love and the crazy thrill stuff. We might compose, you know, poetry. When I was a teenager, you'd make a mixtape, right? As a cassette with all your favorite sexy love songs on. Oh my God, I wish I could find mine. It probably had great songs on it. But we're doing it wrong, right? That's. And I love that when we're such a generation or more apart that your soul's longing is for depth. Long term term monogamous relationship. That is rare, that is exceptional. I don't want it to be rare and exceptional. But in our world it's very rare and exceptional to look at a couple that have amazing long term love. Can I tell you a story of the couple that taught me this? It was my grandparents. My grandparents, Norm and Evelyn Fraser. They're both died some a long time ago now. So I grew up in a small town where lucky for me, both sets of my grandparents lived near. So I got to spend a lot of time with them both on Vancouver island in Canada in the boonies. And my granddad Norm, he grew up in Wales. His dad was actually a physician who was a doctor for the Welsh coal mines, which were a very deadly place. And if you weren't killed in a mine collapse or explosion, you died young from the black lung. And that was what my great grandfather did. And my granddad at 17 was not an academic guy. He wasn't going to go go for an education. So his, his only job would have been to go go down the, the mines. And he didn't want that. So he lied about his age. He boarded a boat to, to the new land of Canada and he ended up getting a train and going to the prairies. And he got a job for something like a dollar a week for I think a German family that had a farm. And so he worked through the winter and come spring there was going to be the spring like community dance. So he went and as he tells it, or used to tell it was off and he was leaning against the wall with the other kind of young bucks and they're watching all the pretty girls come in with their handmade, you know, frocks they've made over the winter and all these pretty girls and the guys are kind of hanging out, being cool, you know, I'm thinking like Grease or something, the movie. And my granddad sees my grandmother and he says, who's that? And the other guys say, oh, that's Evie, but you don't have a chance. And my granddad said why not? And they said because she's already engaged. And my granddad famously said not for long. So he wooed her and he wed her and they had this amazing long term marriage. And when my granny would chime in on the story, she said the only sad thing about their great love affair was she had to disappoint the other fellow that she'd been engaged to for a little While so fast forward, very, very poor, you know, through the war. They come to Vancouver island, they're dirt poor. They lost a child. My dad's older brother died at the age of two because, you know, that happened a lot back then. And then they had my father and he was their only child and so on and so forth. And so the grandparents I knew and my dad and mom married really young due to, you know, maybe an accidental pregnancy. And they were like 18 and 20. So my grandparents were pretty young. They were probably 40. And I spent a lot of time with them and what I saw over and over again. Sahara. When my grandmother walked into the room, my granddad lit up like a Christmas tree. And he talked about when he first saw her. He said she had this blonde, wavy hair and she had eyes the blue of the ocean on a summer day. And so at 40, then at 60, then at 68, I watched this man light up when my grandmother watched, walked in the room. He treated her with such love, such warmth, such kindness. I never heard him speak, speak to her crossly. He was the. She was just the light of his life. So that's what I grew up with. And then fast forward very sadly, as is the way of impermanence. My grandmother got sick when she was about 84 or something, and she died reasonably quickly within about a month or two. And after we died, we learned by being around my granddad. He had Alzheimer's, but none of us knew because their dance was such that she would fill in the gaps for, for him. She would fill in when he started to lose the plot and shape and bring him back to the sentence that none of us had seen, that his memory was deteriorating. So after beautiful Granny Evie died, my granddad went downhill really quickly because he didn't have his anchor. He was in grief and the confusion was there. She wasn't there to guide him through life. And so eventually we took care of him and moved him into, into home by my dad, et cetera. And eventually he was in a long term care facility and his body was so strong. He was still like a bull of a man, man, and his mind was almost gone and he was still gentle and he was still kind. Thankfully, the disease didn't bring the kind of anger and confusion to him that it does to some. And I would visit him pretty regularly. This was in my hometown still. And I would have been in my mid-30s or so when he was dying. And I walked in and Sarah, at that time I had wavy blonde hair and I've got blue eyes more or less the color of the ocean on a spring day. So you know what happened? I walked in and my granddad looked up at me and he said, everybody, Evie, you're here. And I'm grateful for spirit that it came to me. And I didn't say the thing you'd normally say, which is incorrect. And no, granddad, it's me. Evie's gone. I said, yeah, Norm, it's me. And he lit up like a Christmas tree. Through Alzheimer's, through barely having consciousness, left his. Evie was there. And that love for her lit him up like a Christmas, Christmas tree. So that's what I call thrill in my model. That's what I know is possible. And yes, it's very rare. But in their own ways, those two practice the passion triangle. They communicated. He wrote her poetry. And when they, in their retirement, they got an rv, they traveled around with their Siamese cat, they went to square dance conventions, they lived large, sister. And so. So that is a variation, I think, of what you and I are organically craving. And I find it interesting that at our different life phases, we're both deeply drawn to spirit, to awakening to dharma in our own flavors and our own journeys. And we're also deeply drawn to something that many of our peers of both our generations might have said was really old fashioned, especially for you. Like what? You don't want to be polyamorous. And those models have some merit. I'm not against against them. I rarely see them work out in a really deep, heavy way for all participants, though. And I rarely see consensual, non monogamy work out all that well. Because I think it's fairly clear, as we've talked about, that our genitals are connected to our hearts, mind, spirits and depth. And so I love that perhaps against the grain of your generation, that you're longing for something that might sound traditional, but the way we're talking about doing it, it's not traditional at all. My grandparents weren't traditional that love and respect and joy and playfulness. Oh, and dad says, he says, oh, you met them when they were old. He says, I grew up in a one room house. They slept on the other side of the curtain. They had a great sex life. Yeah, go right. So that's a story of the possibility of long term depth, falling in love over and over again with the one you're already with. And it takes effort, just like everything else you and I and everybody listening does, where they take it beyond the typical. It takes a lot of effort and consciousness and choice and Intention and saying, ah, this isn't working. I'll try the next one. Sometimes, by the way, that's very much the correct choice. Absolutely. Other times I think it's lazy.
- [86:16]
A
So beautifully said. Thank you so much for sharing that story. Norman, Evie, grandparents, parents, I felt their frequency with us here. And it's just such a reminder that true love is possible and it's why we're here and it's the ultimate spiritual practice. And that longing is inside of us for a reason because, you know, we know maybe there's another version of us and another reality that is living that love and that we're finding our way. And I feel like sometimes it's the dangling carrot of raising consciousness within ourselves, you know, of like this deep love that we desire is really the only thing that would make us go on a spiritual journey and go into silence and move mountains and change countries and do all of the things that we do in the name of love that I don't think anything else we would change so much. And I feel like sometimes even the love, the partner is like the consolation prize. But it's really the journey of who.
- [87:08]
B
We become very much. And you're implying this and I want to name this really explicitly for people. We also want to shift the focus on getting a great partner and also remember we need to become a great partner. I often say to people, would you date you the way you are now? Especially people who've been together a while, I say, would you date you now based on the last month of how you've treated your long term partner? And they're like, eek, no. I've been kind of disrespectful. I've been impatient with them. I sure as heck haven't taken them on a date or lit them up. I've been lazy in the bedroom, say, exactly. So while we long to be fulfilled and that's beautiful. Longing is a tremendous motivation for growth and change, as you well know. Also, I want to challenge everybody. How can you become a great partner? And that's very much what I think is going to be a side effect. I know is a side effect of the journey you're on is you're going to be such an extraordinary partner for someone with your quirks and your bullshit, no doubt, and stuff's going to come up for the two of you because you are really focusing on your strengths and your growth and your humility and how you heal and what you bring forward. But to put it in the most simple language possible possible, a lot of us can get very selfish in looking for someone who lights us up. Can we focus on how we light them up? Maybe 60, 40? Because if you're both 60, 40 toward lighting each other up, that's maybe a variation of Norman Evie.
- [88:39]
A
So beautifully said. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your stories, your intelligence. I loved this conversation. I'm going to listen to it time and time again. So where can listeners connect with you, read your books and learn further from you?
- [88:52]
B
So the book is Buddha's Bedroom, available wherever books are sold. Best way to reach me, I'm not so much the social media girl I'm on there, but it's just not my jam but my website drcheryl fraser.com and if people are interested in my programs that's where you can get on the wait list for the once a year three month deep dive. I take into the passion triangle and where I take couples on a major journey. And I teach free workshops throughout the year as well where I go much deeper into some of the stuff we talked about today and people can ask me questions and all the things. And then the podcast, Sex, Love and Elephants. That's always a good place too.
- [89:25]
A
Beautiful. Well we'll have that link below and thank you so much for tuning in. This was such a profound conversation. Please share it on your Instagram stories, email it to your friends, have a deeper conversation, share with your partner what a beautiful way or someone that you're interested in dating. Like this is such a powerful stepping stone that you can have these deeper conversations of like hey, at minute like 47, what did you think of what they said that or I'm experiencing this. And sometimes it can be hard to start these conversations, but if you have like a podcast that you both listen to, you can kind of break it down and maybe with your other single friends or friends in long term relationships. There's really so much here for wherever you are on your relational journey. So if you loved this episode, please leave a review and as a free gift I will send you my womb meditation. So all you got to do is leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Take a screenshot and email it over to me me@sahara am sahara rose.com and I will send you my free womb meditation. You can find that email and all the links I mentioned today in the show Notes. Thank you so much for tuning in. Keep tuning into your heart, living your Dharma and living in love and I'll see you in the next episode.
- [90:30]
B
Trust your intuition. Trust your inner wisdom. Trust your inner guidance.
- [90:34]
A
Close your eyes and listen.
- [90:39]
B
So trust your intuition, trust your inner wisdom, trust your inner guidance.