Speaker 1: You are listening to the regular version of Sexy Marriage Radio, passionatelymarried.net.

Corey Allan: Well, welcome back to Sexy Marriage Radio, where you might be noticing something different.

Pam Allan: It's good to be here. I do notice something different, different beat.

Corey Allan: What?

Pam Allan: Different song.

Corey Allan: No way.

Pam Allan: Yes. It is.

Corey Allan: Trying to keep it fresh.

Pam Allan: I like that.

Corey Allan: Well, that's a good way to go through life, which that's what we try to do with every episode of Sexy Marriage Radio, is try to stay fresh and up with what's going on with the members of the nation. And the way they let us know what's going on is they give us a call at 214-702-9565 or they can email us, feedback@sexymarriageradio.com. And we've got a lot of emails in the queue with some questions and stuff that we're just having trouble getting to. So if you've got something that hasn't been answered and you really want it answered, if you call and leave a voicemail, it gets you to the front of the line.

Pam Allan: Perfect.

Corey Allan: And if you're not in the line, call and leave a voicemail with a question you got, or a conversation you want to continue, or feedback, or your slant on a topic we've covered. And then we also ask you to rate and review the show, subscribe, leave comments, help us spread the word that the best sex is in the marriage bed.

Pam Allan: That's right.

Corey Allan: So we're coming up on the end of the early bird registration, by the way, just one little bit to say.

Pam Allan: April 15th, right?

Corey Allan: April 15th is the end.

Pam Allan: So seven weeks.

Corey Allan: Is the end-

Pam Allan: Six and a half, seven weeks.

Corey Allan: I'm wondering why you're keeping track of that.

Pam Allan: I am keeping track of that. April 18th is my deadline. I like the 15th too.

Corey Allan: That's true. So that's when the deadline for the reservations at the early bird rate goes away, and so June 23rd to the 25th, come join us. It's going to be a [inaudible 00:01:43].

Pam Allan: For the getaway, I think we said that, but we didn't say it was for the getaway.

Corey Allan: SMR Nation.

Pam Allan: Getaway in Indie, come join us and have a great time with us.

Corey Allan: I'm all over the place. Smrnation.com/getaway. Well, coming up on today's regular free version of Sexy Marriage Radio, there's a conversation I got to have with Dr. Chelom Leavitt, who she actually was a lawyer, went back to school, got her PhD in marriage and family therapy and human development, and now does research studies in the world of marriage and family therapy and sexuality and mindfulness. And so in the regular version, we're talking about mindfulness in our sexuality, and a project she's got going on, on how that enhances everything. And I love it because it's all based on her research, and research she keeps coming across. And so you know how I like getting the real data to make our premises based on, and so she's an excellent resource for this. And then on the extended version today, which is deeper, longer, and there are no ads, you can subscribe at passionatelymarried.net/smracademy, we get into another research project she did because she's also a Schnarrsian.

Pam Allan: Which makes you tingle all over, yes, that's right.

Corey Allan: It does make me tingle all over. You've been married to me a long time.

Pam Allan: Yes.

Corey Allan: But it's one of those that she's come across his work obviously, and then also attachment theory, which we've done some shows in the archives, where we've had some people on that they are attachment theorists in the way they work. And so she did some research on what's the difference and which one bears out better in the long run as far as approaches, differentiation or attachment. And it's kind of a fun dialogue.

Pam Allan: And you'll dive into, for all the newbies that haven't heard you talking this stuff, you're going to-

Corey Allan: We explain it.

Pam Allan: Dive into what each of them are. Right?

Corey Allan: We explain it some.

Pam Allan: Down to fifth grade level for me.

Corey Allan: No promises. All that's coming up on today's show. It is an honor to welcome Dr. Chelom Leavitt to the show today. She, just a quick bio of Chelom, she has a master's in marriage and family and human development and a PhD from Penn State. You're also a professor at BYU. So you've been doing a lot because I think I even read in there you went to law school and practiced for a while.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: You have eight children. And so you don't live a calm, slow, easy lifestyle at all.

Chelom Leavitt: No, I'm afraid I have too much energy. So I have stuck my finger into many, many pies, and it's fun.

Corey Allan: Wow.

Chelom Leavitt: It's a chaotic life, but it's fun.

Corey Allan: It sounds like it, and mainly what you're producing is fantastic from the stuff I've been reading of you and the things I'm learning, that you're a part of, and that you're helping move the ball down the field. And so welcome to the show.

Chelom Leavitt: Thank you.

Corey Allan: I'm so excited to have this dialogue with you. So I want to jump right in because as we were talking before we started the official part of the show, we can have a tendency to geek out, and so we'll just be upfront. I'll be upfront with the audience that could be what happens today.

Chelom Leavitt: Yes. Geek warning right here.

Corey Allan: For sure, it will happen in the extended content today. But we'll try to keep it a little in check during the regular. But you've landed squarely early on in the field at least. You landed in the whole world of mindfulness.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: First, let's talk about how you landed there. And then, I want to pivot it towards some of the research you've been doing on it, and what you're learning from it, and how that's applicable with married couples.

Chelom Leavitt: Thanks. Thanks for opening that up. I had been a sex researcher for a while. And I was invited to a presentation on mindfulness at Penn State. And I attended, and they were really talking about mindfulness in terms of teachers and students, and pain management, and anxiety management, that sort of thing, which is really kind of the foundational areas of research with mindfulness. And as I was sitting there thinking, I'm like, "This absolutely connects to sexuality." So I went home and started doing some research. I thought for sure someone's already tapped into how these two topics intersect, and no one really had except for Lori Brotto, who's a Canadian researcher. I'm sure you're familiar with her.

Corey Allan: She's been on the show a couple times.

Chelom Leavitt: Awesome. She had done some work on how just daily mindfulness might impact your sexual experience. Right?

Corey Allan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chelom Leavitt: It might help you kind of reduce anxiety. And so as I was ... And I talked to her in the coming weeks and months that I was thinking about this. And I said, "But how mindful are we during sex?" Right? Because that's a very different thing.

Corey Allan: Absolutely, it is.

Chelom Leavitt: As I'm eating my breakfast, or talking to my kids, or walking across campus, it's easy for me, easier anyway, for me to be mindful in those settings than when I'm being super vulnerable and intimate and naked with my husband. And so I'm thinking those are different worlds. So if I could create a measure that looked at: How mindful were people during those sexual experiences where we have heightened anxiety, we're more critical of our body? Maybe critical of just everything about the experience. That might tell us a lot about what is driving good experiences in sex and maybe contributing to some bad experiences in sex, so that's how we started.

Corey Allan: Okay. And so from that, what are you figuring out? What's jumping out that we've ... We only have a certain amount of time, so we might have to stay in this over a whole bunch of shows in the future. But at just a higher level first glance, what are you finding from this? I'm fascinated by the idea of, I frame it like we were talking beforehand with the Schnarrs training and his terminology of, I frame it, we have sex up to the level of anxiety we can tolerate.

Chelom Leavitt: Absolutely.

Corey Allan: Because there's so much going on that I'm not at all mindful of myself because it's all being interwoven with everything else, and I'm uncomfortable, or nervous, or awkward. So what are you finding from this project or this study?

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah. I mean, I'm so glad you made that connection because truthfully, we can only be as intimate as our anxiety level will allow us to be. I think Esther Perel says a lot about that. We have to be able to sit with our anxiety and just be curious about it and say, "Why is it that I'm pulling back from my partner right now instead of leaning in and being more disclosing, more vulnerable, more curious about what's going on between the two of us?" And what we find is that we lack mindfulness during sex. And I'm just going to say this, and then we'll have to dive into this in another setting maybe, but men, at least in our research, and we've had a number of samples, some nationally representative, but men tend to be more sexually mindful than women.

Chelom Leavitt: And this makes sense to me when I think about it a little further. Men are much more think about one topic at a time, where women are far more integrated in their lives. And so that's great in many settings. That really benefits women in a number of settings. But in sex, that does not benefit us.

Corey Allan: No.

Chelom Leavitt: And so what we see is another body of research shows us that women disconnect from their body. Right? And so we may actually be feeling arousal physically, but mentally, it's not registering. We're saying ... And they've done research on this, where women will be showing signs of heightened arousal, and yet they'll say, "Okay, how aroused are you?" And they'll say, "Yeah, not at all."

Corey Allan: But physically, the signs are all there.

Chelom Leavitt: But physically, right, we're seeing more blood flow, they're having more lubrication. So all of these things are indicating that, yeah, your body's feeling arousal, but for some reason, it's not connecting here. So we have this disconnect, this is where mindfulness is so powerful.

Corey Allan: How so?

Chelom Leavitt: Because women can start to actually get in touch with their bodies, help their mind actually connect to their body. That's what mindfulness is. Right? It's a mind, body, heart connection. And so when we practice that outside of sex, so we start to develop some skills with learning what this feels like, learning how I disconnect, learning how to bring myself back in to focusing on my breath, being in touch with my body. When I do that in my everyday regular life, then I transfer that to sex. I'm still going to struggle.

Chelom Leavitt: And so what our sexual mindfulness project does is actually goes through the couples ways, kind of strategies, some exercises, ways to interact that might help support each of them in becoming more mindful even during sex when we have heightened anxiety, heightened criticism of ourself.

Corey Allan: And each other.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah, and each other.

Corey Allan: Because how often do we read something that changes in the dynamic, and I can either go blind to it and act like I didn't see it, which is what a lot of couples wind up doing, not necessarily consciously, but it is that whole, I just saw that they just checked out there, but I don't care because I'm enjoying this and I'm going to keep going, even though back deep down, I'm like, "I really want to do this while we're really connected," because now I'm in an incongruent too. So I just see it as there's such power and profoundness that people think, I think they need to recognize, as I'm hearing you talk, that if my partner ... Because here's where I hear this, Chelom, is this idea that couples in large part are going to say, "What I want in my sex life is a deeper real connection in it. I don't just want the functional get the job done."

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah, for sure.

Corey Allan: That's not for the long haul. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: That's what Schnarrs would refer to. I want to move from the functional to the blessed few. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yes.

Corey Allan: I want to really taste the essence of my partner, which means they'll get the chance to taste mine too, which we both have to then show up for that.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah, that's right. It's hard.

Corey Allan: And in reality ... Absolutely. We suck at it in a lot of ways at times because I get distracted, I get disconnected, I lose it, something, I pull a muscle.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah. That's the [inaudible 00:13:14] sex there.

Corey Allan: All that stuff. Well, it's also getting older. Not you, of course, but for me, absolutely. But it's recognizing that, okay, so if I'm the one that's striving for that deeper connection, I want that mindful sex level, and I want that from my partner, I have to realize their route to get to it is going to be disruptive to me in the short-term.

Chelom Leavitt: It could be, yeah, and likely will be. You're right.

Corey Allan: Because if they're handling themselves better, that's not just playing a role anymore.

Chelom Leavitt: Nope.

Corey Allan: That's not just-

Chelom Leavitt: Going to challenge you. Yeah.

Corey Allan: That's a speak up and say, "Hold on. I just lost it." Or that's a breathing differently, to really be involved in it. And if we're paying attention, which I think most couples need to because it's there, that's going to disrupt things. It's going to derail things for the short-term.

Chelom Leavitt: That's right. That's right. But only for the short term. Right?

Corey Allan: Right.

Chelom Leavitt: And we're aiming for something far better, far deeper. You reminded me of something that Schnarrs liked to talk about was eyes wide open sex. Right?

Corey Allan: Yep.

Chelom Leavitt: Where we're really, instead of closing our eyes and being in our own world during sex, mindful, being sexually mindful is paying attention, paying attention to the details of what's going on in my body, but also what's going on in our interaction. And so that's eyes wide open sex. That's really being aware at a level that we're not ... We often don't create a habit of that. And so we kind of get into this mechanical routine sex, where we know the steps we need to take. And instead of really being present and interacting with that in a vulnerable way, we just go through the motions.

Corey Allan: Just get the job done, achieve the goal. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yes.

Corey Allan: Well, I mean, let's talk real because that's-

Chelom Leavitt: It's true. No, you're right.

Corey Allan: That's kind of what can happen in married sex for sure. Not that that's not still pleasurable in a sense because I think there's a component of why people still settle, and I'm using that word intentionally, for it, because they don't realize what else could be. But they also can be scared of what else could be.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah. And I'm not here promoting that every single experience you have has to be mind blowing.

Corey Allan: Good point.

Chelom Leavitt: I think that the routine sex also plays a very important role. And in fact, we know in our research that couples who haven't had sex, and we make the cutoff at 30 days or longer, if you haven't had sex in the last month, something else might be at play. And so we need to take account for that.

Corey Allan: Okay, yeah, because that's a variable that's going to be impactful.

Chelom Leavitt: Routine sex is also important. Yeah, right.

Corey Allan: No, I get it. And I think we're speaking the same thing.

Chelom Leavitt: Absolutely.

Corey Allan: Because there is an element of keeping something sustained and present. It always isn't the penultimate event.

Chelom Leavitt: Exactly.

Corey Allan: Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: Because sometimes it is just, no, this is functional. That's where I've said on the show several times in the past. I get mileage out of the phrase to my wife of, "Hey, can I interest you in a little bit of mediocre to moderate level sex?" Because we just don't have the energy.

Chelom Leavitt: I love it.

Corey Allan: Or I don't have the energy, and I'm reading her as the same, but with still have a possibility of some tender connection or some love. And it's just not a huge drawn out thing.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah, I love that. It's very important.

Corey Allan: So with this research and the sexual mindfulness project, one of the things that jumped out is men can have better at this ... Better's the wrong word. It's different for them on a likelihood of getting it versus women because the biology in some regards, at least naturally on the research you've done.

Chelom Leavitt: I'll say initially that's true.

Corey Allan: Thank you for the clarification.

Chelom Leavitt: Initially that's true.

Corey Allan: Okay. Is there other things?

Chelom Leavitt: Women, yeah, so women have a much steeper increase. Once women have gone through this training, women catch up to men really quick because all women need is just to be given permission, unfortunately, given permission to be a little self indulgent. And sometimes women are so other focused, which is really a beautiful thing that men can learn from, but women can learn from men to be a little self focused sometimes. And that's important especially in sexuality. We can't really connect with our body and fully experience that pleasure and the sensation, which then contributes to our interaction with our partner. Right? If we're not enjoying it, they're going to enjoy it less as well.

Corey Allan: Right.

Chelom Leavitt: So it's important to kind of tune into yourself and know what you're experiencing.

Corey Allan: And what is it that makes that such a difficult thing? You alluded to maybe there's a little bit of the nature nurture of a woman. But is there other components that you have found?

Chelom Leavitt: Sure. Yeah. So it's interesting because women have been socialized, and we could go on for another session on how men have been socialized in ways that are a drawback to marriage. But women have been socialized to kind of feel like they're not supposed to enjoy sex, or they're giving sex to their husband as kind of this duty, and especially religious women. Right?

Corey Allan: Right.

Chelom Leavitt: We kind of have tamped down our sexuality in a way that I don't think God ever intended. He wants us to fully embrace this beautiful part of how we're built, and so once women have permission to do that, they grab hold. They understand. They're hungry for this. And it's just a few practicing mindfulness outside of sex, sort of ideas, and then some specific ways to practice mindfulness during sex. And I think that both men and women really embrace this as a way to have that deeper connection, kind of go into sex with their eyes wide open, where they hadn't known that was important. It's interesting to me how many people after they've gone through this training will say, "I had no idea that just these little things would make such a big difference."

Corey Allan: Right, because that's that element of if what I'm doing already is functional in a lot of ways, it's not usually a huge leap to get to the deeper or the profound because it's not technique. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: No.

Corey Allan: In a sense of, oh, we were doing sex wrong technically speaking.

Chelom Leavitt: We need a new position.

Corey Allan: Right, I didn't realize penis and vagina, oh, hold on.

Chelom Leavitt: Okay.

Corey Allan: No, it's not that. It's the whole: Who are you and how are you showing up? How are you following connections? This is why I've loved Schnarrs' terminology of that deeper follow the connection, that deeper eyes open, meeting each other behind the eyeballs, that whole concept of showing something so much more profound on a moment of meeting with each other.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah. There's one other little bit of research that you just reminded me of as you were talking. Peggy Kleinplatz, who's also a Canadian researcher, has an article called Optimal Sexuality, and you've probably read it. And she talks about how the really important things for getting this connection that you're referring to has nothing to do with orgasm, or the chemistry you feel between the two of you, or even initial arousal. What it really has to do with is deeply communicating and being vulnerable and seeing each other with kind of fresh eyes each time, so that you're not pigeonholing your partner into a role that they generally play. They may not want to play it right now. And so it's kind of this newness, this constant kind of transcendence of what the normal, the mundane is, and allowing the two of you to connect on this much higher level. I love that.

Corey Allan: That's awesome because I think that's that element that leads a question to me before we kind of wind down this segment. So if you've been doing some deep dive into the idea of sexual mindfulness, and how connected are you with yourself and the moment, and breathing through all of it because this isn't ... Again, you probably know full well we have a tendency to go to extremes, which means I'm going to be mindful, so I'm just going to focus on the sensations. But that's not all of the story. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: No.

Corey Allan: There's more going on because that's the sensate focus to an extreme. It isn't helpful for the relationship.

Chelom Leavitt: Yes.

Corey Allan: It can be helpful for you to maybe jumpstart something, but it's not a relational dynamic as much as it is an individual. And so how does what you have found and what else you've also come across, how does this, if you take the sexual dynamic into the day to day, because I think in marriage, one of the components I would love to see couples get better at is bring the sexual more to an undercurrent throughout the day to day.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah, for sure.

Corey Allan: Right? So it's an element of our dynamic that's at play. There's an energy or a charge there, and it's not about arousal necessarily. I've termed it as it's foreplay for foreplay. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: It's creating a threshold that gets it a little closer to where when you get the chance and the moments to transition, you're already a little more there.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah, exactly.

Corey Allan: How does mindfulness play into that? I mean, that seems like a logical, easy, well, just be mindful in everything. But is there something else?

Chelom Leavitt: For sure. Well, you know I like what you were describing because really, I think good sex at night begins at 2:00 in the afternoon, or even earlier than that because we're interacting with our partner. We're showing that we care about their needs, their emotions. So what I think how mindfulness plays a part in that is you start noticing details about your interactions that you hadn't noticed before. You notice that little sigh that your spouse gives, that you usually just ignore or didn't even hear. And maybe that means I've had a rough day. I'm operating at 60%. So maybe you up your game and take over some of the responsibilities of children, or dishes, or taking out the trash. And that is a dynamic between the two of you that is far deeper.

Chelom Leavitt: Although sex isn't everything, it should be infused into every aspect of our relationship. And so I think what that does is saying, "I'm going to be generous in this nonsexual environment, so that we can both be generous in a sexual interaction."

Corey Allan: Yeah. I think the biggest aphrodisiac there is in married life when it comes to sex is the character of the people, on how they carry themselves in every aspect, that it's not necessarily ... This is an aside, in a sense from way back when Sexy Marriage Radio first started, my wife, I mentioned to you, she wasn't the cohost like she is now. I made a comment at one point where I said to, in a show, "I'm always looking to close." It was just kind of a statement. Right? And it's not an overt, I'm always looking for a sexual moment. It was more now that I look back on that statement, it was more it's on my mind, and there's moves being made, but it's not necessarily for that particular moment. I could make a statement that I hope comes into fruition in three days. That's fine because it's a dynamic and it's component.

Corey Allan: But when Pam heard that, she stopped listening to the show for a while because she started reading everything I was just doing normally as, oh, he just is after sex for that. He took the trash out because he's looking for sex tonight. He's doing this because ... And it made her have to rewire, or as Schnarrs would say, remap. What does this really mean? And so it took her three or four months before she started listening again. And it was like, "Okay," but a lot of it I think is just that element of there's a language that goes on in marriage that goes on nowhere else. And it's difficult because it can derail things instead of seeing it like you're describing, hold on. How am I just engaging with me and the dynamic, but also with me? Because I think that's where we get off balance when you think of I put too much stock in what I'm reading, rather than: Wait, who am I in this process? Where am I in this process? What's coming up for me in this process? How do I get more engaged and more involved?

Chelom Leavitt: Well, and I think maybe part of what was happening with your wife, with Pam, was that she had to think about: What does that mean if he did always think about sex, or always think about every interaction with me as having some overtone of sex? And so maybe that took her a process where she had to work through. What does that mean to me? What message did I bring and put on that? And that's why marriage is so important, is because we care about this person enough to dig down in the weeds of our own head and work out some of these things that need to be worked through. Where else would we do this? If we were hopping from partner to partner, we would never have to be faced with that crucible that as Schnarrs ...

Corey Allan: You get out of it before it gets too difficult.

Chelom Leavitt: That's right, that's right.

Corey Allan: Which is also ... Go ahead.

Chelom Leavitt: I was just going to say, and sex is really the microscope on that relationship. Sex really hones in. I like Esther Perel says it this way. She says, "Tell me the kind of lover you are, and I will tell you the kind of person you are." Because really are we generous as lovers? Are we insightful? Do we pay attention? And if we don't in sex, my guess is you're avoiding things out in your regular life too.

Corey Allan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: Well, Chelom, this has been fantastic.

Chelom Leavitt: Fun.

Corey Allan: And I'm more excited to get geeking out in the extended content in here in a second. But I would love it for the members of Sexy Marriage Radio Nation to hear. How can they find you? And I'll put all these details in the show notes as well.

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah. So I have a website. If you know how to spell my name, C-H-E-L-O-M-L-E-A-V-I-T-T dot com. And I have a blog. I really get into the research there. We have some podcasts that we talk about my research, or my graduate students' research, and then we also have some resources if you would like to participate in the sexual mindfulness project.

Corey Allan: That's so good and I'm so excited about just connecting with this because I think this is one of those things that is so uniquely profound that it's one of those. How did we not come across this sooner? Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah.

Corey Allan: Because that's the whole thing, it just makes sense.

Chelom Leavitt: It does.

Corey Allan: So we've just got to hop to it and do it. Right?

Chelom Leavitt: Yeah. And it's interesting when people actually start to learn about sexual mindfulness, initially that's their response, is that just makes sense. But then to apply it, it's a little trickier. Right?

Corey Allan: Totally.

Chelom Leavitt: But we can get it, it just takes practice.

Corey Allan: Perfect. Well, thank you so much.

Chelom Leavitt: Thanks.

Corey Allan: And look forward to talking to you here in just a little bit longer. Well, it's interesting to me, Pam, on all the different years and shows we've done, that sometimes they just flow like on the opening, and the show, it's this nice little rhythm. And then sometimes it's like, "Man, you had to come in and rescue me." I was fumbling all over the place at the beginning yesterday.

Pam Allan: I think I actually interrupted you and that's why you fumbled because I jumped in mid sentence for you.

Corey Allan: You mean I can blame you for not being smooth with ... No, I don't want to go there.

Pam Allan: You choose. You choose.

Corey Allan: Nicely played, lady. Well, I love when we get people to come on board help round out the conversations that we have.

Pam Allan: Yeah.

Corey Allan: Where we get some experts in the field, and particularly some researchers because researchers help us ask better questions and seek better answers and frame things well.

Pam Allan: Isn't that the beauty of it? It's what we tell our kids all the time. Ask questions. Right?

Corey Allan: Yes.

Pam Allan: Don't be afraid to ask questions because that's how you're going to learn.

Corey Allan: Absolutely.

Pam Allan: That's how you make yourself humble and vulnerable when you recognize you don't have all the answers.

Corey Allan: That's perfectly stated. So this has been Sexy Marriage Radio. If we left something undone today that you'd like you'd like us to continue forward with, let us know, 214-702-9565, or feedback@sexymarriageradio.com. We'll see you next time.