#43 Love in the Empty Nest, with Alexandra Stockwell

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Becoming empty nesters is a major transition for couples. While the divorce rate during this time is common, with support from a coach or therapist, couples can rediscover their passion for one another. Join Alexandra Stockwell and I for a conversation about love, passion, and the empty nest.

A physician coach and Intimate Marriage Expert, Dr. Alexandra Stockwell is the best-selling author of “Uncompromising Intimacy,” host of The Intimate Marriage Podcast, as well as a wife of 27 years and a mother of 4. Couples who work with her discover the key to passion, fulfillment, intimacy, and success isn’t compromise–it’s being unwilling to compromise--because when both people feel free to be themselves, the relationship is juicy, erotically alive, and deeply nourishing.

For over 20 years Alexandra has shown men and women how to bring pleasure and purpose into all aspects of their relationship. She has been featured in the Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, USAToday, Cosmopolitan, Business Insider, thriveglobal, mindbodygreen, FOX NEWS NYC, and LA Weekly Magazine named her one of the “Top 10 Dating and Relationship Experts to Watch in 2023.”

Learn more about Dr. Stockwell, her book, and connect with her:

Website: https://www.alexandrastockwell.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intimacydoctor

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NFfwXTz2n6C_2QdmrfEVg

FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093537316555

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastockwell/

Karin's website: https://drcalde.com

Karin's IG: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

Karin: Hello, everybody. Today we're going to be talking about empty nesters. This transition period can be either a really exciting time for couples or it can be a time of deciding whether or not they really even want to stay together. Many couples at this stage of life decide to split up, and that can be okay. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way if you want to explore the relationship and see if you can make some changes. My guest today, Alexandra Stockwell, is a physician turned relationship coach, and she loves helping couples reignite their passion for one another. So that's the topic of our conversation today. Even if you are not in midlife, I think this is a conversation that could benefit, really anyone who is in a relationship. So I'm glad you're here. And here we go.

Episode:

[01:45] Karin: Welcome, Alexandra.

[01:48] Alexandra: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I love what your podcast is.

[01:53] Karin: Oh, thank you so much. Well, I'm really excited to get into it today and talk about that period of life that we tend to call empty nesting or midlife or retirement, whatever it is. But let's start with where are you in the world?

[02:12] Alexandra: I am in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a relatively little town named Venetia, right on the water. And I've been here for six years.

[02:22] Karin: Oh, okay. So did you live elsewhere in the Bay Area before then?

[02:25] Alexandra: Yes, I lived in Contra Costa CoUnty in El Sabrante for five. I've been in California for eleven and, well, my husband and I have been married for 27 years and this is our 8th home together.

[02:38] Karin: Oh, wow. Okay. So you moved around a bit.

[02:41] Alexandra: We have.

[02:42] Karin: So what brought you to California or the Bay Area?

[02:47] Alexandra: Well, it was a funny set of circumstances. I was born in Greenwich Village and have lived up and down the East coast, my husband as well. And with the housing crisis and a number of other things in our both personal and professional lives in 2008, it just made sense to make a change. And we were really pretty open about it and open about where we would go. And so we ended up in rural southwest Kansas, 3 miles from Oklahoma in 2010 to 2012. And we were there for two years. And then for a variety of reasons, it made sense to move. And when we moved we had a few criteria. We wanted diversity of opinions, just diversity in most metrics. And also my husband didn't want to have to shovel snow. And our daughter is now getting her doctorate in Viola performance. And we want it to be somewhere with a conservatory. So the number of places where it doesn't snow and there are really fantastic conservatory trainings is actually very few. So I suppose Dallas, LA, San Francisco were the options.

[04:10] Karin: And yeah, I imagine that you are in a place that is very different from rural Kansas for sure, for so.

[04:18] Alexandra: Many reasons, including the fact that there are no native trees in this area in Kansas, so everything is just flat and there are native bushes, but not trees. And here we are with the redwoods and all the richness that they add to our lives.

[04:35] Karin: Tell us what you do for work.

[04:37] Alexandra: I am a physician and I'm an intimate marriage expert and a relationship and intimacy coach, so I don't actually practice medicine anymore. But of course I bring that. And I work with individuals sometimes, but mostly I work with couples in long term committed relationships who their lives are stable professionally, personally, everything is in order, and often from the outside things look great, but inside things are dehydrated, numb, conflict free and passion free. There are many ways in which this shows up that we end up compromise and tolerating a lot because we have loving companionship. And I think that is just totally unnecessary.

[05:30] Karin: I can't wait to get into it with you. But I need to ask first, how did you come to do that work?

[05:37] Alexandra: Well, as I mentioned earlier, I've been married for 27 years. My husband and I have four children, and I always loved practicing medicine. I wasn't burnt out, but for a variety of reasons I decided to take a sabbatical. Actually, one is sort of relevant to the direction of our conversation, which is that I prioritize my patients over my family and my family over myself. And while I certainly could do well doing that, it wasn't sustainable and I really didn't want to model that, especially to my daughter. And it wasn't a time management issue. I was used to doing a lot of things, but I just couldn't quite figure that out. And so I took a sabbatical, thinking, I'm in my mid 30s, this is the time to figure this out, not in 40 years. So one thing led to another, and I learned how to bring just more joy, not to be selfish, but to be self honoring. And I felt like I had really tapped into joy and presence and living in a way that I wanted to, except it didn't translate all the way into sensual sexual intimacy into the bedroom. It's like there. Things were not bad, but it was just more functional. And I had brought more sunshine and depth and color to the rest of my life. And so I decided to do a very in depth training for personal reasons, for my sake and the sake of my marriage. But the training doubled as a coach training. And at the time, I didn't even know what a coach was, really. But I was very curious about how this would be taught. And so I went to the first lab to see how the other people were learning to work with couples, and I just thought, oh, I have come home. There is something that led me into medicine and a way of serving people deeply, and this is how I want to live that purpose for the rest of my professional career. And so that is exactly what I have been doing.

[07:55] Karin: So you really felt at home there in that coaching program?

[08:00] Alexandra: Yes. Well, what I really felt at home with was being able to serve couples in a way that was so meaningful, and knowing that the ways in which I would need to grow and be effective were ways I wanted to grow, and knowing that the impact that I would have for individuals, couples, and really their familial legacy, that that was something that I could wholeheartedly devote myself to without any kinds of navigating any elements of corporate medicine that I wasn't really aligned with, but that were sort of part of serving people. I don't have any of that in my coaching practice.

[08:48] Karin: Yeah, there's so many great things that you said. One of the things you said was it also impacts the familial legacy. And that is something that is really important to me, too. It's like, yeah, you're starting with either an individual or a couple, but when you help people love and love themselves, then that's contagious. You spread that. You spread love. You can spread hate, or you can spread love. And doing this work really helps us teach people how to spread love, doesn't it?

[09:21] Alexandra: Yes. There was a point where I was really thinking about children, and this isn't the answer for everyone, but for me, it undoubtedly is true that the very best way that I can serve children, really, of any age, babies, all the way to adult children, the best way I can serve them is by teaching their parents how to have really fantastic relationships. There's something about our intimate relationships and its quality and how we feel within our intimate relationship that even without a single conscious thought, it has a ripple effect in how we interact with everyone else in our lives, in how we handle ourselves in professional context and personal context. There's something about our sense of who we are which can be so deeply affirmed or really quite complicated depending on the flavors of our marriage or committed relatioNship.

[10:27] Karin: Yeah. And that's definitely something that I've noticed, is that when people do grow in one area of their lives and in their relationships specifically, it really does affect all areas. And I think people end up pleasantly surprised. They don't realize that necessarily when they start coaching or therapy that that's going to be an outcome.

[10:47] Alexandra: Yeah, that's really true. One of my very favorite personal growth pithy sayings, there are so many. But my favorite one is how you do anything, is how you do everything. And I think that it's not just that how we are in our intimate relationships influences how we show up in other areas of life. It's also that in our intimate relationship, there are very important and unique opportunities for growth that don't necessarily arise in other circumstances, but that growth carries over really seamlessly.

[11:31] Karin: Yeah. And I'm going to ask you more about that later because I think that that is really a central component to relationship work. Is that personal work? But before we get to that. Okay, I'd love to ask, because I want to talk about empty nesters today.

[11:48] Alexandra: Yes.

[11:49] Karin: And what we often hear is that this is such a special time and a couple's relationship because they now have all this time and energy to explore one another and their relationship and their other interests and how wonderful that is. And yet the divorce rate during that stage of principles is actually very high. I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but I know that it's grown considerably in the last 2030 years and that it's even higher for couples over 65. So what's going on here?

[12:31] Alexandra: All right. There are so many things to say. So I want to start really basic and then dial up the nuance and sophistication of our conversation from there. So one of the most basic things is that there are four different kinds of relationships. There is the toxic relationship where there's anger and fear, and those are really defining characteristics. That's one kind of relationship. Then there is the toleration relationship where both people are tolerating, compromising, putting up with so much, and that really influences the quality of the relationship. We can talk about that more. There is what I call the conscious partnership. I sometimes refer to it as an intimate marriage, which is growth oriented, juicy, passionate, which really improves with each passing year. And let me just interject right away and say having a fantastic relationship is a learnable skill. So anybody who wants to have this kind of relationship absolutely can do so. And then the fourth kind is the termination relationship. And there are different studies about this. I think the highest one I've ever come across is that 24% of couples with children at home, one or both of them fully intend to separate once the children are out of the house. So I wanted to talk about the four different kinds of relationships, because, yes, the divorce rate for the population, as you described it, is certainly rising, and there are multiple factors with that. One of them is that one or both people, more likely the wife in a heteronormative context, decided long ago that she had essentially given up on the relationship. And when that giving up on a relationship happens, then things often are more peaceful in the home, and there's less fighting and just more collaboration, but with a kind of internal wall that the other partner may or may not perceive. And so that accounts for some of the divorce rate in that time period, because now the children are out of the house. So that's when that happens. But I think the much more important direction to take the conversation is, well, related to another statistic, which is kind of incredible, except that I've seen this so often. It's not shocking to me, but it was when I first heard it, which is that the average couple in North America spends less than four minutes a day discussing anything other than children and logistics. And while I didn't do the research, I would throw in pets, because that's a factor, too. But the point is that when people get together and they fall in love, and there's dating, and then the excitement with the commitment of engagement and getting married, or, anyway, committing to life together, there are a few different qualities of that phase of the relationship. And the one that I want to. Well, there are two that I want to point to specifically. One is that the feeling of being in love includes tremendous curiosity about the other person. Where did you get that scar? And if you didn't have this profession, what profession would you want? And if you didn't live here, where would you want to live? And what was your favorite book in middle school, and your favorite book in high school? And what podcast do you listen to in the car?

[16:20] Karin: Now.

[16:21] Alexandra: And it's like a kind of gorgeous, insatiable hunger to really get to know this other person more thoroughly. And then comes the phase of relationship where it's beautiful, we have stability and familiarity, and we know this other person. And that most often comes with a diminishment of the curiosity. So it's totally understandable. But that steadiness, that security, that does not need to come at the cost of curiosity. If someone is listening and the children are still at home, build up the curiosity. Who is this person? This person is growing and changing just like you are. And there is always more to know. We can know our partner very thoroughly and still be surprised. I love when I ask my husband questions and he says something that I just don't expect. But that's not going to happen if I don't ask the questions and make room to hear the answers.

[17:32] Karin: A lot of couples, I think, or a lot of people in general, say, oh, well, this is just what happens with relationships. It just gets boring. You stop having sex at a certain age and that's just how it is.

[17:43] Alexandra: No, it completely is not inevitable. And it's very clear that women do not sexually peak until our sixty s and seventy s. Actually, I just coached a client recently. We had done a coaching package and completed, I think in 2020 maybe. And then she came back. She wanted to do another piece of work. And when we got on the Zoom call, she said, just right off the bat, I'm 72 years old and I am having the best sex of my life because of the coaching we did. A few years ago on my podcast, the Intimate Marriage podcast, I interviewed a couple. They've been married 51 years, and she was just so clear. My orgasms are getting better and better. And I want to say these two women are remarkable, but they are not unique. They just aren't. But the cost of entry is a willingness to grow is a willingness. We know this about aging in general, not just sexually, not just in relation to passion. But it certainly is true there that one of the important variables in living a long and fulfilling, purposeful life is continuing to learn new things. Years ago I remember reading about a woman who was just extraordinary. She was 99 and she had just limber and delightful, charming, and she had taken up French in her seventy s and being willing to learn. It's not as extreme as taking up French in our 70s, but essentially letting more aliveness be expressed in who we are and how we interact with our spouse. No matter how bland things are. If you have the courage to put attention on how to interact in a way that honors who you are and who you are becoming. It's absolutely possible.

[19:53] Karin: It really reminds me of self expansion, where we really need as humans to keep on growing and to keep on having those new experiences. That's so much of how we grow and live and enjoy life. And if we're not doing that, we're really kind of shutting down and even dying at some level.

[20:15] Alexandra: Yes, and actually the huge numbers of couples, their sex lives do die for exactly the reason that you've just said. And I think another component of that is we all expect that whether or not it happens, because times are relatively unpredictable and turbulent compared to earlier generations. But we expect to grow with respect to financial abundance. That in our forty s and fifty s we have more money than in our twenty s. And that ideally in our Sixty s, more than our 30s. So we expect our bodies to grow. Maybe we're not so fond of that, but we expect that. We expect to be in a bigger house. There are all these different areas of life where we expect growth. But for whatever reason, the kind of general conditioning in our society is we unconsciously. People expect a kind of stagnancy with respect to the growth in sexuality. They don't expect stagnancy in sex. But they expect that you figure out how to have good sex in your. It's all downhill from there. That's really not the case at all. There is a certain kind of sex available in our twenty s and other kinds of sex available in our thirty s and in our forty s. I mean, it doesn't follow the decade so directly. But the point is that we need to make room and have our conversations with ourselves and with our partner. And ideally with society. But that's not the job of the listener. Just do it for yourself and your partner. That you think about sexuality as a frontier for growth. An area of exploration, of awkwardness. As you find the next stage that's going to feel good. And another element to this is that in our younger years, novelty often includes new positions or new locations, or just something kind of obviously dramatic or exciting. And that's certainly still available in midlife and beyond. But more often the novelty comes because of the quality of attention and intention. And the depth of familiarity. So that one little adjustment when your bodies are blended and you both are fully present, one little adjustment. And there's this whole new landscape of sensation and feelings that you might not have felt before. Physical feelings, orgasmic feelings. But you can't have that kind of nuanced adjustment with such a beautiful impact early in the history of a sexual relationship with someone. That is something that comes with maturity, familiarity, and going through life together.

[23:27] Karin: Yeah. And I think that's a really important point, is that it's not going to be like the sex you had when you were in your 20s. It is going to be different, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be worse. And in fact, research shows that it's typically better if you want it to be. I've talked on past podcasts about the research done by therapists Klein, Platts and Maynard who found that people who they interviewed said that, oh, sex, the best sex of my life was definitely midlife and beyond.

[24:03] Alexandra: Yeah. And yet there are, I mean, it ranges from like 26% to 51%, depending on the study. But women who over 50 in relationships are not having sex. So there are those who stop, but those who continue without it being done as a duty, but really as an incredible exploratory landscape. Then you get the kind of results you've just described. And I want to just say one more thing to, I'm thinking more co authored a book called the Invitation Vital Conversations about menopause. And in the context of having the conversations and really exploring the content for that book with my co author. And even though I'm a physician, I'm not a menopause expert. My co author is an incredible documentary filmmaker and a speaker's coach and a TEDx host. And we really had the conversation as two growth oriented women who are thoughtful, thinking about our own experience, and having conversations that typically aren't had and are so important. But anyway, in the context of considering menopause and perimenopause and the personal and societal ramifications, what I came to is this understanding that we're missing an archetype in our society. And what I mean is that we're familiar, of course, with the maiden, which is more or less 20 years, and then the mother, which is more or less 20 years. And then we have the crone, which I think is also more or less 20 years. But it's not the 20 years that come after mother. It's not the 20 years that start when we are no longer fertile. There's like a 20 year period from late forty s, fifty to seventy or beyond. It depends. But I think of crone as really older than how I feel at 55. I mean, I have some wisdom, but I don't think of myself as a crone. And I think just one of the phenomena in our society is that we're missing that archetype for what we do. When we're no longer menstruating, we're no longer fertile. We have all this energy for sex, for being with our family, for all the different things you talk about on your podcast, whatever it is that we want to do before really starting to be in the last phase of our life. And I think that this is incredibly important when we think about empty nesters. And here's why. Because so often, however, the relationship is when we're younger, when we're then parenting and establishing ourselves in our career, whatever it is that is taking so much attention. There's a way in which we put our relationship on hold because there are other things that need our attention and that works. But there's a way in which.

[27:13] Karin: We'Re.

[27:13] Alexandra: Also avoiding our relationship. And the phenomenon with empty nesting is that there are no more distractions. Not that I think of children as distractions, but there's no more buffer. It's like it's raw and it's unequivocal, whatever the state of the relationship is. And if a couple suddenly finds themselves in that situation after decades of habitually putting the relationship on the periphery, it takes a lot of courage to turn towards one another and figure it out. And there's very little modeling. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it standard? Not really. It's actually more common that people get divorced or they settle into a kind of dehydrated truce of sorts. But there really is so much possible if you're willing to learn how to be with one another in a way that most people haven't previously created in their marriage.

[28:30] Karin: Yeah. And I think that's really true. Even if couples aren't checked out at some point in their relationship, they get so involved in kids work, possibly caring for aging parents or whatever it is. And those things seem so urgent. And so they think, well, we'll have time, we'll have time. We're solid, we're fine. But that's not how it works. And it really starts to work at the integrity of the relationship. When you don't have that FaceTime, you don't spend that quality time together, then it is really hard when all of a sudden it's just the two of you and you think, oh, my God, I don't even know who you are anymore.

[29:17] Alexandra: Curiosity really is the antidote. It is the way to open things up. It's not very confronting. It can seem very mild. In fact, in busy phases in my marriage, my husband and I, at the end of the day, usually 09:00 p.m. When everyone's attended to. We'll just say to one another, what was something important in your day? And that's enough curiosity to really create a reliable through line and not have to find our way back to one another when the intense phase is over. Because what I'm trying to say is it doesn't take a lot of time and it doesn't take a lot of effort. It just takes some amount of attention.

[30:05] Karin: And that does open up the door to bring to your partner who you are and what you're experiencing and what you're feeling and the important things for you in that moment. So, yeah, I love that.

[30:18] Alexandra: Yeah. The key is to listen generously after asking an open ended question. I want to just point out if this inspires anyone, that every single example of a question to ask that I've given is not a question that has a right and wrong answer, and it's also not a question. It could be that the answer would lead to taking action, but mostly it's just to know what is alive in your partner at this time. To witness, to generously receive it. Not to give suggestions, not to problem solve, not to criticize, not to judge. Just to be present with what is alive. Because it's in being with one another in those moments that the foundation is created and cultivated to have a lot more fun when the children are out of the house, because you feel seen, you feel heard, you feel received. And that really is essential to enjoying one another in and out of the bedroom.

[31:27] Karin: And that is good advice no matter what stage of a relationship that you're in, isn't it?

[31:33] Alexandra: It is. It's honestly true if you're getting divorced, but you'll be co parents for the rest of your life, even with adult children. Do yourselves a favor of being interested in who the other person is. And if you want to heat things up and access a whole other level of sexual connection and erotic chemistry, well, open ended questions are also absolutely an essential and surprisingly impactful first step. In fact, I'll share a story. I gave a lecture once about these kinds of topics, and there was a woman there who had been married for 32 years, and she didn't even intend to come to my lecture. She came to the one after and happened to arrive early. She thought, I have a great marriage. I don't have any interest in this lecture. But anyway, there she was. And she paid attention and she messaged me the next day. She said, I went home and I asked my husband a few open ended questions. And it was astonishing how we felt so much more intimate than we had in about five years. And I didn't think there was anything to improve on. But this was just so extraordinary for them. An open ended question is like adding a little seasoning to a dish. It's not complicated, but beautiful. Beautiful and gratifying. And I just want to emphasize again, because there are people who can ask the questions, but the place that people often fall short is really in listening generously. This is not a question to. Well, you can ask questions while you brush your teeth, but that is not going to accomplish this. Like to really make a cup of tea and put your phone away and just ask a question and have a conversation. That really is relationship lubrication.

[33:31] Karin: And I love to say, and listening with an open heart.

[33:34] Alexandra: Yes.

[33:35] Karin: So that you can really receive it.

[33:37] Alexandra: That's right. And if you ask your partner a question and they don't answer, well, try again, because you're bringing something new into the culture of your marriage. And so it may take a moment to catch on. But also, if you get answers that aren't really more than superficial, then consider how you're listening. How can you make it more safe for your partner to open up genuinely?

[34:05] Karin: Yeah. That safety sure is important for relationships. All of relationships, really, but especially when it comes to an intimate relationship. A sexual relationship.

[34:18] Alexandra: Yes.

[34:19] Karin: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about why that emotional connection really helps to feed a person's or a couple's sex life.

[34:31] Alexandra: Well, when it comes to a one night stand, you can have really amazing sex without even knowing your partner's name. It's just part of the sparks as they fly. It's obviously not guaranteed, but it's possible when it comes to sex with the person you have a life with, that you share a home with and know for a long time everything which isn't sex functions like foreplay, meaning every little interaction, either in a big way or a very small way, brings you closer together or pushes you further apart. So if you are in the habit of not expressing what's true for you because it's going to be overwhelming for your spouse or just whatever the circumstance is, if you compromise. When it comes to everyday communication and emotional intimacy, as human beings, we do not have some magic switch that when we get to the bedroom, we can be fully expressed and present and bring our whole selves in the way that is very important and essential for really gratifying sexual experiences. So if with our souls we are putting up the walls that the little barriers that we put up every time we're not genuine. Every time we just agree to something when we don't really want to, but it's not worth the trouble. It's akin to faking orgasm, but like faking our happiness about where we're going to eat or what movie we're watching. Anytime that we either are super dominating and don't make room for our partner's genuine expression, or probably more common with women, but both happen. Just holding back, just being shut down in the relationship, that makes great sex impossible. So when I coach couples and they want to really enliven, rekindle their sexual relationship, I always start with deepening the emotional Intimacy and with the clients I work with, who are educated, successful professionals, about 75 or 80% of the time, when I guide them to more connected communication and emotional intimacy, and using any interaction, whether it's bland or conflict, using any interaction to create more connection. As I say, 75 or 80% of the time, the sex just takes care of itself. It's very seamless. And then maybe 2020, 5% of the time, I actually coach more explicitly on what's happening in the bedroom and the particulars of how they're initiating sex and how they're touching one another. But more often than not, really attending to presence and communication and emotional intimacy and vulnerability and authenticity. That's the ultimate foreplay.

[37:47] Karin: Yeah. And I love that you said that, because, of course, foreplay starts at the end of when you last had sex. Right?

[37:55] Alexandra: Yes, us.

[37:57] Karin: Right. So it includes everything outside of the bedroom is every bit as important for how you communicate. How you connect is so important outside of the bedroom and in. So, yeah, I love that you talk about that.

[38:13] Alexandra: Yeah. So I hope listeners come away with a sense of hopefulness. And if you don't already have a magnificent marriage as empty nesters, this is your invitation to become good students. There's nothing inherently wrong or broken. It's that you didn't get the education. And really, where would you have, unless you make a point of searching it out?

[38:41] Karin: So do you talk with your couples about eroticism and how that can enliven their sex life?

[38:49] Alexandra: Yes, I do. Although I don't necessarily. I mean, I suppose I separate eroticism and sexuality in that sex lives can be very functional, they can be mechanical, and eroticism really makes it more meaningful, more expansive, more incredible. But ideally, all of our sexual experiences are marinating in erotic energy. And so maybe you were thinking of this. Anyway, I'll take it in this direction that I think the hallmark of a really thriving, fantastic relationship is when the erotic energy is not compartmentalized to the bedroOm, to sexual encounters, but instead, it pervades much of life. It adds vitality, it adds playfulness, it adds embodied pleasure. And it's not that I think we should be walking around dripping with delight 100% of the time, but there's a way in which even the most mundane, basic activities, I can do them while feeling erotically alive and not orienting to my erotic energy as something that's on the shelf until I'm having a sexual experience.

[40:14] Karin: And I suppose I should have asked this first, but how would you define eroticism?

[40:19] Alexandra: Okay. I would define eroticism as a form of electric wholeness. In other words, eroticism is where our bodies and our souls, our hearts and our minds, our individuality and our relationality, all dance together in a way that can be different every time and unique for each person. But it has a kind of electricity and an expansiveness, and we feel it in all of those aspects that I've just named. It's very much a both and state of being.

[41:06] Karin: Oh, I love that. I'm always curious to talk with people or even Google some of the leading experts on sex and relationships and find out how they define eroticism. And it varies so much. And that was such a beautiful definition. Thank you.

[41:25] Alexandra: Thank you. I love the question.

[41:28] Karin: Yeah. So, toward the beginning of the conversation, we talked about just a little bit on personal growth or personal transformation. And so I have a two part question here. So how would you define it, and why is it so important in relationships?

[41:50] Alexandra: I define personal growth as bringing attention to the learning available in every moment. And sometimes that learning entails developing new skills and what would more conventionally be considered growth. And sometimes the learning involves just relaxing and being present in the moment. So what I want to emphasize is that I really think of personal growth as being deeply connected to your evolving journey, but it's less outcome based. In other words, it's not that you're going to take certain tests or pass certain milestones. It's more an attitude that you can bring to any given moment. It's much more about the journey than any particular destination.

[42:50] Karin: Yeah.

[42:52] Alexandra: Remind me the second question.

[42:54] Karin: Yeah. So the second part is, what role does self growth or self transformation play in a relationship, and why is it important?

[43:04] Alexandra: It is my deep conviction that intimate relationships are the ultimate vehicle for personal growth. Because when we deeply love another person, and the relationship includes our body, our sexual self as well, there's a way in which being in that relationship provides mirrors and points us to what is triggering? What is activating 100% of the time, whether we think of it this way, consciously or not, it will reveal our childhood wounding and give an opportunity for us to either be rewounded and suffer or actually heal through leaning in and growing. There's something. I mean, if nothing else, we could say that in our childhood, whatever our circumstances are in childhood, that is where we learn what love is. And in our marriage or intimate relationship, we have another opportunity to be more intentional in what our definition and experience of love is. And the bridge between those two is absolutely the path of personal growth. Everything I just said is true, but it feels a little conceptual. So I want to just bring it, just ground it a little bit. So if you feel that you want your partner to change, that is an opportunity to know more about yourself, about what triggers you. And really, ideally, you don't put your attention on trying to change your partner so you're no longer triggered. You put your attention on getting to know yourself better and understanding what about that is triggering so that you can be peaceful in the face of that same behavior, which, by the way, is more likely to make that behavior change. But that is not the intended goal.

[45:23] Karin: Yeah, I'm with you 100%. It reminds me of something. I don't know if you're familiar with Terry Real, who says that we marry our unfinished business.

[45:37] Alexandra: Yes.

[45:39] Karin: And so when conflict comes up or we feel triggered about something or we have these strong emotions, then it's an indication that we can go down that path and learn a lot about ourselves and possibly heal and then also grow closer with our partners.

[46:03] Alexandra: I want to build on the quote from Terry Real, that we marry our unfinished business. Because I think in the context of this conversation, I would add, and then often we postpone it until we're empty nesters. And so this time, that can be depressing. It's like, how did I end up here? These are all the things I don't want. Well, that's because, yes, in addition to whatever else we marry, we also marry our unfinished business. And if we haven't intentionally worked it through and found connection but instead in a way that makes sense, I'm not judging it at all. I want to be really clear about that. But we fill our lives with children and work and keeping a home and all those things. And then when at least some of those things don't need our attention anymore and we've been together long enough so we recognize patterns, we are then absolutely faced with our unfinished business. And I think whether one has a great marriage or not, there's a normal kind of developmental phase of asking yourself, well, do I want to deal with this? Do I want to grow? I think more often people ask, is it possible? And I want to say, yes, it is, but do I want to deal with this? And I always say, when someone asks me about their particular relationship and ending it or not, stay and grow and find your way in the context of this conversation, I'll say, finish your business. And then either you will be in love all over again and be able to see one another more clearly and connect in the most wonderful way, or you'll know that with a kind of love and neutrality, you'd rather get divorced. But you can be a lot more confident that you're not going to just repeat the pattern with the next relationship because you've actually worked through your stuff, healed, and found a new reality, which is either falling in love again or not. In some ways, you can't always know that at the beginning of this journey.

[48:41] Karin: Yeah, and I love that you said that. That's one of the groups of people I love to work with, is women who are really feeling stuck in their marriages or long term committed relationships and they're unsure if they should stay or go. Say, hey, look, you know what? Let's do the work. And at the end of, not that there's really an end to the work, but you'll get to a place where either your current relationship is going to start to transform or you'll decide, you know what? This isn't the relationship for me, but now I'm really confident in who I am. I love myself and I understand my patterns, and it will be different next time because of that.

[49:25] Alexandra: Yeah, I really agree with that. And I think my wish for every midlife woman is to pursue vitality, to pursue self honoring, self expression. And when you do, then it's exactly what you've just described. I won't restate it. And even though we're talking this way from our respective neutral positions, there's no reason to be sorrowful or afraid. Because if you go for it and you fall in love again, wonderful. And if instead you achieve a kind of clarity that you want to leave, the woman who's leaving is not the woman you are at the beginning of that journey. You do not have to do this with the uncertainty and insecurity that one has at the beginning of the journey. It is a different woman who will ultimately make that decision, which is why there's no reason to be distracted by what the outcome is, because the person experiencing it isn't present yet.

[50:31] Karin: Yeah. So I just want to encourage people listening that this can be such an opportunity. And it does take work and it does take time. It's not like you're going to get there in a month or two or three. It does take time. The rewards are so great.

[50:47] Alexandra: The rewards are so great. And while it takes time, you also can experience results quite quickly. Maybe not final results, so to speak, but the results that come with having more pleasure and more aliveness in your day, that can actually happen sooner than three months.

[51:14] Karin: If there's one thing you'd like people listening to walk away with after this conversation, what would it be?

[51:23] Alexandra: Thank you. That's a beautiful question. And my answer is that I would want people to realize that there always is more that is possible. You're never stuck with what isn't working for you. There always is more that is possible. And it's just a question of what the right next step is.

[51:50] Karin: And as I ask all my guests, what role does love play in the work that you do?

[51:56] Alexandra: There's so many ways to answer that question, and I'm going to answer it in two ways. One is actually quite personal, which is that I find when I put attention on clients, I can't help but love them. In other words, even like I've had. It's been a while, but years ago, there were a few people that I didn't really like in my personal life who wanted to coach with me, and I was like, but I always said, yes, of course. But the reason is that as soon as I coach someone, I love them. And I think the reason for that is when we genuinely put our attention on another human being, love follows. It's when we don't actually put our attention on someone. When we put projections or we don't turn in their direction or our vision is cloudy, that all these other feelings and judgments come up. But when we genuinely put attention on another human being, love really is the seamless next. It's just right on the tails of attention. So I'm saying that in terms of one way of answering the role of love in the work that I do, but what I said is obviously not unique to me. And so you could say in this context that the work that I do with couples consists of teaching them how to put attention on themselves and one another, such that love is what naturally arises and blossoms.

[53:52] Karin: So how can people learn more about you and your book? You have a book called Uncompromising Intimacy, and you also have a podcast, Intimate marriage podcast you have program for couples, I believe so. How can people learn more about all that?

[54:14] Alexandra: Alexandrastockwell.com is my website. It's a great starting point because from alexandrastockwell.com, yes, you can find links to all of my social media. I post a lot of free content on a regular basis. You can sign up for my email list, the Intimate Marriage podcast. I have two books, Uncompromising Intimacy and also the invitation, vital conversations about menopause. You're welcome to message me, but whatever it is that might appeal to you, the starting gate is alexandrastockwell.com.

[54:51] Karin: Great. And we'll put that all in the show notes of course too.

[54:54] Alexandra: Thank you Alexandra.

[54:56] Karin: It was so wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us. I really love this conversation.

[55:02] Alexandra: I appreciate being invited and the beautiful, connected, sensitive way that you lead this podcast. Thank you.

Outro:

Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love Is Us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm The Love and Connection Coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.