You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
Hey, it's Marielle.
Happy almost Valentine's Day, you friggin' cuties.
Question, what do you think about dating people you're friends with?
Terrible idea?
Best idea you ever had?
I mean, I think it's a really great formula to have a best friend that you want to make out with.
Amy Chan is a relationship expert and a previous guest of Life Kit.
She helped us with getting over breakups a while back.
Her upcoming book is called Unsingle, How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts.
Speaking of the couples who sustain strong sexual connections over the long term, the first characteristic they all share, regardless of gender or sexual orientation or anything else they like each other.
This is fellow LifeKit alum Emily Nagoski.
Emily is a sex educator, a researcher and the author of the wildly popular books Come As You Are and Come Together.
So yes, Emily and Amy agree that relationships can and should be built on a foundation of friendship.
But they also acknowledge that when you mix friendship and romance, things can get...
For example, being friends with your ex.
Highly polarizing topic.
I'm betting just the mention of it brings up feelings for you.
Our experts say it is possible, but you've got to give yourself a transition period because maybe your brain has decided to not be in a relationship with this person.
But your body doesn't get the memo.
And so if you keep seeing each other and like sharing good news with each other and having sex, your body doesn't understand that there's been a breakup.
One of the barometers I suggest to people is if this is the first person you want to tell really big news to, especially bad news, like if they're your person you go to, you're not ready to be friends yet.
On this edition of Dear Life Kit, the advice series from Life Kit reporter Andy Tagle.
Emily and Amy are here to offer advice for lovers and friends on all the messiness that can happen when two become one.
They'll talk about what to do when friends become lovers, become just roommates, what to do when you're jealous of your partner's friends, what to do when you're thinking about meddling in a friend's relationship, and more.
That's after the break.
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All right, question number one.
Dear Life Kit.
My girlfriend and I started dating a little over a year ago after crushing on each other for years from afar.
At first, she was very loving and affectionate.
She'd leave me little love notes, and we had sex often.
Then, a few months in, she had surgery to insert an IUD, and we haven't had sex since.
She tells me she's bled constantly since the IUD, and it affects her hormones.
So she simply has no sexual appetite.
But she also abstains from nearly any affectionate gesture, romantic moment or expression of shared feeling.
Now it feels like we're roommates.
I don't want to pressure her, but I want my girlfriend back.
Is it wrong for me to ask her to consider my feelings about sex and affection?
Signed, Starved for Affection.
We only know one side of the story here, of course, but it sounds to me like there's a lot going on with the girlfriend, right?
Is that what you were hearing too, Emily?
Yeah, no change in hormones causes a person to stop writing little love notes.
I think we might not know everything that happened with the IUD placement.
One of my thoughts was there's a significant proportion of people who have very intense unpleasant, painful experiences with IUD placement.
And especially if she's been bleeding constantly, there might have been a painful experience that she has not felt comfortable sharing.
Of course, it's absolutely valid to want your needs met and to have a conversation about it, and have that conversation in a way that doesn't activate the dreaded chasing dynamic.
If you go in and say hey, I'm entitled to the sex and the love that you were giving me before not going to work out well.
I think what I'm hearing him say is, I miss my girlfriend.
And if the conversation begins at the place of, I really miss you.
I miss the sense of feeling emotionally connected and loved and loving.
And without going to the sexual conversation, are there things we can do that feel loving?
I mean, that was my next question is like, what is the absolute wrong way to go about this?
What are some ways, more broadly, that people might be pushing their partners without knowing it in these types of situations?
When we're about to have a high-stakes conversation, and this would be one we can go in with either boxing gloves or a handshake.
And boxing gloves is like.
You know you're not doing this anymore and I want this and my needs aren't getting met.
There's a lot of accusatory language.
And then there's a handshake method which is coming in with care and compassion and and using I statements right.
And when you have the boxing gloves, the person has their defenses up.
They're already in their survival state.
So you've already lost a conversation before it's begun.
Part of communication isn't just okay.
What words am I going to use and what's the goal of it, but how am I going to approach it?
And having a handshake means even the timing of the conversations.
Like I used to love having my deep conversations, high stakes conversations, right before my partners want to go to bed.
Bad timing, right?
Boxing gloves.
I've now learned, okay, afternoons are better.
Yeah.
I think what's extra tricky in this specific situation is the freshness of this relationship, right?
The relationship itself is about a year old.
It sounds like their sexual relationship was just ramping up before it completely shut down.
What if that conversation is opened up very lovingly?
And the answer is, I'm not interested in the sexual relationship.
Yeah, because this relationship is comparatively new.
This is the kind of conversation that can really be like break the relationship or build a deeper, more profound connection, so that they begin sort of tossing aside all the scripts we have in our minds about how sex is supposed to work in a relationship and begin co-creating a connection that's really customized for, to who they are in this season of their lives, which is different from what the first year of their life was like.
Yeah, and I think it's also important when these conversations happen is to see if both partners are willing to come to the table to grow.
And are they invested in building the relationship?
Because right now, this is a topic around physical intimacy.
Guess what?
In five years or three years, there will be another big topic where one partner will say this need isn't being met, or I have this love language and you don't.
And it's not really about what is the conflict of the moment.
It is, are two people, both willing to come together as a team to hear each other out, to grow together and figure out solutions so that it's working for the both of them and not just one of them.
Absolutely.
They're going to be fine.
We're rooting for you.
We're rooting for you.
Start for perfection.
All right.
Moving on to question number two.
Dear Life Kid.
My boyfriend and I have been in a loving long-distance relationship for just over two years.
We like to joke that we'll never leave the honeymoon stage because we only get to see each other every few months, usually for a week at a time while traveling somewhere exciting.
We're both looking forward to moving in together in the future.
My issue is he has a lot of close female friends.
It makes me really uncomfortable.
When I met his female friends from college, for example, one of the first things they brought up was how they'd all seen him naked, because that's quote just what he did at parties.
He'd never mentioned that to me.
Another time, he got too drunk at a party and slept on the couch at his female friend's house.
Just him and her, no one else.
Recently he was invited to a music festival by another female friend and he was very short on details like who's going, what the sleeping arrangements would be.
I don't think he would cheat on me, but I can't stop feeling uneasy and even a little jealous.
I've never had many guy friends so it's hard for me to accept all these platonic female friendships.
Do I have to?
Signed, long distance, and left out.
OK, Emily.
So short answer.
Yes.
Longer answer has to be.
Oh, so how do I do that?
This is a question about trust.
Right.
Yeah.
And either your partner is not worthy of your trust and.
She says, I don't think he would cheat on me, so partner is worthy of trust.
Okay, so that means the lack of trust is happening on your end.
You are slow to trust.
There are so many reasons a person can be slow to trust.
Maybe they have had their trust betrayed in the past, and so they're reluctant to trust again.
Maybe they just grew up in a family where trust was betrayed often or slow to be given.
Some people, just temperamentally, are slower to trust.
A lot of the times, especially when it's a jealousy version of trust, it's about being worried that who you are is not enough to keep your partner with you.
When your partner is going to look around and see all these other women that they're friends with and feel like oh, I could really do so much better because of these other people.
So ultimately, this sounds to me like is this person sure that they deserve trust with his partner?
Okay.
All right.
Amy, are you in agreement?
Yes.
It's totally okay for your partner to have friends of the opposite sex.
So in this case, it sounds like there's kind of two issues going on.
One is, can he have friends?
Yes.
The other part is maybe when this guy was single, He was running around naked and having sleeping arrangements that were fine when he's a bachelor.
But now that he's in a relationship, I think it's also important that they have a conversation of okay, what are the boundaries around this?
Like totally going to support that you have these friends and what is reasonable that now that you're in a relationship that we can both feel comfortable with it.
And I think exactly what Emily said when people are jealous, we can try to remove all the things that make us jealous.
Like you can't be friends with this person.
You can't go out past this time.
But it's like whack-a-mole, right?
If you don't address a core issue, you're constantly going to be just addressing the symptoms.
I think it's reasonable to like sit down with your partner before you move in together and be like.
I have a request.
How about you not be naked in front of your friends anymore?
So it sounds like there are conversations that this couple need to have.
There's some expectation setting that needs to be done.
I want to talk a little bit more about jealousy, because it's you know, it's a natural human response that we all deal with now and then.
What's the healthy way for long distance and left out to work through these emotions?
Therapy.
I don't want to oversimplify but honestly, especially because it's so early in the relationship, like let's nip this in the bud.
You can have all the relationship skills in the world.
And if you don't understand the source of your discomfort, you're not going to be able to cope with it.
Yeah, I also think that What happens is a lot of times when people feel jealous, is there could be an automatic reaction to blame that feeling on the partner.
So I feel this.
It's painful.
It's your fault.
So you do these things.
And so, before they even think of going to therapy, they're like well, there's nothing wrong with me.
Why would I go to therapy?
You go to therapy.
And a question that I find very helpful is to ask yourself, is...
The way that I'm feeling and the way that I'm reacting, proportionate to the reality of the situation or the offense at hand.
And then that's going to require you to do some digging, hopefully with a therapist.
But if not even on your own at first, so that you can start to piece together the dots and then come to your partner with a conversation where you're more vulnerable.
Be like, wow, this happened.
It triggered me.
And that can open up this deep conversation that can actually bring you closer together.
More Dear Life Kit after this quick break.
Moving on to question three.
Dear Life Kit, my partner and I are very close friends with another couple.
We've known them for over a decade, and I even officiated their wedding.
As their relationship has progressed, we've become increasingly concerned for them.
One partner treats the other like a servant, and we feel that the division of labor within their marriage is unfair.
These friends individually confide in both me and my spouse about their marital problems.
We feel a sense of duty to help them resolve their problems, especially since I administer their vows.
But I also wonder if divorce is a better option for them.
What should I do?
Signed, bothered bystander.
Well, I mean, I think that you're a very good friend and you have compassion and you care about your friends deeply.
I would be careful to not triangulate.
So person A's coming to you and complaining, and then person B is coming to you complaining, and then they're not having those conversations themselves.
So ultimately this is a problem between them and you can't go and fix it.
I think if he is going to be supportive, what he can do is ask permission before giving advice.
Like I've been noticing some stuff.
Do you, do you want any feedback?
Because someone's going to be a lot more open to receiving your advice and your feedback if you ask them permission first, but ultimately you can't fix them or, you know, tell them to get a divorce.
Yeah, that is a wild to me.
I was like, oh my gosh, that is a.
That is a wild thing to even consider, you know, even as a very, very best friend.
You suggest that they get divorced and then they don't.
Right.
And forever you're the friend who was like, you thought we should get divorced.
Yes, or they get divorced.
And then you were, you were the thing, you were the thing that that pushed them down that line.
You know, I just yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that when someone is coming to you and they're constantly just venting or complaining, it might feel for that person who's doing the venting like they're being productive, but they're not right.
And it can actually reinforce a negative feeling.
So there's a point where it's just nonproductive and it's actually not helpful for the person and it's not helpful for you as a listener either.
So I think as the friend, you also have to set some boundaries for yourself as well.
Yeah.
People worry that if they set a limit.
Hey listen, I love you so much and I am on your side and I want to hear all about it.
And there's only so much that my emotions can tolerate.
So I'm going to set the timer for 15 minutes.
Go.
And then after that, we talk about anything else.
I love that.
Okay.
Bothered bystander.
We wish you well.
All right.
Question number four.
Dear Life Kit, I've been dating my boyfriend for almost five years.
He was the first person I felt safe with because I didn't have to earn his love and validation.
He was always emotionally available for me.
We've discussed marriage several times, but years went by with no proposals.
Lately, I've realized that I don't think I was ever really attracted to him.
And I think I wanted to get married because he was the first partner.
I didn't feel the need to chase.
We haven't had sex for a year.
I'm also checked out emotionally.
But I don't want to break things off because he's a great guy and I care for him.
Should I settle for a safe relationship with no chemistry?
Signed, stay safe or fly solo.
Imagine you're both going to have strong feelings about this one.
Anyone want to start us off?
Yeah, I had a lot of feelings about this one because there's so many things that could be going on.
Like is it that you were never attracted to this person or is it that you have so much resentment, etc.
Now, when you look at them, you're seeing them through the lens of all these difficult feelings.
You are also emotionally checked out and it sounds like you're not interested in being emotionally checked in.
He's a great guy.
What do you want for him?
If he were your best friend, would you be wishing that relationship would end so that he could find somebody who was emotionally checked in and wanted to be with him and was attracted to him?
And would you want to be in a relationship with someone who, looking at you, is like maybe I was never attracted to you.
That's exactly what I, that was the first thing that I wrote.
I was like if I was with someone for five years.
I really hope that's not what they were thinking about me.
And it's such a hard conversation.
It is to say to someone hey look, I don't feel connected to you anymore, especially because we all want to be as kind and generous as we can.
And though there could be all kinds of other circumstances we just don't know about.
Part of me wants to talk about like responsive desire.
And are you sure you're not attracted?
Are you just not experiencing spontaneous desire?
Because the relationship has lasted a while and your body and brain have changed and the relationship has changed.
Maybe that's a thing.
But from not having sex, emotionally checked out, I was never attracted.
That all feels to me like I have already left this relationship in every way, except for telling him.
So I do wonder like, is she in a lull or is this a constant?
And I don't have enough data because, if this is, a case of resentment has built up and that has caused her to now be emotionally checked out as well.
Um, could there be a very open and honest conversation with this person around the marriage not happening and some of the issues that are causing her to feel like she wants to, you know, disassociate from this relationship?
It sounds like there's a few issues going on.
Like one of them is she wanted to get married and was promised marriage and it hasn't happened.
And so I wonder if there's some resentment that's been building and maybe that resentment is causing her to be in this current state right now.
And when we look at like the signs of memory, our current state can actually change how we remember things.
So maybe her past memory because she's in this resentful state is like I never was attracted to him in the first place.
So I wonder if there's some of that going on.
I do feel that in any relationship, there's going to be ebbs and flows, right?
The physical attraction, the chemistry thing.
Sometimes it's high and sometimes it's low.
And I do feel that it's part of our responsibility, when we're in a long-term relationship, to also learn the skills to cultivate that chemistry.
And a lot of times we're like, well, the butterflies are gone.
It's done.
And we move on.
There's skill building and there's intentionally building novelty and excitement and adventure to create that chemistry again.
Hmm.
Maybe it's not that they're not compatible.
They just need to start putting the work back in.
Yeah.
And I think it also it has to be kicked off by asking each other like, if we are to stay together like, do we want a passionless, sexless relationship, or do we not want that?
And if we don't want that, then what could we do?
Is there anything we could do?
Hmm.
So either way, it's time for an honest conversation.
The broader question this raises for me is what's the right amount of give?
You know, every relationship requires some degree of compromise, some degree of tradeoff.
How do you find the right balance between over aching, you know, dismissing someone too early and choosing an unhappy relationship over just being by yourself?
The best relationship I ever got came from my grandmother, who said that if each person gives 50-50, you've got half a relationship.
Each person has to give 100% of what they have.
But you can't give more than you have.
If you try to carry a bunch of their stuff also, you're going to get burned out and resentful and exhausted.
And... it's not going to last in the long term.
But both of you have to show up with fully open hearts, ready to have a conversation.
And I think, as Amy was saying, having a realistic idea of what a long term relationship looks like.
We started the conversation by talking about friendship.
It sounds like these two could be really good friends.
Yeah, the safety part is something in her letter that struck out to me.
As someone who has formerly been with a lot of people who didn't like me back and spent all my effort trying to chase them down.
I had great chemistry with them because it was always outside of my reach.
And I have found that now being in a very safe relationship where your nervous system isn't constantly being activated,
And I think that there's some of that too.
Is this person associating an activated nervous system or anxiety with chemistry?
Okay, well, our friends stay safe and we wish you well.
Emily Amy, before we let you go, at the end of every episode of Dear Life Kit, we ask our guests for their very best piece of advice, anything that comes to mind, anything that speaks to you.
The couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term have three, and only three, things in common.
They like each other.
They're friends who trust and admire each other, too.
They believe that sex matters enough in their relationship that they prioritize it.
And third...
They do a bunch of emotional work to unlearn all the cultural lies that we're told about how sex is supposed to work in a long-term relationship and replace all those lies with what's true for them.
And they keep renewing what's true for them as their bodies and their lives change over the long term.
Lovely.
Amy, what have you got for us?
People should understand that being great at dating and being great at building relationships long-term, healthy relationship are two different sets of skills and a lot of times in dating we get so distracted and we prioritize these shiny qualities such as looks or or height or color of their hair, whatever that is, and those aren't the things that actually will make a good long-term partner if someone is willing to communicate, if someone is willing to repair and to grow through all these different relationship conflicts.
That's what is going to matter in the long term.
Lovely.
Amy, Emily, thank you so much for joining us.
I've had so much fun.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This was so fun.
That was Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel talking to Emily Nagoski and Amy Chan.
Before we go, I have a favor to ask you.
If you have a moment, would you leave LifeKit a five-star review?
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A five-star review is a great way to show your support.
And thank you.
This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas.
Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan.
Our digital editor is Malika Garib.
Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer.
Our production team also includes Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino, and Mika Ellison.
Engineering support comes from Peter Alina.
I'm Mariel Segarra.
Thanks for listening.
