Dr. Lauren Fogel Mersy and Dr. Jennifer Vencill: Navigating Libido

In this episode of Smart Sex, Smart Love, Dr. Joe Kort interviews Dr. Lauren Fogel Mersy, and Dr. Jennifer Vencill dive into the complexities of sexual desire discrepancies between partners. They discuss the differences between libido, sexual desire, and sex drive, emphasizing that sexual desire discrepancies are common and should be normalized rather than pathologized. The episode highlights two types of libido: spontaneous and responsive, and how cultural narratives often misrepresent sexual experiences. The experts provide insights on how partners can navigate these discrepancies, focusing on communication, understanding individual motivations, and exploring pleasure beyond traditional scripts. Listeners are encouraged to embrace diverse sexual experiences and to seek resources that reflect their unique situations. The episode aims to educate and empower individuals and couples to foster healthier sexual relationships.

Transcript

JOE KORT  0:00  
Music. Hello everyone, and welcome to Smart sex, smart love, where talking about sex goes beyond the taboo and talking about love goes beyond the honeymoon. The guests today are Dr Lauren Fogle mercy and Dr Jennifer vensel. Dr Fogle mercy is a licensed psychologist, an asex certified sex therapist and a certified Emotionally Focused couples therapist. She specializes in sexual health and relationships and owns her own private practice in Minnesota. Dr venz is an assistant professor, board certified clinical health psychologist and asex certified sex therapist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Her research focuses on sexual health and health disparities in marginalized sexual and gender communities. Today, they're going to talk about differences in libido. Don't panic. Welcome Jennifer and Lauren.

Speaker 1  0:56  
Thank you for having us happy to be here with you.

JOE KORT  0:59  
All right, thank you. I say don't panic, because people get really up in their arms about this. I mean, I feel like almost every couple I work with probably has a desire discrepancy, and they worry about what it all means, and so you're going to help them regulate around this, I hope. Right. All right, yes, so let's just start. What is sexual desire discrepancy?

Speaker 2  1:22  
Well, we think of a sexual desire discrepancy as really at its foundation, different levels of sexual interest or libido. We use those words interchangeably between sexual or romantic partners. That might be kind of frequency of interest in sex. It might also be different styles or types of sexual libido, which we can certainly talk more about today. Okay?

JOE KORT  1:41  
And when you say libido, people get confused. And I, as I told you before we started, about the difference between a sex drive and a sexual desire in libido, can you cut tell us about all those differences? Are sure, yeah,

Speaker 1  1:55  
we think of sex in the field more, or libido rather, as more of an incentive motivation system, rather than Drive. Drive tends to speak more to things that are there to ensure our survival as an individual being so things like, you know, hunger and thirst and fatigue are things that you can only go so long before you need to satisfy those drives or needs, otherwise, you may be in danger as as an individual, sex doesn't work exactly like that, and though many people may feel very driven or an urge, or, you know, a great sense of desire, it works a little bit differently, because, as we all know, that you can go, you know, pretty endless amounts of time without having sex and not perish as an individual. And so just a little bit of nuance there, in terms of saying, you know, it's a drive versus a desire, a libido, and that just means that there's an interest, and you might have a strong motivation for seeking out sexuality, whether that's, you know, to connect, to feel good, to, you know, feel validated. There might be strong motivators to seek out a sexual interaction.

Speaker 2  3:10  
Yeah, nobody has ever keeled over dead from not having an orgasm for a certain amount of time, right? Versus going without food or water or sleep, we certainly cannot sustain our life.

JOE KORT  3:20  
That's right. That's right. I have had some clients go, this is going to kill me. I can't last. I can't last any longer. I'm sure you've had the same

Speaker 2  3:26  
Sure. And I also point out to patients, you know, certainly at a population level, we need to have sex to reproduce and live on as a species. But no one individual person is is dying from lack of sex.

JOE KORT  3:39  
I had one client. I think about him sometimes, because he had a long period. He said, I want you to know, Joe, this is how long we haven't had sex. I told my wife that, until we have sex, I'm gonna I'm not gonna show you. And you know, so people get upset and they get angry at each other. So can you say how common is desired discrepancy?

Speaker 2  3:58  
Yeah. Well, as you know, Joe, we don't have great epidemiological data on sexual functioning concerns or relationship concerns. We're just not funding that type of research here in the US, unfortunately. However, what we do know is it tends to be the number one concern that brings people into, certainly sex therapists office, but general couples and marriage and relationship therapists as well, different levels and styles of desire tend to be the number one concern that partners face.

JOE KORT  4:23  
Yeah, I would agree with that. Oh, go ahead, Lauren. I was just

Speaker 1  4:26  
going to add, I think, you know, we see it as the norm rather than the exception, and and certainly, our colleagues have also weighed in and share that sentiment, that it's really to be expected that two or more people are going to have some differences in their relationship as a whole, and then particularly in the sexual dynamic as well, if not at some point, then maybe even more perpetually. So it's it's likely to show up somewhere, either just through a blip or a stage of the relationship, or throughout the majority of the relationship. And so we like to normalize that for. People, because I think a lot of folks are not expecting that, and then when they hit that point where there's divergence, it can create a lot of alarm internally that something's wrong.

Speaker 2  5:11  
We have a lot of messages in our culture that tell us, well, if our partner is not interested in us sexually, that must mean they are looking elsewhere. Maybe they're cheating, right? Or there's something wrong with me, I'm not attractive enough for them, right? So we tend to really look for reasons to kind of fill that difference, because we don't, you know, we're not trained to talk about these things very well, and so we try to kind of reason why that difference might be there. Oftentimes, those reasons are not what's actually going on, though, right?

JOE KORT  5:38  
And then some people think, well, we have a desired discrepancy. I'll just go find another partner, and maybe they're the higher desire partner, and then they find in the next relationship that they still have a desired discrepancy, and they're the low desire because they met somebody with a higher desire, right?

Speaker 1  5:53  
Exactly, it can be so dynamic to the relationship and to the circumstances, and so switching partners doesn't necessarily change that. I mean, it can, in some circumstances, if there's relational concerns or there, you know, certain variables involved, but it's not so cut and dry as just, you know, a new partner means this goes away,

JOE KORT  6:17  
and you both talk about two different types of libidos. Can you explain that? Yeah,

Speaker 2  6:22  
so there's two different types of sexual desire, also known as libido. The first is known as spontaneous libido, and the second is known as responsive libido, responsive sexual desire. Most of us, when we think about sexual desire or libido, we're thinking about spontaneous kind of that first one I mentioned because this is what's represented in our culture. It's what we see in the movies and the shows we watch and the books we read, where all of a sudden the character has this light, not lightning bulb moment of I'm horny, I'm turned on, I'm really interested in sex spontaneously, right? Hence the name, and then the characters go have, like, very unrealistic sex in the movie, right? This is what we see all around us. And so when folks come to my clinic and say, I have low libido. I have no libido 10 times out of 10. This is what they're thinking of, right? I'm not having that spontaneous like lightning bolt, moment of interest in sex that kind of comes in this very frenzied way, and it's not necessarily triggered by anything, at least not not anything obvious to them.

JOE KORT  7:17  
Okay, great. Thank you for for clarifying that because people, I do think that they don't know the difference. And would you say this? I hate to make generalizations, but are sometimes people will say, my office, they if they feel like, well, women are more responsive and men are more spontaneous. Would you do agree with that? What do you think of that the

Speaker 2  7:37  
research actually doesn't support that? The research would say that it cuts equally across genders. I think partly where that sexual stereotype comes from is we know that sex hormones do play a role in spontaneous libido. We don't quite know the complexity of all of that yet, because, again, lacking research, but we do know that things like estrogen and testosterone and progesterone play some sort of complicated role here, and I think that that's where we start to see the origin of some of these sex stereotypes. Sex stereotypes and

JOE KORT  8:03  
and I admitted that I haven't read your book yet, and I want to. We'll talk about your book in a minute. But do you speak about limerence? Do you talk about that lot? You know, a lot of people are pathologizing that on on social media these days, and I don't have a pathological understanding of limerence. I understand it to be kind of what we're already talking about. What do you both think it's funny

Speaker 1  8:21  
you mentioned this, Joe, because I actually have the limerence book. Dorothy tenov, I think is the person who created the term, and I have that in my library account now to read, because I have seen exactly like you. There's this pathologizing of limerence, and that was never my understanding of the term as well, and so I'm in the midst of a little bit of a deeper dive to understand the framing. But we do talk in the book about the honeymoon phase, or new relationship energy. And what tends to happen for a lot of folks is in that time frame, they experience a lot more spontaneous desire. And that can be a really common experience when there is something new or novel or a budding romance. And for some people, they maintain that spontaneous desire then throughout the relationship, whereas for others, they see a spike in spontaneous desire, and then they after some time and

Speaker 2  9:18  
some comfort, might kind of go back to a more responsive style. Maybe that was their more predominant style before the honeymoon phase. There's a neurochemistry role here as well that I don't know that we should be pathologizing, right? And so when we have a new partner, when we find ourselves in novel situations, there is a flood of dopamine in our brain. We know that this is the case in terms of brain chemistry, when we have these novel environments and novel relationships, that's not sustainable over the long term. So we can't necessarily expect limerence or new relationship energy to last forever and ever, but it is a pretty common stage, developmental stage in a relationship. I'm

JOE KORT  9:55  
so glad you could speak to this. I'm so glad you have that book. I'm also going to get the book and I wrote. Wrote an article that I haven't published yet for Psychology Today, because of all this pathologizing over like, acting like we're victims to limerence, rather than we can be in charge of it like, I know, some cultures don't even aspire to limerence because they understand they can attach you to the wrong person. So now people are acting like, oh my god, it, it did this to me. Rather than understanding limerence, you can be you can override limerence, yeah,

Speaker 1  10:23  
I think it's developmentally part of a new connection and the attachment process. And we just want to be thoughtful. I mean, of course, you can become really excited about someone and really enthralled with them, and then you see that spike in desire and oxytocin and the hormones and it so what that can look like is sometimes maybe making a lot of decisions really quickly. Right? You don't want to maybe jump into, let's you know, hitch ourselves together forever and make all these big decisions when we're we're still getting to know each other, and we have some rose colored glasses on, and so that's absolutely part of the developmental process. We just need to sometimes slow ourselves down and allow the process to unfold.

JOE KORT  11:14  
I love that. All right. When we talk to about higher desire partners, what should they keep in mind in the relationship?

Speaker 2  11:24  
First things we often ask chiral libido partners to think about is, what is their motivation for wanting to be sexual. We talk a lot in our book about different motivators and identifying your motivators for sex. For many people, it is physical pleasure, as you can imagine, having an orgasm tends to feel good for folks, but for others, the motivation for sex is to have an emotional connection with their partner. It's to feel comforted. It's a stress reliever we have. We provide a significant list of potential motivators in the book for people to kind of think about and see if that you know applies to them. For folks that have higher libido than their partner. We want them to be thinking about what is the motivation if it's just an orgasm? Are there other ways to do that? If it's finding stress relief? Are there other ways to do that if your partner is not available to you or isn't matching kind of where you're at in terms of libido? So we really want to kind of get to what is pushing this sensation for them, so that we can move forward with more information about that. And I think that's

Speaker 1  12:22  
really helpful, because there can be a lot of pressure that the quote unquote lower desire partner can feel to, you know, meet the desires of the quote unquote higher libido partner. And when we look at sort of, what is it that you're looking for, what is the maybe underlying relational need behind this request. It helps to create, maybe more expansive experiences around getting some of those needs met. Sometimes things can just funnel into one activity, when really there might be multiple ways to feel valued, validated, stress relief, loved, connected, and so having a variety of options for how to meet some of those underlying needs can really help take some of the pressure off of the couple dynamic.

JOE KORT  13:11  
I like that. What should the lower desire partner keep in mind

Speaker 1  13:14  
so often that is focusing on and discovering what is pleasurable for them, what is their own motivator as well for being sexual with a partner, and that may look a little bit different than what we've been sort of told by our culture. Often we are kind of given this message to focus on, you know, orgasms, penetrative sex, you know, certain, very specific partnered experience, but that's not the most motivating thing for everybody. And so it may be that you really enjoy the sensation of kissing or being caressed or just lying naked with your partner, and if we downgrade that to something that doesn't count, because it's not genitally stimulating or it doesn't culminate in an orgasm. A lot of people are putting their own desires and pleasure to the side because it doesn't follow that script or that narrative that we're told it's supposed to. So with lower libido partners, we're often starting with even just the concept generally of pleasure, and how do they experience pleasure and what feels satisfying, both within a like intimate dynamic, but also just more generally as well, we get a lot of messages that suppress our general relationship to pleasure as a whole.

Speaker 2  14:41  
I would add to that that I see, and I I'm certain Lauren does as well. A lot of partners who have either labeled themselves or been labeled in the in the relationship as the lower libido partner, and in fact, they are actually the more responsive libido partner as compared to that spontaneous we talked about earlier. So just a note on that, because we didn't talk about the response. Sexual desire, which is that second type of libido. For people who are more responsive, their physical arousal tends to have to happen first, right? So the body gets aroused. We have pleasurable sensations. To Lauren's point here, before the mind, kind of mentally clicks in is saying, oh yeah, this is good. I'd like to continue, right? So rather than that lightning bolt moment of I'm horny, all of a sudden, out of the blue, right? There is a warming up that tends to need to happen. There needs to be sensation that feels good, that feels arousing to the body, before mentally responsive desire. Folks tend to be able to experience that interest, that wanting, right? Many people who have been labeled as lower libido or lower desire in our culture are indeed more responsive in their style or their type of libido, and that's a really critical thing for both partners, all partners, to understand. What

JOE KORT  15:51  
do you say to couples where the one that wants to have sex so there's often more one partners often more the initiator, another partner is more the one, the pursuit partner. And they'll say, Well, you know, you seem to be having all kinds of self pleasure and masturbatory experiences, and you seem to want that more than me. It feels like, how do you talk? Speak to that with couples, that

Speaker 1  16:14  
happens so often. And I think it really speaks to, then again, the dynamic and the experience of partnered sex versus solo sex, they can be very different experiences. So often solo sex is pretty focused on just like your own pleasure. There's not, you know, the the external pressure of having a partner there, having to navigate different desires, having to face potentially disappointing a partner, having to have hard conversations. So there's a lot of relational dynamic that happens with relational sex, which is different than solo sex. So a lot of people can find this to be competing, like you're having sex on your own and not with me, and that really hurts, which totally makes sense. And I get that. I also think that that's such a beautiful opportunity to have conversation. What is it about when you're on your own that seems to work well? And is there a way for us to bring some of that into our dynamic, right? What is it that makes it easier for you? And often it's, you know, it's I don't have to negotiate, I don't have to leave you feeling badly. I don't have to get into potential conflict. I don't have to feel pressure. So some of those things which really speak to then the relational dynamic, or the sexual dynamic, which is a lot of the work that we end up doing in sex therapy is addressing some of those dynamic issues, but

Speaker 2  17:44  
also remind lower libido, quote, unquote, lower libido partners who

Unknown Speaker  17:49  
are cisgender

Speaker 2  17:50  
women, that there is significant research that suggests that masturbation, self stimulation for cisgender women actually helps to increase partner desire. So there's a difference in the research litter literature, between solo libido, solo desire and partnered libido, or partner desire, rather meaning, are you more interested in being sexual on your own versus with a partner? Are they about equal etc, right? There is building evidence, growing evidence that, particularly for cisgender women, masturbation helps to really build partner desire, right? And so there could be a relational benefit for some people there as well, kind

JOE KORT  18:27  
of so appreciate you adding that. And I don't, I don't even know that, actually, so it's good for me to know that when I'm working with couples. Thank you for that. So let's talk about your book. You published a book called desire, an inclusive guide to navigating libido differences in relationships. You call it a radically inclusive book. Why did you use that term and what inspired you to write this book? So

Speaker 2  18:50  
this book was Lauren's brain child, probably going on six, seven years ago now. It was published in 2023, so just last summer, and from the beginning, she and I went out to dinner one night. Both working sex therapists have known each other for many years. Really started talking about our practices and kind of thinking about the lack of resources out there for anyone other than cis women, cisgender heterosexual women who have low libido for their cisgender heterosexual male partners. Certainly that is an important demographic, and those are certainly important clients and patients that we work with. And we also see men with libido. I work a lot with LGBTQ population, who are not always really represented in those types of materials and books and resources that are out there for the general public, things that I as a therapist and a practitioner might recommend for further education, right? And so we kind of got to the point of saying, Well, maybe we're the two people to write, write this book. And so from the beginning, it was always meant to be a very inclusive all bodies and everybody, right? We want people to see themselves reflected in this book, because everybody struggles with libido. At some point in their life, we feel fairly confident in saying that

Speaker 1  20:04  
right, right, and having something that can include, you know, multiple people, multiple relationship structures where you know, we're not having to sort of caveat a resource ahead of time by saying, Hey, this is not really geared towards you, but it might be helpful. Just felt really important, and for us, you know, both of us come from a training program and background that was more inclusive and diverse in the populations we've worked with, and we just really saw that there wasn't as much out there for, you know, clients and lay people to navigate something like this. We also noticed too that the book sort of evolved as we were writing it. It started off as a low desire low libido book, and very soon became a desire discrepancy book because we realized that, you know, you can't really talk about low desire without having a reference to something else. And so often the people who come in, at least to our practices and our experience, were coming in with a relational context and comparing themselves to their partners. And so it became really important to kind of address the relational piece here. And so we really wove that into the writing, and that's kind of how the book evolved and emerged as we were writing it. How

JOE KORT  21:29  
long did it take you guys to write that book?

Speaker 1  21:33  
I think about a year in earnest. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  21:37  
awesome.

Unknown Speaker  21:38  
Yeah, that's grindstone. About a year. Yeah,

JOE KORT  21:40  
no, that's good. People always ask me, and I say about a year, but people think it takes longer, and but it's grueling, isn't? It's like I was I felt like I said, my husband, I feel like I'm having an affair on you, because this one was my priority.

Speaker 1  21:52  
It is definitely a part time job and and the process is so much longer than just the writing itself. So from start to from inception to finish. It was five plus years.

JOE KORT  22:05  
Oh, yeah, that makes sense, okay? And in that book, you talk about the sexual staircase. What is it and why is it important? Yeah,

Speaker 2  22:13  
the staircase is literally an image. I want your listeners to picture an image of a staircase. We include this in the book that really reflects kind of our our dominant script, our dominant narrative about what sex is, quote, unquote, supposed to look like, right? And so at the bottom of the staircase, imagine what we tend to think of as foreplay, right? So touching that maybe leads to kissing, that leads to maybe more intense touching, maybe it moves to the genitals, right? And we're going further and further up the staircase, at the very tip top of the steps is penetrative intercourse, and at the very, very top is orgasm. Right? This sexual staircase? This is the script that most of us tend to learn about partnering sex in this culture, even if it doesn't apply to us. So for example, for queer folks, for LGBTQ folks, this is a script that really sort of tells us, well, we start with the non genital stuff, we start here, then we move to the genitals, then we move to penetration. That's kind of the most important thing. And then the very last thing that ends the sexual experience is typically the guy's orgasm. And then we're done, right, regardless of whether or not the other partner did, typically a cisgender woman. And so this is a script that, you know, I often say to my patients, I'm sure nobody sat down and showed you this staircase image and said to you, this is how you have sex with a partner. And yet, it is something that we kind of pick up by osmosis in this culture, right? What partner sex is, again, quote, unquote, supposed to be, as it turns out, though, this is a really damaging script. It's a really unhelpful script. And so we talk a lot in the book about how to sort of undo the sexual staircase that we've all internalized, myself included, as somebody who lives in this culture, right? How do we start to step away from this, and how do we create a more healthy approach, a more flexible approach, a more adaptive approach to sex? I like

JOE KORT  23:59  
it. That's good. Are there any other No, sorry. In your book, you also recommend that couples should embrace a more expansive definition of sex. What does that mean?

Speaker 1  24:09  
So alongside the staircase, when we talk about that present that we also talk about an alternative model to that, which we call the wheel model. And the wheel is just imagine, like, you know, the wheel of a wheelbarrow, or, you know, something like that, with spokes and different directions. It's really just to reflect a more open ended option and opportunity for sexual interaction. And so it inherently is more expansive. There are more things that can kind of fit within that model. And they might be things that are really pleasurable or enjoyable, but don't typically fit somewhere on that staircase model that we've all been taught. So this could be things like showering together, massaging each other, just lying naked together without moving into. Some sort of sexual interaction. It's broader. And so it kind of encompasses more areas of intimate, touch, affectionate touch, sensuality, so that it's not so focused on where there is a beginning, middle and end, or at least not one that's predetermined for us. And so this really allows you to, sort of, you know, choose your own adventure, so to speak, and pick what you want that specific experience to look like. And that can be dynamic, and it can be different each time. And so that really allows for a lot of the individual difference and the diversity that we have as humans, because it just doesn't make sense to have one script for 8 billion plus people. Just doesn't work. I agree,

Speaker 2  25:48  
even if that script worked for you at one point in your life. Again, I work in a medical setting, and so a lot of the patients that I'm seeing for sexual health concerns, there's been and sometimes a catastrophic diagnosis in their life. Right? Cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, heart health issues, right, strokes, those sorts of things. Even if that staircase script worked beautifully for you for most of your life, unfortunately, our health can get in the way sometimes, right? Physically, we may no longer be able to do those things that kind of make up that beginning, middle, end script that we're all taught. And so it's really important either way, even if you love the script, nothing wrong with that. That's okay. But I also still want people to have a flexible approach, an adaptable approach, because if we're privileged to live long enough, something will disrupt our sexual health most of the time. That's manageable. We can learn and find healthy approaches to still have good sexual pleasure in connection with our partners, but if we have a very rigid script and we don't know how to do anything else, those are folks that get really stuck when something catastrophic happens with their health. I feel like everything

JOE KORT  26:51  
you're saying, and I've always thought this, and I've thought about writing an article about it, or something, is that many lesbians already know this. Lesbian couples already know this. I feel like everything I've learned to think outside of the box, not everything, but of many things, are from lesbian relationships. Do you agree? Hallelujah,

Speaker 1  27:07  
yeah. It makes so much sense, because the staircase is inherently designed with one male partner in mind, very patriarchal, very heteronormative. And so if you're in a lesbian partnership, you already had to start off by deconstructing that whole model. And so that's built into your sexual experiences is already finding ways to approach it differently. Yeah,

JOE KORT  27:37  
you know. And as you know, in so much of what you're talking about is outer, course, and not only intercourse, right? When I ask my clients if they've had sex, they're like, No, but I give, we give each other blow jobs, or, you know, we do kind of lingers, whatever I'm like, that is, you're having sex. So, you know, I talk, I coined that term side for gay men who who don't top and don't bottom. I'm one of them. And forever I was shamed, and forever I felt ashamed, until one day I went, why? Why? What's wrong? I'm having sex the way I like it, and that's that's what it should be. You guys, are you're saying the same thing? Yeah, definitely. Are there any other messages you would like to share with my listeners about your work and about your book? I

Speaker 2  28:16  
think one thing I always want folks to know about sexual desire, libido, right? Is that differences in desire are the norm and not the exception, especially in long term relationships, we expect there to be differences here at some point along the way. And so again, don't panic when that happens. There are good resources available to you. But just knowing that this is a normative part of the relationship, I think, in and of itself, is really, really important information.

Speaker 1  28:40  
Yeah, and I'll echo that by saying, you know, having some flexibility and exploring what's pleasurable to you are really important messages that we speak about over and over in the work that we do, finding what you enjoy, making your own experience, figuring out what's dynamic for you and your partners, and trying to have a bit of flexibility so that it doesn't have to look and be exactly the same all the time forever.

JOE KORT  29:07  
Very well spoken, very well. Said, I love it. And so where can people learn more about both of you? And by the book,

Speaker 2  29:14  
I am on Instagram at doctor, Jennifer ventl,

Speaker 1  29:18  
and I'm on Instagram and Facebook at Dr Lauren Fogle mercy. You can also find me on my website@www.dr Lauren fogle.com, and the book is available pretty much where books are sold.

JOE KORT  29:34  
Awesome. Thank you so much, Lauren and Jennifer. It was such a pleasure to have you on my show. Great

Unknown Speaker  29:39  
to be here. Thank you, thank

JOE KORT  29:41  
you. And you can hear more of my podcast at Smart sex, smart love.com, and you can also follow me on Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook. My handle is at Dr Joe court, D, R, J, o, e, K, O, R T, and you can also go to my website.or, Joe court. Com, thanks for listening, and until next time, stay safe and stay healthy. You.

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