What Buddhist wisdom can we apply to our relationships? What are the three keys to passion? How do we restore the feelings of being in love?
Find out in this week’s episode of The Learn to Love Podcast, where your host Zach Beach interviews psychologist, sex therapist, and author Dr. Cheryl Fraser on The Three Keys to Passion
Below is the transcript for the episode, to go to the episode page, click here. This is not a perfect transcript, there may be typos and other grammatical mistakes.
[Zach Beach] Welcome to the show the Learn to love podcast, everyone. I am your host Zach beach, and I’m here with the incredible psychologist sex therapist and author Dr. Cheryl Fraser. Hello, Cheryl, and welcome to the show.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Hello Zach. It’s just a delight to be here and to serve your audience and to help people as I like to say, fall in love over and over [00:01:00] again with the one we’re already with.
[Zach Beach] And it is a delight to have you on. Today we are going to be talking about the three keys to passion. And for those that don’t know, Dr. Cheryl Fraser is a clinical psychologist, Buddhist sex therapist, published author. As well as an experience meditation teacher, she writes about love and relationships, sexuality, and passion, meditation, and mindfulness, and what it takes to become a fully awake, happy, compassionate, human being. She combines her knowledge of how the mind works with her mission to help people create sexy, passionate, and a playful relationship. Dr. Cheryl’s new online workshop for couples become passion. Create love that lasts a lifetime, brings her work to your own living room. And her new book is entitled, Buddha’s bedroom, the mindful, loving path to sexual passion and [00:02:00] life long intimacy. How are you today? Cheryl?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] I am so great. You and I were just sharing stories about being blessed to live on the Pacific coast. And I’m looking out at the ocean. I’m enjoying talking to you and hopefully helping everybody listening to become more intentional about creating the love they desire, whether they’re looking for love or in love or falling out of love.
[Zach Beach] Yeah, we have a tall order for today. Sexy, passionate, playful relationship, secret keys to passion. But I have to begin with Buddha’s bedroom because for a lot of people, when they think of Buddhism, they think of selling their possessions, becoming a monk, becoming celibate, swearing off sensual pleasure as just part of the illusionary illusions of the world and that our attachment to physical pleasure only brings suffering because nothing lasts. So what’s the deal. Why are we combining our sexuality with our Buddhist [00:03:00] practice?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Because I’m a blasphemous Creek and I should be doing it out of the Buddha Academy, no cheek, uh, to ground this, uh, for people, particularly those listening without meditation or any Buddhist leanings or background, I’m actually a fairly highly trained teacher of Buddhism, both in the terabyte and tradition. And in the Tibetan tradition, I’ve done multiple four-month silent retreats and tantric retreats and many things. And I never ever desire the. Title of my book, would his bedroom to be seen as irreverent or disrespectful? The wonderful Jack cornfield and his wife Trudy wrote to the introduction for the book. And they say in their introduction, you know, we were a joyfully, passionate sexual couple. Now Jack is arguably the best known and maybe most lofty, uh, North American Buddhist to teachers. So to cut to the chase, you said it beautifully, Zach, you said that the Buddha is misinterpreted as saying that the attachment to sensual pleasures is suffering. [00:04:00] The reason that’s misinterpreted as people gloss over the word you skillfully used, which is the attachment to central pleasures is the problem and Tibetan Buddhism, for example, sense pleasures around food around drink, and even around. Sexual energy respectfully shared with another are taken as energy sources to actually trans mutate. We do this in high-level tantra practice to trans-mutate, the power of pleasurable activity to see the emptiness of it, and to transmute it into an experience of emptiness and bliss and clear mind, that’s probably a bigger topic for another day, but to bring it down to perhaps the lay person. Someone who doesn’t know anything about Buddhism or even meditation. The idea behind the title of Buddha’s bedroom is it’s our mind state. It’s how we invest our mind in our relationship and in our sexual encounters that determines the depth and breadth and beauty and pleasure of that experience. Now, if you cling and [00:05:00] attach to it, you’re in trouble. Let me ground this right now in a very common relationship complaint long-term relationship. And I want to define long-term relationship as being in a relationship for six, 12, 18 months or longer. So Holy smokes, Dr. Cheryl, that’s not very long. You bet, because what happens is we know cause we’re humans and human bodies who’ve had relationships, right? In the first say 18 months of a relationship were falling madly in love. By the way, Zach, we are literally madly in love. You may or may not know this, but functional MRI scans indicate that the way the brain works when we’re on love is the same biochemistry as obsessive compulsive disorder. So we literally are biochemically affected to be super focused on the person we’re dating and falling in love with super aroused. It’s the chase. It’s the cave person needing to chase and conquer a mate. And it’s very exciting. Now, what is she talking about and how does this relate to Buddhism? Hang with me [00:06:00] here. So what happens after a year, year and a half? Well, you become familiar to me. You’re no longer as exciting as novel and all that. My brain is no longer lighting up with the crazy. I’ve got to conquer him and make him my cave person or her, my cave person. And what happens next? Well, we get a caveman and we decorate it and we look at having cave babies and our biochemistry changes. To the chemistry, more of contentment of regularity of familiarity. That’s how we build a hearth and home, by the way, I know this goes without saying, but I want to say it anyway. Anything you and I are talking about, we both know applies to any couple gay, lesbian, transgender, alternative pairings. Any of what I say applies to everyone, of course, not just heteronormative couples. So. I get bored with you to put it bluntly and straightforwardly, even if you’re the most fascinating partner in the world. If I’ve been with you for three, for 10, 20, 30 years, if I’m not careful, if I don’t cultivate a [00:07:00] mindful approach to you, if I don’t use my mind to be curious to, uh, have things feel new, even if we’ve done them a hundred times before I am bored, not you are not boring. If you go to work tomorrow. Okay. Or some locked down, we may not be going to work, but let’s say it’s post lockdown and you’re going to work a new person who meets you tomorrow. If you’re in a committed long-term relationship, you go off to the office, you meet somebody new, who’s joined your team at work. They’ll find you fascinating. This is where affairs begin. By the way is someone finds us new and fascinating, and we find them new and fascinating. And then somehow some way we crossed the line. Am I saying, we’re all going to cheat if we’re bored? No, but as a sex therapist and marriage therapist and couples therapist, I’m going to say that the majority of transgressions of affairs happen because we have forgotten to find our partner. Fascinating. That’s where meditation comes in. That’s where [00:08:00] Buddhism comes in, because if you’ve ever sat and I know you have as a Yogi and a mindfulness practitioner, if you’ve ever sat and tried to find your breath interesting for 45 minutes, you know, it’s not easy. And what we’re cultivating is having this moment, this breath, or let’s make this a little more pleasurable people imagine right now, Zach, that I gave you and everyone listening. A tiny sliver of the most exquisite Belgian truffle. And I don’t want you to put it on your tongue quite yet. And I asked you to wait a moment and everybody do this with us. Do a thought experiment. Imagine you put a sliver of Belgian truffle on your tongue right now. Exactly. You probably are salivating. There’s a light up. There’s an experience of. Now if I, I wish I could have quickly FedEx to you, but if you had a bit of chocolate right now, we were melting it together. Here’s what would not happen after we consumed that tiny sliver of pleasure. We wouldn’t say, ah, but it’s [00:09:00] boring. I’ve known chocolate for 20 years. Would we? No, no, no. Why? Well, because. Each chocolate, if we’re paying attention to it is a new moment. If you’re a coffee or in my case, a tea officiant, natto. When I brew whichever of my 40 loose-leaf teas, I choose this morning. I sit down with that cup of tea and I don’t ever think this is so boring. I’ve had tea every day for, you know, hundreds and hundreds of days in a row. But we do that with our love affair. We do that with our partner in terms of finding them interesting as a human. And we do it with our sex life. I often call the typical North American sex life, nipple, nipple, crotch, good night. Right. And people usually laugh because they recognize that I judge you here. You touch me there. If it’s a, you know, if it goes, well, we both have an orgasm and then we’re done listen to how I’m mimicking that. Right. I’m using a bit of boredom, a bit of complacency in my voice when we forget. That this sliver of chocolate truffle is the only sliver I’m ever going to have in this moment. This kiss [00:10:00] with you is the only kiss I’m ever going to have in this moment. That’s where we train the mind using principles that I draw from Buddha Dharma, because that’s my background, but you can draw from secular meditation, slowing down and pranayama in, in yoga practice or simply. Slowing down, shutting up and looking at your sweetheart tonight with curiosity, asking them a question to which you don’t know the answer. Like, I don’t know if you came back to life as an animal, what would you want to be? Find them interesting again, that’s all in the mind. That’s where we bring Buddha into the bedroom.
[Zach Beach] That was a lot. What I’m hearing from you is first of all, it’s not that Buddhist is rejecting pleasure and happiness, but it is saying that our attachment to it is what actually causes suffering. So we can still experience pleasure and enjoyment in the bedroom, in our relationships. And then I feel like you’re [00:11:00] describing what some psychologists might call habituation or automation in our relationships. When we shift from feeling like we’re falling in love and we feel really awesome about our partner, tons of sexual energy, to like the commitment stage. Whereas we begin to take our partner for granted and find them less interesting and less fascinating. And they just are kind of like our roommate rather than our new lover. And as you mentioned, this is when a majority of affairs happen because we forget to find our partner fascinating, which I love that idea. So what I’m hearing from you is that when we apply our Buddhist wisdom and we apply the practices of mindfulness, such as the presence and such as the curiosity that we encourage in meditation practice, that it basically stops the process of automation of [00:12:00] habituation. Like tell us a little bit more about. Once we train the mind to be present. We make curious with our partner, how does that change? What many people experience as the inevitable of dropping passion and moving towards commitment? What does that training the mind look like? And what od we experienced differently in our relationships?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Great questions. Um, and I’ll direct people who want to go deeper into it to the book because I talk a lot about the four foundations of Buddhism, et cetera, et cetera, that we won’t really cover here. But it’s really simple and really difficult to remember number to do. And by the way, the translation of the, of the Buddhist poly word that is translated into mindfulness, the word is actually salty and a better English translation would be re remembering what does that mean? Well, tonight, maybe we’ve got our routine. Sweetheart gets home from work. We have a bite to eat. If we’ve got kids, we do our kids’ stuff. Uh, and then maybe we watch our show at 9:00 PM and we can go through that routine [00:13:00] tonight and have it be. Pleasant and okay. Uh, but we can just run through the routine between say 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM and not really live any of it. So that present moment, a term that’s used so much people have forgotten. What it really means is. Really enjoy your dinner, really pay attention to and get lit up with the conversation with your kids or your spouse around the dinner table. Enjoy the show. Don’t just automatically, as you said, habituated automatic. So mindfulness looks like waking up over and over again. Re-remembering instead of being on automatic pilot. I was saying to you, Zach, just before we started recording that for two years, I had the pleasure to live all over the golden gate bridge in Marin County, outside San Francisco, and five days a week, I took a commuter bus from that area over the golden gate bridge to the hospital. Now, anyone who’s had the pleasure to see the San Francisco Bay. It’s a beautiful. Beautiful view. I made a point on that ride over the golden gate [00:14:00] bridge every day for two years to put down whatever I was looking at, a magazine, a book, whatever it was sort of before we all had a computer in our hand and to stop and to look out the window and to see the beauty off the golden gate bridge. And then I would look around at everybody else on the bus and not a single person other than me. Was looking out the window. So I saw that for two years, you know, 52 weeks, five days a week, I tried and I’m not going to say I had a perfect streak, but I tried to stop. And at least for say 30 to 60 to 90 seconds, appreciate the view. Outside the window. That’s a very simple example of what you and I are talking about. Can we stop for 30 seconds and really see our sweetheart? Can we stop blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the details of life, which are very important to share with our partner and just take a breath and hold their hand. Can we unexpectedly kiss them? When we walk by them to get the milk out of the fridge, this may sound trivial. [00:15:00] It’s actually profound. When we can show up with that sliver of truffle. For a minute or two or three, we interrupt that habituation. You were talking about. We interrupt being on autopilot. We interrupt and show up and actually experience what’s happening with can lead to much more sense. Pleasure can lead to much more. Yeah. Enjoyment of what’s happening. The other thing I want to say different than we’ve said so far about applying the teachings of Buddhism to relationship and sexuality is watch out for the stories in your head. There’s the data of what’s actually happening. Partner walks in the house at the end of the day, you say, Hey, did you remember the cat food? They say, Oh, darn I forgot it. That’s the data. What is the story that, that occurs is the story you don’t care about? What I asked you to do or you’re so forgetful. I can’t rely on you or goodness sakes again. All of that story is suffering. We’ve made up a story because we’re attached to an expectation for [00:16:00] this mini example. I guess the expectation is you’ll remember the cat food that you said you’d get, and that I texted you at two o’clock to remind you to get right. And I put a sticky note on the cards during real to remind you, to get expectation. The fact that the cat food is in the store or in your house. Isn’t the problem. That’s just facts. That’s just data. The problem in your relationship. Is when you make up a story about what that data means. Like you’re a crappy partner, I’m mad at you. So there’s much more to say there, but it isn’t a marketing gimmick, I suppose, to put the word Buddha in the book title, because the idea of Buddha, what Buddha actually means Bodhi means awake, unfolded alive. And really what I’m saying, having an awake unfolded alive bedroom and relationship. And the way you approach conflict and how you fight fair and how you make up and begin again. How can you work with your mind? As I said, right off the top today to fall in love over and over with [00:17:00] the one you’re already with.
[Zach Beach] I love your definition or description of mindfulness that mindfulness looks like waking up over and over again. And I love that better than like when people just describe it as just being in the present moment, because isn’t the present moment. The only thing that exists. Like even I’m thinking about tomorrow, I’m still doing it, right now, right?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Fair enough.
[Zach Beach] But waking up over and over again is just a beautiful sentiment. And what I’m hearing from you is just really wonderful wisdom teachings that are so important to bring into our relationship. So, one thing I’m hearing from you is basically this idea that I teach in meditation, which is. If you are bored, you are simply not paying attention, right? Like with your partner who is new every day with the day, which is new every day. You’re not noticing the richness of your experience. And I also love what you said about stopping the details, stopping the story and truly being present. And I think I read it in one, a Pema children’s book, just this [00:18:00] lovely quote that we cannot believe our stories and be present at the same time. And then finally, what I’m hearing from you is just the truth. That impermanence means that nothing lasts. And that doesn’t mean that nothing matters. It means that every moment suddenly, becomes precious.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Yes. It’s a huge difference between a misunderstanding of what Buddhism means the misunderstanding is, is nihilistic. Pleasure’s bad life sucks. And then you die. That’s what I used to think. Buddhism was in my twenties because the only Buddhist I knew about was the singer now passed away Leonard Cohen, who is an incredible poet and singer, but depressed kind of guy. And he was a major Zen. And, uh, I believe he was ordained in the Zen tradition. And so I thought Buddhism was, life is suffering and then you die. Get over it. When we enter into it, we realize it’s a. That’s a misunderstanding. What it is is there is suffering in life. Therefore celebrate the moment. Some of them are going to [00:19:00] be good. Some of them are going to be neutral. Some of them are going to be negative or painful, but the preciousness of this human life of this experience wake up to it. When we chase pleasure all the time we’re missing, what’s actually happening. And we’re like in an addict, we want to jump from this pleasurable cup of coffee, to the pleasurable TV show, to the pleasurable orgasm, to the pleasurable chocolate bar and in between we’re discontented, because we’re always waiting for something. Pleasurable. That’s the attachment piece. You mentioned off the top and that’s what leads to the suffering, not the chocolate or the orgasm or the TV show. It’s our state of mind that Ms. Understands and thinks I must have this object, this thing in order to feel good. Oh, I feel good. I like feeling good. Oh, that object’s now finished or I’m tired of it. I need a new object. That’s the definition of suffering, not the object itself.
[Zach Beach] Absolutely. A lot of people think that their actions are moving towards pleasure, but a lot of the time it’s [00:20:00] just moving from one state of dissatisfaction to the next.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Yes, absolutely. Zach and that’s also a better translation into English of the word Duka, which is translated as suffering. A more correct definition is unsatisfactory.
[Zach Beach] Hmm. So let’s see if we can connect all these really wonderful lessons to our topic for today, which is the three keys to passion. And you have this lovely diagram and on three sides, it has thrill, sensuality and intimacy. Before we get into each one, I’m curious. Cause I love your integration of the clinical side as well as the spiritual side. So how did you arrive at these three things?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Hmm. Wow. So that was a journey of multiple decades, essentially. It starts with the fact that to my great tragic loss at the age of 12 or 13, I discovered that Sean Cassidy was not in fact, my soulmate. Now you may be a little young to know all about [00:21:00] Sean, but he was all that. When I was a young teenager as a pop star, you start in a network, Hardy boys show. He was the cutest Hardy boy ever. And I was madly desperately in love with him and had. Ridiculous amounts of fantasies, including very explicit sexual ones for a young girl, Dover 13, healthy sexual ones. If you know what he was going to do to me one day, and I was fairly convinced he was going to find me on this little Island off the coast of Canada and sweep me off to Beverly Hills where I would live. Wait for it. Happily ever after spoiler alert, Zach didn’t happen. So, yeah, it really starts there though. It started with a lifelong longing to be complete in love to find the soulmate, to have life, make sense, be joyful, and to help me live happily ever after. And that catapulted me into my actual love affairs, uh, later in life into an early [00:22:00] marriage. Awesome wedding and mama Mia style on a cliff in Greece. It was insane, but we got divorced two years later because we didn’t have the skills. It led me to my first degrees in science and psychology. I was accepted to med school. Then eventually chose to go to clinical psychology instead, seeking to answer the question. Why do we suffer in love? Why isn’t it easier? Why, why don’t we find someone and yeah, sure. There’s some. Regular life ups and downs, but why aren’t we happier? Then I got some answers. I studied with the best. I got all the psychology answers, not all of them, but you know what I mean? The sex therapy answers the communication answers, and I still didn’t have a good answer. That’s when I more and more moved into Buddha Dharma. And as soon as I finished my postdoc work, instead of accepting a tenure track professor job, the way I was supposed to, I bought a one-way ticket to India. And I went for seven months and studied, uh, with various masters in the Tibetan tradition, the Dalai Lama, and some people are more in the spirit rock tradition, because I was still trying to answer the question we’ve been [00:23:00] talking about. The top today, which is why do we suffer so much? We’re especially you and I. And a lot of our compatriots Zack we’re in the top five or 2% of the world in terms of our creature comforts in terms of world population, why aren’t we way happier with our partner in our homes, in our safe places. We live with good drinking water, with love, with medical care, et cetera. Why aren’t we happier? So that eventually led. To me quitting being, um, a teacher of love and sex and relationships. I was teaching big couples workshops back then 10, 15 years ago, and exclusively going down the Dharma path, essentially being something of a nun. I was also single for about a decade while I was teaching other couples how to have amazing love lives. Ironically. So it went on and I left the field of sex and love therapy and into the full Dharma teaching, I was just teaching Buddhism and retreats, not just, but focusing on that. And then I had a moment of epiphany [00:24:00] that, um, we probably don’t need to go into in detail here, but someone said to me, actually treated good men, that Jack Cornfield’s wife said, why don’t you teach both? I’m like, you can’t teach both. You can’t teach Dharma. And sex. Nobody was doing that. It was a verboten and I actually brushed her off, said, no, no, no, that’s fine. I don’t teach sex anymore. And then I, um, went on a blind date by accident and fell in love. And right after Todd left to India for five months for a retreat and I’m in India and I’m standing on a rickety staircase in the MLS. And so Paymo, which is a beautiful place to go meditate. And. I’m like, what am I going to be? Zach? Am I going to be Cheryl? The Dharma teacher, half, half a nun. Am I going to give it all up and fall in love and go with this man has spoiler alert to him. I’m now married. What am I going to do? And then I realized both they aren’t separate paths. If you choose to walk the path of relationship. In an awake way. [00:25:00] I am not saying I’m awake. Just ask my husband Holy bananas. If there’s a relationship mistake to make, I’ve made most of them. I still make some of them. Now I made a couple yesterday, but what I am is really curious about how we can reignite passion when it fades after that year or two, how we can. Fall in love and find our mate interesting. When they forget cat food. Yes. That’s a real example from my home. What are we going to do if we want? Great love Shaun Cassidy. Wasn’t it. And guess what? My husband isn’t it either. He is not my soulmate. I teach us. To all kill the soul bait. Cause soulmate is a ridiculous expectation of needing certain objects, certain external circumstances in order to be happy. So if you’re my partner, Zach, I need you to be certain ways to do certain things and treat me certain ways pretty consistently in order for me to be happy. That’s the root of suffering. That’s me being attached to needing certain circumstances. I need you to make a [00:26:00] fossil on my birthday. I need you to tell me I’m beautiful. Every day. I need you to have more sex with me. I need you to make the meals. I like then do the dishes after whatever it is, big or small, we suffer in our relationship. When we expect it to be a certain way to make us happy. And when you hear that, you can hear that without meaning to, because we’re all beautiful people. There’s a lot of selfishness in that approach that we may not be aware how selfish we’re being. I need you to be a certain way. So I’m happy. That’s not our heart. That’s our real intentions, but we get stuck in it. So all of that led to me bringing it together. And the three keys to passion, the passion triangle you’ve referred to is the way I choose to teach it, to make it graspable and to give couples a structure they can hang on to and they can actually rate themselves. We can put a link below this podcast to a free quiz. I have takes under 10 minutes where you rate yourself, where are you currently strong and weak. On those three keys to passion that we’ll talk a bit about in a few minutes. So you can say, Oh, we’re doing great on number [00:27:00] one and two. And we’re pretty weak in number three, babe. Let’s focus on re-igniting that side of the passion triangle.
[Zach Beach] So, wow, amazing life path that you just described bouncing back and forth between the psychological and the spiritual realms between United States and India. And you mentioned this question many times. Why did we suffer in love? And so I’m going to have to. Ask the great guru right here. So my question, so I have to ask, because I heard a bit, you just mentioned that we have like this very fairy tale idea about our soulmate, that all we have to do to be happy in life is find the right person and all the love and joy and happiness that we need and want. We’ll just do wrap. Naturally and we’ll live happily ever after. So that was kind of one reason you mentioned. Why are we suffering love, but is there more, so my fundamental question, why do we suffer in love?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Yeah. Well, let’s pull it [00:28:00] together. We talked, uh, in the beginning there, we talked about. The falling in love, the crazy, the biochemical, the madness, the wonderfulness, that changes. So we suffer in love because we don’t realize that’s going to change. We don’t realize that the romance and the last and the spontaneous passion and the excitement will change. And unfortunately, the romance industry tells us the opposite. So does Walt Disney, by the way, we should Sue that dude for happily ever after. But anyway, the most high, high selling highest grossing type of fiction book is romance. Literature, uh, romcoms, you know, hallmark movies. There’s so much out there telling us this is the way it should be. And the people in those romcoms are amazing. They’re saying and doing the things we long for. We suffer because we have a completely wacko expectation of the soulmate of love being easy of the way we feel in the beginning of course, is the right way to feel. And we should always feel that way. It’s simple, lack of knowledge. You knows that one of the most important things I ever say. [00:29:00] To any couple of the couples in my online immersion program, the couples with a different ways, three words, you are normal. You are normal. If you rarely or ever make love anymore, you are normal. If you’re bored with your mate, but you love them and you’re not looking to cheat or break up, you just settled for what seems to be, what is the way it’s supposed to be. Right? Dr. Cheryl, the thrill doesn’t last forever. Right? Well, commonly. The thrill doesn’t last forever, which makes you typical. But my teaching is about how to reignite the thrill, how to take the reality of human bodies, human biochemistry, human psychology, and the, the pressures of life, trying to sustain interest over decades and say, okay, what’s normal. Is, I don’t feel very in love with you anymore. Even if I don’t want to leave you. What’s normal is I rarely have spontaneous sexual arousal. The majority of couples after a year or two very rarely have spontaneous horniness they [00:30:00] have what’s called responsive desire. Meaning they’ve got to start making love when they don’t feel like it. And through the act of choosing to be erotic, our desire and our arousal and our pleasure grows. So. The reason long-term love. It’s such a hard gig is we have wildly unrealistic ideas of how easy it should be and how, if it’s not easy, there’s something wrong with us. And maybe we’ve chosen the wrong person. That’s why I say, kill the soulmate and save your relationship. Kill the idea that, that there’s a better person. And instead ask yourself, how can I be a better partner, a better lover? How can we reignite? How can we invest? Time and intentionality in this, as I like to say. In perfectly perfect person standing right across from you. They’re not your soulmate, but they’re awesome.
[Zach Beach] I love your little nuggets of wisdom. Kill your soulmate and save the relationship.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] I get some flack for that. When people say I’m with my soulmate and I [00:31:00] say, good for you, what you’re with is an extraordinary person. There probably were dozens of others that could have been great for you. And I’m glad you’ve settled on this one, but it’s not all going to be perfect. And when it’s hard, if you think, Ooh, Heck, I thought Zach was it, but I’m really unhappy with him. He must not have been it. Oh, that’s where it gets really problematic.
[Zach Beach] Why you got to rain on my parade?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] No, sorry man. Sorry. Don’t take it too personally.
[Zach Beach] All right. So people don’t realize that their feelings of love will change that the feelings of incredible sexual desire and feeling of it. Of in-love will not last forever. And much of your work in the world is on reigniting that passion. We have the three secrets to that. First one is thrilled. So what is thrill and how do we bring it into our relationship?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Okay. So the three keys to passion is I teach them the three sides of that passion triangle you’ve referred to our intimacy. [00:32:00] Thrill and sensuality, and I’m actually going to start with intimacy and do thrill second. When I used the word intimacy here, I’m not using it as a euphemism for sex the way we might say, Oh, would you like to be intimate? That’s a beautiful way to use that word, but I’m using it differently. When I say intimacy, I’m referring to more, the psychological, emotional communication part of being a couple. Do we resolve and manage our conflicts reasonably well, if not, I’ll teach people how to do that because it’s really important. Uh, When I get home at the end of the day, you’re the first person I want to talk to. I want to tell you the minutia of my da and hear about yours. Also, when I have good news, you’re the first person I want to call. This is what we think of as a really good relationship between a couple is that we’re each other’s best friend to some degree. We’ve got each other’s back. We go through the ups and downs of life together. We share hopes and dreams. We talk about the future. A lot of couples listening are pretty strong in intimacy. See, it’s the one that generally longer-term couples are still pretty strong in about [00:33:00] 30% of them are not because they’re fighting and miserable, but about maybe 70% are like, yeah, we’re, we’re great friends. I love my sweetheart. We barely ever have sex and I’m not that excited about them, but they’re awesome. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything except a romance novel because that longing in these unfulfilled. Then we get to the second side of the passion triangle, the three key factors to cultivate reignite, or if you’ve never had them to bring into your relationship. And that’s the side of thrill that encompasses a lot of what we’ve been talking about today. And I use that word thrill about the excitement, the interest that. Great curiosity you have towards your sweetheart, the urge and the enjoyment to want to plan dates, plan adventures, go do fun things together to surprise your sweetheart, whatever it is that lights you up or used to let you up when you were dating, you probably did it pretty naturally. Then whether it’s whether it was wearing sexy underwear and dressing up in an attractive way, whether it was planning, cool dates, you know, reading the reviews on that. The neatest new [00:34:00] restaurant around the corner, trying to find a movie or a live event, you knew your partner would love. We were pretty fricking awesome at thrill. When we were dating, we put in the effort we put in the time we were excited and we were receptive when our partner said, Oh, I don’t like tomato soup. We were like, really? How come now? It annoys us that they don’t like tomato soup, tomato soup. Awesome. And they should like tomato soup. We change our mind, not our mate, our mate. Isn’t the problem. The mind is a problem. That’s a tough teaching and we need to take that deeper one day, but really it’s about thrill is also in the head. This sounds a little repetitive that’s on purpose because all of our human experience from eating a truffle to loving someone for the longterm, for deciding how to let go of a friendship that no longer serves us is in our head. Our mind is where we meet the world. So thrill is that. Excitement and the joy and the you’re freaking awesome. It’s like, um, [00:35:00] I have a, I have an office upstairs here from my home Zack and I have to go out of my house and go up 10 stairs and then open a different door to go into the separate office suite. Now the odd time I go up there and I forget something, I forget my appointment book or something. So I turned around and I come back down. I’ve been gone 90 seconds now, Zach. I live a long with my hubby. Who’s usually not home in the day with two dogs. What do you think happens when I come and open the door? After 90 seconds, the dogs come, they go great. They jump up and down and they wagon, they wiggle and they’re thrilled to Sheryl exist. And she’s the greatest person on the whole planet. Even if they only saw me 90 seconds before that’s thrill. When’s the last time you treated your sweetheart like that? When they walked in the door. Right. It’s kind of that easy. I actually give that as an exercise and people now have that as an exercise, literally for the next week. Every time your spouse gets home, or if you get home after them, when you get home, whichever spouse is in the house. First get up, run to the door, pretend you’re a Labrador retriever that is [00:36:00] thrilled to see this person come home. Yeah, it’s goofy yet. It’s fun. But I tell you what. Whenever we do it, we will laugh. It will lighten our heart. And it’s a goofy, sweet way to remind yourself. You are freaking amazing. I am thrilled. You walked through the door, you exist and that’s enough for me, right? So that’s thrilled. And if people take the quiz and rate themselves, generally what we see unless you’re pretty early in your relationship is a lots of intimacy, high score and intimacy, medium to low on thrill, sometimes flatline. And then the third key to passion. The third side of the passion triangle is sensuality. And I use that word to describe the entire spectrum of erotic and physical connection. Everything from holding hands, when you’re walking to the store to the most raw taboo, crazy out of the box, fantasy sex and everything in between the entire spectrum of sensuality that. Is a place that for some of us, it was pretty [00:37:00] easy. In the beginning, we had a great and horny and very highly tuned sex life. We learned each other’s bodies, rhythms. We probably tried more positions. We were probably more adventuresome. We probably were less inhibited in the beginning. Not true for all of us, of course. And yet, where are we now? I’m going to share a statistic from a survey I did last October, about four or five months ago. I teach twice a year. I teach a free, a passion workshop, a free mini couple’s workshop online. In fact, it’s coming up this month. People may be able to grab one of those time slots and it’s, uh, an hour and a half on the three keys to passion with a Q and a, and I had about 2,500 people sign up for those workshops. It’s the same one. I teach it a few times over a week or so. And I did a little surveys ag and I asked them multiple choice question. The first one was, how would you rate your sex life these days? And in there, there were five options. One was, we don’t have any sex. One was it’s rare. One was, it’s not very good in quality or quantity. One was, [00:38:00] you know, it’s okay. It’s pretty good. But I would like a little more quality or quantity. And then the top one was we have a great sex life. Only 8% of people said they had a great sex life. Eight. Present. I asked another question, which was basically about thrill and it was, you know, do you feel bored with your mate these days? Or, you know, you like them, but it’s not that sparkling or, you know, you’re still really excited about your mate and you still find yourself pretty thrilled by them. Only 11% said they were still thrilled. And I repeat that because I want it to reassure everybody listening. The three most important words I ever say to couples are you are normal. Your normal, if your sex life is poor or non-existent or it’s okay, but it’s not great. You’re normal. If you don’t feel the thrill and excitement, but I’m here to help you be abnormal statistically, which is to recreate and re-ignite or find for the first time, if you’re a minority of couples who didn’t have much thriller excitement to start with, [00:39:00] how can you uncover what’s already present? How can you go inside to find it? That interest, that excitement, that energy, that effort, goodness sakes. We put so much effort into our career, into our education, into raising our kids, into being a great cook or a great gardener or a great golfer. But we, again, back to these unexamined expectations that that society kind of puts into us. We kind of think our relationships should take care of itself. I’m fond of saying, yeah, how’s that working? How right there may be two, three, 4% of couples. Blessed lucky well-studied unicorns, where they stay in love and crazy and thrilled and sexual over the long-term. Great. Well, only 8% of my respondents said they had a great sex life and only 11% said they were still excited about their spouse. Most of them said, but 60, 70% said, yeah, I like my spouse. And, uh, we’re good buddies. And we run our life. Well, That’s [00:40:00] intimacy. So to review, we’ve got three keys to passion, intimacy, thrill, and sensuality. I would put forward. That for a rich, passionate relationship that excites and interests us over the long term. We need to invest some of our time and energy and learning in, as I’ve said, finding out where we’re currently strong and weak, because of course through the cycle of our lives and the cycle of our relationships when we’ve got young babies, versus when we’ve got teenagers, when we’re retired, uh, our passion triangles, strengths and weaknesses are going to. A rise and fall at different life cycles. Where are you right now? And what would you like to do about it to learn? Because here’s the thing people feel so discouraged. You can learn these skills. It’s not easy. And of course they’re not quick fixes. I wish they were, but like anything else? Hey, if you’ve got a hundred pounds to lose, you can lose a hundred pounds. It might take you a year or two and need good coaching, good guidance, and the [00:41:00] right information about food and about moving your body and other things, maybe dealing with some underlying medical issues so that you can get there. But everybody listening knows it’s at least possible. To lose weight. The question is, will we make the effort and learn and get the coaching and support to do it? So I like to reassure people, whether it’s listening to find podcasts like this, reading a book, going to a weekend workshop, taking a class I twice a year, I take a group of couples through a 10 week immersion online couples program. You can join if that is a fit for you. I don’t really mind where you do it. But do it invest in your life, make passion a priority. I like to say great love and sex. Great. Passion is not an accident. Extraordinary couples are made, not discovered and like anything else in life, we need to learn the skills and the techniques, and we need to roll up our metaphorical sleeves and say, I’m going to do this with you. Let’s reinvest in us. Let’s learn how to be better together. And [00:42:00] that’s what really excites me when I can play any small role in helping couples reignite the passion. They think they’ve lost and challenge the idea that the thrill can’t last forever. It’s a bit like saying a fire can’t last forever. Well, then go. Get some more kindling and some more wood and a new flame and begin again.
[Zach Beach] Wow, I’m drinking through a wisdom fire hose right here.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] So thank you. That’s a very nice.
[Zach Beach] So that was wonderful and informative. And, I’m imagining this conversation with somebody where I said, yeah, me and my wife are getting into role play in order to really spice things up. And they see what, Oh, really? Like what kind? And I say, well, when they come home, I pretend I’m a dog.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Oh, I love it. Exactly. And they’re like too much for me, man. I’m like, no, no, that’s not what I meant.
[Zach Beach] So we have intimacy, which does deep down, just that feeling of connection and friendliness. And then thrill you mentioned is that that level of excitement, and you [00:43:00] mentioned planning, dates, adventures, and surprises. And I’m wondering if you just have any examples or you could give our listeners just some ideas about dates and adventures and surprises. That I can do other than, uh, being a Labrador retriever, for example, they can do to bring some thrill into their relationships.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] You bet. And in fact, we can link below this to a little video I sent out on Valentine’s day, uh, about how to design, how to design the perfect Valentine’s date. And of course it doesn’t have to be on Valentine’s day and then people can learn a little bit more if they wish, but. It’s not so much what you do for the date. Although I’ll quickly say I mentioned adventure and there’s some research is 20 or 30 years old now, but there was a great study that was done. Uh, where the researcher, a psychologist, he, he got an attractive woman to, um, stand at one end of a, of a suspension bridge, you know, a bit of a nerve wracking system. Pension bridge. Right? You walk it and it wiggles and it’s kind of [00:44:00] scary. It gets your adventure up, gets your excitement and maybe a bit of fear up. Now, what he did is he randomly waited for guys of a certain age, sort of 20 to 35 that walked across the bridge. And then he had this fairly attractive female lab assistant walk up to them and say, Hey, I’d like to ask you a few questions about, you know, the ecosystem around this bridge or something. And the, some of the guys would say, sure, and the woman would ask them three or four quick questions, and then she’d say, so we’re doing this. Study at the university about the ecosystem and bridges. And so if you want to, if you want to ever know about the study, uh, here’s my phone number. You can call me and I’ll link you to it. When it’s published, you hear what’s happening because psychologists are so devious when they were actually looking to see as whether the man would call the attractive woman. Using the ruse of being interested in the research as a reason to reach out. And here’s what they found when men walked across the bridge and were in a more heightened state of adventure, a little bit of fear, a little bit of excitement. They were much more likely to call this. Female researcher. Then if she stood at the [00:45:00] beginning of the bridge before they had walked over it and had a level of excitement, what does that mean? Well, this researcher translated it into saying, look, if you want to find your partner more attractive, do something exciting together. And there’s some other good proof of that work. So planet adventure, date, it doesn’t have to be. Guy diving. It can be when it’s safe to do so and things are open again, uh, go to a salsa dance class can be going to a restaurant that’s different than the one you always go to. It could be going down to the beach and taking a picnic. Cause you don’t do that very often, but the idea of something that’s a little different, not habitual, not you go to the same restaurant and order the same exact sushi rolls. You always order that has a place to that’s in the intimacy side, the comfort side, but. Planned some more interesting dates and I’ve just given you some data as to why they can make you feel more attracted to your partner, but on the date, whether it’s a date night at home with, I don’t know, vegan hot dogs in the end, a candelabra on the table. Here’s what I want you to do on your date. And that’s what [00:46:00] this little video covers. I want you to limit the conversation and connection to a certain way of looking at how you’re going to talk about the past, how you’re going to talk about the present and how you’re going to talk about the future in the following way. When you talk about the past on this date, I want you to talk about good memories. That the two of you had maybe your honeymoon, maybe previous special occasions, maybe that cool trip you took that time through Colorado, maybe the birth of your child and how wonderful and amazing it was to hold him or her for the first time. Don’t talk about anything else other than positive. Cool, wonderful romantic, and yes. Sexy memories of things you and I shared in the past. The second thing is the present in the present. I want you to talk about what’s actually happening. This is mindfulness and direct experience. What is, what does this bite of food tastes like right now? Oh, this is so good. There’s something in there. I can’t quite figure out that spice be in the [00:47:00] present moment, reach across if you’re dining touch, your partner’s hand, really feel your fingertips on them. So often we’re talking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Even if it’s interesting and important, but we’re not here and now experiencing it. And then I want people to talk about the future in a specific way. I want them to talk about or to future hopes and dreams or positive things or things I’d like to do or are looking forward to now. I created this video for a couple of weeks ago for Valentine’s day, like I said, and then I thought I better practice what I preach, which I really try to do. So I took my sweetheart out for Valentines, uh, about two weeks after I filmed that video. And we did the technique, we talked about the past and I got to tell you, Zach, it was so. Fun. We ended up talking in detail about a trip we had to Africa about six years ago and went and talked about it in a long time. And we tried to remember the various places we stayed and we were remembering all my goodness. We saw that pack of lions, like kill that water, Buffalo and feed their babies. It was the most [00:48:00] spectacular, scary thing. We probably talked about that trip to Africa for 45 minutes. And we were lit up remembering things, bringing to mind this incredible shared experience. Then we were in the present moment talking about the food and holding hands and what it was like to be here together for seventh Valentine’s day. And then we talked about the future and because, uh, like most of us we have limited or no travel in the next few months, probably we talked about ways to explore our own backyard. I live on Vancouver Island. We’re allowed to travel on this Island and there’s so many beautiful places to go and things to do. So we talked about the future in terms of some trips and some explorations we’d like to do this summer together. And it was great. We really like hanging out together anyway. We would not have limited our conversation in the way I’ve just taught it. We would have talked about everything. Willy nilly. It made the date more romantic. It made it more special. It made it more precious. So there is some take home advice for people that they can do right [00:49:00] now. You can do this at home. You can do this in your own home tonight, set the table differently. Um, sit down and really pay attention instead of watching TV while you eat, uh, set your bedroom up to be more erotic, have a shower, have a bath together. If you, if it’s not wiser, safe to get out and about right now, please don’t. Be imaginative and you can create a lot of adventure right at home.
[Zach Beach] I love how, what you’re describing just feeds back into itself, like planning something, adventurous, doing something exciting together. And not only in the moment, of course stimulates those feelings of excitement, but then later you can reflect on it. You can savor it and you can bring it back into the moment and talk about it again.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Which is enhancing your intimacy. And when we talked about this incredible trip to Africa on Safari, we brought some thrill into our Valentine’s day because it was exciting and amazing. We had a sense of wonder when we talked about the first time my husband who’s insanely mad about [00:50:00] cats. He loves cats. The first time he saw a cheetah, right. It was extraordinary for him as it would be for any of us. And so we actually created thrill. Talking about being thrilled there, it was really, uh, really beautiful.
[Zach Beach]That is really beautiful. And another follow up question I had earlier, because you mentioned that 8% of participants said they had a great sex life and how important it is to make passion a priority. And I’m curious about the couples who don’t feel it’s a problem. So let’s say they’re like, Oh yeah. At the beginning of a relationship, we had sex three times a day, every day, but now we have, we have sex once a year on birthdays or something. Right. If they don’t experience a problem, You know, would you recommend that they can do make passionate priority because it is crucial for their relationship? Or is there a magic number of like, you know, how intimate a couple should [00:51:00] be? Oh, what would you recommend?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] First of all, really smart questions. Secondly, no, there’s no magic number at all. The magic number is what the two of you feel satisfied and happy with. And if that’s once a year on your birthday and you’re both satisfied and happy with that, you do not have a sexual problem. You heard me emphasize the word both. I very rarely meet a couple where they’re both. Very satisfied with their sexual life, if you are, and that’s having sex once a day, once a year or never, and you’re both very content, you don’t have a problem, but you’re also a very low percentage of people. What’s more likely is at least one person. And I would say, cause I’m a shrink and I like to dive deep into people’s minds. I would say at least one person is not satisfied, but has resigned themselves to it. And maybe isn’t tormented by it. But. I ideally would like to have more sexuality and passion, but they’re willing to just go along the way it is, and they’re not bitter, but I would put [00:52:00] forward that the one that says no, I’m just not into sex anymore. I don’t don’t need it. I’m good. I’m content. When I work with persons like that more deeply. Generally not always, uh, what’s uncovered is that they have some sort of sexual shutdown, not necessarily from trauma or abuser betrayal, or being through affairs in the past, but, well, that can be part of it, but hormonally, physically due to menopause or childbirth or a man that’s aging and his testosterone is low, which can happen to men in their thirties and forties as well as older guys. Um, or they’ve had an erection failure and it’s. Astounding, even though men understand erection failures happen to all men, all possessors of a penis, it still does a major number on a lot of guys and they subconsciously start avoiding sex because they’re afraid to have a failure. So I’m a little suspicious in a good way when a couple says, Oh no, we don’t have sex or we rarely do, but we’re both. I’m fine with it. I like to dig and make sure they’re both fine with it. And if they are, I’d say you don’t have a problem. This is [00:53:00] your normal, it works for you. How Lulu, you, you have a beautiful sex life once a year. Fantastic. And I would move on, but it’s not very common that that’s as simple as it is when we start to uncover and give people permission to say, well, I like the idea of having more passion, um, I’m content without it. But yeah, I like the idea. And Zach, how many men and women gay or straight trans any identity are. Dissatisfied and then satisfying through fantasy through masturbation, through porn or through romance novels or anything in between. If we’re living a life of more passionate in our mind, I’m always curious to say, can we bring some of that out of our mind of just me and my mind too? You know, I really love romantic movies. Maybe I’d like more romance. Maybe I’d like to plan more fun dates along the lines of the one we just gave out as an exercise for people. So don’t pathologize yourself if you like, what you like, but get curious. [00:54:00] Do you like what you like, because you’re used to it. Or would you like something else? You do not need to want to practice Kama Sutra, number 89. You don’t need to want it right. Anything. But I liked to help people. And I do in the couples program, they go through a series of exercises on their own, each partner identifying what turns them on and what turns them off, what their erotic fantasies are. What are things they might like to try, whether they’re going to or not. What are the things they don’t want to try and it’s astounding how much people learn about their own sexuality, asking themselves questions that I’ve given them that they haven’t asked. And they’ve kind of just put it on the back burner and catapulted through this busy life without really knowing much about their erotic being anymore.
[Zach Beach] Yeah. Listening to your response. I know it’s very common, you know, when one couple in a relationship is like, Oh yes, our sex life is fine. Isn’t it, honey.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Right.
[Zach Beach] Yeah. Totally. [00:55:00] So thank you so much, Cheryl. This hour has flown by or fountain of wisdom. Um, this has been really incredible. I’ve learned, learned so much and I want to close up by asking a question. I love to ask all of my guests, which is quite simply, what do you wish everyone knew about love?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Love is a dynamic thing and it needs tending and watering. Don’t take love for granted. That’s what I want people to know. And the other one we’ve covered already, which is you are normal. It is not true that everybody else is having great sex and no arguments. It’s not true that everybody else has this figured out and you don’t, and it’s also likely not true that you are with the wrong person. It’s a matter of understanding that this journey has a lot of ups and downs and you can learn how to go up and down together. That was a nice double entendre. Maybe we’ll stop there. [00:56:00]
[Zach Beach] Relationships have their ups and downs. And sometimes like in the bedroom, that’s what you want.
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Exactly. There’s another great book title. Oh, man. That’s wonderful.
[Zach Beach] Thank you so much, Dr. Frazier for coming on to the show and for our listeners who want to learn more about you, how can they find you?
[Dr. Cheryl Fraser] Easiest way is my website, drcherylfraser.com and that’s where people can also take the quiz if they want to rate their own passion triangle. And depending when this is released, uh, below this, we will put. Potentially a link to the free classes I teach, uh, twice a year. And I would love to have everybody join those, learn a lot more about the passion triangle, get a few more techniques. They can apply to their relationship. And in those classes, I also talk about my couples immersion program, which I offered twice a year, where I take couples through a 10 week deep exploration into their relationship and really help them renovate it from the inside out.
[Zach Beach] Wonderful. Thanks so [00:57:00] much for coming on to the show. And thank you listeners for listening to the show. We hope you remember all the wisdom teachings discussed in this hour, including you are normal, but also remembered to remain curious and present with your partner. A majority of affairs happen because we have forgotten how fascinating our partner is. Yeah, and we suffer in love because we don’t realize that our feelings of love will change. The mate is not the problem. The mind is the problem. So make passion a priority amongst many other lessons. So. If you want to learn more about me, you can head to zachbeah.com and the-heart-center.com Thanks again, Cheryl.
Thanks Zach. It’s been a pleasure. Have a beautiful day.
