It’s changing the way people sleep. It’s shifting the way people sell houses. It’s stopping the energy leak. In this episode, Janelle and Andrea talk about their experiences sleeping alone, the braveheart behavior it required, the pressure of intimacy. There’s a nod to: the movie, “The Last Waltz”, Emily Nagasaki’s book “Come as You Are”, the TV show “Donna Reed”, The New York Times article “I Love You, But I don’t Want to Sleep with You” by Ronda Kaysen, the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” and finally, Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent and Three Minute Game. You’ll hear:
--Why our grandparents were our first ever model!
--How a garage sale changed Andrea’s life forever--Insights for courageously addressing intimacy confusion in bed--How sleeping alone relates to the Crypts and the Bloods
--Why having her own room helped Janelle exhale
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrea Enright 0:01
Andrea, hi friend, hi
Janelle Orion 0:02
friend. And
Andrea Enright 0:03
to the brave hearts listening out there. Welcome to permission to be human. I'm Andrea
Janelle Orion 0:08
and I'm Janelle.
Andrea Enright 0:08
Get ready for some real time relationship. Woo
Janelle Orion 0:11
and wisdom from the front lines with occasional tantrums and tears about
Andrea Enright 0:15
how breaking rules, blurring boundaries and tossing tradition can be catalysts for finding your truth.
Janelle Orion 0:20
Let's debunk the fairy tales we were told as children and create a new map for life. Yes, Disney can go fuck itself if you're seeking permission to choose your own path. Freedom is the new F word. People and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you. Please
Andrea Enright 0:36
note, this is our side of the story. Our partners and metamours have their own individual experiences, and we do not speak for them.
Hi, Janelle, Hey, Andrea,
welcome bravehearts to permission to be human. Oh, it is Burning Man. Prep day for Janelle, yes,
Janelle Orion 1:01
and you're listening to this post Burning Man, for sure, but this is one of my favorite times of the year. Yeah, yeah.
Andrea Enright 1:09
She's ready to get glitter and a spear crown and her outfit. I
Janelle Orion 1:12
know I've got a wild crown on today. Totally, it's
Andrea Enright 1:15
like an evil eye, yeah?
Janelle Orion 1:16
Oh no, not an even eye. I was totally thinking of like the third eye. Like, I've got my vision. My vision is, like, this big is how I feel. And I have my unicorn mug.
Andrea Enright 1:26
You do with your cacao, with my cacao. But, you know, evil eye is not about evil it's just like, about scaring off spirits from, from, you know, from, you know,
Janelle Orion 1:33
maybe I don't even know what an evil eye, yeah, evil eye is like, you
Andrea Enright 1:35
know, those little blue bracelets so you get from, like, grease, right? Yeah. So it's not a bad thing.
Janelle Orion 1:41
There's lots of things I don't know. Bravehearts,
Andrea Enright 1:43
oh, you betcha. There's lots of things we both don't know. All right, today we're talking about sleep, actually, one of my most hated topics right now,
Janelle Orion 1:56
I feel for you friends.
Andrea Enright 1:57
Thank you. Thank you. I think about you, because I know you need a lot of sleep, and you get a lot of sleep,
Janelle Orion 2:03
I've really prioritized it most of my life. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I mean, not having kids has been a key component totally.
Andrea Enright 2:11
And actually, I'm pretty, like, happy I actually get I go into my bedroom at, like, really, no later than, like, nine, 915 this is super early, like, which is a weird I got that out of Costa Rica because the sun sets so early there. And that's a beautiful habit that I'm just like, wow. I'm so happy that I'm doing that. Because I think I used to get in bed more like 1030 so, but I don't get to sleep, and I'm not sleeping well, but at least I'm in the bed right. I wind down.
Janelle Orion 2:39
Are you like on your phone?
Andrea Enright 2:41
Are you reading? I'm reading like I'm trying to get off my phone a little earlier, but I'm reading I'm sitting. I'm Yeah, yeah. So winding down. So this episode is about sleep, and we will begin here. So in 2020 I remember Janelle telling me that her therapist also my eventually, my therapist, Deborah, suggested that she sleep separately from her husband.
Janelle Orion 3:08
Period, yes, and because at the time, my husband and I were struggling with her intimacy and Andrea, I think you actually may have been the one to mention it. Do you remember this that I had codependent behaviors
Andrea Enright 3:20
vaguely, like, I remember thinking, like, learning about codependency. I mean, like, Oh, is that what? That's about,
Janelle Orion 3:26
right? So I don't know if you mentioned it, or if my friend Sophie mentioned it, but I feel like I fact checked with my other friend, Sophie, not, not spirit crown. Sophie, different one who's a therapist, and she was like, oh, yeah, I could see that for you. And I remember being like, shocked, absolutely fucking shocked, that I could have codependent tendencies. But I was like, let me solve this. What
Andrea Enright 3:48
did codependent even mean to you? Then, though codependent
Janelle Orion 3:50
at the time, I think meant someone she just was not independent, and I was someone who was independent in lots of ways, but I had to learn where the enmeshments actually took place and it was deep, yeah, yeah, but I had a hard time seeing it at first. Okay. So when I spoke to my other friend, Sophie, she actually suggested a therapist that she had seen that was specializes in codependency. So I reached out right away Problem Solver Janelle, on board, like, let's figure this out. And one of the things that she suggested was taking a break from sleeping together, because it could help distinguish where, like, basically it would keep my energy back within me at night and in human design, which I was a big advocate of, but one of their concepts is to sleep apart as well, because that energy leaks in the middle of the night. I'm a reflector. My husband was a generator, and so that i. Was really never coming into my own energy.
Andrea Enright 5:02
Okay, got it. So it sounds like I'm hearing that you're leaking energy. You're giving energy away all night by sleeping with someone every night, right? And when Janelle first mentioned this, of course, I blanched at this idea. Yeah. I was
Janelle Orion 5:16
like, which I did too, to be honest, I didn't take it like, lightly either, right? I
Andrea Enright 5:19
was just like, What do you know, like sleep on the couch? Like, what would my daughter think? Like, what would my mom think? That must mean we're fighting, right? Because the traditional wisdom is that never go to bed mad. Don't sleep apart. Women and men sleep together. Or, you know, married, married people sleep together. Yes, in my head, yeah. Agree with everything you're saying. So I could hear my mom's voice in my head talking about sleeping terribly when my dad wasn't there, right? And this was kind of a model for me, like, Oh, you're supposed to like sleeping with your husband always. I mean, it's nothing wrong with it, you know? She was just being authentic. And I actually did like sleeping with my husband, right? It felt like a form of connection, versus, yeah. And so, as we've spoken about before on another podcast, both of our grandparents slept separately. Mine slept in separate bedrooms, right? And mine just had twin beds in the same bedroom, like, like Donna Reed or something, like on those old black and white shows,
no reference, no
no reference for you. Like, they always slept in these separate beds. It's so weird. I'm like, why are they doing that? Clearly, they had to have sex at some point to have children. Yeah, my grandparents
Janelle Orion 6:22
had seven children, but I will say, and they were married for 50 years, and at the time, when I was young, I just thought that's something that old people did, was that
Andrea Enright 6:31
they slept separately. Yeah? So it was bizarre to me, and I remember asking my mom, like, what's up with that? And she was just like, shrugged her shoulders and didn't comment. I'm sure she had some opinions, but she didn't know. She was like, I don't know. Guess that's what they like to do. So when you suggested this, I thought, No, I can't do that. Like, it kind of just shut it down in a typical kind of anti Brave Heart Fashion. Like, right? I'm like, No, that's cultural norms, because I don't know. I'm not breaking that, yeah. And yet, there was something in my head, in my heart.
Janelle Orion 6:57
Can I just actually, just pause you? Yeah, I want to elaborate for our Braveheart, because we call everyone bravehearts. We know that we're Bravehearts, but we recognize that the journey of a Braveheart does not mean you recognize the societal norm, and then you're like, yippee, let's go deconstruct that, that, no, that actually it's like, that's weird, or that we have our own judgments, whatever it is. And in your case, what you're saying right now is you're like, I'm not gonna sleep separately. That's what I said. I was like, I'm not gonna do that. And so something like I pushed up against something that said, Just give it a try, but that it was not an easy thing to dismantle. Got
Andrea Enright 7:37
it understood. Okay, nice clarification, because there was something in my like, I don't know if it was my head, my heart, my gut, my pussy that said, Oh yes, that sounds nice. Like, why? Because, maybe because it's easy to reflect on. Now, I'm not sure I could have consciously come up with these things then, but maybe I didn't want to always feel the pressure of intimacy, right? That there was pressure. But, you know, there's always, like, this thing where, like, oh, we supposed to, are we gonna have sex? No, we're not gonna have sex. Like, or are we gonna cuddle? We're not gonna cuddle. That wasn't a bad thing, but it, in a sense, was a question mark every night, right? I mean, in a way, like, some nights you'd know, like, oh, we had a stressful day, or we're going to bed at different times or whatever. But sometimes you wonder, well, when is tonight we supposed to do it tonight? You know? Yeah, I haven't reflected on that, but yeah, I definitely would have had that in my mind. And then two, I just love the idea of not being witnessed in everything I did, which we've talked about before, the value of being alone, like, I just don't want people watching, like, I don't mean anything bad. I'm just like, right,
Janelle Orion 8:47
yes, or tracking, which, as we also discussed here, the tracker tracking. So I know that that's the paradox. Those who are trackers don't want to be tracked, and yet, those who were being tracked are like, stop fucking tracking me. Yeah,
Andrea Enright 9:03
so when we say tracking, we mean, you know, I'm sitting on the couch with Janelle. My husband comes in. Janelle and I are completely immersed in conversation working. He comes in, he's looking for something, and I'm like, Can I help you find something? What are you looking for? Because I'm tracking him. This is what we do kind of naturally. It's another energy leak. So the side note, so I wanted alone time, but I think also there was a lot of practical reasons we actually like to go to sleep at different times at that time, especially, I like a fan on me at all times. I wish there was someone carrying a fan around me in my life, blowing it on me all the time, right? This would be like my dream. He is often cold and drinks hot water during the day, right? I have hot flashes like very different constitutions. I don't mind a little light. He wants it completely black. I like to lie in bed for a while with the light on. He likes to turn it off. I am a reader. He is not like there's this only forgot the drone. I would sleep so well together. Ah,
that is so funny,
I know. So I'm like, wow, we have really opposite references. So practically speaking, it was a winner. But we had just remodeled our living room, like we just, like, knocked down a wall, and we only had a love seat and living room, no guest bedroom. The fact is, it wasn't even possible for us, and emotionally speaking, I still didn't know if I could do it. But then, in amazing thrift fashion, we found the best thing ever at a garage sale in our neighborhood, at the home of a family from my daughter's school, and it was this total Andrea version of the Janelle super couch. So you used to have a super couch at your old apartment. Yes, it was huge and you had a special cushion made for it. It was amazing. It was a size of three twin beds put together as one couch, yes, with some backs on part of it. So I found this gray IKEA super couch. It was a couch that pulled out. It was the right color. It wasn't too big for our tiny bungalow. Sold like literally, and I think it was $50 it was $50 I mean, five, oh, we probably paid 1200 for the fucking love seat. So I brought it up to my husband, this idea of sleeping apart maybe one night a week, and he saw the value, and I was like, Oh, it's covid. This is the perfect excuse to tell my daughter, because we were all feeling a little suffocated at that time. And at that time, I didn't have the guts to be honest with her about, oh, this is also quite she was also quite young. Yeah, that's true. To be honest, she never really saw me sleeping on the couch. I mean, she never had a reason to ask. Reason to ask. She wasn't up early, whatever. And you know, we bring this up partly because there was an article recently. It was actually reposted from a couple years ago, so it's not a new thing. And the title was, I love you, but I don't want to
Janelle Orion 11:58
sleep with you. It was in the New York Times,
Andrea Enright 12:02
and it tells about people expressing their creative personality by having their own room that they decorate. You know, in a marriage, a wife or a husband, and since they each have their own room, correct? So like and about real estate developers actually creating two masters in a house with, potentially with Jack and Jill bathrooms, or on Suite bathrooms, yeah, or in suite so I think people are doing this. And it was actually disappointing. I remember to see that the therapist in the article was like, I'm not sure I can get on board with this. So they had a different opinion, right? I can see, of course, how it could cut down on intimacy, right, and could help you become disconnected.
Janelle Orion 12:51
It probably could go both ways. I remember that when I moved out, when we were getting divorced and I moved in the duplex, I moved to the other side of the duplex, and I had, like, within the first like, minutes of me being in this bedroom, I was just like, oh, here I am. Like, here's my energy. And had the thought that, Oh, I wonder, had we had separate bedrooms, our entire marriage. What that would have done? Wow, interesting. Like, because it just it felt so actually enlivening instead of, instead of forced intimacy. I mean, obviously we never executed on this, so I have no idea how it would have played out, but that it's like, oh, now we're consciously choosing intimacy versus in the should we? It's Saturday, it's been seven days, or whatever it is.
Andrea Enright 13:48
I know I think it basically, I feel like it's in an ideal world. It's beautiful, but it's another thing to manage, right? To make sure that you don't go too long and then get disconnected, potentially, right? So that, I guess that would be the, that would be the question. I don't know if it's another thing to manage, or you're just managing it differently, yeah, fair enough, yeah. So this idea they're talking about in the New York Times article about having separate bedrooms. Now, not everybody can afford that, or not everybody has a spare bedroom. And I hadn't thought about this in a while, because naturally for me, when polyamory started, my husband was away one or two nights a week. It started with one, and then gradually got to two. Sometimes he would come home at night, late at night, sometimes he would stay the night, but that's when I really got the big taste of it, because I was in my own bed next to my nightstand, with, you know, with my stuff in my bed, not on the couch, and alone, and it was really hard at first. I mean, that was when I we had, like my. Most of our boxer conversations was that
Janelle Orion 15:02
witching hour. For those of you don't know, if you're starting out in poly, like, 10 to 11pm could be the witching hour of, like, When are they coming home? Are they coming home right now? Like,
Andrea Enright 15:12
what's going on? Like, yeah, it was really brutal for a while there. And then eventually, it's a phase. It is. It's impermanent. So eventually, really became came to appreciate that. And then even when he wouldn't do it, when it was an off week, or she was out of town, I was just like, Oh my God, I need my alone time. How am I getting up my alone time? So I really came to crave sleeping alone. So the funny thing is that so just going into childhood, my daughter's childhood. For a minute, my daughter slept on her own as a baby, like we trained her to fall asleep on her own. And there was a big controversy at that time. Like there was this whole joke about the cribs versus the beds, which is like a playoff of the cribs versus the bloods these gangs in LA and so if you were a crib, you were like, make them sleep in their crib, you know, teach them, let them cry it out. And if you were a bed, then you let the baby come into bed with you, which, of course, was tough, because then you're it's interrupting your lovemaking, right? And so we did train our child to train like, you know, worked it out. So she fell asleep on her own. But then at some point, when she was about four, she started coming in to sleep with us. We had her sleep in the middle, her head at the end, her feet coming through us in the middle, which kind of worked, like we only have a queen bed, so it was a little challenging. But whatever, like, we always had empathy for the fact that, as an only child, she slept alone while we get to sleep together. That was the argument she came up with. She's like, it's not fair you have someone to sleep with. And I don't, I thought I'm like, good point. But the biggest joke ever is that, like, now, I wish I had my own room, like she does, right? Because it would be nice to decorate, you know, how I want it, or have the lights, how I wanted, or whatever. So while I do find immense comfort in sleeping with him most nights, I do sometimes wish we had our own rooms. So it's something to work out. Again, like all societal norms that we talk about, Bravehearts, this is just something to consider and to ask the question like, Oh, what if we didn't sleep together every night, right?
Janelle Orion 17:22
And that this is a huge permission field. We've talked about. Our grandparents, mine had separate beds in the same room, Andrea's had separate bedrooms. That's one way to do it. Andrea has a small house, doesn't have a guest bedroom. She ended up getting a couch that worked for her to sleep on. I remember when we when we when we did this experiment, it was during covid. We actually had access. We also didn't have a guest bedroom because we lived in an apartment in downtown Denver, right? But we had access to our neighbors apartment because it was their second Hey, Duffy, Duffy, that was a thing for a while. Yes, that so, so that was just like, talk about privilege. We just had access to another apartment because that wasn't their primary residence during covid. And so we actually just walked out down the hall. That's an unusual circumstance, but it again, we were like creative problem solving,
Andrea Enright 18:15
yes and and we have creative problem solved now as well, because my husband, who administers medicine journeys, has his own his office right with a pull out couch. And so now, if we need some alone time, he can always sleep there. Mm, hmm. And so he did this recently, is so nice, right? He got to just go have some alone time. So did I
Janelle Orion 18:39
Right? And creating an off, if an office space can also double as a, yes,
Andrea Enright 18:43
exactly.
Janelle Orion 18:44
Pierre, what's that called? What do you say? Pierre de i It's like, I think it's like a French term for my little apartment where I go and have, like, sleep with my lovers.
Andrea Enright 18:55
I'm like, I've never heard of this because he and his girlfriend, like she had a separate condo that they was like a rental property for them, and so like that really worked really well for them. Another alternative,
Janelle Orion 19:07
right? Is that if you're in a open relating situation, and then one of them, you could be sleeping in someone else's house,
Andrea Enright 19:14
right? So you really can do some creative problem solving here. Obviously you could rent an Airbnb, but that, you know, that's cost some money, but I think the goddess temple is also an option, right? Talk about that. Like, yeah. I
Janelle Orion 19:26
mean, if you live in Denver, we the goddess temple. Here we offer goddess getaways, where people I just make it really easy. You can just like, rent a room for a night, sort of Airbnb, like a la, Airbnb, but easier, easier. Because you just like, send me a text, and then you just come in, and then you just change the sheets when you leave, and it's a sliding scale, and just room to yourself. But then you're living in community too. Because I could be here, Thomas, I could be here, you don't know, share a kitchen, yeah? But there's a couple different options, yeah, but it's a little like, hey, just know it's a Denver staycation, so people can. And be in their own energy or outside of their norm for a night or two.
Andrea Enright 20:07
So let's just throw in the definition of a Braveheart for any new listeners out there Chanel you're really good at it.
Janelle Orion 20:13
A Braveheart is someone who is seeking or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms. So let's
Andrea Enright 20:23
just delve into what we could have done to shift the energy, the energy leak or the pressured energy, if I didn't have a super couch
Janelle Orion 20:35
or Yes, or a spare bedroom or a way to sleep alone, right? But I asked, before I even go into that, I would love just to talk about a comment that you made, which was, is intimacy gonna happen tonight or not? Because I feel that it have and I have not reflected on this that I in my scenario, I likely was the one going into bed with the like energy of like, are we gonna have sex? Are we gonna have sex, right? Even though we weren't for a long time, I wanted to be for a long time before. It was years before it was just like, we're not and just turned it off. But it was like, are we? Are we? Are we
Andrea Enright 21:23
interesting? So to
Janelle Orion 21:24
your point, like, oh, like, that's before I had a voice completely to be able to, like, navigate this. I mean, we were really working through it. It wasn't like this was completely unconscious, but it was how to navigate it. So let's just talk about, like, our bed time routines.
Andrea Enright 21:43
Let me ask you something about that, because how did it feel to be the woman wanting the sex, when, traditionally, in our society, there's some kind of stereotype of
Janelle Orion 21:54
the opposite? Yes, I remember listening to we can do hard things podcast, Glennon, Doyle, Amanda and Abby Wambach, and them talking whatever they were talking about. Amanda came on and said, Hey, I just want to acknowledge that what we're talking about here is the assumption that's men who want to have sex and women who don't. And she was, like, I was in a relationship where it was the opposite. And so I just want to give a shout out to all the women out there, because there's a double shame, like, double shame about, like, right? Because not only then are you the one who wants it, but then there's something extra wrong with you, because you can't get it, and then society thinks you're also extra, like, weird, like you're not following societal norms either, right? In the standard dynamic of what we say, Yeah, men want versus what women want, right? Yeah, it was hard. That is no, that's huge.
Andrea Enright 22:57
And I think it takes courage. This actually is a quote from, oh god, what's it called? I think it's called The Last Waltz, amazing independent movie with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen. And they say it like it takes courage to initiate sex. It takes courage to ask your partner about sex. And it did for me. I mean, I can't, I mean, I can't, I just can't speak for everyone else. But I imagine I'm not completely alone in that that, you know, maybe in the early days, it doesn't right, but after you get into routine and you haven't had sex for a while, or you're not feeling sexy, or going through menopause or whatever, whatever issues you're facing, it does take courage. I it took I we talked about something two weeks ago that I was like, Oh, I just totally did it. I'm so proud of myself for bringing that up, right? 49 like, been married for since 2005 so it does take courage. And so I feel like, what can you do? I think, to alleviate it. Is it talking about it before you get in bed, you know? Is it bringing it out into another, another part of your life? So it's not like the pressure of being naked next to each other, staring ahead, I don't know, like that. That feels like something, yeah, instead of it being this taboo topic, yes, i
Janelle Orion 24:19
i I feel like we have just ventured into completely unknown territory, because you and I have never talked about this, this Mo, like, this exact element of the conversation. It's very true. Yeah, doesn't sound familiar, of being in relationship with someone, and how do you navigate the intimacy and sex of the bedtime routine? Right? So it's, this isn't like, the hot date night. This is like, does someone want it and someone not, and you are living together, right? Versus like, right now, like, I'm not. I have so I just, I actually haven't navigated it with the version of me now to be with a lover in a routine scenario. Mm, hmm. So I'm not speaking from experience, but I'm speaking from an area of like, Oh, wow. This is juicy. This, this could I would love to hear from bravehearts how they navigate this. Because it seems to me that when I really think about wanting education and skills in the area of pleasure and intimacy. This is one of the areas of how to navigate. Like, what do we need to know? Like, is it a conversation? Is it a schedule? What works for two people? Is it okay if someone goes to bed early, then we're not gonna that's not a night for sex then? Or like, Yeah,
Andrea Enright 25:41
I'm kind of like, deer in the headlights. Like, where do you begin? What comes to mind for me is the three minute conversation. Like, these tools, no, it's
Janelle Orion 25:50
a three minute game, but that's not a conversation, okay, three minute game,
Andrea Enright 25:53
I mean, but that's you're touching, correct, right? And to me, like, this is, I find this type of thing to be really helpful. Like, it's a structure that I can bring up that comes from outside of me, so it feels safer, like, oh, I have an idea. Let's play a game. It's called the three minute game. And Bravehearts, if you want to find this, I think you can google.
Janelle Orion 26:13
Yes, it's Betty Martin's work. It's will of consent. You can go to the school of consent.org, and there's YouTube videos, and you can do a printout, and it's, yeah, it's an incredible skill to
Andrea Enright 26:26
Yeah. So, I mean, I think this ventures a bit into, like, how can we jazz up our sex life, right? But the three minute game is about touching. It's not it's not like, about different positions or something. It's just about giving and receiving. But it is a way I feel like to become intimate slowly, or reacquaint yourself with intimacy. And that is something I've experienced with my husband in the past where it's like, oh, you know what? Like, neither of us are feeling super sexy right now, like, I would love a massage. Like, can we just cuddle? Like, can we start there? And that's just being honest, because you have to be honest. Like, sometimes I'm feeling sexy and sometimes I'm
Janelle Orion 27:07
not right, but so yeah, so maybe what something I'm hearing is a still open communication required that between two people to say, hey, is, where are you at tonight? Where are you at tonight? And then, even if you're both in the like, Oh, I'm low or and the one's low, one's higher, like, feeling like they want to get it on that, you can say, Okay, well, why don't we at least start with and this, I think, to your point, like, a three minute game where we're just trying to attune our energies to one another, and we're doing it in A container. It could be for 15 minutes, right? Let's just do 15 minutes of intimacy, of something and where our nervous systems are aligning. I'm like, wow. I'm like, really excited someday to, like, practice this in real life, and then I'll report back. That's how it is for me, but
Andrea Enright 27:59
it is exciting, and I will say, just from a recent experience, too, that it takes, I would say being honest and being able to receive honesty in the moment, in the moment, right? This is an everyday practice. We're talking about, yes, and I know two, 510, years ago, I would not have responded as well as I did recently. Like saying, like, saying, Oh, are you feeling sexy? Like, how are you feeling tonight? And then receiving someone saying, a partner, a boyfriend, a husband, saying, you know, I'm really not feeling sexy tonight. I'm just I'm not in the sexual energy, and not being in any way offended by that, knowing that it is not personal, because I get it right, if I have been with my daughter all day, or if I've been hanging out with family all day, I'm not in a sexual place, and there's something wrong with that. And so this takes a lot of transparency, a lot of honesty, and a lot of like, staying centered and grounded when having these conversations. So I just want to put that out there, that, like, I practiced this and gotten better at it, and it can be still hard if you're not in a good space or in a particularly fragile space. Mm, hmm.
Janelle Orion 29:18
And this is I uh, come, as you are pretty sure that's Emily Nagasaki. In that book, she speaks about women's orgasms and talks about brakes, the brake pedals and the gas pedal, and without even talking about sex, what she's talking about are all the things that prevent a woman from actually wanting to or being able to be relaxed, right? So when what I hear you saying is that, oh, if you've just been with your daughter all day, that you're not feeling like you want to have sex, but what if, just for example, you're like, Yeah, but I would love for you to just rub my feet and. How intimate that could feel in that moment. So being able to ask for that, right? And then also to be able to receive that, and I think that there's something there as well of recognizing, oh, I do want intimacy, but it actually looks like very specific and I know what the container is for it,
Andrea Enright 30:20
yeah, and this just speaks to letting go of form, right? Intimacy can look so many different ways, like it does not have to look even for a period of your marriage, a period of life, a period of a quarter, period of a year. Maybe it's just feeding each other, maybe it's just cuddling, maybe it's foot massages, right, like,
Janelle Orion 30:43
so coming back to this episode that we're talking about on sleep, this relates to it, because if you're in the same bed with someone, right, is part of the reason why you want to sleep alone, that you're Like, Oh, the sleep dynamic that's happening. It doesn't actually feel great all the time. Yeah, we're gonna keep talking about sleep and why we're advocates for sleeping apart a couple nights a week. But then there's all these other nights a week that you are sleeping together, yeah? And
Andrea Enright 31:17
this is how do you navigate those nights? Right? Right, right. I think is an ongoing conversation. And I just encourage you, Bravehearts, to be curious. Be curious. Ask questions. Ask your partner questions. Back way up and look at your bedroom. Look at where you're sleeping together. Look at the energy you're giving, you know, and giving away and receiving. It's just something to be curious about at a minimum.
Janelle Orion 31:44
Okay, Bravehearts, something to think about sleep, the dissection of sleep, yep, and then also communication around intimacy before sleep. And as always, no answers here, just ideas, just insights.
Andrea Enright 31:58
Yeah. Please follow us on Instagram. Please visit permission to be human. Dot live slash events to attend an in real life Braveheart conversation at the goddess temple. We just hosted one. It was amazing. And
Janelle Orion 32:12
we have our next Braveheart retreat for women, happening October 18 through the 20th. Thanks,
Andrea Enright 32:17
bravehearts. We love you. Bye. Do you need permission to be human? You got it?
Janelle Orion 32:24
Listen, subscribe and review on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, learn more about us at permission to be human. Dot live you.
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