How to Navigate Love and Sex in a Pandemic with Dr. Diana Wiley

Dr. Diana Wiley is with us in today’s episode. Diana is a marriage, family, and sex therapist who has been practicing for over 30 years. She’s been hosting her own online radio show called “Love, Lust, and Laughter” for over 10 years. Last year, she published a book called “Love in the Time of Corona: Advice from a Sex Therapist for Couples in Quarantine.”

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On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast:

• What inspired Diana to write her most recent book.
• How the pandemic influenced Diana’s clients.
• Why couples should have more sex while they’re stuck at home together.
• What Diana believes is the fountain of youth.
• What good sex can help with physically and emotionally.
• Where to begin if you are struggling to have sex with your partner.
• The importance of planning a date night at home.
• How to navigate having a sex life while the children are still living at home.
• Different types of exercises to improve intimacy.
• How to improve your emotional connection with your partner.
• Why it’s important to let your partner know that you are spiritually present.
• What you can do to get on the same emotional page as your partner.
• The type of clients that Diana typically works with.
• Diana’s hope for couples as they look back at the pandemic.

Connect with Diana

Dr. Diana Wiley Website: https://drdianawiley.com/

Dr. Diana Wiley Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deardrdiana/

TRANSCRIPT

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:02] I am Gloria Grace Rand, founder of the Love Method and author of the number one Amazon best seller, Live Love and Gauge How to Stop Doubting Yourself and start being yourself. In this podcast, we share practical advice from a spiritual perspective on how to live fully, love deeply and engage authentically so you can create a life and business with more impact, influence and income. Welcome to Live, Love, Engage.

[00:00:38] Now I’m a stay and welcome to Live, Love, Engage, I am Gloria Grace Rand, and today I’ve got a guest with us who is going to be talking about love and sex and the pandemic. She is an expert and in all of those things. So I want to welcome to Live Love engage Dr. Diana Whiley.

[00:01:05] Thank you. Gloria, I’m really glad to be with you.

[00:01:08] Well, we’re glad to have you, because this is not a usual topic necessarily that we share. But, you know, the podcast is about living fully, loving, deeply and engaging authentically. So it really does fit with all of those things. So let me share with those of you listening and watching on YouTube just who Dr. Diana Wiley is. She is practiced for more than 30 years, actually, as a licensed marriage and family therapist. She’s a board certified sex therapist and a gerontologist. And since 20 20, she’s actually hosted her own online radio show called Love, Lust and Laughter The Progressive Radio Network. And the last year and twenty 20, she published a book called Love in the Time of Korona, advice from a sex therapist for couples in Quarantine, which is a, as I understand it, a compendium of your best advice that you’ve been giving to thousands of couples. So congratulations on getting that out there.

[00:02:17] Thank you, Gloria. My radio show, Love, Lust and Laughter has actually been on since twenty ten. I think you said 20, 20 years, 20. Congrats. And I actually do it now every other Tuesday. So but it’s progressive radio network and it’s I as you must enjoy your podcast. I so much enjoy. Doing mine, it’s actually live the first hour, so it’s radio for the first hour and then it’s archived now.

[00:02:50] Wonderful. And do you have guests on the show as well,

[00:02:54] Or every time? Oh, yeah,

[00:02:56] Yeah, yeah. That’s what I love. I love actually getting to meet interesting people like yourself. So. Yeah, so so let’s get to this a little bit and I guess maybe, maybe actually share with us why you decided to put together this book Love in the time of Karen and what other than probably I assume the obvious reasons. But I guess what what was your goal in putting that together last year?

[00:03:27] Well, in March of last year, I became quite apparent that we were in serious trouble with a pandemic. And and I switched from in-person sessions to zoom sessions and. I could see that my clients were very upset and and if they had issues and usually they they had issues because they contacted me to therapy, these seem to be the issues seem to be extra horrible because they were stuck together, forced togetherness. And I’ve always wanted to write a book and I didn’t think a pandemic would be the impetus for it. But that’s what happened.

[00:04:15] And it’s a I think turned out to be a time of a lot of creativity for a lot of people, because I think because we were stuck home and having to look for other outlets. I know I’ve spent a good time working on my book last year as well. But now one of the things that you talk about, I guess, and I guess is comes up in the book, is you promote the idea that couples should actually have more sex while they’re stuck at home together. And how would that help, especially if maybe there’s tension around the fact that suddenly your spouse is home 24/7 instead of going to the office for eight hours a day?

[00:04:56] One of the things that I like to point out to begin with is that it’s far more painful. It’s much harder to be a sexless couple than it is to do the work. And when we have when we have good emotional physical sex, when our emotional intimacy is present and and there we have emotional foreplay, then our our physical intimacy is better. And so I point that out and I say that I remind them that sex is fun, it’s free, and it’s the fountain of youth. But if it’s right, sex is. And I think with all of your spiritual overlays that your work, Gloria, I think great sex is not about how your body looks or what position it’s in, but it’s about the emotional, perhaps even spiritual. They’re often together in connection with your partner.

[00:06:06] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:06:08] Yes. So, yeah, good sex is is he helps with anxiety and helps with your immune system. It helps the couple feel closer. Some studies show that couples that have frequent sex, if they had arguments, they got over them faster. But most of them had fewer arguments as a result of having more sex. It’s kind of the glue of a relationship, in my opinion.

[00:06:35] But how would a couple go about maybe instigating this, I guess, if they’re really having trouble communicating, maybe they’re at an impasse with each other, how are they going? How are they going to do follow this prescription, as it were?

[00:06:51] Yes. Well, it begins with having a hard foul talk and, you know, say to each other, I I have faith that we can rekindle the passion that we felt in the beginning and. That takes a leap of faith, that’s a bit of a risk to be optimistic about that. You know, you have what it took to fall in love in the beginning of your relationship. I believe you’ll have what it takes to stay together and the other thing I would say is really, really listen to each other so often couples are not listening. Well, and I know that I’m sure that’s part of your work to do, to get people to really listen. And I and I’ve helped many people to do this. And the the guidelines and the exercises are all in my book, Love. In the time of koruna, the impasse can often be overcome by doing something like scheduling sex. But that starts with planning your date night at home. And actually, that’s the second chapter in my book, Planning Your Date Night at Home. Many people are kind of nervous about what sex sex should be spontaneous. If it’s really good, I’m going to feel the passion kind of erupt in me and I’m going to run toward you. That’s a Hollywood myth. And I talk about two different syndromes. Diane’s double income, no sex and t face, which is too tired for sex. And both of those syndromes are very common in and even and of course, they’ve been exacerbated by quarantining together. So I talk about the date night at home, setting the scene, maybe getting takeout food and making it would take off and having enough privacy, putting flowers on the table, maybe bring out your vagina and so on, but make it a nice scene and then over over dinner, don’t talk about your anxiety or your depression or your children or your work. Right. About your relationship and your hopes for the relationship, both the physical intimacy and the way you have to start with the emotional intimacy right away.

[00:09:21] Yeah, well, that’s good. And you you mentioned children because I think that’s another aspect that has also been a bit of a wrinkle, shall we say, in this last year as well, because a lot of parents are homeschooling kids now. And and so there’s even more stress where everybody again is underfoot. So have you do you have any other recommendations for parents who are in that and being able to really be able to have some sort of time? Because because I know when my kids were little, we could actually go out on date night and we would do that. But it’s like when you’re sick at home, it’s a little it’s a little harder.

[00:10:04] Yes. Yes. So it is it is very hard if if the if a couple has very young children, they may have to wait till the children are asleep. If they have middle middle school children and older, it it’s more challenging. But I think the message needs to be. That the couple needs to love the mother and father needs to say to their children, you know, we’re your mom and dad, but we’re also husband and wife and we need time together and we’re going to have a date night. And that does not include you children. I mean, this is going to be included other times. Right. And and maybe you put them in front of a movie or something in the television. And if you have enough space in your house, if it takes a little more creativity to go to work it out, some some couples have quarantined with another family so they can put your children over to the other family for the evening. So but there are ways you can get around, it depends on the motivation and when I’ve seen transformations in couples, and that’s one reason why I have no plans to retire. And God willing, I can eat my marbles. And so far, so good. I’m in my 70s. My husband and I have a very robust sex life. And I practice what I preach. We practice what I preach, and it makes our marriage so much better.

[00:11:47] You know, couples. Especially women, older women often fold up their tents. They might need some bioidentical hormone replacement therapy if they can get that. There are lots of lots of things you can do for inhibited desire, but that’s very, very common. So but it helps. But we need to think about sex, not just as intercourse. I have a whole chapter on that to let touch relieve stress. And so I talk about at our core, which is everything but intercourse. And I have four stages for kind of getting back together. And the first two stages, these are all such exercises, also called sensate focus. Don’t even involve intercourse. The two the first two stages and I have a ninety five year old friend who has a partner of some 20 years. She’s a bit younger, not a lot. And and I sent him a book and he he and his partner immediately did stage one, which is face, hands and feet. And he said, I wish I’d had your book 70 years ago because it would have saved me so many years of frustration is that I always thought I had to be touched first on my genitals. And he said that was not true. I love the feelings of being touched in other parts of my body. Very arousing.

[00:13:18] Oh, well, that’s that’s an enlightened man. So that’s that’s a good

[00:13:22] Thing in life is I like

[00:13:26] To appreciate that. What would you say? How would you help someone who is, let’s say, one partner who really does get into more of the physical aspects, whereas the other partner wants more of the emotional connection? How do you help some couples in that instance?

[00:13:47] Well, they need to have more emotional foreplay, say the woman. And a lot of women want men to slow down, do more, more. And so. You’ve got to have that talk and and one of the exercises I have toward the end of my book, Love in the Time of Corona, is a sweet nothings exercise, and this can really help. So you take turns. I have the couple facing each other, need a knee holding hands, making eye contact. And they say, this is what I really love and appreciate about you. And they take about a minute. You say all the reasons why, why they are loving and appreciating their partner and then a switch and the other person doesn’t. And then if I’m doing it in my session, I help them process it. If they’re doing it alone. And that’s usually going to be the case, they should talk about it after and say what it meant to them. I’ve had I’ve had men actually cry a couple of different times because they were so happy to hear something positive and appreciative. Yeah, that can be one way. You got to break down these barriers, these communication barriers and start.

[00:15:23] Yeah, that that makes sense because. Yeah, because nobody likes to just hear all the complaining about it, about myself or something like that and having having the partner focusing on what’s wrong with you instead of focusing on what’s right with you. So that makes sense.

[00:15:41] Yes, it helps. And it also helps that to let your partner know that you are. Physically and spiritually present. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, you need to be in the moment. And mindfulness and many women in particular multitask when they’re being sexual, they’re thinking about other things, women actually have a bigger corpus callosum, which is the connective tissue between the right and left hemispheres of their brain. And we may have been hard wired like that in our brains, because if we have a baby and if we’re making love to our husband, we also have to be able to hear

[00:16:33] Those the

[00:16:35] Grows up. And a woman is still multitasking. She’s she’s thinking about other things that she doesn’t really want to be there. So being in the moment and if you have to have thoughts that are intrusive, see a stop sign and stop those thoughts and come back to center and come back to what you’re experiencing. Or see a conveyor belt kind of going from your brain with all these extraneous thoughts carried away and come back to the present. It really helps.

[00:17:11] That’s a great idea. I like I like that. That’s and that’s so useful to be able to have like a concrete specific steps to follow because I you know, I know just in my relationships and things and and even in any other type of thing that we do, if we you know, it’s nice to be able to say, oh, I want to be able to have this, I want to have that, but how do I get there? And so it’s good that you’re able to help people and give them some steps.

[00:17:39] Well, that’s that’s how I normally do cognitive behavioral therapy CBT. And there’s lots of research to show that if it works, you’ve got to change how you think. One of the thoughts and a lot of people think, yes, I’m not I’m a bit worthless and you have to believe that you are you you are deserving of a good, intimate, emotionally, physically relationship. And then you’ve got to change the behaviors. And we know that a series of baby steps, a series of positive behaviors, you do a lot of those and then eventually the attitude starts to change. So doing these is doing the baby steps is really, really important and. One of the things you can do. In the beginning, to kind of get on the same emotional page is to recall the good times. You get an old scrapbooks and look at pictures of yourself when you first fell in love. Listen and dance to music that was popular when you first fell in love and tell your story to your partner. Sometimes I get my clients to do this, but you don’t need a little therapy. Can be very useful if if you’re really at an impasse. Right. Let’s say one person says to the other, I want to tell you my story about how I fell in love with you, why I fell in love with you, and you can maybe have a better chance to re rediscover yourself in the relationship.

[00:19:21] Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I can definitely see the benefit of that for sure. One thing I wanted to ask you about, because I mentioned in the introduction, and that’s something that maybe not necessarily everybody knows what it is, but I mentioned that you’re a gerontologist. So can you talk a little bit about what that is and and how you how that plays into what you do in your in your life?

[00:19:47] Yes. In the early 90s at that time, I was living in Palo Alto, California, and I worked with Dr. Walter Barr to geriatrician for an M.D. And we did two different studies on aging and sexuality and the Palo Alto Senior Center. So this is the early 90s and it was a very active place. And the turnout for our series on aging and sexuality was great. And for the first time ever, they said they had more men than women turning out for a workshop at the senior center. But because Stanford University is at in Palo Alto and there were like there were a lot of women who’d gone back to school. So this is the early 90s and so. They’ve gone back to so they tended to be pretty well educated people and they knew that if they could reinvigorate their sex lives or at least get some of it back, that they would have a better relationship. So those studies and another one with SERS, that’s an acronym for Sons of Retirement. We spoke all over the Bay Area for a year and gave these older guys questionnaires. And we did follow ups on both both studies. Anyway, these studies were published in medical journals. And so after that, I got to call myself a gerontologist. And so I’ve had this specialty in aging and sexuality since the early 90s.

[00:21:25] Wonderful. And it’s certainly still absolutely timely because as the baby boomers continue to age, I think you’re going to have clients for quite a while. So let’s hope as long as you want to write.

[00:21:39] Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

[00:21:42] Well, tell me a little bit about how how so you said you do work with you work one on one with people, or do you ever do any group works or group

[00:21:54] Like groups anymore? I did two groups in in the mid early 90s and mid 90s before I moved to Hawaii. And I was still in Palo Alto and two women’s sexuality groups. And they all had sexual trauma and they weren’t having orgasms. And then much later, I worked at UCLA Female Sexual Medicine Center, did some groups there, but mostly not mostly couples. And then I do see individuals, too. And because there’s there is the sense of loneliness is pronounced and with anxiety and depression are depression in the United States has increased about three times and the alcohol use is up.

[00:22:46] Yeah, I

[00:22:47] Do see I do see individuals. And and then, you know, we talk about how you might even find a partner even in a quarantine. And it mostly involves spending a lot of time, maybe more time with courtship. Over Zoom before you ever meet in person and a question you might ask a single person who’s that you’re communicating with is what does social distancing mean to you?

[00:23:17] That’s a good question.

[00:23:18] Yeah, some people may not, if you’re being really adamant about and most people that I know are you’re being very careful. You don’t want someone who’s going to be very casual and doesn’t wear a mask and all of that. So there are things to negotiate, but mostly.

[00:23:37] Yeah, well, awesome. Well, if someone wants to be able to maybe no. One, get a copy of your book and maybe learn some more about you, where is the best place for them to do that?

[00:23:49] Well, I developed since March and since the publication of the book in May. An advice website, and that is Dear Dr. Diana Dotcom. Dear Dr. D-R or spelled out, it doesn’t matter, Dr. Diana Dotcom. And so there you will see people who have written questions. So it’s an advice thing. But also there are links to my YouTube channel where I have advice about different things coming from my blog. And and then there’s a link to buy the book, which is available on Amazon so you can go directly to Amazon or your doctor, Diana.

[00:24:29] All right. Also, I’ll make sure that I have all that information in the show notes. So in case if you’re listening somewhere and you don’t have a pen handy, you’ll be able to get that. So you just have to go to live, love, engage podcast dotcom and you’ll be able to get that information. So is there anything else you’ve really you’ve talked about a lot of great stuff and offered a lot of excellent advice. Is there anything else that maybe you haven’t covered? But I didn’t ask you about that you think would be important for those listening and watching to know about connecting and having good?

[00:25:05] I think I think we’ve covered quite a lot. And your show isn’t long enough for me to go into too much more detail. But I think what I want is my hope is that. And my hope is that down the road, you can look back on this pandemic and say this was a time when we rediscovered stuff about each other. When we took we had more time together and we used it wisely and we reclaimed our sexuality and we saved our relationship. That’s my hope for people. And I say, may you find more love in the time of Verona? Yeah, that’s my message.

[00:25:50] Absolutely. I love it. That’s an excellent, excellent, excellent message. And what the world needs now is more, just more love. So, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here today and and sharing your words of wisdom. And you’re also your your heart and and helping helping couples out there to be able to come together and really appreciate one another. So I appreciate you for being here today.

[00:26:22] Well, thank you. I appreciate you, Gloria, for hosting me. And it’s been a really wonderful conversation to have with you. Thank you.

[00:26:31] Thank you. And to all of you who are out there listening, I appreciate you as well. And for those watching on my YouTube channel, which if you want to be able to see the replay of this, you can go to YouTube, dot com forward, slash Gloria, random video, and you’ll be able to find all the episodes, past episodes of the podcast there. And until we meet again, I encourage you, as always to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically. Did you know that a majority of entrepreneurs

[00:27:07] Tend to discount the importance of their work and a good number feel their success is simply due to luck? I know from personal experience that self-doubt can keep you from having the kind of life and business you desire. That’s why I’ve created a free guide called Uniquely Knew how to move from self-doubt to self-love in four simple steps to claim your free guide. Go to live, love, engage dot gift. That’s live love. Engage dot g-i-f-t