Nat from Always Mending and Marital Coercion
In this episode of the Intimacy Lab, Michelle Renee and Nat delve into the complexities of intimacy, coercion, and personal growth within relationships. They explore the impact of social media on sexual awareness, the nuances of desire and arousal, and the importance of communication and consent. Through personal anecdotes and shared experiences, they highlight the journey towards understanding one's own sexual autonomy and the challenges faced in navigating intimate relationships. In this conversation, Michelle and Nat delve into the complexities of emotional abuse, healing, and the journey towards self-worth and empowerment. They discuss the importance of consent and communication in relationships, the challenges of navigating difficult conversations, and the significance of personal growth and finding one's calling. Through their experiences, they highlight the need for self-awareness and the courage to prioritize one's own needs and boundaries.
Nat started on Tiktok and has turned her life experience into a platform with the start of the hashtag #maritalcoercion. Her IG profile reads, "Writer, lover, mother, awakening to higher love after abuse and talking about it way too much." I love that about Nat! She is drawing attention to a hot topic that needs more conversation! You can learn more at https://alwaysmending.com.
Michelle Renee (she/her) is a San Diego-based Platonic Intimacy Guide and Surrogate Partner. Michelle's websites are https://meetmichellerenee.com and https://humanconnectioncoach.com and she can be found on social media at https://instagram.com/meetmichellerenee.
If you’d like to ask a question for Michelle to answer on an episode: https://www.meetmichellerenee.com/episode
Links from today's show:
https://mendingme.substack.com
The Cost of Duty Sex: https://youtu.be/7pWGTzhtS24?si=HXjzXHsq8uXS_VHw
Rebecca's inner child moment on Ted Lasso: https://youtu.be/-Zo4NWUxhf0?si=2GrI3UhOmVu5HpBu
To grab your own set of We’re Not Really Strangers https://amzn.to/47XJjvm
Rough Transcript:
Michelle Renee (she/her) (00:21)
Okay, welcome back to the intimacy lab.
we're joined by Nat today. If you're watching, if you're listening to this, you can always catch the video if you're like, I really want to see these people interact. That is an option on Spotify and on YouTube. So to say, okay, so when I started this podcast, I didn't really know what I was going to do with it. I knew I wanted to be able to talk to the people that have had a big influence on my life or the people that are in my regular like inner circles, like to bring some of our.
Nat (00:36)
Well, I'm very flattered.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (00:52)
what I think are really cool conversations to a spot for, I don't know, this feels like a voyeuristic podcast in a lot of ways, because I'm really like, I get to have these just like really fluid conversations and people at home, either they're gonna love it or they're not, and I don't really care. So, Nat came into my life. Sometime, I didn't go back to look to see what the history was, but I can say.
I know Nat got started, you got started on TikTok during COVID or before, like, okay, I don't even know when TikTok started, but I know that when I got on TikTok, I quickly came across Nat and I, so anybody listening to this, if you come here, because Nat has promoted this or you know me, but you haven't heard all of my story. I was married for 18 years. The marriage ended, but...
Nat (01:24)
2020.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:48)
It never, I felt like I was sexually broken in that relationship. I was told something was wrong with me constantly because I just wasn't a big yes to sex, but I was doing it anyways. So like, I was basically a human masturbation sleeve is how I like to describe it. Although it's the worst kind of way to experience sex. I'm not the worst way to experience sex, but certainly not one of the better ones. And I...
There was two things that really shifted for me in my internal understanding of that. And one of those things was learning about responsive desire and come as you are with Emily Nagoski But the other, the big thing was running across Nat on TikTok and learning about coercion in long-term relationship. And Nat coined the tag or the hashtag marital coercion. And
Hearing that made all of this history click into place and make sense. And I have been on my own little rampage in the therapy world trying to freaking help sex therapists specifically look for coercion. And coercion has this implication that it's like this really obvious thing that, oh, I think they get this idea that it would stand out really strong. And I'm like, no. It's so...
subtle and I just want to make like a little disclosure. I'm going to talk about my own experience. I can't talk about my ex-husband's experience with his voice, because I'm not him. But I will say that we still don't agree on the history of our marital sexual relationship.
I have made an offer to go back to therapy with him so that we could get on at least an understanding for him. It is very, very important that I let everyone know that I cheated on him in our relationship. So if I haven't said it enough times in the world, I cheated on him and he sees this as just wanting a wife that loved him and wanted him.
Right? And I can go, if we might get into that conversation and hear about what led me to go down the cheating route, maybe we will, maybe we won't. I'm always happy to talk about it. I don't see myself as a cheater anymore. The reasons being is that I've found my voice. I have found my bodily autonomy. I know how to ask for what I want now. But more importantly, I know how to not.
Well, I'm working on how to not self-abandon any longer. Right? So today I get the pleasure of...
like getting a real conversation with Nat. We've shared like messages back and forth here and there and I've watched and shared a ton of Nat's content and I'm just really, I feel like a sister is sitting across from me to bring Nat into like closer into my world, but also to introduce my world to Nat. So Nat, thank you so much for being here.
Nat (05:04)
I feel the same way.
Thank you for having me.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (05:10)
Oh, I'm so excited. I just want to like if I know you're from San Diego and when you come back, if we get a chance, I just cannot wait to like, give you a big long hug if you want one. Of course, consent is super. What's that?
Nat (05:22)
Yeah, I know. I wish I hadn't been there at the holidays. I wish I hadn't been there at the holidays. That's the worst time to go because I'm stuck with family. Not stuck with family, but you know, I have to do family things. And everybody else is with family.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (05:27)
Oh.
I also was gone part of the holiday. So that also was a hard one for me too. It's yes, exactly. But it'll happen. I'm not concerned about that, but I'm really, I know about ripples, right? We do our own work and then those ripples ripple out to our friends, our community, our communities community. And we just like,
Nat (05:41)
Thank you.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (06:01)
I know that my work has helped my children. It's really even helped my ex-husband, whether he knows it or not. But I get that, I always have that, the book Untamed from Glennon Doyle talks about, liberation is never one direction.
Nat (06:20)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I keep that book came to me after I had already done a lot of that. So it seems to be when I get find resources like that anytime somebody recommends a book, I still go get it. But as I'm reading through it, I'm like this it ends up just being confirmation and validation for what I've done, which is still good. It's just I feel like we're all kind of on the same.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (06:25)
Me too.
Mm-hmm.
Nat (06:43)
path. A lot of us are on the same label when Wayne, lay weight. There you go. That's what I was trying to intuitively. I think we're all kind of headed in the same direction. And yeah, it's nice to have that confirmation.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (06:49)
Wavelength. Words are hard. Yeah, words are hard. I'll say, yeah.
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about my experience with that book. But first, can you give us a little introduction? I mean, other than me just like saying how I know you, how would you how would you introduce yourself?
Nat (07:11)
Yeah, yeah. Well, for those who don't know me and are here for Michelle's content, it overlaps where we talk about sex all the time. It started with my husband moving out. I asked him to leave when my kids, my oldest kid, expressed some concerns about him. They were noticing
were kind of crossing over to the kids a little bit. As far as coercion goes, there was a lot of guilt trips and other things like when the kids didn't want to hug or whatever, we'll get into that. But it was getting toxic and it had been for a long time and I asked him to leave and it was six days after he moved out, I was shy and mousy and sat down on the floor of my bedroom to make a TikTok video thinking nobody would see it because I'd never been on TikTok before and I didn't know anything about their algorithm.
So, maybe a week later, a video blew up to a half a million views overnight and freaked me out and I almost deleted my account. But I didn't because there were so many voices from women saying, me too, essentially. I mean hundreds of comments overnight. Me too. Oh my God. Me too.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (08:30)
putting language to all of our shared experience, I can't imagine. I remember years ago, I put out a blog after I got divorced and I started dating. I went the route of, I knew I never wanted to be traditionally employed. I had spent all of my adult life, we had a family business, I hadn't worked for another person since before I had kids. And there was a part of me felt...
Nat (08:36)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:01)
a worry that I would be forced to work a regular job at some point. I wasn't sure what I was going to do as a stay at home mom when our marriage ended. I was really like, oh, what am I going to do? I started a blog about sex and relationships, about my exploration into non-monogamy and kink and BDSM. I did it partially to make sure I would never be qualified for regular employment. When that launched...
Nat (09:18)
Hmm
Oh.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:30)
I used, my friend built the website and I had boudoir pictures done as part of my own healing journey. And he got those and put them smack dab on that blog and they went out when I launched the blog and I just kind of sat there like, oh God, what's gonna happen? And I remember people from high school going, is that Michelle Purdy? Like that was my maiden name. Like, oh my gosh. And I got over it real quick, but.
Nat (09:37)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:59)
Like I made that choice. You made a choice in making that video, but you didn't know that you would like that blog never blew up to where like your stuff has blown up. Right? Like would you do it different?
Nat (10:10)
Yeah, I would not go back and change anything. No, it was fantastic the way it all evolved and it evolved because it was a very slow process over time. It was one video that wasn't even about sexual coercion. It was about just at first in those first six months or so it was just me, another woman complaining about her husband.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (10:16)
Yeah.
Nat (10:32)
It was just like, oh, and he does this and he does that. And then the comments are filled with men saying, but there's nothing wrong with that. And then the women are like, my husband too, oh my God. But it wasn't abuse really yet. You know, it was somewhere in those first few months, I said something about a guilt trip and I got to do it anyway. And somebody in the comments said, are you okay? Are you safe? And I was just like, well, yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (10:55)
Mm-hmm.
Nat (10:59)
Like, and that clicked for me, like, he's not in this house anymore, so yes, I'm safe. And that got me thinking about all the times that I didn't feel safe. So I started to talk about those. And somewhere in the comments, again, somebody said, that's sexual coercion, honey, that's not okay. And I was like, sexual, sexual coercion, I've heard that before. Right? Like, I was this baby like mousy Christian homeschool mom, right? That does, that's not on my radar.
But I remembered it from my youth. I remembered it being a thing when I was dating in college. I was like, there's something to that. So I started Googling. And in my head, I came up with, you know, one of my talents throughout my life, and I will humble brag about this. I am very talented with words. I can come up with words and put words together, and I call it moving thoughts.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (11:38)
Yeah.
Nat (11:53)
I can make one thought become another thought and another thought and my whole life, my whole thinking has shifted now. This happened that night. I was Googling sexual coercion and I said marital coercion. Is that a thing? So I Googled that. I could not find anything, nothing related to sex. I was like, maybe it's not a thing. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe it doesn't count when you're in a marriage. And then it was like, no.
And I was very like defiant child in this moment. I was just like, no, I have a right to my body. You know, and I was mad and I was just like, I'm making it a thing, damn it.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:33)
Bless your inner child, right? I'm rewatching, I'm rewatching Ted Lasso right now because I just decided I need some more Ted Lasso in my life. And the episode I was watching last night was where Rebecca, have you watched Ted Lasso? Oh, okay, there's, it is, yep. And...
Nat (12:35)
Yes, yes! I was like, screw that!
No, I think it's on Apple TV, isn't it? Yeah, I can't see it.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:58)
Yeah, it's mainly I describe it as a male heavy character show, but where the men move through this like emotional growth process because it's about a men's soccer team in the UK. Okay. Yeah, I really it's funny. It's it's tender. It's like it's got all the young. It's just got a light, just all the yummy components for me. But there is this woman that owns this soccer team.
Nat (13:10)
Okay, I hadn't heard that much about it. That's good.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (13:27)
Her name is Rebecca. And she talks early in the show about when she needs to build up her like girl power kind of thing. She does this thing where she makes this face in the mirror where she like takes on this animal characteristic, right? So in last night's episode I was watching, she's getting ready to go into this big all-men's meeting where she knows that she's gonna be sexualized and all this stuff, but she's got a seat at the table and she's gonna take it, right?
And so she's standing in the full length mirror and she sees her inner child in the mirror reflected back at her. And they do the whole like posing and bringing out this inner animal thing. And I just, and then at the meeting, she just remembers to look at all the boys, all the men as just little boys at the table. And it's just the most precious, fun, also stabby kind of moment of the show. I just, it reminds me of this is like, yes, you're little.
Nat (14:09)
Bye bye.
Thank you.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (14:23)
Your inner child like stepped in and you listened.
Nat (14:28)
I did that with I do that with men in the comments.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (14:32)
Yeah, I'll have to if I can find a clip of just even that scene, I will have to send it over to you because I think you would so enjoy it because I yeah, it's good. So, yeah, so you you're like, I get to say what happens to my body. You had this epiphany.
Nat (14:38)
Make a TikTok out of it. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I started to take a look at all the ways I had been told that was not true. How had I been convinced to give up my autonomy? What happened? And it wasn't just my husband. I thought it was, right? Initially, I was just looking at the surface and I was looking all of his tantrums and all of his anger and all that frustration over the 20 years. But somebody told him that too. And it was other women at church.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (15:02)
Oh no.
Nat (15:18)
Oh, you know, they would call it Nike, the Nike principle. Oh, you just do it.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (15:22)
Oh, yeah, that was a slogan.
Nat (15:24)
Yeah, just Nike, baby. Just do it. Nobody. And then there was this concept among women that was, oh, nobody likes sex. It's just something we do for men. Right. Not one single woman ever talked about her own pleasure. It wasn't a thing. It was, and it was selfish to even talk about your own pleasure to expect anything from him in that area. And I just kind of deconstructed.
all of the messages that had been given to me, even down to, you know, 15, 16 years old with a boy in my living room. And it's getting late and I don't want this to go any further. So I send him home and then I get railed at school the next day for giving him blue balls.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (16:08)
Can I ask what was your household like growing up as far as your mother's messaging around this or your father's messaging around this?
Nat (16:14)
Oh, very liberal, very liberal, anti-Christian, pro-women's rights and all that. But with a lot of the standard patriarchal, oh, you're going to wear that? Oh, you know how boys are. Right. And so it was just this constantly looking over my shoulder, figuratively, for dirty boys.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (16:30)
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and it makes sense. Like at the time, I mean, I think that message has just started to shift that we are. Most of us are still living that message. Some of us are starting to look at it. Right. I just I I. So how did you end up in the church? If you came from that background, what was the process to finding? OK.
Nat (16:48)
Yeah.
I was running away from home essentially. I was, what, 19?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:05)
We go towards the opposite, is that kind of what it was? Like, oh, these are my parents, I'm gonna do the opposite?
Nat (17:08)
I rebelled by becoming a Christian. Yeah, I had a, I really, it was, I think it's what everybody goes through at some point in your life. You're looking for belonging. You're looking for your tribe, your people, you know, somebody who gets you. And I had not been heard my whole childhood. Nobody got me. And I just wrote something the last night. I was writing. I became a writer because
Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:12)
Thanks for watching!
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Nat (17:39)
I became a writer because the only words that were ever heard were the ones that were written.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:43)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Nat (17:45)
Um, I felt like no matter what I said, no matter how I said it, what time of day, it didn't land. People didn't hear it. So as I left, you know, high school and I dropped out of college and I ended up in the world as an adult for the first time, I just didn't want anything to do with whatever my family had and I had Christian friends.
who were being so nice to me and inviting me to things to all the, to things all the time and telling me that I'm loved just as I am, you know, the whole Christian come as you are kind of a thing, not Emily Nagoski's version, which is much better. But they draw you. Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (18:24)
Yes. Yes, I want to put a picture of her real quick. I want to I need to go on and if somebody hasn't done this already, somebody should put a picture of Emily Nagoski like in the whole like, like Mary with like the light shining behind her and stuff. I want to do that and put it in my office so, so much. Yeah.
Nat (18:40)
No!
That would be funny. Yeah. No, but there was this, they draw you in with this message of come as you are, your love just as you are, you don't need to change yourself or be any different. But then once you're in, it felt like maybe six months to a year in, all of a sudden, I'm just bombarded with shame. Oh, but you have to do this. Now you have to do that. Faith without works is dead, that kind of thing. Like, yeah, you can't just have faith. Now you have to change who you are.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (18:55)
Mm-hmm.
See, I grew up in the church, and it wasn't like I had this incredibly, really strict family around it. My mom would go really regularly. My father didn't. I always saw him as the atheist of the household, which later got really flipped on its lid when he got older and returned back to his original church family. Oh boy, that was really fascinating, from childhood kind of thing. So I didn't... I feel like...
I got spared a lot of that. I was in high school. My mom was attending a Bible study. She came home and told me a story about the pastor that was leading it, how they had talked about pro-choice versus pro-life or something, and how he told her that he's actually pro-choice but can't say that. And she relayed this to me. And then I remember being in church and him like...
promoting some pro-life event and I saw the hypocrisy and it just like something happened there for me that really kind of made me start to go, this doesn't feel great. And then I also was a homeschool mom, so we have that in common. But I was the one, I lived in Michigan and everybody assumed I was the Christian homeschooler, right? We had a really big Christian homeschool community. And I was like, no, where's the hippies? Like, I need the hippies. And I eventually found them.
Nat (20:33)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:37)
Right. And in part of my curriculum with my kids was we had like a religious studies section, and I learned so much about other religions through that, that it really changed my entire view of everything I knew grew up growing up. And so I moved away from that more on the agnostic side of life just through that. But I still got the messages.
Nat (21:05)
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (21:05)
You know what I mean? The messages still came through, but they come through because we live in a society that kind of upholds those messages. It's not just the church. Yeah, it's not just the church. Yeah. So that's how you met your husband was in that space.
Nat (21:08)
Yeah.
It's not just believing.
Yeah.
Uh, kind of, yeah. My dad, I was from California, my dad was, had married a woman who wanted to move out here, so they moved here. And I came to visit one day and he was a friend of my dad's, a younger friend of my dad's. So, and I liked him and I was planning a move too because more running away.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (21:39)
Oh.
Nat (21:48)
more running away from my problems. I thought a life in Indiana would be a nice fresh start for me. And so I needed to make that, I didn't want to make that trip alone, moving myself out four or five day drive, you know, and I didn't know really who to trust. And my dad said, you know, this is a good guy and you can trust him. And so he met me out in California and drove back with me.
and that's how we got to know each other. And it was a few months later we got married.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:20)
through you.
Nat (22:21)
20... probably 23 or 24? I don't remember.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:29)
Yeah.
Nat (22:30)
I don't have a great memory as far as those details.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:35)
Some of that time feels like a blur. I mean, for me, it's, I don't know, it's complicated. I wish some of the things I didn't remember.
Nat (22:43)
Yeah, I remember feelings and emotions and you know I can remember how I felt in a moment but I can't remember the date. I don't know what that is.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:48)
Yes.
Any chance you have aphantasia? I just want to throw this out there. Have you heard of aphantasia? Do you see pictures in your head? Oh, OK, I don't. I mean, I can if I work really hard, I can see something blurry. But I learned about it because I was at a kinky board game weekend with friends and there's 10 of us there. And one day my husband comes running into the room I was in and he goes,
Nat (23:01)
Yes.
Oh!
Oh, interesting.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:21)
Oh my god, Michelle, I have to share this thing I just learned because he knows I'm a big geek about how people work and he goes, if I say the words red truck, what do you see? And I said, I see the words red truck and his eyes got huge and he goes, oh my god, you're this thing. I was just going to teach you about. And I was like, what do you mean? Right. And he's like, you don't see that you don't see like a red pickup truck or a fire truck or something. I was like, no.
Nat (23:32)
I hope.
Wow.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:50)
And he's like, that's aphantasia And I was like, holy shit. Like everything in, like not everything, but a lot of my history started to fall into place and make sense of like, you don't know what you don't know, right? And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, this, this helps. The first thing I thought of, this helps me understand why when I ask a client to try masturbating without fantasy and just go with sensations in their body, they look at me like I have three heads.
Nat (24:06)
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:20)
Because then the first question people ask me is like, well, then how do you masturbate if you don't fantasize? And I'm like, by what? By feelings, right? And so for me, my memory, my... Yeah, so, yeah. So what I also notice is that I can remember how I felt in a memory so strongly.
Nat (24:28)
Yeah.
Well, yeah, your other senses would be heightened, wouldn't they? If you didn't have the visual center, you would have the sensations in your body.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:47)
Like it's hard strong, like it's hard to let go of that feeling when it comes up. It's really easy for me to tap into it and remember it. And in the visual part is, is a much harder thing to get to.
Nat (24:51)
Yeah.
That is interesting. I wanted to talk about this, but I don't know enough about it and I don't like talking about things I don't know. But in general, I wonder if there is a difference, if we strictly take away all the coercion and everything, if we're just talking about women and having these non-consensual experiences, where their body is experiencing a sexual experience, maybe it's 10 minutes, maybe it's an hour, whatever's happening in that moment.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:07)
It's a good idea.
Nat (25:28)
You're experiencing that, your body is going through that. Based on whether or not you feel the feeling stronger than someone else, is that actually causing more damage to this woman? I've been trying to figure out why some women are not bothered by this at all. I wonder what's different about these women who in their marriages, they are doing the same thing. They're having sex with their husbands when they don't want to. They're forcing themselves to do it, and they seem to have no problem at all.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:52)
Okay.
Did you, were you able to listen to the podcast I sent you about the, the problems with duty sex? Okay, great. It's okay. Let me just, let me catch you up because I'm going to put it in the show notes. So the people at home, um, there, there's a Cami Hurst who is a therapist. I think here in California, I'm not positive if she's in California, but she did a study of, of a select number of women and she's going to, I think, redo the study with a much
Nat (26:02)
Oh shoot, no, I missed it.
Okay.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:28)
white women, so probably Christian background, that kind of stuff, right? And they have a hard time, people don't understand what coercion means, right? So if you ask someone, did you have, was there coercion involved? They would say no, because they don't have an understanding of all the places it comes in from, right? So what they found was that generally, of course, there's always
Nat (26:31)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:56)
even if they didn't realize that it was coercion, it would have, pardon me if I've totally fucked this up, they were still having, it was having an effect on their ability to have sexual desire.
Nat (27:07)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:09)
So if you didn't...
Nat (27:13)
That's understandable.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:13)
I think the fine line is, okay, so I can back this up a few different levels here. I think if you're doing the duty sex.
because you're willing to do the duty sex from not a place of I really want to be in this, but from a place of I'll put up with it. That's I think the coercion side. If you're coming into it because like, okay, let me say now the difference of what I know about myself is that I say yes to connecting with my partner, knowing that we may get to sex. But knowing myself, I...
Nat (27:33)
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:54)
I do not experience sexual attraction is what I've realized in the more recent months is that I'm on this asexual spectrum for sure because I can tell you I don't I think there was one time I did experience sexual attraction and it scared the shit out of me because I was not used to feeling it and I like ran out of the room kind of thing. Like looking back I'm like maybe that was sexual attraction maybe that's why it felt so weird to me. I can get to sexual desire right through I know what my I know what the recipe is for me.
Nat (28:10)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (28:24)
I need some connection time, meaning closeness, probably cuddling, some deeper conversation to feel an emotional connection. And then I know what I can do to my partner that he'll have a certain reaction that makes a certain, like he makes a certain noise, it turns me on. Like we talk about in responsive desire, arousal shows up. With arousal, I get to sexual desire.
Nat (28:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (28:55)
doing that from a place of I know this is how I work and I want to get to sexual desire from a place of my own want that is very different than what I know from back then, which is yeah, sometimes I would be able to get to sexual, well, I would at least be able to get to arousal. But it wasn't because I wanted to.
Nat (29:02)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (29:20)
was my body responding. So the arousal non-concordance kind of shows up in that space of like, yeah, I was able to have an orgasm, but I didn't want to be there.
Nat (29:23)
Yeah.
I didn't want the orgasm. I remember that feeling. Because now this justifies this moment that I didn't want to be here. And now I'm gaslighting myself. Because did I not want it? Maybe I did want it. I'm so confused. Oh. Thank you.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (29:44)
Yeah, and that's the thing. I think nobody sat me down and said, you should want to want to have sex before you start to try to have sex, right? My mom would give into sex with my father. It was known in my household that this was a thing that she would have tried to avoid at all costs.
Nat (29:56)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (30:10)
but it still happened. So we had that modeling. That's why I asked about what your parents were like, because I didn't know any different, right? And I was just being told that there was something wrong with me because I didn't have the sexual desire.
Nat (30:23)
Yeah, I don't remember my parent any discussion of sex with my parents and I don't remember I don't remember even thinking of them having a sex life at all Yes, but not my mom and stepdad, no
Michelle Renee (she/her) (30:32)
Well, that's I've asked my sisters.
I've asked my sisters, like, how do we know this thing? Because it's an interesting thing to say, I know this thing about my mother, right? And people are like, how, like, and I'm like, it was a running joke in our house that mom would put on extra clothes before she went to bed to put more distance between, like there was less access. There was a running joke that she wouldn't shave her legs so that dad wouldn't want to touch her.
Nat (30:42)
Yeah. What were the signs? I'm curious.
Yeah.
I just in the shower today, just before this morning, I was coming up with a list because I'm about to make a video about this, but I was making a list in my mind of all the things that I did to protect myself. Keep going, you've got two of them around, lady.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:12)
Now, those are the two that stick out for me. What I know that I did in my world, and I didn't do this consciously, this is one of those things I look back at, I gained a lot of weight in my relationship. And I know there was a part of me that thought it would make me unattractive and he would leave me the fuck alone. The only time, this is a man, boy, if he ever listens to this, this is a man that could be puking and still think that he needed to have sexual contact with me because he had needs.
Nat (31:20)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:41)
Every day there had to be some kind of release. So we had a rotation and people are mortified when I say this, but literally penetrative sex, oral sex, hand sex, every day, rinse repeat, what day are we on? Oh, we just did this yesterday, we're doing this today. Do you want to come today? And I would say it's too much work.
I literally, I came yesterday, it's too much work, I can't do that again. Like.
That was in my world. I thought everybody's life was like this.
Nat (32:15)
You know, for me, it wasn't even that. I hear stories like that and I'm confused sometimes because it sounds like sex became this cheap service that you provide to him. And for me, yeah, but see, and for me, I think I was so thrown, part of what took me so long to see it was that he was always trying to be so romantic about it. And this twisted my mind all up.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (32:27)
It was like making breakfast.
Mm.
Nat (32:39)
because I knew if I didn't do it, I'd be in trouble. He'd be angry and stomping around the house for another couple of weeks until I finally gave it and did it. But then in that moment, he was just so loving and doting and tender and gentle. And then afterwards, you know, for 24 hours or so, it was like, he was just all over me. Mr. King of Romance just said, oh, you're still the best, you're amazing. Wasn't that beautiful last night? I loved it, I had such a great time. And then over the next few days.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (33:06)
And you're supposed to be like, me? I imagine he's waiting for you to be like, oh yeah, it was fantastic.
Nat (33:09)
Yes!
Right? But then I also at the same time I'm like, well that's the husband I should have. Where have you been? Like I want to keep that husband. I want him. Why can't I have him? And so then days start going on and the kettle starts to heat up and he's again another week or so and he's about to blow. And so I know in order to get that guy back.
I have to do it because there's no way he's going to love me and treat me with care unless I do it. And if it had ever been like it was for you, he would have been disgusted and wouldn't want to do it if I saw it that way.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (33:45)
Yeah, it comes in so many different ways.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I look back now and I said this to my ex. I've said, I think that you really were craving connection and you didn't know how to get it any other way, but you didn't actually get it. Right. It just. Yeah.
Nat (34:04)
Mm-hmm. Right, right. I say that to them all the time. You know, I know you're craving a connection to your wife. You just think that it comes through sex and you are afraid of going and looking at other ways to get that connection. Because that's going to open up some wounds for you. I know it is.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (34:19)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. We got to have our buckets filled in other ways before. At least for me, I can't speak to everyone else. I'm sure there's some people out there that are like, no, sex fills my bucket. Cool. Go do you. And you're probably not dealing with an issue in your relationship if you're both on the same page. The problem is when you feel like that's the only way that this person is trying to connect with you and that.
Nat (34:48)
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (34:50)
When we look at, and I'm going to generalize, I know it's never just one, this is not just affecting one gender in certain directions, right? But we look at people socialized male at birth, they lose access to touch so much sooner than our daughters do, right? And so touch becomes, or sex becomes the access to touch. Sex and sports, basically.
Nat (35:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (35:18)
you know, you can think of it that way. Right. So I remember there is a video, there was like a documentary put together, gosh, it must have been in the early 80s. And they show like, they show this progression and the guy comes up behind the wife who's doing dishes, right. And he grabs her and she's like, could you not? Right. And it's that every time you touch me, you're trying to consume something from me. Right. You're taking touch from me.
but I'm not consenting to it. Because you're not, if you only feel like a dispenser of this regulating hormone, right? If this is, this was the thing that came up, and I think I shared this with you at a comment one time, I had a sex therapist friend over, and it was discussing this, like, what do you do in your work when you see coercion show up? And she's like, I send them over to out of control sexual behavior therapy, because they're using sex.
Nat (35:50)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (36:17)
to regulate their nervous system. And that was like, oh, holy shit, I think you're totally right. Like this all makes sense suddenly to me, right? And I can have a lot of compassion for the people who don't know any better, but once they're, I think what I've enjoyed watching with your thing is that sometimes the partner that is using sex to regulate.
hears your message and goes, oh, maybe I maybe I'm doing this. Maybe I am involved. I wish it was more often that I see it. I don't know how you feel about it from your side. Like what you're paying attention to it way more than I am.
Nat (36:58)
Um, that actually affected my relationship last year. Uh, after we broke up, he talked about a, what he called a disconnect when it came to sex. Cause I commented that he was a different person once things started to turn sexual, uh, more confident, uh, more self-aware, like more just in more himself, really.
And when we were not sexual, it was a little bit more, he was in his head. He was a little bit more insecure and awkward. And after lots of conversations with him, I think he saw my he was watching my content the whole time we dated, too. And I think I think he saw himself in that. And I think. I could feel it at times that he was.
feeling like there were emotions he couldn't access. He had not done that work, but he was feeling it and he would sort of get into this panic mode, but then it would start to turn sexual and he would calm down and he would become more relaxed and like he knew what he was doing. He knew what he wanted and he would go for it and that part of him is what I loved so much. I loved that he was
I think he was using sex and I don't think he realized it. I think he started to realize it and it spooked him.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (38:23)
Mm-hmm.
Which is, you know, that's a starting point, right?
Nat (38:35)
Yeah. Anyway, it's interesting to see that in men in the comments and then in real life to see that play out. It was shocking to me.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (38:37)
Yeah.
Yeah, I've had a few people I've worked with where I get to use my own experience to kind of remind them, like specific was like a cup. I don't work with couples very often, right? But there has been times where I've had somebody who I've been working with one person, specifically the male partner in the couple, where they start to hit that desire discrepancy conversation. And boy, it's real easy to focus on yourself in that conversation and not look at what your partner is going through.
And I was like, hey, I'm going to share with you my experience in desire discrepancy.
This is how it felt to be on the side of being told that there's something wrong with you. You can nip this in the bud now and make space for your partner's experience, or you can destroy your relationship. It's toxic. It's real toxic. And thankfully this person believed my experience, they got help and were able to correct course.
Nat (39:56)
All of society is on the side of the person who has the desire and wants it. And there's something wrong with the other person who doesn't.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (40:01)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. And some of it is just lack of real sex education. Right? When I got to see, I was at a therapy conference a couple years back and I was in a presentation with Emily Nagoski. The minute she opened her mouth, I just started crying. Because I was just like, this is the woman that made me feel like I wasn't broken. Even though I'd done so much work path. This is like...
Nat (40:20)
Hmm
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (40:32)
I didn't read Come As You Are until we were in COVID. And I had referenced that book so many times in my world, just based off of the Ted Talk and all this stuff. I finally read it. And it was like, I was already well past. I had done my work around learning to masturbate and I had gotten into all the work that I'm doing now. And it was still then when I went, oh, there's actually nothing wrong with me.
Nat (40:34)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (41:00)
And so that was, I just, again, I'm gonna put her on my wall somewhere and have a little shrine or a little like altar to her or something, I'm not sure, but I want to go back to Untamed, Unleashed, this person that came out.
Nat (41:19)
That's the next book, right?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (41:21)
I remember, I remember, yeah, right. Oh my God. So many things popped in my head. I remember hearing an interview with Glennon Doyle on Brene Brown's podcast about that book. And I remember crying a lot because it felt like it was very much giving me permission for a lot of the choices I had decided to make after the marriage ended. Now, mind you, I don't get to claim that I-
Nat (41:35)
Mm.
Hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (41:49)
I ended the marriage, he ended the marriage. I don't get to be like the hero of this story, but I have taken over from there and I feel pretty good about what's happened since then. But I heard about the book and I thought, oh my gosh, all the people I wanna share this with, I'm so afraid that this book would destroy their relationship and I don't wanna be responsible for that was the first thought that came to mind, right? My sister was one of the people I was worried about sharing it with.
She shared the book on her Facebook and was like, look at this book I'm reading. A friend sent it to me and I was like, oh, I've thought about reading it, but I don't want to waste the sixteen dollars because I'm already untamed. Is how I was kind of viewing it. Like, is it a waste of my time and money? My heart earned sixteen dollars, right? Like and she goes, oh, I think you'd love it. You would definitely love Chapter three called blowjobs.
And I was like, sign me up, right? So I get the book and I get to chapter three and I fricking fell apart because that was the chapter. So for people that haven't read the book, that is a chapter where Glennon talks about going to the therapist saying, I cannot have sex with my husband any longer. I'm really in love with Abby, but that's even irrelevant to this.
I really can't have sex with my husband anymore. Therapist says, what about blowjobs? They're less intimate. And it was like, oh, my ex-husband isn't a monster like on his own. He's been fed the same fricking bullshit line from every direction, the same direction I was fed it. Right? I take...
responsibility for the... I was putting some of that coercion was on myself and some of that coercion was from him and some of that coercion was from everywhere that is coming together to say this is a story that we... Women don't like sex or this is your job as the partner.
Nat (44:10)
or that the entire act is just facilitating a release for him.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:15)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. What does sex mean?
Nat (44:17)
That's the goal. It doesn't count if it doesn't happen. And whatever you need to do, it doesn't really matter, the methods, as long as he gets it.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:23)
Yeah, yeah, suck it up.
Nat (44:26)
It doesn't matter if you want to or not.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:28)
Yep, it's just part of being in a healthy relationship, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I cried real hard. Cried real hard. I had a conversation with my ex-husband about it. This is where I thought we were moving towards being much more on a reparative process. But in the end, I look back a couple of years later and go, oh, I think I put words in his mouth. I wanted him to understand it. And we had kind of.
Nat (44:32)
Mm-hmm. It's a give-and-take. Yeah.
Mm.
Hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:58)
a big blow up about it after I went on, Not Tonight, the podcast. They shared a clip on Instagram. Of course, it was out of context, right? And I get pages of text from him because he saw it on Instagram. And. And it just made me realize we're not there. Like, he still doesn't get it.
Nat (45:03)
Mm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (45:26)
He didn't listen to the whole episode.
Nat (45:26)
It's a hard thing to get. It requires a complete deprogramming of who you are and how you were raised. And.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (45:36)
But he's been in therapy for a couple years and I was hopeful and you know what I mean? Like I think I just I want it so badly for him to understand that I yeah.
Nat (45:46)
I get that question a lot from women. Does your husband ever understand? Did you ever talk to him? And I don't care. I don't care. And I tell women, I don't think you need to care. You need to care about you right now. And I'm not saying that to you right now because you've, you're wrong. I'm saying these women, when they're still in their marriage and they're like, but my husband, what about him?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:01)
Oh... Oh no! I wanna say...
He has to get there on his own. He has to get there. He has to want to understand it. For me, what I realized was that there was a lot of emotional abuse in that relationship. It wasn't just in this space, right? And so what I, in retrospect, I had to really...
Nat (46:13)
Yes.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:33)
eat the fact that I was still protecting my abuser. I wanted him to have come so far because I really wanted, and this is a man I've known since I was 17. Like he was such a big part of my life for 20 years. I wanted something that wasn't really there. And that was a lot to process. But he showed himself. Oh.
Nat (46:46)
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a lot to grieve because at some point you do have to grieve that I had to grieve the man I thought I had, the relationship I thought I had or that I was promised. And the person that I could have been potentially if things had gone differently. All things that I've had to let go and grieve.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (47:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm hmm. Yeah. And it took me a long time even post marriage. So I'm out almost 10 years. And I'm like, there's like, I think of like stair steps of like, what is my recovery kind of been? And of course, Betty Dodson and learning about my own pleasure and that I can live on a deserted island and still get myself off. Like, that's a liberating thing, right? I don't need a man for anything, right? Like, I got this one covered.
Nat (47:31)
Oh wow.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (47:54)
But realizing how much I use sex to prove my worth, post divorce, it took a while. I was in therapy for quite some time to work on my cognitive distortions, right? All this negative self-talk that I had about myself through therapy, through maybe some drugs.
Nat (48:02)
Mm-hmm.
Oh, okay.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:24)
I was able to have this like, oh yeah, I don't have to actually do anything to prove my worthiness to be in a relationship. I'm enough on my own. I don't have to be the perfect girlfriend, the perfect wife. These are things that have only come up in the last couple of years. But as that shifts, then it's like, okay, if that's not a reason to have sex.
Nat (48:32)
Mm-mm.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:53)
What are my reasons to have sex? Oh, because I really do enjoy it when I get to the point of sexual desire. I like having that connection in my life with my partner, but my partner also treats me like he would still love me even if it wasn't there. I always have the option to say no. And it sounds silly to say the option to say no, but if you can't safely say no in your relationship, your yes is pointless.
Nat (49:10)
there.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (49:25)
So you think you're consenting, but you're not.
Nat (49:28)
No, no, and I look at sex like chocolate cheesecake. It's yummy, I like it, and I will have it when I want it, when I feel like it, and nobody will shame me for how much of it I have, or how little I have, or whether or not somebody else wants to eat it with me. Maybe I like to eat it alone, 10 times a day.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (49:45)
Or how little?
Nat (49:57)
Maybe I'll go for a week without eating any. Maybe I have a partner sometimes. It's just, it's a fun dessert, but it's not a need. It's not gonna be life-threatening if I don't have it. And no, and if somebody has hurt feelings because I don't wanna eat it with them, maybe they need to show up differently next time.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (50:04)
Yeah.
No, it is not the equivalent of a chore. It is not.
Well, maybe they also need to do what I did was consider, is this how you're finding yourself worth? Right? Like, do you? Yeah. What what does your relationship look like outside of sex? I used to think if you weren't having sex in your relationship, it was a sign of something wrong in your relationship. But now I'm like, oh, no, if everybody's on the same page. Cool. And if you're not, talk about it.
Nat (50:28)
Yeah.
Ultimately, yeah, I think that is a lot of people.
There is a certain... I do see though that there's a certain amount of validation in sex though. I mean, because I've experienced it. When he's happy, I'm happy. I'm feeling good. That's a high for me. But am I now craving that high because I need that validation? Do I need to have sex with him so that I feel good about myself by making him happy? You know, that's a question I have to ask myself. If he says no...
Michelle Renee (she/her) (50:56)
Sure.
I'm gonna...
rights.
Nat (51:18)
Is it really because I just want to eat some chocolate cheesecake? Or am I clinging onto this as something I need for me because I'm not healthy in this moment?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (51:28)
Oh, I'm going to high five myself, pat myself on the back for all the great things I am capable of doing. Right? Like, I like a good, wow, that was amazing. Right? I want, I like to be fed in compliments and whatever too, but it's, it's in addition to how I feel about myself.
Nat (51:31)
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah, yeah. I already need to come into that sexual experience having validated my own needs first and I know that, you know, I'm worthy and I don't need this. You've done that work specifically, though it sounds like.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (51:48)
It's.
Oh, well, it's what I do in my work with my clients that I get to practice. It's like, it's like when I was homeschooling, I was not a very rigid homeschooler of like, here is our curriculum and these are all the things you're going to do. I was like, let's mix like Little House on the Prairie. Let's make sure we do some reading, writing, arithmetic, right? And then like, go out and find that thing you're really passionate about and come teach it to me, right?
Nat (52:03)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (52:28)
So my kid was really into World War II one year, right? And so I was still homeschooling while I was living in California. He was in Michigan and we'd get on Zoom every day. And it would be like, what are you gonna teach me this week about World War II? Let's pick a topic, you go research it and come back to me with it, right? So I'm in the same space with my clients a lot of times where I'm seeing, like, I see there's a spot where I'm hesitant to tell my client no.
Nat (52:57)
Hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (52:58)
I get to evaluate that, really put it under a microscope. There's still something you need to work on here, Michelle. I had to disappoint a client recently. I've changed my boundaries in my work because of figuring out where I am in the asexual spectrum. Things are just starting to make more sense. Like again, these puzzle pieces keep clicking together of like, who am I and what do I want right now? And it's like, I want to enjoy sex with my husband.
And let's just say I only have so many spoons for that. I'm not giving them up to my clients anymore. If you wanna do that, I will do all the work up to that point with you. And I think that's the meat and potatoes of what I do. If you need that part of it, I got to either send you out or we just don't work together if that's really important to you in our work together. So I had to check myself and realize, oh, I still have a lot of fear of disappointing.
Nat (53:30)
Yeah.
Mm. Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (53:58)
this client.
I still have that fear in the rest of my life. It's not a thing that I can say I'm 100% over, right? It's just a practice. And again, like not self abandoning has been like my theme of where I'm at right now in my life is I'm doing everything in my power to not abandon myself on a regular basis.
Nat (54:20)
Yeah. Well, I mean, I've had to learn these last couple of years that it's impossible to practice something if you're not challenged with it. So you can't be good at something unless you're presented with those challenges. I can't be good at a relationship unless I'm in a relationship practicing.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (54:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it changes the stakes, right? There's so much of relationship that has to be healed in relationship. And even in my work as a surrogate partner, while we're building relationship, it's not the same as an organic relationship. I don't come in with my wounds nearly as much as if I was in that conversation with my partner, but they're there enough that I get to practice them, the client gets to practice them enough, right? That hopefully they get enough
Nat (54:54)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (55:06)
confidence builds up that they can go out and start doing that with other people. Yeah, I say, what's I call it the lab space, right? This is just a laboratory to practice in a more contained fashion so that you can have a place to screw it up and not...
Nat (55:09)
Sort of like a fire drill.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, like with the fire drill, when the real thing happens, it's not going to happen exactly the same way, but you've got some practice and some instincts that will kick in because you've done the thing already to some degree.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (55:36)
Yeah, so like difficult conversations with clients, they're not my favorite thing to do, but they're such an important part of the work for them to experience going through a difficult conversation. And like my parents didn't do difficult conversations well. They were very verbally abusive. And I don't know if I would say they, my father was very verbally abusive. My mother was the...
Nat (55:43)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (56:04)
kind of the whipping post to that. I didn't get to see people have anger that wasn't toxic. And like, I got into work with Cuddlist as their operations, well, I was a cuddler, but I was brought in for operations. And I got to work side by side with the co-founders, right? And I called them mom and dad because I got to watch them have disagreements and not personally attack each other. So if I can model what that...
Nat (56:31)
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (56:34)
can look like in a session with a client when we do have a disagreement around something because I have to disappoint them or they're disappointing me or whatever it is, right? It's like that's, it's a smidgen. It's the first step, but hopefully they can pull that forward. Like you say, like when the fire drill, when the real fire happens, they can be like, I don't have to, I don't have to attack this person just because we're disagreeing.
Nat (56:45)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And it's for me, it's just been a matter of being aware of what I'm feeling and where I'm feeling it in my body and taking just a minute before I react to something to feel it. Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:11)
Yeah, yeah, I love that you're doing it. I mean, it's not something everybody can do so publicly. And I always say like, I really public because I can. And you're.
Nat (57:17)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I believe it. I wouldn't have thought I could, you know, if somebody had said three years ago, you're going to be on TikTok and you're going to be talking about this. I'm like, no, not me.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:26)
Yeah.
I give a huge shout out. I don't know who your therapist is, but like, I just, you've been such a good role model for people that have been on, like when you said, like this is the thing and all these women come forward and be like, me too, right? The fact that you've continued to do this in a pretty public forum isn't easy. And I don't even know how you've dealt with like the...
Nat (57:42)
Oh, thanks.
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (58:02)
the less than fun people.
Nat (58:05)
Well, I get used to it after a while. You know, I just like, you know, if you're walking down the street, it's a busy street and somebody bumps into you, you go, oh, whoops, what was that? And then there's more and more people and eventually you just start putting up an arm. Nope. You push them out of the way and it doesn't phase you anymore and you just keep on walking.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (58:18)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember when my first, I had a, the local news did a thing about professional cuddling when I was living in West Michigan. And I remember it hit the news. And I said to my now husband, then boyfriend, could you read the comments? I can't do it, right? I cannot do it. Just give me a general gist of what the comments are. If there's something you think I really need to address, like send me directly to it, but I can't read all of it. And that was a lot. Oh gosh. It was probably 2017 maybe. And now I'm like, oh,
Nat (58:42)
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (58:59)
I'll go through the comments with just like laughter. It doesn't, it just kind of, it's such a, I'm glad I'm on that side of it. I'll just say that. Like it was a good practice of like, who do I care? Like Brene Brown says, like you should have a little tiny post-it note of the names of people that really matter what they think to you. And in the rest of them just can slide by.
Nat (59:02)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Oh, and I'll say it's not just people that matter to me. It's how to recognize when it's genuinely somebody witnessing something in me that they need to point out for my benefit versus what most of the time is happening is some kind of production. When I, when I read comments, even if they're from mutuals or even just a few days ago, I had, I don't know if you caught it, I had a mutual of almost two, more than two years made a public video attacking me.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (59:38)
Mmm.
Oh yeah.
Nat (59:54)
in the middle of the night. Oh, it was bad. And so all of a sudden, you know, I'm activated. I was like, wait, where is this coming from? I know this woman. Why is she yelling at me on TikTok like this? But when I see everybody now through this lens of something's going on with them, this is not me. Whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me. So let me start from that place and look at this situation objectively from their eyes. What's going on?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (59:55)
Oh no.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Nat (1:00:23)
them that's making them lash out at me like this, whether it's a comment or a video or a DM or whatever. That's my approach now. So even when it's with the people I care about, I'm still looking at what's going on in them, unless I can get the sense that hang on, they're definitely coming to me with something that I'm doing that's harming them. And we need to have a conversation about that. My kid confronted me last week about something in the moment and was like, Mom, you're doing this again. And I was like, Oh,
God, you're right. I'm really sorry. And I pulled back. But like, that's different than an internet attack. I know that guy online who's mad at me has nothing to do with me.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:01:04)
Yeah, I think of all the list of things you wish they would have taught you in high school, I feel like that thing about the times that people will project is almost 100%. And it just makes everything feel different once you have that, it's almost like a secret code. Once you embody that, it's like so much easier to deal with.
Nat (1:01:09)
Mm-hmm.
Oh yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It also keeps me aware when I do it. Right. Because I check myself and I'm like, okay, that was me. That was, I was not telling them that for their sake. That was me. So like, it puts me back into a space of right now, as I'm typing this comment, am I genuinely interacting with them and what they're saying, or is this something that I'm coming up with out of my own experiences?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:01:31)
Oh yeah!
Mm-hmm. It's that it's the hitting emotional maturity. I think it's where it really it does. But that's like, how generationally healing is that? Like, I know how many times I wished I could have gotten an apology from my parents, from my ex-husband, you know. And I do that very freely with my kids because like I want to take ownership for when I've screwed up.
Nat (1:01:55)
Yeah, it takes a while.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And recognizing that when it's painful, that pain is coming from pride. That's all it is. That's my ego kicking in right then and there because my feelings are hurt, because I've been caught at something. I've been caught at doing life badly for a minute. I know, right? I screwed up. So the reaction should be, the reaction is not digging my heels and double down. The reaction is...
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:02:20)
Like it's just.
Mm-hmm. We just weren't perfect for a hot second. We're all human. Yeah.
So.
Nat (1:02:46)
What did I do? Shoot. I did do that. Right. And it's kind of like, oh man.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:02:51)
Yeah.
And then having self-compassion. That we're not perfect.
Nat (1:02:55)
Yeah, yeah, that's, and that's hard. That's something that has to be learned. Cause I know my kids struggles with that. I have a kid that struggles with that constantly beating themselves up when they're caught at something.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:03:08)
Yeah, well, I mean, some of that is where they're like where they are in their development too. Like sometimes they just they're not there yet. Like it's just something that we get as our brains grow.
Nat (1:03:13)
Yeah.
Yeah, well, and I think part of it too is coming from a Christian home where I held myself to such a high standard That that rubs off on the kids too. I was like that
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:03:26)
Sure. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you the We're Not Really Strangers card. I've put it off. I have it. I usually start with it, but I was like, no, this one's going to be great for wrapping because I think it'll become it'll start to say, where are you now, Nat? What are you doing now, Nat? So with insider information. Do you believe everyone has a calling in our is this yours?
Nat (1:03:33)
Okay. I'm ready.
OK.
Yes, yes, I believe everybody has a calling. I don't know that everybody figures out what their calling is. I think it takes a lot of introspection and time with yourself and time with whatever spiritual connection you have to get outside yourself, but not inside other people. Like we talk about projection, don't let, not letting other people project onto you, I think is how you find your calling is being.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:04:17)
Mmm.
Nat (1:04:18)
centered and grounded within yourself to know yourself well enough to know what your talents are and where to let those things develop and for me, it's it seems to be Speaking and writing and making people see the world differently than they did before Taking this information coming into this to help people break it down a little bit better
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:04:41)
Yeah, through your own experience.
Yeah, I think of like, I would not be here right now without a certain series of events happening. And there is nothing about my life right now that I would change. Like what, that is like the ultimate of freedom and autonomy and choice. Like, gosh, having choice. I've heard my mentors say like, it's not
Nat (1:04:56)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:05:15)
The choice you make isn't as important as having a choice, making a choice.
Nat (1:05:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I tell that to women all the time. It doesn't matter whether you have sex or not, just that you're allowed to not do it when you don't want to. It's that you have the choice.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:05:30)
That's what love is. We talk about like what is love, right? Is it love to force something onto someone that they don't want?
Nat (1:05:35)
Yeah.
It's not love to want them to do something that they don't want to do.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:05:43)
Right. Yeah, I've been in that relationship. I know we're veering a little bit. I want to talk about what you're doing next. But I want to say I did get the opportunity to be on the other side of this. I had a relationship with a man, my first really long term relationship after my marriage. It's not my current one. And we figured out pretty quickly into the relationship that. Well, eventually we could call it fraysexuality which is like the opposite of demisexual, which is like.
Nat (1:05:51)
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:06:13)
I need a real strong connection to find sexual attraction. In his case, the connection actually moved him beyond sexual attraction. So it was like, he didn't want to have sex with me once we got a stronger connection. And I was 40 years old, dating a 24 year old. It was all for the sex, right? That's where I was looking, right? And so it was very confusing to me that I was like, it was also like, he was very dominant.
Nat (1:06:14)
Thank you.
Oh.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:06:41)
and I was very submissive with him. So it felt like a power dynamic play at times where I was trying to be the good enough girl that he would let me have sex kind of thing. It was very, it was so not where I'm at now. But it became really clear at one point I said to him, this all like shut down within probably six weeks of us starting to date where I was noticing it felt like I was having to work for sex. And so I said to him one day, it feels like you're
Nat (1:06:43)
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Mm.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:07:11)
having sex with me because I want to have sex, not because you want to have sex. Is that true? And he said yes. And I said, we have to take sex off the table then because I won't put somebody that I love through that because I've been on the other side and it doesn't feel good for me now or when I was on the other side of it. So it's, that's what I think of like when I think of what it means to love someone is to put, put that what is
Nat (1:07:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:07:41)
Like what is good for them?
Nat (1:07:44)
Yeah, I said in a video yesterday, it's balanced though, because what I see on the other side is the women who are giving into sex for the same reason, right? Because I have to consider his feelings. I truly love him, right? Yes, so without self abandoning. And so on the flip side of that, if you're a person who really does genuinely crave that connection physically,
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:07:54)
That's not okay. No, no, no.
but you can't abandon yourself in that process.
Nat (1:08:11)
and you feel like there isn't a real strong connection outside of that, that's okay to conversation to have as long as it's not coming from a place of trying to get them to move toward more sex. It's just a genuine curiosity and understanding of their situation and should we end this relationship?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:08:30)
Yeah, or change our agreements or is there something that would feel good for connection so that we can have our connection? Because I think that a lot of times if you could rebuild that connection in other places, the sex connection might come back, but it has to be at its own fruition. It cannot be out of pressure. It has to be because I feel really connected to you and I'm a yes to adding that connection back in.
Nat (1:08:31)
Yeah.
Yeah, but that communication is, I'm glad you had that communication. That's important.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:09:00)
on its own. I don't think it probably works.
Oh, I have it. Yeah. It's one of those things that I refuse to have moving forward outside of that. Like it was just one of, I don't know. I want to say it was like a firm requirement. I had to be able to talk to my partner and I really wanted them to be able to talk openly with me. Like it was really, really important to me outside of that because I never felt like I could have that conversation the first time around. Anyway.
Nat (1:09:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. I think no matter what dynamic you have in your relationship, that if you don't have that open communication and you don't feel safe to talk to each other, it doesn't matter how great everything else is, it's going to get screwed up.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:09:40)
No, I just had a client yesterday. I don't remember how it came up. He said something like, it's so hard to have these difficult conversations in relationship. How do people make a change of what they want when they've been in this relationship for so long? And I said, you start with those conversations from day one so that they're normalized. It's really hard to go backward. You don't say...
Nat (1:10:04)
It is hard to go backward.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:10:09)
15 years into a relationship, oh, hey, I need to talk to you about something that like is big, right? That's not, you do it all the time starting in much smaller right from the beginning. Let's have relationship check-ins. Let's, you know, normalize this.
Nat (1:10:24)
Yeah. Well, I think women need to know, women need to be taught that it's okay to leave a relationship if a man is not having those conversations in the beginning. I think I, it's so many women, we get called a nag and we just accept that. And we say, oh, I guess I'm nagging. I should just lay off him. He's a man. He can't understand this conversation. Right?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:10:30)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Well, this is you've got to be ready to leave a relationship if you're not getting your needs met. And that means both of you people are able to leave the relationship if it's not working for you. It's not about you're a bad person or you're a bad person. It's like, are we compatible? And we might not stay compatible. Thank you, church, for making us think that the only successful relationships are the ones that end in death. Like that's.
Nat (1:10:50)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I see the compatible word come up a lot because people will... I'll say this is so crazy. It comes up on a video that I made about a man taking what he wants in the middle of the night, essentially, right? And I have not consented to this. This just happened to me. But I got a woman in the comments not too long ago who said, well, if you're not compatible, why are you together?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:11:25)
Mm-hmm.
Nat (1:11:38)
I'm like, what does compatible look like in this scenario to you?
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:11:42)
Well, okay, I don't know this person's story, but I do come from the kink and BDSM world and there is some stuff around that kind of play, but it's consensual, right? That's the missing part.
Nat (1:11:53)
Right, that's the point. I don't have a problem with that, but in this video it was very clear that this was not consensual, but it was like that's what gets me as well. They're constantly just like, maybe you're just not compatible.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:11:59)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah! Well... ..
Well, who is compatible with that? Like even in non-consent world, it's still consensual non-consent. So yeah, I guess the guy still needs to be called out that, or whoever, I shouldn't gender this, the person needs to be called out that this is not OK. Because it's well beyond compatibility.
Nat (1:12:14)
Well, yeah, who is compatible with somebody who's roping you?
Mm-hmm.
I'm going to go to bed.
Yeah.
It is okay if you had that conversation and said, this is okay. Like the guy was with last year, we were both half asleep. It started to happen and I woke up and was like, whoa, what are you doing? And, but we had a conversation in the moment where I was like, Oh, okay. I'm okay.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:12:41)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I had a period with my partner where he was coming in and doing like the, he comes to bed way later than me. And there was a couple of times that he kind of just slowly kind of moved into that. And I was like, that was fucking hot. But then it started to happen regularly. And I went, wait a minute. I feel like this is turning into the shortcut method because normally I take a lot of like, uh,
Nat (1:13:03)
Yeah.
Uh huh.
Yes! Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:13:23)
getting into the mood kind of stuff. It takes me a little bit of a slower ramp up.
Nat (1:13:25)
And what was hot one time isn't going to be every time. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:13:30)
Well, it loses its hotness when it's every time, like for sure. And so I just had to say, hey, it feels to me like you're kind of trying to take the shortest route and that's not feeling good to me anymore. So I got to, I got to say this can't be a, when it's a regular thing, it's not hot anymore. Just like, if you find something that works on my body one time, doesn't mean that's the go-to every time. Cause it's not going to be, and I don't have that problem with my current partner.
Nat (1:13:40)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Bye.
There are no cheat codes. There are no buttons you can push.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:14:00)
No, it's about, oh God, it's like we have to get in the moment. Be present. What feels good to you right now?
Nat (1:14:05)
Yeah.
When that's the key though is that I don't care if he wants to try every night, as long as he backs off the minute it's obvious I don't want it. And he's not upset about it at all. If he will just cuddle me instead, we're good. I think what was in that video that I was talking about was he's mad that it didn't go any further and then gaslighting you the next day acting like it never happened.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:14:17)
Yes.
Right.
Yes. Yeah. Thank you for
Oh yeah.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. The sleeping sex thing. I had that where I was like, oh, this is a horrible story. This is before I got married and I still married him. Like there's so much depth of issues with this whole, that whole relationship. But there was a point where I remember waking up to him trying to pursue something. I pretended to sleep thinking that would stop him.
Nat (1:14:44)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:15:05)
He continued. I laid there and took it, pretending to be asleep the whole time. And then when we finally had a big blow up about it, because I was not good at communication and having difficult conversations, then he said, I must have been asleep. I didn't know that happened. But he wasn't. No, I know. But we had gaslighting all the time in my relationship. So that's just one of those stories. Anyways. Okay.
Nat (1:15:06)
Bye.
Mm-hmm. That's the most common excuse. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Okay.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:15:35)
We got to wrap. What are you doing now? Just tell us how this has turned into your next project.
Nat (1:15:42)
Well, I'm now coaching. So I'm yeah, you can go to my website instead of a I got a calendar and everything where you can make an appointment and I've talked to a few women who just are Wanting to talk about stuff because there's nobody in their life that they can talk to Sister's aunts whoever that they might normally go to are not receptive to this particular conversation so that's really nice and
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:15:45)
Bye!
Nat (1:16:08)
It's open to the men too. I say this if any of those angry men want to let me have it, you can pay me for that service now.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:16:16)
I love this. God, I love it. I took up cross-stitch during COVID and one of my most popular cross-stitch, which lives in my friend's house now, and everybody always says they want it. It's just a cross-stitch that says, fuck you, pay me.
Nat (1:16:21)
Uh-huh.
I love it.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:16:34)
It's the best. So I, when you announced that you're doing coaching, I am just so stinking excited for this. And, um, you've always lived as a resource, like one of my favorite things. I have a section on my website of like my favorite things and you are there. And now I get to say like, and you do coaching now, like I just, I love this. I'm so, um, I need to invite you to my intimacy professionals group.
Nat (1:16:40)
Oh.
Aww, thank you. Yeah!
Okay.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:16:59)
I don't know if it works for you, but I'll send you an email about it because now I'm like, oh yeah, you're a pro now. We can bring you into some more spaces. That'll be great.
Nat (1:17:01)
It'll be great.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I also write. I have a sub stack, mend So every week or two, I'll post something related to my content. It's essentially what I'm doing on TikTok and Instagram, but in a longer form, where I have more time to really think about what I'm what my thoughts are. And I'm working on a book. I have a I made a playbook a couple years ago with all the stuff the men say.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:17:20)
Hmm.
Okay.
Nat (1:17:31)
all the coercive phrases, but I'm working on one now that has more to do with my own personal spiritual journey and my journey through love and figuring out what love looks like to me now and how I think I'm supposed to teach that to the rest of the world.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:17:46)
I totally forgot I wanted to talk to you about the great sex rescue. We told, I totally forgot about that. Yeah. I'm going to have to bring you back for that conversation because I have thoughts and I was supposed to talk about it with some colleagues too, but maybe we, maybe we'll finally get our shit together and get a little round table together because I have thoughts about that book, but we don't have time. Um, remind everybody where they can find you and I'll put it in the show notes.
Nat (1:17:50)
Oh, that's a whole different podcast.
Okay.
AlwaysMending.com would be the place to start.
Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:18:15)
and then you can find you all over the place. Always prolific, no, everywhere. Okay, thank you Nat so much. We'll do this again, and I'm so glad to have you in my circle.
Nat (1:18:17)
Yes. Everywhere.
I don't know.
Me too.
