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AUDIO: Sex Therapist Dr. Marty Klein Says Ask Me Anything - Episode #2

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Listen to sex therapist Dr. Marty Klein respond to women's most intimate sexual health questions. Hear Dr. Klein respond to questions submitted by EmpowHer's members. How can I tell if my husband is interested in me? If you've got a sexual health question that needs answering, visit https://www.empowher.com/ask

Over Dr. Marty Klein's 24-year career as a Marriage Counselor, Sex Therapist & author, he's continually called attention to the social conditions that make people feeling guilty, confused, scared, and hopeless about our sexualfeelings and relationships.

Read below the full transcript of this show.

EmpowHer Host Todd Hartley: From the EmpowHer.com studios, here is Dr. Marty Klein and EmpowHer CEO MICHELLE.

Founder/CEO Michelle King Robson: Good morning Dr. Klein, how are you?

Dr. Marty Klein, Ph.D.: Hi.

MICHELLE: Thrilled to have you on this show today.

DR. KLEIN: Thank you.

MICHELLE: We’ve got some questions. At EmpowHer we do this ask and share and so we’ve got women who are just asking sexual health question after sexual health question, it’s really interesting to see what’s happened with this because who would have thought when I started this site that we would have sex, that sex would be so predominant but that women would feel so much more comfortable having a screen in between them to talk about their sexual health.

That was something that I was unaware of when we started this but it has become very clear that it’s a huge huge thing for us and that’s a huge thing for women.

TODD: And who better than to have Dr. Klein here, he is the author of ‘Ask me anything’ or ‘Dr. Klein answers’, the sex questions you’d love to ask and so women submit questions and here are some questions that Michelle has to have Dr. Klein answer.

MICHELLE: So here is a user, her name is Hunter Queen and she emailed then and asked us ‘how can I tell if my husband is interested in me?’

DR. KLEIN: How can I tell if my husband is interested in me?

MICHELLE: Yes.

DR. KLEIN: That’s one of those questions where we need an expert. We need an expert in what her husband is thinking and feeling. Where are we going to get that fellow? Well, it’s not me it’s her husband. She’s got to ask her husband.

MICHELLE: Makes sense.

DR. KLEIN: And what is the sophisticated, complicated ways you ask your husband, you say, “Oh honey, are you interested in me?” That’s how you do it. You look him in the eye and you say, “Sweetheart, you seem not so interested in me, are you interested in me”, and I have a lot of patience, I know a lot of you will say, “Oh I could never ask that”, or, “Oh, he is not going to tell me the truth”.

If you don’t trust what your husband is telling you then you have a bigger issue than weather or not he is interested in you sexually. So I think it’s really important that people just ask each other.

You know, I am an expert about a lot of things but I am not an expert on whether or not your husband or your wife or your girlfriend are interested in there so they like that. Its really important that people develop a skill of saying, “Sweetheart, what do you think about this, what do you want, what do you not like”, and, “Are you interested in me? Are you interested in this saggy old butt?”

MICHELLE: It’s so hard for us to do that though, I mean…

DR. KLEIN: Yeah, I know it. It’s amazingly hard for people to ask. Actually having sex with somebody is not the most intimate thing that people do, it’s talking about sex that is the most intimate thing that people do.

MICHELLE: That’s great.

DR. KLEIN: And the proof of that is that people will have sex with people that they won’t talk to.

MICHELLE: Right, that’s easier.

DR. KLEIN: People will say, “I’ll take off my clothes and you can put a part of your body inside a part of my body”, but talking about that, “Well, I am kind of embarrassed”.

MICHELLE: So you think it’s more male versus female or you think it’s both?

DR. KLEIN: No, I don’t think hardly anything is more of one gender than the other. What I know is that men are hesitant to talk seriously about sex, women are hesitant to talk seriously about sex and both genders are hoping that the other person will raise the question and both genders are terrified that the other gender will raise the question.

So I think when it comes to communicating about sex, everybody is handicapped in our culture and everybody needs a little help and one of the nice things about a program like this is that people can say to their mate, “You know, I was listening to this podcast”, or, “I was looking at this website and some other woman was wondering if her husband was interested in her and she was having trouble asking him, and that the doc said why don’t you just ask the guy, so I am asking you”.

So you know, that’s one way that people can use the work that we’re doing at EmpowHer. They can just quote it to their mates and they can say, “Here is what this other person said and here is what this other person was wondering about, I am wondering about the same thing”.

MICHELLE: Oh that’s great, that is so helpful. Well, here’s another question that I am going to share with you from S3 Jackie and she asks, can I alter the taste of my vagina? I thought that was a rather interesting question.

DR. KLEIN: That is a good question and presumably she means the taste of her vulva not the taste of her vagina because you know, whose got a tongue that’s two and a half inches long that can reach all the way there. But it’s a good question…

MICHELLE: I am sorry, next question.

DR. KLEIN: If that were in my office my response to that would be why would you want to? Why would you want to, and the answers that I typically get range from, “Because every time my partner licks me he gets a horrible look on his face”, all the way to, “Well, my partner likes to lick me down there and I am kind of nervous about do I really taste okay”.

MICHELLE: Right.

DR. KLEIN: So I would give those two different women slightly different answers, you know. If you’re concerned about does your partner like the way you taste or if you are concerned that the reason your partner is not going down on you is because they don’t like the way that you taste I would say before you mess around at all with anything, talk to your partner.

Talk to your partner, “Hey honey, do you like the way I taste and smell?” Most heterosexual women have never tasted a vulva so they don’t know what it tastes like and they have these fantasies that you know, it tastes awful, that it must taste so bizarre, and different people like the taste of different things as you know.

MICHELLE: Right.

DR. KLEIN: Some people actually like the taste of vegetables, I don’t get it but some people actually do. So before I would tell a woman well, you know do this, do that, I would say why do you want to know and if you have any concerns about this, step 1, talk to your partner.

Now after you talked to your partner if you do, for some reason, want to change the way that your vulva tastes or smell the main thing to do is to use soap and water, that’s the main thing that you do, soap and water, and preferably soap that doesn’t have a lot of perfume in it, just plain, old soap and water.

MICHELLE: No douching or anything like that, just soap and water.

DR. KLEIN: Oh quite the contrary, you know, the vagina is a wonderfully balanced ecology. It’s got florae, it’s got fauna, it’s got all sorts of interesting healthful bacteria, it’s got all sorts of interesting things in there and what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to introduce chemicals in there that are going to disrupt the delicate ecology.

Vaginas, vulvas, they’re very tough as long as they have everything that they need. If you introduce chemicals in there that change the pH, that change the balance of acid and base, if you introduce by douching or anything else to get that so called ‘fresh feeling’ which you really don’t need, you upset the delicate balance that you don’t, don’t, don’t want to do that.

There are some evidence that for some women, if you’re eat a really, really spicy diet and you change that to a more bland diet that will change a little bit, the smell or the taste of your vulva.

The same way for men, you know that changing your diet may change the smell of the taste of your ejaculate but I don’t know anybody who really likes garlic, who is going to change how they eat just for that their vulva tastes really different to somebody else. That ‘s asking a lot, to give up garlic, you know.

MICHELLE: That is asking a lot.

DR. KLEIN: I would basically say don’t do anything. If you feel self-conscious take a warm wash cloth and swipe yourself a couple of times before you’re sexual, even better, get your partner to do it. Get your partner to go the bathroom, get some warm water on a washcloth and gently swab your vulva, preferably while that person is kissing you and telling you that you’re wonderful.

MICHELLE: Right, there in the bathtub?

DR. KLEIN: Yeah, sure. For people that have bathtubs and of course, no one in New York City has a bathtub. Nobody has big enough bathroom. In California, its different but in New York, bathrooms tend to be very small.

MICHELLE: Well that can be very fun.

DR. KLEIN: Yeah, bathtub is fine too.

MICHELLE: So that leads me to my next question which is ‘does lubrication like KY jelly affect the creation of natural lubricant?’ Now if you’re, we are talking about the douche and the woman douching, does that affect the vulva and the vagina?

DR. KLEIN: Well, we don’t want woman to douch because they’re introducing chemicals inside their vagina that are going to affect the other natural substances that are in there.

MICHELLE: Got it.

DR. KLEIN: Lubricants, on the other hand, like KY or Asteo glide or Silk or stuff like that, those are specially designed so that they don’t fight with the natural lubricants that are already inside a woman’s vagina, quite the contrary, they compliment them.

MICHELLE: Oh they do.

DR. KLEIN: They are very good lubricants, you know, they are tested, they are very gentle, they don’t have a lot of chemicals in them and the nice thing about them is that they don’t interfere with a woman’s lubrication.

So women don’t have to worry that well, my body is getting the signal that when using KY week after week and so my body has to crank out less lubrication of its own. No, no, no, it doesn’t work like that. If anything, if anything, using an external lubricant will help a woman or a couple relax and make sex more enjoyable and easier and less uncomfortable and that if anything will increase the body’s natural lubrication.

TODD: For more information about this show, go to EmpowHer.com or visit this rock star Dr. Marty Klein on the web at sexed.org, that’s S-E-X-E-D [dot] org.

Announcer: Your healthy podcast is brought to you by EmpowHer.com, that’s E-M-P-O-W-H-E-R [dot] com.

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.

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