The Sex, Health and Food Post

Today’s post kicks off Ryan’s and my perspectives on health and food. Specifically, how changing our food has changed us. Rather than enter this discussion delicately, we going to the heart of it, with me going first. It will be interesting to see how much Ryan and I learn about each other through these posts!

Laura’s Story

Our story begins like this: a vibrant marriage with great sex. We were young and healthy (by most people’s standards). We decided to have a baby, who is now an incredible, vibrant, healthy six-year old boy named Colson. After having Colson, I did not rest as I should, and I did not know how to feed myself to withstand the rigors of very little rest, working full-time, raising Colson full-time and helping Ryan with his business.

Like too many women, I tried to do it all and I suffered. My memory started to fade, my hair and nails became weak and thinned, I developed terrible eczema on my scalp and I was profoundly exhausted. I was working from home from 4 a.m. until 7 when Colson awoke. I would play with Colson and nurse him, put him to sleep, work, play with Colson and nurse him, put him to sleep, work, play with Colson, nurse him, make dinner, put him to sleep, and work. Those were my days. Quitting work to make my days easier was not an option because we needed the money. My nights were interrupted because I had to nurse Colson. I had no time for myself, other than in the shower. I was over-stimulated and over-touched, with no time to recharge. My health was fading due to lack of rest and nutrition and the added drain of nursing Colson. I had absolutely nothing left for my husband. Bed was only for sleeping, and I was shocked, frustrated, and amazed that Ryan would suggest that I should stay awake for sex!!! Was he kidding?! No. Ryan will always have the drive of a teenager. I felt terrible that I could no longer keep up, but it was not possible, and I was too tired to feel terrible for long.

Ryan is an incredibly evolved and patient man, but eventually his frustration began to peak. I hardly had the energy to acknowledge, let alone deal with it. He could not even remotely understand what it was like to be me, and that bugged the hell out of me. Because we have good communication, we were able to maintain a loving relationship, but a distance was entering. Ryan especially fought hard against it, and he had to because I physically could not. I had not an extra ounce of energy. It was enough to make it from day to day. A few times he began to completely give up on a physical relationship. I am immeasurably grateful for his love and loyalty to me.

Many couples live with these problems, and some separate because of them. What makes our story different is that we conquered them. Not just conquered them, but we are pulverizing them! Ryan may have a different take on the intensity of my recovery and the pulverizing part, but that is ok. I am thrilled because my health is vastly improved, sex is better, my memory is improved, my creativity is up, my resiliency is improving, colds are almost non-existent and I have an increasing number of days where I have abundant energy. With this renewed energy I struggle with not taking on too many new adventures!

My solution to recovering my depleted, exhausted self is healing through food under the guidance of our doctor of oriental medicine. My doctor recently told me that I first came to him with adrenal glands that ranked a four out of ten in health, and now I am at a seven. I can’t imagine what a ten feels like! I have found over and over from friends and strangers that women know that they need to change what they are doing, especially with food, but their partners stand in the way. This story is universal.

My recovery has been gradual, and Ryan has supported me. It took a long time to get depleted, and it takes awhile to get better. Now that I am well on the way to the top with much experience behind me, I see that my recovery could have been faster than the almost three years it has taken so far. My mission is to help other women effectively and efficiently recover themselves and their relationships using food to move from exhaustion to vibrancy. If you are a partner reading this, GET OUT OF HER WAY!!! You cannot understand what she is going through, and you need to support her in her healing efforts if you want to have a vibrant relationship again. It is not about you. It is about her regaining her most basic health and strength. Do not take her lack of desire personally. She is too exhausted to have any desire.

Let her sleep when she needs to. Just ask Ryan. He knows that it will pay for him the next morning to let met quickly fall asleep after a busy day. My days are busy: homeschool Colson, work from home as an environmental consultant, change careers to help people move strongly forward on their healing journeys, cook all our food from scratch, and look for a house to buy. Even doing all of that, I feel pretty good by the end of the day if I had enough sleep the night before. Good enough to even have some love at the end of the day, and boy is it fun! I didn’t think Ryan’s and my relationship could be like this again, and it can be for you too.

Husbands: support her in her efforts to heal.

• Support her if she wants to try a naturopath or a doctor of oriental medicine. Read this post to learn how to choose one: How to Choose an Alternative or a Complementary Medicine Practitioner.

• Support her if she wants to heal by changing the way that she eats. Don’t ask her to cook two separate meals because you don’t want to get on board with the healing program. Cook some of the meals for her if your schedule allows.

• Here is a special note for vegetarian and vegan husbands (and I know a few with exhausted wives). Change the type of food you eat, even if it goes against your beliefs. She really will need to eat animals and animal products in order to regain health. Humans evolved eating this way. Bone broths will be a huge factor in her recovery.

• Don’t let expense stand in the way – you both really do need to increase the amount of non-processed organic food that you eat. Cut the cable, stop going to the movies, whatever it takes. It will pay off in the long run. We know. We did it.

• Don’t let food preparation time stop you. Getting off of processed food and making your own is crucial. It gets easier as the weeks pass, and my blog is the how to manual that will save you time. I had no manual, and it took me longer than it will take you to learn to make real food. Cook and learn together so that you both can appreciate the incredibly positive changes you are making. And the food tastes so good!!!

• Read The Four Agreements

  by Don Miguel Ruiz. As a couple you likely will have some communication frustrations to work through, and the Agreements will make it easier. In a nutshell, they are: 1) Take nothing personally. 2) Make no assumptions. 3) Be true or sincere with your word. 4) Always do your best. These Four Agreements will make you stronger individually and as a couple.

• Have fun! Greet each day with excitement, gratefulness and anticipation for where you are heading as individuals and as a couple.

Please send comments to: lrcombsblog@yahoo.com. We will keep them anonymous and we will do our best to address them in future posts.

Ryan’s Story

“So, what is sex like with the same person after 25 years of marriage?” I once asked of a man who had just told me that he was celebrating his 25^th wedding anniversary. I had asked the question mainly for shock value and was surprised at the man’s answer. “It gets incredibly better every year” he answered with a wry smile. I didn’t believe it when he said it, and by the time I was celebrating my 10^th wedding anniversary I was certain that the man must have been crazy.

Before Laura was pregnant the first time (seven years into our marriage) our relationship was great, both emotional and physical. We worked hard, played hard, had lots of adventures, and maintained high levels of “relationship communication.” We would go on camping trips with nothing but three loaves of bread, two sticks of salami, a pound of generic cheddar cheese, a few boxes of crackers, and a 12-pack of beer. It was awesome and there was no reason for me to think that things would ever change.

After our son was born things really did start to change. I had prided myself on being as much of a full partner in the pregnancy/birth/new baby process as I could. I happily attended the birthing classes, supported the decision to breast feed for at least a year, did my homework on the circumcision debate in case we had a boy (which we did, and heck no I didn’t!), and even changed our little guy’s first diaper.

Of course Laura was tired for the first four or five months, I had expected that. Not only was she doing all of the Mom stuff, but she was still working full-time at her job. I reasoned that if I had a little screaming human who expected me to be a milk factory 24/7 I would probably be tired too; but surely things should begin getting back to normal in the love department any time now. However, things weren’t getting back to normal – and around the baby’s first birthday I was beyond eager for things to return to the way they had been before.

The depth of the tiredness that she was experiencing seemed to go deeper and stay there. We were getting along just fine as people, and the baby was great…but I was frustrated that our spark was fading. Laura would tell me that she was so emotionally and physically over stimulated from nursing and caring for the baby that she was having a hard time being touched by me. Her energy level was really low even though we were walking and working out. Where she had once prided herself on her ability to keep both of our calendars in her head, her memory was now almost gone. Her trademark curly hair was starting to fall out, and I was starting to consider membership in a monastery.

By the time we were in our late 30’s I was completely frustrated and confused. I stopped even trying the whole romance thing. In our conversations about the lack of intimacy we often started sentences with “You always…” or “You never…” and one evening I took a radical step in emotional self-preservation by sincerely suggesting that we just remove sex completely so that it would no longer be an issue to have to deal with. My brain was still thinking of it every 30 minutes, but it wasn’t happening but once every few months and I was in a state of constant agitation. I wasn’t going to leave the family of course, but I was resigning myself to officially change our status from romance to roommate.

Thankfully, the story takes a turn for the better at this point. Although Laura could have started hormone therapy or had a M.D. prescribe the latest dopamine boosting pill, she chose to see a Chinese medicine practitioner and learn how to heal herself. I am very proud of her and the way she has taken control of her health.

Through the advice and guidance of Dr. Morehead, the Holistic Mom’s Network, and a carefully chosen and cultivated network of local farmers, Laura began learning how to repair herself through food. Her climb back to health has been a long one and as a result of her new path, both Colson and I have radically changed the way we eat. At first I only went along with her new and strange foods in order to be supportive. However, two years into this new lifestyle and I find myself 25 lbs. lighter and feeling better than I have in 10 years (more on that in future posts).

The relationship benefits resulting from our health changes have been positive on every level. Man, if I knew four or five years ago how much better things would be I would have given up mint chip ice cream and ballpark nachos in a heartbeat! I am not really the kind of guy to have conversations with my buddies on their eating habits or their sex lives, but I do know that nobody likes change. Contemplating large-scale changes like eating habits is a big deal and nobody wants to do it. Think about it, why does any man have a 2^nd heart attack? Most likely it’s because he didn’t change any of the things that caused the first one.

So, why have I spent time telling you way too much about my love life? I agreed to do it because a lot of the wives who hear our story tell us that they want to make changes to the way they eat and feel but their husband and kids would never go along with it. My message to those husbands is “Do it! The benefits you will gain far outweigh the cost of making some new choices.” If you have read this far, you might be interested in the next entry I agreed to write wherein I will pass on my “List of Allowances and Demands” I made up before I agreed to change what I ate.

Comments

[sosgood]

Thank you so much Laura for posting this Frank discussion on exhaustion, it is a true gift to all women who suffer from this to hear the story of someone who has conquered this problem. To know we are not alone helps give us perspective and validates that it is "not all in our heads" or just "being moody" as many husbands who have no idea or understanding on this topic would have us believe. It also gives us hope that there is a way to overcome this problem and let husbands know that with some support from them with diet changes, that we (their wives) can recover and have the energy to be a fully involved spouse once again.