Naima B. Robert – Advice to Muslim Women about Sex, Desire, Marriage and Motherhood the Village Auntie
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And I curate I
curate,
women's only spaces where we talk about sexuality,
we talk about spirituality, we talk about life
changes, we talk about family,
reproductive health,
and I'm just excited to be back talking
to my girl, Naima,
about something that we don't
talk enough about. So I'm really excited for
this conversation today.
I love it, sis. Now as I've said
before, guys, my apologies because I know you
guys have been coming for me in the
comments. And if you knew that people are
talking about having a GoFundMe
to support my Internet because my Internet is
so bad because everywhere I go I'm followed
by bad Internet. So I would like I
don't want this anything of, you know, to
to disrupt our learning from you inshallah.
So we're gonna be talking about you're going
to be talking about cycles of desire,
marriage, motherhood, and menopause. I wanna give you
the stage Insha'Allah. Bismillah says take it away.
Alright. So,
yeah.
I have never been,
quiet about
my age.
It is not something that I've ever hidden
since I've been on
a social media stage. I've been doing this
work,
in earnest
since
around 2,001.
I started in 1998
as a way to heal my own,
sexual health issues. I'm a victim of sexual
assault and sexual trauma. So I really got
into this work not to inform anyone else,
but to heal myself.
And along the way, I was in contact
with women from West Africa, women,
from the Caribbean, women from the United States,
older women who taught me about different ways
that women heal themselves through herbs, through somatic
therapy, through movement, dance.
And one of the things that I noted
was these were older women. I was in
my early twenties. These are women in their
forties, in their fifties, sometimes in their sixties,
and they were fully resonant with the place
that they were in their lives at that
time. There was no desire for youthfulness.
There was no desire to, you know, get
fillers or Botox or any of these things
to appear young. And so I think from
a very early age, I got the understanding
that
sexiness,
and I know that's a trigger word for
a lot of Muslims, and I know people
are gonna say, oh, I stuck for the
lie. You shouldn't be talking about sexiness. But
when it when it comes to a woman
wanting to feel desirable to her partner, to
her husband,
this is a very real concern. But what
I saw in these women who were older,
this was not really an issue.
They were fully comfortable in who they were.
So that was my first
understanding
about sexual desire across the lifespan and what
it means for women as we go through
different cycles of life.
So
let's let's talk about it. When I when
I teach my rights of passage class for
women, foundational womanhood,
and when I teach my my course art
of seduction, we talk about the 4 stages
that a woman passes through.
So you have the fledgling.
This is a woman who has,
she's a she's prepubescent.
She hasn't yet started her menses, but she's
learning. She's learning from her sister. She's learning
from her mother. She's learning from the women
who are modeling femininity and womanhood around her.
There may be curiosity
about the different shapes that a woman's body
can have because she's still although she may
be getting taller, she still has the body
of a child.
Then you move into the phase of a
nurturer.
The nurturer, this phase, and these are all
phases that I came up with myself,
so you can write them down. It starts
with the fledgling. So that would be birth
to right before the onset of menses. So
for my daughter, for example, that will be
birth to age 12. I have a a
9 year old daughter who's still in that
fledgling stage. They're absorbing. They're learning.
They are building the internal script that will
dictate their sexual lives in the future.
Then you have the nurturer that is from
the onset
of menstruation
until
prior to the onset of menopause.
The nurturer phase for some women, depending on
your life expectancy,
can be the longest period that you live.
It is a period that is marked by
pregnancy, if a woman chooses to give birth.
It can be marked by
issues with fertility for women who have challenges
with fertility,
it is marked by a lot of labor.
The nurturer phase is when a woman takes
on various roles.
She becomes a person of utility in her
family and in her community. She is mother,
she is auntie, she is teacher, she is
sister, she is worker, she is builder, She's
Sunday school teacher. She's Quran teacher. Everything is
about output.
What can you do? And while she is
nurturing people physically, there may be a depletion
mentally. So many women in this phase suffer
from,
emotional,
spiritual, and often physical
burnout
because of the mental low that we have
to have. Again, this is not just for
women who are married. This is not just
for women who have children because a lot
of times when we have these conversations about
sexuality and desire and and women's life cycles,
we always put motherhood in there. Motherhood was
not written for everyone. Allah
did not make right for it that every
woman has to have a child and will
have a child. There are women who definitely
have,
serious issues around fertility that they have to
deal with from a physical standpoint and also
a mental standpoint. Now all of this,
becomes a form of fatigue.
Then,
during this stage, you also have the ending
of puberty.
We often think that puberty ends when they
graduate from high school. That's what I used
to think. Before I I really started studying
this, I thought puberty ended,
at the end of high school.
When I turned 18,
I was done with puberty.
Even though
I was confused,
I was crying all the time, I was
in an emotional wreck, my body was still
going through changes, and it wasn't until later
that I learned that puberty actually doesn't end
until you're about 24, 25 years old. So
all through university,
this explains
why I had so many problems with understanding
where I was in my life because I
was still my body was still growing. My
brain was still developing. So during that nurturer
phase, lots and lots of things are happening
internally
and socially that can affect a woman's approach
to her body and approach to desire.
Then you have the onset of menopause.
I am going to be the 1st woman
in my immediate family to go through menopause
because as an African American woman,
my community, many women in my community,
my sisters and mother included, had hysterectomies very
early
due to a number of reproductive health concerns.
We don't have a a a a we
don't have enough time to talk about the
history of slavery and colonialism,
and systemic racism and institutionalized
oppression that has affected the reproductive health of
black women in colonized spaces, America being one
of them. But my mother and my sisters
both had different forms of reproductive cancers,
reproductive
system cancers that meant that they had to
have his hysterectomies
in order to save their lives. So they
never experienced menopause.
They don't know what menopause is and the
majority
of people that I hear talking about menopause,
are women who are much older
in their sixties.
They're often white women, often women, you know,
with big,
mansions and they're they're on television talking about
having hot flashes. So menopause seems like this
very strange thing that only happens to old
people.
But during that menopausal phase, that's that third
phase
of womanhood, and I call that
the discoverer
phase. It is discovering
a new
way to live. You get a whole new
body.
It may not be the body that you
expected.
It's not the body that society thinks that
you should like or that you should have,
but the discoverer phase is a very special
phase. Out of the 4 phases of womanhood,
you have fledgling,
you have nurturer, then you have discoverer. Discoverer
is my favorite. Because as you noted it's
the most misunderstood, the one that we don't
talk about enough. So the discoverer phase starts
at the onset of menopause.
What is menopause?
Menopause? Menopause is highly irregular
or the complete absence of menstruation.
A lot of people think that your period
has to stop completely in order for you
to have entered menopause, and that's not true.
If your cycle was normally every 28 days,
lasting for 4 days, and then you go
67 days, and then you have a period
for 2 days, and then you go 72
days, and you have a period for 5
days, and then you go a 104 days
and you have a period for 7 days,
you are entering into that phase known as
perimenopause
before menopause starts.
If you have questions about that, I am
not a medical doctor, you can seek out,
information from your reproductive health, doctor or reproductive
health specialist.
But menopause,
I like to call it a second puberty.
Think about what you what you went through
when you first went into puberty. Right?
Skin changes, might have had started having acne.
Your body would start to grow. For girls,
you start to grow *. That new bile
phase with with new * that are forming.
They can be very painful and sore.
You get cramps for the first time if
you experience cramps.
You may have difficulty sleeping because of discomfort,
you know, with your menstrual cycle. Mood swings
and mood changes because of the different levels
of hormones in your body,
you may start to experience changes, in your
hair.
So your hair might start to feel a
little bit different. All of that comes back
in menopause. All of it comes back in
menopause. And you would think since this is
the 2nd time that our body is experiencing
this that we would be used to it
by then,
but it doesn't quite work like that. So
menopause, the the onset of menopause generally comes
between ages 4555.
I always tell women, look at the history
of women in your family. You generally follow
that pattern. For example, I started my period
at the age of 12, my daughter started
her period at the age of 12. My
youngest daughter is 9, she's probably gonna start
her period around the same time. So if
your mother didn't go on to menopause until
57
and it's out of that 10 year range,
40 5 to 55 that the the Journal
of American Medical Association has has,
dictated,
it doesn't mean that it there's anything wrong.
Right? So between 4555.
And menopause itself can last
5 to 7 years, but but as long
as 14 years. And during this time of
menopause,
you experience some of the same things that
you might have experienced,
during puberty.
You experience
changes in the skin. So the skin,
instead of having,
the cystic acne that I had in my
youth, right, I might develop,
eczema,
I might develop breakouts, they call it adult
acne. Those are your hormones reacting in the
body. Right? Also your diet and life have
things to do with it as well. But
you also may experience a loss of skin
elasticity.
It's what causes wrinkles, people. Okay? It's why,
you know, people have wrinkles. Kim Kardashian, she
is definitely not a model,
for me in any way, shape, or form,
but she is a cultural model for a
lot of people. She recently said that she
would do anything to keep looking young, even
if it meant eating, human waste. She would
she would do anything. I think it I
think that's what she said. I'm paraphrasing, but
she said she would do anything
so that she could appear youthful.
And that's that push against the natural process
of aging. Menopause
is completely natural. You can't stop it,
you can't prevent it, but you can ease
into it with information. So and you may
not have all of these symptoms. Right? So
you have the the the thinning of the
the skin on the face. You also have
the thinning of the skin
down below.
The the the skin of the vulva can
start to thin as well, and you can
start to experience,
in some extreme cases, muscle atrophy. So the
the vaginal muscles may not, be as strong
as they were before if you're not exercising
and using them regularly.
Vaginal dryness is also a thing, that can
can occur. Osteoporosis,
so, bone fragility,
changes in bone density,
night sweats, waking up at night, and you're
like, oh my gosh. You know, it's December.
Who turned the heat on?
Hot flashes during the day where you have
these extreme temperatures in the body,
and also PMS like symptoms.
I don't like that that phrasing,
but peep I use it because people will
know what I mean when I say PMS
like symptoms, but moodiness.
And that moodiness is coming from the intense
changes. It's like your body is is making
itself over anew. It is finishing out this
period of utility for a certain period of
your life and shifting it to something else.
So in addition to the mood swings that
you may have, you may also
experience headaches.
All of that when it comes together can
lead to a decrease in sexual
desire. So let's talk about sexual desire. There
are some questions. I don't know if I'm
supposed to answer these at the same time.
No. No. Someone says if puberty ends at
25, what does that mean for marriage is
done prior to that on the health of
the woman? Nothing.
Having * before the age of 25, before
you have completed puberty, does not mean
that you shouldn't be having * before the
age of 25. What it means is being
being careful
and gracious with yourself and understanding that your
body is changing. It's understanding that the the,
not lamenting at 25,
right, or 26 or 27
when you look in the mirror and your
body starts to resemble your mother or your
auntie because now you have hips where you
didn't have hips before, you have backside where
you didn't have backside before,
your * start to take on a different
shape or a different fullness, this is just
letting you know you should be gracious with
yourself because this is your what your body
is naturally
designed
to do. If you get married at 16,
get married at 17, that's totally fine. Just
don't expect to have the same body at
26 that you had at 17. That's why
I'm talking about that. And also note the
mental changes. What advice do you have for
women? Okay. So we'll we'll we'll we'll get
to the the the marrying and and and
younger men younger women
part in a bit.
So
menopause is often seen as a phase of
life where
women and even doctors say this, there's a
decreased sexual desire.
I'm just gonna say I don't think that
that's all necessarily true for everyone.
Some women may experience decreased sexual desire. However,
I think we have a misunderstanding
of what desire is. So let's talk about
desire versus arousal.
Naima, should I answer the question now, or
should we save that question about marrying younger
women until the end? Oh, no. We can
do questions at the end. Okay. So
when I was younger,
my mother's 30 years older than me, almost
exactly 30 years older than me. It's interesting
because my my mother's almost exactly 30 years
older than me. Almost I'm almost exactly 30
years older than my son.
My mother would tell me when I was
a teenager. Let me preface this by saying,
I'm a say this as nicely as I
can. Don't come from my mom in the
comments. That's the best way I can say
it. That's the nicest way I can say
it. Okay? My mother is not a Muslim.
My mother is a clinical psychologist. This may
harm the sensitivities of some Muslims. But my
mother would tell me when I was a
teenager, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until
you get older. Everything is better when you're
older, including *.
I kept that in my mind because my
mother
said this with a level of knowledge that
let me know that she knew something and
I didn't. I was not having * as
a teenager. I didn't know anything, but that
stuck in my mind. She says * and
everything gets old get gets better when you're
older.
And she would talk to me about how
a woman's * drive actually increases when you
get older. We hear these, you know, cultural
stereotypes about how, you know, men reach their
sexual peak at 25, women reach their sexual
peak at 40.
I call bollocks on all of that. Right?
I think it is it has a lot
to do with understanding the difference between arousal
and desire. So
desire
is the mental
capacity or need for more, for pleasure. Right?
A desire. I desire
a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Right?
It is it is a mental
need. Right? It's an intense need.
Arousal
is the physical manifestation
of that desire.
So you have desire,
mental,
arousal
is physical.
What are signs of arousal? Some signs of
arousal might be,
* that become erect for both men and
women, right?
A penis that becomes erect, a * that
is lubricated,
these are signs of arousal. A clitoris,
becoming engorged with with blood. Right? These are
signs of arousal.
But there's something that we never talk about,
which is arousal non concordance. And for me,
as I work with women who are aging,
as I myself go through the process of
aging, I'm starting to understand that we don't
understand arousal,
desire, and something called arousal
non concordance, which can help us to understand
cycles of desire. So we're gonna go back
to the nurture phase for a bit.
Picture this, a mom,
she has 2 children,
13
and and 9,
and she has a toddler who's 2.
She is
working outside of the home,
as a teacher at her children's school. Her
husband works,
they have a very loving relationship, he pays
all of the bills.
She uses her money to take care of
things for the kids and saves for family
vacations.
Her 2 year old is in day care.
She
cooks, you know, meals from scratch every night.
She spends time with her kids on the
weekend going through their Islamic school lessons.
She herself wants to go back to school
for a PhD in Islamic studies in an
online program.
From the outside looking and she has a
very good life. Right? She loves her husband.
Her husband still thinks she's sexy and desirable,
and and she really has it together. House
is clean, the kids are clean, the food
is good, everything is good.
But at night, when she lies down and
her husband wants to come to her to
engage in marital relations,
She has she still thinks her husband is
is fantastic.
He's still the most beautiful man that she's
ever met. He's the only man that she's
ever been with, but her body is not
lubricated when he touches her.
They used to be able to have
amazing
marital relations, but now it's very difficult
for her to get lubricated.
It's very difficult for her to experience any
signs of physical arousal in her mind, although
she really desires her husband.
This is an example of something called arousal
non concordance. What arousal non concordance says is
there are 2 types of arousal that affects
arousal non concordance. 1 is subjective arousal. Subjective
arousal is in my mind, I want this
thing. In my mind,
I want my husband. Right? This is what
the woman is saying. In my mind, I
love my husband. I desire my husband. I
really want to be with my husband.
But the physical arousal, the signs are not
there.
The body is like, you think you want
this, and you're saying that you want this,
but we're not complying. That's non concordance. Arousal
non concordance.
That happens a lot in women who are
in the nurturer phase, who are in the
active process of,
caretaking, whether that is for children, whether that
is for elderly parents, whether that is a
person who is in in in school or
is going through a Hivs program. You know,
stress doesn't just have to be, you know,
this monumental thing. It's whatever causes your body
an inability
to process
the the external stimulation that you have. That
external stimulation can affect
your desire. Right? The desire that you know
that you have and it can make your
body unresponsive.
Now is this a bad thing?
No.
It's a misunderstood
thing.
And this is what happens a lot with
women who are in that menopausal phase, women
who are mothers,
women who are experiencing menopause,
women who are stressed,
women who are grieving.
We are still in the throes of of
an ever evolving pandemic. We've come out of
COVID 19. Now we're going into monkeypox.
Right? Mental health is at a
is at an all time low.
We're grieving loss of of people and community
and opportunities, all of this is having a
weight on us. So as a woman
who is cycling through through various stages of
life, it can feel as if my body
is broken. And I've had sisters say,
auntie, my I, you know,
my husband,
he I just I just it's just not
working for us anymore. I really desire him,
but I don't really wanna have *. And
I the first thing that I ask is,
what did you eat today?
When was the last time you had water?
When When's the last time you took a
nap?
When was the last time you just did
absolutely nothing? Because stress has a huge effect
on cycles of desire and cycles that a
woman may go through.
So when your body is going through all
of these changes, it will absolutely affect your
proclivity for sexual activity. When
you add menopause on top of that and
the social and cultural pressures
that aging women have, it can exacerbate
the the the problem.
I hate
that's not a good word. I shouldn't say
hate.
I really strongly dislike
the phrase aging gracefully. What does that mean,
to age gracefully?
Aging is something that is guaranteed to each
and every one of us. We've all aged
29 minutes since I first started talking.
Whether we wanted to or not,
time is just gonna keep moving. We are
aging. Aging means that you are what? You
are living.
Because if you're not aging,
you're dead. You you don't exist anymore. Right?
You're not living. So aging gracefully, what does
it mean to age gracefully? You just age.
It's a neutral it's a neutral
point of fact for any person who is
living.
But there's this pressure on women to age
gracefully,
to get Botox. Now I get Botox for
migraines. I only get a little bit of
Botox to manage my migraines. I have wrinkles.
I have
aging
skin.
Parts of my body that looked different
10 years ago,
are, you know, slowly morphing into something different
now, and it's okay.
But the messaging that we get, even in
spaces that are intended for women who are
older look at any,
advertisement
for gray hair shampoo. So there's a shampoo
called shimmer lights by Clairol. It's purple shampoo
for women who have blonde hair, who have
graying hair, and I was telling my sister
in law's mother about this shampoo.
And when I looked at the ads, every
woman on the ad looked like a 25
year old woman with gray hair.
But these were supposed to be women who
were menopausal,
women who were aging, women who were in
their forties and their fifties, but the cultural
messaging is that, sure, you can have gray
hair, but you're supposed to look like you're
25.
You have women who have absorbed these messages
unconsciously,
even Muslim women. Even Muslim women who do
do not consume media, it is evident even
within our own communities because what you have
is and this is gonna rub some people
the wrong way, but I've seen it happen
so often
in this work. You have men in their
late forties, in their early fifties, late fifties,
abandoning relationships,
abandoning marriages that they've had for 25 years,
for 15 years, for 30 years, and they're
swapping out their wife for a younger model.
Now I don't know what happens in everybody's
relationship,
but when I see that start to crop
up, when I see that start to be
suggested by brothers with podcasts,
by brothers with platforms,
by imams in the community, when couples come
to them I've had a couple come to
me and say, you know, we've had these
issues in our marriage and the imam suggested
that my husband get a younger wife. What
does that do to the psyche of a
woman?
When you feel as if you are no
longer useful because you're not youthful anymore.
Why is it that the older a man
gets, the sexier he gets, but the older
a woman gets, the more matronly a mother
like she gets? This is a part of
the cultural conditioning and programming that happens even
in religious spaces that really pushes against really
the sunnah of our community. The prophet Muhammad
his marriage to Khadija, may Allah be well
pleased with her, is an example of what
we should be striving for, an older woman
who is still seen as being a beautiful
woman, a useful woman, a faithful woman, a
woman who is worthy of this,
divine companionship,
yet that doesn't really play out in our
communities because of the ways that we allow
our obsession with youth to taint our focus
on relationships. And and that that's a problem
for a lot of women. So if you're
a woman and you're in your late forties,
you're in your mid forties, you're in your
early fifties,
and you, you know, are at a a
a sister's,
conference,
right, in person,
and people are calling you auntie,
and you've dyed your hair with henna, so
it's bright red when you take your hijab
off, and people start to look at you
a different way, you start to feel a
certain way, that gets into your psyche. When
you go home at night to your husband,
that can affect your desire. And I'm I'm
saying all of this because I think we
don't think deeply enough about the nuanced ways
that we are taught to hate our bodies,
the ways that women are taught to hate
the aging process when it's really something that
we should be embracing. Because to be alive
is But
we
don't
talk
about
how
that
affects
our bodies.
But we don't talk about how that affects
our bodies.
We also don't talk about and I know
this conversation is about women, but we also
don't talk about how aging affects men because
men are seen as being,
virile up to a certain point.
It's like up to a certain point, like,
he's good to go. Right? Once he starts
to hit, like, mid fifties,
women start looking at brothers a little bit
differently, and that can cause performance anxiety in
men. I have couples that I've worked with.
I have men in my family who've said,
you know,
Angie, I don't I and by the way,
don't call me Angie. Only people in my
family could call me that. They say, you
know, Angie.
I really wanna get married again, but, you
know, I'm I'm I'm in my my late
fifties. You know, women aren't really checking for
me. That causes performance anxiety in the men.
So what that what happens is,
your husband,
you're you're 46.
Your husband is 52.
You're dealing with all of this messaging. You're
dealing with the hormonal changes in your body.
Stuff is just not working the way that
it used to. He's, you know, on the
basketball court playing basketball with the young brothers,
and his knees are hurting in ways that
they didn't hurt before. And he's starting to
feel he's starting to feel his age. And
then you all come together at night.
You come together at night and you both
have arousal non concordance because you have this
stress. You both desire each other, you love
each other a lot, but you have all
of these competing factors. You have changing hormonal
levels, you have changing environmental,
antecedents that are affecting you coming together. So
then when he's not able to become erect,
you start to feel, oh, he doesn't really
love me, he doesn't really desire me, he
doesn't really want me. And when you don't
respond to his touch and your body doesn't
feel the way that it used to, when
he used to touch you, he starts to
feel, maybe I really don't have it. So
it just becomes compounding.
So how can we stop this?
One of the ways
that we
deal with this, right, the changes that our
bodies go through,
understanding the changes, welcoming the changes is exactly
what we're doing right now. We're having a
conversation,
about intimacy. Intimacy is so much more than
the physical.
I have something called the intimacy pyramid. So
we talk about spiritual,
intellectual,
experiential,
emotional, and physical intimacy. Right? So intimacy,
authentic intimacy,
really encompasses all of these things, but we
don't talk about the physical enough, which is
why it's important that we're having,
this conversation.
It's also important for us to not be
afraid to broach the subject of menopause,
to broach the subject of how does your
body change during motherhood?
How you know, is is it normal for
my urethra to shift positions after I have
children?
This is a conversation that we can be
having with our girlfriends,
with our mothers, with our aunties,
with people like me, but we're afraid to
have that conversation. We're afraid to talk about
the changes in our body. We're afraid to
ask, what do you do if
do you have you ever tried a lubricant?
You know, we don't even Muslims sometimes we
don't even want to have this conversation about
these things because we think, oh, haram haram
haram. But lubricant might be something that might
be very important for a woman who experience
experiencing vaginal dryness during perimenopause
and menopause. And there are lots of good
alternatives out there. But we have,
women who are suffering in silence, and we
have Muslim couples that are suffering, in silence
because of the fear and the shame around
not
happy, that we're having this conversation. So I
just said a whole bunch,
so I'm gonna stop right now
and see,
where we are. What questions do might have?
Sis, you said all the things.
I was just watching this with a friend
of mine, and I was saying, how did
she have this whole conversation
with apparently no notes and just
just, you know, just just going with it.
So I I think that you've JazakAllah Khayin,
I think you've touched on some,
firstly, very thought provoking points, but also some
really
important information
that most of us don't have about the
aging process, about, you know, potentially how it
affects us,
and may affect us and what we can
do about that. So we do have some
questions,
guys. Please do put your questions in the
chat. Those of you who are watching live
on YouTube, put your questions in. We're gonna
check them out. And those of you in
the VIP room, please put your questions in.
I wanted to know a little bit more
about the, arousal nonconcordance,
right,
that you mentioned is my first time hearing
that phrase.
What are the causes
and also what is the solution?
So if
mentally,
you would you you have the desire, but
physically you're not manifesting the symptoms, the the
arousal,
What what's what do you do about that?
A lot of times it can be episodic.
So it's not something that will is perpetual.
I would I would only say seek out
a doctor's input if it's something that happens
all of the time because there could be
some other issue that's going on.
But a lot of times, it's it's
being kind to yourself
and just recognizing that this this just may
not be the time, and this may not
be the the space. You just may not
be in the mood. We talk about being
in the mood a lot.
And we often talk about women not being
in the mood. Men can also not be
in the mood, but it's just being patient
with yourself.
What are the causes? The causes can be
a variety of things. It could be diet.
It could be lack of sleep.
It could be stress.
There could be some other physical concerns, which
is, you know, if this is something that's
ongoing a lot, you might wanna see a
doctor, particularly if you're a man experiencing arousal
nonconcordance
and you're not able to get an erection.
Lots of men with diabetes have problems with,
you know, erectile dysfunction.
But
when
I'll be transparent. When I have experienced arousal
nonconcordance, it's during times when I'm completely overwhelmed
and burned out.
It's like this is I have so many
things to do. * is not on my
to do list
today. I I don't need to do it.
That's that's that's not something I wanna do
today. Right? And and and I think being
honest about it and and experiencing
other parts of intimacy. So arousal non concordance
doesn't mean that no physical intimacy can happen.
What it means is that there might need
to be different types of stimulation.
Okay. It might need a longer foreplay session.
It might need just cuddling and just hugging.
Maybe there is something that you can do
for your partner to relieve the the sexual
tension that they have, and you might not
be engaging in it. But it's understanding that
it's it's perfectly normal. Emily Nagoski talks about
arousal non concordance in her book, Come As
You Are. And I saw, Ustase Ifette. She's
she's one of my favorite people. She's one
of my students.
She's does amazing work, and I know she
has often recommended that book. So I don't
know if she recommended that book, but I
highly recommend Come As You Are.
And Emily Nagoski talks about arousal nonconcordis
and the fact that 90%
90%
of cisgender, that means women who were born
with a * and still identify as a
woman, because you have to be very clear
in 2022 about who you're talking about,
90% of women experience arousal non concordance.
So it's not uncommon at all. And it
and it it it is something that will
happen from time to time, and it does
not have to be perpetual.
Okay. Alright. So that's, I get it, a
relief, I think, probably for for many people
out there,
especially the scenario that you painted, You know,
that picture of this busy mom, you know,
we we all know that that that whole,
you know what was it you call it?
The nurturer phase? Yes.
Especially with young children, pregnancies, breastfeeding, etcetera, it
can be it can be really, really heavy,
in terms of, you know, brain and what's
going on up there.
So for that. I wanna just turn quickly
to this question here, which I think is
an interesting one because the sister says, what
advice do you have for women
who marry late?
Right? In their thirties or forties.
So they're virgins. Right? Up until their thirties
or forties, so they'd be losing their virginity
at that stage.
Mhmm. Is there anything they should be aware
of physically?
Or even a man who's marrying a woman
at that stage who is a virgin in
her thirties or forties, is there anything physically
that they should be aware of?
She should be aware of her reproductive health
history.
So, you know, when did she start her,
menses? When did her mother start her menses?
When did her mother start menopause?
Knowing that your late thirties, you're not really
close to menopause. It seems like you're close
to menopause, but you're not really close to
menopause at all. And even in your forties,
I went to my doctor last year. I'll
be 47 in a couple of months,
and she said, Angelica, you're not close to
menopause. Like, why do you think that you're
no. You won't go through it. Yet she
could tell by, you know, by base based
on looking every at everything. So one is
being kind to yourself
and acknowledging the fact that menopause is not
something that's like knocking right at the door,
but also understanding that as a woman ages,
as a man ages, our bodies change.
So educating yourself as much as possible about,
fertility
and later life.
All of my pregnancies were considered geriatric pregnancies
because I had all of my children in
my thirties, and all of them were healthy,
completely complication free pregnancies.
If you are a woman who is losing
her virginity in her thirties or forties,
there may be some issues
sometimes with a mental shift that has to
happen. So if you were born and raised
Muslim or if you're a convert to Islam,
you're in you're you're you're 39. Right? Say
you converted to Islam at the age of
21. For 18 years, you have been you've
been hearing the messaging that * belongs inside
of marriage. Do not sit with a non
Muslim man.
Do not look at these images. It can
create a mental block in your head such
that when you do get married, some women,
not all,
please understand when I say this, not all
women, but some women
may develop vaginismus
when they are
having * for the first time at any
age, right, at any age. So this is
not just for women who are in their
thirties and their forties. So it's important to
understand,
what vaginismus
is and and things that might come up
and things that you can do to help,
to alleviate those symptoms. But there's really nothing
that I think the woman or the the
spouse, the man has to do except for,
stay informed.
I have friends who were married for the
first time at 41, and they have a
perfectly, from what they report, a perfectly healthy,
perfectly happy
* life. So it's not as though,
the * cannot be good. It's the same
thing that will be required for for any
woman. And knowing that,
the only consideration would be if you want
to be a woman who is carrying a
baby
in her forties, there may be certain things
that you wanna consider health wise, even outside
of reproductive health, even just in terms of
emotional capacity. Right? Do you wanna do you
wanna have a child at 43? You know,
do you wanna have a baby at that
age? It may be it might be perfectly
fine, but that will be the only consideration
that I would really strongly think about. Okay.
JazakAllah Khayla.
You know, you mentioned about vaginismus,
and, you know, I've got a great conversation
with Amir Rezaki. You guys have probably seen
it on the channel, really deep dive into
that condition.
And it is a lot more common than
people think. It's not it's not, you know,
that common, but it's more common than people
think. Right? And something that came up in
the comments that I wonder if you can
speak to was
what does a man do or what should
a man know? Because obviously men don't know
anything, especially brothers. Like, they don't know about
stuff like that. Okay. They may know a
thing or 2, but they don't know stuff
like that. So if a man finds himself,
you know, he's he's going to get married,
Firstly,
okay. My questions are,
is there anything that we need to talk
about beforehand
to see if this is an eventuality?
And if
you do get into that situation, and guys,
for those of you who don't know, what
that will look like is that penetration is
not possible. Yes, sister? Is that correct? Mhmm.
Yes. So I somebody It's either not possible
or extremely
painful.
Extremely painful. Right? So there is an a
cultural idea that losing your virginity is painful
anyway. Right? So a man may not necessarily
see that as a bad thing if, you
know, his wife is cringing as this is
happening.
And and, you know, there were comments where
a man said, like, you know, you you
you're not gonna refuse your husband on the
first night. Like, what is this? So yeah.
I know. I know. I know. Right? Roll
eyes. But again
again, ignorance.
Right?
Not even knowing that this is a thing.
So how what could you say to the
brothers,
fathers, mothers as well for how to prepare
their sons
for their wedding night? Because we're always talking
about preparing the girls for their wedding night.
How can we prepare our sons for their
wedding night?
The first thing to say
is that * on your wedding night is
not obligatory.
It's not a requirement.
There's no religious stipulation that says you have
to have * on your wedding night or
your wedding
is your marriage is null and void.
And I say this to women, I say
this to men because there's an immense amount
of pressure to perform.
You have lived your entire life possibly with
never having any form of sexual stimulation,
and you're expected to have knock down, drag
out, swing from the chandelier * on your
wedding night, that is not an obligation. Now
I'm not saying to refuse and say, oh
my gosh, I would never touch you. I
don't want to be near you. That's a
whole different conversation.
But relieving the pressure for the wedding night
means talking to your son and saying,
this is your first time
being with this woman. You have to take
it easy. You have to take it
slow. You have to be patient for both
of you. This is not a sprint. This
is a marathon. I always tell couples the
best * of your life should not be
on your wedding night because if it is,
everything else is downhill from there. Instead,
focus on being patient and focus on being
kind.
Men who have wives
who have a difficulty penetrating their wives, their
wives, may be experiencing,
vaginismus.
One of the things that I highly, highly
recommend is learning the technique kunyaza.
Habiba Conde has a book about it. I
teach classes about it, I have a couple's
class on kunyaza coming up very soon,
and kunyaza is a non
penetrative
form of stimulation.
Now
konyaza only works if the woman consents to
participating in konyaza. There's no penetration involved, but
there is skin to skin contact of of
the the the penis and the * and
the vulva. So it is important to make
sure that she's comfortable with it. But the
reason why I like kunyaza is because, 1,
there's no penetration involved.
2,
it requires
a
lot of patience
and a lot of willpower on behalf of
the man. So what it does is it
helps men who are newlyweds
learn how to,
keep their erection longer,
and it is an intense act of close
physical intimacy.
Women one of the one of the the
tools that women use to to help to
cure themselves of of vaginismus
and that doctors might, you know, recommend for
them to use are dilators that are inserted
into the the vaginal cavity. But with konyasa,
there's no insertion, but there is relaxation.
There is stimulation of the clitoris. There is
stimulation of the labia, and there is that
skin to skin contact. And if there's lubrication
that's happening, there can be an intense pleasure
for the man as well. But brothers need
to understand first what vaginismus is because I've
I've had a sister say that her husband
felt very proud that it was difficult for
him to penetrate her because he thought that
it was because of his size.
Men have to understand that vaginismus is not
because you're so big you can't fit.
Vaginismus
is not your wife doesn't love you. Vaginismus
is not she's afraid of *. Vaginismus
has, lots of physical
and also psychological,
sources. So
understanding what vaginismus
is, just like women have to be educated
about their bodies, if men are having *
with women, they also have to be educated
as well. So I I think using, in
addition to konyaza,
other forms of physical intimacy that are not
penetrative
are also extremely
important, especially on the wedding night.
Focus on kissing, focus on touching, focus on
being close together.
Stop putting so much pressure because one thing
that we never talk about is we never
talk about how a lot of men have
performance anxiety on their wedding night, and it
is not uncommon for men to not be
able to get an erection because there is
this extreme fear. So these are, you know,
vaginismus and erectile dysfunction, these are, you know,
extreme cases, but this is what we have
to talk about, what we have to learn
about. We spend a lot of time preparing
for the marriage ceremony, but we don't spend
a lot of time preparing for the *
life within marriage, and that that should change.
Guys, you all heard that word, and that
is a whole word right there. We don't
prepare enough now.
I want us to close out with this
question because I know that you're gonna have
a field day with
this. Uh-oh. Asks in the YouTube,
how do we talk about sexual desires and
marriage
with our mothers or sisters when it's seen
as shameful?
You know, I'm not a good person to
ask this question
because
Allah blessed me with a mother who is
a clinical psychologist and who also was very,
very open with all of her daughters, such
that I'd be like, I don't wanna hear
this. I don't wanna talk about this.
But I'll say this. The older that I've
gotten I would have had a different answer
in my twenties. The older that I've gotten,
I will say,
let them guide the conversation.
Do not push them into spaces that they
don't want to go.
You almost have to treat our elders like
we treat teenagers. Don't push too hard because
you'll push them away. Understand that these are
women who have lived their entire lives.
They may have birthed you. They may have
birthed your parents. So, obviously, they know something
about *, but you have to think about
what protective
factors come with that shame. Do they not
talk about * because it was something to
protect them within their, you know, spaces so
that they would not be abused?
I have a one of my students who's
whose,
mother lived through partition,
and she said one of the things that
that that led to a lot of the
the shaming around * wasn't really shame. It
was protection.
You had to protect the young girls in
the family. So there were certain things that
you just didn't talk about. Didn't talk about
having a period because that might show that
you were someone who was, you know, sexually
ripe or sexually ready.
But I think easing into the conversation by
asking questions
helps to open the door. So if you
go to your mother or your grandmother or
your aunt and you're asking for advice,
and you ask for advice in a way
that might push the boundary a little bit,
that can open the door. So you might
say, you know, I really I'm really having
difficulty after having the baby. It it seems
really hard for me to want to have
relations with my husband.
What advice could you give me? Right? And
and they may not give you the best
answer the first time. But when you start
to to lead into this type of questioning,
it leads to a feeling of safety and
security. They can feel as though, okay, you're
not trying to set me up to, you
know, berate me. You really are asking, and
then that opens the space to have conversations.
We have to understand that if if this
is 2022
and some of us are just getting this
information,
what about people who were, you know, in
their 20 somethings
in in in the the the sixties, the
seventies, the fifties? Right? We have a lot
of elders in our community. So we have
to be very kind and understand that,
these conversations can be had respectfully,
but it's not something that's going to happen
overnight. It has to happen incrementally with a
high level of deference
and respect for their sensitivities because we also
don't know what traumas our elders,
may hold.
I love that answer.
Sis. That's yeah. That's that's the real food
for thought, I think, for all of us.
So I've got a couple of questions here,
this I love this one. So one of
our VIPs
has been listening intently
and says that it seems that for an
older couple to still enjoy their * life,
the woman should be made to feel as
relaxed as possible. Is that correct?
Both people should feel relaxed. Why are you
going into * angry? Don't be stressed out
and angry. * is supposed to be fun.
It's not just procreation. I think, yes, everyone
should be relaxed. But if it's an older
couple,
I don't know. Should I say it? I'll
I'll say it because whatever. Because people are
already gonna come for me because I said
the * is not mandatory on the wedding
night, so we just gonna let it roll.
Listen. The older you get,
the older couples that I deal with
in private practice,
those people are doing the wildest stuff. They're
having the most fun. They
love it. Forties,
fifties. There's a level of bodily autonomy and
self confidence that comes with age that you
simply don't have when you're in your twenties.
I'm sorry. It it just it develops over
time. So, yes, the woman should be relaxed,
but the man should be relaxed too. And
and * should be fun. * doesn't have
to just be for procreation. It can absolutely
be for pleasure.
All of it, it works together,
and it's not just, you know, tiptoeing to
your wife and and like you're, you know,
walking on eggshells,
but we have to stop looking at *
as just being something to bring children in
the world, or something that is a religious
duty and responsibility
to our spouses. We also
can and should look at * as a
way to release pressure, as a way to
relax you. * can be relaxing. You can
go into * feeling stressed out and with
the right touch, the right move, the right
positioning, the right what have you, you can
absolutely become relaxed and there's nothing wrong with
that spiritually, ethically, mentally, physically, or socially. It's
actually a good thing.
Oh, this is so good. This is so
good. And it kind of bounces off what
our previous, sister Ifeht was saying,
because she touched on this aspect as well.
Okay, guys. So you heard the tea. Okay?
It gets better as you get older, so
lots to look forward to.
Finally,
I've got a question here. It's not really
a question. It's a comment that somebody made,
and I think that they were,
sort of laughing in a wry way.
But they said that my wife was on
her period on our wedding night.
And I'd like us to talk a little
bit about intimacy during menstruation.
Can we touch on that? Is that too
close to the phone?
No. It's listen. I'm used to being skewered
by now, but this one is easy, actually.
This is very easy because you can look
at a hadith of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. What did he do with
his wives when they were on their menstrual
cycle? What did he instruct them to do?
What did he tell them to wear? To
wear a cloth around their waist, and he
will put his head in their lap while
they were menstruating.
He would kiss them. He will fondle their
*. This is not what I'm saying. These
are in
hadith. I have a student
who was doing an alamiya program, and she
sent me this message. She was like, auntie,
read this hadith, and she sent it to
me in Arabic. I said, I don't know
what that means, and she translated it. I
said, I still don't know what it means,
and she told me what it meant in
English. And it was talking about the way
the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam kissed his wives and how
he kissed his wives.
The the the the
the sunnah is very descriptive
in terms of the ways in which Rasulullah
was with his wives. It's not graphic, but
it's very specific, and it should be a
model for us in how we can engage
in physical intimacy
even during those times when you cannot have
penetrative *. So if your wife is on
your period on her wedding day,
why can you all not slow dance?
Why can't you all give each other a
massage?
There's a type of massage that's done body
to body where you're you're not clothed at
all. There's lots of different pleasure points in
the soles of the feet. Men's feet actually
are more sensitive than women's feet. There are
different parts of your body that you can
explore, that you can touch, there are lots
of different ways to be intimate without having
penetrative * And when people say that I
can't have * on my period, it's haram.
This is true. The penis cannot be inserted
into the * when a woman is on
her cycle. That does not mean that you
can not experience physical intimacy, and this is
where education comes. It's very important.
It's also very important to explore with your
partner. You can have a a whole game
that you play. Say, we are going to
do as many things as we can to
stimulate each other, but we are not gonna
have *.
And that can be a starting off point
to know what are the more sensitive erogenous
zones on your partner's body. Some people's erogenous
zones are more sensitive than others. You can
look up erogenous zones before your wedding day.
This is something that you also have to
plan for with your son. You have to
let your son know, listen,
Your wife might have her period on your
wedding night, which means she might have it
for 3 or 4 days after the the
the wedding. You also have to be prepared
for that. I think that
talking about physical intimacy has to extend beyond
penetrative *, and that is really where the
fun and the true pleasure lies when you
are able to experience pleasure with the fullness
of your entire body, not just your genitalia.
And I think that is a fitting close
to a very
informative session. You know, I'm just, like, grilling
under here because I always am,
whenever we get a chance to speak. And
I love the emphasis, that we've had really
from both of our speakers this evening on
gaining knowledge,
getting
the right frame of understanding
around this topic,
and exploration,
pleasure, and play,
you know, which we tend to be a
bit afraid of associating
with with intimacy, but really, you know, this
is one of the one of the fruits
of it, I guess, and one of the
the best parts of it. So, sis, please
tell the viewers where they can find you
and how they can learn more from you
inshallah.
Sure. You can follow me on Instagram and
Twitter and Facebook at Village Auntie. That's auntie
with I e at the end.
I also have the Village Auntie Institute.
You can follow TVA
Institute,
on Instagram. I do workshops. I do classes.
I'm opening up once again for private clients,
both, single women. I don't do single brothers,
and couples. And I have
a program that is starting on September 17th
called Foundational Womanhood. It's a 12 week rights
of passage program for women. It's an intergenerational,
international,
intercultural, interfaith
rights of passage, womanhood training program for women.
But everything,
that you find about any of my class
offerings, you can find on Instagram,
Twitter, or Facebook. And soon to be, my
website is almost finished, village auntie.com.
We love to see it. Thank you so
much, sis,
for taking the time out of your schedule.
Please tell the babies we said,
we love them. Tell the mister that we
appreciate him. Tell him to look after you.
You look after him. Look after those babies.
And may Allah bless you in all your
affairs.
Love you for the sake of Allah. And,
you know, this is not the last time,
inshallah.
Exactly.
Thank you so much. Guys, that is it.
That is it. We are out for tonight.
Make sure that you follow the village auntie
Insha Allah on her channels,
and and, you know, dive into any of
the resources that you find that are useful
to you. Those of you who are on
YouTube right now, make sure that you subscribe
to the channel. Make sure you share the
link to the video so that more people
can watch.
This is our first live stream of the
weekend. It is not our last. We will
have more live streams tomorrow night when we've
got a host of amazing speakers coming through.
We've got sister Hane Banani. We've got brother
Gabriel Armani. We've got who else we've got?
Nisa Kisun. And
just as a reminder
if you got an email from us with
an offer for a VIP
ticket
and you're like
why am I gonna get a VIP ticket?
What's the point of a VIP ticket? I
want you to know that
the village auntie did a private workshop for
sisters
on
the pathways to pleasure
where she broke it all down. When I
say all down, I mean all down. So
you think that today was a lot? No.
This was a private workshop where she took
sisters
through from a to zed.
It is only available to v I p's.
It's only available in private. It is not
published on YouTube at all. It's one of
those special private workshops. So if you
want to access that go to the link
in your email upgrade to VIP
and you'll also get free access to Anissa
Kissun's private workshop happening next weekend. Sister Anissa
is going to be talking about sacred seduction.
You know you don't wanna miss that. So
make sure that you upgrade, get the VIP
ticket and you'll be able to join us
in the zoom. But more importantly, you'll get
access to bonus
workshops and videos and a live session with
sister Anissa next weekend inshallah. But now I
wanna bid you all a good night JazakAllah
Khayron for joining me.
Tell your friends if you benefited.
Put it on socials. If you benefited, tag
me so that I can repost,
and let's get more people benefiting from this.
You know, sister Umtalha, she asked me, you
know, what's your intention with this whole conference,
with this conversation?
Why are you doing this? And I said
to her, at the end of the day,
we want more happy couples.
We want more happy Muslim men, more happy
Muslim women, more people
enjoying the barakah
of the good things in that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala has blessed us within this life.
We want more solid homes inshallah. Okay. We
want more relaxed happy couples. So if this
has been beneficial to you, please do make
dua for myself, for the speakers, and for
everybody involved.
And let's keep it moving. We'll see you
guys inshallah tomorrow night.
Be there will be square as they say.
Subhanakallahu
maraba nawbihamdik. Ashaduallahuilla
ilaha illa and
I'm out.