A lot of the women that I work with that are going through the menopause realize that their libido is low, they don't fancy sex anymore,

they don't feel great about themselves, they've got the hot flushes, and then if you've got a partner that doesn't understand what you're going through,

they can then internalize that as,

oh my gosh, this is a partner that doesn't fancy me anymore,

so that you've got all the pressure of all the symptoms that are sort of played around your body, and then your partner also think you don't. the

pressure of all the symptoms that are sort of playing around your body and then your partner also think you don't fancy them. So for a lot of the couples that I work with, the women are then telling themselves that they have to have sex

because this is the thing to do, but we know that vaginal dryness is

one of the symptoms of the menopause and so the sex is painful it could be a

really difficult space for people going for the menopause.

Well that's Charlene Douglas you might recognize her as the therapist from

Married at First Sight UK. She thinks we could all do with really interrogating

our relationship with sex. I'm Liz Earl and this is the

Lizal Well-being show, the podcast helping us all to have a better second half, the title of my

latest book. My mission, well it's to find ways for all of us to thrive in later life by investing in our health and our well-being today and that of course includes something that we don't often talk about, well, maybe not that openly anyway, and that is sex.

So how do you feel about having an open conversation about your sex life, about how important or not it is to you, how it might have changed over the years

for better or for worse and ultimately about what it means to you. Well Charlene Douglas is a psychodynamic and psychosocial therapist.

That basically means that she helps people get to grips with their problems, find solutions and

ultimately feel better about themselves.

As a therapist, she's helped people with everything from low sex drive and painful sex

to understanding their desires and perhaps finding that elusive orgasm.

Now she's written a book called Come Closer in the hope that even more of us can get to know

our sexual selves a little better. I wonder then is sex therapy group chat. We get it. Four votes for a festival, three for a city break.

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