Becoming a Cyclical Woman: Would it Save Her Relationship?

 

“Becoming a Cyclical Woman: Would it Save Her Relationship?”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Stefanie: Everything felt just a little bit easier and flowier, and I felt confident and articulate and I could take on the world. You know, you’re starting to come out and see like the flowers blooming kind of experience. I just remember being amazed at the power my body had to feel so differently. And what that translated to in my friendships and my relationship and our sex life — I mean everything, right?

[encouraging, acoustic music]

Stefanie: Stephanie Adler has a vivid memory from childhood in terms of what she learned about sex. It involves a kids’ movie she watched. She doesn’t recall the name.

Stefanie: But I can see the characters in my head. I was probably eight or so.

In the movie, these little birds get kind of caught up in a net and someone is coming to like, I don’t even really remember if they were there to tickle him or there to do something, you know? And he was kind of like tied up.

And it was the weirdest thing cause at the time, I mean obviously I didn’t really know much about sex, but I remember feeling aroused. And being like, what? what is this going on? Why do I feel excited? And it’s just interesting also because that is kind of a kink for me, you know? I do have a little bit of a fantasy around that. And so it’s so interesting that at such a young age, it was brought on by something so PG.

August/narration:

She also remembers getting curious about self-pleasure.

Stefanie: And doing that a lot until I learned about sex, I guess in a more formal way.

August: Did you know that self-pleasure was sexual?

Stefanie: At that age, probably not. I think I knew enough to not do it in front of other people because it was my private parts, you know, I gathered that much to know this isn’t something you just do at the dinner table. But I don’t know if I really associated it with sex until I got a little bit older and learned more about  birds and the bees.

I did have sex ed, but by the time I did sex ed, which was in probably ninth grade, I already knew about sex. It wasn’t the first time that I was getting educated about that. And I grew up in Atlanta and I did sex ed in public school.

And so it was abstinence only education. It wasn’t condom on a banana, for example. It was like, don’t have sex until you’re married. But I’m pretty sure my parents talked to me about it before that.

August/narration:

Then she went through something really difficult in her teens.

Stefanie: My mom by no means was abstinent until she met my dad. And that was kind of clear she was engaged once before. but there was also this attitude of sex is sacred and should be saved for someone special. That was present in my home and upbringing.

But then when I was 15, probably, maybe I was 16 actually, I remember I was driving. I had an experience where. I don’t hundred percent know exactly what happened, which is not because I was drunk or anything just because all of the sensations were so new. I’m not a hundred percent sure what part of someone else’s body was coming into a part of my body. And I was wanting to stop it.

Anyways, I had like a non-consensual experience. And then the aftermath of that was actually pretty rough in the sense where he had a girlfriend that I didn’t know about. And anyways, things were dramatic and it kind of stole the sacredness around sex for me.

I totally had this crush on this older guy and he invited me to something and then we started hooking up and it didn’t go the way I planned. And then afterwards he denied that it happened because he had this girlfriend. It made me have this, Oh, well, sex doesn’t matter attitude, even though I think deep down I really wanted it to.

And so I think that I dealt with it in that way where I was just kind of like, oh, it doesn’t matter. And I wasn’t having a lot of sex or anything in high school, but I wasn’t hesitant around it or I wasn’t “saving” it. I definitely started to approach it differently.

August/narration:

Thankfully, she said, it didn’t affect her experiences for long.

Stefanie: Around the time I was 17, going on 18, I had my first serious boyfriend and I totally fell in love with him and we had like really beautiful romantic sex and that lasted for almost two years. And then because of distance, we broke up.

And then within another year of that, I had another serious boyfriend for a couple years and totally romantic, loving sex with him.

August/narration:

While she was dating, a guy we’ll call M, Stefanie moved into a four-person apartment. One of her roommates would turn out to be her husband. They even went on a group date together.

Stefanie: When M and I were dating, we went on a double date with my now husband and a girl he was seeing. And so it’s kind of funny. I’ve been on a double date with my husband, with him not being the person that I was with.

Needless to say, then that boyfriend and I broke up and then I got together with my now husband. And so I kind of had three back to back serious boyfriends. So I feel like I had actually deep love that was connected to sex after that, which really healed those few years in between.

August/narration:

That last deep love continued.

August: So you had already met your husband. How did the actual romance start?

Stefanie: It’s so funny.

When I moved in there, my sister and my good friend would come over for dinner and stuff. They used to make so much fun of me because we used to call him Hot Roommate. Like when we would text about him or whatever, we’d be like, “Oh, what’s Hot Roommate up to?” We just all thought he was very attractive.

And I used to blush, my mom found out about this from my sister and was making fun of me. She was like, every time your roommate comes in the room, I hear you blush. And I had such a crush on him from day one.

But we also just quickly became very good friends. You know, I always love our love story because we were best friends. Like we were in love with each other before we ever kissed.  We used to cuddle in bed and just all the things and be like, “I love you” before bed, before we had ever done anything.

We weren’t cuddling in bed when I had another boyfriend. But part of the close friendship was I had another boyfriend at the time who I kind of knew I wanted to break up with for other reasons. And then finally when I broke up with him, we, we were in a place where there was clear, like we are attracted to each other, but we live together. And so that’s probably not a good idea. There were all of those components.

And then finally one night we just went out and I was also 21 at the time just to frame some perspective and very much in a party era. And I just remember we went out one night and got really drunk and came back and hooked up and I was like, “This is weird. You need to go back to your room.”

And the next morning we were supposed to spend the day together and go and do dinner together. And I ran out of my apartment. I was like, “I can’t look at you.” I ran out of my apartment, I was hiding. And I remember him texting me and being like, “Whose idea was the Tubi?” Which is a drink in the Middle East that is like deadly. It’ll get you very messed up very quickly and he just diffused the situation so easily.

I remember him being like, “Yeah, I heard if you give gluten-free girls beer, then they’ll like put out or something.” ‘Cause I was gluten-free and…he made it so light, it made me like fall in love with him even more. Because I was so…moritified is the wrong word. ButI had a lot of like, what did we do feelings, and then it was probably like a month or two after that when we were finally just like, okay, we can’t resist this anymore.

I remember him being like, “I wanna take you on a real date.” He made a joke and knocked on my bedroom door, like he was  knocking on the door to come get me, even though we were going from the same apartment.

August/narration:

Stefanie remembers the date well.

Stefanie: We lived in Tel Aviv and it was this restaurant called Leuk. And he ordered Jerusalem grill, which is all organ meat and skewered. And I love organ meat and I like that he’s an adventurous eater and we eat a lot of organ meat.

But I just remember wondering if he actually knew what it was. ’cause he didn’t love it once it came. He wasn’t eating it so much. And I was like, did you mean to order this? I remember it kind of being funny. But it was a probably a 15 or 20 minute walk from our apartment.

And what I always remember about it is the way he his hand on my lower back while we walked. There’s something so sexy for me about the slight little direction pushing with the hand on your lower back. And I remember the feeling of just being like, oh, this is so fun.

We’re in public. And we kind of kept our relationship a secret for a while because we lived together and we had so many shared friends and we were like, if this doesn’t work out, it would be so weird. And so it kind of just felt really fun to be like out in public on a date being like, we’re doing it!

August/narration:

Early on, the couple’s relationship full of tipsy, slightly blurry fun.

Stefanie: Some of this is really just interesting for me to reflect on as someone who like barely drinks anymore and who’s like, so invested in my health and wellness that like when I think back to like how much we were partying and drinking it’s wild. But a lot of it I don’t a hundred percent remember. I remember the feelings underneath it, like excitement and happiness, but also we were drinking a lot and like we were partying a lot.

We were living in a party city with a bunch of party people… So, I don’t remember a ton of it from the very, very beginning, although I remember feeling just really excited by it and really happy.

August/narration:

And the sex was good, she said. One day he asked Stefanie a question about it.

Stefanie: And it was the first time a guy had ever so directly asked me this that I thought it was such a turn on. And I remember he did it in such a casual way. Like after we had had sex one morning. He was just putting socks on to go to the gym and he was like, “So what are you into? What do you want me to call you during sex? What do you wanna say during this?”

And I remember being so excited by that being like, oh, he doesn’t wanna just have sex with me. He wants to know what I’m into and be more creative and play together. And that was really exciting.

And then we traveled through Europe together that summer, and I remember that just like feeling really exciting, like always going to these new places and traveling and having these new experiences and like getting to integrate that into our sex life felt really fun and special and doing different things in different places.

August/narration:

About a year into the relationship, things started to change. By then they’d spent some of their relationship long distance, Skyping every day. In January, 2016, they ended up together in San Francisco.

Stefanie: From there, I would say probably around that time is when I started having emotional moods and outbursts and all of these things were not me.

It is kind of a collection of like a montage of memories, mostly being really late nights where I’m just like crying and we’re having these conversations that are going nowhere, just like in circles, you know? I’m so emotional about things that rationally deep inside my brain, I know I don’t need to be emotional about.

I’m like, I’m sitting in front of this amazing guy. He’s so wonderful, and I’m going off about nothing. And it’s two 30 in the morning and he’s looking at me like, I wanna kill you because all I wanna do is go to sleep. And why are we still having this conversation four hours later?

And just like not being able to snap out of that. Or snapping about just the most mundane things, you know, that should have just like not been a big deal and it turning into like World War III. Or me like being like, “Oh, I can’t talk to you right now,” and storming away and going home.

August: It sounds to me almost like an ongoing PMS.

Stefanie: Yes.

August: I’m in my mid-forties now and pretty aware of when it’s happening, but it took me a long time to actually go, “Oh, my period’s coming up.” These intense emotions. Like a big magnifying glass on everything emotionally.

Stefanie: It was an interesting thing because it was also like my, big adult relationship, you know? And there was just like, I didn’t really have a frame of reference for what was normal. And then I remember there was this one time where we’d been like having this ongoing fight and it’s like three in the morning and we both have work the next day.

And my then boyfriend was like, “I can’t keep doing this. This is not healthy.” This also just doesn’t seem normal, like, and he’s a very loving and respectful person. But he was just kind of like, “You’re acting actually crazy and this is like not healthy, good, normal,” and like, “I’m not gonna continue doing this.”

It really snapped me into action because again, behind the fog, this guy is amazing and perfect and I love him. And I was like, what is going on that I can’t help but push him away right now? It really inspired me to look deeper into being like, well, why can’t I control myself?

August/narration:

Stefanie’s emotional challenges and the couple’s attempts to navigate it all affected their sex life, too.

Stefanie: We’re not big makeup sex people, you know? I feel like there are some couples who like, they fight really big and then they have sex really big that like, that has never been me nor us. And so it was kinda like a wet blanket on our sex life. We weren’t feeling excited and attracted to each other after having these like, super long intense talks and episodes that just like, felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. So it definitely was not, the height of our sexual connection.

And I was like turning everything into a fight. So what could have been a lovely evening that led to sex…

August/narration:

Didn’t go there. She said she’d take the smallest thing and blow up about it.

Stefanie: And then it was a terrible evening where no one was happy.

August/narration:

The details of the fights are a bit fuzzy, looking back, but she vividly recalls how they felt – and the kinds of things that would set her off.

Stefanie: Like if there was a miscommunication and I thought he was going to stop and get the cilantro we needed to make the dinner. He came home and was like, oh, I thought you were going to get it. And I would just like, turn it into this like “You’re never listening to me.” Instead of like, “Oh, okay, like we can use basil instead.”

Like just me kind of taking what now I can see is just like life happens and turning it into like it was something malicious and intentional all the time

That would start it, but then the fight wouldn’t go on about that. It would turn into like an existential thing for me. Like what kind of person are you?

What kind of husband would you be? What kind of father? I would like take these small moments and like blow them up into like, can I depend on you in the future? It felt super existential to me.

August: Yeah. And I could see how it would, because if you’re having these strong, emotions and these just like big rollercoaster things. How could you not question everything, but you didn’t know what was happening yet, so you were just kind of spinning it sounds like.

Stefanie: Totally.

August: So you said that you felt very compelled to take action when you were seeing the impact on the relationship and, and your partner’s like frustration. What was kind of your starting point with that? Did you have some guesses? Were you like, is this depression? Is this blank? Do I need this? Do I need that? Like, what was your starting point?

Stefanie: I feel really fortunate that I was doing what I was doing from a educational perspective to like build my career because it gave me a lot of insight.

August/narration:

Stefanie has a degree in conflict resolution and studied political science. But eventually, she became a functional health practitioner — inspired by personal experience.

Stefanie: I had basically healed a lifetime of digestive issues when I was really young by changing my diet and being really intentional about the food that I eat. And when I was in school for holistic nutrition, I had this realization that like I was so intentional about all the food I was putting in my mouth, but I wasn’t paying attention to this other thing I was putting in my mouth every day, which was my birth control pill.

And I had been on the birth control pill since I was 12 because of like a family history of endometriosis. I mean like when I look at it, why they put me on it is like so ridiculous. But I was young and I’d had a couple painful periods and they were like, here you go. And so that’s what we did.

And then I was sexually active and so it made sense for me to wanna stay on it.

I had this moment of like. Oh my God. I am never gonna be able to know myself or know my own hormones as long as I stay on this medication. Like, and I, and I hadn’t ever put two and two together before. And I think that the reality is, and was that I was always like that.

August/narration:

Always struggling with her moods and emotions.

Stefanie: I just didn’t have, like, the stakes weren’t high enough for me to realize that it was such a problem.

When I look back at my other relationships when I was younger, I also was like very emotional and they had to like walk on eggshells around me, but either because of who they were and who I was at the time, like it didn’t become something where I was like, oh my God, I have to do something about this ’cause they were willing to put up with it and my current partner was not, I guess.

August: Do you think, too, the deeper intimacy? I feel like. Really strong connection also brings much more vulnerability and honesty. And you were moving, I don’t know if you knew it yet, but towards this “forever.”  It’s a very serious, long-term relationship, so I could see the veil coming off in a way.And it’s interesting how he became like a mirror.

Stefanie: Yeah, totally. I think that that’s a huge part of it. You know, like it did become, whether I knew it or not, like it was more of like an initiation into like adult relationships and everything that comes with that. You know, like I was working 50 hours a week and then I was going to school in the evenings.

I think with my previous relationships, I was in college, I was like on gap years, I had more time and space to just like be in a way that maybe some of that emotional volatility had like somewhere else to go. And then once I entered like the quote unquote real world, I didn’t just have like four hours to like lay at the beach and journal and like feel better about everything before I met up with my boyfriend for a date.

And so like, I think there was also just like a shifting of my lifestyle that then it became really apparent you need to do something about this.

August/narration:

Her plan? To go off birth control.

As an aside, birth control is super important and I think everyone who wants or needs it should have access. And thankfully, there are so many different means and methods. For Stefanie, the kind she’d been on and for how long, paired with her emotional challenges, led her to stop taking the pill and to use a different method.

Stefanie: So I just stopped, like cold Turkey, didn’t take it anymore.

I remember having a conversation with my partner about it, obviously ’cause like it was going off of birth control and I chose to get an IUD, like a non-hormonal IUD instead, a copper IUD so that I could learn to track my cycle. And then I had something called post birth control syndrome,

August/narration:

That’s the medical term for symptoms some people experience after stopping birth control.

Stefanie:

So like I didn’t have my own period for almost six months . This like really woke me up to like, I knew I wanted to be a mom one day and I really was like, I have to learn everything I can about this system and what’s happening in my body and my hormones in general because it was like so shocking to me that I could have so little understanding and connection with this part of my body.

August/narration:

Because hormonal birth control suppresses various hormones, producing natural ones again after stopping it sometimes boosts your libido. It totally did for Stefanie.

Stefanie: So on the one hand, my libido, who was super high and awesome, but on the other hand I got really bad acne and that was like really hard for me as someone who’d never had acne before. I was self-conscious,

And I remember in a very sweet way my boyfriend would  tease me about it a little bit, and it was so hard.

August/narration:

She wanted to get to know her natural menstrual cycle, but she couldn’t just yet.

Stefanie: I was kind of waiting for my period to come back and then I wanted to start doing fertility awareness method. I ended up needing to do like a lot of Chinese herbs and like really give my body a little bit of support to bring my period back after being on birth control for so long.

August/narration:

She started to get in touch with her cycle, something anyone who menstruates might relate to or benefit from.

Stefanie: The first period I had just even off of birth control was like an initiation for me. Like now I talk about pooping periods all day. I’m like the period queen, right? I love talking about menstrual cycles. ’cause that’s, it’s a biomarker for health.

And I think I realized that that was like my calling around that those first couple of periods because for the first time in what felt like my life, because I’d only had a couple periods before I went on birth control, I felt what it felt like to be a cyclical woman. Like, what does it mean to really truly shed and to feel myself ovulate.

Like I hadn’t ovulated in probably 10 years maybe more than three or four times in my life total. Like it was incredible.

August/narration:

It really affected her, feeling connected to her body in that way. For the first time, she said, experienced ovulation – the glowiest time of the menstrual cycle — as a “flow state.”

Stefanie: Everything felt just a little bit easier and flowier, and I felt confident and articulate and like I could take on the world. And like even the leading up to that, when you’re like starting to come out of, you know, your internal moment with your menstruation. you know, you’re starting to come out and see like the flowers blooming kind of experience. just remember being amazed at the power my body had to feel so differently throughout the month. And like what that translated to in my friendships and my relationship and our sex life, I mean everything, right? It was like, there is a rhythm to this. It’s not every day is kind of the same.

August/narration:

Before long, the changes started to benefit her relationship and intimate life, too.

Stefanie: It wasn’t a hundred percent smooth sailing, but the like, emotional volatility and like the feeling, quote unquote crazy went away pretty quickly, within six weeks I wanna say, or less. I remember us feeling like that was a night and day difference.

I remember us having a conversation about it. I don’t exactly a hundred percent remember the timeline. Let’s call it like six months maybe after I got off of birth control, where I remember us kind of having this moment of celebration and being like, cool. We got through that felt really almost immediately resolved, which was, is so special and amazing.

That really allowed our relationship and all of its elements to really blossom.

 August/narration:

If Stefanie’s story spoke to you, she wanted you to take away two things.

Stefanie: The first one is, common does not mean normal. And I think that so often when it comes to women’s health and especially hormonal health, these seasons and these issues that arise around menstruation or hormones are normalized when really they’re not normal and they’re just common. And so painful periods, really moody, PMS, you know, a transition into menopause, that’s like incredibly challenging. And, wrought with symptoms. These things might be common in our society, but they’re not normal and they’re your body’s way of asking and screaming depending on how loud they need to be to get your attention for help. And you are not crazy for wanting to go a different way. I think so often women go to their doctors or go to authority figures in our society with this and are kind of just gaslighted and told it’s part of getting older. It’s just like that’s part of being a woman. You know, “Take a Midol.” It doesn’t have to be that way.

And then the second is that most hormonal issues are not actually rooted in the hormones. If you are on a path to balance your hormones and wanna feel better, and you’re realizing you have hormonal issues, make sure that you look one level deeper.

[acoustic, encouraging music]

August/narration:

Stefanie shared this about her work:

Stefanie: I help women and sometimes their partners, figure out what is blocking your body from healing itself. And so it’s really the work that I do is about empowering you. To become the expert of your body and empowering your body to come back to balance. And so we really are using modern science to identify some of those modern blocks, whether that’s, you know, gut imbalances or some sort of, you know, toxic exposure, things like that, that are preventing your body from getting back into balance.

And by removing those, we allow your body to do its own healing and really come to this place of balance and using traditional nutrition and wisdom to get there. And so it’s really like the marriage of the modern and the ancient and the modern and the traditional.

August/narration:

Learn more about Stefanie Adler and her offerings at stefanieadler.com or Instagram. There, you can also sign up for occasional email updates from me.

For an inclusive guide to birth control, check out chapter 10 of my Girl Boner book or head to besider.org.

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