Sex, Love & Goop's Michaela Boehm Has Some Advice For Your Love Life - Exclusive
In 2008, Gwyneth Paltrow launched her wildly successful lifestyle and wellness brand, goop. Known for being on the cutting edge of self-care, goop has evolved from a weekly email newsletter to a an internet destination. And now, the brand has launched a hit Netflix series, "Sex, Love & goop," where couples share their deepest insecurities and problems in the hopes of improving their relationships — physical and otherwise. Paltrow isn't the only person that the couples interact with, though. In addition to the A-lister, couples are joined by a number of experts hoping to aid in their journey towards deeper sexual pleasure. Enter Michaela Boehm, Goop's expert in intimacy, relationships and sexuality.
If you've never heard of Boehm, you're clearly missing out. She's been a sought after sex and intimacy expert for some time, and calls Paltrow, and other celebs like Will and Jada Smith, as clients (via New York Post). Boehm uses a tried-and-true system called The Non-Linear Method, which uses a combination of movement, trauma therapy, and polyvagal theory to get to the bottom of the problems that some of these couples are facing. With all of that expertise accounted for, we just had to ask Boehm ourselves what advice she has for the love lives of our readers. In an exclusive sit-down with The List, she told us everything you need to know.
Two of the best tactics couples can incorporate are communication and boundaries
Maintaining a healthy relationship takes hard work. While there are a lot of beautiful, happy moments, being part of a couple isn't always a fairy tale. So what does it take for partners to bring the heat back into the bedroom? We asked sex and intimacy expert Michaela Boehm exactly that. "I would say the answer would be: learn how to set boundaries and learn what you like and dislike," Boehm said. "I think a lot of what happens is that people have no idea what they like or don't like, and even if they know what they like, and don't like, they can't articulate that."
With that being said, Boehm elaborated that when it comes to physical and sexual connections between partners, "no amount of sexy tips" will really make a big difference if the party communicating isn't saying exactly what they have in mind. In addition, it's incredibly important that their partner takes the time to build the skills needed to take critical feedback without getting offended. "I think it's very, very important that people learn their preferences, not only sexual, but in general, and then develop the skill and the muscle to actually both give positive feedback and also set proper boundaries," Boehm explained during her exclusive sit-down with The List. "Everybody can learn how to, everybody can find out what they like, what they don't like and how to articulate it."
Is decreased physical chemistry a bad thing?
We've all heard the trope that when the physical chemistry in a relationship begins to die down, the union is pretty much doomed. While many of us consider physicality to be an important part of any romantic relationship — especially those of us who consider physical touch to be our dominant love language — Michaela Boehm doesn't agree. Calling her thought "a bit controversial," Boehm explained that when that spark starts to dim, it can actually be a sign of "the relationship progressing positively."
"That's very hard to understand for people ... Sometimes a relationship degrades and goes away, right? But in a healthy, normal way that people develop, they get a certain kind of closeness. And when they get that closeness and that commonality, that makes the relationship good, that's when the sexual attraction, hopefully, temporarily wanes," Boehm explained. She went on to share that the bulk of sexual attraction is based in opposition, and as such, "good, long term sustainable relationships" shouldn't have consistent threads of opposing ideals in place. This in turn can apply to the physical chemistry between two people. "The more commonality, the more common values, interests, friends, ideas, location you have, the better your relationship will develop including communication," Boehm said. "But all the things that make your relationship deeper don't necessarily make the sex more exciting."
"Sex, Love & goop" is available on Netflix.