Infinite Devotion

Why Don't I Want to Have Sex With My Husband?

"I wanted to want it more. I just didn't, and I didn't know what was wrong with me."

That's how Dawn describes the years her desire went quiet. This is part two of our series on desire in long-term relationships, and it's for the women. Last week was the man's half. This week Dawn and I get into hers: why her libido never actually died, what buried it, and what it has taken over the last five and a half years for her desire to come alive bigger than it was at the beginning.

In this episode we get into:

• Why nobody has a dead libido, only a buried one
• The lies Dawn believed: "low libido," the infatuation stage, and what a good marriage is supposed to look like
• Desire as the pull, and why willingness is something else
• The day Dawn asked what was standing between her and feeling turned on
• Why slowing down is the first step, and who your body actually belongs to
• The Madonna-whore split women run on themselves
• The gasoline and the match, and the turn-ons hiding in the things you've judged
• Being turned on by your own life
• Why there's no technique, and what to do instead
• Speaking up, rebuilding self-trust, and the day Dawn told me she wasn't turned on by my body

Next week's episode comes out Tuesday, November 10, the day my book Infinite Devotion launches. Get the first chapter free, sent to your inbox Sunday, November 8.

Chapters

• 00:00 Part two: her side of desire
• 02:11 Nobody has a dead libido
• 04:15 We never saw passion last
• 06:18 Even at the worst, her body kept telling the truth
• 07:34 The lies Dawn believed
• 08:58 Desire is the pull
• 10:21 Her sexuality ran through me
• 12:29 "My hand can touch you, yours can't"
• 14:19 Five and a half years, and why you can't rush it
• 16:40 "When you come, I see God"
• 18:24 Why slowing down comes first
• 20:32 The same pull toward anything in life
• 22:44 Who does your body belong to?
• 24:42 When's the last time you pleasured yourself?
• 25:23 Communion and learning how to be
• 26:35 From wanting to obligation
• 29:54 Unwinding codependency
• 31:11 The Madonna-whore split women run on themselves
• 33:58 Capacity, orgasm, and letting go of control
• 35:10 The gasoline and the match
• 37:19 Your biggest turn-ons live in the shadow
• 38:04 Turned on by your own life
• 39:20 Acceptance, and learning to feel what you receive
• 41:19 There is no technique
• 43:58 If you're close to leaving, try staying
• 45:04 "I wanted to want it"
• 46:24 Hold the little girl on your lap
• 47:16 Let your emotions burn away the lies
• 48:26 When nothing in your life turns you on
• 50:29 Getting loud and rebuilding self-trust
• 52:11 "I'm not turned on by your body"
• 56:48 A woman's feelings are always accurate to something
• 58:46 Intimacy and intensity, together
• 59:25 The book, out November 10

Mentioned in this episode

• Communion: six months home to your body, for women. Waitlist open now.
• The Few: my six-month group for men. Waitlist open now.
• The Gasoline & The Match: Understanding Feminine Desire
• Lovense: Dawn's favorites are the Lush 4 and the Domi 2. Our link includes a discount.
• Part one, for the men: Why Won't My Wife Have Sex With Me?
• Infinite Devotion, the book

Some of these are affiliate links. If you buy through them, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Connect with us

• Read the companion post on the blog
• YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
• Instagram
• Free resources

Why Won't My Wife Have Sex With Me?

Around 2014 I typed that exact question into Google. It started everything Dawn and I do now.

This is part one of a two-part series, and it's for the men. Dawn and I get into why the pull you felt at the beginning never actually died, how desire slowly turns into obligation, and why you can never talk a woman into wanting you. Then we get practical about the half of this a man can actually control.

Next week, part two: her side of it.

In this episode we get into:

• What sex and desire were like at the beginning for us, and what that proves
• The "infatuation stage" assumption, and why I refused to believe it
• How wanting each other turns into trying to keep each other
• Why there's no room for desire inside obligation
• The night I lay in bed arguing with Dawn about why she should want me
• Deciding to stop asking her to want me, and to become a man she actually wants
• Choosing to stay, even if it never worked, and what that taught me about devotion
• Dawn's honest take on how most men present themselves (she doesn't pull punches)
• The low-hanging fruit: clothes, grooming, shoes, fitness, and getting your health checked
• Whether you actually approve of women being sexual beings, and the Madonna-whore split
• How enmeshment makes desire structurally impossible

Chapters 00:00 The question that started everything 03:11 What sex was like at the beginning 06:24 Where does the pull go? 08:40 The "infatuation stage" 11:03 Can you want what you already have? 12:29 From wanting each other to keeping each other 13:31 What changed in me 16:22 Desire is something she feels in response to you 19:16 Stress, money, and the man she stopped seeing 22:03 The half you can control 23:31 The night I tried to talk her into wanting me 26:54 Done asking, becoming a man she wants 32:07 Choosing to stay 34:04 Physical attraction matters 35:03 Dawn on how men present themselves 39:14 The easy stuff: clothes, grooming, shoes 41:11 How would you show up if you were dating again? 42:05 Get your health checked 43:11 Do you approve of women's sexuality? 45:09 The Madonna-whore split 49:36 She's a sexual being, and not only toward you 52:15 Enmeshment and your independent life 53:21 You can still have this

Mentioned in this episode Function Health, where Dawn and I get our bloodwork done: click here for $25 off Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity Giving To Receive: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/giving-to-receive The Infinite Devotion book, out November 10: https://infinitedevotion.com/book

Listen to the full episode Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/infinite-devotion/id1703653891 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NOiUF8kMERd52klxIrr1w YouTube: https://youtu.be/c5IACzRhxS8

More from Infinite Devotion Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

Dawn and I have lived full-time in our RV for almost two years. We live together, work together, travel together, and do all of it in a house with four rooms, thin walls, and a garden hose for plumbing. When a man heard about this recently, he looked at me and said, "You must be really good people."

We like each other, which helps. Mostly, we've gotten good at navigating discomfort. In this episode Dawn and I talk about what close quarters actually do to a marriage: the space you can't get from each other, the noise you can't control, and what this life has taught both of us about meeting our own needs without making the other person the problem. Then we stick around for a game of "who's more likely to," which gets a little spicy.

In this episode we get into:

• Dawn crying through a wave of grief five feet from me making breakfast, and why she didn't ask me to stop
• Why the biggest challenge of a small space is emotional room, more than physical room
• What happens to a marriage when the eight hours apart disappear
• The weekenders, a 10 PM golf cart parade, and recording content with a remote control car outside the bedroom wall
• Three nights of storms, a 300-mile tow, and the dent in the truck that reminds me not to drive exhausted
• Hard water, Dawn's hair, and the real logistics of plumbing a house with a garden hose
• The laundromat saga in Michigan's Upper Peninsula
• Enforced minimalism, and why we still dress up in a campground
• Dawn's one-word answer when strangers ask what we do for work
• Who's more likely to: forget things, wake the other up, get sappy, speed, laugh at a funeral, and forget how thin the walls are
• The recipe app Dawn and I built together
• The Infinite Devotion book launches November 10

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Marriage in 320 square feet
• 04:00 Why this episode, and the game coming at the end
• 05:14 The biggest challenge: room for your own energy and emotions
• 08:13 Four rooms, one small house
• 09:54 The outdoors as living space
• 12:18 Sickness, flexibility, and being together almost constantly
• 14:13 Thin walls, the weekenders, and a golf cart parade
• 18:04 Storms, earplugs, and the dent in the truck
• 21:30 Thin walls and recording content
• 23:08 A tiny bathroom, and a month in a real house
• 24:38 Hard water, softeners, shower filters, and reverse osmosis
• 28:32 Laundry on the road
• 30:14 Surprising each other in a small space
• 31:43 Enforced minimalism and the wardrobe question
• 33:43 Dressing up in a campground
• 36:08 "So what do you do for work?"
• 38:28 The "who's more likely to" game
• 40:32 Packing, campsite frustrations, and middle-of-the-night wake-ups
• 44:54 Forgetfulness, letting go, and fist bumps
• 47:20 Sappy moments, misremembering, and laughing at the wrong time
• 48:02 The spicier round
• 51:05 Video ideas, speeding tickets, and who's the better cook
• 54:57 Dawn's cookbook app
• 57:46 The book launches November 10

Mentioned in this episode The Infinite Devotion book, out November 10. Get notified: https://infinitedevotion.com/book

Our RV: Brinkley Z 3515

Hears sleep earplugs (not an affiliate)

Dawn of Desire: https://dawnofdesire.com/

Prefer to read? The companion essay: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/marriage-in-320-square-feet

Listen to the full episode

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/infinite-devotion/id1703653891

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NOiUF8kMERd52klxIrr1w

YouTube: https://youtu.be/UPqBz9WA2fw

More from Infinite Devotion

Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog

Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources

Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

Why She Doesn’t Feel Safe With You (Even Though You’d Never Hurt Her) | Infinite Devotion Episode 153

Ask most men if their woman feels safe with them and the answer comes fast: of course she does, I’d never hurt her. That’s the floor.

Underneath it is a layer of safety almost no man accounts for, and it decides whether she ever truly lets go in his presence: whether she can tell him the truth.

People will lie to you unless they feel safe enough not to. In this episode I get into why hiding is the human default, why comfort and safety are two different things, and why the only man a woman can fully trust is one who tells her the truth when it costs him something.

In this episode we get into:

• Martha Beck’s year without a single lie, and why losing her marriage, career, and home felt like “safety, safety, safety”
• Why everyone you love has edited themselves for you, probably today
• The layer of fear most women carry that most men never see
• Comfort as the absence of friction, and safety as knowing where you stand
• The arm test from Diary of a CEO, and how Dawn and I use it to find what’s true in our bodies
• Why keeping the peace makes you untrustworthy, and why she can feel it even when she can’t name it
• Leading by going first, and the one sentence that makes saying a hard thing possible
• What it cost me to admit why I really started my old business
• Why the man who can’t say the hard thing usually can’t hear it either
• How the truth brings back the fire you had at the beginning
• Where to start: a journal, a friend, and one thing you’ve been afraid to say

Mentioned in this episode
Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity: https://marthabeck.com/the-way-of-integrity/
Last week’s episode with GS Youngblood: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/powerful-at-work-powerless-at-home-how-to-lead-a-strong-woman

Listen to the full episode
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/infinite-devotion/id1703653891
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NOiUF8kMERd52klxIrr1w
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

More from Infinite Devotion
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 What Safety Really Means

01:19 Truth Requires Safety

02:58 Martha Beck Truth Year

06:26 Women and Deeper Fear

07:40 Body Knows the Truth

09:22 Truth Changes Your Life

11:41 Comfort Versus Safety

16:41 Lead With Hard Truths

20:12 Receive Her Truth Too

23:19 Reviving Long Relationships

24:45 Let Truth Wash Away

27:34 Practices to Tell Truth

30:38 Final Challenge and Wrap

Powerful at Work, Powerless at Home: Leading a Strong Woman with GS Youngblood | Infinite Devotion Episode 152

I haven't had a guest on this show in over a year. I decided I'd only bring someone on if I really wanted to talk to them, and it took a year to find that person. GS Youngblood is the author whose books I've bought and given away more than anyone else's, and when he talks to men about relationships, you can hear that he has lived every word.

GS spent seventeen years in the tech industry before a divorce left him feeling like a failure and sent him looking for a better way. Twenty years of study, and a thirteen-year relationship with a woman who carries both a strong feminine and a strong masculine, became the laboratory for his Masculine Blueprint: three elements that, embodied daily, put a man back in his masculine core and let his woman feel safe enough to open.

In this episode we get into:

• Why so many men run teams at work and fold the moment their woman gets upset
• Respond versus react, and why good intentions vanish the second the fight starts
• The little boy trying to get out of trouble, and where that "oh shit" feeling really comes from
• "I may or may not be the problem, but I am the solution," and how to take full responsibility without drowning in blame
• The trifecta of embodiment practice, therapy, and coaching
• How to feel deeply without becoming the "emotional flow boy," and what it means to hold your emotions and share them judiciously
• Logistical, emotional, and sexual leadership, and why all of it starts with inner clarity
• What to do when she asks you to lead and then shoots down every attempt
• The sentence his ex-wife said that took him years to fully understand: "I can do all this stuff. I just don't want to have to."
• Strong spine, big heart
• Holding her fire, setting a boundary without leaving connection, and the line between a hard truth and actual abuse
• Why everything she feels is accurate to something, even when it doesn't match the facts
• The fear most women carry that most men never account for

Connect with GS Youngblood
Website: https://gsyoungblood.com/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/gsyoungbloodmir
Books (on Amazon): The Masculine in Relationship and The Art of Embodiment for Men

More from Infinite Devotion
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

00:48 Why His Work Resonates

02:38 The Leadership Challenge

04:42 Origin of the Blueprint

08:04 Doing vs Embodying

11:19 Three Blueprint Elements

11:44 Respond Versus React

17:18 Nervous System Over Mindset

18:36 Responsibility Without Blame

23:43 Deescalating Conflict Fast

27:16 Feeling Emotions Like a Man

31:29 Flow Boy vs Containment

34:02 Provide Structure Leadership

35:15 Inner Clarity to Lead

37:11 Logistical Emotional Sexual Leadership

38:53 Why Leading Gets Rejected

39:30 Build Conviction and Start Small

42:24 Finding Inner Clarity

45:49 Work Mode vs Relationship Mode

53:12 Safety and Emotional Containment

56:49 Boundaries and Abuse Labels

01:05:59 Fear Empathy and Truth

Dawn sat down with a list of questions and didn't tell me what was on it. We were both in tears within the first five minutes.

A few weeks ago I posted, "I don't want you to be mine. I want you to be free and choose to stay." On Facebook it reached over a million people, and plenty of them were angry. One said that giving a partner that much freedom will turn even the best person into a bully. Another asked if it meant Dawn was done surrendering. This episode answers both. It's also the first time I've told the story of what happened on a beach in Los Angeles seven months ago, when I asked Dawn to stand up.

We also get into why most men's ideas about leading are really about getting, what faith becomes once it stops being a way to avoid questions, and why male, man, and masculine mean three different things.

In this episode:

• What we each love about ourselves and each other (it got emotional fast)
• The beach in LA, and why I asked Dawn to stand before offering her a new symbol of her surrender
• Dawn on finding her own wholeness and choosing to follow from there instead of from self-abandonment
• Why freedom doesn't turn your partner into a bully, and why I don't set boundaries on what Dawn can do
• Two sentences that make everything make sense: there are no contradictions, and check your premises
• Why your body sometimes has to learn to trust you again before you can fully trust it
• Walking out of Catholic education at 13, and what faith means to us now
• Male, man, and masculine, and what actually makes a male become a man
• Do I get a blowjob every day? (No. And the men who want one are giving themselves away.)
• Why other men seeing and wanting Dawn doesn't threaten me
• Marriage as a choice you make every single day
• The teachers who've shaped me most, and the one I've learned the most from by far

The book: Infinite Devotion comes out November 10. Join the email list at https://infinitedevotion.com to get notified when it's available!

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

Everyone knows their love language. Couples quiz each other on it, therapists assign the book as homework, and it gets treated as the starting point of relational wisdom. In this episode I take the framework apart. Your love language is real, and it is telling you something true. It is a precise map of where your emptiness lives: the exact spot where your okayness depends on your partner's behavior.

I share my own story with words of affirmation, how the neediness underneath it played out with Dawn for years, and what finally filled the void that no amount of her words ever could.

In this episode:

• What Gary Chapman actually got right, and where the prescription built on top of it goes wrong
• What each of the five love languages confesses about where your self-abandonment lives
• Where the emptiness comes from, and why your partner can never fill it
• Three tests you can run tonight: joy or relief, what happens if they stop, and who you were really excited for when you found the quiz
• How my collapse into neediness pressed on Dawn's oldest wounds
• Why love from outside only ever lands on the performance
• Inner child work: the only substance shaped like the hole
• What love languages become when neither person needs anything

Read the full companion post on the blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/why-i-no-longer-have-a-love-language-it-was-lying-to-me

Have a question about this episode? Send it through the contact page at infinitedevotion.com and I will answer it on a future Q&A. Questions for Dawn are welcome too; she will take them on in a future Ask Dawn Anything.

If this episode was valuable to you, a five star review takes fifteen seconds and helps us reach more people. It is the only thing I will ever ask of you.

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Love Languages Hype

01:35 Framework vs Prescription

03:51 Love Language as Emptiness Map

07:21 Where Emptiness Comes From

16:02 Why It Turns Transactional

22:33 Relief or Joy Tests

24:30 Andrew and Dawn Story

33:06 Filling the Void Within

38:32 Love Without Strings

41:15 Use Love Language as Diagnosis

43:51 Closing and Next Steps

How to Be Untriggerable | Infinite Devotion Episode 149

In this week’s episode Dawn and I dig into a word I've used for years, one that keeps coming back to me from listeners, especially men: untriggerable.

This episode is about what that word actually means to us, why most people go about it the wrong way, and what it's really taken for us to get to the other side of the things that used to set us off.

In This Episode

• Why the word "untriggerable" resonates with so many people, and why nobody wants to feel triggered in the first place
• Why we can't discipline our way into being untriggerable, and why effort and force actually work against us
• The real definition: being untriggerable means encountering the thing that used to upset us and having it not upset us anymore, not forcing ourselves to not react
• Why we have to let ourselves get triggered, fully and repeatedly, instead of trying to shut the reaction down
• The four survival responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and how each one has shown up differently for each of us
• Why the fawn response is likely the most common one in men, and how it shows up as the "nice guy" pattern
• Why being untriggerable is never about the moment we're in, it's about what happens next time
• How resisting a trigger keeps it alive, and why trying to talk ourselves out of a feeling is the same suppression that created the pattern to begin with
• Gabor Maté's idea that trauma is self-inflicted, meaning the event is one thing and the ongoing suffering we build on top of it is another
• How single-sentence beliefs get written in childhood, before language even exists, and how life keeps handing us "evidence" for them
• Why it can take until your late 30s or 40s for these patterns to run out of road
• The different way triggers show up for men and women: women often protect the physical body, men often protect the heart, and why understanding that difference matters more than fully relating to it
• Why "your triggers are gifts" is true even though it hasn't felt that way to us in the moment
• Why this whole process isn't something we can do perfectionistically, and what it's actually felt like as it's started to change for us

Quotes Worth Sitting With

"You can't discipline yourself out of a reaction."

"Being untriggerable isn't about this time. Think about next time."

"Every attempt to talk yourself out of feeling what you're already feeling is the whole process just keeping itself alive."

"The trauma is all based in the reaction that we have to it, and the meanings that we make out of it."

The Kid Nobody Picked: An Open Q&A With My Men's Group | Infinite Devotion Episode 148

Every Wednesday morning I get on a call with the men inside Becoming a Dominant Man and answer their questions. This time I flipped it and told them to ask me anything.

They did. What came back was a mix of the light and the heavy, which is how life actually goes. My bike. My sex toys, or lack thereof. What it actually takes to prepare for a nomadic life. How you get a dog to the vet without an address. And the friend who died at 38 a few days before this call, and what that did to my thinking about power exchange, plans, and time.

The heaviest question was the one about what makes me different as a dominant man. The answer is nothing, except that I've been willing to sit down with the seven year old who got picked on all day and let him say what he never got to say. Including the part where I admitted, out loud, that I still half believe nobody likes me.

In this episode:

• The bike I ride and why drop bars saved my shoulders
• Best and worst part of RV life (same answer for both)
• Whether constant novelty kills novelty
• My two biggest challenges building a 24/7 power exchange, and why life never gets in the way of it
• Ten years of preparation, six months of purging, and the storage unit I now regret
• Why community on the road is still the problem I haven't solved
• Escapees mail service, Banfield, Discount Tire, and the unglamorous logistics of no fixed address
• Abundance as acceptance, Carl Jung, and the two year old running most men's lives
• Why a sailboat would be a hundred times harder than an RV
• The only honest answer to "where's your favorite place you've been"

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

We haven't done one of these in a long time, so we sat down by the fire and answered your questions. Yours, all 6,500 plus of you who follow along on email and social, and Dawn's own following too. This week is every safe for work question you sent in. The sexual ones, the kinky ones, those are coming soon to the paid platforms.

In this episode Dawn gets into:

• How she handles getting emotionally dysregulated without asking me to fix her, and why "help me" used to be a crutch
• Practicing trust and surrender when the future of your marriage feels genuinely uncertain
• The fear of losing this connection, and why what you're actually afraid of is never what you think it is
• Why "life gets in the way" is the wrong frame entirely, and what to do instead
• Her advice for a younger dom sub couple trying to build something that lasts
• How she handles public opinion, criticism, and being recognized in public
• Her favorite version of me that almost nobody else ever gets to see
• What she's had to unlearn about sex, marriage, and monogamy
• What she thinks couples misunderstand most about staying alive to each other over the long haul
• Our actual morning and evening routines, no filter
• How I show up for her when she's sick
• What to do when your partner's preferences don't match your needs, and how to tell the difference between a hard no and a freeze response
• The words that actually comfort her when she's struggling, and why there's no perfect sentence a man can say
• How she handles it when she feels like I'm dropping the ball, and why that question itself was worth taking apart
• And the one we get asked every single time we do one of these: when exactly did she fall from heaven
•

All the NSFW questions, the sexual ones, the dirty ones, the kinky ones, will be coming in the weeks ahead on Dawn's OnlyFans and inside the Infinite Devotion Community. Keep an eye out.

Dawn's OnlyFans: https://dawnofdesire.net/
Infinite Devotion Community: https://community.infinitedevotion.com/

Listen to the full episode:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/infinite-devotion/id1703653891
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NOiUF8kMERd52klxIrr1w
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Fireside Chat Setup

02:09 Ask Dawn Anything Begins

03:08 Self Regulation and Support

06:47 Surrender in Crisis

09:57 Keeping the Dynamic Alive

15:02 Fear of Losing Connection

16:44 Advice for Engaged Couples

19:25 Handling Public Image

22:33 Containment and Desire

28:04 Favorite Side of Andrew

29:51 Unlearning Marriage Myths

31:31 Desire Keeps Love Alive

33:23 Fantasy Versus Real Kinks

33:54 Learning Self Love

36:11 Morning Night Rituals

38:33 Care When Sick

39:53 Needs Wants And No

43:54 Support Without Fixing

49:24 Sub Dom Control Trap

54:52 Closing And Heaven Joke

This week we get into one of the most practical ways I lead in our relationship: taking ownership of our health optimization. It started with a routine idea to get full blood work done and turned into a discovery that Dawn's ferritin was at seven, that I have early markers for Hashimoto's, and that Dawn carries a genetic marker (lipoprotein A) that changes how her body handles certain fats.

Along the way we talk about what it actually means for a man to lead, why individualized data beats throwing darts at a dartboard, and how being cared for this deeply lands for the one receiving it.

A few things we cover:

• Why circulating iron and ferritin are not the same thing, and why it matters
• What a standard yearly checkup tends to miss
• Using your own body's data instead of internet rules about "good" and "bad" foods
• How health optimization becomes a place to lead, and to be led
• Eat the chip

Function Health

We are not affiliated with Function Health in any way (yet, but if anyone from Function sees this...call me!) I just love what it's done for us and want to share it. They have a referral program that gives anyone who signs up an extra $25 discount, and gives us a $25 credit in return.

Click here to join Function with $25 off your first year

If you sign up and learn something helpful about yourself, come tell us. We’d love to hear it.

Links:
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
All of our courses and offerings: https://infinitedevotion.com/store
Becoming a Dominant Man: https://infinitedevotion.com/becoming-a-dominant-man
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

Connect

• Instagram: @_infinitedevotion
• YouTube: @infinitedevotion

• • More writing on the blog

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome Back Lakeside

01:11 Leading Through Health

02:50 Ferritin Wake Up Call

07:37 Taking Charge of Care

10:35 Function Health Discovery

14:27 AI Powered Tracking

20:05 Biometrics Environment Data

26:09 Supplement Tweaks Results

27:50 Dawn Perspective Perfectionism

31:45 Cholesterol LpA Genetic Risk

34:18 Actionable Heart Risk Plan

35:14 CT Scan Peace of Mind

36:20 Lowering LDL Ammo

37:29 Rethinking Cooking Fats

38:56 Fear to Self Trust

44:12 Love Leadership Polarity

47:20 Body Signals and Salt

49:03 Different Bodies Same Meals

52:57 Grounding the Fear

56:31 Why He Leads Health

01:00:52 Advocacy and Wrap Up

The first version of us you ever saw was the least authentic version of us you'll ever see. Same goes for you, if you’re doing the work and going inward in your life. Every new thing that surfaces as you shed conditioning is truer than what came before it, which means the person your partner is becoming is more real than the one they used to be.

Dawn joined me for this one, and we recorded outside by a lake in northern Wisconsin. Bugs, birds, wind, squeaky lawn chairs, all of it. Slowest, easiest conversation we've had on here in a long time.

What we get into:

• Where we've been since April (Grand Canyon, Page, southern Utah, Moab, Yellowstone, the Black Hills) and why moving weekly burned me out
• Why I've been pivoting away from the dominant/submissive framing, and why none of the teaching actually changes
• The version of you that lives in everyone else's mind, and what happens when you stop matching it
• What it means when someone else's life makes you think "how dare they"
• Permission versus acceptance, and why permission can't be used as a tool to pry something out of your partner
• Why intimacy and sex are not the same word
• One year of adult content: what surprised us, what Dawn found in it, and what I'm still working out for myself

We'll probably do more of these outside.

If this one lands for you, take five seconds and leave a five star review on Apple or Spotify, or drop a comment on YouTube. It's the only thing I ask in return for everything we give away, and it's what puts this in front of more people.

Links:
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
All of our courses and offerings: https://infinitedevotion.com/store
Becoming a Dominant Man: https://infinitedevotion.com/becoming-a-dominant-man
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

Connect

• Instagram: @_infinitedevotion
• YouTube: @infinitedevotion
• More writing on the blog

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Lakeside Podcast Setup

01:57 Why We’re Here Today

04:15 Beyond Dom Sub Labels

09:20 RV Pace and Burnout

11:44 Southwest Route Highlights

16:50 Boondocking and Remote Living

18:25 Page Arizona and Lake Powell

21:25 Antelope Canyon Must See

22:39 Moab Parks and Mountain Detour

24:50 Yellowstone Awe and Wildlife

28:56 Dakotas Stops and Badlands Take

32:56 Wisconsin Reset and Fan Meetup

34:53 RV Parking Requests

35:19 Avoiding Big Cities

36:14 Adult Content Backlash

38:58 Authenticity Evolution

48:52 Acceptance in Relationships

52:44 Permission vs Safety

57:37 Porn First Then Depth

01:00:54 First Year Reflections

01:07:48 Romance Books Mirror

01:12:55 Lakeside Wrap Up

01:14:20 Rate and Review

Join the Infinite Devotion Community: https://infinitedevotion.com/community

Most couples who have been together a decade or two are not fighting. They are holding their breath. Somewhere along the way the relationship became a landmine map, a whole terrain of subjects you don't raise, tones you don't use, days you don't bring up money. Nobody signed up for that. It accumulated, one unhandled thing at a time, until the ground you could safely stand on got smaller every year.

This is part two of the abundance versus scarcity conversation, and it takes last week's idea straight into love, sex, and embodiment. Abundance is trust. Here is what that trust does once you put another person in the passenger seat, and why the couple who can find it is the one still laughing, still adventuring, and still having sex ten and twenty years down the road.

If you haven't heard part one yet, it stands on its own, but you'll get more out of this one if you go back to it after.

In this episode:

• Why scarcity turns your partner from a person into a supply line to be secured and monitored
• Two people, two brakes, one car, and why you both keep blaming the other for the fact that nothing is moving
• The landmine map, how it forms without anyone deciding it should, and why it explains a fading sex life better than "we fell out of love" ever could
• What abundance actually looks like in a man, why control is always the tell, and why he can lead, hold her, and hear a no without it landing as a verdict on his worth
• Why a woman's nervous system reads a man's nervous system first, and why neediness pushes away the very desire it's reaching for
• What abundance looks like in a woman, why the guard she built for good reasons is the thing standing between her and the surrender she wants, and why no man can install that trust for her
• The shift from facing each other looking for threat to standing side by side looking forward at a life of possibility
• Why "whatever happens, we'll handle it" is the most valuable thing a couple can own, and how it dissolves the landmine map instead of tiptoeing around it
• How losing the scarcity makes money conversations, sex conversations, and honestly the whole rest of your life easier
• An honest word on the in-between, why the first attempts to let go will feel reckless, and why that feeling is information about the size of the fear rather than proof you can't do it

The whole point in one line: love and connection do not have to be hard. Fear, control, and lack are what make them hard. Trust is what makes them easy.

If this one lands, a five-star review on Apple or Spotify, or a comment and a like on YouTube, is the single biggest thing you can do to help it reach more people.

Connect

• Instagram: @_infinitedevotion
• YouTube: @infinitedevotion
• More writing on the blog

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Abundance Recap

05:23 Scarcity Creates Clinging

07:12 Partner As Resource

11:02 Landmine Relationship Map

14:58 Abundance For Men

17:48 Control Versus Presence

24:33 Hearing No With Trust

26:06 Why Women Feel It

30:05 Abundance For Women

39:39 Shared Abundance As Couple

43:28 Truth Play Adventure

49:08 Devotion And No Pressure

50:47 Practice And Grace

53:34 Wrap Up And Review

This episode is Part 1 of a two part series on the single biggest factor I've found underneath what makes a relationship work or fail, and it has almost nothing to do with what you think.

Most people hear "abundance" and think money. I want to blow that idea open. Abundance and scarcity aren't financial categories, they're the lens your whole nervous system looks through before you make a single decision, and that lens is either quietly running your relationship, your body, your time, and your sense of what you deserve, or it's setting you free to actually live.

In this episode I get into:

• Why abundance isn't about money, it's about trust
• The image that changed how I think about this completely (a car with one foot on the gas and one on the brake)
• A real moment from my own week where I had to trust instead of fix
• Why people with the most money are often not the most abundant people you'll ever meet
• Where this pattern shows up in your time, your capacity, your trust, your health, and your creativity

Next Monday in Part 2, I'm taking this same pattern into relationship specifically, why scarcity is quietly killing sex lives and making people undesirable, and why abundance is the thing that actually makes someone magnetic. Come back for that one.

Connect with us:

Podcast, blog, courses, and coaching: infinitedevotion.com

Dawn on Instagram: instagram.com/dawn.of.desire

Infinite Devotion on Instagram: instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Dawn of Desire adult content: dawnofdesire.net

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome to Infinite Devotion

02:45 Abundance Versus Scarcity

03:51 Car Brake Metaphor

06:06 Defining Abundance

09:56 What Abundance Feels Like

14:12 Personal Funk Example

21:42 Scarcity Mindset Explained

26:55 Money Is Not Abundance

32:27 Tour Through Life Areas

40:08 Take Your Foot Off Brake

41:33 Next Week Relationship Teaser

42:21 Closing and Thanks

Last week I went live to walk through Receiving To Give, the essay for the women. This week I'm going live again for its twin, Giving To Receive, the men's essay I published Friday. It's the most personal thing I've written, about a pattern I lived inside my own marriage for years without being able to name it: a man who gives everything and still comes up empty, because underneath the giving was neediness.

This one's for the men. If you're a woman listening, there's a section near the end written just for you, and it may help you understand the man beside you in a way nothing else has.

In this episode:

• The child support story: the years I covered everything for Dawn's daughters, called it generosity, and the quiet sentence running underneath it, now she'll love me, now she'll want me
• The simple test for whether a gift is really a gift: what happens when nothing comes back
• Why I wasn't actually a giver at all, I was oriented around getting, reading Dawn's mood every day to know if I was okay
• Needs versus neediness: a real need resolves when it's met, and why the ones that never resolve aren't needs at all
• Why sex was where this showed up loudest, and what I was actually trying to get from it
• The boy who learned his feelings weren't welcome, and why that closes a man's heart to survive
• Why it wasn't that Dawn didn't love me, it was that I couldn't receive love no matter how much of it she gave
• The two men in the same kitchen, same touch, and why she can feel the difference between a gift and a test
• The only way out: taking her completely out of the equation and learning to give yourself what you never got
• Why meeting that pain will feel like weakness before it feels like anything else, and why it's the doorway to real strength
• A note for the women watching: you were never the shortfall, and why you can't fill a bottomless hunger no matter how hard you try

The whole thing lands here: what you think you need from her was never actually hers to give. The moment you learn to give it to yourself, your heart opens, your giving goes free, and what she gives you finally has somewhere to land.

Read the essay: Giving To Receive

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post called Receiving to Give which you can read here: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/receiving-to-give

and the response to it caught me off guard. My inbox was flooded for days. So many women told me they felt seen in a way they hadn't from anything else I've written, and it was clear I needed to bring my voice to it directly, which is what this episode is. I delivered this episode live, which gave it a special sort of energy.

I've been using the language of doing to get versus receiving to give with women for years, but I realized I'd never actually taught it outside our deeper courses and coaching work. So in this episode I'm breaking it down from the ground up, live, and taking your questions along the way.

I talk about where this language actually came from, which is watching my wife Dawn nearly run herself into the ground for years. She looked disciplined and responsible from the outside, but underneath it she was operating from fear, chasing a standard of perfection she could never let herself reach. I had to stop looking at her behaviors and start paying attention to the woman underneath them.

I get into the real diagnostic question that most women are afraid to ask themselves, which is simply, am I doing this because I want to, or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't. I talk about what happens when that fear-based doing becomes so normal it starts to feel like responsibility instead of fear, and how that's exactly when a woman loses touch with her own desire, including in the bedroom.

Then I get into what receiving to give actually looks like in practice. Not passivity, not doing nothing, but checking in with yourself before you act so your doing comes from fullness instead of obligation. I talk about why performing feminine embodiment is just the same fear-based pattern wearing new language, and why the real practice is simply noticing, without judgment, when you've overridden your own signal.

I also spend some time talking directly to the men listening, about what it actually looks like to support a woman through this without trying to control or fix her, because force from you just reinforces the same pattern she's already fighting inside herself.

I answer a handful of questions live toward the end, including whether this dynamic shows up differently for men, what to do when you know what you want but can't seem to give it to yourself, and how to let a partner have his reaction to your no without absorbing it as your responsibility to manage.

Next week I'll be back with the other half of this conversation, called Giving to Receive, which turns this same lens on men.

Connect with us:

Podcast, blog, courses, and coaching: infinitedevotion.com

Dawn on Instagram: instagram.com/dawn.of.desire

Infinite Devotion on Instagram: instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Dawn of Desire adult content: dawnofdesire.net

This week it's just me, and I want to walk you through a paradox that has tripped up almost every man I've ever worked with.

I'm going to tell you that you need to lead. Lead your relationship, lead your life, take a position, hold the ground. And in the same breath I'm going to tell you that you control almost nothing. You don't control her, you don't control the outcome, you don't even control yourself. Both are true at the same time, and learning to hold both is what lets you actually lead instead of just forcing.

If you can grasp this one, it changes how you lead, how you relate to yourself, and how your woman relates to you. Take your time with it. If you're in a relationship, listen together and have some honest conversations about what comes up.

In this episode:

• The three ways men fall apart when they can't hold the paradox: the man who forces, the man who flees, and the man who freezes, and why all three come from the same root of being at war with reality
• Why the forcing man looks strong but is actually the most afraid man in the room
• How everything you do to your partner, you do to yourself first, and why your relationship is always downstream of your relationship with yourself
• Why control, inner and outer, is always fear wearing a costume of discipline, responsibility, and standards
• What surrender actually is, and why it's the opposite of giving up, going passive, or becoming a doormat
• The river as the model for real strength: yielding to every bank while carving the Grand Canyon
• The hard reality I had to face about why Dawn didn't want to have sex with me, and how surrendering to it was the only thing that let me change
• Why letting go feels like everything will fall apart, and what actually happens when you stop gripping
• How to practice this in the small moments: the drink, the laptop, the phone, and the little pause that changes everything
• Why the strongest, most untriggerable man isn't the one in control, but the one who stopped needing to be

The whole point lands here: you can't lead something you can't see, and you can't see reality while you're fighting it, fleeing it, or numbing out from it. Surrender is how you get back in contact with what's real, and that's the only ground you can actually change anything from.

Connect with us:

Podcast, blog, courses, and coaching: infinitedevotion.com

Dawn on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dawn.of.desire

Infinite Devotion on Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Dawn of Desire adult content: https://dawnofdesire.net/

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome and Setup

01:18 The Leadership Paradox

04:06 Fight Flight Freeze

09:57 It Starts Within

15:39 Fear and Control

19:44 What Surrender Is

25:00 River Metaphor

28:28 Facing Relationship Reality

32:26 Leading Without Force

35:38 Practice the Pause

45:30 Unshakable Leadership

49:49 Closing and Next Steps

Dawn is back for the second week in a row, and this one goes somewhere raw and real.

This episode is about shame. Specifically, what it costs you to carry it, what it does to your relationship, and what becomes possible when you finally set it down.

Andrew and Dawn have spent the last year living about as openly as two people can live. The podcast, the coaching, the blog, the Instagram, and yes, the OnlyFans. All of it is them, all of it is real, and none of it is an accident. This episode is the honest conversation about why they've chosen to live this way and what it has meant for each of them individually and for their relationship.

Dawn's journey from church girl to the woman you see today is not a cautionary tale. It's an invitation into whatever freedom might look like for you, through an example of what it feels like for us.

In this episode:

• Why shame doesn't just hurt you individually, it cuts off parts of you that your partner can never access, and what that actually costs a relationship
• The shame economy and why the people judging you most loudly are showing you exactly what they've locked away in themselves
• What happened when Andrew and Dawn started making adult content together and why it was never really about the money
• The connection between suppression and sexuality, and why the bigger the shame, the bigger what's underneath it
• Why you can't borrow someone else's permission to be yourself, and where that permission actually has to come from
• The difference between living openly and performing openness, and why only one of them actually sets you free
• Dawn's experience going from someone who wouldn't even say the word porn to becoming one of the fastest growing creators on OnlyFans
• What shameless living has done for their sex life after 17 years together

This is not an episode about kink or porn. It's an episode about what happens to two people when they stop hiding.

Connect with us:

Podcast, blog, courses, and coaching: infinitedevotion.com

Dawn on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dawn.of.desire

Infinite Devotion on Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Dawn of Desire adult content: https://dawnofdesire.net/

It Was Always About More Than Dom/Sub

This week marks a turning point for this podcast and for the Infinite Devotion brand.

After several years as Dom Sub Devotion, the podcast is returning to its original name: Infinite Devotion. Not as a retreat from what we've built, but as a homecoming to what this was always actually about.

Andrew and Dawn sit down together to talk through why this change is happening now, what Dom/sub dynamics actually taught them about themselves and each other, and why the lessons from that world have never belonged exclusively to that world.

If you've been here from the beginning, nothing is being left behind. If you're finding us for the first time, you don't need to speak our language to belong here.

In this episode:

• Why the podcast started as Infinite Devotion, became Dom Sub Devotion, and is returning to the original name
• What the Dom/sub container actually required of each of them individually, and what it taught them that has nothing to do with labels or lifestyle
• The shame economy inside the kink world and why it's been a ceiling on the reach of this work
• Why depth is the only thing that actually changes people, and how AI and social media are reinforcing the very patterns that cause the problems people are trying to solve
• The full integration of Infinite Devotion, Dawn of Desire, and OnlyFans as different facets of one shameless, openly lived life
• What devotion actually means to each of them, and why the name has kept proving itself more right the longer they've lived it

This is Infinite Devotion. Welcome back, and welcome in.

Connect with us:

Podcast, blog, courses, and coaching: infinitedevotion.com

Dawn on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dawn.of.desire

Infinite Devotion on Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion

Dawn of Desire adult content: https://dawnofdesire.net/

Welcome to Infinite Devotion. To learn more about us visit https://infinitedevotion.com