Looking for guidance. Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk, turned to intimacy teacher Michaela Boehm to answer their relationship questions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The couple did a Q&A with Boehm, which was published on Goop, where they opened up about their personal stressors living with their combined four children and how to balance their own romance while in quarantine.
“We’re lucky that we have a really solid relationship, but we’re also in the house with the kids and it’s pretty close quarters,” Paltrow, 47, said during the video chat on Thursday, April 2.
The Iron Man actress noted that “I think we all feel, especially my teenagers right now are really feeling very pendent, especially [my daughter] Apple, who’s a very social creature.”
She then explained that she and Falchuk, 49, are all in the house with the kids and their dogs and “trying to work,” which left her asking, “what are you supposed to do?”
The expert responded that schedules, lists of activities, and compartmentalizing one’s day can ease the tension, but she joked that “teenagers you just have to live with.”
“You have to have areas of engagement that have timeframes attached to them,” Boehm said. “Certain dimensions of one’s life are not being mixed together all the time, because that kills everything.”
The intimacy guru admitted that during these trying times, “couples’ time gets muddled [and] that is really grating on anyone.”
She noted that “it’s fine to take an hour or two that doesn’t involve anyone else in the household” if you need to.
During the quarantine and current period of fear, Boehm recommended that people “put any kind of relationship, drama, discussions, things that need to be worked on, on the back-burner” in order to “focus on the best possible communication.”
The Politician actress asked what Boehm would tell someone who is “having a hard time feeling sexual” amid the pandemic, which she said her friend was struggling with.
Boehm replied that women’s bodies in particular go “into the survival mode” when put under stress, which tends to lead to them not wanting “so much pleasure.”
That will eventually pass when the threat level reduces, Boehm explained, but if one wants to ramp up their sexuality now, they can engage “with the senses,” which “brings sensuality up and sensuality begets sexuality.”
“Engagement with the senses is also very important for survival,” she added. “So by going via the senses, and that would be things like, self-care, beauty, dressing in ways that feel particularly good.”
Falchuk and Paltrow later commented on their own dynamic during the current crisis state, and the American Horror Story cocreator revealed that Paltrow has been doing “great.”
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