How to Talk About Sex with Your Spouse with Monica Ortega

Do you ever feel embarrassed when it comes to talking with your husband about lovemaking? Do you know how to ask for what you need... or communicate if something feels "meh" ... or even worse, hurts? Monica Ortega, co-host with her husband Renzo of the Two Become Family podcast, chats with Sarah about the book she and Renzo wrote: Lovemaking: How to Talk About Sex with Your Spouse. As a faithful Catholic couple informed by church teaching and theology of the body, they noticed that when it comes to candid and practical advice--there's still a lot to figure out! Sarah and Monica talk about mental load both spouses bear (as well as the gallant, swoon-worthy way husbands can help wives with their mental load!), feeding sexual intimacy with the whole-life intimacy that a couple builds outside the bedroom, and how to tell your husband when something gives you the heebie-jeebies. 

Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse, Ave Maria Press, 2025

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Transcript

Sarah: 0:50

I'm so excited to have a conversation with Monica Ortega on this episode of My Delight. Monica is the co-host of the To Become Family Podcast, along with her husband Renzo. And together they are the authors of the book, Lovemaking, how to talk about sex with your spouse. So again, I'm just so thankful to have Monica Ortega on the podcast today. Welcome Monica.

Monica: 1:13

Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm so excited to chat with you tonight.

Sarah: 1:18

Ah, thank you. So this is really wonderful that you and your husband have written this book about how to talk about sex with your spouse. We were chatting before we recorded about how there are. A few books that a lot of Catholics know about to help guide them in, you know, in how to view sexuality authentically. But they, a lot of them were written a while ago and don't address the practicals very specifically. So this is a huge gift. Can you give us a little insight into like what you were thinking about as you wrote this book and what your main motivations were?

Monica: 1:56

Sure, absolutely. So we one thing that we were excited about when we were invited by our publisher Ave Maria Press was that they asked us to write this book together. And we felt like that was a really special and important privilege that we were that we were given to be able to speak from both lenses, from both the feminine and the masculine side of this topic. Because, you That is so necessary for us to be able to see and hear the complementarity, but then also sometimes the difficulty and the struggle that comes in how two people, two very different, unique people come and approach this very intimate. topic and now as a married couple, this very intimate reality of your lives. And while I don't want to like over broad stroke male and female perspectives, it even just to offer two different voices because you and your spouse are going to approach things similarly, but also differently. So that for starters was really important for us To be doing this together as a team and to offer both of our voices and our big hope was to offer an opportunity for spouses to To see not just the theology, the morality of the Catholic church teaching on sexuality. Because like you said, there's wonderful, wonderful books out there to learn about that. And they were books that we had read before we had gotten married and we're like, okay, we've got this down. And then we got married and we were like, Ooh. We do not have this down. And, you know, we, there was just several times where we looked at each other and we're like, why is this so hard? Like, it's so beautiful. It's so magnificent and it's so challenging. And so we wanted to try to just approach it from. Our, you know, with a little bit of humor, a little bit of lightheartedness, but also just real authentic, like this is what it looks like day to day to work on your intimacy, to practice lovemaking, to sometimes get it wrong, you know, to sometimes not be on the same page and how can we open up those delicate conversations where can we start, you know, maybe things You know, things are okay. And you're like, but I thought it'd be great. And it's like, how do I actually say that out loud? So really really our big goal was for it to be a conversation starter amongst couples This doesn't have all the answers, but it has ways to approach the conversations And we really wanted to encourage couples to communicate Openly and authentically. And even if it's like, well, I'm gonna blame Monica and Renzo for for the beginning of this conversation, so you didn't have to enter it too awkwardly. That's so generous of you that you'll take the fall, you'll,

Sarah: 4:57

you'll be the Well said Well, I love that. Even in the subtitle here, you're just putting forth this idea that you should be talking about sex with your spouse. That this is something we should be doing and acknowledging that it might be difficult. So you're going to give ideas for how to talk about sex with your spouse. Would you say that it is pretty common for couples to feel awkward, stuck, unsure, or like not even sure where to start with discussing sexual intimacy with each other, even though they're married to each other and so close.

Monica: 5:36

Yes, absolutely. And I think part of it is just our own upbringing. Like we weren't necessarily taught how to talk about this well. You know, we have these different places that we've come from, these different experiences in our past. Maybe. Yeah. It's our sexual education from school, which was more about anatomy and like, here's a banana and this is how a condom works or, or we, you know, we had chastity speakers and abstinence talks and, you know, talks on purity and virtue. And the two seemed like it's in such opposition and then maybe our home life, like our parents maybe had the big talk one time or maybe they never even talked about it. Maybe it was spoken about really, really regularly in our, in one person's home, but like never brought up in the other person's house. Right. So we're all coming from these different backgrounds and then putting them together in a marriage. And just like in all of the communication as far as like conflict resolution and how to discern like what jobs we're going to do and where we're going to live, this topic just feels more delicate and more intimate and it should, so sometimes it feels a little bit more scary or taboo to approach it. And I think there's also, there's a lot of feelings involved. So you're nervous about hurting somebody else's feelings to be honest with them. Maybe you don't receive honest feedback very well, and it's hard. It's hard to hear those things. So I thought we thought that it was really important to help couples like to frame these conversations. The other thing that we Really felt passionately about is that we needed to take sex out of its own isolated box and realize that lovemaking and intimacy happens, not just in the bedroom. And that like your whole integrated life is what enhances that experience at what it's what feeds that experience. It's what leads to that experience. Because if we're just leaving it in the bedroom, we're just leaving it in the category of sex, then We're having that gift that God has given our marriage. Like we're, we're, it's falling short of what it's meant to be. And so we also talk a lot about all the things that can influence your satisfaction of sex that have nothing to do necessarily with sex itself. So it's kind of a combo. It's got a lot about. The act itself and then it's also got a lot about the stuff that leads to the act and the follow up afterwards

Sarah: 8:23

Yes. Oh, I love that because it is the whole person It's the whole couple that comes together to make love not just your body But your heart your soul your whole week your year like all your other experiences exactly are Are forming and shaping you and affecting you, are taking your energy, are taking, you know, a lot of space with your mental load, the quality of your relationship how many of your kids have the flu any given week,

Monica: 8:55

right? Yep. Yeah, it's funny you say mental load. Chapter two is all about the mental load. Let's go into that. What

Sarah: 9:03

would you like, what would you like Catholic married men and women or engaged men and women to know about mental load and lovemaking?

Monica: 9:09

Sure. So one of the, yeah, one of the things that we discover through marriage is that both spouses are absolutely carrying a mental load. They're both They're both very aware of their responsibilities and they're carrying things that matter and are important. But one thing that we learned is that through the feminine genius, the woman's mental load typically is more relational heavy. And is really considering not just tasks that can be checked off, but interpersonal. Ways of being of communicating and anticipating future needs of others By knowing them well, and so that's a that's a deep concern of women. They're nurturing and their Maternity whether or not they have children that just idea of wanting to not only in one example I share is like it's not just about buying a birthday present, but like considering the whole person that you're trying to gift to While also being very aware of the budget that we're trying to stick to and like all the things. So it's, it's not like, Oh, just grab them a gift card that fits in the budget, but like, well, I want them to know that they're thought of and cared for. And, and so that's just like one example, but to acknowledge that while we both carry mental loads, they are very different and they present themselves differently and and one recommendation that we have is that men try to, instead of being passive, try to initiate by carrying some of the mental load or lightening some of the mental load of the women and how fruitful that can be for your lovemaking and for your sexual experience later on afterwards.

Sarah: 10:58

That is so swoon worthy. That is like what a gallant gentlemanly thing to do. Right? Help carry that mental load and help the woman feel valued, acknowledged, help your wife feel safe. Seeing and also help lighten it, you know, a burden shared is a lighter burden and then right, then that's going to help her feel more available, interested, excited, free to enter into the joy of lovemaking without feeling so weighed down. I think that just that term load, that really conveys that being weighed down.

Monica: 11:38

Yeah. Absolutely. And then for, I mean, on the flip side, cause it's not all on the men, but for women to try to really be self aware of like, is this a legitimate mental load that I'm carrying or is this crossing over into like anxiety? And this is a little bit of like, or control or control, right? Like this is actually taking up too much of my space and I should free myself of some of that. And be more present to my husband, you know, and like those other things can wait. He is here right now. So there's there's again, there's this both and and it's kind of a dance and it's there's no one Solution again. This is why this is not an advice book. This is a conversation starter book, right? like it's here are the here's the reality and then how is this going to Be lived in your marriage How can you accommodate, how can you adjust how can you hear one another in how you're experiencing these differences and this complementarity and move forward that way.

Sarah: 12:41

And it does, I, as you talk about discussing the mental load, it seems to me like this doesn't have to be a discussion where there's blame. Or accusationally. It could be a problem solving discussion, like awareness raising and problem solving together. Absolutely. So, yeah. That's wonderful. Well, what other, like, if you were to distill or just choose three, three things from the book that you would really like to make sure that everyone who reads it remembers and walks away with, what would you say are three real important nuggets? that you hope that the book conveys. And again, we're talking about Monica and Renzo Ortega's new book, Lovemaking, how to talk about sex with your spouse, which is newly out from Ave Maria Press. I. Which is why I'm just. choosing that number.

Monica: 13:32

No, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. So I think one thing that we hope is for couples to be, you talk about feeling seen by your spouse. We want couples to feel seen in their own unique relationship that we share some of our quirky experiences and you might relate to it or you might not but then you can see that like Oh, other couples have their own quirky situations, and that this like, whole idea of comparison, we live in this like, social media influenced world and culture that like you're not meant to look like another couple. And so this idea of well, how often should we be having sex? Or Is this normal? Is this is this a problem like all these things? It's like, well, the answer is not that clear. There's not really a quantitative number and there's not a yes or no, right for frequency. So like, this is really, it's definitely worth having conversations about and that conversation is going to evolve and devolve as the seasons of life happen and change. And so this is worth communicating about and it's worth communicating about over and over again. So that was one of our hopes is that couples can see and feel like, like where we're at is a, is a decent starting place. And are there things for improvement? For sure. But we don't have to have this goal of looking like another couple. So I think that was, that was one of our, one of our hopes with. The tone that we took in writing the book. And yeah, I know I've repeated this over and over again, but I would say that the Second goal was this communication, this conversation starter. We just want couples to feel like they can talk about anything with one another. And that is something that has, that was so important for us. Earlier in our marriage, like I said, we, we came into marriage knowing. All the theology we came in with is quote unquote good Catholics and both of us come from families of divorce. And so our goal going into marriage was to not get divorced, which is a very subpar goal because it doesn't actually tell you what you should do. It tells you what you're, what you're aiming away from. And, and in that, we were really afraid to touch on a lot of topics because isn't that the thing that if it's a problem, people get divorced with? And so we avoided a lot, right? And so, no, that is the recipe for, for some bad stuff to happen to to not talk about it. So we're very passionate about that. And then The third is just that like sex is a very important and intimate part of your marriage. But intimacy is not just sex and how important true authentic intimacy is for your marriage and how much that can enhance the overall satisfaction and pleasure of your sex life. So the two definitely. Go hand in hand, but if you had to pick one as a superior, you would want to have true and authentic intimacy as your main goal and allow the rest to follow.

Sarah: 17:04

Right, and to be, to have lovemaking be the expression of that, that emotional intimacy, emotional connection, spiritual intimacy, intellectual intimacy, just, yeah, sharing dreams and goals and memories, all of that is so important. And, you know, the truth is You can be a married couple and not have sex. I mean, you need to consummate your marriage, but there, there are examples in the church where this happens occasionally. Like, I don't know if you've heard of the Quatrochis, the servants of St. Luigi and Maria Quatrochi. The last several decades of their marriage, they decided not to have sex anymore. And they were still very unified and close spiritually and emotionally. And this was like a sacrifice. They did this. Intentionally, right as a sacrifice, but they still had a great marriage and there are a lot of times, you know, health situations will come up where maybe the husband has erectile dysfunction at a certain point because of some health issues or are the you know, wife's experiencing painful sex and it's just The humane thing to do not force this on the poor woman, whatever the reasons may be. Oh, there actually, I had a instance, someone emailed me and she had actually a friend forwarded the email. Like she was asking because she had a cancer of her genital tissues. And then with the reconstruction surgery, it was just so tender and painful. And so, anyway, like this is, we can't just assume this is always going to be, you know, a constant part of marriage, but intimacy can be, if you see it, broadly

Monica: 18:44

speaking, right? Exactly. And what is the greater good for your marriage, right? Like what? That should always be what we're striving for. So sex is one expression of that. It absolutely is like a bodily form of a spiritual reality. So it's not to at all downplay that, but when we make these free will choices for the greater good of our family, whatever that reason might be that's intimacy and that is love making. Whether or not sex is happening.

Sarah: 19:16

Yes, and the church calls marriage communion of life and love. And forming that communion, that is an intimate work, right? And the communication about it, this is really I think what your book can serve so well to help couples form a greater intimacy. in their unity as they discuss their sexual intimacy. So that's really wonderful, that being vulnerable, really sharing what your experience is, what you hope for, what your likes and dislikes are, frequency preferences, all that. It's sharing yourself, and that's where a lot of this gift of self can truly, be more vibrantly lived. You write in your book, You need connection before connecting. Our spouse can only really learn the language of our bodies. What we like, what we love, what we dislike, and what gives us the heebie jeebies if we communicate in spoken language as well. Can you comment a little bit about the relationship between the Bodily language of the body and then communicating with spoken language here. I love how you've articulated that.

Monica: 20:24

Sure. Yeah, so That's my husband's funny tone with the heebie jeebies. So there's a lot. There's a lot of term there. Yes, exactly Yeah, I think that sometimes I think media and movies have distorted our perception of this idea of body language, right? Like, that's absolutely a way to communicate, but I think we also have to be very careful not to assume that our spouse can read our mind. And, and when we go there, there can be, that inserts a lot of confusion, that inserts a lot of assuming, and that inserts a lot of insecurity. So sometimes it's really just affirming, like, no, that was a real, that was a real climax and I appreciated all that that act entailed. And then sometimes You can be dishonest in that and so then your spouse will go and keep assuming and if you don't communicate that that wasn't Authentic or that wasn't as enjoyable or that that didn't work the way that they had hoped it would you want your spouse to one enter into sexual intimacy with a space of trust and an honesty But also they want you to enjoy the experience. So if it wasn't enjoyable Let them know it's that. Right. Don't fake it and let them know. It, again, it may be sensitive and it may be hard to have that conversation, but they also want you to enjoy that experience. Mm-hmm So they don't wanna keep doing the thing that's not enjoyable. Right. Like, deep down they're like, oh shoot, swing in a miss, maybe. But like they. There's another opportunity to try again, and you don't want them to just keep repeating the same thing that's not actually working, right? And whatever that might be, that might be like a physical act, that might be a gesture, that might be the way that they're talking, it might be the way that the lighting in the room or One of the things that one of the things we're convinced about a question that every newlywed should ask is, are they able to fully enter into sex in a messy room? Oh, and I think that that controversial topic here. Yes. But I think that every couple should ask that because you want your spouse to enter in full freedom and if they're like distracted or you know, frustrated or disgusted by their surroundings. They can't fully be free to be in the moment. So it might have nothing to do with what you're doing. It might just be where you're doing it. Right. And things like that. So

Sarah: 22:58

the pile of laundry or, you know, kids toys. Or, oh my gosh, Monica, there was a student in my, my delight course a few cohorts ago and her husband kept. His woodworking tools all around the bedroom like all on the horizontal surfaces of the bedroom was filled with tools I was like no those have to go You have like you need to talk with each other and like those go in the shed or somewhere else, but not your bedroom

Monica: 23:24

Yes, but like one spouse may just have no idea because it doesn't bother them, right? So if you don't actually say that out loud They're not gonna know and it's not really fair Try to like drop hints or be passive aggressive about it. Oh no, right. It's not fair and it's just better to say it. It's just better to say it and I think that that's, I think that's where that line is, the motivation for that line comes in is like, just say the thing that you've been, Trying to say in a different way that hasn't hit the mark.

Sarah: 23:59

You know, a saying that has been life changing in our family life as well as in marriage and that I like to teach also to my students and my delight is ask for what you'd like, don't complain about what you don't like.

24:13

Yes. Or don't complain

Sarah: 24:14

about what you don't have. Just ask, like, I would like the room to be tidy before we make love. Could you please help me with that?

24:23

Yeah.

Sarah: 24:23

Yes. This could be part of the before play. Right? Yes. Exactly. Instead of, I hate how messy our room is. Or like you say, the dropping the hints, the passive aggressive comments, that is not an effective form of communication.

Monica: 24:36

Sure. Yeah. Exactly. So I think that's, yeah, again where that. That line is, is trying to, trying to hit.

Sarah: 24:45

Wonderful. Very good. In your book, you talk about how spouses can discuss frequency, foreplay female orgasm, all sorts of topics. Are, I guess, what is something that What was a surprise for you that you saw end up in the book where you, you wouldn't have thought ahead of time, like, Oh, we're going to write about this. And then there it is. In the book.

Monica: 25:08

Yeah. I didn't think that we would necessarily be as bold. I, I, I, um, it's funny, like people ask, they'll be like, Oh, I heard that you wrote a book. What did you write about? So that's a very uncomfortable, I guess I have to, I joke that I wish that we had written it under pseudonames so that I don't have to tell people. So I'm usually like, Oh. Marital intimacy and Renzel is like We wrote a book about sex. Um, and so the two playing of the voices and the two ways that we communicate and the two, just the two people that we are definitely comes out in the book. And I think that there's pieces of it that are more bold than I probably would have written if I had written this by myself, but they're absolutely necessary. Like if I'm trying to be clear in what we're communicating and how important it is to communicate with your spouse. It has to be said, you know, and so I'm glad I'm so glad that it's there and I'm glad that we wrote it together Because so I didn't have to be the one to say it That holy boldness that is exactly so much so Yeah, so I think just the clarity out of charity and it's good that it's there.

Sarah: 26:26

Oh, wonderful. Well, it's been so great talking with you, Monica. What a gift to the church and to Married and Engaged Couples Everywhere, your book Lovemaking, How to Talk About Sex with Your Spouse, coming out from Ave Maria Press. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. And we'll definitely put a link to the book in the show notes, and Yeah. Everyone listening can look for it online or wherever you like to buy your books. Thanks so much.

Monica: 26:55

Thank you for having me. You're welcome. God bless.