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How To Restore Sexual Libido In Your Relationship
Are you unhappy with your sex life because she has little or lack of sexual desire? What can you do when you are faced with this situation?
Do you have any of the following symptoms-
(a) You have sex maybe 10-12 times in 3 years
(b) She has little or no interest in sex and any other sexual activities
(c) Sex becomes a chore for her
(d) You initiate almost all sexual activities
(e) When she does initiate it, she wants to quickly get over with it
(f) You no longer have any sexual fantasies about your partner
(g) You do not feel connected to each other emotionally and sexually
(h) You increasingly feel lonely, dissatisfied, unloved and empty
If you have one or more of the above symptoms, you are likely to face the situation of a low or no-sex relationship or sexless marriage. There may be many underlying reasons for a woman to be not interested in sex and it is very normal for you to feel frustrated when you have unmet expectations.
Here are a few suggestions that you can try at least to start the ball rolling in order to reverse this trend of decreasing sexual desire.
(1) Reclaim your sexual side for yourself
Orgasm is a great stress reliever and there is a need for an outlet for your sexual release. A way you can do is to masturbate. This will help to keep your emotions in check if the level of frustration continues to intensify. Do remember that it is your responsibility to keep in touch with your own physical needs.
(2) Touch her in non-sexual ways
Studies have shown that a simple touch can reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure, decrease pain and fear, inhibit loneliness and release endorphins in the brain that not only make us feel loved, but want to give love in return.
Affection and non-sexual touch can build trusts, deepen intimacy and strengthen a relationship. Holding hands, hugging, kissing and gentle massage of the neck, shoulders and back are wonderful ways to show affection without the pressure of sex. You need to break the touch barrier that is happening between the both of you.
(3) Have a heart-to-heart talk
You can put across how you feel to your woman in a non-confrontation way. You can say something like this – “I love you. I feel that something that is important to me is missing in our relationship. I need a more intimate relationship.” Then ask her to set aside a time to have the most open and honest conversation about sex that you can ever have with her.
If she says no, ask if she would prefer to do it with the help of trained personnel such as marriage counselor or a sex therapist who is non-judgmental and unbiased. If she still says no, tell her that being in a sexless marriage is not what you want and you are willing to work with her to make life together better and that you are asking her to be willing to do the same.
During the open and honest conversation there is a need to find out about your woman’s sexuality such as whether she ever feels sexy, either alone or with you; whether she can pinpoint anything that happen to her in the past that can cause her to hold back sexually; has she ever masturbated or have an orgasm; any reasons for her for not wanting to have sex.
There is a need on your part to be dedicated and patient enough to help her discover her sexuality, possibly for the first time. You must also be willing to do whatever it takes to let her feel comfortable enough to feel sexual.
You need to tell her that you feel unloved, dissatisfied and empty when being trapped in a low-sex or sexless situation. Explain to her that you are willing to do anything to make sure she will enjoy a sexual relationship with you as much as you will.
If her level of sexual experience is an issue, offer to show her what feels good for you. Also ask her to show you what feels good to her, the better if she is willing to masturbate in front of you. Help her to embrace her sexuality and encourage her to share it with you. Learning how to love and please each other is a great bonding experience which can help to strengthen a relationship.
Living in a sexless relationship for long times is very stressful and unhealthy physically, mentally and emotionally. All it takes is the willingness to invest the time and energy to do whatever it takes to save your marriage/relationship by revitalizing your sex life.
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How Women Find Their Sexuality
“I wasn’t allowed to date until I was sixteen.”
“I used to cuddle on my daddy’s lap but after I turned twelve, he wouldn’t even hug me anymore. He yelled at me to ‘put something on!’ when I came downstairs to watch television in my pajamas when I was fifteen. ”
“We used to have sleepovers with all the cousins, boys and girls, together.”
“My cousin, Sally, and me, we would sneak to the pond and watch the boys when they swam naked.”
“It was almost by accident, I pressed the hair brush handle against myself.”
“I used to love sliding up and down the playground pole.”
“My mom and I went horseback riding…”
“I found a bunch of magazines in my brother’s room. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at!”
“The pastor of my church was very clear that dancing was the Devil’s work.”
“My mom got so embarrassed by the sex education material that the school sent home that she hurried from the room, leaving me to stare at the floor and my dad to shift awkwardly in his chair.”
“We used to watch Sex in the City together.”
“When mom caught me touching myself in the bathtub she explained that there were pleasurable feelings that were good but that I couldn’t touch myself around other people.”
“In high school, someone had a copy of Fanny Hill. We passed it along until the pages began to tear.”
“My best friend and I were comparing our boobs. One thing led to another and soon we were kissing and touching each other…”
These are just a few examples of ways that women come to understand something essential about their sexuality. The exploration and awareness of what we are feeling in our bodies is our introduction to our sexuality. The truth is that we do not find our sexuality so much as we “rediscover” it as we get older. What I have found enlightening from my many, many discussions with women is that when I ask them how they found their sexuality, many of them refer to a time long before puberty.
In other words, long before a time that we normally associate with being sexually mature.
For small children, discovering their penises and vaginas is a time of delightful discovery – and pleasure. Those “privates” that had been hidden away in thick diapers and clothes become available in bathtubs or running around the house without any clothing on as our mothers chased after us, imploring us to get dressed. But they were laughing and smiling when they did.
As we become toilet trained, we begin to associate all sorts of pleasurable – and sometimes shameful – feelings with our genitals. A few scenarios to illustrate this, I will introduce Mona.
I have a friend, I will call her “Mona”, who recalls the first time she was conscious of “discovering” her vagina. And that there was some kind of shame involved with her discovery.
I was with the other kids on the block. We always played together. God, how old could I have been? Maybe eight or nine. Anyway, I don’t know how it happened but the four or five of us started showing each other our bodies. It probably started because it was a warm day and the boys weren’t wearing shirts.
It seemed silly to me that I had to wear a shirt. After all, it wasn’t as if there was anything different between my chest and the boys’ chests at that point. We were all just skinny little bean poles. We were children for God’s sake.
Anyway, we were running through the sprinklers and, of course, the clothes we kept on were getting wet. So, it made perfect sense to simply take the clothes off.
I’m sure we were aware that we were doing something “wrong.” After all, we didn’t generally run around naked. I remember not long before this my dad had accidentally walked into the bathroom when I was taking a bath. He seemed so unnerved and embarrassed. He practically fell over himself to get back out of the bathroom. I wondered if there was anything wrong.
Of course, I didn’t ask him about it. We didn’t talk much in general in our house. My parents were lovely people but they were a bit emotionally distant. They could be strict but most of the time they were just there, background presences. I think most parents were like that then.
So, we were running through the sprinklers naked when Bobby, I think it was Bobby, pointed at me and laughed. I asked him what he was laughing at and he said that I didn’t have a penis. I can still feel the way I felt. It was a combination of defensiveness and anger and… and… and a sense that something was missing. Isn’t that terrible? That I would think that.
Of course, I was smart enough to tell him that I wasn’t supposed to have a penis, that I was a girl. I had a vagina. He asked how I peed without a penis. The other girl in the group, Susie, told him that she would show him. So she just squatted down on the grass near the sprinkler and peed.
We all giggled. It was all good-natured. We were all the best of friends. Our parents were good friends. We had BBQ’s together.
I made Elliot, the seven-year-old, bend over so we could see where he “made” from. Then we all showed our rear ends to one another. I think it was about then when my mom appeared. I don’t know if she’d been watching us or if she’d just showed up but I looked up and saw the expression on her face and I couldn’t place it. She was shocked. Outraged. Unnerved. Everything at once. She sure wasn’t amused.
She marched over and even though the sprinkler was spraying on her she grabbed me by the arm and began to drag me away.
“My clothes!” I cried out, not wanting to be dragged across the street to our house without my clothes on.
“You should have thought of that before!” she snapped.
She dragged me while I cried and screamed. She smacked my bottom a couple of times as we crossed the street. When we got home, she really gave me a spanking. Then she made me stay in my room, promising to tell my father as soon as he got home.
Which she did.
My father came into my room and looked right at me. “I’m very disappointed in you, Princess.” That’s what he said, in those exact words. He told me I should never, ever behave like that again. Then he told me that he would have to smack me with the belt – the most severe punishment in our house and one that was generally only visited upon my brother. But that day, I got the belt.
Later, I heard my parents through my bedroom door. They seemed to be talking about whether I had to be taken to the doctor, although I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why – unless it was because they’d spanked me too hard.
I’m sure it is just the way I am misremembering it, but I can’t recall ever playing together with those friends like that again.
From then on, girls played with girls and boys played with boys.
And no one ever spoke about the incident again.
Mona’s experience is very insightful in that it brings into play many of the things that contribute to our sense of our sexuality. There was a peer group. Clearly, there was some “objective” knowledge that the children had gained from someplace – family or books – because they knew what their genitals were called and that boys had penises and girls had vaginas. In addition, despite no “spoken” prohibition, they all knew that being naked was somehow “not allowed” even though they could see no reason for it.
Finally, Mona’s family had a tremendous impact on this event and experience. Unfortunately, the message she received from her parents’ reaction was a powerfully negative one.
Just a few of the lessons that Mona came with were that nudity was wrong, that her behavior, though childlike and innocent, was wrong and bad, that what she did was deserving of punishment.
There was no discussion. No explanation. No acknowledgement that everyone is curious and that there are better (“more comfortable” for her parents) ways to learn.
Imagine what could have been.
Mona’s mother could have let Mona collect her clothes. She could have held her hand as they crossed the street, making it clear that even though she was separating Mona from the activity she didn’t think that Mona was “bad.”
When they got back to the house, she could have suggested that Mona get cleaned up and dried off.
“Why don’t you take a quick bath and I’ll make a snack?”
Then, when they were sitting together enjoying a snack, Mona’s mother could have acknowledged Mona’s curiosity and found an appropriate way to discuss her body. In other words, Mona’s mother could have nurtured Mona’s sexuality.
It was, of course, very unlikely that she’d do that. Mona’s mother no doubt struggled with a blunted sexuality herself. Sex was not discussed in the house. There were no overt displays of affection between Mona’s parents.
“Just a coolness. A distance,” Mona said. “They were such lovely people, really. I can’t say that I thought they were ever happy though.”
Ah, happiness. There’s a difficult concept to address. We all want to be happy but that “pursuit of happiness” seems to trip us up frequently. Perhaps because we are only guaranteed the “pursuit” and not the “happiness.”
What I can say is that Mona is only now beginning to feel comfortable with her sexuality – after two divorces and several unsatisfying relationships.
I would not suggest that there was a direct link to Mona’s playful experience, her parents’ reaction, and how she developed into a sexually struggling and then sexual mature adult. What the incident does do is highlight the various factors that come into play in our developing sense of our sexuality and why, for so many women, the task is to rediscover their sexuality rather than to “find” it.
Mona, as it turned out, was developing her sexuality in a wonderful, organic and comfortable way. Her parents’ reaction blunted that and submerged that quality, causing her to struggle to “get back” to that same kind of view of her sexuality.
As Mona indicated, there was nothing in her parents’ reaction that was inconsistent with the way she was raised in general.
It is worth noting that other than comparing her chest to the boys’ (we were “skinny little bean poles”) there was no mention of other physical descriptions. No one was fat. No one had freckles. No one had big ears. Or stretch marks. Whatever.
This experience was pure sexual exploration – without the sex! – without the hang-ups and obstacles that make the process so difficult for us as adult women.
Until her mother showed up. Then there were only hang-ups.
There is no greater influence on our sense of ourselves as sexual selves than our families. Let me be very clear, I am not including those horrible situations when there is sexual abuse in the family. Clearly, such experiences are beyond damaging and demand intervention. But we are not talking about abused children.
For if history has taught us anything, it is that it does not take an abusive home to sow the seeds of sexual dysfunction. Another example to illustrate the development of sexuality is Meredith’s experience.
Meredith grew up in a solid, middle class family. Her father owned a service station. Her mother was an aide in the local elementary school. She grew up with an older sister and a younger brother. Her older sister was six years older. Her younger brother only two and a half years younger than she was.
“I was always close with Bruce,” she said, referring to her brother. “From the time I was six, I babysat him. I was around when my mom changed him. We always had a special bond.”
She and Bruce took baths together when they were small children and, while she was bathing them, her mother was not at all reluctant to answer their questions about Bruce’s penis or Meredith’s vagina.
Meredith’s father, though hardly a professional, was a lover of music and a reader of books. He was an affectionate father who encouraged Meredith to play ball just as much as he encouraged Bruce.
“Lots of summer nights, we’d be out playing catch with my dad after he got home from work,” she said wistfully.
The only “fly” in the ointment was Meredith’s older sister. “Sue was always a little wild. At least, that’s what mom said. Rebellious. Although, I couldn’t say what she was rebelling against. Seems to me we had a pretty good life.”
Although Meredith’s parents were very young when Sue was born, there was a degree of enlightenment in the household. Perhaps it was the connection to the school. Maybe it was their father’s devotion to music and books. At one point, he had wanted to be a musician and still harbored dreams of writing his own book. Maybe it was just that they had enjoyed the “fruits” of the sixties without the flame outs. Whatever it was they were very permissive raising Sue.
But when Sue hit adolescence, she seemed to have lost her way.
“Don’t worry,” Meredith’s mom assured her dad. “It’s just hormones.”
She wasn’t reassured. She started smoking cigarettes and sneaking out of the house at all hours of the night. When her parents tried to set limits, Sue screamed and shouted.
“She got pregnant when she was sixteen,” Meredith said with a shrug. “What was I? Ten years old? I don’t remember a lot. Just that there was a lot of tension in the house and my mom always seemed worried.”
Sue went to live with an aunt and she gave the baby up for adoption.
“She didn’t come back to live with us after that. It was almost like she was never part of the family,” Meredith said. “At least, not physically. Bruce and I used to refer to ‘Sue’s ghost’ all the time.”
What she meant by that was that her parent’s experience with Sue changed their outlook. They went from progressive, open parents to cautious, worried parents determined not to “make the same mistakes twice.”
Meredith was not allowed to date until she was seventeen. She wasn’t even allowed to go to boy-girl parties until she was sixteen, and then only if her parents knew that parents would be home during the party.
“But none of that was particularly damaging,” she said. “I understood where they were coming from. What was damaging was the silence that took over the house. It wasn’t for a long time after that that I realized that my dad didn’t listen to his music so much anymore.
“And he didn’t read very much. He’d just sit at the kitchen table and stare out the window.”
Seeing – and feeling – the sadness in the house had a real impact on Meredith. Without a conscious decision, she determined to be the model daughter, the perfect girl that Sue was not.
“It was like I was walking on egg shells, not wanting to make a mistake.”
She was valedictorian of her senior class. She was accepted into a very good college and, after that, medical school.
But there was always a sadness. Like a cloud, a cloud that settled upon her sexuality.
“I guess it made sense,” she said with a sigh. “After all, it was the sex that really changed everything. Until then, there were just the fights. But when Sue got pregnant… well, that just changed everything.”
Between focusing on her studies and her determination to never do anything to upset her parents, Meredith didn’t have a real boyfriend until her senior year of college.
“And we didn’t do much,” she admitted.
Her second boyfriend became her husband. They met in medical school. The first time they had sex it was quick, uncomfortable and not particularly satisfying.
“I loved him – I love him,” she said, quickly correcting herself. “But the sex thing somehow got locked up someplace deep. I mean, I studied anatomy. I was even thinking of becoming a gynecologist for a while.
“And yet, I was so uncomfortable with my own sexuality. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Ironic but not surprising. The cues we get as children have a powerful impact on how we develop into adults. In Meredith’s case, it would have seemed that her home and family environment was perfect for the development of a healthy sexual sensibility.
Sexuality During Menopause
Although menopause is not “official” for a full year after your last menstrual period, irregular periods are a sign of approaching menopause. Once menopause is reached, you will no longer be fertile (by definition) and you will experience:
- Vaginal dryness
- Hot flashes
- Sleep disturbances
- Mood swings
- Increased abdominal fat
- Thinning hair
- Loss of breast fullness
Yikes! Nothing here sounds pleasant. But the larger concern is whether all this means that you cease to be a sexual being, that sex stops being an important or desired aspect of your life. The answer is emphatically, No!
While going through menopause, it sometimes seems as if your desire for sex will go away. Vaginal dryness hardly sounds like an invitation to a satisfying sex life. However, while many people (men and women) believe that menopause means less sexual desire, the truth is much more nuanced. It is certainly not necessarily true that menopause means less sexual desire. For a large number of women sex after menopause is as enjoyable – even more enjoyable – than it was before menopause.
Without the worry about pregnancy and with other aspects of your life more settled (children grown up, or nearly so, you and your partner finally alone for what is, many times, the first time since you married) many women enjoy the best sex of their lives.
For Arlene, that required going through both the grieving process and menopause. But when she was settled with both, she began to see the benefits in the same way a married woman would. She didn’t have children who were grown so the “empty nest” experience didn’t apply, but she and her partner were finished paying for their mortgage, they were settled professionally, they became more free to take small vacations and enjoy each other’s company.
It is true that getting older often means it takes a little longer to feel sexually aroused and the sexual act likewise is more leisurely (another reason that many married women enjoy sex more after menopause – their husbands are also older and do not climax so quickly.) Yes, a small decrease in sexual desire might be part of the aging process but the trade-off in sexuality can be a net plus. Growing older doesn’t mean that sex is over.
If you experience a continued loss of sexual desire after menopause don’t necessary blame menopause or “getting older.” You may need to look at psychological or physical reasons. There might be other causes, causes that can be addressed. Medications to treat high blood pressure (anti-hypertensive medication) or tranquilizers for anxiety or anti-depressants can contribute to altered libido.
Chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis can reduce libido, as can that same self-image you might have struggled with when you were younger. So too, the stress you deal with on a daily basis.
Many people assume that reduced estrogen (a female hormone) is responsible for diminished sexual desire after menopause. However, researchers have determined that the largest factors that determine post-menopausal sexuality include attitudes toward sexuality, overall health and the status of your relationship with your partner. Estrogen levels are not responsible for diminished sexuality in menopausal women. Decreased estrogen’s have an effect on vaginal dryness and therefore result in painful intercourse.
In short, menopause puts a fine point on the fact that sexuality is a lifelong reality and how you deal with your sexuality as a young woman can and will impact your sexuality as a middle-aged woman and as an older woman. Researchers have discovered that the only women who experience the loss of sexual desire post-menopause are those women who believed that the loss of sexual interest is a normal part of the aging process.
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Clearly, menopause doesn’t have to mean the end of sexuality.
The Older Woman and Her Sexuality
There was a time when the “older woman” held an important place in our sexual mythology. She was the knowledgeable woman of the world, the one who understood both the mysteries of a woman’s body and the workings of a man’s body, needs and desires. She was the one who was beyond the confines of mere convention, the one who could teach a young boy how to please his lover and the older man a deeper appreciation for the ways of love.
Whether that “older woman” ever really existed or not is hard to know. What does seem clear is that if she did, she has lost her way. Young, hard-bodies, images of models, the beautiful thin actresses shown in magazines, advertisements and articles on beauty and sexiness….. all this knowledge about sex seems to have put the older woman out of business. Which is ironic in a way, seeing as all this so-called knowledge about sex has come at a very high price, the diminishment of sexuality, which was the very thing that that “older woman” possessed in abundance.
In those days, “allure” was the word that came to mind. Now, more mature women who find themselves confronting their sexuality and their sexual being react like a deer caught in the headlights. They are not sure what to make of their sexuality. If there is mystery involved, it is that their sexuality is a mystery to themselves!
Take Alice. At forty-one, Alice was divorced. Her son was off to college and her daughter, at sixteen, was fairly independent.
“The divorce was difficult, no question. It was long overdue, don’t get me wrong. But it was difficult nonetheless. So many emotions…” She smiled a quick smile. “And Mike and I were as amicable as I could have imagined under the circumstances. He wanted what was best for the kids. He wanted me to stay in the house after the divorce. He said I deserved it after all those years.
“So I know I was more fortunate than most in terms of the divorce itself. But that somehow didn’t make it a whole lot easier. Still, the divorce was nothing compared to the moment my daughter looked at me and told me she thought I should get out there again.
“Get out there? Date?”
Alice was incredulous at the thought of “getting out there” and going out on a date. She hadn’t been on a “date” since she was married – at twenty-two. And she’d dated Mike for three years before that.
“The very idea of it made me nervous,” she sighed. Rather than think about dating, she had immersed herself in either work or her kids both during and since the divorce. She was not blind to the irony that just when her life was “falling apart” she was finding herself exactly where she’d always wanted to be professionally.
She shrugged. “Still, I knew I couldn’t be so slavish about work. I wasn’t a kid anymore. My years for really fighting to get higher on the ladder were long gone. I didn’t want to be so devoted to work. I wanted to enjoy life – to do all the things I felt being with Mike kept me from doing.”
Alice found herself exactly where many women who have raised families and then found out that the man they’d married was not the man that they wanted to grow old with. At forty-one, Alice was hardly “old” but she sure didn’t feel young anymore. And, when she was most honest about dating, she knew that she was most frightened of the first time she would have to kiss a man again, the first time she would be naked in front of a man again.
The first time she would make love with a man other than Mike.
“I couldn’t imagine…” she sighed. “I just didn’t think of myself as being attractive in that way.” Which was one of the consequences of her failing marriage and of being taken for granted for so long.
She suffered through what seemed to her to be hours in front of the full-length mirror, studying in minute detail every flaw – real and perceived – that she could identify on her body. From “crow’s feet” to frown lines, to “sagging boobs that were never big enough anyway” to a stomach that she felt “could have been flatter” and hips that “could have been narrower” to a rear end that “could have been… well, never mind…”
She did what many women do. She joined a gym. And she dedicated herself to getting in shape. What she didn’t say out loud was that “getting in shape” for her meant making her body more attractive so she might contemplate getting “out there” again.
Her body was never going to be an eighteen year old’s again, but it could be “as good as this forty-one year old can make it!”
Still, the thought of going out on a date, of making out filled her with dread. Most of the time. Sometimes, it filled her with real excitement. “If I could have only gotten rid of the nagging fear that my teenage daughter knew more about sex than I did!”
Alice might not have felt ready to start dating again but there were more and more objective indicators that it was time. Several men at the gym spoke with her about going out. She always said no, she wasn’t ready but there was no denying that the attention was more than a little flattering to her.
Sex in Islam: What Is And Isn’t Strictly Forbidden
Many people have the belief that sex in the Islam religion is extremely restrictive. The truth is that in most areas, Islam’s view of sex is not that different from other religions such as Christianity. Even though the consequences for disobeying Allah’s laws in regards to sex, tend to be more severe than some religions, the law itself is quite compatible.
Sex Inside And Outside Of Marriage
In the Islam religion sex inside of the marriage between husband and wife is strongly encouraged first for purposes of procreation and second for companionship and the enjoyment of both parties male and female. It is believed that a healthy intimate relationship between husband and wife makes for a happier and more solid marriage and keeps both the husband and wife from committing adultery which is against Islamic law.
However, the issue of oral sex in marriage is highly debated with some theologians suggesting that it is acceptable if both parties agree and others stating that it is not. This is an issue that there seems no clear direction on but, those who want to remain faithful to the Islamic religion more often than not err on the side of caution.
So too is sex outside of marriage whether that sex is an adulterous affair, between a man and woman, or same sex partners. Any sex outside the marriage bed is strictly forbidden and seen as sin by both the man and the woman. In cases of rape the woman is to be held blameless and the sin falls entirely on the man.
Birth Control
When it comes to the use of modern day birth control most of those of the Islamic faith allow the use of birth control. Especially in cases where the couple already has children and adding more children to the family may result in the couple being unable to care for their children. While birth control is not encouraged it is not usually strictly forbidden.
Abortion
Abortion on the other hand is a more tricky issue when it comes to Islamic beliefs. In general, abortion is seen as taking a human life and is forbidden however, there may be exceptions made if carrying the pregnancy to term may jeopardize the mother’s life. In other cases abortion has been deemed acceptable in cases where there may be congenital defects that may result in the demise of the child, or even in cases of incest or rape. However, there really is no clear cut allowance for abortion under Islamic law leaving this open to interpretation.
Islamic religion has a very healthy outlook for the most part on sexual relationships between husband and wife and pretty much follows the same pattern as most other religions on other sexual issues. What makes this religion seem so restrictive when it comes to such issues is the punishments that are assigned for transgressions of Islamic law. And that is why, the Islam religion is seen as so forbidding and foreboding when it comes to matters of sex. Not their actual beliefs.