Interview with ISGH Fellow Leonor de Oliveira, PhD

The Bored Sexologist Finds New Opportunities for Sexual Health Research

Leonor de Oliveira, PhD, the Michael E. Metz Fellow in Couples' Sexual Health at the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH), is a clinical psychologist and sexual therapist from Portugal. She worked for many years in crisis intervention as a counselor and incident manager. Her postdoctoral work at ISGH comprises a combination of research and sexual therapy with individuals and partners. Dr. de Oliveira is focused on working with sexual dysfunction, relationship adjustment, compulsive sexual behavior, and LGBTQIA+ health. In 2014, she began a sexual education social media project, Pronto a Despir, that led to the publication of her book, É Normal? in 2023, which answers sexuality questions from the community.

How did you come to decide on a career in sexual health research?

I grew up in a pretty progressive household, which doesn't mean we had conversations about sex all the time. I think for most people, including my parents—even though they were progressive—it wasn't necessarily an easy conversation to have. But as I started asking questions, they gave me a “sex-cyclopedia” for people seven to nine years old. And when I got to nine, I wanted the one for ages nine to 11. And when I got to 11 I asked for the 11-13 volume. Then I wanted the next one for teenagers.

My parents didn't have the tools to discuss some things with me, but they wanted to make sure I had information appropriate to my age. I go back to this memory quite often because it shaped the way that I organize my career. I still find myself thinking that the answer might be somewhere in a book. That might be why I do research. I'm very curious, particularly about sexuality.

That was instigated in me when I was really young: that the answers are there somewhere. Sometimes the answers for the questions you're looking for aren’t there, and you have to keep asking questions and try to answer those questions. So that was how it started for me.

Then there's the people I met. I am a psychologist and, throughout my training, I did not have any training regarding sexuality. In the last year of my course, I met another researcher who was studying sexual satisfaction. After that lecture, I emailed her asking if I could work with her. She said I should finish my master's first and once I was done with my thesis, I should contact her again. Her name is Patricia Pascoal, PhD, and she was the one who helped me take the first steps into the field. Later, Joana Carvalho and Pedro Nobre were pivotal in my pursuits within the field, and people I will be forever thankful for believing in me and supporting me throughout my academic pursuits. It’s amazing what genuine interest and encouragement can do for you.

Initially I wasn't that interested in doing research. I wanted to do the clinical work. And earlier in my career, I was a pure clinician. That's what I wanted to focus on. I ended up doing a bunch of different things, including working with suicidal teenagers. My focus was always systemic psychology. I'm interested not just in sexual health, but in the several layers that affect our sexual health.

So, as with most things in life, my career path resulted from several coincidences. It started when I was young at home and then later I was meeting people and wanting to invest in this area that I felt there was so much still to do. I ended up training as a sex therapist, and I created a blog, “Pronto a Despir,” a word play with the French expression “prêt à porter,” which means “ready to dress,” that I changed to “ready to undress” in Portuguese! It got really popular and from the questions people were asking me, I ended up writing É Normal? (In English: Is it normal? When we talk about sexuality, the answer is usually "yes.”) I still have my Portuguese project on Instagram, but recently decided to take the risk to communicate to the public in English with The Bored Sexologist, where I talk about sex and sexuality. Now I'm a fellow at the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH), and I'm extremely happy with the work I'm doing.

Is there a particular research project that you'd like to bring attention to?

My main topic of research has been sexual boredom. I am interested in understanding what happens in long-term relationships of all kinds because I feel that often we are over-diagnosing sexual desire issues that are more likely part of the normal ebb and flow of relationships. I feel sometimes people don't necessarily have low desire. They might be experiencing low desire in the context of their relationship, but maybe lack of novelty, boredom, and lack of sexual satisfaction.

There are many factors probably affecting your sexual desire that are not dysfunctional. They're not pathological. I mean, they still can definitely impact your sexual health. But it doesn't mean that we should be telling people who are experiencing probably a normal stage of their relationships that they have a sexual dysfunction.

I'm not saying that sexual dysfunction doesn't exist; I'm saying I'm interested in finding out what's really going on. For some people and some couples, I do think that this could explain what's going on.

I've always been interested in that particular aspect of relationships. What I've been finding in my research is that sexual boredom shouldn't be something to scare people. It's something that just signals the need for change or for something else. And so I've been very happy to do some rehab on the word “boredom” to almost reframe it as not necessarily a negative thing.

It might not be a positive thing, right? No one likes to be bored in any context. Boredom is something that makes us feel restless or agitated. We don't want to be doing what we're doing. We want to escape in some cases. But it's very important because it makes us change if we have the right tools and resources.

Where sex is concerned, often we don't have the right tools. We don't know how to communicate about it. Telling your partner that you are bored might be extremely challenging. We might have the resources to manage boredom in other areas of our lives. With sex, we don't because we're missing pretty much everything from the start. We don't have comprehensive sex ed. We don't really talk about pleasure. So, of course, we're not likely to talk about boredom and what happens in relationships.

In a long-term relationship, it is very likely that you'll get bored at some point. There's nothing wrong with you or the person you're with. It's not that they're boring; it might be that you are unable to find whatever you’re looking for. We tend to think “this person is not compatible with me,” or we tend to look for an explanation, but very often it's more about how we haven't been able to manage that boredom.

Is there another area of focus in your research you’d like to discuss?

More recently, due to the shifting political climate, I felt a strong need to do a different type of research. I'm interested in doing whatever I can to protect reproductive rights. I am involved in research with Kristen Mark, PhD, MPH. We're both PIs on a grant-funded project that is very timely and something that I'm very proud to be doing during my time in the United States. I don't have a lot of time in the United States, and I felt compelled to do something that I think is important for this community right now.

I was really happy to get this grant. My supervisor was always kind and supportive. She always wanted me to pursue it and shared all the knowledge and resources she had. So I'm between these two worlds. I'm a sex and relationship therapist who is very interested in helping people with promoting their sexual desire and having more satisfying sexual lives. Then there's this aspect of reproductive health care that I am curious about and invested in.

I'm trying to give back to this community that also welcomed me here. It's not that I can't research these things in Portugal—that would still be important—but reproductive rights are protected in my home country, and here they're not. It's just a fact. In Minnesota, they're still protected, but not in the neighboring states. We actually get lots of people coming from other places seeking this healthcare.

What kind of advice might you give someone who is considering the study of sexual health?

Right now my advice, especially for those who are located in the United States, is that the work matters. Even if setbacks and obstacles keep piling up, it just means that it really matters and that this is not a time to get discouraged; it is a time to do the work.

So my biggest advice is that when people get discouraged, they should remind themselves that what they're doing matters—even if it's something simple, even if there's other work to be done. Just the fact that they are talking about sexuality and bringing sexual health to the forefront makes a difference. Any attempt to highlight the importance of sexual health is going to be beneficial to communities and protect those who have lost rights and who are marginalized.

We all need sexual health, but if sexual health is invisible, it's definitely going to affect more groups than others. My main advice is to stay grounded. Remember that your work matters. It's going to be hard, but that means it's really important. To me, personally, it has been really grounding to do the work. I feel it gives me a sense that even when everything seems dystopic and out of control, I have control.

I'm proud of doing the work, and I'm proud of my colleagues who keep doing the work. So that's my advice. Just keep doing it, even if it's hard—it just means that you're doing something very important.

Why did you choose this fellowship at ISGH?

It was another big coincidence. I was finishing my PhD and looking for an internship. I wanted to do some more research on sexual boredom. I wasn't sure what I was going to do after graduate school, but I knew I wanted to do more research on the topic. I started looking, and there were some options through the American Consulate in Portugal.

Dr. Kristen Mark is my supervisor at ISGH. She is someone I respect a lot and whose research I have followed for a long time. I decided to send her an email checking in about opportunities. She happened to be on her way to a conference that I was also on my way to in Miami, and she asked if I wanted to meet up. Kristen asked me whether I wanted to do research only or if I was also interested in clinical work. I told her that ideally I would do both. She encouraged me to apply for the postdoc position at the university because fellows get to do clinical work and research, plus teaching too.

That was exactly what I wanted to do. I love research, but my research has been very much informed by the real world. That is what triggers my curiosity. I have more questions than I will be able to answer during my lifetime. But I'm still interested in doing the work and I love learning. So that was it. It was the only place that I'm aware of that offered me the possibility of doing clinical work and research at a university. Most places, you're a researcher and that's it.

I'm sort of boredom-prone, so I'm studying boredom and that's very personal. But I'm never really bored because I always find multiple things to focus on and to do. I feel like I'm learning a lot on so many levels. I'm doing what I was hired to do, which is sex and relationship therapy, but I'm also doing gender-affirming care and working with compulsive sexual behavior, which were things I didn't really have experience with before.

The diversity of the work I get to do, the research, and the people are so smart here. I really respect everyone I work with. That is a cool thing to say about your workplace: that you're inspired by everyone else. That’s how it is for me.

I'm from Portugal. It's a long way. I come from a very warm, very different place, and I traveled to Minnesota in January. It was scary. I didn't know it ever got warm. I only knew about the cold because that's what everyone talks about. Now, I'm really happy I came. It has been a wonderful experience. And the weather is beautiful too.

What do you hope to accomplish as you look toward the future?

It ties up with everything that I've been saying. My motto has been “do well and have fun,” and that has been my experience so far. I'm lucky to be working in a field that I'm really passionate about. It is so rewarding, too, as a clinician because you see in vivo the impact of your work. But also as a researcher and an educator, I feel I'm very much committed to translating science to the public. My projects in sex education in Portugal have done that, and I ended up publishing a sex education book called É Normal? Quando Falamos de Sexualidade, a Resposta é Normalmente Sim.

I'm very committed to always keeping this connection with the public and making sure we're getting the information out there. We're doing all this good work. But people don't necessarily get to see it. Maybe our research papers are read by a handful of other researchers. And people want to know. My experience is that people are very curious. They want to know what we're doing.

So I've been thinking about how to continue what I'm doing on all these fronts because I'm passionate about it. I love clinical work. I love research. I love public-facing opportunities and sharing the knowledge that I have. I like to translate knowledge and present it in a way that makes sense for everybody. And in the end, I want to make a difference.

Ultimately what I'm trying to do is to change the perception around sex so that it is at least neutral. Ideally it gets to a point where it doesn't necessarily cause a turmoil of emotions. I’d love to see it normalized to a point where people talk about it over coffee. I am seeing that in some places; that sex is actually just a normal conversation for people to have.

I will keep working. I'm committed to sexual health and advocating for it. Because when we do this type of work, we're always doing advocacy of some sort. We're advocating for sexual rights and sexual health. There's no way you're going to do this work without being connected to the health needs and the education needs that you still have to fight for. It's not something that we can take for granted. That's what the future holds for me. I will keep on working and hoping to see the changes from the seeds that my colleagues and I are planting. We're going through a low moment, a difficult phase, but eventually we'll overcome it. There will be ups and downs, and we should just stay strong and keep doing this work.