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everyone wants more sex better sex and there is huge amount that we can do that can guarantee great sex for the rest of
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your life so that the best place to start is Dr Karen gurny she is a clinical psychologist and psychos
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sexologist that has been helping individuals and couples overcome sexual problems for 20 years she's lead
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psychologist in an award-winning NHS sex clinic this might be surprising to some people 52% of women and 42% of men are
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unhappy with the sex lives that they have and that's because as a society we've got sex all wrong for example the
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way desire is represented to us is lust passion spontaneity but it's not the
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norm and the problem is a lot of people are waiting to feel like that and they're waiting a really long time what
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we need to do instead is be aware that our desire can be triggered using what I call sexual currency I'll go into that
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we also know that penis and vagina sex is women's least favorite sexual act but that's how we see how sex should be so
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we see less pleasure and less reward for women but also if you ask most people how often they should be having sex
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everyone says three times a week it's actually drastically different than that three times a month and that shows the
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way we understand sex is all wrong so I have questions do you think you should schedule sex no what you should do
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though is fantasies fetishes what if your partner says I don't like it well I can talk you through that if you like
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parents who are struggling with sex what should they do we know that people start having sex again from when their kid is
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about six and that's because what if you're in a relationship right now and you no longer found them attractive what
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do I say I would say it's absolutely crazy to me that so
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many of you have decided to watch our show um and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show we now have five million subscribers on YouTube
00:01:49
which is a number that I just can't comprehend and it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had we
00:01:54
started the dire of a CO just over 3 years ago now and in my wildest expectations we might have had 100,000
00:02:00
subscribers by now so you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these
00:02:07
conversations every week um and spend some time with us so thank you and I made a deal with you I made a deal that
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if you subscribe to this show that we would continue to raise the bar and in 2024 we're going to raise the bar like
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never before I've been working for the last nine months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to the show
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00:02:32
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00:02:38
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[Music]
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episode Dr Karen gy hi what you do and why' you do it I
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spend my working week trying to change people's relationships with sex and the
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reason I do that is because although we might think that sex is a kind of frivolous recreational Pursuit it
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actually isn't it's super important for our psychological well-being for our relationship well-being we know that
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when people have great sex their relationships last longer we know that when people have great sex they're even
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more productive in work than next day there are so many reasons why sex is important but unfortunately as a society
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we've kind of got it all wrong about how sex Works about what we should be doing
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and because of that we have hugely High rates of dissatisfaction with people's sex lives in the UK but also worldwide
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why did Sex take your fancy there's so much about sex that's fascinating I think there's loads we don't know um
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there's loads we do know but no one talks about people find it so hard to talk about sex and it's so
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stigmatized that you know when people come into the room you can really see the weight of it on their shoulders it's
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hard for them to speak about it's embarrassing for them and to be the person that makes that feel comfortable
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and to be the person that can create change in a part of their life that matters so much but is perhaps something
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they've never told their closest friend about is hugely rewarding you also get to work with people across all ages so
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you know from their teens to their '90s you get to work with couples individuals um you get everything with Sex Therapy I
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love it since you started your work what was almost what 20 years ago did you 20 what have you seen in terms
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of changes in the problem set M that
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you're dealing with now I what are the new problems that you're you're confronted with in your clinical
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practice when couples or people come to you yeah that's a good one because lots of things have stayed the same right so
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we we we know that for example problems with desire Remain the most common reason why people end up in my clinical
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room um but lots of things have also shifted data actually shows those shifts
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over the last few decades so we have long-term um data into the lives of um
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people in the UK in terms of their sex lives and we know that we're having less sex this decade than we were the decade
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before and the decade before that so the amount of sex we're having for example is going down from my clinical hunches
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but also from what's been written about in the research we have a good idea that that's our pace of life our work life
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balance our distractability our use of devices um it's become evident in the
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last kind of two decades that when it comes to sex attention is a really key
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part of it it's really key so being able to pay attention to what's happening in your body or being able to pay attention
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to what's happening in your mind is crucial but as a society I think we're getting less and less able to pay
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attention we're getting getting more and more in pursuit of distraction and that shows itself all the time in Sex Therapy
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you know couples who come to see me because they feel that they're never having sex but yet when you look at
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their week they actually have very little time together and the time together they do have they're both busy
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scrolling they're watching Netflix and scrolling they're perhaps doing three things at once they're checking their
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work emails that's taking them to a whole new cognitive place of stress and so it's no wonder that people don't have
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space for their desire to emerge and that's definitely a newer phenomenon it kind of made me think of some of the
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things I was reading about in your books where you you say that couples and individuals who do mindfulness practices
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um are those that typically have the most desire the I think the quote is from your newest book which is the book
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is called how not to let having kids ruin your sex life yeah it's a bit of a mouthful it's a it's a great great title
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it says research tells us that women who find easier to have orgasms are typically more mindful in everyday life
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and find it easier to be in the moment during sex which is chapter three that's right so there's an enormous amount of
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data about attention and sex and obviously one of the ways in which we can sharpen our attention is mindfulness
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we know that mindfulness Works across a range of challenges that we face whether it's pain management whether it's sleep
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whether it's about apti regulation all kinds of things but when it comes to sex it's super powerful so when you're
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distracted during sex um and we know that over 90% of people have nonsexual
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thoughts during sex okay so everyone gets distracted we know that from the research but what happens when we start
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to get distracted most of the time or when those distractions are what we call cognitively Salient which means they're
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worrying or they're particularly stressful like oh I'm not going to calm or what if I don't stay hard or is she
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enjoying this those types of distractions what happens is our distraction is basically basically
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turning down our arousal like turning down the volume on the TV so it becomes
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harder for our bodies to respond so to stay aroused for example it becomes harder for us to feel anything so our
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pleasure is turned down it becomes harder for us to come and ultimately over time it gets in the way of our
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desire on the contrary if we work on that distraction either by trying to
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remove them or trying to tackle the worries that their root cause or trying to promote our ability to pay attention
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where we want it to be so that's sexual thoughts sexual Sensations pleasure then
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it's like turning up the volume and we've seen plenty of research that demonstrate the enormously powerful
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impact of mindfulness on sexual response I can think of times in my life where
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because I was stressed or worried when I got in bed I was worrying about something or stressing about something
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at work yeah my partner tried to have sex with me and I had zero chance of getting aroused I could not get an
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erection and it's I remember those moments and thinking oh God she's going to think that it's about her but really it's because of this thing I have on my
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to-do list that's exactly right i' I'd got in bed doing my to-do list so I I like I was holding my to-do list and I
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was doing it on my phone and I put the phone down and then I lay back and I'm
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still thinking about my to-do list and then she tries to initiate and there's zero chance that's it and that's also
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exactly what we were talking about late earlier on right which is that our society has changed the way we work has
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changed so perhaps three decades ago you wouldn't have been checking your emails
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just before bed which means that wouldn't have started that Cascade of thoughts about work which would then
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perhaps Peak your cortisol your stress levels and then cut off your ability to get turned on so that is one of the
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major things that has shifted for all of us and I think you know one of the myths that we you know would benefit from
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quashing about sex is this idea that particularly men are always up for it
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are always ready to have sex it's just not true in fact everybody needs their kind
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of conditions for good sex as I call it to be right they need to be in the right kind of headp space they need to be not
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distracted um they need to know that the environment is an environment that works for them it's quite important so yeah
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your experience is mirrors what a lot of people are probably sat at home thinking about just now do you think there's a
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bit of a a paradox with sex in the sense that the more you think about it mhm and
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worry about it the harder it becomes yes absolutely so what do you do just not
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think about it and worry about like so it's quite interesting because there's also something else that happens when we
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get turned on which is that we get this attentional focused narrowing so one of
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the features of physiological arousal so so when blood flows around the body particularly to the genitals is that we
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know it kind of sharpens our attention it makes us basically want to block out the rest of the world and I'm sure we've
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all had experiences when we've been completely in the moment during sex when
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we've not thought about a single other thing that might be happening around us
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so that attentional narrowing is great unless your attention has been hijacked
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by a worry because then you get attentional narrowing on the worry MH
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and what happens when we worry about something is that it interferes with sexual response in two main ways the
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first is that it takes our attention away from what's erotic and that turns down the arousal and pleasure like we
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talked about earlier on the TV um the second thing that happens is that when we worry about something that activates
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our sympathetic nervous system sending chemical messages around the body saying don't have sex there's something to
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worry about you know it can't tell the difference between a modern day worry like this email has come through that's
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ruined my day versus you know a saber-tooth tiger has just walked in you know our brains are still primitive in
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that regard so what happens is that switches off our sexual response might mean that you struggle to get turned on
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it might mean that you struggle to feel anything it might mean that your body doesn't work in the way you want it to and then of course the next time you go
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into it what are you thinking you're thinking what if it doesn't work you talk a lot about expectations um and the
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role that they play in sex expectation and pressure make sex worse that's a
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quote from your new book chapter 3 I know maybe that's not a quote but that's basically the gist of what it said um
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but it's also the G gist of my experience I think it's always felt to me like the opposite of great sex is
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expectation and like rigidity yes and great sex for me is some sometimes spontaneous but it's Carefree yes and
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it's worry free yeah yeah I mean pressure is a total passion killer but
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pressure it's like that's again the kind of compounding Paradox because the more there's a problem with our sex the more
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it becomes a focal point in our relationship the more pressure the more expectation every night you go to bed you're thinking you know I've had
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moments in past lives and past relationships where because the sex wasn't great I would feel nervous going
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to bed because it was going to be one of those moments where we kind of both are sat there thinking about it but we're not saying anything to each other and
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then if I fall asleep I'm going to disappoint them but if I try it's going to go badly so what the hell do I do yes
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pressure um is not good for our sex lives and one of the challenges with pressure is that when you think about
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initiation it's often very much bound up in pressure and perhaps we'll talk about initiation in a second but actually the
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foundation of those problems with expectation and pressure is not being able to talk about it okay because if
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you think about it what we really want to say is I'm feeling quite stressed
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about the sex situation and the fact that we don't talk about it means that those things are hanging between us and
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we know with sex that one of the fascinating things about it is like other ways in which we learn we learn
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about sex by what we witness in the media and what we pick up from social
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learning something psychologists call social learning theory when it comes to sex we don't witness how anyone else is
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doing it really we only see what happens on TV and what happens in porn and maybe
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hear from our friends but we don't really know if they're telling the truth or not so what that means is we've all my
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friends all lie about it yeah everyone does they're all stallion in that now I'm joking they're all very honest there's actually a fascinating sex
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research fact which is one of my favorite facts which is that men uh when they say the number of sexual partners
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that they've had are more likely to round it up to a zero or a five a number ending in 05 I think that's a great sex
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fact um so what that means then is is that we're all living our sex lives
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based on something we call sexual script Theory this is a concept that organically came out of the work of some
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sex researchers in the 70s called gagnan and Simon and they discovered that actually in the absence of talking about
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sex we all have quite set ideas about what our sex lives should look like and
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we've picked this up from uh from the media from how people talk about sex in
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popular culture and and how we've Ed language what this means is that we have
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a set of ideas and this includes things like penis and vagina is the main cause
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of sex and everything else isn't really sex and language backs that up doesn't it with the use of the word foreplay
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kind of relegating any other type of sex to less than and the use of the word virginity which we only really use to
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refer to penis and vagina sex so all of these things tell us well that's what
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real sex is and then you hear people talking about that and backing that up
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with things like well we did everything but which is like we didn't have sex you did have sex because you were sexual
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together so what happens with these sexual scripts is that they benefit us to some degree because they reduce our
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anxiety that's what sexual scripts are there for to give us some idea of what's
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expected but what they do to us in the absence of communication is they give us
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an idea about what we should be doing or what someone else wants to do without us
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having to talk about it which often means that problems arise for examp one of the examples you give in your book is
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about orgasms yes and pornography giving us a sexual script that men are
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basically meant in a heterosexual relationship men are meant to orgasm and that there was some crazy stat from some
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PornHub research yes yeah that's really interesting research there was some research that talked about depictions of
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female pleasure and pleasure inducing acts for women from the hund most
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popular videos on PornHub and they found that um women's pleasure was shown in
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about 18% of those top hund videos and men's pleasure or act that produce
00:17:10
pleasure for men mainly around penis and vagina sex because that's men's most favorite sexual act it's women's least
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favorite sexual act that was depicted in about 78% of cases so it's quite
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interesting then when you think about the fact that we're learning from what we see because what does that then tell
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us about what sex should look like about when sex ends about whose pleasure is
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prioritized and it's one of the reasons that we have an orgasm Gap when men and women have sex together because that's
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how we learn about sex on that I just want to pick up on two things you said there that were really interesting to me
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the first one was about us not talking why we don't talk um it's very difficult
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to talk about sex with your partner very very difficult I've been there very difficult because the plethora of
00:18:03
reasons why you might not be functioning well or enjoying it can often sound like
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you're blaming them communication is so important we know that being able to
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talk about sex is one of the most highly correlated factors with long-term sexual
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satisfaction and relationship satisfaction and maintaining desire over time it's more important than the amount
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you have set liking the same thing sexually it's so important but it's so hard to do and we
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know why it's hard right it's because we're not socialized to talk about it we're not often given the words that
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feel comfortable we are out of practice getting those words out of our mouth so they feel kind of clumsy and
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awkward there's a lot of worry and risk involved what if I say this and they don't like it and because of that it's
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easier to avoid but the most fascinating thing about about sex I think is that it's constantly evolving for us so you
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and I we're not the same people sexually than we were when we were 15 16 and we
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won't be the same sexual people in another 10 15 years than we are now so
00:19:13
we need to be able to have the ability for growth right growth and flex in our
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sexual relationships but how do you do that if you can't talk about it it's a bit like going to the hairdressers same
00:19:25
hairdresses for the rest of your life and every you sit down not saying anything and just hoping that they'll
00:19:31
give you the haircut that you want you wouldn't do it right and they continually give you the bad you one and
00:19:37
you just keep coming back and you say thanks and you tip them and you go so we need to get better at talking about it
00:19:44
and it's not easy it's easy for me I talk about it all day every day but I know that that's not the norm and part
00:19:50
of the work that I do is to try and help people try and give people the scaffold to talk about it and I can talk you
00:19:56
through that if you like please so it might be that the best place to start is to find out how people find talking
00:20:03
about challenging topics anyway with their partner so if you can't talk about other things outside of sex without it
00:20:10
going into an argument then it might be worth just looking at communication full stop forget sex for the moment just talk
00:20:16
about that are you creating some like Rules of Engagement for how we communicate you listen I express myself absolutely and I always recommend the
00:20:23
Gans um I don't know if you know their work I do yeah um I recommend them because they have some great resources
00:20:28
around General communication it's important to have a good basis if you're going to talk about sex but if people
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can talk about other things and they find it relatively easy to hear each other and to share their kind of hopes
00:20:40
and fears then it might be useful to start to create a culture where talking about sex becomes the norm this is
00:20:47
always the place you want to end up right we all want to end up with a relationship culture that supports easy
00:20:54
communication about sex that's the guaranteed route to sexual satisfaction and to do that we have to make it
00:21:00
something that we do frequently without any pressure without any expectation
00:21:06
that something big has to change so an early way to start that might be for example to bring in some novelty in your
00:21:14
Communications about sex so people might be listening to this podcast and they might say oh how was your day today
00:21:21
great oh I heard this thing on Diary of a CEO podcast and it was about depictions of pleasure in porn and I
00:21:28
thought it was really interesting and it occurred to me we don't talk about porn much you know is that something you'd be
00:21:35
open to talk about whether you watch it whether you like it what you like that might feel too much for some people and
00:21:41
it might be I heard a podcast about sex and it talked about the importance of talking and I thought we don't do that
00:21:46
much so there's ways of bringing it in which are saying look this I think would be good for us the key point is stating
00:21:54
the impact that you think it will have so I would like like to talk more about this because I heard it means you can
00:22:00
guarantee great sex for the rest of your life so I think that would be good for us you know I'm committed to this relationship I want our sex to stay
00:22:07
great this might be awkward for us but can we do it so the starting point if
00:22:12
you're nervous is always to talk about things outside of your sexual relationship things you've heard on
00:22:17
podcasts films you saw with good sex scenes in them bring things in rather than talking about the two of you after
00:22:25
that if you get good at that it might be worthwhile talking about your own sex when it goes well so a good time to do
00:22:32
this is after sex that's gone well or at another time when you're feeling really emotionally connected maybe you're out
00:22:38
for dinner maybe you're having a weekend away and talk about what you really liked and why okay so don't talk about
00:22:46
it when it's bad no no not at this stage not at this stage if you feel confident with that and you get into a habit of
00:22:53
talking about sex talking about what's gone well talking about sex as if if it's any other topic of conversation
00:23:00
like business or exercise or Diet then you might want to start to talk about
00:23:05
things you'd like to be different and in an idal world I try and encourage
00:23:11
couples to have a kind of regular practice of this so if you think about your goals for your exercise your work
00:23:18
your diet often you'll set yourself goals right and you might tell your partner about them you know in six
00:23:23
months from now I want to do this or this year I'm working on this it's quite good to get into the habit of saying
00:23:29
where do we want our sex life to go how would we like things to be what do we want to continue what do we want more of
00:23:36
and what do we want less of and that's a really positive conversation you don't need to talk about what you don't like
00:23:43
you're talking about what you want more of instead what if the issue in your
00:23:49
sexual relationship is one of Attraction and I I've asked a few guests this because I think it's one of the the
00:23:54
hardest challenges to overcome and I don't know in a clinical setting what
00:24:00
you would say if you're sat there with an individual and they're telling you that the reason they aren't having sex
00:24:06
with Dave right now is because they're no longer attracted to them what what is their path forward there do they dump
00:24:11
Dave or do they go tell Dave it depends how important sex is to them if it's
00:24:17
important say it's important and for them a relationship they're in a monogamous relationship so they can't
00:24:23
get sex elsewhere or they've agreed to not get sex elsewhere and is important
00:24:29
then it's quite important that attraction is part of it um we know that
00:24:35
the sex science tells us that when attraction is high at the beginning it's really easy to maintain desire over time
00:24:43
when attraction is low it can be really challenging It's Not Unusual for me to see couples who've been together decades
00:24:50
with very low levels of Attraction but the work they need to do to maintain a sex life that works for them both is
00:24:56
tough so so you need to kind of have your eyes open I guess about what you're signing up for if sex is important to
00:25:02
you then attraction is fairly important I think it's also maybe useful to say
00:25:07
that attraction can work some Wayne and it might be worth examining what's going
00:25:13
on there and whether you know there is a certain situation that you find yourselves in as a couple or whether
00:25:19
they're at the moment going through some stuff that maybe makes it harder for you to see them in that light yeah sometimes
00:25:25
attraction can come back when those relationship contexts are worked on but
00:25:30
if it's never been there from the outset if it's a very strong sense of a lack of Attraction if someone's eyes have
00:25:36
already moved to someone else then it may be useful to address it and attraction's not just a physical thing
00:25:42
people think of Attraction as being physical it's a psychological thing as well absolutely absolutely and you know
00:25:48
attraction can vary in relationships depending on what's happening in the relationship Dynamic so a common thing
00:25:55
that I've written about in the new book it's to book for parents really is around the dynamic of what it feels like
00:26:02
to have a partner who feels like a another child so the idea that you might
00:26:08
be having to care for them as well you know make their lunches kind of buy their clothes um tidy up after them that
00:26:16
we know from sex research that's a super unsexy Dynamic and that is something which often falls on women in straight
00:26:23
relationships once kids arrive and that kind of dynamic can shift attraction and
00:26:29
may well shift back if that Dynamic is addressed so your new book is called how not to let having kids ruin your sex
00:26:35
life that's right why did you title it that I just thought let's say what it is and that's exactly what it is it's a
00:26:42
guide to not let having kids ruin your sex life does that tend to happen kids
00:26:47
so oh yeah so it's so common sexual dissatisfaction is that it's lowest for couples in the period after having kids
00:26:55
so if you've got an under five-year-old at home it's pretty likely that your sex life is suffering for it it doesn't have
00:27:02
to but many of the kind of reasons why our sex life struggles when kids come
00:27:08
along are um amplifications of dynamics that we struggle with outside of kids so
00:27:15
for example quite often but of course not always people are in a long-term relationship quite often they're living
00:27:21
together being in a long-term relationship and living together are two factors which reduce your desire over time so you've already you're already
00:27:28
starting from that point you may have also been trying to conceive you might have had problems with fertility with
00:27:34
miscarriage sex might have got boring but you might have had to do it anyway you've then got pregnancy which for some
00:27:40
people is a golden time of sexual exploration but for some people means for one reason or another they don't
00:27:45
have much sex and then you're expecting to get back to your sexual life when you've getting no sleep when you're
00:27:50
stressed and when you've got another kind of 37 40 hours of work a week to do
00:27:56
which is the parenting week so there's so many reasons why it's challenging and that's why I wrote the book is there a a
00:28:01
certain demographic of person that you're most likely to see in your clinical practice and is it is it
00:28:08
parents I see people of all ages I see I probably see people mostly in long-term
00:28:13
relationships I think people know that desire is my specialist subject so people tend to seek me out particularly
00:28:19
around desire um I see a lot of parents I also see a lot of non-parents but you
00:28:25
know Parenthood brings additional child Alles for people to navigate even if you think about the time available to have
00:28:31
sex it's much more limited it can be really difficult to initiate when you initiate it the other person might
00:28:38
experience it as a really clumsy initiation when they've got a lot on their plate these are all just as I said
00:28:43
amplifications of what you might get in long-term relationships generally but it tends to be the more challenging wedge
00:28:50
of the pie desire this idea of Desire is really fascinating to me I actually speak to
00:28:56
one of my best friends about um what we call Desire management and it was a theory that we developed based on
00:29:03
just looking at both of our lives and how we' manag to maintain sexual desire in our respective relationships he has
00:29:09
an approach to dating which we all laugh at him for where he meets someone and he
00:29:15
moves them in really really quickly like moves them in it's a very like smothering approach to like finding Love
00:29:21
and Desire very quickly goes out the window whereas I'm probably the opposite of that where in my current relationship
00:29:27
with it was a longdistance relationship for 2 years she lived on the other side of the world eventually in maybe year three or something we like moved in
00:29:32
together but we're still we still both fly all over the world so we don't see each other much which I think is proven
00:29:38
to be quite Central to our desire management we don't see each other much and that's that's the theory of Desire
00:29:44
management keep some distance keep keep the right amount of distance there's probably absolutely there's probably two
00:29:49
too far away and too in frequently seeing them and then there's seeing them too much absolutely it's a great Theory
00:29:56
so desire is possibly one of the most fascinating aspects of sex that is
00:30:01
grossly misunderstood by our kind of collective psyche and it's quite
00:30:07
interesting because if you ask most people um on the street how desire works
00:30:13
or what desire is they'll tell you that we have such a thing as a sex drive or libido which kind of comes into our mind
00:30:21
and tells us it would be a good idea to have sex that is an idea that came from sex science in the 50s and 60s when we
00:30:29
believed that desire was the first part of the sexual response cycle so you you first had the idea to be sexual and then
00:30:36
you acted on it and that's kind of seeped down into our Collective psyche and that's how we all operate our sex
00:30:42
lives we generally wait to feel like it and then we act on it but actually we
00:30:48
now know that desire doesn't work like that and that in the early stages of a
00:30:53
relationship or if we live apart there's your desire management we manage to
00:30:58
maintain higher levels of that kind of Desire it's called spontaneous desire and it happens when a partner is novel
00:31:04
or less familiar to us or perhaps when our Dynamic with them isn't diluted by
00:31:10
other roles so for your friend that moves someone in that person then becomes a
00:31:15
flatmate so that the role of them as a sexual partner is diluted for other people it's diluted also by being a
00:31:23
co-parent so our brain starts to see that person less as a sexual object this is an inevitable part of being with
00:31:30
someone for a number of years and we can pretty much guarantee that for most
00:31:35
people spontaneous desire will start to decline about a year or 18 months into a
00:31:41
relationship obviously it depends how often you see each other and it sounds like your desire management fantastic might keep that going a bit longer for
00:31:48
most people they have this experience and we know that this happens for everyone but that women struggle to
00:31:55
maintain this more than men so in the UK we know that 34% of women and 15% of men
00:32:02
are worried that they don't feel like sex enough and that's because they've seen a drop in the spontaneous desire we
00:32:09
talked about sexual scripts earlier and we talked about how we learn about sex from what we see the way desire is
00:32:15
represented to us in the media is lust passion
00:32:20
spontaneity that sexual urge that you absolutely have to act on and yes that
00:32:26
is how it works for some of us some of the time perhaps after we've not seen each other for a long time perhaps at
00:32:32
the start of a relationship and for some people you know lifelong with the same person but it's not the norm actually
00:32:39
what the norm is is that that type of Desire tends to diminish and it's other motivations other than horniness that
00:32:46
we're seeking out through sex so we call these nonsexual motivations and there may be things like wanting to feel close
00:32:54
stress relief wanting to feel desire ired um wanting to demonstrate love or
00:33:00
affection wanting to have fun um out of a sense of obligation because it's been
00:33:05
a while these are all nonsexual motivations which lead us to the
00:33:10
behavior of sex the problem is a lot of people are waiting to feel like it before they act
00:33:16
on it and for those people they're waiting a really long time we know that
00:33:22
for women particularly uh it should be considered normal to never feel like sex
00:33:28
out of the blue with your long-term partner never how do we know that from
00:33:33
sex research so when we ask women how often do you feel like sex with your partner they say either never or maybe
00:33:41
once or twice a month this is spontaneous desire but we're asking the question
00:33:49
about only one type of Desire responsive desire is desire that emerges out of us
00:33:55
beginning sexual activity or or having what we call sexual stimuli in front of us a passionate kiss a flirtation being
00:34:02
naked together um a text that suggests something that we might do later
00:34:08
on the later versions of sex research tell us that actually desire emerges out
00:34:15
of being sexual okay so it comes from doing something to trigger it but if
00:34:21
your understanding of Desire is that you should wait until you feel like it there's a large proportion of people in longterm relationships that are just
00:34:28
never feeling like it and never doing anything about it what we need to do instead is be aware that our desire can
00:34:35
be triggered and find ways to trigger it and have a relationship context that supports triggering it in that context
00:34:42
we know that people's desire works perfectly well that means they can have desire feature as much as they want in
00:34:49
their relationship just by knowing how desire works so our brains code things
00:34:55
as sexual and this could be physical touch it could be kiss it could be being naked together it could be the sight of
00:35:02
someone's naked body it could be a suggestive text it's different for everybody but essentially sexual content
00:35:08
triggers our arousal which triggers our desire it's the reason why the most common thing people say to me in Sex
00:35:15
Therapy is I didn't really feel like it but we had sex and it was great and afterwards I said why don't we do that
00:35:21
more that's responsive desire it emerges out of sexual activity the problem of
00:35:27
long-term relationships is that we see a decline in what I call sexual currency
00:35:32
so how we relate to each other as sexual beings we start to see sex a bit like an
00:35:38
onoff switch so we're either having sex or the rest of the time we're not being
00:35:43
sexual together you know we're not passionately kissing unless it's part of sex we're not sending each other those
00:35:48
flirty messages we us to do at the beginning we're not spending time lounging around in bed on a Sunday
00:35:54
morning being naked together in a way that might kickstart desire so these low levels of sexual
00:36:00
currency and these high levels of familiarity seeing the same person every
00:36:05
day means our brains just don't code them as sexual stimuli in the same way
00:36:11
and then we go cheat or we go look for porn or something else yeah absolutely because we want to have that kind of
00:36:17
frison of excitement can I just clarify that sexual currency this definition basically means if I think this of this
00:36:24
in a financial context if you see someone as being highly sexually desirable they have a high
00:36:30
sexual currency in your mind not quite okay so think currency more like charge
00:36:36
oh okay like a thatp yeah so sexual currency my definition of it would be
00:36:41
it's everything that you do that marks you out as a sexual couple apart from having sex so this is the stuff that you
00:36:48
wouldn't do with your friends you wouldn't do with your family you wouldn't do with your kids so you're
00:36:53
physically affectionate with all those people right M but the seual side of it the passionate kissing the bum grabs the
00:37:00
flirtation the saying you look super hot in that top these things are sexual
00:37:05
currency so if we think about our sex lives not as this onoff switch of the
00:37:11
you know 18 minutes that's the average for men and women when they have sex together it's 18 minutes of having sex
00:37:17
however often you're doing it if you think of your sexual relationship as something which is always happening
00:37:23
something which you're always nurturing you can imagine the power that that can have on both triggering desire but also
00:37:30
Meeting those sexual needs I'll give you an example that I wrote about in the new book actually um because parents
00:37:36
obviously have limited time available to have sex and raising sexual currency is
00:37:41
one of the ways you can increase sexual satisfaction even when you can't have any more sex so if you think about an
00:37:47
example of um a straight couple whereby he is feeling that her lack of interest
00:37:53
in sex means that she doesn't desire him as much as she used to and he's worried about that because for him that means
00:38:00
the relationship is in crisis uh she might look elsewhere and also he doesn't feel so good about himself he wants to
00:38:06
feel desired we all do right he gave me an example of a time when they perhaps
00:38:12
attended a function and they were in the lift and as they went up in the lift to get to this function she pushed him
00:38:18
against the lift and kissed him really passionately for the 10 seconds they were in the lift and then they got out
00:38:25
the lift and They carried on with the function this is sexual currency and that made him feel more desired more connected to
00:38:32
her sexually than a week before the sex they had that felt like going through the motions so you've got something
00:38:39
which meets your sexual needs which makes you feel desired attractive close like a sexual couple like you've got
00:38:45
some sexual secret between you that no one else can see sexual currency does all of that but it also acts as
00:38:51
scaffolding to help us move easily into sex because we talked about expect expectation and pressure earlier and if
00:38:59
you have high levels of sexual currency there's low pressure for it to go anywhere because it is your sexual
00:39:05
relationship for its own right it's not someone initiating sex the way to
00:39:10
overcome this potential psychological barrier is to create a culture of low pressure between you you say that sex
00:39:16
should be trivial and often not rare and crucial absolutely yeah soal and often I
00:39:22
always know that my work with couples is done when they find it really easy to invite each other into sex and really
00:39:28
easy to turn each other down because what happens when uh we have low levels of sexual currency and when sex has
00:39:35
become an issue is that everything's riding on initiation so the person initiating Waits they they ignore all
00:39:42
the other times they want to initiate it because it's quite stressful and they wait until the time it really matters
00:39:48
maybe it's an anniversary or a weekend away or something where it feels like you should have sex and they initiate it
00:39:53
and there's so much riding on it that the other person knows there's so much writing on it they feel pressure
00:39:58
pressure is a desire killer it doesn't happen and then the initiation will be even rarer moving forward more pressure
00:40:06
for more pressure exactly what we want instead is a kind of trivial and often
00:40:12
way of sexually relating high levels of sexual currency high levels of initiation so you find it easy to say to
00:40:18
your partner by the way at work today I was thinking about doing this to you when when we get home and your partner
00:40:25
can say that sounds really hot if only I didn't have this meeting tomorrow on my mind let's come back to that on the
00:40:31
weekend so you can let somebody know that sex is on your mind you can invite someone into something which might be a
00:40:38
passionate kiss might be let's go to bed early and talk about our day knowing that that is sexual stimuli which might
00:40:44
trigger arousal and desire but also it acts as a way of
00:40:50
triggering that um initiation it makes it easy to initiate if you're doing it often and if there's low pressure do you
00:40:57
think you should schedule sex no never ever schedule sex cuz you said let's come back to on the weekend I was
00:41:02
thinking that's just ruin the weekend I'd like to I like it to be spicy and spontaneous so um it's one of our sexual
00:41:08
scripts that sex spontaneous sex is better and I don't necessarily agree with that but I do agree with the idea
00:41:15
that scheduling sex just creates pressure for everyone how can you in advance agree to something that you
00:41:22
don't know if you're going to feel like when you get there and all that does is create pressure what you should do though in today's day and age is
00:41:29
schedule physical intimacy schedule some type of sexual currency because we're so
00:41:35
busy if you don't do that when is it going to happen the issue I have though is if I schedule physical intimacy MH
00:41:43
then okay and I keep doing that eventually the expectation comes in that
00:41:48
we have sex after the physical intimacy it's also the same thing with like date night if you're parents and you get one
00:41:53
date night a week we all know when we need to get this we need to make this thing happen so it becomes scheduling
00:42:00
sex because you're scheduling date night once a week you know what I mean yeah so you've got two options haven't you one
00:42:06
is that you wait until it's really high pressure and you don't initiate it very often you wait for this date night I
00:42:12
don't know once a week once a month and everyone knows there's all kinds of stuff riding on it and that makes it
00:42:18
possibly the worst set of circumstances to for everyone to feel like sex lots of high pressure sex that might feel
00:42:23
formulaic everyone's distracted means they can't get into it it's not great sex the other option is that you keep
00:42:31
high levels of sexual currency and you try your best to schedule brief moments
00:42:36
of physical intimacy which could act as scaffolding to take it further you're right in that you may start to build up
00:42:43
an expectation that oh every time we say we'll have a bath together we end up having sex that might happen but when
00:42:50
you invite someone into the bath you are inviting them into the bath right so you're not inviting them saying let's
00:42:56
have a bath and have sex afterwards you're saying do you fancy having a bath together the fact that you both know
00:43:03
where the bath might lead is fine because it allows you to get into that head space Oh okay I hadn't thought
00:43:09
about sex tonight but the bath might lead to sex so let me get into a sexual
00:43:14
head space for a minute so that's quite useful the problem comes when you say to
00:43:20
them afterwards you said you wanted a bath and we've not had sex well that wasn't what you invited them into you invited them into the B so you have to
00:43:27
be okay if it doesn't lead to that but if you initiate these types of things more if you think about it scattergun
00:43:34
approach more of them are likely to go where you want them to go versus that one time of high pressure if you were to
00:43:41
give me a couple of pieces of simple advice on how to keep desire high in my
00:43:46
relationship what would you say I would say kiss more kiss for kissing's sake
00:43:52
okay kiss kissing often falls off the agenda in longterm relationships the number of times I see
00:43:58
that um with couples I'm working with who've been together decades they only kiss as part of sex or as initiation of
00:44:05
sex so kissing is a great way of triggering Desire it's also a great way of getting our sexual needs met so that
00:44:11
would be one the second would be you have to make time to schedule physical intimacy of some type because remember
00:44:19
that desire is triggered by that kind of sexual stimul whether it's um getting
00:44:24
naked on the couch and watching film together that you know it's got good sex scenes in it whether it's massage
00:44:29
whether it's the bath whether it's um some kind of date night that involves use of your bodies without that there
00:44:36
are no triggers to your desire so you're just kind of waiting to feel it the
00:44:41
third is understand how desire works it's drastically different than what you've been sold and you're normal if
00:44:48
you struggle to get in the head space sometimes what about distance and you know this idea of like you talked about
00:44:54
how they kind of your partner can lose their sexual currency if they become a carer or you know I've heard before if
00:45:00
they become like too much of a mom or a dad in your mind and they stop becoming
00:45:06
a sort of sexual partner relationship Dynamics are quite fascinating U as you
00:45:11
say because when we talk about them we often hear things like well obviously if you're experiencing great amount of
00:45:18
relationship conflict it's going to affect your sex life I mean that's of course right we all know that to be true
00:45:24
but actually it's the subtle dyam dynamics that are quite important it's
00:45:29
um having distance from each other and being able to bring in novelty and newness a bit like you do with kind of
00:45:37
having that that physical distance but it's also an emotional separation isn't it because you're having experiences
00:45:43
separately and then coming back together to talk about them it's also about what roles you might get typ cast into in
00:45:50
your relationship so something I talk about often is the idea that when we
00:45:55
have sex with the same person for a long time we can start to feel as though there's only one way for us to be
00:46:01
sexually and that's the way they're kind of expecting us to be so it can feel quite suffocating and sometimes that's
00:46:07
the reason that people go outside of a monogamous relationship is because they want to experience themselves
00:46:13
differently they want to be a different person sexually and because they can't talk to their partner about that and
00:46:19
they feel typ cast in that Dynamic you know you're the dominant one I'm not or
00:46:24
um the sex that we have is really kind of sensual and caring and I want it to be passionate and animalistic it's really difficult you
00:46:31
must come across so many couples in um your clinical practice that have two different visions of what sex should
00:46:38
look like yes fantasies fetishes you know this one wants this person to do this to me but this person thinks that's
00:46:44
you know horrific MH how does one bridge the gap and how does one go about even communicating those things because I
00:46:50
imagine so many people in so many relationships it's kind of like what you said earlier having really bad haircuts
00:46:55
having really bad sex and I saying nothing about it and oh yeah I've been in relationships before where I've thought you know what I really want to
00:47:01
do that but I think she'll think that I'm a little bit you know trust me no one is talking about it everyone stays
00:47:07
silent and just hopes that the other person will either get the hint or will accidentally stumble upon the thing they
00:47:13
really want them to do it is fascinating really when you think about it because so much of our satisfaction our life
00:47:19
satisfaction depends on how sex goes but we just almost leave it to Chance by not talking about it one of the things we
00:47:25
might do in Sex Therapy is by getting people separately to write down what
00:47:30
their perfect sex looks like um I have a um an exercise it's actually free you
00:47:36
can find it on my social media or my website which is called conditions for good sex which guides people through the
00:47:41
process of doing that and it looks at three main areas one is psychological arousal what turns you on in your head
00:47:47
what kind of dynamic between you and the person works for you how do you need to feel about yourself and your Optimum
00:47:53
sexual experience one is physical stimulation and that could be anything from where you like to be touched to the
00:47:59
types of sex you like to um the type of positions you like to be in the third is
00:48:05
being able to be in the moment so you might right there the kinds of things that go through your mind to distract you and I would get people to do that
00:48:12
separately um the way I guide people through that is by getting them to think about their three best sexual
00:48:18
experiences and really replay those in their mind what were the aspects of that
00:48:23
sexual experience which you play over and over again what was it about how you
00:48:28
felt about yourself about how you could be with that person what was it about what you were doing what was it about
00:48:35
the environment and people are able to then develop their own perspective their
00:48:40
own um list if you like of the things that really work for them what if your partner says I don't
00:48:47
like it well that's what we come to next then we look for the overlap so is there overlap if there's not then there's a
00:48:53
little bit of work to do right are you going to stay in a monogamous relationship and if so how are you going to make this work are you going to open
00:49:00
it up so you can get your sexual needs met elsewhere plenty of people do that often there is enough overlap for people
00:49:06
to say okay I didn't realize that that was a thing for you I don't I like that
00:49:11
thing but maybe not quite to that degree can we do this instead so there's a little bit of negotiation that happens
00:49:17
in the middle but I think perhaps one of the myths around our sexuality is that
00:49:22
it exists between us and our partner and actually our sexuality just exists within us alone and we should be allowed
00:49:29
to express that alone or in our minds in whatever way that we want and that could
00:49:35
look quite different what we do alone perhaps with others to what we do with
00:49:40
another person so we don't have to get all of our sexual needs met by that one person there may be other ways of doing
00:49:46
it should we remain open-minded to the um desires and requests of the other I I
00:49:52
remember you know I like experimenting you know and I think I was once upon a time with someone who was less Keen to
00:49:59
experiment and I remember think oh this is boring this is going to be really boring and then over time I think I was
00:50:06
able to introduce things slowly that open their eyes to experimentation and
00:50:11
they love they love experimentation we had the best sex of Our Lives okay because we introduced things we experimented more but um I I remember
00:50:18
reflecting in that moment that I could have easily walked away from the relationship when this person said oh no that's weird I don't want to do that
00:50:24
yeah and it may be that if this other person had done their conditions for good sex they may have written down
00:50:29
under the psychological arousal part I really need to know someone or I really need to trust someone before I can do
00:50:35
things that are outside of the normal sexual script right sense and experimentation could be part of that um
00:50:43
I think it also comes down to how you want the kind of personality of your sex
00:50:48
life together to be so I think for some of us um experiencing kind of thrill or
00:50:55
joy or pushing boundaries or experimentation in sex is a key part of
00:51:00
what really tis ticks us along what really keeps us going for other people it's just not it's it's that they want
00:51:06
sex to be predictable um intimate fun but close without anything outside of
00:51:13
the ordinary so I think it can be quite useful to think about what do we see as the sexual personality of our
00:51:19
relationship how do we how do we want it to be what would make us feel most alive and that's where creat a culture of
00:51:26
talking about sex is helpful because without that how do you know earlier you
00:51:31
used a phrase you said it's when we were talking about vaginal um penetration you said it's women's least favorite act yes
00:51:38
it is yeah so we talked about sexual scripts um penis and vagina sex being
00:51:43
the main course of sex is very much a dominant sexual script and there are
00:51:48
many reasons that's dominant and it's something that we know from sex research that if you ask people and they have
00:51:54
done many times in sex research to recount what sex looks like people will recount a set menu of sex that is you
00:52:02
start with this then you do a bit of that then you go to the main course of penis and vagina sex um the kind of
00:52:08
American audience will know that as a kind of baseball analogy and I think worldwide we know that analogy too right
00:52:14
that's how we see how sex should be but what's Most Fascinating about that is that suits men's Anatomy more than
00:52:21
women's we know that the majority of women about 80% um don't orgasm from
00:52:28
penetrative sex because obviously it's all about the clitoris and so that's why for women their most favorite sexual
00:52:34
acts are things like people using their hands to stimulate their clitoris or receiving oral sex not penis and vagina
00:52:42
sex they rate rate that the least pleasure inducing sexual act for men it's different it's the
00:52:49
highest pleasure inducing sexual act right alongside masturbation actually what's f fascinating is we talk a lot
00:52:57
about desire particularly between men and women when they have sex together but we don't always talk about the fact
00:53:02
that to move towards sex we have to be motivated to feel that there's going to be a reward and so when we're having sex
00:53:09
that perhaps doesn't suit our anatomy as much as we'd like it to or when there's a big orgasm Gap and someone else is
00:53:16
reliably experiencing more pleasure than we are of course our desire suffers does it we've used the word
00:53:22
initiate a lot does it matter who initiates it doesn't matter but we know that the
00:53:28
person initiating often experiences higher levels of sexual satisfaction in the encounter than the person who's
00:53:34
following there are some really interesting things with initiation and I actually think that when it comes to sex
00:53:42
with long-term Partners when it comes to many of the couples that I see people
00:53:47
often walk through the door saying there's a problem with desire sometimes there is it's usually in their
00:53:53
understanding of Desire not desire itself but often it's an initiation actually because if you think about it
00:54:00
initiation is a communication you're basically saying I'd like to have sex now would you and
00:54:08
there are a variety of ways that people initiate and in my experience they can be wildly off theark so one scenario is
00:54:16
that the person initiates and it's so subtle that the other person just doesn't pick up on it at all and it's
00:54:23
quite difficult to put yourself out there with initiation right so people test the waters with this coded subtle
00:54:30
I'll put my hands there and and they'll know what that means and often that is
00:54:35
completely missed by the other person and so the opportunity for sex is lost the other side of the coin is when
00:54:43
people initiate in a really direct way so um we know that women having sex with
00:54:48
men initiate much more directly and when men are initiating with women or when
00:54:54
women are initiating with women they initiate much more indirectly so this
00:54:59
direct initiation from women to men often looks like should we have sex
00:55:05
then do you fancy a shag that kind of thing which although it's direct and you
00:55:10
could give it points for being direct communication people say that all the time time all the time they say it it's
00:55:18
direct it's getting a point across but it's inherently unsexy and it's quite interesting
00:55:26
because the social script of men are always up for sex means that in women's
00:55:32
Minds often they can just say that and that will do it for their partner yeah
00:55:37
and actually that's not the case and what we know from research is that most
00:55:42
men actually say I need a bit more than that I need to feel intimacy I need to
00:55:47
feel desired I need to feel as though she's initiating it because she's enthusiastic about doing it not because
00:55:54
she's doing it for me we also know that people fall into styles of initiation
00:55:59
and just in the same way that I mentioned getting typ cast around how you are sexually with a partner you can
00:56:04
get typ cast in terms of how you initiate so there might be one way that
00:56:10
you do it always the same always and maybe it was cute for the first six months but in month 60 it starts to
00:56:17
become quite irritating it starts to become not a sexual trigger but oh here we go again yeah unsexy it's kind of
00:56:23
like yeah predictable yeah pressure so it can be a really useful thing to have
00:56:29
a conversation with somebody else somebody you're having sex with around how you actually like sex to be
00:56:35
initiated and whether that matches with how each other does it you know what's interesting when we think about sex and
00:56:42
what we assume it must be like we all have a bit of an idea in our head maybe from pornography or something else or
00:56:48
movies that it should just flow yes that it should just you know and so when our sex doesn't flow we think something is
00:56:55
broken and wrong with it m we should we just walk in hi babe how's work oh off we go we're off to the like every day
00:57:02
and it should happen every every other night um and if it's not flowing and
00:57:07
happening every other night we think we need to go and like yeah you know fix this someone's to blame something's
00:57:13
wrong with me or him or so let's come back to frequency because that's a big one but before we get on to
00:57:19
that occupying the space in between willingness so that's a nice idea that
00:57:25
I've had or you've had but I'm not there yet and desire when your desire kicks in
00:57:30
is actually quite an uncomfortable space to occupy and one of the things I like to do in in my work with people is to
00:57:36
try and help them get comfortable in that space because as you say we have this idea that we should be feeling it
00:57:41
before we start that's wrong we know that now but also that it should be easy for us just to slip into that sexual
00:57:48
head space to lose that awkwardness to lose that sense of I don't actually know if I'm going to feel like it I might do
00:57:55
can we just continue what we're doing and I'll see occupying that space in between willingness and desire is really
00:58:02
a key part of initiation because if you initiate with shall we have sex it
00:58:07
doesn't really give you a chance to see if you can occupy that space does it you have either have to say yes or no do you
00:58:14
know think it's harder for men as well in some regards because like we got to get you know the Eiffel Tower up in in
00:58:20
in a heteros sexual relationship there's like it's very easy to see if the man is
00:58:25
aroused whereas it's less obvious I mean it is there's ways to tell obviously yes without getting too detailed but it's
00:58:32
it's so clear if the man is aroused there's no hiding it for all of us our
00:58:37
body's arousal response and the degree with which we're turned on in our minds so desire don't actually always match as
00:58:45
much as we'd like them to so I don't know if you've ever had this experience or any of your listeners have but it can
00:58:50
be quite common for men to want to be getting in a sexual head space or
00:58:56
actually be feeling desire but not be hard and because it's a visual sign
00:59:03
sometimes their Partners whether they're male or female Partners can take that really personally MH what does that mean
00:59:08
about me I I'm going to be honest because that's the whole point of this podcast was I've had multiple times in
00:59:13
my life where I've not been able to get an erection and uh it's so awward and
00:59:20
it's the minute they realize that you you're not going to be able to get an erection what do I say you know what do I say
00:59:27
yeah I'm so glad you mentioned it because it's so common and it's common because this is called arousal
00:59:33
non-concordance so an idea that our bodies don't always do what our brains are thinking so you might think you want
00:59:39
to have sex but your body doesn't always respond and that happens for people of all genders it's just more challenging
00:59:46
for people with penises right because you can see it that's I'm saying yeah so it brings with it that extra level of
00:59:51
pressure as soon as you've got that pressure then as we know your attention goes elsewhere your worry increases that
00:59:58
turns down arousal like turning down the tv less chance of inter rection so can I ask then what do I do in that moment and
01:00:04
what should they do as in like how do they help me in that very embarrassing moment and what do I say yeah so they
01:00:10
first need to understand that no erection doesn't mean that you don't want to have sex it might sometimes of
01:00:16
course but if you're saying look I'm I'm really Keen for this I'm just not there
01:00:21
yet then they need to take that at face value okay that's really important otherwise you end up feeling as though
01:00:26
it's a judgment on your attraction or your desire for them which it's not um the second thing
01:00:32
is there needs to be less focus on the need for the penis to be hard and that
01:00:37
comes from delineating this idea of this set menu of sex which means a hard penis
01:00:44
has to be part of it there's plenty of other things that you could do sexually if you're feeling like you want to be
01:00:50
sexual which will move your attention back to sexual things things that might really turn you on so for example giving
01:00:57
oral sex is often something that a lot of men say really turn them on obviously it's not for everyone vibrator out yeah
01:01:02
all kinds of things watching someone else's sexual pleasure can really turn us on for some people it's really hard
01:01:08
for them to get used to um enjoying sensation when their penis is soft they
01:01:13
they kind of want to avoid it be great if they didn't and they could be comfortable with enjoying that touch even then but it might mean moving
01:01:21
moving your attention to another person what usually happens then is that at some point it comes back MH but it only
01:01:29
comes back if you don't worry about it and if you don't put pressure on it that has to be not just about you it has to
01:01:34
be about the person you're with as well because you know if they're oh never mind then we'll just do it another time
01:01:40
okay so that's really interesting so the foundation of all of that though is communication absolutely because without
01:01:46
that if if I go flatted and then I don't say anything about it and I just lay there like dormant and then she's laying
01:01:53
there dormant and then we try and go to sleep and then we never address we never get to communicate cuz maybe I did want
01:01:58
to have sex but maybe for some reason my to-do list was still on my mind exactly and notice that the Assumption behind it
01:02:05
is that the sex that you're going to have is penis and vagina penetration is that even what she wants and if we could
01:02:12
initiate sex in a way that was clearer if we could say to our partners easily
01:02:17
um and really horny what I'd really like to do is X and it all be about me are
01:02:23
you up for that that's quite different if we're able to be clear about that what would that do to your confidence
01:02:30
with your actions does that make sense if she'd actually gone into that sexual encounter saying you know what all I
01:02:36
want you to do is make me come I'm I'm I'm not I not feel like penetrative sex tonight if she'd felt confident to say
01:02:42
that I can guarantee there would have been no problem with the erection the erection would have come as part of it
01:02:48
because the whole process would have been arousing this is a bit of a left field one but I just remembered a debate
01:02:54
me and my friends had in our little like mates chat is it better to have sex before or
01:03:01
after you eat because he was like oh no I this I thought this was weird he was like I have sex before we go on the date
01:03:09
I'm like what you have sex before the day he was like yeah no sex after no sex after food that is a good idea to be
01:03:15
fair a lot of people say they struggle really when they're full they feel quite unsexy they feel a bit lethargic they
01:03:23
feel a bit bloated they don't feel great about their body perhaps um a lot of people do that if they're going to have
01:03:29
a date night I mean I never like date nights because I think by the time you get home from a date night you've maybe
01:03:35
had a bit to drink you've maybe had a bit to eat it's maybe quite late it's not the best conditions for having sex actually I'd rather if you had a date
01:03:42
night you kept it on fun emotional connection relationship satisfaction and then you plan an in at home date night
01:03:49
that's more about physical intimacy okay do you know what I mean because it's not it's not that easy to do the two so your
01:03:54
friend's probably right probably before food is better but you want to come back to frequency sure yeah because we talked
01:04:01
about that earlier and this is one of the big myths that people talk about around sex life which is that the amount
01:04:07
of sex that you have matters and it really doesn't so what I mean by that is that
01:04:14
if you ask most people how often they should be having sex a week I mean what do you think they would say your friends
01:04:19
or people on the street how much they should be having sex yeah a week a month how much do you think they'd say three
01:04:26
times a week everyone says three times a week really it's this kind of urban myth
01:04:31
that again forms part of our sexual scripts if we're not having sex three times a week there's a problem it's
01:04:37
actually drastically different than that the average times people in in the UK and actually it's kind of replicated
01:04:43
around the world but what's fascinating is that we're using frequency as a yard
01:04:49
stick of a good sex life and there is no correlation between the fre frequency of
01:04:54
sex and sexual satisfaction none whatsoever so you're saying it's quality over quantity absolutely you could be
01:05:01
having sex you know once a year that completely blows your socks off makes you feel alive makes you feel super
01:05:07
connected um that's really exploratory where you lose yourself in it and that is better than having sex once a day
01:05:15
where you're not enjoying it your mind's not in it it's not pleasurable you're feeling disconnected you're feeling
01:05:21
awkward so it's so interesting that we get so hung up on frequency in fact the
01:05:27
average amount of times people are having sex in the UK If people are interested is around about three times a
01:05:33
month but there is huge amount of variation there so plenty of people in relationships that haven't had sex for
01:05:39
months and I'm quite happy with that and plenty of people having sex more but I think having that average is quite
01:05:46
useful to talk about because actually it's a it's quite surprisingly different
01:05:52
to how most people perceive it should be over 40% of women want to be having more
01:05:57
sex than they are currently having which is in chapter two of this book in front of me mind the gap MH what about men so
01:06:03
women are women want to be having over 40% of them want to be having more sex than they're currently having yeah
01:06:09
there's there's huge levels of sexual dissatisfaction for people of all genders everyone wants to be having more
01:06:15
sex better sex than they're currently having we know that for women it's around about what just over half of
01:06:21
women 52% and for men it's about 42% are unhappy with the sex lives that they
01:06:26
have enormous numbers that's UK data 15,000 adults between the ages men are
01:06:32
typically more satisfied yeah and I suggest that the reason for that is that
01:06:38
although men experience challenges with desire as well men find it easier on
01:06:43
average to maintain desire for the same person and as we've already talked about women struggle to access their
01:06:49
spontaneous desire and label that as a problem when it's not you know I'm aware we're talking very much about straight
01:06:54
couples because that's where we see the majority of sexual problems but when we talk about men and women having sex
01:06:59
together we also see that orgasm Gap so we see less pleasure and less reward for
01:07:04
women which I think accounts for that slightly higher number so you said something in between there that was curious to me just to confirm over
01:07:11
long-term relationships the man is more likely to maintain their desire for the woman in a heterosexual relationship
01:07:17
that's right the woman is more likely to lose desire for her partner that's right
01:07:23
and we're talking here remember about spontaneous desire okay okay is that remember there there the responsive
01:07:29
desire we talked about earlier and we know that this is the interesting bit when it comes to women's desire it's
01:07:35
actually much more easier to trigger with a wide range of sexual stimuli than men's so women's responsive desire works
01:07:41
brilliantly you could say it works even better than men's so spontaneous desire is only one type of Desire it's that
01:07:48
feeling of out of the blue lust horniness want to rip your clothes off it's partly attributable to to higher
01:07:54
levels of androgens like testosterone but certainly not exclusively there's a massive social component to it as well
01:08:01
so yes men find it easier to maintain that um but I think it's really important to say because there will be men listening to this that will be
01:08:07
worried about their desire as we've said earlier 15% is actually quite a large number it's not all men some men really
01:08:14
struggle to keep hold of that spontaneous desire in a long-term relationship and just to clarify the
01:08:19
reactive desire is the desire that kicks in once you've begun basically yeah some kind of sexual stimuli some kind of
01:08:25
sexual currency um it comes after arousal I want to close off on the
01:08:31
subject of parents um I'm not a parent yet but my brother has three kids and
01:08:37
they're under the age of six they're six and under he's got three of them I'm going to send in my book yes I'm going
01:08:44
I'm sure he's he's going to listen anyway um and from that I've I've been able to understand on a surface level
01:08:51
the plight of a parent sleep um kids waking up in the middle of the night
01:08:56
work pressures a lot of people are working at home now as well so that that has impacts on sleep and how you're
01:09:01
feeling and your mental health and all those things and to think that couples irrespective of children are struggling
01:09:07
with sex you you said at the start of this conversation but it says in your book as well that we're having less and
01:09:13
less sex um when you compare one decade to the previous decade and there was
01:09:19
another study that I saw that said there's been General declines in sexual frequency in other count around the world as well like Japan Australia
01:09:25
Finland and the USA mhm so we know that like we're we're having less sex with each other anyway and then you throw
01:09:32
kids into the mix which I just I don't know I've not been there yet so I've not crossed that bridge but I'm trying to
01:09:38
figure out when I do come to that bridge how on Earth I'm going to be able to have sexual desire when I'm a very busy
01:09:45
CEO running multiple businesses traveling all over the world seeing my partner currently not very much you know
01:09:51
and trying to make those moments where we do spend time together special then you throw in little Timmy who's
01:09:57
going and he's not going to care about my schedule no and to it's going to
01:10:03
become my priority for rightfully so if he behaves himself and then where sex
01:10:08
going to go where you know yeah this is why it's it's a real challenge for parents and I think one of the key
01:10:13
things one of the reasons I wrote the book actually is because the first thing that we can do for parents is talk about
01:10:19
the fact that it's normal okay it's not you it's not your relationship it's nothing about the two of you together
01:10:24
that means you shouldn't be together it's challenging to have a good sex life when you've got young kids at home it's
01:10:30
challenging for everyone I think the second thing that we can do is explain
01:10:36
to people what the factors are that tend to make a difference so people know about pregnancy people
01:10:44
know about trying to conceive they understand that these things will impact on their sex life but I think the things
01:10:50
that they don't acknowledge or don't realize as much is the trajectory that that sets them on in the early stages
01:10:57
and the trajectory that that first year of having a newborn baby will set you on in terms of that reduction in sexual
01:11:04
currency in terms of resentments that might start to breed and how your relationship Dynamic becomes in terms of
01:11:12
how equal the mental load is and we know that the mental load so that's kind of the unequal division of labor which
01:11:18
often falls on women in heterosexual relationships particularly when kids come along we know that there's a direct
01:11:24
correlation between couples who divide that household labor in a kind of
01:11:30
Equitable and transparent way and sexual satisfaction so it seems quite hard to believe but actually it doesn't have to
01:11:36
be completely equal but if you feel as though your partner is pulling their weight if you feel as though it's not all automatically falling to you we know
01:11:44
that people generally tend to have better sex so there's all kinds of things which parents need to know about
01:11:50
their sex life that they don't is that about resentment though is that yeah it's resentment and it's about what I
01:11:56
mentioned earlier about seeing your partner almost as a third child you're you're you're the captain of the house
01:12:02
right you're the boss of the house and you have to hold in your mind everything you're the CEO of the house you have to
01:12:08
hold in your mind everything that needs doing even for your partner yeah that they they're not holding anything
01:12:13
they're not remembering the kids' birthdays they're not thinking they need to buy a present you're having to do that that takes your attention away from
01:12:20
sex and it also raises your resentment and sexual satisfaction can really suffer but there are a few other things
01:12:27
that I like to talk about in the book that I think are really important for parents and one of them is I compare the
01:12:32
Journey of Parenthood a little bit like um a kind of navigation across the seas
01:12:38
right so Parenthood is the storm and it's a storm for everyone and there are different phases of the storm and some
01:12:44
of it you just need to Baton down the hatches and get through it as unscathed as you can and not worry about sex so
01:12:50
much that might be like the newborn phase but then there are also parts of the journey where you might have found
01:12:56
yourself knocked off course a little bit and what you actually need to do is take stock of the boat and say hold on what
01:13:02
what's going on here what are we doing if we continue on this trajectory 10 15 years down the line we're likely to be
01:13:10
in a place where sex is unrecoverable versus if we make a small
01:13:15
change a degree or two to the left or right very small changes over the long
01:13:20
term we might end up in an entirely different destination and so the book is all about what are
01:13:26
those small changes and this might be surprising to some people it's not having more sex it's other ways of
01:13:33
increasing sexual satisfaction so for example we know that when we turn each
01:13:39
other down gently for sex it increases sexual satisfaction we know that when we increase sexual currency which doesn't
01:13:46
have to take much time we increase sexual satisfaction so there are many things that people can do even if they
01:13:52
don't feel they have time or head space for sex or until they have the time and head space for sex that can just keep
01:13:59
that boat kind of heading in the right direction what about what's the relationship there with sleep and sex
01:14:05
then because obviously if if I've got little Timmy crying at night time at 3:00 a.m. uh I'm going to be poorly
01:14:10
slept the next day which means will that have an impact on how horny I am yes yeah big relationship between sleep and
01:14:17
sex for all of us we know that if you get a good night's sleep your chances of having sex the next day increase by 14%
01:14:22
so that's for all of us when it comes to parents there is some quite interesting data about the impact of nighttime
01:14:30
waking on your sex life we know that the number of times you get up in the night to tends to a child like to go to the
01:14:37
cot or the bed to see to a crying child the number of times you get up has an
01:14:42
impact on what's happening in your sex life and for your desire so we tend to see the more times you get up the less
01:14:49
happy you are with your sex life and the reason for that is because not not getting a good night's sleep disrupts um
01:14:55
how the body responds to sexual response so how the chemicals in the body that help us be prepared for arousal to build
01:15:03
but also it's the cognitive distraction of being woken up by something quite
01:15:09
upsetting someone else crying and having to deal with it which we know disrupts
01:15:14
the part of our sleep the RM sleep which actually we need for our sexual functioning so even just knowing that as
01:15:21
a parent and knowing that look if you're getting up many times a night don't worry about your sex life
01:15:27
for the time being what you can do as a couple is focus on sharing that more equally because if one of you is getting
01:15:33
a good night's sleep and feeling horny all the time and another one's getting up three times and sex is the last thing
01:15:38
on their mind probably the best thing that you can do is try and share it is there a certain age
01:15:44
where sex comes back in in terms of your children's age is there like when you get to I don't know 10 years old then
01:15:51
sex comes back in typically yeah so we know that people start getting sleep from when their kid is about six but
01:15:57
obviously if you've got another one that's a bit younger um then you might be starting the process all over again so given that sleep's so important the
01:16:04
older they get the better that is for people's sex lives I mean it's hugely variable so there are plenty of people
01:16:12
that start having sex again um you know within three months of their baby being
01:16:17
born and yes it may be less frequent than before but it doesn't disrupt their sex lives as much much and then there's
01:16:24
plenty of people whereby it might take them a year to even start having sex again and then the frequency of having
01:16:30
sex might stay quite infrequent for some time what's interesting though in how
01:16:35
quickly people get back to it is that how quickly people get back to it is often about the habits that they've then
01:16:42
fallen into as a sexual couple so low levels of sexual currency high levels of
01:16:48
awkwardness not prioritizing time together you know Parenthood is basically a jug of priorities right all
01:16:54
the time there's always something else you should be doing and so the sex that you have has to be enticing enough for
01:17:01
your brain to say yeah I'm going to sacrifice that for sex because there's always something else that you should be
01:17:07
doing with your time so it's those habits that we fall into around our sex lives that dictate how quickly people
01:17:14
get back into it at what point does someone should they reach out to a person like you for help I wish people
01:17:20
would do it sooner they always wait until it's got really bad and by that time it's fine we can still reverse it
01:17:28
there's a lot we can do but all these habits have kind of settled in all of this awkwardness pressure resentment
01:17:35
people have moved to quite polarized positions it would be great if people came earlier I'd like people to think of
01:17:42
someone like me a bit like a personal trainer for your sex life that you don't necessarily go to a personal trainer
01:17:48
just when I don't know things are terrible you go because you want to improve something maintain yeah or maintain um I'd love
01:17:56
people to see it that way you use the word we can always reverse it but then a couple of moments before you use the
01:18:01
word unrecoverable now I wanted to know is is there ever a situation have you
01:18:07
ever seen patients in your practice where you knew intuitively this is unrecoverable oh of course of course
01:18:14
what were the Hallmarks of unrecoverable um so the Gans talk about the four
01:18:19
horsemen and they talk about resentment as being um an aspect of a relationship Dynamic that often means that it can be
01:18:27
quite hard for people to recover from that and for the relationship to survive sometimes when you're talking about sex
01:18:33
if resentment comes across quite strongly in the way that people talk to each other it gives you a good
01:18:38
indication that this is going to be quite challenging I would say though that sometimes unrecoverable is a good
01:18:45
outcome because we're not necessarily destined to be monogamous we're not
01:18:51
necessarily destined to be with one person person yes social convention makes us feel that that should be the case but for some people a good outcome
01:18:58
is having a split and a good sexual relationship with someone else so
01:19:03
sometimes identifying that it's unrecoverable because it's gone so far it's been so long perhaps they were
01:19:09
never that sexually compatible in the first place decades later there's tons of resentment maybe it is the best thing
01:19:16
at that point and perhaps that is a good outcome for some people point of curiosity what are the
01:19:22
the types of problems that people come to you with the types of challenges they come to you with what what is you know
01:19:28
you see a couple sit down um the first sentence out of their mouth what are
01:19:34
those sort of five most popular sentences that come out of their mouth um it would be the first one and by far
01:19:40
the most popular is we have a great relationship but and it's a problem with
01:19:46
sex usually a problem with initiation or desire that is by far the most common
01:19:51
presentation we love each other immensely you know we have so much respect for each other we have a great
01:19:56
partnership but sex just doesn't happen or it doesn't happen in the way that we want the second is probably specific
01:20:03
problems that people have with their bodies and sex so people that are experiencing pain particularly painful
01:20:09
penetration people who are worrying about erections worrying about orgasms these things are all quite
01:20:15
common the third is probably navigating change so we talked earlier about how
01:20:22
sexual relationships need to be able to flex and allow growth for us as individuals and quite often because we
01:20:29
can't talk about it growth happens for one person and then they're suddenly not
01:20:34
getting their sexual needs met so for example they might suddenly decide that
01:20:40
there's something that they're into or want to explore that they do not feel able to talk about with their partner
01:20:45
and without it the sexual relationship is a crisis point and so we need to be
01:20:51
able to allow space for that sexual relationship to see whether it can withstand that
01:20:57
change and growth and create that culture of growth I'm I was just playing in my mind all the all the really
01:21:03
incredible things you must have heard from people about like their fantasies and stuff like that and
01:21:13
um I'm trying not to break your client patient confidentiality just thinking about the
01:21:18
other like the unexpected things that people come to you and ask you about you know what's one of the most unexpected
01:21:24
things after 20 years of doing my job one of the things that has come up a lot
01:21:30
recently that has surprised me and it may not surprise you I don't know if you've got any but the impact of pets on
01:21:37
people's sex lives oh my have you got any pets I've got a dog and he loves to watch there you go you know this was a
01:21:43
massive surprise to me I've been doing this job decades and only recently I something came up on my insta and it
01:21:49
blew up with people saying yeah my pet's con constantly ruining the mood they're either trying to get involved or they're
01:21:56
watching or they're in the room or it puts the other person off this was one of the biggest surprises to me honestly
01:22:01
so what's the so people are saying that what the pet is jumping in or my pet my my dog um I think he was concerned about
01:22:10
my partner I think he thinks that she's being attacked or protective yeah he's
01:22:15
very very protective so sometimes I think he thinks he looks really upset and then when he was younger he used to like wee himself oh when he was watching
01:22:22
which is like a nervous Wing cuz money and Daddy are fighting it's like well I think it was we it was I mean it's it's
01:22:29
a big deal when you think about what we talked earlier about attention and distraction because nobody really wants
01:22:36
to have to take account of a third person in in well unless you want a third person in the room but you know a
01:22:42
pet in the room basically it's quite distracting right it is yeah and if you put them outside my understanding
01:22:49
because I've heard this as cats as well my understanding is that they will bar and scratch at the door it's not like
01:22:54
you can keep them away very easily this is a massive challenge pets should come with a warning label for your sex life
01:23:00
so you think pet should not be invited into the I would say not but I mean some people are obviously fine with it but
01:23:06
the reaction I got from people on my social media was this is a major problem and I've never heard of it before I've
01:23:12
never seen it written in research it's a new thing maybe it's lockdown everyone got pets are you hopeful for the uh
01:23:20
trajectory of sex in this world I really am actually there is I think there's
01:23:25
been a a boost of sex positivity um in the media on social media on TV shows
01:23:34
like sex education I think what I've noticed is that's not yet trickled down to the
01:23:39
therapy room so you know what I see and think is happening I guess because I'm plugged into those things and the types
01:23:46
of people I follow on social media I really feel like it's changing and people are understanding more about sex
01:23:53
feeling more assertive about sex understanding that it doesn't have to look one way looking at different relationship structures not just
01:23:59
assuming monogamy not just assuming heterosexuality but actually what I see in the therapy room is that's not
01:24:06
trickled down yet and so my hope is that in the decade that follows we'll be in
01:24:12
quite a different place and you know for me as a parent of two boys that's quite
01:24:17
an exciting place to be because we know that our first sexual experience is actually quite influential in dictating
01:24:24
our sexual satisfaction lifelong so to be able to go into sex with more
01:24:30
knowledge to be able to have an experience that is good rather than bad which is most people's first experience
01:24:36
I think that's a great gift that we can give younger people you use the word change there talking about how we have
01:24:43
to sort of grow and adapt through our sexual Journey with a long-term partner one of the changes that I've come to learn that takes place from doing this
01:24:50
podcast is menopause M and that cans on someone's sexuales has an on our
01:24:56
hormones and how we're feeling I'm learning more and more about menopause but I imagine some of the people that come to you and talk about their sexual
01:25:02
desire are referencing the impact that menopause has had or paropa AB absolutely the symptoms of menopause can
01:25:07
be um really unpleasant for a lot of people not for everyone of course but things like hot flushes and um aches and
01:25:14
pains and mood changes they obviously can really disrupt your interest in sex there's also other things going on in
01:25:21
menopause that are more kind of Psychosocial as well often around stay long-term relationships all
01:25:27
the things we've talked about around desire and sometimes the work is figuring out how much of it is to do
01:25:33
with menopause which some of it might be how much of it was there before and is exacerbated by those symptoms of
01:25:38
menopause but it's really important in fact hormonal fluctuations for all people with menstrual cycles actually
01:25:46
are quite important when it comes to sex and we do see changes across the monthly cycle in um people's receptiveness to
01:25:54
sex and also the types of sex that they're interested in changes one of the
01:26:00
changes that happens when we have kids is our bodies change yeah hugely and that can have a big impact I imagine on
01:26:06
self-confidence but also potentially attraction yeah I think there's often a
01:26:12
big worry that those body changes will influence attraction and again because we don't talk about it people never get
01:26:19
to find out so a lot of people tell me that they're worried that their partner won't find them as attractive because
01:26:25
they've got stretch marks or because their body looks different and actually they've never voiced that part of the
01:26:30
success of therapy is people speak the things that they don't speak elsewhere and sometimes just having a conversation
01:26:36
about those things means that the problem is removed instantly by someone saying well actually no like I can see
01:26:43
your body's change but you know the way your belly looks isn't the sole attraction that I have for you so yes
01:26:49
it's changed but no it's not shifted my attraction for you so so yeah changes um
01:26:56
to body image and how that affects you during sex but also what you were AA partner might think can be a huge thing
01:27:02
for parents are we are we meant to be monogamous no is that a shitty question are we meant to be anything no you know
01:27:09
it's not a very popular answer this and actually when I post about this on my
01:27:14
socials people hate it because it really disrupts what a lot of us are doing I'm monogamous myself right but we are not
01:27:21
destined to be ogous we there isn't anything about humans that means that
01:27:26
we're designed to maintain sexual interest in the same person for a long amount of time that's why if we have sex
01:27:33
with the same person forever if you don't work at it if you don't nurture it if you don't allow growth it's going to
01:27:39
be challenging because we're not designed to do it our brains they get bored they need um novelty they don't
01:27:46
like predictability so we're not designed to be monogamous and I think what's
01:27:52
fascinating is that we all just kind of fall into it because it's a social construct that is kind of politically
01:27:58
and economically and historically present we just think that's what we should do it's fine if people choose it
01:28:05
of course it is but I think if you choose monogamy I think you have to have your eyes open to the fact that you
01:28:11
can't expect that that means you'll maintain sexual interest for that person without any
01:28:17
effort that's what we know about long-term monogamy spontaneous desire will drop sexual currency will drop
01:28:24
person will become very familiar you'll need to find ways to keep sex novel you'll need to not order the set menu
01:28:30
you'll need to go for the buffet you need to bring different versions of yourself into sex there's so many things
01:28:36
that you need to be conscious of if you choose monogamy if you want a good sex life and I think monogamy tends to bring
01:28:44
with it an idea that that person will just always remain sexually interested in you because you've married them or
01:28:52
perhaps you don't need to work at it and I think those things can be quite harmful those ideas I've read like only four or five%
01:28:59
of people identify as being polygamous is that the right word polygamy so I
01:29:06
mean there are many different words but um in terms of open relationship structures of which there are many I
01:29:12
think I think they're on the rise and I think that's a good thing because I think all of us a bit like as I said
01:29:19
earlier that idea of compulsory heterosexuality you're kind of monogamous and straight unless you prove
01:29:24
otherwise or choose otherwise right it'd be great if we all had an idea that well you could be any of those things and
01:29:30
there is not a one that's best or right but why don't you look at all the options before you make your mind up do
01:29:36
you have people come and see you that are in those polygamous relationships yeah absolutely and I have plenty of
01:29:42
people come and see me that are moving from monogamy into opening up and want
01:29:47
to think about how they can do that in a way that privileges their kind of Prim primary relationship so that that's
01:29:55
actually a really wonderful thing to work with I love working with those couples because actually they're really
01:30:00
able to think outside the box and they can separate their love from each other
01:30:06
and their commitment to each other from their sexual interests and they cannot be threatened by the idea of sex
01:30:12
elsewhere um it's yeah it's really fun to work with a new set of problems and
01:30:19
does it work I would say a new set of solutions interesting does it does it work yes but like monogamy it only works
01:30:26
if you work at it because there are another set of things that you might need to work at that are you know you might not need to work on novelty you
01:30:32
might not need to work on predictability um because you you're getting that with different partners but you do need to
01:30:38
work on boundaries communication um how you manage it together and the constant
01:30:43
flux of that so it all requires work what if you're in a relationship right now and you want an open relationship
01:30:50
what is the best way to broker that conversation with your partner is it just a hey babe let's sit down and have
01:30:56
dinner um I'd like to have an open relationship I think you know direct is good but also if you want to test the
01:31:03
waters you might say like we talked about earlier with communication I was listening to this podcast turns out that
01:31:10
you know a lot of us choose monogamy without even thinking it through did you do that did you choose monogamy did you
01:31:16
know that was right for you I've been thinking about this for myself recently I don't know why I chose it my partner
01:31:22
said that to me it would be like a dagger in the heart I'd be oh gosh got
01:31:28
nervous even hearing that cuz it because you know what they're implying they're implying that they want to go shag
01:31:33
someone else yeah and we you know one of our ideas about sex and sexual relationships
01:31:41
is that the attraction and desire we have for our partner or the romantic love we have for our partner is finite
01:31:47
MH and that if it moves to someone else it's lost from us MH and it's it's a really interesting concept that we only
01:31:53
really have with romantic love like we don't have it with love for our children we don't think if we have another one we'll stop loving the first one and we
01:32:00
don't have it for our friends right we can have multiple friends and love them all equally or love them all differently
01:32:05
so you think we can love multiple people absolutely yeah but I think we are we feel fear about the concept of it simply
01:32:12
because in our mind that is a threat to our connection I think you know it's a
01:32:18
really it's a really interesting concept and it'd be it'll be fascinating to see where we go with different relationship
01:32:23
structures in in the decades that follow Dr Karen
01:32:28
gurny we have a closing judici on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and there's
01:32:35
two questions that have been left for you the first one is what's the worst advice you've ever
01:32:41
received the worst advice I've ever received was to not become a
01:32:46
psychologist cuz I wasn't cut out for it who gave you that advice my first supervisor I hope she's
01:32:54
listening what when she said you're not cut out for it MH what did she mean she said to me there are many qualities
01:33:01
required to be a good clinical psychologist unfortunately you don't have any of them what a thing to say to
01:33:06
somebody it was very early on in my career I must have been you know 19 20 um so yeah I'm glad to have proved her
01:33:13
wrong and the second question is what's the best advice you can offer Steven
01:33:19
bartler on how he can improve well I'll obviously have to focus it on sex okay and it's going to be create a
01:33:26
culture of talking about sex often initiate freely and be really
01:33:33
comfortable with being turned down thank you so much it's been an absolute um honor to go on this journey of sex with
01:33:39
you I mean that sounds a little bit strange but you know what I me go with it yeah um to learn about your perspective on sex it's really
01:33:45
refreshing I've spoken to a few people that are experts on the subject matter of sex and orgasms and everything in
01:33:50
between but your perspective is um really refreshing because it focuses on
01:33:56
first reframing what sex is and some of the like underlying um psychological
01:34:02
barriers that we create about our perceptions of what sex is and if we start there then we probably won't have
01:34:08
a lot of these other Upstream symptoms of that like misunderstanding that's exactly of what sex is um and also I've
01:34:16
from doing this podcast had tons of parents that have contacted me asking about when you become a parent what happen in your sex life so your book has
01:34:23
come at a fantastic time in culture I recommend people go and get both books um both of which are available now both
01:34:29
are incredible reads they're really inclusive and easy to read and your new book how not to let having kids ruin your sex life is essential reading for
01:34:36
all parents that might be struggling with this so thank you really appr thank you it's been a
01:34:42
pleasure I think it was about a year ago I became obsessed with sleep to the point that as many of you know I pretty
01:34:48
much have it as a non-negotiable one of the things that I found is's a brand called Eight sleep that sponsor this
01:34:54
podcast and that is the cover that I have on my bed some of you will know that in order to have optimal sleep our bodies need to be a certain temperature
01:35:00
and there's slight variance between all of us that's exactly what eight sleep does it learns my body and regulates
01:35:06
both sides of my bed with two people on it so that we both have optimal sleep and on the app you can also see how much
01:35:12
you've slept if you've underslept and how you've performed across multiple stages of sleep it is a bit of a revelation in my life I have to be
01:35:18
honest it automatically regulates our temperature so we sleep deeper and therefore wake up feeling more restored
01:35:25
more energized and more capable to pursue our goals the podcast sponsors that I have are brands that I love and
01:35:31
use and eight sleep is one of them I've had so many technological game changes in my life and eight sleep is certainly
01:35:37
one of them check it out at 8sleep.com stepen for Holiday
01:35:42
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savings [Music]
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