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is the question everyone wants the answer to it what is the single biggest killer of
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relationships in the modern age let's talk about sex today's podcast is very very different but incredibly
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incredibly important today i'm sitting down with kate moyle who is a sex therapist and a relationship therapist to talk
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about some of the taboos topics which we don't normally discuss things like erectile dysfunction
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sexual inadequacies issues we all have in our relationships and sex lives the single biggest killer of
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relationships in 2021 sexual anxiety how to keep a sexual relationship exciting and everything in between i'm going to share some very personal sexual stories that i've never shared before some of
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the things i've gone well and some of the problems that i've had that have caused relationships that have meant the world to me to end this is a very
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very honest open podcast today you know this is why this is called the diary of a ceo and kate is the perfect person
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to put them to so i think you're going to enjoy this conversation i certainly did i feel very vulnerable sharing some of
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these stories with you but as i always say just keep it to yourself so without further ado this is
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the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself
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sex i think i think it's fair to say that everybody has some kind of challenge with sex at least some point you know at least at some point within their life and i am no different in fact my last
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relationship which was a very i thought i i genuinely at one point thought that was going to be my wife
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um the reason that relationship broke down was because of a sexual issue and a sexual issue
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that showed up about seven or eight months into the relationship and um long story short i know this
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isn't a therapy session but it kind of is as well um at some point seven eight months into
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our relationship she told me that she didn't like having sex and i didn't know what that meant and as
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a guy that's never experienced that in my life um i read into it probably in the wrong way but it definitely made me insecure i was like what you don't like having sex how's that possible
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and i thought that was some kind of um condemnation on me i thought that was something negative towards me or something that i was doing wrong and i tried various things i tried to to be a bit
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more under you know listen a little bit more to what she wanted and how she wanted it and then it you know it progressively
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got to a point where i was getting in bed and i was [ __ ] myself because you don't want to once you get rejected i've never been like i've never gone to have sex with someone in my life and been rejected in that way and so you
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get in bed and you don't want to even ask them for sex because you might take an l and you don't want to take
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that l and then how how the hell am i meant to get an erection as a guy when i'm that [ __ ] scared of
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rejection and eventually long story short we're in um we're away one time and the same issue happened and she we were having sex and i clearly i was looking at her thinking she clearly isn't enjoying this at all
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and we stopped she started crying she said um i've got a problem um she said like
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uh you know i just don't enjoy sex i need to like address it i said to her you want to talk about it she said i'm not comfortable talking
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about sex with you even though we've been in a relationship for a year and i left and then i broke up with her and i do regret breaking up with her
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because um i did so maybe too flippantly and i didn't understand it and i didn't think it was fixable and i didn't know how to fix it and yeah sorry for my brain you know my
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dumping that on you but good place to start no i think and you know so much of what you've just said there's so many points there that
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you know i hear all the time so difficulties with desire struggles with communication struggles
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with knowing like where to start in terms of talking about it anxiety you know all of these points
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which can kind of get in the bedroom with us or be in bed with us and we just don't know how we're
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meant to address them we don't know what we're meant to do about them and we all feel that sense of what am i
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doing wrong here or what's wrong with me do i have a problem am i broken you know
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all of these phrases and actually working with all of the information that you've just given me you know as an example we can kind of target or work with
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each of those problems in an individual way which isn't terrifying for people which doesn't
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create more anxiety which doesn't damage self-esteem but we don't have those conversations in
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a bigger more normalizing way yeah and i think one of the biggest things that i talk about
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is this idea that sex like everything else across our lives has good days bad days average days variability but we
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expect there to be this constant and we expect it to be protected from everything else that we
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have going on in our lives and that just isn't the case but and somewhat automatically right like we kind of
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expected to take care of itself yeah and relationships as well we kind of expect that you know once they're good they're
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always good that they shouldn't falter that we shouldn't have to work at them that
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they shouldn't struggle and i think that there's such a problem with that as a basic
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foundation message around sex and relationships how do you refrain that then how do i reframe my thinking in order to make
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sure that i'm i guess that is a reframing of my thinking if i think that this thing
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isn't going to take care of itself and it needs to be worked on like everything else in my life i guess
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that's the answer to keeping it exciting yeah i mean i think there's just a normalizing of the fact that
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our sex lives and our relationships are in the context of us they're not isolated they're not protected they don't have their own kind
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of special area where they aren't impacted by how we feel about ourselves stress
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anxiety our health our mental health you know physically what's going on for us um psychologically what's going on
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for us but why don't we just give ourselves a break and but you know what we're not perfect or good or great at
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everything else we do all the time so why would we be here i don't think you know i think as professionals
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we often talk about like why aren't we applying the logic that we apply everywhere else in our
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lives to this this part of our lives and in that particular case with me and my this this particular person um she turned to me i remember we were away one time and she said to me
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you know there's loads of people that are like me that don't have like a high libido or whatever and i have just never encountered these
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people in my experiences so i thought oh that's rubbish was she right yes yes and how right is
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she very right and you know we understand that you know this is a huge part of the
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conversation around sex lives at the moment and sexual wellness at the moment is this idea about desire desire's not a
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fixed concept that we're born with we're not kind of given or holding a set amount it's not like we
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kind of have an amount and we like use it up it is context dependent it's responsive and
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we understand that it changes but actually how we can change that within kind of take power of our own i suppose or change that within the context that we're in how we can feel
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in control of that is based in almost how we define it or how we understand it ourselves and there's a
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huge problem we're just thinking okay well i had it now i don't have it in the same way anymore
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so what's wrong with me or what's broken or what changed or what's not working here rather than if i reframe my understanding my thinking about this it makes a lot more
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sense and it takes the pressure off and when the pressure's off then i can work with this in a more
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pleasure focused enjoyable way rather than an anxiety provoking and stressful way
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what should i have done so the first time she turns to me she says steve i'm just not that interested
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because what it was is we're in bed and we're away on a holiday and i like you know just i don't know what i do whatever i do to
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to let someone know that when i have sex i don't know stroke their arm or whatever i did whatever i do and she was just
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like nah and what should i have done then because you know i think a lot of people would take that
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as a bit of an l and i certainly did i was like what i was and i was angry as well
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not like visibly angry not like you know hitting with a pillow or anything but i was like i turned i remember turning
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away and thinking you know like because i'd never experienced that before i've never experienced that like
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it is a form of rejection it's like a form of it's a kick in the self-esteem what should i
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have done well i think you know i can't talk to what was going on for you two like kind of in in that moment then but
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you know the biggest problem that couples in situations like that have is assumption so as you said like this is the kick in the teeth for me like that hurts i feel rejected
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so we internalize and actually the best way for us to deal with something like that is to try and explain to try and move
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away from assumption to explanation to understanding because actually if we can have a conversation
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which opens up and you know we you hear sex next relationship experts talk about communication being
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you know the kind of biggest pillar of sexual wellness or sexual well-being and assumption kind of and the gap between expectations and reality
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is actually the biggest place that we have a lot of these problems and i think that it feels like you know that's a good
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example of that happening fast forward four months uh the same sort of issue happened and she turned to me and this is when i thought it was completely over
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is she said to me i'm not comfortable with talking to you about sex right and we've been together for a year
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and i thought well if we can't talk about it and i don't really understand the issue and you're not willing to talk about it
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then we are [ __ ] and i thought and that's when i left i left that country um soon after and
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i broke up with her maybe like i don't know two three weeks later because i thought if we can't talk about it then how do we fix the situation
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but i do regret it because i think i reflect and i think i don't want to be the type of guy generally that when they care about
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someone will walk away from it so easily and i think i should have made a more active effort to try and support
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as you say and understand maybe but i would say sometimes the hardest person to talk to about sex is the person we're having it with yeah because of it's so loaded
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it's so like intimate it's so vulnerable and also the fear of getting it wrong or making
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it worse or leading our partners on or going in the wrong direction or us not being able to unhear what we've
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heard or unsay what we've said so actually you know that natural human response to
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feeling anxiety around something is avoidance you know we don't tend to approach the sources of our anxiety
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unless we're trying really hard to hone in on it or focus on it our most natural instinct is
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i don't want to go there you know like it's just easier to keep the status quo even if that status quo isn't working and so it's
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it's about thinking about how do we how do we help people to approach that source of anxiety or
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feel empowered to change their conversation around sex because it's really it's really hard it's like
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talking in a language that we've not been taught you know we're not taught how to have these conversations
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we're not taught to be comfortable about these conversations we're not taught that sex is normalized as a topic and
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then we're expected to all be experts and that our partners are going to be experts and we're all
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expecting that from each other and then when it doesn't work you know we have no solutions or ways of
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knowing how to deal with it now some of us muddle through we kind of work it out we're like okay well
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let's try this or think about this or take expert advice or listen to a podcast or read a book or get the information and we can kind of
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work our way through it but for a lot of us that's way too intimidating you know sex feels like an off the record you know off the
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table topic how do you bring on the table how do and i'm presuming that couples that are successful in the bedroom are those that bring it on the table to some degree is
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that a fair assumption or yeah i think that's definitely a fair assumption i think that you know it takes the courage to do it
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it takes the kind of sitting in the uncomfortable it might be quite anxiety breaking obviously some people kind of
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seek out therapy or external advice or someone that can help them manage those conversations or they might
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do it in their own way so it might be kind of reading a book and sharing that with each other or listening to a ted talk and then
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sharing that with each other and using that as a springboard to have that conversation but i would say it's
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talking about it outside of the bedroom is the biggest way to put it on the table and is it possible
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to be just like sexually incompatible with someone yeah i think it is and the way it's think you know impossible
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possible to be incompatible with anything else but what we can also do is you know when
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we have different interests or different preferences in other areas of our lives we can work together to negotiate that
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to manage that to kind of work to each other's kind of preferences or and kind of switch that around or manage that manage that kind of relational bit that
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kind of bit in between and it is possible to do that with sex but also for some people they might have deal breakers and they
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might not be able to meet those for each other this is i don't know if this is too much information but i don't think i care
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um i i remember one day as well i tried to introduce because i typically when i have sex i typically use
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a lot of additional apparatus so i'll use all kinds of stuff i don't care like i'll use handcuffs and all kinds of
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ropes and toys and whatever else and i remember trying to introduce something like that because i thought maybe it would make it a little bit more
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interesting for her and um she was like absolutely not she she said to me that she thought i think
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it was a vibrator she thought a vibrator was for old people and you know i'm already up i'm really
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up against it here that's so i'm trying to like do something to help and when she said that i just thought like maybe we
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are just like sexually incompatible maybe just we just speak two different languages here so
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i don't know but you know like sometimes one part nina what i would say is it's actually more common for couples to not be perfectly
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sexually matched yeah than it is for them to be like perfectly sexually matched in every way
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and for some people they are more ready to try something or you know they might be the one that leads
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something and then the other partner kind of catches up or it's really in about also kind of like
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how we perceive what our partner is suggesting or how we what we think that means
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because one of the things about sex is we have this idea as humans about like metacognition like we think about
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our thoughts we think about what that our thoughts mean and i think it's really really apparent when
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it comes to sex and relationships because we're trying to constantly analyze what's happening or as you said
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kind of looking out for like the risk of rejection or the fear of rejection we're trying to understand
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what that means about us or what that means about them or what it means about our relationship and so we're
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always trying to i suppose think about like what's going on and the wider context or meaning of that now when it comes to sex
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we're already in a culture and a society where it's a bit taboo where it's quite stigmatized where
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we don't necessarily want to kind of step outside the norms or the expectations because what does
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that mean about us as a person i you know since that um whole event i you know we we spoke a little
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bit after we broke up and she she told me that was actually the first time she told me that she had like a low libido and i actually didn't really understand
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what that meant so i googled it but then i started talking to some friends about it specifically some male friends
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and i had another male friend say to me one of my best friends said to me that he also had the same problem where he just lost his um
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sexual desire um in you know when he got to a certain age which i i was shocked about because you don't people don't have these conversations so you don't think it happens so when we encounter it whether it's in
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the bedroom or wherever else um yeah it really feels like a real anomaly but how how common is low libido and also
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what are the what are the typical causes of someone having a low libido i think really
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common and i think you know like so much of the stuff we don't have huge and huge amounts of at least
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up to date like sex research so you know it's something that people are really trying to kind of develop in the space
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but what we understand when we think about desire so we've got desire and we've got arousal so arousal the body's physical
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ability to kind of prepare for sex the desire the want to be sexual and what we understand is that
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it typically changes across relationships and what feels really difficult about it
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is that at the start of relationships when everything is new and exciting we're getting to know each other we're exploring
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it feels like desire is very high we're kind of leaning into that because it's a way of getting to know each other a way
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of connecting with that person and it's kind of what we understand is it's triggered i suppose a lot because a lot of the situations we find ourselves in
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are novel are kind of tuning into also the area of our brain that likes the new things that likes the excitement
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and we have that sense of wanting to get closer to that person wanting to get to know them now
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also what we see particularly this is with a relationship focus is there's like exchange of kind of like
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novelty newness the unknown exploration for like routine security safety getting
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to know someone so we kind of see these things switching out almost and so it's just actually that as we get kind of more used to each other there are less of those kind of triggering like exciting moments which
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are where desire can tend to thrive and what we need to do is perhaps just slightly more consciously or with a bit more of an effort
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put in the time to create those spaces now chuck in i mean you know the year we've found ourselves in where no one's had any kind of personal space or independence or ability to go away and come back
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together kind of change of context but technology the kind of well third and fourth if there's two people in the
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relationship wheels that are constantly taking our attention kind of demanding us
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you know distracting us so we're missing signals from our partners we're missing
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those kind of i suppose quality time moments we're constantly notified or we're distracted
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and actually then it's harder for us to give each other our full attention to kind of sit down and focus on each other to have the things that promote connection eye contact touch we're
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constantly kind of looking around and connecting i suppose with everyone apart from the person actually that we're it creates a barrier
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and so how do you know you get five 10 15 20 years into relationship um and you've started to get you know
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secure and things are predictable how do you this is probably the most you know popular question i'm sure you
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get which is like how do you keep it fresh what advice would you give me to keep my sex life with a partner i've been with for x amount of years
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still fresh exciting and uh yeah exploratory um yeah i think it's i mean it's the
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question everyone wants the answer right it's it is about a.s first thing acknowledging that it might be different to how it used to be so
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again one of the biggest hurdles people can get kind of tripped over on is it's not the same as it used to be or it changed now why does that mean it's worse you know
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actually perhaps the quality of the sex that people might be having might be better because they know each other better they
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understand each other's bodies better they feel more in tune with each other so it's understanding that you might be
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in a different phase or stage and that's okay it doesn't have to be you know that famous phrase the
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honeymoon period that kind of everybody quotes or goes back to so i think that is one thing and i think actually kind of carving out the time and the space and the effort
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and not seeing that as a bad thing not seeing that as problematic that we have to be a bit
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more conscious of that part of our relationships is a huge huge factor because what
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the kind of common narrative we see in like society i suppose is if i have to make an effort for this
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then there must be something wrong with that because sex should be spontaneous should be
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something that just happened that's what it says in the movies which is part of the problem right because
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that's one of the most easily accessible visual versions of sex that we have we don't
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see into other people's sex lives in the same way now what we do see is social media or pictures of couples
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or images of couples or and we make assumptions about them we make assumptions about they look happy but they have great sex yeah in porn it's just like the gardener's like
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outside and then eli comes in and the husband's away and then like it's just boom perfect lasts an hour everyone
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looks like they're having a great time but one of the one of the best phrases that i heard and you know um is trying to learn about sex from porn
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is like learning to drive from watching the fast and the furious and it's one of the things that i go back to i wish i knew you said it and if
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you know please tell me so you can claim it um but porn wasn't designed as an educational
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tool but a lot of people have used it as one and that's again i mean like every man ever and also women to be fair like i
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think men have this bias where we think women don't watch porn but then you ask a woman you know and
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i've asked several of my ex-girlfriends if they've watched porn and oh yeah they do some of them do but i'd say and
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this is a general and i'd love you to correct me here because i i'd love to not be i love to be corrected on
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things like this where i'm so naive i i tend to believe that like 90 of my male friends watch porn and then i
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think it's probably like 50 of my female friends do you know the numbers is that i don't know the numbers but i
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you know we know that women watch porn we know that there are also a huge rise of like female-friendly female-focused
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pornography platforms kind of coming forward and i think that a lot of those ideas again tie into
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these old stereotypes and narratives about like male sexuality and female sexuality
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and then you know we're trying to change the conversation around this and i think that it's also about
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recognizing that they're not these kind of like two like so separate entities and actually that
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we can understand that we're all sexual creatures and we all have our own versions of sexuality and what that
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doesn't mean is that it has to again kind of line up with the narratives that have always been there
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which is like men do this women do this but are there distinctions between um sexual appetite and the type of representation of sex that men and women typically want to see i
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was going to ask you a question which kind of alludes to the same answer but it's like if you were to create a point because you said there's men there's now
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sites emerging which are like female friendly i'm like what's the what's the what's the difference what what's how do
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they i suppose well you know one of the things that um a lot of these sites they're creating is a focus on kind of female pleasure
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in a way which is that what we know for example is that the majority of women um or like the most common way of
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bringing women to orgasm is through direct literal stimulation but for example in not necessarily porn but in the movies
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we never see that and so then everyone is kind of replicating what they see in the movies
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and no wonder it's not quite working so i think that there's also educational elements starting to kind of
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come forward and a lot of that kind of content as well i guess that makes sense if the demand
00:24:37
for pornography has been skewed male then what you're seeing in the pornography would also be catered to what a male likes to believe is
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you know men as you like alluded to that men typically get their arousal from like what do they call it
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vaginal penetration i guess that's not intercourse yeah or intercourse whatever but
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women would typically get reach like an orgasm via clitoral stimulation so porn tends to
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reflect the the former um so has has porn been a a a positive or negative impact on
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um our perceptions and images of what our own sexual relationship should be like
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do you think oh that's such a big question is it again it's the one that everyone wants to know the answer to i think that the problem that we've seen is when
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people have used it as an educational resource and that's not how it was designed um now what it has offered
00:25:41
is people who are exploring their sexuality and feel that it doesn't fit for example the
00:25:48
norm or expected norm you know however you want whatever terminology you want to use for that it's offered those people a sense of
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community or safety in exploring or belonging or knowing that they're not alone not
00:26:00
isolated in their experience and so there are you know like everything in life there's going to be huge pros and cons and like anything in life is how people use anything but i think for me
00:26:13
you know working with people with sexual problems and relationship problems isolation or feeling alone in your
00:26:20
experience is probably the biggest side effect or negative side effect on mental health or on the problem itself of what they're experiencing of what
00:26:33
they're struggling with and so combating that which in a way is where therapy helps you know we're kind
00:26:39
of sharing that conversation we know that shame thrives in silence we're starting to externalize we're starting to talk
00:26:45
about these things is making people feel they're not alone is massive i am one of the things you said i read that you had said before which i thought was really good advice
00:26:59
especially as it relates to keeping sex like fresh and exciting was just to change one thing every time um and i wanted to for you to tell me
00:27:06
why you think that's important and how that helps it goes back to some of the themes you've talked about but it was one of the things that i
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thought i could immediately do in my own sex life to keep things continually fresh yeah and what are those small things that you're referring to when you say i suppose what i like about that is it's
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actionable so it's this idea that we can all be like empowered and in control to
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do something in our sex lives and you know like one of the the phrases we hear kind of
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all the time is that mixing it up spicing it up and what i think people get intimidated by
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is the idea that they have to do something massive to do that that they have to you know go out like buy a whole new
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wardrobe yeah exactly or try something that they've like never done before or you know buy 25 sex stories or um you know try everything like and
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that in itself then becomes a barrier to people trying it because they're like oh god that sounds scary expensive as well but you know like
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that i it's that um god like how am i gonna do that there's no stepping stone to that it's a whole like bridge a whole
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jump and that puts people off so again we're back to that avoidance thing you know what i'll just stay in my safe zone i'll
00:28:22
stay in my comfort zone i'll stay where i am like the idea of trying that and it not working or trying that and it
00:28:27
failing feels way scarier than where we're at right now and so i think that idea of
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like changing one thing every time is it's also that routine doesn't kind of help or promote or um kind of encourage desire because we're
00:28:45
like oh i know what's coming i know how this is going to go and what we're then doing is we're more likely to
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kind of let our thoughts wander or be distracted and we see that with people you know they're like i know it's going
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to go so actually i wasn't really noticing what was happening in my body or that experience i was thinking about like everything i
00:29:01
need to do tomorrow and so what it does is it works as a way of encouraging breaking up
00:29:08
routine now these are small things like having the lights on or having the lights off starting with your clothes on
00:29:13
or your clothes off keeping your underwear on or underwear off using lube or not you know taking intercourse off the
00:29:20
table for that evening and just focusing on non-penetrative sex trying a sex toy
00:29:25
or you know putting even something simple that i talk about is putting like your pillows on the other
00:29:30
end of your bed so your room feels different like lighting candles changing your smell having a shower or not you know
00:29:37
doing it in the street you can get arrested for that but um you know it's that idea of these
00:29:43
are all accessible within range non-intimidating things that we can try to create
00:29:51
shifts and changes my journey with huel has intensified a lot over the last six to 12 months the
00:29:58
the untold story of a healthy diet and a nutritionally complete diet is how you feel and really that's a much more
00:30:05
important thing because actually how you feel is the sort of precursor to you having the motivation the discipline and the
00:30:12
state of mind that will help you go to the gym and follow through on your goals and i feel amazing i don't think i've
00:30:18
ever felt better i've never had more energy i've been sleeping amazingly well my sort of mental cognition has been
00:30:25
sharper than it ever has before but i just feel good right and you often just get to see the physical effects
00:30:31
that having a nutritionally complete diet could have but there are all of these other impacts and other effects which are so much more
00:30:37
important and as i said are the precursor to the positive physical um effects you see so yeah you know it's
00:30:44
one thing having a podcast sponsor that pays you money but it's another thing having a podcast sponsor who you genuinely believe can
00:30:52
help people change their lives for the better is it possible for some you know because i've got this one friend and i'm sorry
00:30:57
for just rinse one of my friends here i've got this one friend yeah this is a problem with being friends with me you always appear in the podcast if you've got any slight like
00:31:04
peculiarity about you um and like i feel like all of my friends have been mentioned in this podcast at least once they just don't know where
00:31:10
they're being mentioned but i've got this one friend who is a guy and he i've known him maybe 10 years and i've i don't think he's ever had sex and he's
00:31:20
maybe 27 28 years old whatever and i don't believe he's ever had sex i've never i've never seen him in a relationship he doesn't talk to girls at all or guys
00:31:32
for that matter um and i don't it's just so unusual because in our in our friendship group we talk
00:31:39
about sex a lot so we're always talking about you know who we're sleeping with in various things and we've basically just learned to just
00:31:45
not have the conversation with him or when he's there you know if we're just like joking with each other as
00:31:50
friends we will never joke with him because it's just this big question mark and none of us know the answer
00:31:56
um and i think my conclusion has been maybe he's just asexual if that's the thing yeah that's
00:32:02
the thing and what is that thing and what and if you i'm sure you've heard about this before right what is what's going on well i mean like
00:32:09
we we don't know what's going on for that person but you know asexuality is is some is an identity you know like
00:32:16
people who don't experience sexual attraction and what that also doesn't mean so we
00:32:22
have asexuality and aromanticism so those are two different concepts so what we can see is that people can have
00:32:27
successful relationships and be asexual because they can have connection and friendship and intimacy and we can see
00:32:35
that people who um are so we can understand that it's not a kind of like pairing necessarily and something i also talk about is we can have intimacy without sex and sex
00:32:47
without intimacy now what a group that i've also worked with is lots of people who have
00:32:53
such bad sexual anxiety and this is in no way me saying what's going on for your friend but that that limits them in sexually
00:33:00
exploring or taking their sex life to where they want to go or dating or seeing people because
00:33:07
what it can feel a bit like is if we get on the ladder of for example meeting someone or dating then we get
00:33:14
closer towards the source of our anxiety which might be sex and i think that people who haven't had sexual experiences and i suppose bear in mind you're only viewing this from your perspective
00:33:24
rather than speaking to the person you've been speaking to um is that that kind of it can feel like a snowball effect of a new something that i talk a lot about in
00:33:35
therapy with people that i'm working with this this snowball effect of okay well the older i get
00:33:41
the more i feel that this is a worry or the more i feel other people will judge me or the more i feel that i won't match up to
00:33:48
what's expected of me or that i will get kind of found out and i think that these anxieties around sex are also because what we assume is sexuality in people so we kind of
00:34:02
assume everyone's sexually active it goes back to that point about feeling isolated or alone in our
00:34:07
experience everybody else is doing it so what's wrong with me and that the problem we have when it
00:34:14
comes to sex is we can't know with people until we check it out we can't know until we we're judging
00:34:22
someone's inside world based on what we see from the outside and actually what we know with sex is that
00:34:29
they don't always match up there's no way of really knowing until we for example you know sit down with a therapist and
00:34:35
unpack it or sit down with a friend or a family member or whoever that is we share you know a partner that conversation
00:34:41
with i think there's also like i was just thinking then about there's also this like wider philosophical question of
00:34:46
like what is the purpose of sex because if you see sex as being you know just to ejaculate
00:34:52
then you know you might encounter a bunch of issues there because the the role that sex is playing for
00:34:58
your partner might be a completely different one so i guess at first you have to understand what role sex plays in
00:35:06
relationships uh to your partner but also to yourself like is that how would you define the
00:35:11
purpose or the role of sex what is it why do we do it and what's it for we're going to make a sexual therapist have you yet
00:35:18
are we having my job in a minute i know you'll see tomorrow instagram page it's like sex with steve
00:35:24
it's just everything you've said um so one of my favorite pieces of research and anyone who's listened to my podcast or any of the interviews and stuff i know is going to be so bored of hearing me bang on about this is
00:35:34
a paper called why humans have sex um and it was done in 2007 and it identified 237 reasons for why
00:35:42
humans the motivations for why people have sex and there is such a wide breadth of those
00:35:58
and that might be um you know my favorite my favorite one from that study is um because i was cold
00:36:04
because i wanted to get warm but we can understand that you know it might be because i want an orgasm because my partner
00:36:10
looked hot because um i wanted to feel close to them because i wanted to show them i loved them because
00:36:16
because because because so the meaning of sex goes be so beyond the what of what we're doing
00:36:24
but we are so focused on the what all the time and then we get so tangled up in everything that's kind of psychologically going on for us and i think that you know sometimes
00:36:35
we're thinking about the why you know what does it represent in our relationship if we're in a relationship what does it represent to us if we're
00:36:40
single what does it represent to us if actually the sexual relationship we have is just with ourselves you know i think
00:36:46
that thinking about that is such a big part of us understanding ourselves sexually
00:36:54
there's definitely emotional elements but there's also like a physical uh prehistoric maybe evolutionary role
00:36:59
that sex plays right and has that been somewhat lost upon us now like because my body my body you know the
00:37:06
chemicals in my body will start tickling me and telling me that i'm horny and then you know that will drive me
00:37:11
into action you know i feel like the the role the sort of prehistoric evolutionary role of
00:37:17
sex has been lost upon us a little bit especially now that you know we have all this contraception and we can swerve
00:37:24
having kids so i think it's become a bit of a sport for many people well sex is about pleasure isn't it did
00:37:31
you know you tell me well you know i think you know well what we see is that the majority of the reasons that people have sex are not to do with procreation
00:37:43
yeah and also the the problem is i think something you kind of said earlier um was it's so gold it can be so goal
00:37:54
orientated now again this is where so many people struggle with sex because if sex is goal orientated and as you said like the goal is to orgasm or to ejaculate or to
00:38:07
finish then what happens if that doesn't happen we feel like we've failed yeah and so
00:38:13
what it creates then is this goal-orientated kind of pass or fail model for sex now the
00:38:20
complete irony of that is if we're struggling and we're focused on where we need to get to as a goal
00:38:27
the act of focusing on where we need to get to is actually the thing that is most likely to not get us there because it's
00:38:34
preventative because if we are in the moment enjoying what we're doing experiencing kind of pleasure and
00:38:40
sensations and able to enjoy it then that's actually the thing that's probably most likely to get us there but if we're so distracted by the negative thoughts that are going
00:38:51
on in our heads we're so distracted by our concerns our worries that is going to break down that kind of process of us getting there because i know a lot of people only
00:39:04
every sentence i say sounds so strange i think i know a lot of people that struggle with orgasms but i know i've
00:39:10
spoken to some of my girlfriends and i've asked i've asked them if they've orgasmed in fact my one of my
00:39:15
ex-girlfriends she said to me that she had basically never had an orgasm in her life
00:39:21
um which i obviously is a guy you find quite well well not obviously but as a guy that has
00:39:27
never had that problem i found that quite peculiar and i wondered why why some people can orgasm so easily and
00:39:33
then some people are find it a lot more difficult um in this particular case my suspicions were that
00:39:39
it was an emotional thing in fact what you've just described there about worry this is one of the people that i know
00:39:44
that's very very tense about the topic of sex and i just thought you know my suspicion again super naive
00:39:49
was that they're not knowing this person um they would probably not be able to relax
00:39:56
in bed and then when i when they became a sexual partner of mine i thought yeah they're just like not
00:40:02
relaxed at all but i wanted to get your take on why some some people find it so easy to orgasm
00:40:07
and then some people just can't at all well i think it also goes back to almost like the first time you know early messages about this stuff as well you know early messages about what it's
00:40:19
like to have these experiences what it's like to be sexual you know is it something that's
00:40:25
never been talked about is it something that's shrouded in shame is it something that we um think that we shouldn't be doing
00:40:33
or we think about ourselves a certain way for doing and so there's so many components to this as a
00:40:38
conversation and you know probably um too many you know longer than we have time for but there's the idea of how we again think
00:40:45
about what we're doing how we know and learn about our bodies what we know and learn about our bodies how we
00:40:51
discover what works for us and our preferences so there's the physical element you know we talk about an orgasm as a peak pleasure experience
00:40:58
but also how we feel about it because if we're feeling shame or embarrassment or that we
00:41:05
shouldn't be doing this that is going to be something which again gets in the way of us
00:41:10
being able to fully let go and enjoy ourselves or giving ourselves in therapy we talk a lot about this idea
00:41:15
of giving ourselves permission to be sexual or to let go or to enjoy ourselves or to experience pleasure again this is super naive but an orgasm
00:41:27
is a pretty natural thing isn't it it's like a natural physiological reaction to
00:41:32
stimulation so again super naive just i will just disclaimer from here on out that
00:41:37
everything i say is largely naive and i'll stop disclaimering every sentence but so one would assume that if you know if
00:41:43
we're struggling to orgasm then there's something maybe emotional maybe even physical that's being going unmet
00:41:49
there might be something physical going on but you know it's there's probably like something emotional going on but it's also about
00:41:55
you know have we learned to do this like have we learned to kind of experience pleasure enough to take us
00:42:01
there and also once we do then we're like okay i understand how my body works now i understand how
00:42:06
that feels and i think for lots the lack of sex education here is a huge part of the problem you know
00:42:13
pleasure has historically been left out of the conversation and particularly female pleasure
00:42:19
who are your who are your clients who who comes to you with the sex issues and challenges the most
00:42:28
normal people with normal problems you know everyday people for every difference um genders you know
00:42:34
both men and women i work with both couples and individuals i have a lot of younger clients so a lot
00:42:39
of my clients are kind of in that sub 45 age bracket but i work with a lot of people
00:42:44
in their kind of early 20s and i think that the early 20s kind of 30s but also there's there's
00:42:52
a couple of things that are going on one is that therapy has become much less taboo in itself and sex much less
00:42:58
taboo and we have this kind of corner of therapy which is psychosexual therapy where
00:43:04
i think people recognize that it now can be a solution or that sexual problems aren't just medical that actually there can be something psychological or emotional
00:43:14
going on and i think that the idea of accessing help for this stuff now has become much more normalized which is brilliant i think you know and much
00:43:25
needed and there are some amazing amazing sexual experts and sexual therapists in this country who
00:43:32
you know i hope are really being and i know have really been used by people to help them improve this part of their
00:43:37
lives and i think that again a part of it is any other aspect of our life we would go and see a doctor or go and see a physio or go and see a
00:43:50
nutritionist or whatever it is you know if another part of if a part of our body wasn't working
00:43:56
we would access help for it without feeling embarrassed you know if we'd injured our knee we wouldn't feel embarrassed about going
00:44:03
to ask someone about that but why when it comes to sex do we feel that we shouldn't access the
00:44:09
help and then the longer we're struggling with that the more of a problem that becomes because we don't just have the original
00:44:15
problem but how we think and feel about it but is there like is there like an age range where
00:44:21
people are more likely to go into a sexual therapist no i don't think there is then i think evenly distributed from like 20 to 80. yeah really i mean
00:44:35
and i think you know again it's a bit about life stages isn't it you know what are people
00:44:41
looking to explore at different stages we see for example people might go after a cancer diagnosis or cancer treatment or
00:44:47
for example around menopause or that there are certain health conditions that impact sexuality or
00:44:53
you know common side effect of a lot of anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants are an impact on sex
00:44:59
lives or it might be that someone is starting their sexual experiences or they've had a relationship where sex has been a
00:45:06
problem and they don't want to carry that on into their next relationship i think that it's about understanding like what has brought that
00:45:12
person to therapy at that time is a big part of for me as a therapist anyway kind of
00:45:19
exploring what's going on for that person what's the trigger for dealing with it now polygamy
00:45:25
um do you have a lot of people come to you with in polygamous relationships so you mean
00:45:31
like polyamory like multi-part multi-part relationships and what are the issues typically that um
00:45:37
you'd see with yeah polyamorous polygamous relationships yeah i think that it's something that
00:45:43
people have a lot of questions about um it's something that you know i've talked about on
00:45:48
my podcast because it's what people are curious about um because it's also a breaking away
00:45:54
from our kind of heteronormative like mono-normative model of relationships and i think the big
00:46:01
questions that people have are how do we do this you know how do we navigate this how do we manage it and
00:46:10
that's about working out what the rules are for those people you know how do they hold what are the rules for
00:46:17
them that work for them how do they understand the rules you know rules around things like disclosure rules around
00:46:22
things like how much detail do we go into how do we manage this but actually communication for lots of
00:46:29
those relationships is really good because they have to be really good in order to
00:46:34
manage that different style of being or you know also just the practicalities of there being more than two partners in a
00:46:40
relationship i've always wondered if it would cause a lot more problems but i guess you've
00:46:46
answered it there it's about studying selling clear rules and having effective communication my next
00:46:52
my next question again which i was really excited to ask you was like what's the and this is a super hard question so just get ready yeah what are what are
00:47:00
the things that men don't and typically don't understand about women when it comes to sex and
00:47:05
vice versa it's a hard question isn't it it is a hard question i was just thinking i was thinking because i know
00:47:11
men are super naive and we watch we're exposed to a certain type of media and content and then we like rush into
00:47:16
the bedroom thinking that i don't know our partners want to be i don't know tied up or dominated or whatever else
00:47:24
and then from the other perspective you know when you speak to a woman about sex and what she's looking for
00:47:29
there's obviously she's experienced a certain type of media but she also is i think typically again with being super
00:47:35
binary here typically a woman is is is um has a slightly different expectation from the man from my experiences anyway
00:47:47
i think part of the problem in that is that binary approach is that if there's something that i
00:47:54
would want everyone to understand it's that we can be different but we are also so similar um
00:48:00
you know and like this idea about like performance when it comes to sex is hugely
00:48:06
detrimental to everyone um and again probably like what is one of the biggest things i want everyone to think about is the assumptions you know what are the
00:48:17
assumptions that we're making about each other based on gender norms and expectations based on
00:48:23
historical messages how do we break away from them and it might be that that's a conversation
00:48:28
between those two people and that's the best way of doing it but also there's you know all of these kind of so many of
00:48:36
these ideas about sex is so steeped in history but we've never asked them we've never had them challenged so
00:48:43
an assumption being you know a really historical message that we hear all the time means something i hear all the time when i'm talking to people about like
00:48:49
myths you know what are the sexual myths or what are the sexual rules that you think are kind of applicable to your sex
00:48:55
life a really common one is that men initiate sex like men are the initiators the sex and
00:49:00
women are the responders now how does that fit people then when they're like oh but that's not how it works for us or you know a for example male partner
00:49:12
if we're talking about hetero heterosexual relationships who is less confident and a female
00:49:18
partner who is more confident and so actually it's the other way around but then they're thinking okay
00:49:23
but this isn't what we think everyone else is doing so maybe there's a problem here when there isn't because that's what's
00:49:31
working for them and you see big distinctions between the issues that heterosexual and and homosexual
00:49:37
relationships have i think that what same-sex relationships don't battle with as much is the gender assumptions the gender narratives the gender norms
00:49:53
that kind of idea of like men do this and women do this but you know there are also kind of
00:49:59
every relationship struggles in some way with that dynamic of we're two individuals
00:50:04
how do we work on our differences and our similarities together that interrelational part which is what
00:50:11
happens between us you know how what are our triggers what how do we kind of what makes us both anxious or what makes us both feel secure or what makes us both feel closer
00:50:23
and also navigating that you know that that's really the battle that all couples have again
00:50:29
super naive question but i'm sure it's one of the most popular questions you get asked which is like is there a healthy amount of times for a
00:50:37
couple to have sex per week or whatever i used fiverr once a month before they became a
00:50:43
sponsor on this podcast and since they've become a sponsor on this podcast and i've delved into what the site does and how all the services
00:50:50
work and the vast array of things that you can achieve on fiverr using freelancers around the world
00:50:55
i swear on this dog's life pablo my dog here who sat on my lap if you can't see i swear in his life that i've used
00:51:02
fiverr at least once a week for the last three months we've built so many websites we've designed so many decks we've had video clips edited we've had subtitles
00:51:13
produced if you haven't checked out fiverr before hit the link in the bio fiverr.com ceo
00:51:20
go to the website check it out and every single time i do this podcast one person who dms me
00:51:26
with a service from fiverr that they need doing for their business for their podcast for whatever project they're working on i will pay
00:51:33
for that service to be done for you so find a service on fiverr that you you want done send me a message and one person every
00:51:38
week will have that service paid for by me super naive question but i'm sure it's one of the most popular questions you
00:51:43
get asked which is like is there a healthy amount of times for a couple to have sex
00:51:50
per week or whatever and you know one would assume that changes over time right because i think i know just judging by my relationships it starts we start like [ __ ] energize the bunny rabbits and then you
00:52:02
know life happens but is there you know and i hate these questions because again they're so like
00:52:09
unnuanced and so like narrow but is there an average amount of times that couples
00:52:15
you would you know if you had to answer this question and not swerve it in this for the sake of nuance what
00:52:22
would the answer be i would like to know what you think the answer is i think again context like i'm going to go into nuances here but context matters like if you live on opposite sides of the world then
00:52:33
obviously there's there's barriers but if you're living in the same house if you're cohabiting living in the same house i think like at
00:52:39
least twice a week you know once in the weekend tuesday but where okay so where do you think um that idea of twice a week would comes
00:52:52
from just looking at my schedule wait a minute where can i find time probably like once in the week and then on the weekends i have a bit more time so
00:53:05
um yeah but i mean it obviously changes over time i feel like i probably have sex every night but if i you know but
00:53:11
just energy levels and yeah what's the answer then so someone i um interviewed talked about the amount of sex we have as a red herring
00:53:22
so the kind of regularity of sex doesn't determine like the satisfaction of it or
00:53:29
the kind of pleasure of it or the enjoyment of it and i think what it feels like we've been trying to
00:53:36
do is find an objective way of measuring sex so it's this idea of okay well we're all
00:53:43
trying to find the answer to sex like how to be good at sex like what that looks like how to
00:53:49
know where we pitch ourselves against everyone else and regularity is one of the only kind of objective measures we have of that
00:53:56
so it's the one that we kind of will lean into or we want to know the answer to whereas what i would say is i don't
00:54:02
think we do have an idea of i don't know what kind of modern like surveys say there's a big survey that's done um
00:54:10
kind of every few years but i haven't actually seen the results of that one yet but what about the monkeys how often are they doing i feel like they were like
00:54:19
what are the orangutans doing um i haven't got a clue to find out maybe your next guest yeah
00:54:25
like a zoologist or something um but i think that the the thing is is working out again and what it what we're looking for is a measure of like how we're doing yeah by knowing that um answer and i
00:54:38
think one of the things is for some couples it might be as you said they might kind of work in different
00:54:44
countries it might be every time they see each other they have great sex and that's enough like that works for
00:54:50
them for other couples it might be we have sex once a month and it's really good you know we're both enjoying ourselves
00:54:56
and we feel like our needs are met great for other people it might be once a week you know i think it's about
00:55:02
determining like what your normal is or what your what is right for you but again the kind of worries and anxieties and stresses come from a we're not having enough sex
00:55:15
why is that yeah you know is it because my partner's no longer attracted to me that tends to be the first thing people go to and what's
00:55:22
going on um is it because our relationship isn't working is it when we don't have a clear kind of obvious answer like we've
00:55:28
just had a baby for example um so there's the assumptions that go with that why has sex
00:55:33
changed what's going on but also the well everyone else is having sex once a week and we're having sex once a month so that we must have a problem there
00:55:45
must be something wrong with us speaking of my ex-girlfriends i feel like i've slightly thrown several of them under the bus but i had
00:55:52
another relationship this go this goes back a little bit further where i just like fell in love with this girl
00:55:59
in every other aspect non-sexual so intellectually in every other way and then when it came time to have sex
00:56:05
which is actually quite a little bit later than it usually is in the relationships that i have
00:56:10
like three or four months into knowing this person um there was i don't know how to say this
00:56:17
because it just sounds i'll just go for it um the the i tend to think especially when it comes to like vaginal penetration that it's like a
00:56:34
hand and a glove and the hand in the glove didn't match and again i genuinely thought that i could have spent the rest of my life with this person but i saw that as
00:56:45
a like insurmountable object like my penis didn't suit her vagina and i thought we can't change you can't change this um
00:57:00
yeah is this something that people come to you about often they talk about like the
00:57:06
practicalities the practicalities like the hand in the glove yeah i think it is and you know there are for example like conditions that mean that people
00:57:17
can't have sex for numerous reasons so like sexual dysfunctions or you know particularly for women there
00:57:23
is a condition called vaginismus which is where there's an involuntary contracting of the pc muscles the pelvic floor muscles
00:57:29
where they're unable to have sex and that we think affects about one in 500 women in no way am i saying that's
00:57:35
necessarily what was happening here but you know we also know that that it's about how we
00:57:42
work together as couples how we work with bodies what would make things more helpful how we can look for
00:57:48
kind of practical advice but it's about understanding like okay how do we help ourselves here rather
00:57:55
than again that assumption of like something's going wrong because it made me believe in this like idea of like
00:58:01
there's a physical compatibility to sex as well not just like a a desire compatibility
00:58:06
or like you know an experimentation compatibility but there's like a physical um compatibility as well to having like good sex where you can just like physically not
00:58:18
be compatible but i suppose it's then where how do you if you want to like explore working around a roadblock you know how do you kind of
00:58:31
because that's build yourself so hard to talk about like i could never bring my i could talk about
00:58:36
the um libido issue with my partner but i could never tell that partner that i wasn't that i was basically turned off by our lack of
00:58:48
physical compatibility i could never mention it so i ended up the end the relationships
00:58:53
i tried multiple times to like fix it in various ways and i just couldn't bring myself to talk about it because i didn't want to hurt
00:58:59
the person i didn't want to say something that might hurt them and stay with them forever so i ended the relationship on the
00:59:05
grounds of something else but that was fundamentally the issue i've actually had two relationships in my life but like sexual partners in my life that
00:59:13
ended purely because of that but yeah and i think it's so hard again isn't it because we just don't know how to tackle these as topics as you say like
00:59:25
how do we manage talking about something or exploring something that we just have no idea where even to start and i
00:59:33
don't offend the person which that must be it must be a huge thing in the work that you do like not wanting to offend your partner
00:59:39
because as you said it's such a sensitive topic and i don't know how i could have approached that situation without
00:59:44
offending the person and i think that it's the fear of judgment like the fear of offending the
00:59:50
fear of hurting our partners the fear of us not being able to go back once we kind of it feels a bit like pandora's box for some people like this
00:59:56
idea of talking about sex in a relationship you know like if i open this up like how do
01:00:02
we close it or i think a lot of people have the fear of if i open this up then every time we
01:00:09
have sex we're both going to be thinking about this and we're both going to be completely in our heads and what we know
01:00:15
is when we're completely in our heads when it comes to sex we're not experiencing what's going on in our bodies and that is interrupting arousal you
01:00:22
know the body's process of us kind of enjoying you know our body kind of working with us the kind of
01:00:27
sexual arousal process and so you know our thoughts are as distracting as they're kind of being
01:00:33
like someone in the room that's not the person wearing sex with or someone actually like walking in or
01:00:38
kind of saying all of that stuff to us just because our thoughts are not a physically represented being doesn't
01:00:46
mean they're not as distracting as something else and you're completely right because from then on i didn't say anything
01:00:52
but i carried on trying i thought maybe you know one bad experience whatever we'll try again we'll try again
01:00:58
and it got to the point where i was i was almost avoiding sex because i knew that
01:01:03
it was going to be an issue and i started to overthink and as a guy overthinking is not what you want to be doing when you're trying to maintain yourself so
01:01:16
i am so i started having issues keeping my erection up because i was just i was walking in i was
01:01:22
getting in the bed thinking oh my god here we [ __ ] go again and i've got a you know like are you gonna be able to get it up because you you really
01:01:28
don't enjoy this and and that all of that just became too much i couldn't tell her because i didn't want to insult her
01:01:34
and i was starting to have problems like you know being aroused because it was a big issue and you're right it's
01:01:41
a snowball and performance anxiety is one of the key things that i work with with men because where there is not a physical kind of indicator
01:01:52
or reason for why they might be struggling for example with erections because getting into your head too much again creates a speed bump for
01:02:04
sexual arousal because when you're feeling stressed or you're feeling anxious you're in that kind of fight flight free
01:02:10
state your body is preparing not for you to kind of lie down and have sex and be comfortable and relaxed but it's
01:02:16
preparing for that kind of threat response and that is not compatible with being sexual in that moment so in a way your body's kind of working against you
01:02:27
and so what you have to do then is work on this kind of like frontal bit of your brain you know your thoughts
01:02:33
like focusing on that in order to in a way like reprogram because sex has become not fun
01:02:41
exciting pleasurable connecting it's become anxiety provoking stressful fearful you know don't want to
01:02:49
be here would rather avoid so in a way the way i describe it a lot is the meaning of sex has changed so the
01:02:54
way we relate to it has changed how does one give their partner good positive constructive feedback do you know what i mean like because i'm sure there's i was thinking
01:03:05
then i'm sure there's so many people listening to this that are in relationships that would like their sex to be slightly
01:03:12
different and they probably in the same way that i was anxious about approaching it with my
01:03:18
xxxxx girlfriend um what is the best way to approach these sensitive self-esteem
01:03:24
attached topics with your partner not in the moment when you're having sex so not just kind of like in bed like just before because also what you don't want to do is you know kind of create like a scent a
01:03:37
further sense of like stress or anxiety like in that sexual space so what i always talk to people about is
01:03:44
like leading with a positive you know like i really love our relationship like i'm loving what we're doing
01:03:50
but maybe there's something we can work on here or how can we do this better or so leading with a positive you know
01:03:56
affirmation because if someone comes at you and um you know we're often really sensitive to criticism also in our intimate relationships and this isn't good enough or you're not
01:04:07
doing this or our immediate response is defensive or attacking we're not open to hearing what they have to say we're already like shut down before they've even got there
01:04:18
so kind of approaching it without that positive framework or like connecting framework
01:04:23
or open framework and also let's work on this together this is a shared venture something we want to do together some you know
01:04:30
something for us to think about like how can we go about this because what can also happen is we isolate the problem in one partner yeah when there are two of us
01:04:42
there i guess i guess another sort of attach to that would be just telling them what you you like as
01:04:48
opposed to what you don't like so it's just like the same outcome but different framing so it's like oh i like when you blindfold me or
01:04:54
i don't like when you don't blind you know what i mean and just making it i might some of my sort of sexual partners
01:05:00
that have given me positive feedback in the past have done so by telling me what they like more of because then we can lean into that yeah exactly and we all like to be
01:05:10
told we're doing a good job we all like to be affirmed we all like to be especially in sex because we don't have
01:05:17
a reference point you know are we doing a good job and we feel you know if we think we are bad at sex
01:05:26
with that's really personal yeah isn't it it's brutal you know that's really a difficult thing to hold on to and then
01:05:34
we go into our next sexual situation thinking i'm bad at this and actually what it's more likely to do
01:05:39
is make us struggle and actually when people are relaxed and comfortable and calm in those situations they're
01:05:46
able to connect with the other person more and we're kind of able to i suppose follow the pleasure path a bit
01:05:52
more or kind of affirm each other a bit more and understand that actually someone says
01:05:58
can you touch me here it's not because you weren't doing it the right way it's just because that might be their preference but we cannot
01:06:04
be mind readers we cannot know what our partners like until we communicate that with them
01:06:10
that's such a fascinating thing as well that we never know if we're good at sex we're just like kind of trusting our and
01:06:16
especially because you see all these movies and we read these magazines about people faking orgasms as a guy i swear to god
01:06:23
the first couple of times someone said that i was like good in bed or whatever i thought you're full of [ __ ] i thought you say this to everybody and
01:06:28
then like i still i still and i've heard that a few times whatever but i still don't know and that's crazy that like
01:06:35
with everything else you have a fairly um accurate gauge of whether you're good at it but because we've never seen like pretty
01:06:42
much we should really we've never like seen anyone um doing it in real life or really got
01:06:48
to observe it outside of the fakeness of porn and you don't know how it feels for the
01:06:55
other person and sometimes you don't even know if they're faking it or if it's real you can't i th well for me in my mind
01:07:02
like kind of float through life assuming you're doing okay until told otherwise but it also assumes that here we go
01:07:10
again good at sex is a formula that you can apply across the board like everybody it's every sexual experience
01:07:18
is going to be different between those partners in that time in that moment in that context it is not
01:07:25
like a universally applicable true formula now what we can do is we can sorry i just passed your purpose but my ex said i was
01:07:40
like what we can do is we can feel more informed so we can make no i consider a big part of my job to be
01:07:46
helping people to make informed choices about their sexual wellness and well-being so that might be
01:07:52
you know thinking about the narratives that have shaped how they think about sex thinking about their current definition of sex
01:07:58
thinking about sex education how can they feel informed about things like anatomy
01:08:03
things like their body their preferences their likes and the communication bit how do i then
01:08:08
communicate that with a partner and all of that can contribute to better sexual self-confidence and again what we
01:08:15
know is like sexual self-confidence is in that person again it's reflected back to them in situations with other people
01:08:22
but really it's kind of all about that relationship with self and i know that sounds very
01:08:28
therapy and something that all therapists say but it's really true because we put ourselves in those sexual
01:08:33
contexts in those sexual situations for some people they might never struggle with sex they might have kind
01:08:38
of muddled through you know like trial and error worked it out kind of and always and be okay and they're
01:08:45
satisfied and that's great but for some people they do struggle for some people they have a period of normal sexual
01:08:51
functioning and then they start to struggle and it might be that they've never thought about sex really before
01:08:57
until they feel like they have to so again there's no kind of one route to all of this
01:09:04
and although there are themes for example in the conversations that i have with people everyone has their own journey their own
01:09:11
story their own experiences that have shaped that and some of it can start in you know the
01:09:16
playground like playground banter about what sex is like but at a younger age when we're quite impressionable and that sounds really scary what people are talking about we can kind of carry that
01:09:28
with us and then it presents further down the line or we might have had a negative sexual experience early which means that we then don't want to try again and so we hold on to
01:09:40
that negative experience because we've had no in a way like challenging or corrective or other more positive experiences which
01:09:46
can go against those ideas we're ever evolving you know humans and people and we're changing in every way you know mentally physically i think one of the things that has
01:10:00
it's going to be honest because i think that's just the point i think i think when i'm honest i think i resonate with more people one of the things i'm slightly concerned
01:10:06
about is that at some point in my life i'll fall in love with somebody and the sex will be great and everything
01:10:11
and then me all them will change in that we could change in a variety of different ways
01:10:17
whether it's our desire but but more so even like i'm we might not be attracted to each other
01:10:23
anymore i might you know deteriorate in some form and i wonder how much of an issue that like two people changing and falling out of
01:10:35
attraction with each other is um prevalent in the work that you do in the pit and the people that you know
01:10:41
come to you for therapy and for advice i think it is it's not probably the most prevalent thing i deal
01:10:47
with but also what you're basing that on is an assumption that that's not something that can be worked at
01:10:53
it's not something that people accept when they are in a relationship with each other or
01:10:58
that they you know i think it goes back to that relationships moving in stages and phases
01:11:04
bit as well and i think there's that's that fear of like things not always staying the same whereas actually
01:11:10
what i would say is if we accept that things don't always stay the same then we can change and work with that and accept
01:11:17
it and improve it or adapt you know as humans we're really really adaptable but we want to feel encouraged in that rather than i suppose kind of put off or challenged
01:11:30
by the fact that we need to in the world we live in now there's just this incredible like
01:11:35
perspective perception of choice i'd say like more so than my grandparents around i imagine they're
01:11:40
dating their sort of circle of possible matches extended to like the size of their like street or village didn't have tinder yeah exactly they
01:11:47
didn't have tinder or instagram but now in my relationships if it's not going well i've got apparently
01:11:53
a gazillion people right here that are perfect they're all filtered and i think you
01:11:59
know 32 000 of them just like my photo so if i lose attraction with my partner in the world we live in now where we've got this huge sort of perceived amount of choice and accessibility just one swipe you
01:12:13
know it must make holding relationships together at times when they hit you know rocks more difficult than ever
01:12:19
before no yeah i think that there are often ideas that like the grass is always greener
01:12:26
but equally we understand that relationships take work and i think you know we we've seen a
01:12:33
breakdown of norms we've seen that you know divorce rates are at an all-time high but it's not the same stigma that it used to be
01:12:39
that kind of people changing their models of relationships so changing relationships
01:12:44
is not kind of such a a big thing but also something i think is important to say is
01:12:50
just because a relationship has ended doesn't mean that in itself it wasn't successful and i think that's another
01:12:57
thing that we need to like to reframe you know people can be in a relationship for 10 years
01:13:03
and it ends that doesn't mean that relationship failed or was a failure it might have been for that person at
01:13:09
that time this is part of the issue in my view with marriage because marriage you say till death do
01:13:15
us part but we all know that if there's the only constant is change we're all going to change
01:13:21
so how can you honestly make a commitment that you're going to stay with this person why would you want to until death
01:13:29
knowing that you're both going to change in various ways that are yet to be seen but can't you also change together
01:13:35
in a positive way you can like i think i think people are moving they can move if you think about it as
01:13:41
like two parallel lines they can go they could be slightly tilted one degree to the the right which means that in 10 years time they'll be too far apart or they could be slight one degree to
01:13:52
the left which means that in 10 years time they'll be closer together um or they could be perfectly straight
01:13:59
right so perfectly parallel which means that in 10 years time they'll be the same they'll resonate in the same way they'll
01:14:04
be as close you know whatever but you don't know that yet so i think that that's why i've always been slightly
01:14:10
let down by the concept of marriage because i think you know you can't predict the future so
01:14:15
why would you want to make something like that so final um and i've i've i think like
01:14:21
you know the men in black have you seen men in black oh god a long time ago when they get the pen and they they hold it up and if they press the button on the
01:14:27
pen basically it raises your memory i sometimes think i think if if we held that pen up to the world and erased
01:14:32
everybody's memory what are the things that would come back like science would come back religion would never come back the same
01:14:38
we wouldn't it wouldn't come back the same right science we would figure all the same things out same experiments marriage i'm like no
01:14:45
wouldn't come back the same not in 2021 i don't think that would come back the same um i think we'd have a much more bespoke
01:14:52
open flexible form of marriage that would involve less of the law and would involve less
01:14:58
of the church um and i probably think would be a little bit more effective so i guess my question is about marriage what do you think about marriage are you married
01:15:14
you know i think that it's what what does it offer people you know like what are people looking for and i think for a lot of
01:15:20
people it's security you know and it's it's form of insecurity though like i think i tend to i'm going to play
01:15:25
devil's advocate here yeah i do because i think if you're looking for security from like a legal contract i'm like then that for me speaks to a little bit
01:15:32
of insecurity somewhere else but i think it's also about you know i suppose marriage has been the norm
01:15:38
right historically it's always been the norm it's always been also considered the gold standard or
01:15:44
like what we should kind of aspire to be or aim for and i think that again you know that that impact of history like us doing the things that we've always done but it's an institution and a lot of
01:15:57
people subscribe to that now what we see now is that people can be married multiple times and be happy in every relationship or it be perfect for that stage or for them or for that
01:16:07
relationship that people don't need to get married that people can parent and become parents without being
01:16:13
married that it's i suppose the biggest um representation of commitment that historically we've always had and people now can find other ways to commit to each other you know buying property together
01:16:28
that doesn't require it so i suppose children it's probably the biggest commitment but it's also about what those people are looking for
01:16:37
i think i think that's you know people think i'm really against marriage it's actually not the truth and my friends say to me are steve's against
01:16:42
marriage i've listened to his podcast i'm like no you didn't listen what i'm against what i'm for is a more bespoke
01:16:48
um tailored approach to how two people come together i actually had a friend of mine say to me this week that he and he will
01:16:54
be listening to this podcast for sure he said um he thinks he can only be with someone for a year at a time
01:17:00
he says after a year i just i don't think i can you know the relationship can't go on so
01:17:06
he's having these continual one-year relationships and look i guess the most important
01:17:11
macro question is like are you happy yeah um and people's happiness is derived in various ways
01:17:17
um i do think i do think marriage is somewhat you know i think maybe it's because i tend to have a perspective that
01:17:23
convention um conventional solutions um aren't always very well equipped to solve new problems
01:17:29
and the world we're living in is a very new one we're living longer than ever before we're exposed to different types of information we have
01:17:36
much more freedoms than i think our some of our ancestors used to have so maybe the the way that humans commit
01:17:42
to each other should not involve the law it shouldn't take two years to divorce someone which i think is crazy
01:17:48
um i think it doesn't have to and i suppose it's about what people are looking for and i
01:17:55
suppose as you you know you're asking earlier about like multi-partner relationships or like you know consensual non-monogamy it's
01:18:01
about us making informed choices about what works for us and our relationships and i mean that's a conversation i was having with someone just yesterday is how do we feel more informed
01:18:15
you know how do we explore what that might look like in another way because for some people trying to fit into what
01:18:22
they feel they're expected to do might not work for them it's a it's a system or a model that doesn't work
01:18:27
so how do we then start to like open up that conversation for ourselves but also we have our fears you know we're humans
01:18:40
we like to i suppose feel that we fit the normal fit what's expected or you know some of us do at least that what well other people think of me
01:18:50
if i step outside that so as humans we have that balance of like what do i want but also what
01:18:56
will other people think yeah which i think is typically quite awful yeah but it isn't it one of the biggest
01:19:03
things that drives people in a lot of ways drives them try somewhere though like i think i just
01:19:08
think in every facet of life it's like your mom wants you to be a doctor but you really want to be a ballet dancer in costa rica
01:19:14
and it's like you know what's expected of you you know you're expected to go get married or and then become a doctor but like your intrinsic joy will come
01:19:21
from going and being a ballet dancer in costa rica and uh not getting married or whatever and smoking i don't know whatever
01:19:27
in the mountains over there but you know i tend to believe and this is probably there's no like i don't have a huge scientific basis for this i have a couple of like philosophical studies i've read but that um people who abandon like their
01:19:39
true selves or that conform to society's expectations typically have some point in their life some kind
01:19:46
of um moment of realization where they realize that they've not not fulfilled themselves as they could
01:19:53
have isn't this back to that point of expectation versus reality though yeah i guess so like the gap between what we expect and then where we kind of
01:20:05
find ourselves to be or what we what that looks like because i think again that's that
01:20:10
and also you know i'm it's that idea again i feel like i talk about gaps a lot but that idea that gap between the person i kind of know myself to be in the person i show everybody else that
01:20:21
i am and the bigger that gap the more space for struggles or battles or mental health challenges around that what is and this might just be the title of this video because i
01:20:34
because i think it will be so we'll uh we'll clickbait this part what is the single biggest killer of
01:20:42
relationships in the modern age in 2021 in your view if you had to say this one thing is the single the biggest killer of relationships what would it be
01:20:53
unrealistic expectations one of the big problems you you talked about it earlier this idea of like what we see in the movie so we're like oh that's what it's like so then when it's not like that we're
01:21:07
disappointed our partner fails us they haven't met our expectations they haven't met all of
01:21:14
our needs you know we talk about this idea lots of relationship experts talk about this idea of how we shouldn't expect
01:21:19
one person our partner to meet every single one of our needs but we do and so they're kind of doomed
01:21:27
to fail then in that way so how do we change that how do we start to kind of like open that up how do we you know we have other relationships in our lives we have family we have friends we have
01:21:40
colleagues you know we need to start to think about like how we can do that for ourselves and then our we work with our partners
01:21:48
to create something together i completely resonate with that and i think most of my relationships fail
01:21:55
because the expectation that my partner has on me it goes unmet because i'm very selfish
01:22:01
and i like to work all the time and to think about my stuff all the time and i'm like very self-absorbed and when i have free time
01:22:07
i just want to like i don't know do something for me um i've tried over the years to like manage that expectation by making it
01:22:13
clear as early as i possibly can that like work is a huge part of my life and i am very selfish
01:22:19
selfish sounds like such a negative word but it means that like i'm so consumed with my passions and the things yeah like you could say focused i use
01:22:26
selfish because it makes it because i'm trying to take a little bit of blame i guess but i am so consumed with my passions like i will
01:22:32
work all day and then i'll go on youtube and want to watch something about spacex and elon musk taking spaceships to mars
01:22:38
and then in the morning you know i just want to do and i kind of want them to do their own thing as well
01:22:43
so i try and very early on lay that expectation down but it just never seems to work because
01:22:48
at the start someone will tell you that they oh they're cool with that they're never cool with that
01:22:53
ever i suppose it's about that you know relationships are about that balance of independence and dependence
01:22:59
and so it's where that balance sits i want independence i want them to be independent me to be independent and will like meet in the middle sometimes but yeah i
01:23:12
i don't know maybe i i maybe i'm the problem because i think that compromise is important i don't think i compromise very often as much as i should um
01:23:25
i went through my life i think pretending that i was just so focused on my work and no one could deal with it but i probably
01:23:31
think that i'm also like i think selfish is probably the word and unwilling to compromise and like i think so like the negative version of
01:23:38
selfish is also the word where like i prioritize my my needs more than someone else's
01:23:43
i think that's caused me a lot of problems i i sit with people in this podcast all the time that's super successful and they
01:23:48
they'll they largely struggle in relationships do you think that's because their
01:23:53
primary relationship then is with their work yeah and themselves because it meets you
01:23:59
know we see that right we need people talk about their businesses as their babies you know like that's my first baby or
01:24:04
that's my baby and i think that you know are we for some people we get our needs met through our businesses through our passions through
01:24:15
our sport through our careers and for some people they might get enough of their needs for relationships met in those kind of smaller doses or not in those kind of like single
01:24:28
intimate or couple or relational relationships but they have that met in other ways
01:24:36
across the board or in kind of smaller ways now who are we to pathologize that i suppose
01:24:43
difficult i was hoping you'd have all the answers i'm sorry i definitely don't have all the answers i can but compromise is important right yeah
01:24:49
but in any relationship you you compromise with people you work with you compromise with friends you
01:24:55
compromise with family members like we all we all have to compromise because relationships are however many people
01:25:01
there are but you know if we're talking about couples two people who are independent different
01:25:06
people trying to work together and they're not going to perfectly fit together or be aligned in every single way so how do we navigate that when you're running your own business though and you're the ceo
01:25:20
you don't have to compromise as much do you know what i mean things tend to go on your schedule when you know you get to kind of lay
01:25:25
down so in your and then transitioning into your personal life you have to almost perform the opposite
01:25:31
behavior which is like high patience listening when you're the ceo you can you know condense things how you want and you're leaning into your natural way of working and things are kind of going at
01:25:41
your cadence within your how you want things to happen whereas in your personal life that that's maybe where i've struggled
01:25:48
whereas like i've learned one behavior in my professional life which is about saving time on everything and optimizing
01:25:53
everything to be more productive and performance-based yeah and i'm like i don't want any sentence to be longer
01:25:59
than like it needs to be um so then transitioning into my private life where things you know you can shall we go for a walk a [ __ ] wall like i'm like what are you doing what a
01:26:11
waste of time what what for like do you know what i mean and i think i've struggled with that
01:26:16
transition because the decision making framework i have whether that i use at work it can't be the same it's applicable oh
01:26:23
my god it's the worst and sometimes maybe it seeps over into my personal life so they're different
01:26:28
it's almost like different operating systems exactly exactly two different objectives do you think
01:26:34
that so if i like kind of push that back on to that kind of question of like how
01:26:40
relationships work back on to you then do you think that entrepreneurs or people who then kind of
01:26:46
go out on their own and do that are more prone to that different way of relating or more that's their more natural style as in do i think they're more likely to
01:27:00
say so just to make sure in terms of you were saying like you know as a ceo you're like the person in charge you set
01:27:06
the agenda you set the time like it's more you're kind of leading that that in a
01:27:11
way that might be a piece of being an entrepreneur is someone who kind of puts their head down and does that yeah but and it's also like heavily
01:27:22
learnt it's like you learn imagine if you put i don't know they say like you know how diamonds are made that it's like the
01:27:28
pressure over a million years or whatever um you get pressured over 10 years and you learn
01:27:34
a philosophy for your use of time for how you want things to happen whatever um and that becomes part of your character even if it wasn't when you were you know 10 years before when going through that experience it
01:27:45
makes it part of your character where you're like quite impatient things you know typically operate
01:27:50
in the way you want them to so you learn that personal philosophy because that's what made you successful
01:27:56
and also that's what's required to succeed yeah yeah and i i genuinely think that it's for me anyway i mean of course i've got these crazy hindsight biases but that's what was required for me to get
01:28:08
to where i needed to get to but if i want to be successful in my relationships then it's like all these
01:28:14
other things which is like compromise and patience and doing things for the sake of doing them as opposed to
01:28:20
where they're gonna get you yeah with some kind of outcome that's what i've struggled with anyway um but anyway enough about me you know a
01:28:27
lot of stuff right questionable yeah you've learned a lot of stuff so how easy did you find it
01:28:33
to implement all of this stuff that you know into your own life and in your own relationships i always whenever i have like an expert in a
01:28:38
specific topic on i'm always fascinated by their own ability to apply their knowledge in their own lives
01:28:44
um i mean i think you know speaking for myself in this space like i think we can i can
01:28:50
be a hypocrite i think we can all be hypocrites in our own ways and you know that's because we're also all human you know we all
01:28:56
still have our our triggers our anxieties our defenses and i try my best and i think that you know that's the best you can do but i think that relationships there's
01:29:07
an acknowledgement that relationships take work and take nurture and i think actually when you try to talk about this
01:29:14
stuff all the time you actually sometimes need to kind of step back and be like okay so what am i doing here you know like at home how do i
01:29:20
implement this as a partner as a parent as a family member as a friend and it's kind of acknowledging
01:29:26
that i'm being thoughtful of it and i think that there's also that idea of like how
01:29:31
am i best working with or serving people close to me rather than kind of like everything else something else to do for me it's about pulling away i suppose from being a yes man you know there was a stage in
01:29:42
my kind of life career and i said yes to absolutely everything and now you have to be a bit more selective because otherwise
01:29:48
then you lose the quality time and i think that quality time is an important part and it's actually making sure that
01:29:55
it's carved out protected um so i think for me that's a big part of it but yeah i think
01:30:01
not you know what what is the perfect relationship you know we're all working at everything all the
01:30:06
time and i don't pretend because i'm someone that works with relationships and sex i've not to be working on it myself
01:30:13
i bet all of your friends come to you so last night you like did you get that a lot i think a bit but you know i think i feel incredibly um fortunate that i have a very
01:30:26
you know emotionally open emotionally intelligent group of friends you know like i surround myself with the people
01:30:32
where we have those open conversations we are able to go to like the difficult places it is very
01:30:37
mutually supportive and none of us pretend to have it all worked out or that it's all perfect you know i think there's kind of a almost like a celebration of like the perfectly imperfectness
01:30:48
yeah of it all and also putting our hands up like wow this week is tough or i'm really struggling with this
01:30:54
or you know this is going on and i think that there's something in knowing you can
01:30:59
pick up the phone and just say that that is hugely hugely important do you ever instruct or advise any of your patients to this is a [ __ ] rogue
01:31:14
question but i just came to my mind to go and get some kind of like training sexual training is that a thing i've seen it in like a documentary i think it's quite like a place in amsterdam you can go and
01:31:28
i'll teach you how to you know give someone a hand job or something i don't know no i think you know i think
01:31:34
the where we're at now you know in the world is that there are online platforms kind of creating i suppose like more
01:31:40
instructional content so there's an amazing one that was launched by the kinsey institute which is one of the
01:31:47
leading kind of sexuality research institutes in the world and it's a platform called omgs and it's basically
01:31:52
about helping like instructional videos and interviews about like how to um create female orgasm or
01:32:00
stimulate female pleasure what's the website again but i think that you know we are now you know with sexual wellness and well-being becoming such a big important
01:32:13
topic we're seeing that these platforms are coming up which are to help instruct or to help offer advice
01:32:20
and that means that the educational content is available to people and i recommend lots of that stuff
01:32:26
because if people feel informed they feel more confident and that means that they can have actionable things
01:32:32
to work on to build on and that they're more able to be like okay yeah i can i understand how this works
01:32:38
now whether this is our bodies or someone else's bodies to a certain extent so that can kind of help set me up for a
01:32:46
sexual experience and lastly just to sort of loop around from the from the start what are the if you were to say that they were there were similarities in couples that do
01:32:58
enjoy great sexual relationship just principles top-line principles what are those sort of key distilled top-line principles um
01:33:06
such a big question communication communication yeah is like top of the tree and i think i
01:33:11
think it's top of the tree and i think it's the one that people don't want to hear because it's less actionable and it's
01:33:17
quite scary yeah exactly it's like in a way i think talking about it is the hardest thing to do and but it is you know any relationship kind of expert any expert in the sexual kind
01:33:29
of well-being how space will say to you like communication is that and then it's like okay but
01:33:37
how do i do that and you know we talk about these communication exercises things like kind of speaking from your own position so like i say so there's a place called the
01:33:48
gottman institute and they have you know done so much research on couples but it's this
01:33:53
ownership like my feelings are i'm feeling my perspective is because actually what
01:33:59
you're not saying to your partner is you yeah it's not blame it's not blame exactly so i think that
01:34:04
the communication part on like positive communication is a big part of that but it's that breakaway from assumption
01:34:11
it's like clarification or assumption assumption is what trips us up so much of the time because we're mind reading we think we
01:34:17
know what our partner's going to say before they say it so we don't even give them a chance yeah that's true well listen thank you
01:34:24
so much for your time i feel like um it's been a very enlightening conversation and i appreciate that the fact that you've taken the burden of all
01:34:30
of my sexual every sexually show i've ever had it's good to get it out of that i feel like
01:34:36
this was therapy for me more than anything else but um where can people find you and i know you're involved in a bunch of other
01:34:41
projects i know that you've got a sex toy project which you're involved in as well so where can people find you and reach you
01:34:47
yeah so my website is my name kate moyle.com at uk i host a podcast called the sexual wellness sessions where
01:34:53
we have um informative but informal conversations about different areas of sexual well-being so
01:34:58
whether that's desire sexual functioning kind of sexual mindset um infertility and sex you know try and
01:35:06
i try and cover kind of um specific subjects around like what people might be struggling with
01:35:12
um and then i'm on instagram at kate moyal therapy but um this expo project is on the uk sex expert for lilo
01:35:19
so um luxury sex play brand and they do some amazing amazing products as well so
01:35:24
and i work with um brands kind of creating like sexual kind of wellness focused i
01:35:31
suppose projects or huge products yeah and i think brands are really trying to get it right
01:35:37
and i really really respect that i think that's amazing so i actually love that work because it feels like it's taking the learning from inside the
01:35:44
therapy room and putting it out into the world and hopefully then that's creating that social cultural kind of sex positive
01:35:50
shift that i think we all need well thank you so much for coming on today it's a real pleasure to speak to you and i was so i've been so excited
01:35:56
about this conversation for a long time probably because i've been able to unload on my own personal issues but because you're someone that really
01:36:02
um has a powerful insight on a part of our lives that as you say is taboo and often not talked about enough and that's why i thought that was good to to have this is one of the pages in this
01:36:13
podcast diary so thank you so much and um i'm sure we'll uh we'll i'll be in touch
01:36:18
with all my other issues every year i'll be in touch just just wanted to say thank you thanks
01:36:25
this is huge news i finally got to meet my debut book happy sexy millionaire it arrived from my publisher last week and it was so surreal
01:36:37
seeing this book after about almost three years from the point where we had the idea and
01:36:43
i started speaking to publishers about it to the point where it's in my hands has been almost three
01:36:48
years and i traveled the world to produce this book i stayed in two different jungles on two different
01:36:55
opposite sides of the world for 60 days in total completely alone completely in isolation
01:37:00
to write this book i've poured so much time effort research studying into it i've met mental health
01:37:07
specialists i've met some of the most successful people in the world i've met clinical psychologists professors people that are experts on
01:37:13
divorce everything and i've poured all into this book mixed in with my own life experiences
01:37:19
it's without a shadow of a doubt the single most important thing i've ever produced and it's crazy because you have to sell
01:37:26
a book that's what like fuels the industry right that's what gives you a publisher that's what gets into shops that's what gives you
01:37:31
distribution but if i could if i could click my finger and everybody got it for free and it
01:37:36
meant that i made zero i would click my finger in a heartbeat because i think it's that important and i just want people to read it i don't care about the
01:37:42
money side of it it's everything i've ever learned all of my most important lessons distilled into this small book
01:37:48
and i teamed up with one of the world's leading artists in sort of visualizations and he produced about 25
01:37:53
images for the book as well so i know that some people learn through words some people learn through images
01:37:59
the book is a combination of the two happy sexy millionaire you can pre-order it everywhere now and if you do get that pre-order please
01:38:05
do dm me because i'd love to thank you myself [Music] you