Moment 128: How To Fix Your Sexless Relationship: Tracey Cox

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0:33My friends, they're in their 30s. Sexless. Sexless relationships. They are increasingly frustrated about it, it seems. It's funny, I've got this collection of my best friends, we're very talkative and communicative around our sex lives and stuff. And I just noticed that in various ways, they're in situations where they don't feel like they're getting enough sex from their partner and they see it as a critical problem, which might result in them, for example, being cheating or ending the relationship. Even in my own sexual experience, what got me really engaged with this subject matter was I was in a relationship where the partner turned around to me one day after six months and said, I don't like having sex.

1:19And as a young man, I thought, what does that mean? That's super -amasculating. Does that mean that I'm not hitting it right or like, do I? Maybe it's her problem, whatever. And so I went on that journey with... What did she mean? So it's interesting because we separated. My reaction was very like, and also, I turned to her and said, why? And she said, the next sentence was, I'm not comfortable talking about that with you. Oh. Yeah, so for me, that was like the door closed. Of course it did, because where do you go with that? Yes, exactly. So I broke up with her. Yeah. And year passes, we both go to different places, we both go and figure ourselves out a little bit.

2:00And on her journey, she really got to understand that at the heart of her relationship with sex was this fear that had derived from previous relationships where the partner was very forceful, you know, apparent cheating, all of those things that we kind of discussed earlier. So it wasn't that she necessarily didn't like having sex. There was a lot of psychological work to be done on removing that fear of abandonment. And really, if I made her feel safe, really, really safe, then the sexual appetite would return. That's what happened. Oh, hell. So a year later we get back together, we're having the best sex of our lives on an ongoing basis.

2:40And it was because she was able to understand, I was, okay, so first she was able to understand what was really going on. I was able to like be patient enough to like listen and, you know, go from weeks and weeks and months with not having sexual intimacy and just be there, which allowed her to feel safe. And then beyond that, we were able to kind of like rebuild it. And we're still together today. Oh my God. So this is your girlfriend. Yeah. I just asked her for permission to say this. Well, I'll show her the clip and make sure she's tough to board. But that's extraordinary story. So we went from a point of, I don't like having sex, I'm not coming exactly really, really bad situation to the best situation.

3:18I think one can imagine in that department, obviously communication was at the heart of it. Leg me. Of course, the way is, yeah. And giving her space to, you know, and I give the credit to her because she figured that out. But that's what got me really into the subject matter because I've now got loads of friends that are in that situation. What I was saying to your friends is, if your partner doesn't want to have sex with you, I wonder whether how good the sex is because a lot of women say no, I'm presuming these straight couples, a lot of women say no to sex because the sex it's on offer is not that interesting to them.

3:50So for this, we need to talk about sex drives. Spontaneous desire versus responsive desire. If you heard of that. Yes. From reading your book. Oh, right. So spontaneous desire is two thirds of men have spontaneous desire and it's the desire that everybody has at the beginning. And by the way, if you want to know somebody's resting libido, you've got to wait about a year. You have to wait about a year to find out what their real libido is because it's always so artificially inflated at the start, right? But so spontaneous desire, two thirds of men have this. It's the, you know, want to see, want to see, you know, seek sex, want sex, seek sex.

4:24They can go from people with spontaneous desire could be like scrolling through Instagram, somebody's sexy walks past and it's like, wow, I'm instantly aroused for sex. They go from zero to a hundred very quickly. They seek out their mate, want sex and they're off, right? Responsive desire means that you have no desire for sex or very little desire for sex. And till somebody is actually doing something to you sexually. So this is somebody who, you know, maybe is with their partner. Their partner wants to have sex. They're not even slightly interested but goes, okay, look, I'll give it a go. Then want to start, things start happening if their partner is very good at stimulating them and they enjoy the stimulation.

5:05All of a sudden they're like, yeah, actually, yeah, I'm enjoying this. That's the warming up. That's the warming up, right? Now, 30 % of women have responsive desire. The rest of them are a mix between spontaneous and responsive. Most men, so you've got this situation where most men have spontaneous desire, most women are responsive. Most men are very happy to go straight to genital sex. They don't need warming up the way their anatomy works. For women, for prey isn't a luxury, it's a necessity because in order for sex to be comfortable, you need the vagina to tent. So it literally puffs up so that it can, you know, take a penis comfortably.

5:44So if you don't wait for that to happen and you go male style sex, go straight for penetration, she's not even off the starting blocks. And suddenly you're penetrating, sex isn't great. And then it's all over. So the men you could have, like, not even thinking about sex to having finished within 10 minutes. For women, they need time to warm up because their sex drive is responsive. So they're almost like blinking it's over and they haven't even got to 5 % desire. And this is the problem with couples. And that's, that's with, I'm talking about a very basic couple who probably don't talk about sex and who aren't terribly sexually savvy.

6:22So I think, because I think people have an understanding vague understanding that women need more for play. I mean, that's been drummed into men, hasn't it? But I think that what women don't understand is that women think, you know, at the beginning it was great. It was all spontaneous. I desire was there. You know, when you get into a long term relationship, desire doesn't tap you on the shoulder anymore. You have to create it. And women, I think, think because that spontaneous desire is gone and they don't feel like sex. It just doesn't come out of the blue unless they start having sex. They think, oh, that just must mean I don't want sex anymore.

6:55Wow, something's wrong with me. I don't want sex anymore. You do want sex. It's just that you've got to be, have sexy things happening to you before you feel the desire for sex. And if people understood that, if women understood it better and stopped saying, oh, it's obviously means my sex drive's gone. No, it hasn't. It's there. You've just got to have great stimulation and great sex to get it back. And the other thing about women is that women, we have this thing about that women want tame and they want romance and stuff. That's not true. So much research now shows that women like erotic, wild sex.

7:30I mean, they've done these experiments with women where they'll show them erotic videos and they'll wire up the genitals to measure genital response. So when you're aroused as a woman, blood flows to the genital, same as men and you lubricate. So they're watching all these videos, various sexy videos and they have to say, you know, full anything is disarousing you, no, because society says no, we're not supposed to be. And the genitals are like, you kidding? What are you thinking? This is fantastic. I'm absolutely say yes to this. Say yes to this. So the, you know, there's such a big difference between what we taught and what we would like.

8:06So if your girlfriend's saying no to sex and you're in a long term relationship, it's because you're not giving her interesting enough sex. Give her exciting erotic sex. Give her something like, actually, this is what we're going to do. I mean, look at 50 shades of grey. That got middle -aged women wanting sex, women who hadn't wanted sex for 20 years. I remember being on a holiday with my husband and we started talking to this couple and it was around the time when 50 shades came out and she knew what I did and she said, God, I hadn't really had great sex with my partner. It wasn't interesting sex, you know, for like 10 years.

8:39She said, I read the book. I'm sitting there two o 'clock in the morning. I'm looking down at my partner. I'm thinking, I really just want to wake him up and have sex with them. And she said, and I've never, and then she said, and I read the books and suddenly I was back into this erotic sex with my husband that I just forgotten about. Like you think of sex as like, oh god, here we go, kissing, bit fumbling, you know, and then the routine sex, but give people something interesting. Like all your friends, give her really interesting scenarios. Take her somewhere sexy, push her out of her comfort zones.

9:11Don't give her romance. Don't give her, you know, give her sexy sex. And then they'll be interested. Hmm. I'm trying to think of my friends like posing that and how uncomfortable they'd feel. Really? Like, baby, I want to drive to the country side and do do do do do do. Because you know when you've been with someone and you've become that kind of sibling thing that you described earlier, they might almost look at you with a bit of horror. Horror? Horror, yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't go straight from not talking about sex to like, and we're going to go in a lockdown as a child tonight. And no, you have to have the conversation, you have to bite the bull and have the conversation, because the thing about sexist relationships, if you haven't had sex for a year with your partner, it is very unlikely you're going to have sex again with your partner.

9:56Unless you confront it head on. If you just think, yeah, this will pass, this will pass, it will never pass. You're not going to suddenly go, oh my god, look at that. We haven't had sex for five years. Let's go to bed now. No, it's got to the awkward, awkward, awkward stage. So, I mean, 30 % of couples who have been together for two years or more don't have sex. Two years, not 10 years, two years, 30%. It is very easy to get out of the habit of sex. And once you're out of the habit of sex, the less often you do it. And then couples get into this thing where it's like, God, we haven't had sex for ages.

10:31But you know what, next we came, we'll have this marathon sex session. And that'll make up for it all. And then the marathon sex session is like, God, am I going to find time for that? Or, you know, that's a bit daunting. And then of course you'd have to have sex for like six weeks to make up for the session. So it just becomes more and more insurmountable. So I always say to people, just have a little bite size bits of sex. You know, sex doesn't have to have the beginning and middle and an end. Like, have a big snogging session. Have a thing where he gives you oral. You don't do anything, you know, give nothing back.

11:01Or you give him oral. Or, you know, you just do something sensual together. You have a bath together. That counts as sex. You know, people think sex has to have intercourse in there. It doesn't. It's the least favourite bit for them. And take the intercourse out. Start doing little bite size stuff to reconnect sexually.

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