Moment 159: The Most Important Sex Advice You NEED To Hear: Esther Perel

0:03When couples do come to you with sexlessness in their relationship, again, we have to define what sexlessness is, but they stopped having sex. It's been six months since they've had sex. Oh, six months. Why not 16 years? You've had that? Six months. Yes. I mean, when we talk about a block, you know, a breach, an impasse, a shutdown, we're not talking months. And by the way, this is not people, this is your best friends and you don't know. I asked them and I was shocked. You know, that's why, where should we begin? So people began to see that this is not just some others or just them, that it actually is very common.

0:52And so sexlessness is not about frequency, though at some point for some people it means nothing, nothing for years. And then you ask, do you still kiss? Do you hold? Do you touch? Do you rub skin? Is there any physicality still? Is there affection that may not be sexual touch, but that is affectionate touch? So you really look at the broad, you know, definition. And then you ask what, you know, what is it that you would want? Are you prepared to take the chance? I don't want that. I want to know how I get back from that place. But also I want to know how I avoid getting to that place. It's two separate answers, I guess.

1:36There's 16 years in no sex. How do we get back? So first and foremost, maybe this is a place to start. When I think about the conversations I have about sex with the people I work with, individuals or couples, and I think probably the best way for you is to listen to it in the podcast episodes, because you can hear how one begins to have this conversation. is that sex is not about a five-minute foreplay that is just in preparation for the real thing. And the real thing in a straight couple is penetration and orgasm, and then you know it worked. That model, that performance model with an outcome is so not what I'm talking about.

2:27This is what couples have had for centuries. People have had sex. I mean, you can do it and feel nothing. That's not the goal. So I don't care how often. I care about the quality of the experience, that the connection you have with yourself and with another. And so we talk about touch. We talk about giving touch and taking touch. We talk about fantasy, imagination. We talk about how do you ask for the things that you like, but that doesn't mean just touch me here, touch me there. It's how do you communicate sexually? What is that translation from Spanish to French? You know, how do you say to somebody, I enjoy this, I would enjoy that more?

3:08How do you create a vocabulary that isn't negative and critical and castrating? How do you pay attention to how the other person is responding and not just say, why don't you like this? Everybody else likes this, That kind of stuff. So it's very, very rich, you know, and the definition of sex is really way beyond this. And so you start to ask people about their imaginative life, around what excites them, around peak experiences that they have had, around the kind of touch that they enjoy, around what do you look for in sex? Is it a communion? Is it a spiritual union? Is it a free experience of being dominated, of giving yourself over to someone, of being naughty, of not having to be responsible and take care of other people, which you do the whole day?

4:00What do you look for in sex? Where do you go? What do you seek to express there? These are conversations a lot of people, most people have never had. Sometimes one person in the relationship doesn't want to have that conversation, right? And the other person does then i meet with them alone okay i'm and because some things need to be sometimes articulated separately first you know what is it sometimes it has to do with smell and body and and sometimes it has to do with trauma sometimes it has to do with lingering resentments sometimes it has to do with a fundamental inequality in the relationship in which one person expects and assumes.

4:43What blocks the sex, it's a sleuth work. It's not just, it's stopped. Do sometimes couples say to you in private that I'm just not attracted to them anymore? Of course. Sometimes they say it flat out to each other too. Really? People say hurtful things, yes. And sometimes it's, I can't believe somebody would be attracted to me. I don't find myself attractive. I have been ill or I have struggled with weight or I have had addiction issues or I... Sex intersects with a lot of things. It intersects with your health. The vast majority of couples, 55 up, that stop being sexual is actually because of the men in heterocouples.

5:31because the men are often on medication for diabetes, for blood pressure, for prostate, for depression, and others. And all these medications have sexual side effects. If you are a man who basically has focused your entire sexuality around your penis and your erections and your ability to get hard and last and have autonomous, spontaneous erections, and suddenly it doesn't happen. And you suddenly think, now I have to ask for help. Help, you know, what kind of a man? This is now no longer, you know, then you give up. And the notion that actually you have an entire body to make love with and that your penis doesn't make the decisions.

6:19It's a person who makes decisions for the penis. That's a very different story. And that you actually can experience pleasure in all kinds of other ways. or that you have had all illnesses with which you've grappled with. So human sexuality is a very broad topic that evolves in the course of your life, that changes with your successes, with your illnesses, with your children's lives, etc., etc. And that is one of the best things I can offer to people, is that suddenly the conversation, when you say the person doesn't want to talk about it, it's because what they've talked about is that narrow.

6:57Why don't you want to have sex? You never want to have sex. All you can think about is sex, that kind of thing. And once you've actually invited them into a whole other conversation about what is pleasure for you, what is connection, what is the difference between desire and arousal, what does it mean to start because you're in the mood versus to start because you're willing? I've had partners before where I thought, you know what, if I laid out the full menu of what I find pleasurable, they would think I was a weirdo. Listen, I'm not into anything extreme. Like I'm not into, you know, I have a very, look at me apologizing.

7:35Um, I'd think, oh, they, they wouldn't be into that. So I just won't tell them or it might make them run off. So I won't tell them. And I think dawned on me a couple of, um, maybe about a year ago when my girlfriend turned around to me and actually asked me the question for the first time about like what my fantasies were. And I was like, do I give her the vanilla menu or do I tell her about the. that's where the card game comes in this card game mine yes this one i have on the floor it has a i have a whole bunch of sexuality related questions and because you're playing you know it's the pink triangles are the sex ones but in play mode you can ask this question about fantasy in a way that is much less directed yeah or loaded loaded you know confrontational.

8:24And, you know, there's 60 cards on that subject alone. And that creates a very different kind of conversation. And I really think that to put it in the context of play and playfulness invites a very different kind of revelation and honesty.

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