The Sex Therapist: The Truth About Orgasm, Desire & What No One Tells You About Sex

0:00Everyone has to be talking about sex all the time. Foreplay starts the minute the last sexual experience happens. We think people are having more sex, better sex, wilder sex than we are. And we then measure ourselves against what we think we should be like. Kate Moyle is a world-leading psychosexual and relationship therapist who isn't just talking about sex and relationships, she's redefining how we understand them. As a certified psychosexologist, the driving force behind the Sexual Wellness Sessions podcast and a published author, Kate's work is essential for anyone seeking deeper connections and a healthier understanding of intimacy.

0:39Is there such a thing as an ideal sex life, or at least a baseline that we should all be targeting? There is a common thread that runs under all, which is sexual anxiety in some way, shape or form. Fears about sex, that sex has changed. Anxieties about sex, worries about sex. What does it mean that I'm someone that can or can't sexually function? There's no magic formula. It's more about it being a constant conversation. It's about it being, you know, hundreds of tiny conversations about it being allowed, about it being a part of your discussions about everything in your life. But what it isn't is me saying everyone has to be talking about sex all the time.

1:25Are there any fundaments that make a person sexually attracted to someone else? Yeah, I would say... Is there such a thing as good sex? Especially for a woman, if she has one orgasm, that's at least good sex. But if you don't get that one orgasm, it's not good sex. One thing I think is really important to say is... If you had to compress all your knowledge and experience into one essential advice, what would it be? It's two parts of the same piece of advice I suppose. One is...

2:07Kate, how would you best describe the work you do? For me being a psychosexual therapist is being a creative problem solver. So essentially the definition of psychosexual therapy is a specialist branch of talking therapy of psychotherapy where the sign above the door is it's okay to talk about sex here but we're specifically dealing with sexual and relationship problems whether that's physical you know a dysfunction that something's changed that someone's struggling with an aspect of their health they're having relationship difficulties they've got sexual anxieties their sexual relationship is not working anymore they haven't had any sexual experiences and really it's about helping people to work out what it is that kind of got them to that place, what it is that's maintaining that problem and what we can do to help them change it.

2:57What are your credentials to be an expert to speak about this subject matter? So I started off with a general kind of psychology degree. I then did my psychosexual therapy training, a master's in relationship therapy and latterly a psychosexologist qualification which is a European qualification and I also have a diploma in gender sexual relationship diversity therapy. Right. So sexual therapy. What are the most common problems that bring people to you? So for me, I suppose my area of kind of specialty has become just by practice dealing with sexual dysfunction. So for men, that's erectile dysfunction, difficulties with ejaculation.

3:43For women, pain conditions and things like vaginismus, so inabilities to have sex or sex be very painful, very uncomfortable. But for me, a huge thing is there is a common thread that runs under it all, which is sexual anxiety in some way, shape or form. Fears about sex, that sex has changed, anxieties about sex, worries about sex. What does it mean that I'm someone that can or can't sexually function? On top of that, we then have kind of for couples, one of the big things that brings them in is a discrepancy in desire. So I want sex more or less than my partner and we are struggling to navigate the difference between the two of us.

4:24But there's also impacts like sex has changed because of struggling with infertility, repeated miscarriages, trying to get pregnant and not working, cancer, treatment, medical treatment, mental health, injury, sexual trauma, anything really that can shape our sex lives. I mean, the list, honestly, is almost unlimited. But it's anything that someone is struggling with specifically to do with sex and relationships. And the important thing is that it's, on my work anyway, is that I approach it with something called a biopsychosocial approach. Understanding the physicality and the kind of biological components of it, the social elements.

5:03So what does it mean? How do I feel about it? What do I think in the kind of social context of what it means to be someone that's struggling with this? And also then the thoughts, the feelings, the psychology of it. So often someone might come in with something that feels unrelated to sex. let's pick a big example bereavement for example or grief and it's showing up in their sex life and they can't explain that and we need to do some kind of untangling to work out what's going on for that person but okay so when should someone know that they should go to therapy so for example there are some individual reasons for sexual dysfunction so um if i have an erectile dysfunction For example, if it happens once, twice, should I go and see you?

5:47Or if I'm in a relationship and perhaps we're not having an amazing sexual life, when should we go and see you? So in these two cases, which I think might be two very common ones. Well, we know the incidence of something like, let's pick erectile dysfunction. You went with that. Let's go with that as an example. We know the incidence of that is common. We have statistics that suggest it's kind of 30 % of men under 30, 40 % of men under 40. we also see an increased incident with aging, which is what we expect. But erectile dysfunction, is it that you cannot perform sex at all, or it just happens once every three?

6:25For some people, they might struggle to gain an erection. So they might not be, or for some people, they might start by having an erection and then they might lose it. It can be unreliable. There are different, so clinically, what would come under the kind of definition of how you'd be clinically kind of assessed and managed for having it would be if it's been going on for longer than six months, over 75 % of the time, that it's causing you significant distress. And what we would also then be looking at is, is this something psychological? Or is there something physically that's changed? Are you taking a new medication?

6:59Have you gone through a hormonal change? So those are the things that we would be looking at. But is it mostly the first or the latter? Mostly I would say it's psychological. Interesting. But what brings people to therapy isn't necessarily always what fits the exact clinical guidelines. You know, what I'm working with as a therapist is the distress and the disruption that it's causing to your life. Now, someone might have a reason for it. They might say, okay, well, I know that, you know, I have low testosterone levels or that I'm on some kind of medical treatment or that I've been having for example something that might feel unrelated um like pelvic pain so there's an anxiety around that part of my body i have an explanation for that that might reduce the distress and we also see that with aging often because there's an expectation that this happens more that the the distress is less for some for example for someone in their perhaps 70s because they might have an expectation that this is something that happens a bit more so they might feel like it's very different to someone who's experiencing it in their 20s but when someone should come to therapy really is when it's becoming a real problem for them now what is it that makes the difference between it happening to someone and someone saying oh do you know what like this happens sometimes the erections are about blood flow I know that some of my mates have had this you know I'll get over it what happened what's the difference between that happening to one person and for one person it feeling catastrophic the first time it happens that's a combination of personality, genetics, experiences, the reaction of their partner, how they feel about themselves.

8:32And that's what I'm untangling with them as a therapist. Interesting. I fundamentally agree with what you're saying, but in particular with expectations. I think we all build up these expectations of what a good sex life should look like. And it's a combination of what you see in porn and what Hollywood has been selling us. and based on this expectation, then we compare it to our sex life, whether it's as a single person or as a couple. Is there such a thing as an ideal sex life or at least a baseline that we should all be targeting? Really good sex is about what's good for you. I agree with you.

9:16Sex on screen, so whether that's pornography, whether that's the media, whether it's films, Netflix, etc. these are non-representative versions of sex, but they are the most accessible versions of sex that we have. And so most people are in some way comparing themselves to that. And we do it with everything in life. You know, social media has had this whole other layer of comparison culture onto our lives that didn't exist in the same way before. There's also, you know, a bit of that that kind of plays into it. But how we measure ourselves sexually is based on these versions of what we think other people are doing in their bedrooms.

9:55These versions are most often exaggerated. We think people are having more sex, better sex, wilder sex than we are. And we then measure ourselves against what we think we should be like. And these shoulds typically come from, you know, pop culture, mainstream media versions. And if we want to view sex, the first thing we're going to find, if we type the word sex into Google is going to be some kind of pornography. And so we're then constantly measuring ourselves against these versions of what we're being told sex is. But actually, these materials are designed to create arousal. They're not designed to be sexual education tools.

10:32But we don't have open conversations about sex lives. We don't have kind of access to it. And there are lines between what's private for people and not. But the versions of sex that we see are not typical. They don't show good days, bad days, average days, like we have in our sex lives, like we do everything else. They don't show that sometimes it doesn't go perfectly. Sometimes the doorbell rings. Sometimes someone gets cramp. A position doesn't work. We need to add in lube. There's no, the expectations are one of the biggest hangups, I think, that people bring into the bedroom with them that can shape the experiences they're having.

11:08You're mentioning sex education. I think that's spot on because right now, almost everything that is related to sex is in the form of entertainment, but not education. I grew up in Spain, but then I came here to the UK when I was quite young. And in either of both countries, they never told me that this is how sex looks like. This is how maybe an ideal frequency should look like for a normal person, not for a porn actor. these are things that I just picked up along the way from friends or friends of friends or movies and so on so there is not a real there's not a thing called sex education that is accessible to the to the public well it's reproduction education essentially you know if you ask most people what their sex education was often they'll also say the boys and the girls were split up um that it's about periods it's about how not to get pregnant how not to get someone pregnant and about STIs.

12:07But where do you get this? Is this like a lecture that someone comes to your school once every two years and that's it? Well, often actually one of the things is that it's given by a teacher who might not have been kind of given the appropriate level of training themselves or might not kind of be wanting to do that. And so it's, and also that when we put kind of there are brilliant, brilliant sex education charities doing amazing work where people are completely comfortable, but also they don't have to then kind of deal with people's questions the next day and then go into doing a maths lesson or whatever it is and it's not it's how we kind of need to shape that in a better way for example pleasure is not something that's discussed in sex education and also the clitoris has traditionally been left out of all of this material which is obviously a huge part of you know women and people with vulvas kind of sexual experiences but there is you know it's not a the criticism isn't you know the reproductive bit is huge but actually the majority of the reasons that people are having sex is not for reproduction is not to try and conceive we know one of my favorite pieces of research found that there were 237 reasons for why people said they had sex and you know one might be trying to conceive because we're trying to get pregnant but there are many many others that don't get addressed and leave people feeling ill-equipped to know how to deal with what a sex life looks like but the flip side of that also is we're not equipping parents to know how to have those conversations themselves as well and we're seeing organizations now trying to do that but it's this you know that it's a holistic approach it has to be kind of on all sides and often kind of parents fear getting it wrong as well you know they're terrified about saying the wrong thing and so we have to kind of look at it from this multidisciplinary approach which is, okay, how do we create this kind of much bigger, wider conversations that equip people to know also what to do when they have questions, where to go and ask them?

14:06Because I think that's the thing is so many people feel they have questions and then they don't know where to go with them. Interesting. This is precisely why I wanted to have this conversation with you and bring it to the podcast because I want this episode to be purely educational and to build up this baseline of what sex is, how it looks like from a health perspective, and also to debunk and unpack all these myths that we see online. So let's start from the very beginning, even before you have sex. So I've spoken several times about this with my friends and it's in relation to sexual attraction.

14:43Some of my friends, they typically say that it's more related to your looks, that initial sexual attraction. And some other friends, they are more of the thought of it being related to your personality. Are there any fundaments that make a person sexually attracted to someone else? Sexual attraction is one of those things that we just don't have an exact theory for. I wonder if we ever will, to be honest. But there are components. there are some people we might kind of consider more objectively attractive or across kind of a field of people people might consider more attractive but also often it's things if you kind of get into it with people it's things like confidence it's things like being able to communicate with someone someone giving you their attention eye contact and whilst what makes someone attractive at first or sexually or initially or that spark you know when people kind of say that you know we locked eyes across the room that might be a kind of sexual attraction which feels more physical or more arousing, that might not translate then into something relational.

15:52And then we also see the other side of it, which is people who build connections. They, for example, are in a relationship with a friend, someone they get really comfortable with, really intimate with, trust builds, the connection builds, and then suddenly they realize there's an attraction there. And it's someone they wouldn't have necessarily looked at as a sexual partner before. and so it's again we have no kind of exact science for it but I think that we do see people that are more confident in themselves more settled in themselves there is something very attractive in that for other people and also it's about kind of what am I looking for in a partner to complement me and this stuff isn't always conscious it might be that we're really excited by the person that seems that they have the attributes that we don't have and that feels like a really attractive thing but we might not be able to necessarily explain why.

16:42Interesting. I have this friend which I'm not going to name him but he was telling me something that I think is very interesting. So he has, in his opinion, a profile of a woman that he would date. A type. A type. But then he has a different type of woman that he would like to have sex with and they're different. why is this this is a real this is also a thing that we see kind of really discussed on lots of dating tv shows a lot of kind of modern tv shows are about this you know love island is like my type on paper it's that phrase we hear all the time i guess for me i'd be interested in what is it that separates this kind of you know girlfriend material wife material kind of sexual partner material what are the different categories that you're looking at and also why what is it that's stopping you combining them because a lot of people if you said what are you looking for in a long-term relationship they'd be like oh someone I am you know friends with that I trust that I can have sex with that I can have fun with that I think I could kind of build a life with his answer would be that he wouldn't be able to introduce the woman that he wants to have sex with to his parents okay it wouldn't fit the profile the type that his parents would approve so to speak okay which would then assume that there's something about a certain type of profile which is laden with judgment or assumption so that you can't be both of those things.

18:12You couldn't be both whatever that type is as a sexual partner and a good wife, a good long-term partner, a good girlfriend. And I guess that would be about the judgments that we hold or the assumptions we hold. I think for me that's the thing I would be digging into.

18:33my assumption to this is that there are some people that correlate sex or define sex or the role of sex in their lives is more physically driven as in similar to eating or sleeping is a necessity that your body needs and there's another group of people or set of people that they perceive sex as an emotional connection. I feel this is more, maybe I have a very binary naive thinking, but it's more related to women and the first one to men. Is there a kind of a right or wrong approach to how we perceive sex or it doesn't matter? No, but it's about how we perceive sex is going to be based on the social messages we've had about sex, for example, like our cultural messages the experiences we've grown up with you know I hear from people things like oh I remember someone saying this to me in the playground about what sex was and that has shaped their ideas about sex in some way the both visible and invisible messages we've picked up about sex so for example you just gave um one there about kind of a type is it that we've heard people talk about people that dress in a certain way and what that means and is it that we've taken and on that information and we kind of carry that with us without consciously addressing it ourselves, is it that we are holding these versions of sex, we read an article about something and then someone confirmed it?

19:58You know, these unconscious biases are built up and also layered throughout our experiences. And then we start having sex ourselves. How does it make us feel? Does it feel like it was a positive experience? Do we feel a bit ashamed of what we did because we were told that that's not the type of sex that we should have? And again, should, here we are, is a word that is banned in my therapy practice because we hold so many shoulds when it comes to sex and they get in the way of pleasure a lot of the time. And our version of sex, our definition of sex, is shaped by many, many things and a lot of which we might not realize have shaped our definitions of it.

20:36I agree with that. I mean, the external stimuli shapes our perception of sex. but my question is is there a definition or perception of sex that is an ideal one a healthy one that we should all adopt that perhaps we're not aware of because of all this stimuli that we had throughout our youth yeah i guess for me anyway a big part of my job is helping out to this more expansive definition of sex so for a start your sex life is not just the act of sex that you're having for example if you're in a relationship it's all the things that go around sex, things that we call sexual currency, which are how do you maintain a sexual connection?

21:17How do you feel desire? How do you feel sexually connected to your partner, which can be really healthy and thriving? Why is that called sexual currency? Basically, it's about this idea of kind of keeping the currency high in a relationship. So imagine it to be a bit like kind of putting like the coins in a money box, because we don't just kind of start having sex and it being an act and then it's done. And we build on it. You know, Esther Perel, who's an absolute kind of icon in my world, talks about how, you know, foreplay starts the minute the last sexual experience happens. So it's this idea that we're constantly building on it.

21:51You know, if we're really struggling with our partner, we feel disconnected from them. We haven't kind of touched for weeks. They don't look up from their phone when we're talking to them. We don't kind of trust them anymore. It's not going to be a thriving relationship for sex. All of those things are helping us to build on our sexual relationship, our sexual connection. The things that sexual currency is typically high at the start of relationships. Lots of eye contact. We're flirting. They have our attention. We're checking in. We're touching. We're playful. We are kind of investing more in them.

22:23Those things that are really high at the start of relationships, which often is a thing that people say they want to get back to. That will kind of go back to that point later. But those are the things that are important in relationships. if you say to someone how do you know that your partner desires you or feels attracted to you or that that's kind of part of your relationship is still there even when you're not having sex they'll say oh well because when I'm sitting on the sofa sometimes they'll just come up and give me a kiss or sometimes like when they walk past me in the kitchen they'll just give my hand a squeeze or sense of affection yeah or you know a flirty text or you kind of come downstairs to go out for dinner and they're like wow you look hot those things are part of a sexual connection or part of someone's sex life and so you know when we're talking about this definition of sex yes there is the kind of physical act of sex which is way beyond just penetration intercourse which is what the kind of oxford dictionary definition of sex would be it's all the things that sexually we do together but it's also how we build on that in our relationships and sex is both physical but incredibly psychological it bridges all these different parts of our lives which is why it's both simple and complicated when we're meeting someone someone new right let's take it from the very beginning not in an advanced relationship so you're meeting someone you're going on a date and when that happens you're trying to identify if you are a match with this person so you try to share all these different values and so on and so forth.

23:54But right now, based on what you're saying, when we're at that stage, we are unconsciously already bringing all this baggage of sexual understanding and so on to this particular point. But I feel like we're not discussing it. And then we're entering into a relationship without knowing that big part of the other person's life and also my life do you think we should be talking about sex perhaps on day one because it's incredibly important for us to lay the groundwork on this is what I like this is how I perceive sex to be what do you think are we in line I think sexual compatibility is this thing that we're really kind of fascinated by and it's not as simple as do you kind of just put two people in bed or wherever they're having sex together and it works or it doesn't work for me we don't need to be kind of going in and on a first date saying okay this is the sex i like to have what do you think it's not as simple as that but it's more how do we when we get to kind of being sexual together negotiate that communication is one of the biggest bedrocks of sex one of the biggest pillars and that is as simple as you know how do we kind of consent to having sex how do we say actually that's not how I like it could you kind of even if it's something basic move to the left a bit could you slow it down this is these are my preferences actually I don't like being touched on that part of my body should we say those things while we're having sex well or we can kind of say before just so you know like or this is sometimes you know I'm working with people who there might be kind of things that they need in their sex life so it might be just so you know like I always need to lose loop for a sexual experience that's a non-negotiable for me and you know or sometimes i struggle with erections i just want you to know because then if we're going into a sexual experience i don't want you to be thinking it's about you it's just something so if i'm meeting someone you when should i disclose these things when you feel ready and when you feel comfortable you know there's no point in you having this conversation with someone if you don't think there's someone that you're going to potentially go and have sex with but equally we're not educated already or most of us don't feel equipped to have these conversations about sex in this kind of comfortable open way and so going in on a first date and saying okay this is my kind of sexual shopping list most people aren't going to be equipped to also hear that and so we're battling with this sense of if we are someone who feels able to talk about it that we're not expecting everyone else to be on the same level you know I talk about this for a living I talk to people every day and if I was uncomfortable talking about sex I wouldn't be very good at my job and but you know I recognize that I've been practicing for 10 years I've got kind of three degrees in this there's going to be a level of comfort that has to come with that but most of us have a level of discomfort about it and an assumption that if we have to talk about sex that that must mean there's a problem by nature because we don't see these conversations happening widely generally so for a lot of people even the fact that they feel they have to have the conversation can feel like it's indicative of there's a problem and if there's if we have to talk about it then then in some way that's problematic whereas I would encourage people to flip that and see talking about sex or having that communication about sex as preventative for sexual problems but you know how we navigate sex is going to be different with every partner you know perhaps is different between you know when we're on our own to when we're with partners is going to be different with partners however long we're with them for you know might be different on monday to it is on saturday might be different dependent on how we're feeling where we are in our menstrual cycle if we are exhausted if we're highly stressed if there is something kind of going on in our personal lives if we're worried about money if physically we are noticing that we're way more tired.

27:51Sex is always, always in context. And we have to understand that what that means is it's not static. So let's say that I adopt your approach and I will have a proactive approach towards discussing sex with my partner. How often should I be discussing sex with my partner? Is it once a week? Is it once a month? Because if it's every time we have a problem, then it's reactive, right? So when should I do it even if we don't have a problem? There's no magic formula. It's more about it being a constant conversation. It's about it being hundreds of tiny conversations, about it being allowed, about it being a part of your discussions about everything in your life.

28:34But what it isn't is me saying everyone has to be talking about sex all the time. That's not what we're saying here, but it's about how do we allow those conversations about sex into our relationship, into our conversations so that we can feel more comfortable with them and not that when you start to bring it up that my immediate reaction is panic, that means there's something wrong rather than saying, okay, well, look, you know, we've been adapting our gym routines or we've been kind of adapting our diets or we've been having to kind of do our schedules slightly differently because you've got a new job how do we also take that approach into sex which is you know I used to really enjoy that but actually it's not been doing it so much for me anymore shall we try something a bit different or since I've been on this new contraception I've noticed that things are feeling like I need a little bit more time to warm up just letting you know that that's what's kind of going on for me or do you know what since we had the baby I really am not feeling in the mood for sex anymore so I think that it's something that we kind of need to build back up to or I'm feeling like I'm struggling with my body confidence a bit at the moment and that's meaning I'm a bit more distracted with sex and how we navigate that because if we don't and this is a really really common thing is both partners are left with their own assumptions of what they think is going on for the other so we have these kind of information gaps we often fill those kind of assumption gaps with our worst case scenarios which is my partner's not attracted to me anymore or there's something going on, they're thinking about someone else, what am I doing wrong, I'm not good at sex.

30:12These are the things that kind of go on for people, these worst-case scenario thoughts. And we kind of put them in our invisible backpacks and we carry them with us, whereas actually a discussion with our partners might clarify some of that and we'd be like, okay, yeah, I can understand that a bit. Okay, we can do something a bit different, or we can slow it down a bit, or what do you think we could do differently? because those kind of mismatches of assumptions are really some of the things that can get people tangled. And often, you know, this is when we get into therapy and we're talking about things honestly and there's a third person there to mediate.

30:45Someone might say something and their partner will say, that's not how I feel at all. But it's something they haven't checked out with each other because we fear so much where that conversation might go. We fear kind of disrupting the status quo. And because it feels uncomfortable or awkward, we often avoid those conversations. Yeah, I feel like everything we're talking about goes back to expectations. Like, for example, we all have these expectations or understanding of what good sex should look like and feel. But then I feel like, especially for men, when we're having sex, I can only speak for as a man, but when we're having sex with a woman, we don't know if we're really satisfying the woman.

31:26So how does, is there such a thing as good sex? Like, especially for a woman, if she has one orgasm, that's at least good sex. But if you don't get that one orgasm, it's not good sex. No, it's not that simple. But it's, orgasms are one way that people experience sexual pleasure. We still see that there's an orgasm gap that exists in heterosexual relationships which is about a 30 % gap between the orgasm rates that men and women are reporting having in and this is in different sex situations we see that that gap is reducing when people are reporting on solo pleasure and also when women are having sex with women so and then we see that there are kind of factors that play a role in this for example people faking orgasms so what that does is it maintains that gap so good sex is not about achieving an orgasm or multiple orgasms that might be a part of it but really actually when we're thinking about good sex it's when people say I was fully in it in the moment I wasn't distracted it felt good if if the the reason for having sex was to feel closer to my partner or to boost my relationship or to feel closer to my partner then that will be an additional bit but really when we're talking about good sex it's that I was in the moment I had a great time I felt satisfied for some people orgasm might be really difficult to achieve and so creating a pressure or a goal to achieve orgasm can be the thing that makes it not good sex because of you know back to that word you've been using expectation if we create a goal orientated model around sex actually we then create something which is like a pass or fail model if we put pressure on orgasm ironically it's the thing that's actually going to least likely get us there.

33:11So it's not, you know, what we do do as a kind of society and a culture is we try and measure sex by objectives. So by regularity of sex, by how long it lasts, by orgasms. They're not great measures of sex because what they don't tell us is about satisfaction. But is there like, at least from a length point of view, a baseline of how long it should be for a woman to know? No, and the thing about the orgasm gap, and there's someone called Dr. Laurie Mintz who's kind of done the research around this, is that the time that it takes men and women to orgasm is not that different. So the structure of the clitoris and the structure of the penis are not actually very different at all.

33:53They start out as the same thing in utero and then they kind of go in different directions. but what it is also about is that the way that most women and people with vulvas kind of report achieving orgasm is through direct clitoral stimulation and penetrative sex is not the best way of achieving that interesting but obviously when we think about and this is why this this is all kind of wrapped up in the same conversation what's the best way to achieve that through direct clitoral stimulation so whether that's through kind of oral sex or using hands sex toys but when we think about when you think about that kind of as you said earlier like what is sex this kind of definition of sex if we only view the definition of sex as intercourse then we're ignoring a huge part of why people are having sex the pleasure side of it the kind of the parts that are likely to bring us intense kind of sexual pleasure and okay so basically if we were to build a conclusion of what good sex looks like, am I satisfied?

34:55Was it present? In order for myself to increase the chances of me feeling that, but also my partner feeling that, I feel like if we get our partner aroused, I might have a higher chance of achieving that. Are there any specific, let's say, techniques or methods that would increase the arousal of my partner? Asking your partner what they like. Okay. So it's individualized? Yeah, because let's take a basic example. If you have a partner who doesn't like a particular area of their body being touched. So let's say we'll pick a body part, a stomach. So if you have your hands on your partner's stomach and it's a thing that they don't like, they don't enjoy it, it's a turn off for them.

35:42what they are not going to be focusing on is what you might be doing with your hands if you're also sexually touching them they're going to be thinking i don't like that that's making me feel uncomfortable that is a distraction from arousal so distraction is a massive massive break when it comes to both arousal and desire arousal the body and brain's physical process of preparing for sex desire are psychological motivation and want for sex two separate processes but they often happen together but they can also happen separately if you are then kind of doing something which you don't know is a problem because your partner hasn't told you and you haven't asked and it's distracting them even if you're doing the kind of right thing physically on the other part of their body it's probably going to be creating an inhibition of a way of them less likely to achieve orgasm because they're distracted so this is what we talk about in terms of kind of good conditions, which is the right type of touch.

36:40The right type of touch for one person is not necessarily the right type of touch for another. It's psychologically being, am I in the right place? Is this the type of touch that I like? Is this with someone I want to touch me? Is this feeling good for me? Does the context feel right? And then being in the moment. So this is the kind of magic triangle being present. So those three things working together. So you could be doing the right kind of sexual stimulation like touching in the right places doing technically what the right thing might be but if someone's mind is completely somewhere else they're not going to be enjoying it to the full extent what we're trying to do is to avoid distraction so right so perhaps tv the tv needs to be off because that's already a distraction um i mean you need to set up the environment right so if perhaps your dog is is around that might also affect it and being unconsciously perhaps right no pets play a big role in getting in the way of people's sex lives and and also like for example if if we are on a retreat in a hotel and there's these amazing views in the room that can also be a distraction then correct yeah but I go more basic distraction is my phone is on the bedside table and it's vibrating yeah I can hear the baby crying I'm looking at a pile of laundry I got into bed and my boss had just sent me a shitty email and now that's all I can think about what have I got to do for tomorrow okay I've got to be up early um and I know that I'm going to be really stressed and then I've got to get from A to B how am I going to do that it's I'm not feeling good at my about my body at the moment um it's do you know what my partner's been acting weird recently I feel really distracted by what I think's going on it's last time we had sex it didn't really feel like it went that well I'm worried that it's going to go again well I'm not really feeling that turned on but we haven't had sex for two weeks and I feel like that's a long time for us so I want to make sure that I have sex but I'm not really in the mood I'm really tired I'd rather sleep you know these are what we call kind of latent cognitive thoughts these negatively framed um kind of thoughts that are going around our heads distraction is not just physical uh not just physical not just external it's very internal you know we have thousands and thousands of thoughts a day but if they are particularly negative slanted towards sex and then we're going into a sexual situation feeling kind of unsure, unconfident, distracted, we're much more likely to kind of be in our head than we are to be in our body.

39:05And these two things are working together all the time. And can alcohol, for example, numb us from those distractions? Yeah, so a lot of people might use alcohol to kind of take the edge off, to distract them so they feel more relaxed. Obviously, when it comes to sex, that can go too far. you know if someone is too drunk they can't give consent they might kind of be completely inhibited but not in a good way how you know someone's relationship with alcohol of course is going to play a role in that but a lot of people might say do you know what I feel like my mind is a bit quieter when I've had a drink and so then I find it easier to be sexual but again it's about what is it doing for you that is helping you to then be able to be more in the moment?

39:47Is it just taking off a layer of kind of inhibition? Misconceptions. What are some misconceptions that men have about what women like and vice versa? Well, I think one of the things is basing our versions of sex or our ways of being sexual on these kind of mass media, kind of pop culture, whether it's pornography, sex in movies, Netflix, versions of sex. it goes back to the orgasm gap and that kind of focus on penetrative sex all the time, which is not the way that most women are commonly achieving orgasm. And that kind of primary focus on that, I think, is a big thing. You know, if we educated around sex and pleasure and how the body works in a much wider way, and we're getting there, absolutely we're getting there.

40:42There's still a long way to go. the orgasm gap still exists but my hunch is that it's it's getting smaller then but also it goes back to this kind of idea of okay well what feels good for you and again it's you're going to hear me say it hundreds of times and it kind of might feel like a very kind of therapy discussion to say talk about it talk about it communication but no partner can be a mind reader but if you're both basing that version of sex on something that you've seen oh it looked like it worked there so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to replicate that but the other person is thinking okay well I don't want to tell them that that's not what I like because then they might think that the problem is with me so I'll just go with it and this is a dynamic we see happening all the time then you are both in a situation where you're doing something you think you should be doing rather than focusing on actually what you might be enjoying more and do you think that even if we ask this question that's me as a man and I ask my partner what is it that you like that gets you aroused um do you think she would know the particular answer well hopefully we are kind of getting to a place where we're saying to people get to know your body a bit more but a lot of people don't and this is the problem but it's not even that specific it's does that feel good do you want to carry on with that shall you know shall we keep doing this these are very simple prompts that we can use.

42:07But again, people often fear saying it because then they think, okay, does it look like I don't know what I'm doing if I have to ask? But actually, that might be exactly what someone needs to say. Actually, could you slow it down a bit or could we try something different? And it's even more important when we're dealing with people that have sexual pain conditions or things like perimenopause where they might be experiencing more vaginal dryness or vaginal dryness happens when people are breastfeeding. because there's a change in estrogen levels. So there might be different stages in our lives where we've been through physical changes or psychological changes or hormonal changes where we need to check a bit more because we can't just assume that things are going to be the same.

42:49Foreplay. I think it is even more important in advanced stages of a relationship because in the very beginning when you're meeting someone, I guess you're both horny right after your dinner because you're seeking that approval and see what it feels to have sex with this person. So you can just, you know, after your dinner, go back home, get undressed and, you know, just dive into it without meaningful foreplay. But as you get into more advanced stages of a relationship, so multiple years, probably over five years, just like breaking that ice becomes a little bit harder. So I think foreplay becomes more important.

43:28Maybe I'm wrong. A, would you agree with this? and then B, are there any particular ways of doing foreplay that are more effective? I'm going to dismantle the word foreplay. Okay. Because often when we say foreplay, what we mean is sexual acts that are not penetrative sex or intercourse. So for me, I was referring to like anything that happens right before the intercourse. Yeah. Like a warm up. Yeah, but even that, what you're saying is, what you're doing then is you're still continuing to pedestal penetrative sex as the top of the pyramid, a more superior type of sex, and that everything else is something that comes before.

44:17But then what we're saying is, okay, well, and this is something we hear, well, I hear all the time, penetrative sex is real sex, and everything else is not such real sex or not so important. what it takes out then is people that, for example, don't have both a penis and vagina in their relationship, don't like that type of sex, can't have that type of sex, that it is very, I think it's very heteronormative in terms of how it kind of sets sex up, but it can devalue the other things when we think about it in these terms of kind of foreplay. The value of these acts are that they come before the main event.

44:57they're the starter and this is the main course whereas when we start to this goes back to the expansive definition of sex we say okay all of these things are sex this is all sexual experiences then we can start to say okay well that is something that's enjoyable on its own it's back to the word you said earlier expectation because if we're expecting that that has to be something that goes somewhere else then in some ways that can detract from that being an enjoyable event in itself and yes it is important because all of these things whether it's kind of touch it's psychologically engaging it's feeling like we are building something with our partners they're all an important part of warming up yes the body does need time to do that but it doesn't mean that it has to go anywhere further than that act than what you're doing but again it's a really big thing that we see you know everything you've asked me so far what is you know is it about good sex how do we define sex they're all set up in this definition of there are this group of things and then they always lead on to this but then if it doesn't often people think okay well we didn't have full sex or real sex or you know the baseball analogy first place second base third base fourth base and that in itself can be problematic for people when it doesn't need to be because if you said to them well did you enjoy what you did did you have a good time do you feel satisfied and people say well yeah we did then what about that is not valuable or sexually satisfying yeah interesting I guess I grew up with the notion of intercourse being the main course and the foreplay being the starters so if you're only having starters it's like you didn't really have a full meal so i was completely like i was told wrong no but that's what most people grab this very linear version of sex which is we do this this this this and then you know and typically the end actually is and then the man orgasms and then we're finished and it's very linear and i think you know what we're trying to do is particularly with the conversation around sexual wellness has moved to this much more circular approach which is why are you having sex for some people it might be because i want to have an orgasm because it helps me to sleep for other people it might be because me and my partner are working away for the next two weeks and we're not going to see each other for another it might be because um I think my partner looks really hot tonight because I'm in the mood because I think that that person is really attractive there are a million reasons that we talked about earlier and you can get that and that need that satisfaction from a variety of different acts but you shouldn't be feeling like those are less valuable because of a should back to another should.

47:49So this is a question that a lot of men ask themselves. I've discussed it a few times with my friends. How much does size matter, as in the penis size? Does it matter? It matters if you think that the only way of having sex is penetrative sex. and again then if we go back to the orgasm gap which is that that's not how most women are achieving orgasm or um climax or kind of peak pleasure then you know it matters as much as you think it matters but no really is the answer of course obviously some men are having sex with other men but it's not it's not important because there are so many ways that you can be sexual experience sexual pleasure but again this links to so many ideas about masculinity and what it is to be a man and performance and a lot of that stuff is what bring men into the therapy room with me is these ideas that we are some way kind of failing at masculinity or failing at manhood or failing at performing.

49:04And, you know, performance is a very interesting word when it comes to sex because that indicates that we have this kind of objective list of things that we should tick and then we're doing a good job. And a lot of this stuff then goes back to kind of identity or how I see myself as a man. If you are satisfying your partner, your partner feels satisfied and you guys are enjoying the sex you're having, there's no requirement for a particular kind of penis size for that to be achieved? As a man, I believe that most of us think that if we are not making our partner have an orgasm, whether it's through intercourse or foreplay, we are underperforming.

49:47And then we feel like it is our job for her to achieve that climax. And perhaps we neglect all these other factors that can make her more prone to have one or multiple orgasms, perhaps could be more genetics related, or as you said, perhaps she's being distracted because of work and whatnot. What are some of the factors that are completely unrelated to the man's so-called performance that can determine if a woman can have one orgasm or multiple orgasms? Yeah, I mean, one thing I think is really important to say is putting too much pressure on orgasm, focusing on orgasm too much is one of the biggest inhibitors to someone achieving an orgasm because you're creating this pressure point this goal and it's you know aiming for satisfaction because it's something that you want for your partner but for them working out how to do it in the way that's good for them is important but you doing it for your own goals your own sense of satisfaction your own sense of kind of achievement or that you've done a good job shouldn't be the focus of it now if it's something that you guys need to work out how to do together it's something that was happening and now isn't then that's a different story but it's not a kind of box to be ticked but for one kind of female orgasm particularly you know a woman needs to know her body she needs to know what feels good for her and again it's about this idea of arousal concordance so kind of how do we get mind and body in line together because if we go back to that triangle of good conditions physically the touch might be right but psychologically if we're in the wrong place if we are feeling really distracted or for example if we have a history of sexual trauma or we feel shame or we haven't been able to orgasm because we feel inhibited then we're not going to be able to get to that place when there's someone else there so there can be all of these factors going on the being in the moment being present again that links to the psychology of sex if we have reasons in our history which mean that we don't feel able to just kind of let go and be fully in sex and relax into it or we don't feel able to kind of connect with our bodies physically that's going to be a big factor and but then if we feel pressured by our partner and we feel like it's our job to make sure our partner feels like they're doing a good job that's an extra layer of pressure which is not going to help the situation i have some friends especially friends that are going on first dates, that they've shared with me that they feel this sexual pressure because when they're going to have sex for the first time with this new person, they are overly focused in satisfying the other person, that they completely neglect their sexual needs.

52:43And that brings them into a spiral of thinking, and to give them pleasure and to give them pleasure and to give them pleasure and that makes them perform in in their perspective less good and also perhaps maybe not even get an erection what would you advise to these men in very simple terms so what should they be doing or not doing so they don't arrive to that stressful situation in bed Yeah, so we describe this as performance anxiety. So basically when we're super anxious, we can't be super aroused at the same time. So performance anxiety is where we are prioritizing performance over pleasure.

53:23We are in an anxious state. We're distracted by our thoughts. We're kind of convincing ourselves that we aren't doing a good job or we're not going to do a good job. We're trying to future cast, trying to work it out. And we are so in our heads that we're not going to be in our bodies. Now, we cannot be in two places at once. Your body cannot be fully aroused and turned on. And also in this threat response, which is fear-based, which is anxiety-related. And we're always going to prioritize that kind of anxiety focus over arousal because that kind of really old system in our brains is designed to protect, not designed to keep you happy.

54:00So really when we're doing that, I think that it's about kind of undoing some of those expectations and trying to go with an experience, you know providing it's kind of legal consensual and between adults this is about the two of you enjoying an experience what it is focusing on what feels good the reason that you're there because you're both attracted to each other not creating this strict picture of what that's going to look like and trying to go with it in a way which is kind of going with what feels good this complete preoccupation is creating again a fixed plan and if you feel like you're going off plan then you start to feel stressed you start to feel worried it's highly likely that the other person is having their own versions of these kind of thoughts as well but then you're so focused on each other that actually you're kind of taking out your own parts in an experience so I would say just kind of go with the curiosity kind of let's see what feels good and do that checking in does that feel good for you and trying to be more relaxed in the situation that there is shouldn't be so much pressure on sex this unrealistic pressure comes from these expectations of okay sex will be good if I do x y and z so I have to do all of those things it's so much more than that if you ask someone what good sex means to them they might say oh like I just had a good time we you know really connected um it felt physically good but also I felt really attracted to them again there's not a kind of set list of things that you have to tick in order for that to be the case.

55:33Do you think there's more pressure towards the men and the women? Because I feel like us as men, we are responsible for the outcome of the intercourse or whatever is it that we're doing. So if it goes well, it's because I did well. If it goes bad, it's because I didn't do it well. But that's if you're working with a model of all of the focus being around intercourse. it sits back to that kind of pyramid structure i think that a lot of people irrespective of gender feel pressure when it comes to sex i think the pressures that they feel women might be different yeah you know we have a lot of social messages around femininity around how women's bodies should look and men's as well you know and social media again we talked about this earlier really has added layers of kind of pressures and expectation to this and has also done some good in terms of the body positivity movement.

56:30But, you know, there's a lot of anxiety that goes with being with a new sexual partner. What are they going to think of me? What are they going to think when I take my clothes off? How does my body look, taste, smell, feel? Am I doing a good job? Am I pleasing them? But equally, we're all in that together. But also when we're really turned on in the moment, feeling like it's going well with someone, a lot of those thoughts disappear because we're trying, you know, we're not thinking about anything when sex is really good, when it's going really well. We're just going with it. I once had a partner many, many years ago, for the record, and she used to like to have sex with the lights off.

57:11And the reason why she wanted to do that was not because she was ashamed of her body or anything like that, but it was because she didn't want to have any distractions and she wanted all the entire session to feel like a very sensorial, you know, experience. And that actually did work. So I was much more focused on the pleasure of whatever we were doing, whether it was intercourse or not. But I was really focused on how I felt and how she felt rather than how does she look, how do I look, or I don't know, maybe I need to do this later. So I was much more present. Does this make sense to you? Is this something that you think we should be doing more?

57:56Well, the senses are the gateway to how we experience anything. But when it comes to sex, if we shut down one, it heightens the others. But what we see is that, for example, playing with the five senses, these are basic kind of mindfulness techniques that often people use. And mindfulness has really positive effects when it comes to sex. But what it makes sense about is if it reduces distraction and preoccupation. So for example, that might be good for people who are worried about how their body looks and they find that's a really kind of strong distraction for them in the way that wearing a material of something that feels nice against their skin might feel like a really good distraction because you're focusing on the feeling rather than the appearance.

58:39Body confidence is not about how you look, it's about how you feel. So if you are someone who that feels like it's inhibiting you sexually, then yes, cutting out the thing or kind of creating a way of managing that can be a really positive. But for a lot of people, they might feel really turned on by seeing their partner, by seeing their own bodies, by seeing their pleasure, by seeing their partner enjoying themselves. So that might feel like it's something that's kind of hiding something or taking away from a sexual experience. So that's going to be back to that person and what works for them.

59:11Now, some people who might find too much sensory overload kind of overwhelming, or again a distraction or that it takes away from sex, yes, kind of managing some of that in a different way might feel like a good thing. And what about music? Is it distracting us? It's the same thing. You know, for some people, if it helps them to feel relaxed, it's kind of a focus, it's, you know, a certain music makes them feel sexy, then great. But if for some people that feels like that's pulling their attention outside of the experience, then it's going to be a hindrance. Because I feel like there must be some sort of science behind it because in porn videos, they have music in the very beginning, like in the foreplay, but not when they're having sex.

59:58Okay. Is there any science behind that? I would imagine that's just kind of like a film setup. Okay. But, you know, in terms of the mindfulness bit of it, which is about focusing on the senses and kind of directing attention in a particular direction without judgment, then there is lots of research that backs up the positive role that mindfulness can have in sex lives. And there is a Canadian professor called Dr. Laurie Brotto who's done this research and she measured an eight-week mindfulness program on people who had gone through cancer and cancer treatment. And not only did their subjective experience of their arousal increase, so they felt their arousal more, they felt more time done.

1:00:43But when they objectively measured it by measuring blood flow to the vagina, there was an increase in that objective arousal. So it wasn't just how they were feeling, but it was also how their body was responding. What's your take on porn? I think that it's about people's relationship with it. you know porn is not created equally you know we know that there is some porn that's highly unethical that obviously a lot of it is depicting things which are not positive but there are also some pornographers who are kind of making ethical pornography or more feminist pornography we're seeing a real rise in kind of female pornography companies or female-led companies but it's not all created equally there's a huge moral discussion that goes on around it but how people use it can become problematic, yes, but also it's about someone's relationship with it.

1:01:35And the reality is the internet is a huge part of our lives. We're not going to get rid of this by pressing a button. We have to learn how to live with anything that exists on the internet with any kind of content and how we then manage it is important. What's problematic is when people use it as a sexual education tool. When you build expectations. And when you build your expectations and you build all your sexual experiences based on it, because that's not what it was designed for. And what, should we use it in a relationship? Is this something you would recommend or not? If both partners want to use it in the relationship, they want to use it together and everyone's in agreement, then you can use anything in a relationship.

1:02:23But not necessarily together, like... If one of us is watching porn or both of us, is that indicating that we have a problem? No, not if it's not causing a problem in your relationship. The problem tends to come when it becomes a hidden behavior and the other partner is really against it. And so then it feels like a trust issue. So it feels like this isn't something I want. I told you this is something I don't want you to do. And again, it goes back to the kind of morality discussion around it. Or I feel, you know, often it's a problem for people when they feel something is missing in their sex life and their partner is supplementing that in another way and that's taking away from their sex life, which can happen.

1:03:07But how you manage it, again, is going to be about the two of you, your beliefs about it, how that works in your relationship and what you take it to mean. Whereas for some people, masturbating, self-pleasure, has a separate role in their relationship to their sex life with their partner. And that's okay. And that's totally fine. But how you manage that between the two of you, if you know that your partner has a real problem with it and then you continue to do it in a hidden behavior, then that's more likely to cause problems when your partner discovers it or when it starts to kind of seep into or get in the way of your couple sex life.

1:03:48And sex toys, I think you've mentioned them before, but you would recommend them? Yeah, so I work with a brand called Lilo who are a kind of world-leading, kind of award-winning sex toy company. And, you know, we talk about these as kind of pleasure products, But again, the old school kind of, or I suppose the kind of outdated historical message was always, if your partner gets a sex toy, that will in some way replace you. Or you will in some way kind of be nudged out by this product. As a man, it makes me feel like I'm not enough. Okay. I'm assuming that's wrong. Where do you get the idea from when you think about it?

1:04:20If I am not able to satisfy my partner by myself without the assistance of a tool, and then I need to introduce a tool, it's because perhaps I'm not enough. Maybe, you know, it can go back to my performance, whatever my performance may be. But again, maybe this is a very naive binary thinking, but am I wrong? Yeah, I think you are. Again, that comes from a position of, okay, well, I should be doing everything, you know, in no other area of our lives. I also feel like sex toys are for women, not for men, or more for women than for men. Is that correct? The male market is booming, but there is the majority of the sex toy market is for women.

1:05:09um there you know that that perspective you're holding I think is really interesting because again what it goes with is this kind of um there's like deficit mindset which is okay if I'm not doing enough we have to introduce something else in no other area of our lives would we think twice about introducing something that might help us or might bring us something different you know we go to the gym some days we run sometimes we're on the cross trainer sometimes we're doing cardio, sometimes we're doing weights, sometimes we're doing stretching. Again, we... But do you build up a dependency on these things?

1:05:44Because sometimes I don't introduce something new into my life, because I feel like I may need it momentarily, but then I may develop a dependency. Yeah, this is a real myth around sex stories, that we can kind of get dependent on them, and then nothing else feels enough. With anything, we can kind of grow a habituation. Yes, We can kind of get tunnel vision. We can get used to something. And then what we need to do is we need to increase intensity in order to get the original high that we used to get. But, you know, when we think about sex toys, it's about bringing in something different, bringing in a different sensation.

1:06:16It's great for couples to bring in together to try something new. They're useful for all bodies. Vibration is a different sensation that can activate the kind of sensuality of the skin all over the body. just because it's a different type of pleasure doesn't mean that it's something that kind of takes away it's about introducing novelty curiosity and a lot of people might use them because for exactly that reason oh it offers me something different it keeps sex interesting it's a way of us trying something new together but when we feel like it's taking away from something that we're doing because of this kind of sense that we're not doing a good enough job of course we're not going to have a positive relationship with it but one of the things that we see at Lilo is that when we did some kind of research when we were launching a new male product that the male kind of sex toy sales are pretty continuous with very little marketing they are pretty constant the difference between men reporting who how many of them own sex toys but how many of them would say that they own a sex toy there's a real gap with that which indicates that there's still a bit of a taboo around men using sex toys.

1:07:25Do you have any statistics on how many people buy them to use them in a relationship versus individually? I don't have any statistics, but I do know that when we were doing some research at the start of COVID, that we saw a lot of couples, definitely like an increase in percentage of couples buying sex toys. And I think that there is something about, you know, we're at home together, we're trying something new, we're introducing difference at a time that, you know, we don't have much difference going on, you know, we're all in lockdown. And I think that was a real shift that we saw at the time.

1:08:00But, you know, this is the multi, multi, multi million pound industry, people are buying them for all sorts of reasons. And let's say for someone that is not acquainted with these toys, right, and perhaps would like to introduce them into their relationship. What would be the first toy that you would recommend them. It's like when you have a baby, right? You cannot give a steak to a baby. You give it milk and then slowly and gradually you build it up to the steak, right? So can you build up this analogy within the sex toy? I'll take, oh yeah, I guess I can work with that. Start simple with something like a simple vibrator.

1:08:38Don't go, you know, massive or intimidating or for something with 25 settings. Jesus, intimidating. Don't give steak to the baby. just go basic and what I would say is introduce the idea to your partner say that this is something I think would be fun for us to try together look at a website together make it like fun and playful choose something say you know I like the look of that one but I don't like the look of that one there are so many to choose from but something basic that you could kind of both use on each other like a really simple vibrator that can be used all over the body and go from there but just kind of springing it on your partner if you think they might have a slightly kind of negative idea around it or they might be a bit intimidated by it is not going to help the situation so that mutual buy-in but again the focus on let's try something new together curiosity there's huge huge benefits for our sex lives and breaking up routines trying something new all have benefit for us sexually all the things that are going to increase desire help us to feel more excited about doing something but the focus on togetherness if you have a partner that you think is not so on side is going to be a real benefit with that conversation.

1:09:45I feel like, and perhaps again, I'm wrong with this, but my perception with sex toys is that aside from building a dependency, you are building a tolerance because I believe that is based on, again, breaking your routine and always trying to get that extra dosage of dopamine rush. and once you've, like you build up this tolerance, right? So perhaps the vibrator is doing that, doing that job in the very beginning, but then it's not enough and then you need another toy and another. And then I feel like ultimately you end up building a whole room that is just packed with sex toys. Am I writing this or am I exaggerating?

1:10:23You're exaggerating. I'm exaggerating, okay. Yeah, if you have a positive relationship with it and you want to try new things and kind of try different things, great. but it's not it's not you know you're I guess you're framing it in terms of it feeling like it's kind of going down like the addiction route but what we're talking about is introducing novelty different ways of doing things and you and your partner can use them however you want or you can use them on your own or not with your partner but it's not this kind of reliance on some people might say do you know what the only way I can orgasm at the moment is by using a vibrator but it's also likely that because they've learned that that's the way that works for them that they're more relaxed in that situation that they feel able to kind of let go a bit more that their focus is more on what's happening in their body and it doesn't have to be a bad thing if that's something that you have to bring in to kind of push you to the over the peak but if we feel like it's a bad thing then we're going to start to have a negative relationship with that type of pleasure with using something like that and that's actually probably more likely to get in the way as well And then using lubricants, is this something that, again, do you have a statistic in which it tells us that it improves the experience for everyone?

1:11:38I would say it's the most cost-effective, simple way of making a change in your sex life, of increasing pleasure in your sex life. So these ideas about kind of lubricant only being if your partner isn't turned on enough, if you aren't turning them on enough, these are really outdated. I feel like that's going to be the title of this episode. This one thing is going to change your sex life. But it's just, it's, they're really outdated views. You know, there are so many reasons that someone might use lubricant because they are on a contraception that has kind of slightly changed how they lubricate, that they are someone whose body lubricates slightly less, that they are enjoying the sensation when there's less friction, that they are someone with a history of painful sex, that they feel that they're more able to get more aroused at different points in their menstrual cycle, that they like the feeling of it.

1:12:30That increases, basically what it does is it creates a, reduces friction. So friction when it comes to penetrative sex can, if there's not enough lubrication in the vagina, it can cause like micro tears, it can mean sex is painful, it feels uncomfortable. It's not necessarily, it's not a good thing. So anything that can help with that. and when we talk about lubricants we're talking about water-based lubricants with condoms because oil-based lubricants which are longer lasting can kind of break condoms down so those two things are not compatible but it's great for clitoral stimulation the clitoris does not obviously self-lubricate um anal anal penetration we use or recommend a different type of lubricant because there's a different ph balance the anus doesn't self-lubricate and really most people's barrier to using something like that is what they think it means about them sexually rather than the fact that they, you know, actually enjoy using it.

1:13:27It's an attitude. Yes, I feel like if you have these things from the toys to the lubricant, maybe some people might think that you're a pervert. Okay. But again, probably I'm fundamentally wrong. Where do you think that idea comes from? I don't know. Maybe it's a very conservative idea of how I perceive sex, which by the way we do use lubricant I will disclose that but and I agree with you it is it is marvelous but yeah it all goes back to perception and expectations are we having more sex than our parents generation no less yeah Jesus Christ really yeah so the Natsal survey which is the biggest you know it's actually in the UK we have this huge piece of sexual research which is done every 10 years, which is called Natsal.

1:14:13And every 10 years, thousands of people are surveyed, and it tells us information about what's happening in people's sex lives, their attitudes to sex, the type of sex they're having. And decade on decade, we are seeing people reporting having less sex. Less sex is less penetration? Yeah, so what we're kind of recording is sex. Now, I'm pleased you asked that question, because what we don't know from that is how satisfying people are finding that sex. Are we recording just penetrative sex? How is that playing a role in a world where technology is increasing role in our lives? A lot of people might be kind of sexting as a part of their sex lives, having online sex, kind of digital sex, and, you know, living in separate countries, kind of having sex with their partners on the phone.

1:15:00Well, yeah. We're seeing what is reported by people, well, by these surveys. It's kind of decade on decade people are reporting having less sex. Now, why is going to be, I guess, the next question. Our lifestyles have completely changed. You know, most people now sit in bed together on their phones, on their devices. We're permanently distracted. The 9 to 5 model is completely kind of dissolved. We're constantly kind of being pulled away from each other. A lot of us work really busy lives. we're in different places all the time there's so much going on that interrupts the resources that help us to kind of be in a good place sexually time attention physically being in the same place at the same time and that these are all kind of big factors in that but you know what I think we will hopefully start to see with more sex research of which there aren't huge amounts and sex research only really started in the kind of 60s.

1:15:58So it's relatively new. But is how do we start to measure sex in these kind of less objective ways? Because the amount of sex being had really gives us very limited information about the sex that people are having. Interesting, because my friends, especially the ones that are in long-term relationships like me, sometimes we have these discussions around having a sort of pause in their sex life. And some of them, they feel like it's more related to them being in a long-term relationship, but sometimes it happens and you need to refresh it. Some other people feel like it's because life just gets incredibly busy and so on and so forth.

1:16:41I think it's a combination of both things. But a fundamental question that we all have a different answer for is how much sex should we be having? what's the frequency of sex that we should be should we be having in a long term relationship is there a baseline some people say twice a week some people say three times a week and I'm speaking about relationships that are five years plus living together is there an ideal answer what do you think the ideal answer is if I ask you that question it's interesting because I also had this discussion with my girlfriend and we've been seven years together so for me it's at least three times a week perhaps my libido is higher than somebody else's, perhaps is lower than somebody else's.

1:17:25Is that kind of right? It also depends on my schedule, to be honest, but yeah. You know, I guess you're in your 20s. We would expect, I guess, younger people probably to report higher numbers, but also you said there should. How much should we be having? And for me, there's a question. This is my therapy brain kind of going. Where does the should come from? my shoot is coming from from from comparing it to how much sex we were having in the very beginning so for example if in the very beginning I was doing it every day and sometimes multiple times a day and then you fast forward to today which is seven years down the line and we're doing it a few times a week you know my again naive binary brain would assume that there's something wrong but then I would also assume that it's normal and so on and so forth but I also feel like this and I'm not just going on a tantrum here but I feel like this is also a reason why a lot of couples end up breaking because they don't know why they ended up in that situation and I feel like you're going to end up in that situation even if you're dating Angelina Jolie in their prime time or Brad Pitt

1:18:42but there doesn't seem to be a baseline of what people think it's enough or okay or the minimum at least that we should be having. I think there needs to be a minimum. If sex is an important part of your relationship for both of you, it's how you negotiate that. What is normal? There is no normal. There is, you know, the only thing normal when it comes to this part of our lives is difference. But, you know, this answer that you just gave once a week, twice a week, three times a week, those are the typical answers that people give. For me, I'm wondering about, you know, what is it about people like a nice round number?

1:19:18And again, it's back to that idea of at the start, we used to. Your relationship five years on is nothing like it was at the start. You don't have the context of managing your lives together, work, or having to juggle schedules, of having to think about who pays the bills, who does. The context of our kind of domestic lives is quite desexualizing, But also that process of habituation we talked about earlier happens in our sex life. We see a natural decline in desire in amount of sex being had across relationships, across the kind of long term of relationships. And that's not a problem in itself.

1:19:58It's something that we expect to happen. how much we then prioritize sex happening is about how intentional how much action we take to do with it but we see that desire shifts so desire again that kind of motivation for sex at the start of relationships we have everything on our side we have as you mentioned earlier kind of dopamine we have our brain is excited it's excited by novelty it's curious everything's new we're getting to know that person we're throwing so much into that relationship and sex is one of the big ways that we connect if we are in a sexual relationship the reason I'm saying that is because some people start their relationships not having sex and it's something that comes later because that might be their set of preferences so if we're doing that and you know at the start of relationships we see people kind of doing things like they abandon other parts of their lives they don't see their friends so much they you know will prioritize kind of having sex in the morning and getting into work 10 minutes late they'll kind of throw everything into that we have all the things on side, high sexual currency, lots of eye contact, lots of flirting, lots of touching, all of those things that create the context for sex to happen in a lot.

1:21:06As we start to kind of get to know someone, we build things like stability, security, we get to know them more. We're seeing this kind of weighing scale exchange of those things. You gain something and you lose something. It's changing. The nature of the relationship is changing. It's not a bad thing. but Esther Perel again to quote her talks about how we nurture the erotic in relationships so there's not much that's erotic about arguing about who put the bins out why did you stack the dishwasher that way can you pay that bill how are we going to look at our diaries and work out what the next few weeks look like have you phoned your mom you know all of these things but we can bring sex into that and it's about how we marry those things but also what we see is that sexual currency starts to wane, which is why we need to pay attention to it.

1:21:54And it's a natural factor of relationships. But what happens sometimes is that people feel that the change is a loss. So often people say, I've lost desire. Actually, it's that desire has changed. But when we feel like we've lost it, we start to panic. We start to worry, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with our relationship? Back to the shoulds that you just said. Once we start to have these kind of negative thoughts, this negative cycle around it, we start to question, we start to feel stressed about it, we worry about it. And that's when the education bit for me comes in. Because if we said to people, sex changing throughout your relationship is the most natural thing to expect.

1:22:30Your relationship has changed. Everything has changed. Everything is changing all the time. Why would we expect this to be a static constant? And when that happens, go with it, work with it. if you notice that it's slipping too far, pay attention and do something about it. That, for me, would be a much more positive approach to people managing the changes in their sex lives. I attribute the decline in sex in long-term relationships to two things. And perhaps, again, I'm wrong. But number one is the same person that initially gave you that thrill, that passion. and then that same person becomes a person that gives you stability, warmth, communication, respect, trust.

1:23:16You don't want to have sex with the second one. It's just like they're not compatible. So I feel like that's one. So you're gaining a lot of things, but at the same time, that's not something that is sexually appealing in my opinion, especially because you're removing the approval side out of the equation. In the very beginning, you're constantly perhaps unconsciously or consciously trying to seek that approval from your partner. And then the second reason is because when you're in a long-term relationship, you have these small cracks that happen sometimes on a daily basis or weekly basis. Some of them you are mentioning right now.

1:23:50So are you going to take the trash out, this or that? Especially like not necessarily big arguments, but small, little arguments, disagreements. A million tiny cuts. Exactly. And those, I think, they fracture in ways your sexual life that you are not able to perceive. But ultimately, it leads to the point of, well, if I just had this little argument with this person about something so stupid that is the trash, do I want to have sex with a person that I just spoke about that stupid topic? Perhaps not. So I attribute it to these two points. But because I understand it, I feel like I'm going to reach that same mindset or stage in my sexual relationship with any partner.

1:24:30It's not related to myself or Olivia because there are so many other aspects. Olivia's my partner. So many other aspects of our relationship that I value. So then it leads me to this question, which is, right. So after seven years, sometimes sex would feel like an effort when it used to be a feeling that is spontaneous. And that's something hard to accept. Now, my question to you is, is it okay for sex to be felt as an effort, even though I love her more than anything in my life. Yeah, what you're talking about is a shift in desire now. Desire again, that motivation, that want, that kind of openness towards sex.

1:25:12If you ask most people how they define desire, okay, I'll ask, how would you define desire? What is desire? As in sexual desire or desire in sexual desire, I get an erection immediately and it's a very very strong erection um and i'm very present with you in the moment i'm not thinking about work and and that is related to me desiring being with you so that's this kind of sense of like i'm intensely turned on it's uh kind of very instant and if you said to most people they would say what you kind of just said like i know i'm really turned on but it's that if you said to most people okay what does desire look like they would say oh like my partner and i get through the door we're gonna push each other against the wall we're kissing it feels really kind of passionate it's that it's also very kind of movies based version of sex so we can't keep our hands off each other these kind of phrases now everything at the start of a relationship sets you up to have that a lot like we said high sexual currency giving each other a lot of attention your focus is in each other everything's new all of those things happening desire can And also, and may I add, is still as valuable in relationships when it is what we call responsive, which is that we can start something sexually and then it emerges in response to what we're doing.

1:26:37So you and your partner start kissing and then suddenly you start to kind of feel that feeling. You're like, oh, I'd like this to continue. You know, I want to carry on with this. Now I'm feeling more like sex. I wasn't thinking before, I'm in the mood for sex, I'm going to do something about it. but actually now I've started something, my body and my brain and my psychology are responding. That triangle, the context feels good. That touch feels really nice. I feel kind of in the moment and I'm really, you know, feeling really close to my partner. Why not? So when we understand that desire is something that we can trigger and that can start, that can come from us starting something, which in long-term relationships is going to be a factor, then we can do something with it which is about creating the context which is okay how do I understand that that is okay just because it doesn't look how it used to look it's different it might have changed a bit it doesn't hit me like a bolt of lightning out the blue but understanding that that is still as valuable and holds a key role in long-term relationships that's a huge huge thing there's a colleague of mine called dr karen gurney did an amazing ted talk about this wrote an amazing kind of best-selling book on this called Mind the Gap but you know once we say oh okay I understand that that's fine that's normal suddenly it takes the sting out of it because we're thinking otherwise oh it used to be like that and now it's not so I guess the problem must be us because I haven't heard anyone else talking about this I kind of have an idea that this is how other people's relationships might work but what have we lost whereas when we say okay how does it change and we understand that instead of that okay i need to be in the mood for sex feeling and we're waiting for it people in busy lives long-term relationships they could be waiting forever for that feeling to hit them out the blue it doesn't mean that they're not attracted to their partner it doesn't mean that they're not interested in sex with their partner it just means that sex for them and desire for them is something which is more responsive now if you get into bed with your partner and you say, do you actually have an early night, put our phones kind of on flight mode or on do not disturb, we get into bed, we're talking, kissing, paying each other attention.

1:28:47It's likely that if we're feeling both open towards each other, so that's the other thing, we need both partners to be open to the possibility, then it's likely that things might turn into something more sexual. If we're feeling good, we're feeling in the right place, we're feeling connected. And that doesn't make it any less valuable than the kind of walk through the door kind of throw each other against the wall type of sex that we see you know most of the time on Netflix one of the things that I do in order to keep my sexual life active and fresh in a long-term relationship and again seven years of a relationship living together is going back to this frequency so I feel like if I take the running analogy if if I'm running three times a week and then I bring cold day in general, I might still keep it, you know, to once a week because I created that habit.

1:29:39But then if I stop running for like a month or two months, just like starting again, you know, that zero to one is harder than one to 100. So I feel like it's very similar with sex, that if we stop having sex for an extended period of time to break that ice and to get back into that rhythm is harder. So I try not to lose that rhythm. You know, like horses have three different types of speed so I always keep like that medium speed you know so in case we can always increment it but don't stop because then to restart is is more painful does this make sense to you yeah but I would say what that's based on is what meaning do we take from the fact that we're not having sex so if for example someone had uh let's say had an operation and they've been told not to kind of do anything physical, including sex, for eight weeks, you're not likely to take that as a personal insult or a problem in your relationship or, you know, that my partner's not attracted to me.

1:30:49You've been told by a medical professional not to have sex for eight weeks. You have a reason for it. So the meaning that that has is something very different to you. If you have, let's say, an eight-week gap in your relationship for a reason that you can't really explain, it feels like sex has become a bit awkward or you feel a bit anxious about it, you and your partner have been avoiding it, that's going to be the thing that kind of causes more of the problem for it. And then the idea of closing that gap can feel really stressful. You're like, well, they haven't done anything, so maybe I shouldn't do anything.

1:31:24It's going to feel uncomfortable, so we'll probably just avoid it. that's the that's the dynamic that kind of gets in the way for couples and it's easy to happen you know people live busy lives they are separate a lot you know it can feel like a long time we suddenly think oh what does it mean about our relationship that we haven't had sex for two weeks and then two weeks becomes three becomes four thinking okay well that's unusual for us that's not normally how it goes maybe there's a problem suddenly we start to kind of worry about that that is you know where the kind of psychological side of the biopsychosocial bit comes in and I also feel it goes in cycles right so even if you're in a long-term relationship it's not that it just goes down and stays there like there are some periods in which you pick it up and then it goes down again and is that normal like everything in life yeah but also you know if for example one or both partners in a relationship sex is the way that they feel loved they feel connected to their partner, they feel like it's a really important way of their relationship kind of being satisfied, suddenly that being taken away is going to feel really important to the partner who feels that way.

1:32:32If both partners feel that way, it's unlikely it's going to slip as a priority so much. But often we see a discrepancy in the different ways that people feel loved or show love, show desire, show connection for each other. So it's also going to depend on that kind of prioritization now if it has slipped because it's been a really stressful few weeks or you know someone's struggling with something or you're not having or it just it just happened you don't really have an explanation for why it just happened if it starts to feel like a stress point you start treating it like a stress point it's probably going to cause more stress is that really be the dynamic or is it like look i have a highly video and that's it and that's who i am for the rest of my life it's going to change based on what's going on in your life, sex is about context.

1:33:15So, you know, context, feeling sex positive, you know, sex is driven, sex is a motivation, it's driven by enjoying what you're doing. You know, we're not motivated to do things that don't feel good. If we're not having good sex, we're not really going to be motivated to kind of repeat the experiences. So, you know, there's also a way of kind of, okay, how does this work for us? How does this work in our life? How How do we manage it? I'm going to share with you the experience of a work colleague many, many years ago when I was in consulting. So basically this person was married for many years and then one day we go for a drink and perhaps he opened up to me because we had a few drinks and he told me that he didn't have sex with his wife for many months.

1:33:59I think it was something like five or six months, which to me it sounded like there is a problem. what would you say to this person so in order for him to break that that ice again for him to go back and refresh in his sexual life with his partner what would you advise this person? Well it's a problem for that couple or that person if the regularity of sex feels like a really important thing to confirm some couples have sex a couple of times a year they're both aligned about that they have great sex great satisfying sex and that's what works for them if you are aligned that shouldn't be a problem based on the fact that you think that you should be having more because of this kind of invisible societal standard of what a sex life should look like if this person is struggling with it i mean the first step is okay well how do i i can't change this for my relationship for both partners by myself you have to have mutual buy-in to making a change in anything in your relationship and addressing it is going to be the first thing now the hardest thing to do for most people is how do I bring this up with my partner how do I start to talk about this and that's going to be the first step you know I would say to people talking about sex outside of when you're having sex so don't kind of try and start this conversation when you're about to have sex, having had sex, or having sex, or just after you've had sex.

1:35:32Talk about it in a non-sexual environment. This is not a pressure to act, to do something straight away. But you have to be able to kind of talk about it with your partner and say, do you know what? This is unusual for us to have not had sex for five or six months. Is there something going on? Do you think we need to kind of talk about this? How are you feeling? And that is where it's got to start. But also framing it positively. if we turn around to our partner in an accusational, critical way, and we say, you haven't had sex with me for five months, that is not going to bring out a positive response in a partner.

1:36:04They're going to feel criticized. They're going to feel defensive. You know, we're positioning it with blame and like we're being told we're doing something wrong. There are so many reasons that people might not have sex for a while. The difficulty comes for people, not when they're not having sex for a period of time. Would you say the main reason is because there's a problem in their relationship within your experience? Or not? Sometimes. You know, sometimes it's because there's been a trust breach, because someone feels let down, disappointed that they don't have their partner's attention, that their partner isn't kind of feeding into other aspects of their relationship, that, you know, there's two things are going together.

1:36:39But, you know, the problem becomes when people feel like it's not because they're not having sex, but when there are opportunities for there to be sex that they are never taken. Yes, yes. So where the potential is there and it's never acted on, That tends to be a critical point for couples because that's when we start to kind of read into, okay, what's going on here? There's a study by Boots that found that 17 % of women engage in duty sex, meaning they have sex with their partner because they feel it's expected, not because they want to. What's your advice for people in this situation? I think a lot of people have sex for this reason.

1:37:26Do you think it's better to have duty sex than no sex? If it's playing a role in your relationship, but I don't think it's just women that have duty sex. I think that when we talk about sex and what motivates people to have sex, you know, back to that kind of 237 reasons for why people have sex, which is from a 2007 study from someone called Bus in Meston. When we think about that, sometimes our motivations to have sex are non-sexual motivations. They might be because I know that sex is really important for my partner and that's an important kind of motivation for me. And again, it goes back to desire.

1:38:04I might not think that I want sex kind of out of the blue or my initial motivation for it might not be I want to have sex. It might be because it's important for us to have sex once a month or because I want to feel close to my partner. I want to keep that part of our relationship alive. but once we and this is a phrase I hear all the time I don't ever feel like I want to have sex out the blue but when I have it I enjoy it and so it's that again if we understand responsive desire and where that plays a part we can harness that now duty sex no one should be having sex when they don't want to have sex that's something very different but if duty sex is defined as it's because I feel like it's a part of my relationship then and a part of keeping that active and that benefits both me and them then that's something different how conflictive feelings about this topic because if i'm the one that is performing the duty sex it feels horrible like how would you define it it feels like a sacrifice like i'm i'm doing something like i'm happy to sacrifice myself in other ways in which i'm not giving myself in it just feels strange i I never felt it though.

1:39:18Just imagining it. But that's the difference between having sex. If you don't want to have sex, and that's what I said, no one should have sex when they don't want to have sex. But if it's I'm having sex, but the motivation might be non-sexual, my desire for sex might be something about closeness, intimacy, my relationship. That's slightly different. I also like on the other end of the bed, let's put it that way, I wouldn't want to be the receiving recipient of duty sex. So if you don't want to have sex with me, don't have sex with me. Because that would make me feel strange. Well, nobody owes their partner sex.

1:40:02It's not a guarantee, a debt collection service. It's not any, we don't owe anyone sex. But again, this is how couples negotiate sex in their relationships. the reason that you have sex with your partner doesn't have to be the same every time it's likely to be for hundreds of different reasons in a relationship like it is when someone's dating it's like you've 100 reason for hundreds of different reasons but it's how we negotiate that now if someone is saying do you know what sex has been really uncomfortable for me recently um i feel like there's something going on you know can we try and do things a bit differently again we shouldn't be kind of having sex when it's painful painful sex is common but it doesn't mean that it's not it doesn't mean painful sex is common but it doesn't mean that it's normal we shouldn't just be pushing through with that because it's feeling uncomfortable and painful for us we shouldn't be doing something because we think we should be doing it we should be saying okay well why actually you know oral sex or non-penetrable sex feeling okay for me for the moment but intercourse isn't so can we just pause on that but there's still ways that we can be sexual together that feel okay for me right now that's a very different conversation are there any physiological or mental benefits to having sex?

1:41:16So I don't know if some physical benefits like your skin improves or something like that. Yeah. I mean, we have a whole host of kind of neurological release, which is really good for us when we have sex, when we have an orgasm, we release feel good neurochemicals that can have a buffering effect on cortisol, stress levels, sex is physical exercise. We can feel kind of closer to partners because of oxytocin release. An orgasm is a way that we feel pleasure. It's a kind of gift to ourselves in that way. And, you know, but then we kind of take in the psychological bit, which is, okay, does it make me feel good about myself?

1:41:52Does it make me feel connected to my partner? Do I enjoy the sensations of pleasure? There are lots of benefits of it, but they can also be achieved through masturbation and self-pleasure. In the same way? Yeah, so about building that relationship with yourself, about, you know, the neurochemicals that are released can help us feel relaxed, can kind of aid sleep. Again, you're still able to get that through self-pleasure. What about the opposite? So not having sex for a prolonged period of time, does it have a negative effect in our brains or our bodies? No, what it does is it's going to kind of make you feel probably less interested in it.

1:42:32It's less present for you. It's less in your environment. It's less relevant. You know, often we see in those kind of dips that people think, I think about sex less. it's not so on my mind I'm less preoccupied with it or I haven't thought about it for a while a bit like anything that's kind of out of our environment or out of our space for a while

1:42:54Kate, if you had to compress all your knowledge and experience into one essential advice that we must implement in our daily lives one advice what would it be?

1:43:11it's probably predictable based on our conversation. But I think, well, it's two parts of the same piece of advice, I suppose. One is just because you didn't kind of have the sex education, or the kind of sexual setup that you wanted, doesn't mean that you can't get it at any point in your life as an adult. It's just that you have to go and get it. so there are amazing you know resources podcast books experts but so many people feel hung up on what they feel like they didn't get sexually kind of at the start of their sexual life or their education or knowing how to talk about it and I would say that's something you can change at any point and I would love people to know that because I think that so many people feel stuck and then they wait till things get to rock bottom before they try and seek a solution and there's proactive ways you can do that but also it's learning how to get comfortable with talking about sex learning about it you know even if it's something like listening to a podcast you're listening to other people talk about it other people's perspectives so many of us have our version of sex and it's kind of in this neat little box and starting to open that up can really be helpful for starting to think about things differently and for you building a level of comfort and then confidence with this part of your life thank you thank you for coming and this was a profoundly interesting topic, I think for everyone, but for me.

1:44:36I personally believe that sex plays a fundamental role in our lives, in our relationships and our overall happiness. However, for a variety of reasons, we tend to avoid this conversation with our partners, with our friends, with our family, which this often leads into relationships being broken. I also believe that if we had a deeper understanding of what sex is or isn't, we would avoid these problems happening in the first place, or at least we would have the language to be able to address them when they happen. So because of this, I want to thank you because you are still one of the very few people that are disseminating this incredibly useful and perhaps for some other people, uncomfortable knowledge, but incredibly useful.

1:45:29I also believe that in the future, your job is going to become more frequent. And I think it's very much, very much needed. but until that happens, as you said, forms of content like this one, podcasts or books or going to therapy, to your therapy, are what we have in order for us to achieve that level of understanding of knowledge to basically improve our lives. So I thank you for that and I thank you on behalf of everyone that would improve their sex life based on our conversation. Thank you.

1:46:09You