Sex Expert: 97% of Couples Are Having Sex WRONG (Here’s What No One Tells You) - Charlene Douglas

0:00Our book is out now. Sales is therapy is available everywhere for people who are looking to get better at communicating, asking better questions, closing more deals and bringing in more clients. Beware it is not for the faint of heart or for closed minded people.

0:17Charlene Douglas:You can buy it in all good shops. Links below. He was about 10 years old. He had a 15 year old babysitter who was a woman and she said to him, do you want to smell my vulva? So any issue you have with sex or relationships, I'm your woman. Have you heard the name Bonnie Blue? It was just very sad. It was like no one was coming to rescue them. So he'd literally wake up in the morning and want to go straight down and sniffing away. And then I came on board out on Married at First Sight, like the ratings through the roof every year. And your woman is saying to you, hey, I want 30 minutes of foreplay.

0:52Charlene Douglas:And you're thinking, mate, I can only give you like five minutes right now. I'm super excited. there's this like epidemic of lonely young men that aren't having sex they're not having relationships they're scared to communicate they think it's about sex but i think it's about

1:15charlene douglas thank you for being here it's a massive honor i'm very very excited to talk to you as i'm sure jack is as well we always start our podcast off the same way so who are you and what problem do you solve?

1:27Charlene Douglas:Okay so I'm Charlene Douglas, I'm a psychosexual therapist and I solve the problems linked to sex and relationships. So any issue you have with sex or relationships, I'm your woman. Okay so for someone listening, let's imagine it was a typical doctor's surgery. What are the symptoms that make someone end up in the office with you? Oh this is a good question. So oftentimes the relationship is broken down, so communication is broken down, people are at a bit of a stalemate and they aren't being intimate anymore so usually that's the point where one person will say hey let's go and speak to charlie nice yeah so it sounds like people will come to you when it's too late or they're trying to get there because they're feeling it what are some of the the early warning signs you know like on a car where it flickers on it says get this checked out what were some of those early signs yeah i think when you're arguing quite a lot you're not resolving the issues um obviously if sex isn't happening and it's something that's important for you in a relationship then that's a bit of a red flag that something needs to be addressed here um I think avoidance as well and that can happen quite a lot in relationships where you have one or both partners that are just not talking about it it's like the elephant in the room but you maybe notice that you're becoming irritable about other things like you know you put the you didn't do the washing or you didn't put the rubbish out um so i think those types of issues you start to notice actually maybe you might need a bit of help but so often people wait until it really has built up they have like a big argument someone walks out and then it's like oh let's go and see charlene now yeah let's get charlene in okay i want to i want to dive straight into the deep end i want to understand attachment styles where do we start oh that's a big question Okay, so when we're young, based on the relationships we have with our kind of early caregiver, we develop like an attachment style.

3:28Charlene Douglas:So the ideal situation is that you'll have like a secure attachment style. And that is that your parents will, you know, give you the right loving, nurturing, emotional care that you need. and what you'll then see with children that are securely attached is that you know the parent might go out the room and the child might feel a little bit like nervous a bit anxious but they can quite easily settle in their space and then the parent will come back and then they'll be like oh mum and dad's back and then they'll go back to the parent um but what we find is that there are often times where you'll have children that maybe have or develop like an avoidant attachment style and that can happen if there's like neglect in the space so the child then just learns well I just have to like do this world on my own and and no one's going to come to help me it's quite sad it's quite sad to see and I remember when I was training seeing examples of children that had this like avoidant attachment style it was just very sad they it was like no no one was coming to rescue them um and then you have the anxiously attached where maybe there have been times where their parents have been quite unpredictable so sometimes the parents there but sometimes the parents not or maybe like parents maybe like sneak out the door and you know the child doesn't know if the child if the parent's coming back so it's that's kind of kind of a very broad example of of those attachment styles but then what can happen is that they then continue throughout our lifetime and impact our relationships and marriages and that's when problems can arise how do they present themselves then so if you fast forward to when people are adults i mean i'm sure we all know and can think of examples of people that we could spot that in all those kind of symptoms or those traits what what do they look like in like marital or relationship behavior yeah so someone who maybe has more of a secure attachment style they may be able to be a little bit more logical in a situation so a partner might have behaved in a way that they felt was inappropriate they would be able to have that conversation with their partner sit down talk about it think about their point of view the partner's point of view and together you know work on a way to move forward that's kind of the ideal situation right we probably are not used to that so often but that's the ideal situation but then you get maybe someone who's a bit more anxiously attached and they want lots of cuddles and they want a lot of attention and they want to always be by your side and they maybe maybe they're a bit insecure sometimes when you haven't honoured them in public or you haven't showed like public displays of affection so you know you sort of notice it in those types of behaviors and then you get the kind of avoidant attachment style in relationships now stereotypically speaking men are known to sort of adopt that that place and so it would be that classic thing of you know maybe in a heterosexual relationship your partner saying hey babe let's talk now and you know oftentimes you're both like so oftentimes that's a kind of like oh my gosh no what have I done type thing um but more than that I suppose someone who really is avoidant they would just do everything in their power not to have that kind of vulnerable conversation they won't talk about it bury their head under the sand dismiss everything and the list goes on nice how does that marry up with um different love languages so love languages is really interesting and the reason I say this is because there's no real research or sort of scientific research when it comes to love languages although I find them really really fascinating um I don't know if I can say there's sort of any kind of correlation between attachment styles and love languages only because with attachment styles there's lots of research that's gone into attachment styles love languages I don't think there really has been much research um other than you know the work that we do with clients we know that it's helpful for them to understand the five love languages, particularly because the couples I work with, some of the biggest arguments that they have is I don't feel loved by my partner.

7:26Charlene Douglas:And so if you don't feel loved by your partner because they're not showing you love in a way that you show love, then it's like, well, maybe understand that maybe they show love in a different way. So again, I'm going to be very stereotypical here and say that let's say for women, physical touch is really important it might be for their husbands the acts of service you know so they will put the mirror up on the wall or they will make sure the petrol's in the car because they know that their partner's got a long journey the next day and for women they can sometimes miss that loving sign because they're like but you didn't hug me you know and and it's important to communicate so you're both aware I think of each other's love languages interesting what could you break those down for them those love languages yeah sure okay so this is the test now uh gifts um so that'll be your normal flowers chocolates whatever it may be acts of service which is what i've just described putting a mirror up on the wall doing someone's garden or whatever it may be uh we've got words of affirmation so um compliments um also things like you know like maybe writing on a post-it note like I love you or you've got this babe you know maybe sticking that in your partner's folder or briefcase when they go to work or something like that you know little things like that you know words of affirmation uh what else we've got physical touch and of course that's a physical touch um I think what's really important to say about physical touch though is that if your love language is physical touch it's important to understand the context of physical touch for you because this has gone really wrong for a lot of couples where the guy will hear that the woman's uh like love language is physical touch and he will decide to cuddle her when she is focused on cooking or something or he might touch places that she's not ready to be touched at a time when she's concentrating on something at work and eat work email or something like that So time and context is really key.

9:34Charlene Douglas:And so it's important to have those conversations. Which ones have I missed? I've done, so words of affirmation, gifts, physical touch, acts of service. I feel like there's a fifth one.

9:48Charlene Douglas:I can't remember off the top of my head. We'll put it in there. Yeah. There's a big one. Quality time. Quality time. That's it, quality time. As in time together, date night. Yes, but also quality time is really important as well to discuss and to have that conversation about because it looks different for different people. So for some people, being in the same car together, dropping the kids off to school is we're together. For other people, it's putting your phone away. Let's watch Netflix. Let's really spend time together. And so that can also cause a lot of arguments if you think that, you know, we've had quality time when your partner's like, no, your phone was out.

10:26Charlene Douglas:and you know you were chatting to your friend as well and for some partners they were like but you we were next to each other so yeah are there so if if i'm let's say i'm an avoidant and my love language is uh acts of service am i looking for someone who's avoidant and acts of service or do i have to find something that's totally different so they kind of gel together so i think what happens so in terms of what you need to look for i think unconsciously we gravitate towards people for various reasons. So research has shown that there are times where if you have had maybe some kind of childhood trauma, that you might try to kind of repair those wounds by choosing someone that may be similar to the perpetrator, let's say.

11:12Charlene Douglas:So a very basic example of this might be if you had, I don't know, a mother that was really, really controlling and never listened to you, you might find that your wife is quite controlling and you're constantly getting into arguments because you're desperately trying to correct what you weren't able to do when you were younger. But you'd be sort of banging your head against the wall because it's like there's something unconscious going on there. So I think it's not so clear cut to say kind of who you should be with. In an ideal world, we would be, you know, we'd have a secure attachment and our partner would have a secure attachment, right?

11:46Charlene Douglas:And you'd be able to have adult conversations. You'd be able to give each other space when you need it. All of that would be the ideal situation. but i think that the the more emotionally safe you feel with a partner which usually happens over time the more the sorts of the secure elements of you can come out so you do feel connected and you don't you don't always then feel so triggered yeah that was brilliant so we're obsessed with therapy techniques and how we use them in everyday life and and use them i keep thinking about like the avoidant okay so you've got an avoidant that comes into your your your studio your office they lay down on the the shalong and and then you're having a conversation with somebody that's probably avoidant how are you how are you getting them to open up and be honest and give you that information yeah so so i as well as being a psychosexual therapist i'm also a psychodynamic counselor and that's where the psychodynamic element comes in so for me what i'd be looking to do now i feel like i'm telling telling you all the tricks give it it's all so Any avoidant person listening will be like, ah, I know what you do.

12:52Charlene Douglas:But the keys kind of build like what we call a therapeutic alliance. So that kind of real strong relationships that they feel safe with you. They don't feel like you're sort of pushing them into a corner, trying to get an answer from them, because that's going to kind of push them into the corner a lot more. What I would do, my choice of language might be a bit different. So I'd help them to understand that, you know, let's we're in this together. you know let's let's kind of up and let's explore this together let's unpack this together you know I wonder how that felt for you sometimes when you're avoidant you might struggle to find the words to express the feeling and so it might be them expressing a story and me saying oh that sounds quite sad and in their mind they may never have really acknowledged that it was sadness but the more that sort of said to them the more they have the space to have a think about it psychodynamic counseling is um i think fantastic but it's not for everyone because part of the work is allowing for silence and not everyone is okay with that um we're in a world or a society where it's all about kind of instant you know you need an answer straight away which is probably why cbt works so well um although saying that research has shown that a lot of people then kind of sort head over to other types of therapy once they've done cbt because it's quite short term and sometimes people want to go a bit deeper um but i think with psychodynamic counseling it is important it is long term it you know you allow for silences you allow for a relationship to be built and when people feel emotionally safe that's when you usually get the best out of them so then a lot of relationships i would say will will kind of fall down because of that lack of communication that they're not going in having conversations with therapists it's it's getting to a point where it's too late and it's blowing up and they're leaving it so what i guess what can people do when they're in relationships to communicate more effectively again big question sorry charlene i really love these questions so i think the first thing is that you have to acknowledge that there's a problem and so what usually happens is that it takes a while before people realize that we really have a problem when it comes to communicating so a lot of the couples that I work with the very first thing that they will say to me is Charlene I have an issue with my partner in the bedroom as a link to sex but my actual relationship is fine so they're like you don't need to kind of delve into the relationship part it's just a sex it's just in the bedroom and I would always say that it's never just in the bedroom this has started in the relationship you haven't felt respected you haven't felt valued your voice hasn't been heard you have felt emasculated something is going on here that is playing out in the bedroom like 100 so in terms of helping them to communicate I suppose therapy in itself obviously talking therapy in itself is powerful because you're teaching people how to communicate so the questions that I would ask ask my clients teaches them how communication actually works and I suppose I'm known to ask the questions that people avoid as well and you'll see that on I suppose Married at First Sight but also in my practice that you know if someone's saying something to me like you know yeah like the sex is great I'll say what is it about the sex that's great right good question right and when they say well this is really really lovely I'll say well tell me a time when something wasn't so good because oftentimes what can happen people just focus on the yeah it's great we had a good time and I'm like hmm so if it was so great tell me what tell me the reason that you're not going back to it like what is what's going on there um and so so I suppose what I'm saying is that in terms of teaching people how to communicate through the therapy they kind of learn some of those skills um in saying that there are tools that you can give people as well so helping people to understand the importance of really actively listening to your partner um so often what happens is you just wait for your partner to finish talking so you can just say you're you're yeah you're just and if you really want to show that you know i'm being mature here you're like okay just finish in your head you're thinking just finish just finish and then you're going you're going to give it some with your evidence um but what can happen in that space is that you're both doing the same thing and so no one's really listening to each other so a lot of the work that we do in therapy is teaching people how to actively listen because that's really important when you said that then i think about one thing my wife and i think lots of people's wives don't like is when you go straight into that kind of like fixer mode straight away so problem is presented and it's like oh have you ever tried doing this before but you know you've like made it so much worse and having that space to go oh that sounds really frustrating or annoying I could see why that would bother you yeah tends to land a bit better do you know why that is why it's so much more frustrating to jump straight into I want to fix this for you well everyone's different right so there's some people where that works really well they're looking for a solution but I think sometimes people just want to know that you're in it with them that you're validating their feelings their emotions their thoughts um what can be helpful is to say is there anything that you'd like me to do to help you know so that they have a choice because otherwise it could indirectly sound like you're saying to them wow your problem's really bad like how could you not have thought of this I'm giving you a solution like right it sounds a bit like that and if you're in that space where you're feeling really overwhelmed anyway and you're maybe not feeling that great not feeling very powerful the partner that's over your shoulders and says to you well all you have to do it and you know what with all due respect to men and we absolutely love men sometimes the male tone of voice can some be a bit patronizing right content yeah man's explaining right the mansplain it and sometimes it could be like all you need to do is did you not think about doing yeah and you know some of those choice of words or that tone can just yeah can just trigger someone yeah i'm with you i'm with you the one of the other things that you mentioned about i want to kind of jump back to is so at the start of relationships it can feel like you're both very sexually compatible yeah and then flash forward past kind of honeymoon phase it's kind of that's what you're actually like as a sexual partnership what why is that why are you so sexually compatible at the start and then you're kind of oh actually we're really like six months down the line that's what we're both like as a default setting yeah I think there's a couple of things there so I think that when we first get into relationships um we don't really show up fully as our authentic self right so you're not you know all your flaws you're doing your best to kind of keep them right at the back if you're an impatient person you're definitely you're trying to be patient.

19:31Charlene Douglas:If you're a bit selfish, you're desperately trying to be selfless. Like, you know, that is just natural. And then there comes a point, usually I say around the three month point where you can't hold on to the lies anymore and your personality comes out. And that's not to say, actually, I say lies as a joke, but you know, there's different parts of our characters, right? So there are parts of us where we feel really overwhelmed and we don't know what to do with it. But there are times we can feel may be overwhelmed and we we know exactly what we need to do so but I think when you first meet someone you show them all the good sides right also when it comes to sex and intimacy it's all very new when you first meet somebody so it's very unpredictable it's very new oftentimes you don't live together so there's that excitement of oh I get to see my partner and all the kind of imaginations all the the excitement around that we also know that desire is created when there's distance as well so when there's a little bit of distance and you're like oh we're going to come back together that could be exciting but if you like living together you're seeing the good and the bad of your partner and you've just gone to a toilet and they've just come out right or you've seen underwear that didn't look as sexy as it did when you first met them all those things kind of contribute to this sort of shift in the relationship and I think it's in those moments that people try so desperately to just hold on to what they had when they first started as opposed to acknowledging no I need to be intentional daily to keep this relationship alive in the same way you would like you know when you're at work right so you go to work you don't just sort of stay stay stagnant in your role and you know not learn how to do things any better or any differently you have team meetings you have one-to-ones you do all that you can to be better and then usually you'll be promoted that's that's kind of the idea right but with relationships i think people just sort of stop they're like well we love each other and there was sexual attraction we've got kids now and we've got a house so it's okay but actually you've got to still keep putting the work in to kind of keep it new keep it alive keep it fun and that's where i think people sort of fall fall down because they don't always do that so what what are the i guess what's the prescription charlene what should people be doing to to fix that so to go in and be like right this is gonna be the thing that blows everyone's socks off and gets us there yeah i think you have to do the work on yourself i think so for so many people they have maybe childhood trauma or when i say childhood trauma i don't always mean like the like trauma as we know in terms of those big things you know even some of the kind of what we call the small t traumas you know maybe uh a parent that parents are divorced and we just felt a bit abandoned even if even though we maybe saw our dads at the weekend you know you know all those kind of experiences can impact how we show up in a relationship and so it is our responsibility to to be the best version of ourselves in the relationship and to kind of continue to work on that and particularly in this country it's not necessarily the done thing and there's still a lot of stigma around therapy um I think the great thing with like social media we've got lots of great podcasts calls like this we've got um yeah relationship podcasts we've got sex podcasts so you can learn if you want to but not everyone does so I think if you want to go into a relationship you want to make it work you've got to do the work on yourself like that is key but you've also got to learn how to communicate and compromise and I think if you can't do that then yeah then you'll be coming to see me send them in.

23:05So then it gets me thinking, and we've been talking about this a lot recently, like on podcasts and off podcasts, there's this like epidemic of lonely young men that aren't having sex. They're not having relationships. They're scared to communicate. So I guess I'd love to get your take on it. And then I'd like maybe like to touch on the first dates, how you should be approaching dating, relationships, things like that. what's the question first question i'm asking too i didn't want to i didn't want to i didn't want to ask a big one um i would like to get your take on what what's going on at the moment generationally with kind of young men and the dating scene yeah i think when i think about

23:47Charlene Douglas:some of the young men that i've spoken to that have sort of come to my practice what they have said is that they felt quite confused in terms of what's expected of them in a relationship so i think if you kind of rewind to like i don't know the 1950s it felt probably really clear what the roles were and you know if I think about say heterosexual relationships it you know back actually I'll say the 1950s I saw an advert in the 19 like 1980s advert and it was so stereotypical it was like the woman was cooking dinner and all the kids came running around the table and then the husband came in from work and he like took his boots off and it was so stereotypical but I think and I'm not saying that we need to go back to that because I think we definitely need to not go back to that but but it felt like the roles were quite clearly established I think now for a lot of young guys they sort of feel like they're not sure what to do like should they offer a bit of chivalry in the relationship or should they hold on to the feminist approach that I think a lot of women have and rightly so um you know do they pay for a date or not do they go half half like do they let the partner pay I think there's a lot of confusion I think around what the done thing is or what the right thing is but I think that you know if you can meet somebody that you can have a really open conversation with about their expectations in the relationship and your expectations and together agree on what you both want moving forward then I think it can be really powerful.

25:13Is there just talking about that then is there anything that happens in early life that typically leads someone to be a bit more promiscuous when they do get sexually active are there any

25:25Charlene Douglas:links yes um it's interesting though the word promiscuous because i think that i think years ago that word was probably used a lot more i think now it's probably seen more particularly with women that women are feeling more liberated yes um or the fact that the word is sometimes associated with women being promiscuous but for men it's like just having a good time so i think when you said the word promiscuous that's the first thing that came to my mind I think I mean there's a whole host of factors I think that if if you've had someone that in childhood hasn't been allowed to ask about sex about intimacy then you might find that when they hit their adult 18 or 16 in terms of the legal age of consent that they might really want to explore you know it's like kind of the the floodgates have opened it's like yes I get to go out and enjoy this and I think the thing is I think if you are someone that loves a lot of sex there is absolutely nothing wrong with that but I think you have to ask yourself what purpose does it serve if it serves like a healthy purpose then absolutely great it makes you you know it's pleasure a bit of fun helps you to connect with people that de-stresses you like go for it but I think some of the people that come in my into into my practice where they're having maybe lots of sex a lot of different people it's it's masking something it's masking something a bit deeper you know a bit of some pain there maybe they're trying to avoid real intimacy because you know when you're having casual sex it's not oftentimes very intimate is it it's just like wham bam thank you man ma 'am kind of thing right and that was that was pleasurable that was great um but when we're talking about an intimate relationship where you know you're discussing your vulnerabilities you're really connecting with somebody you know you'll get people that can orgasm at the same time you know where they're so in tune with each other for some people that's quite a fearful experience getting too close to someone so as a result they then just maybe have lots of sex so i feel like i'm not sure if i've completely answered no you have there's just lots of different reasons why people might yeah to have lots of sexual violence i was actually more so thinking from from i know and have known a lot of men who almost voraciously pursue a female.

27:44And then as soon as they've had sex, it's like, I'm totally over it. I'm not interested anymore. And I was wondering what would lead someone to kind of want to do that and repeat that over and over and over again.

27:54Charlene Douglas:It could be a number of things. I mean, it could be what we've just described there around a fear of real intimacy. Sometimes, some of the men that I've worked with, when they were younger, they were told they weren't good enough. They weren't chosen by the girls. so now it's like there's this quest to prove to themselves constantly constantly that I'm good enough I can get the girl and once they've got the girl they're not interested anymore um and that I I see quite a lot in my practice actually where some men are just like I actually do want to settle down I just can't connect with a woman I just love the chase that adrenaline because it's the adrenaline rush yeah it's like can I get her can I get her yes I have oh great okay can I get another but then there's a loneliness in that as well because we are designed to be in relationships so if you can never really connect with a partner that will catch up with you eventually so what are some examples of that healthy um you were talking about it before but like that healthy sexual relationship maybe for men more so but what is an example of what what does that look like where it's not on the on the the line yeah so i think you know we're talking about kind of having a number of partners so just because you have a number of partners it doesn't mean necessarily that there's anything unhealthy going on for you but i think it's about understanding yourself understanding your desires your needs your wants making sure that you're not using sex to mask something that you're lacking in in in life or in yourself i think that if you are clear of the reasons that you're doing it there's absolutely no reason that you can't go out and have fun with lots of different people and enjoy yourself of course consent is really important boundaries are important so making sure that the person you're having sex with that consents um and that you're both enjoying it you know two adults or two or more adults because it always has to be two you know if you're enjoying yourself there's boundaries in place and there's consent then happy days and when people come to see you what what are they getting wrong when it comes to pleasure overthinking it i would say they're overthinking it it's kind of like oh this is what i should be feeling now as opposed to allowing their body just to feel it um i think for so many of us we've been taught that sex is like a performance more than an experience and so if you think about a performance like think about so i went to watch tina turner the musical right and I was at the front and I could kind of feel the tension of the actors and actresses behind the curtain sort of thing, right?

30:25Charlene Douglas:Or at least that's what I thought. And you can just imagine the nerves that they're experiencing and then all of a sudden the curtains open and then everyone is watching them and they have to perform. Sometimes for some people, that's what sex can feel like, where it's like, okay, I've got to perform right now. and when you're in that space then it takes away from pleasure and really enjoying it I think the people that get the most out of sex are people where they know what they like they know what turns them on but they're with a partner that they feel safe with safe to just be themselves and what I mean by that is that if they accidentally fart then that's okay you know like or if there is something that goes wrong they need to drop off the bed or whatever it may be it could be laugh you know you can laugh with your partner and and it's all it's all okay as opposed to a partner that's like what are you doing that for oh my gosh you fart that's awful like you know those types of things now I'm not saying you know smelling the fart isn't awful but it's like you know you want to be in a safe environment with your partner that you can just laugh about it or just be silly about it over the windows or whatever but not that you're shaming the person and I think that in order to create pleasure you need to feel physically and emotionally safe with somebody nice that leads i think nicely on to what i want to ask you it's another big question are you prepared hold the table hold the table yeah how how does someone gain a fetish how does that come about this is interesting i was talking about this yesterday as you do as a sex therapist with somebody and um i think what's interesting about this is that there are some researchers that have said it has nothing to do with like childhood traumas or anything like that and of course you'll always get other researchers that say it has everything to do with some kind of trauma that you've experienced in your younger life or over you know throughout your life that now you're trying to take control over the situation um I think it's probably but I think probably both are right you know for different for different people um I can give you an example of a fetish are you ready for this one yeah okay all right so listeners be prepared um so So there was a guy who was into smelling knickers and smelling the vulva of their partner, but they needed their partner not to have washed.

32:55Wow. Okay. How long? That's not a big question.

33:01Charlene Douglas:So I think for a considerable amount of time. So he would say that he wanted to know, if he like how much he could kind of really deal with so he would want the woman to you know if it's like maybe a couple of days he'll be great like great or if maybe she'd gone to the gym and she was really sweaty he's like no no don't shower don't shower um I remember for her this was super strange um because oftentimes you know I suppose as a woman you do feel maybe self-conscious you know around like make sure I smell okay right um but she said that she started to get on board with it and actually started to find it quite a turn on so he'd literally wake up in the morning and want to go straight down in between the you know in her vulva playing around and she could just hear him sniffing away and the more he did that the more he was becoming erect the more turned on he was now where has that come from as soon as I heard him talk about this I was super curious and I was thinking where what's this about like where did this all start the sad thing is it started uh I think, with something that was traumatic.

34:06Charlene Douglas:But for him, he was like, I don't know, it wasn't a big deal. So when he was, I think he was about 10 years old, he had a 15-year-old babysitter who was a woman. And she said to him, do you want to smell my vulva? Now, we now know that that's actually very abusive. But in his mind, he was like, this is cool. I told all my friends. She was like an older lady. and like you know but we know that you know both the 15 year old girl that is asking him to do this there was probably something going on for her that she even had the idea that that would be something that a young boy would would do and for him as well but then what happened is that he started to get really used to doing it and enjoyed it and noticed that it was becoming sexually arousing for him as well and that's where it started so now any woman that he chooses so he's not with this woman anymore any woman that he chooses to be with moving forward he says it's important that they are open to having their vulva sniffed wow isn't that fascinating how some of the things that are traumatic kind of link into different chemical receptors so like that because you think of something traumatic that happened could impact your relationship where you're like oh actually turn all the lights off like i feel so vulnerable now like turn the lights off yeah then what you're saying there even though it's traumatic must have linked into a different receptor so it's almost like that release of dopamine or whatever it may be there but it's still just as traumatic as the turn the lights off person absolutely i think for him and it took him a while to really understand that actually what he was explained to me was actually a traumatic experience that had happened to him in his childhood but i think for him he didn't have a great relationship with his parents so for him this felt quite intimate it felt quite close um And from a child's point of view that doesn't know any better, you can understand maybe why that's the conclusion that they would come to.

36:04Charlene Douglas:But then it sets something off in him that to be close to somebody, to be really intimate, like this is what you do. And then obviously there was a physiological response to that in that he was becoming erect from it. And then at that point, the woman was also on board with it too, because I think there was something quite taboo about it. So, yeah. yeah so wow fascinating so there's so that that trauma response sounds like it was obviously like i think the thing with trauma that a lot a lot of people think of it as like how do i fix the trauma or how do i get rid of it or whatever but where that sounds like i'm actually quite happy with the the trauma response i'm sure there are people listening to this that are feeling that their fetishes or their things that they find pleasure from are probably quite shameful there's this guilt attached to it how do you help people navigate that conversation if there is that shame well i think if there's shame attached to it it is about understanding what i suppose just unpacking it you know just kind of because i think that the the whole thing around shame is that you're not able to kind of apply logic to the situation so the therapist's role is kind of help you to apply logic to it over a period of time so that the messages that you're sending to yourself that I should be ashamed is a bit different you know instead of I should be ashamed it's like this situation happened to me you know I was a young person I didn't have the control over over the situation we also know that you know a young person doesn't have the ability to consent to anything um that the brain isn't fully developed then either so they don't have the life experience they don't have the logic that we do as adults so I think the more you work with a client that is experiencing shame it can take some time but usually they get to a point where they can acknowledge actually this situation happened to me um and then sometimes you'll find people that will like maybe create a charity or do something very positive that helps them to feel more empowered and then help other people and that can help with healing when it comes to trauma as well i like that that's really nice and then i i feel like all the questions i'm going to chuck at you i've got a really big one for you um it's really big all right um what i have to ask this because obviously we've both got partners what what do men get wrong when it comes to women and sexual relations?

38:35Charlene Douglas:Everything. Okay, this is a really good question. I'm really glad that you've asked this question actually because I think for men it can be difficult to take the feedback on from your partner about what pleases them and what does it for them. Particularly because we live in a society where we're told that as a man you should know what you're doing. you should be always up for sex you should always be hard and erect you should you should ejaculate after x number of minutes and if you ejaculate if you take too long to ejaculate what's going on if you're if you ejaculate too quickly what's going on so there's a lot of pressure on men so i think the message is always that as men that you should know what you're doing um so i think if you have a partner that's saying to you look i like to be touched in this way or you know can we introduce sex toys now that is very controversial because men and sex toys that are designed with women in mind is not always the greatest match sometimes men feel like they're a bit redundant and you know they're not needed um I mean sometimes women probably contribute to help them to feel like that by kind of just sort of sitting in the corner with it with their sex toy but I think I think ultimately what you what you want to do to have a healthy sexual relationship is to be open to feedback.

39:51Charlene Douglas:And I think sometimes that could be difficult for guys. I think also, and it's funny because I was having this conversation yesterday, I think for a lot of men, they think about sex, they dream about sex, they wonder about sex probably every day. So when their partner has finally said yes to sex, the excitement is like through the roof that they're actually seeing the naked body, the woman that said yes, the green light is on. It's like, yes, yes, yes. and so naturally the body gets really really excited so then your woman is saying to you hey I want 30 minutes of foreplay and you're thinking mate I can only like give you like five minutes right now I'm like I'm super excited and you know there's nothing you know shameful about the fact that for a lot of guys that they like the intercourse like that feels nice for them but it's just that for women it's not like it doesn't feel nice but it feels better when their body has really experienced that sexual charge and yeah I mean there's been so many stories of guys that have where you can just feel the guy the guy's getting bored they just wait for you to say okay you can you can penetrate now but you know learning about foreplay learn to be a bit intentional your touch introducing a bit of tease you know I think sometimes guys forget all that all that good stuff um i'm gonna ask you to give me some therapy now okay um so i've got four children so i've spent a lot of my relationship my partner without her being in a hormone cycle okay and getting back used to that i've been like oh my god she really loves me this week and then the next week i'm like oh she's gonna leave me what's going on and then we've had we're good having kind of open communication and having a laugh about it yeah but is there advice that you would give me for how to navigate that hormone so I can kind of be a better partner throughout that yeah that's a tricky one isn't it because I think sometimes as a woman when you're feeling hormonal sometimes you're not even really aware of it like it's hard to know like am I feeling hormonal or is he just getting on my nerves like you know it's hard to work out which which one it is probably both yeah so it's difficult but I think that I think the best that you can do is ask what she needs in any given moment um and if it's space then allow her that space if it's a hug or if it's a cuddle or if it's a conversation even like a cup of tea um I think oftentimes what can happen is that guys as we said a little bit earlier want to fix a situation and if you're feeling really emotional you're not in a space where anything's feeling logical for you you know you're not it's not logical when you're feeling really overly emotional something's been triggered and so what can be helpful is your partner saying what do you need right now weekly daily hourly i think when you notice that your partner's in a space that you you're not sure what's going on there um i think the longer you were the partner the more you kind of know okay like her period's due soon for example and this is normally a time when she behaves xyz and you might learn then kind of what she needs in that moment but i think if if there's ever a time where you're feeling like what's going on for you here i think to sort of say you know is anything that you'd like me to do to help you right now i think don't guess because that's when it can go that's my problem i think asking what she needs in any given moment i think is always really helpful and if the response you're getting isn't a helpful response then i would say maybe just give her some space.

43:26Okay. I'm gonna hit you with a segue now both of you gonna be amazed by this. Wow. Tune in. You ready for a segue? One thing that does bring us together no matter what part of the hormone cycle we're in is watching Married at First Sight together. Married at First Sight. That was, mate can I shake your hand? Yeah you can. That was beautiful. That was really good. Love that.

43:45Charlene Douglas:Love that. So how did you get involved? Okay so I would love to say that this story was really super exciting okay uh so one of the producers contacted me to be on the sex clinic in 2019 so the sex clinic was on e4 um and it came out it was it was on a good few years before lockdown but my uh series came out on uh literally i think like march 2020 of the day um so so i started there and i suppose when you work with channel four they know how you work it's probably maybe easier to kind of get other roles um or maybe i'm just saying that and actually maybe i was just fantastic i'm sure you were i know um but yeah so i just then randomly got a phone call and they said it's a really uh great show um we're changing the format because mario the first site there was like an older format that um some people describe it as the boring version but i wouldn't say the boring version i think it wasn't as um maybe as entertaining as uh kind of as i'm just conscious that um Paul Brunson was on both Paul was always great yeah absolutely across the board but um but yeah the series I started on 2021 that was when the format had changed um and so they were like yeah this is really great series like you know Paul and Mel are on it so Mel's from the Australian version and Paul was doing celebs go dating and he's done lots of other things as well and uh yeah and then I came on board as a sex and relationship therapist and yeah it's just gone from strength to strength like the ratings are like they go through the roof every year it gets better and better it does feel like there's the pressure though because every year it gets better and better so you're just like wow how do we take it to the next level and we managed to somehow do it so yeah it's an amazing show to be a part of we we love it and I think me and Zach started in the same way it was a case of our partner saying we're watching Married at first sight and i go oh well i'll i'll go and fix a car or something and then and then oh yeah yeah and then the head's popping around the door i'm like oh they do it wait a minute god that's good yeah um so i guess as you've you've met so many people that have been through the the experiment and i love that that they they talk about it so openly as it's an experiment it doesn't necessarily mean it will work you will find love we know that some people have gone on and i'm sure that you could give us some examples as an experiment do you do you think that it can work that people can be put together and and and it can just from there that can give love i mean we've proven that we have been able to do that and that that has worked i think you know we we do the the first part right in terms of putting people together then they have to do the hard work and that is listening and listening to the feedback uh that is stepping out of their comfort zone that is doing things differently from how they've ever done it in the past not everything but certain things that maybe weren't so great and some people are committed to that some people are not and um and also for some people the spark is really important and that they hold on to that throughout the whole experiment it's like the spark wasn't there and it's like well could you give the space for the spark to potentially grow because we know in real life that that has happened for a lot of people and some people uh do that some people don't on the show we're nicely diplomatic when i typically hear people say the spark isn't working it feels like and this might not be true but it feels like there's not a sexual attraction is is that typically the case when people say it's the spark isn't working i think for some people that's what they're talking about But I think it's interesting this word spark.

47:29Sometimes it's hard to really like understand or explain what it really is.

47:34Charlene Douglas:But oftentimes we've all experienced it where it may or may not make sense, but there's just a connection that you have to somebody and you just click, you just connect, it just works. And there are other people where, you know, you just straight away just feel like there's just something not right here. Even if that person is like absolutely attractive, full of life, you're just not feeling that connection and I think on married at first sight a lot of the couples want to feel that straight away they want to be they want to you know be the the at the wedding you know in at the church or wherever it is and they want to see their partner they just want to see all those like whatever happens when you have that spark was it flowers and fireworks fireworks all that kind of stuff they want to feel that and I think also as well we've come from a world where we've all watched those children's programs we've all watched those programs in our childhood where it's like you know romantic stories where you know you got Romeo and Juliet you know where you look at each other and you fall madly in love you have children and it's like happy ever after um and that's happened with some of our couples like Adam and Taya who were in our first season they officially got married afterwards and now they're on their second baby so there have been some really great success stories with Married at First Sight i've spotted something you can tell me if i'm on something here or not okay detective over here so when people get married yeah at first sight yeah yeah thank you and it's very passionate straight away and the honeymoon's very passionate it's very like all over each other super passionate yeah boundaries are straight down you know etc they seem to be the ones that maybe don't do as well long term in the experiment whereas the ones who kind of slow burn have to overcome a few bits at the start and then a few weeks in they kind of have that more tighter bond seem to do much better do you want to hire me now we need to pull up a fourth chair i think i think so you're right i think that in my experience over the last four years you're right there have been quite a few couples where that sexual spark has been there straight away and they'll make it known that they were like at it like rabbits and that kind of stuff they'll be very open about that but then when conflict knocks at their door they can't really resolve it they go back into old patterns of behavior they withdraw they shout they scream they um they go into that avoidance space um they slam the door they want to go to another apartment for the night i mean that happens a lot that happens so much where they have an argument and they're like i'm fed up of you and then they want to go in another apartment to sleep overnight which is fine because if you're feeling really overwhelmed that's great but in real life when you're married we know that that's not worth the possibility you have to still share the same bed and the most you can do is just make sure your partner's leg isn't touching you even that is annoying for you right but um but yeah with married at first sight I do think that you're right that if you I think the couples that have worked have been the couples where they've fancied each other they've had a great time but it's kind of a bit slow and then it's really built up so then when conflict comes to their door they can they just it's just not so explosive they can work through it they can take the feedback and then they can move on those that have the passionate sex at the beginning are just as passionate in in the conflict yeah and they then can't always resolve it so you heard it first guys i was well done add it to your linkedin profile yes the other thing that's probably more more of an obvious observation i think anyone could see is when you have the the sofa sessions the weekly commitment ceremony um it feels like those people who it's i'm here to be right my in this there's there's an argument or a dispute here but actually i'm here to be right those ones never do well yeah unless you can get them to a point where it's like it's kind of more about mutual agreement so how much do you think communication style of someone coming in and being like i just have to be right gets in the way of even having any connection that's long term yeah i think yeah i think you have to be in a space where you're more committed to resolving a situation with your partner more than being right and of course as a couples therapist as well i see that quite often so what will happen is you will have a couple that've had an argument and they cannot wait to see charlene and they have got both of them got like their evidence lists of evidence of things that they need to tell Charlene because they desperately want me to be on their side.

52:04And I remember one couple where the woman was like, yeah, and she shouted in my face.

52:10Charlene Douglas:And then she just stopped waiting for me to wait for my reaction. And, you know, maybe I did give her the reaction she needed, but it's that, isn't it? It's like kind of going to mummy to tell, you know, and I think that we see that on Married at First Sight as well, that they often say at like the dinner parties, you'll hear them say, we can't wait to go to the committee ceremony and talk to the experts about this. But that's because in their mind, they are right and their partner's wrong. So take us behind the scene. So I'm really intrigued. How much pre the show, when it comes to the couples and the pairing, what does that actually look like in reality?

52:46How much involvement do you have?

52:48Charlene Douglas:So I feel like that question, it comes up a lot and it feels like sort of KFC Colonel Sanders you know like you know what is the recipe so um so we give different answers depending on which platform we're on so I think what I will say is this so um we obviously match them right um but we have to make sure or at least the producers have to make sure that people are um okay to be on tv right so in terms of background checks need to be done so if we a couple can work really well but the background checks have shown that actually there's something a bit shady here that isn't great for tv um then they won't be on the show so you know there's safeguard and there's legal teams there's lots of people involved to make sure we get the right people um but ultimately it's paul mel and i that are kind of having those discussions and working out who we think will be the best match so 20 people on the 20 people on the table 10 men 10 women what are you where because it feels like it feels like one direction do you know i mean like oh we look good with that person like what are you looking for to say that's a match yeah well let's let's take it back we get lots of applications in thousands of applications so they have to be sort of whittled down as well we have a psychologist that isn't um like a an on-air psychologist as it were so she's sort of behind the scenes so she will do uh like narcissism tests and attachment styles and things like that.

54:18Charlene Douglas:Yeah, all those kind of like self, like all those kind of assessment, self-assessments, their anxiety levels, et cetera, just to make sure they are in a good, healthy space to be on TV. Because the whole process is, let's call it a psychological journey, right? So I think sometimes people think like, hey, I could just meet my partner and go on TV and be famous. But actually we take people through their paces. You know, there's intimacy tasks that they have to do. There's like deep level conversations that we have with them. We challenge them. They do homestays. They do partner swaps. There's lots of spaces where you could be tempted, you know, by another partner or where you could go home to your parents and your parents are like, I don't like him.

54:59Charlene Douglas:You know, so it's real, it's quite a journey. So we need to make sure that people are resilient enough to go through that whole process. but you're right in terms of all the all the pictures on on the table trying to work out who who's matched with who my areas around sexual compatibility um so i would be looking at i suppose how open people are to talk about sex um it doesn't mean that if one person is not really interested in sex and the other person is that they're not a match because there might be other factors um there might be other factors that mean that they are a match but there's just i suppose what i'm saying is there's lots that go into it it's not like one um tool as it were um but my areas around sexual compatibility.

55:37I'd heard, this might be a myth, that the dinner parties, you watch the whole thing. Yes, we do. So it's not, so obviously we get the televised highlights, but you watch the whole thing from start to finish.

55:49Charlene Douglas:Yeah. And is that the only time you've seen them that week? So you don't know anything that's happened in the lead up? No, we don't know. You just get to see it there. No, no. So, and this is often the thing, isn't it? So I think people, we get a little bit of slack sometimes in the media because when it gets to a commitment ceremony we're asking questions um sometimes the public are like well why are you not going in harder on that person and it's like well we don't see that much so we see the dinner party um and what goes on there and then and sometimes even that you can sometimes miss some conversation but you know we see as much as as we can and the commitment ceremony is like therapy so you know when couples come to my therapy space like i'm listening to what they're saying i'm working with what they're bringing to the space i'm looking at not just a verbal communication i'm also looking at a non-verbal communication with couples so i don't just take everything they say i'm looking at what their body language is also saying but ultimately i don't get to see what goes on in their bedroom i don't get to see what the argument you know how that really played out and it's no different from married at first sight yeah we work with what's presented to us there's also that thing of overcoming um people can only go through any self-development there's self-awareness there calmly so I think sometimes what people think they are how they think they're presenting themselves it's actually totally different yeah they are is there a difficulty in the in the the commitment ceremony of kind of getting someone to like here's the here's the ugly mirror and they're just not acknowledging that that was that was them oh yeah that happens all the time yeah you know but it's difficult for all of us isn't it to take feedback on and you know also as well your defenses are probably going to be quite high if you're sat on a couch in front of Paul, Mel and Charlene and all the other couples watching you as well.

57:34Charlene Douglas:And if you also then acknowledge the fact that two million people are also probably watching you as well, because that's the reality, right? It's nerve wracking and you will want to defend yourself. And so if Paul, Mel or myself are saying to someone, you know, you need to really think about your behavior and think about like how that impacts others, it might be that you are going to do your very best to defend yourself and be like well no actually I think this person is also to blame you know because why wouldn't you we'd all probably try to defend ourselves I think Paul Mell and I we try to build that rapport and that yeah that relationship with the couples and with them individually so they know that we're on their side we actually want them to do better we want the relationships to work like I know people don't always believe that we actually do we want you know my ideal situation would be that all the 10 12 couples work out and I mean I don't know if that would make great TV.