How Often Should We Have Sex? Dr. Karen Gurney Breaks the Myths!

0:00Welcome to We're Talking. Today, we're busting some of the biggest myths we've been taught about sex with Dr. Karen Gurney. Also known as the sex doctor, Karen helps us unlearn the scripts that have shaped our sex lives for generations. This conversation is about freedom, honesty, and pleasure without shame. This week, we're talking sex.

0:33This is a question that seems so simple, but yet I don't think I know the answer. Go ahead. What is sex? What is sex? Sex is something we can do alone or with somebody else or with more than one person, with our body or mind to give or receive erotic pleasure. Okay. So that's as wide a definition as you can get to. That's my definition of sex. Everyone's got their own. But really, if we think of sex as something as expansive as that, it really creates all kinds of freedom with how we can start to think about our sex lives. We can enjoy our sex lives alone, solo sex, masturbation. We can enjoy sex lives with another person entirely digitally.

1:25we can enjoy our sex lives where we're using our mind more than our bodies in terms of the things that we might say to somebody to try and turn them on so sex is as expansive as that well that's interesting because the way that you describe it is there are no necessarily there are no rules no to it because i think oftentimes what we hear especially in heterosexual sex is sex means penetrative, which is penis in vagina. That's right. But that is absolutely not a rule whatsoever. No. I mean, it's certainly a social rule. It's a social script that we have, particularly in today's society, particularly when men and women have sex together.

2:07We have an idea that that's what sex is. And it's important to note that that idea about sex comes from historical contexts of sex being about procreation only, sex being linked to having babies, to the church, to something that you do within marriage out of duty. Quite different ideas than we might have now about what we have sex for, what the reasons are behind it. If you ask somebody, did they have sex with someone, they might say, oh, we did everything but. Yes. But you didn't. We had sex. That's true. That's true. Yes. And we have words like foreplay. We have words like virginity. These are words I do not use ever.

2:52Both of these words pedestal penis and vagina sex as the main act of sex. And they relegate all those other wonderful forms of sex as being just the starter, you know, in the lead up to the main course. which is so interesting when you think about it because even if you take the word virginity and the word i use the phrase i use is sexual debut sexual debut which basically is uh there's no one fixed time point you know from from even when we're very young we are we are um our sexuality is emerging in terms of our attraction to others our sense of ourselves our self-exploration it's there's no one fixed point where we become sexual beings you know we emerge into that and if you think about a word like sexual, a phrase like sexual debut, we're really talking about privileging the incidences on that timeline that are important to the individual.

3:46When was the first time you had an orgasm? When was the first time you truly felt able to let yourself go with somebody else? When was the first time you felt joy during sex? When was the first time that you experienced this one type of sex that you discovered is your favorite thing, which is very different than the word virginity, which says this is the marker of when you became a sexual person. And this one type of sex that you may not even like anyway, or, you know, this may not have been that pleasant for you, is the start of your sexual career. Wow. What a crazy idea. Yeah. You know, this is the first time I've heard you talk about foreplay and I want to talk about that.

4:25And it wasn't until you brought that up that I thought, wow, you're right. Foreplay, bad word, bad word. But you're right in terms of virginity. That makes sense because it's this continuum, in essence, that we're on. Yeah. But I've seen that pop culture is beginning to embrace this. Let's keep unpacking it. All right. So we're still in what is sex. So we had a guest who came on and she said, I am demisexual. And I didn't know what it was at the time. And I had to do my research. And I saw this scale, this asexual to allosexual scale. So what is that scale? And are we all somewhere on that scale?

5:05Yeah, so we're all on a continuum with all kinds of things in life, aren't we? And our sexuality is no different. So we're on scales with sexual orientation. You know, it's fairly rare for people to be entirely straight or entirely gay. There's a lot of people somewhere in the middle. And it's the same with our relationship with our sexuality. for some people sex is really important and integral to their sense of well-being you know we meet some people in life don't we who are creative people yes and we're like gosh you're really creative i i don't know if i'm as creative as you i can enjoy creativity and i can have a good go at it but actually it doesn't feature as strongly in my life as it does yours and that's same with sex.

5:48For some people, sex is a central feature and something that they become really quite distressed or unhappy if it isn't going to plan. For other people, it matters much, much less to the point where maybe it doesn't really matter at all. Interesting. And we know from sex research that sexual satisfaction on average is very important to relationship satisfaction. So we can say that sex is important for relationships, But of course, there are lots of people in that pool of people for whom it doesn't matter that much, too. What matters then is that the person or people they're having sex with also feel the same way.

6:29Same. Sex. That it doesn't matter too much to them either. Is that what sexual compatibility actually is? Or is there no such thing as sexual compatibility? Well, sexual compatibility is a really interesting thing because there's no one definition of what that could mean, physical attraction. There might be things like how much you place sex as something important in your relationship. There might be things to do with what kinds of sex you want to have or how often, although those things do fluctuate a lot through the course of our life. And I'm sure we'll come on to that later on. If you're dating, because this is a question that I often hear is that, you know, you're dating, you're trying to figure out, is this a partner that you want to have in your life in a committed way?

7:13Is there a way to determine how sexually compatible you are early in the relationship? Yes. There is. Talk about it. Talk about it. Oh, my goodness. How important is sex to you? You know, what have your experiences been of sex so far? What kinds of things do you want out of a future sexual relationship? isn't it bizarre that we ask people questions about you know do you want to have kids you know where do you want to live one day how important is exercise to you how important is your family you know these are questions we ask people right to establish whether we've got shared values it's true why don't we ask about sex because sex is the one thing that if you're in a monogamous relationship you can only get from that person all the other things desire to travel or interest in horror films, you could meet those needs elsewhere.

8:00Sex is actually quite important if it's something you want to feature in your relationship. So it'd be good to ask, but of course it's difficult to ask. Yes. And also I would imagine that a lot of the answers are lies. It's a good point. Do you like, oh, I love sex. I have sex every night. And actually, you know, it could also be that your relationship that you're about to have might be the one that changes people's experience of sex forever in a positive way. So you might ask that question when you're dating and they might say, you know, so far I can kind of take it or leave it. You know, I like sex, but it's not the most important thing to me.

8:40And it might be that your relationship is the vehicle to take their sex life to a new level. So it'd be good not to discount people on the grounds that, you know, where they're at right now, because for all of us, our sexuality is in constant flux throughout the course of our life. On that note of compatibility, right? So let's say you have the conversation. What I often hear as well is, okay, so we slept together and it was fabulous. What is fabulous sex? Like what is actually good sex versus bad sex? It tends to be that people feel that they've been able to lose themselves in the moment. So for that, however long it's gone on for, nothing else mattered.

9:24And they were completely present with that person in the moment. That's usually a great definition of sex being good. sometimes people will evaluate sex based on things like number of orgasms that's fine if that's how you want to do it but you know orgasms are not the be all and end all of good sex they matter but it might be that orgasms are easier to come by perhaps at the start of a relationship when there's lots of novelty lots of newness lots of difference high attraction, high arousal, high mystery and that might become more challenging over time. So good sex is really about being able to completely let yourself go with another person.

10:12So it was bad sex that you were focused the entire time I need to do this. It was very technical. Yes. Okay. Really bad sex. A sex where you felt you didn't want to be there and you struggled to end the encounter. And that's sometimes connected to all kinds of ideas in society that are unhelpful about things like you shouldn't lead someone on and then halfway through decide that you're not into it. This is a really unhelpful and actually painful idea for a lot of people because they find themselves, people of all genders, find themselves going along with sex that they don't want to be having. and that's going to lead to bad sex.

10:57Sex where you're not present, sex that's not pleasurable, sex that doesn't make you feel good afterwards. Those would be definitions of bad sex. Sex that's not good but is mediocre sex is often the type of sex where you're distracted the whole time. Being distracted during sex is actually really common for all of us. something like 92 % of people have non-sexual thoughts during sex. Did I turn the cooker off? What time is it? Have I missed match of the day? Exactly. My team is playing in five minutes. Exactly. Those thoughts are really common, really normal, nothing to worry about. But the opposite of being completely absorbed in the moment, which is this great sex we've talked about, is having a running commentary going through your head of all of the things you're thinking about or worrying about.

11:50So this could be things like, I've got to be up in five hours. We need to wrap this up soon. It could be things like, they're not enjoying themselves. What if I don't come? What if I can't stay hard? What do they think of my body? Those kinds of sex related worries are things that really affect people's experience of sex. And they are so, so common. They're much more common than being lost in the Wow, wow. What if you are experiencing those thoughts, second thoughts, concerns, but you're there for your partner?

12:46You can't do anything wrong. Right, nice. It doesn't feel like paying. Paying. With Visa, pay. Now, test it. And your partner is having, they're losing themselves in the moment. You know, is then that still a bad sexual experience because two people didn't mutually experience that euphoria? Yeah, I mean, I guess you'd both want to be lost in the moment. But you're never going to be at the same level with that because, you know, we've all had different days. You know, we're all in different head spaces all of the time. But you're right. You probably don't want a huge mismatch there. It would be unusual, I think, for one person to have completely lost themselves in the moment and not be tuned in to the fact that their partner isn't.

13:36It would take a particular kind of person to not really be concerned that their partner seems distracted. did. But we all become quite good at masking our distraction. You know, we know what noises to make, we know what faces to pull, and we perform sex to fool our partners sometimes into thinking that we are present and there. It's also, you know, okay to think about this as a continuum. And it's quite common for people when they're dating or whether in new sexual relationships, to not be able to lose themselves in the moment with that new partner. There's lots that's maybe good about it. It's highly erotic.

14:16It's new. It's got the mystery. You're really attracted to that person. You've not got any of the other context of, you know, the pets and the kids and the house and the mortgage to desexualize your relationship. So there's lots that's good about that. But actually in the start of a sexual relationship, we know that people often struggle to really let themselves go because they're worried about how the other person is evaluating them. So it's okay to go through peaks and troughs with this. That brings up this topic around safety. And is there any gender difference around feeling safe with a partner?

14:53And then how does that impact casual sex that you're talking about? Because oftentimes I've heard that in a lot of casual sex encounters that the pleasure rate is very low, in particular for women. It is. And I've heard that it's also associated with lack of safety, but maybe I'm off there. I think it is really important to think about the risk of sexual violence, particularly for women having sex with men. Of course, we know there are higher rates of sexual violence. And that is something which, of course, affects sense of safety, which then affects ability to be in the moment. Essential. But there's probably more to it than that with the orgasm gap in casual sexual encounters.

15:36So, of course, we know the orgasm gap is the different rates of orgasm when you have sex on your own, so masturbation, versus with a partner of a different gender. And we see particular trends in the orgasm gap. The biggest orgasm gap is when cis women have sex with cis men. So in heterosexual sex, we see a very large orgasm gap. The rates of orgasming alone for all genders is about 95%. But as soon as you have sex with another partner, if you're a woman, it drops unless you're having sex with a female partner. So women having sex with regular male partners can expect the orgasm rate to drop from 95 % to about 65%, whereas men's doesn't drop.

16:16And then with casual sex, it can drop down to as little as 8%. As little as 8%. 8%, 12%, 18%. Different research produces different stats. Huge orgasm gap. Yes. our social scripts magnify casual sexual encounters let me explain what i mean by that we have these ideas of what sex looks like we talked about it earlier sex is a penis in a vagina sex ends when men come women's orgasms are trickier than men's none of these things are true but these are ideas we hold in society um it's important for both people to orgasm is another idea that we hold in society. So when men and women particularly have sex together, we know that the sex that they have usually falls down to penis and vagina sex.

17:05And in casual sex, you see even less variation than you might see in more committed relationships. Because, you know, it might be just happening once. And so people might skip other types of sex. They might, you know, do, well, they might do the set route, the baseball analogy, you know, we do this, then this, than this, then we have penetrative sex. But we know that the penetrative sex bit is the type of sex that is least likely to result in pleasure and orgasm for women. So if you look at all the different types of sex that might produce pleasure and orgasm, and you ask people of different genders to rate them, men will rate penetrative sex up there at the top with masturbation as the most reliable to produce orgasm, and women will rate it at the bottom.

17:47Underneath, masturbation, a partner touching the clitoris with their hands or fingers and receiving oral sex and penitentiary sex is after that. So we know that only about 20 % of women can orgasm that way. And even then it's kind of indirect stimulation of the clitoris. So when the sex gets boiled down to that being the main course and very little around it, it's anatomically, it's just quite unlikely that women will orgasm, but it's not just about the orgasm gap. It's also about whose pleasure is prioritized. It's about women being socialized not to be too assertive sexually, not to feel able to ask for what they need, not to be able to say, hey, you know what?

18:28This is great, but I also need a vibrator if you want me to come. Women don't feel able to say that in casual sex. And so what happens is we have really high rates of faking orgasms, about 55 to 65 % of women fake orgasms regularly. In relationships? In relationships and in casual sex. And when we fake orgasms, what that does is create an illusion that actually women are orgasming in that type of sex, which then makes the next woman who comes along and says, actually, this isn't going to do it for me. Her partner says, well, that's not like all the other women I've had sex with. You must be unusual.

19:06so people don't say and it kind of maintains this orgasm gap over time so it's complex it's not anatomical that's the key message there is no difference in the time taken to orgasm by gender alone okay so women's orgasms aren't trickier they don't take longer they take the same number of minutes that men's orgasms do but if the uh if the women watching or listening reflect on how they produce orgasms alone, it looks quite different to this idea of what sex is in our society. It's very different. The clitoris is quite far away. When we stop using words like foreplay, virginity, and saying we did everything but to talk about sex, we're also giving an idea that we think sex is so much more than one particular sexual act, which allows the freedom to say, hey you know what I'd really like to have sex but the sex I'd like to have is oral sex yes or the sex I'd like you to have is you using your hands on me it's it's almost impossible for people to say that to each other a because we can't talk about sex and b because people feel they're abnormal there was a woman who had written in and she was in a relationship so she is she's in a marriage 16 years she said she's had four orgasms in 16 years the four came at the very beginning of the relationship she uses sex toys yeah but she fakes the orgasm with her husband countless i mean it's it's endless faking yeah you know it's it's what i think about that is i think gosh what you can't have the conversation with your husband but i understand what it must be incredibly shameful is is i mean what what what is what is preventing that conversation from happening yeah i mean i see this in therapy this is not an unusual situation i see this in therapy it's common um and it isn't just about having orgasms it's about all kinds of things i don't like the way they kiss i don't like the way they initiate sex it leaves me cold um i don't like the direction our sex life is going in and also not just from women, from people of all genders.

21:16But this issue around orgasms is one that crops up a lot. It's partly driven by a sense of not feeling normal. So that's one of the key factors. If you think about what you see on television, you see women orgasming from a few thrusts of vaginal penetration at the same time as men orgasm. That's what you see. That's what we've all had represented to us. I can't tell you the number of women that I've spoken to about this fact of anatomy, the fact that, you know, the clitoris and the penis are actually the same structure. You know, they developed in the womb and they went different directions. So having sex without your clitoris being involved is the equivalent for a man of having sex without your penis being involved.

22:03And it's our culture that's created an idea that it's okay to just forget that and do something quite different. But it's women that struggle to then think that they're not abnormal. So that sense of being abnormal is one of the things that keeps people quiet. There's also the maintaining of the status quo. how do I tell someone after decades that I've been lying about my orgasm all of this time? But it also does those partners a huge disservice because you're not communicating with them. What that might do, and in fact, what it does do, I see this all the time, is it impacts people's desire because sex needs to be enjoyable for us to feel motivated to do it.

22:52And orgasms are one of those ways that we enjoy it. So if you go on long enough without pleasure and orgasms, it's a bit like every time you go to work, you don't get paid or you don't get any other job satisfaction. You're just going to stop wanting to go to work. So that's something that then as a couple, you're contributing to that loss of desire, loss of sexual satisfaction for you both over time. I'm not saying it's easy. This conversation is not easy if you've been faking it for a long time. but it's it's part of a a cultural shift i think that we can start to talk about hey i've never been able to talk about this because i always thought it was me and for us to have a great sex life moving forward i really want that to change and that's a tough conversation but it's a necessary one yes i can't imagine how challenging that conversation would be uh being in a relationship but even if you are not yet in a full-blown relationship it sounds like what you're advocating is, is stop faking orgasms.

23:56There's no circumstance whatsoever where you should fake an orgasm. Yeah. I would love us all to normalize being able to talk about sex. We have this idea that sex is, I don't know, it's like some kind of water slide where, you know, you get on at the top and then you can't get off until you've splashed at the pool at the end. Right. And people feel that pressure, whether that's to go in and it comes all the way to penetrative sex or whether that's everybody used to orgasm for it to have been a good time. Let's normalize saying, you know what, we fooled around a bit and that's all I wanted tonight.

24:27And that was wonderful. Thanks so much. Let's go to sleep. Yes. And I would imagine too, that self-esteem and self-worth has to creep into this a little bit because we had a guest who, my gosh, I think she had numerous partners, numerous sexual partners, faked orgasms with all of them in an attempt to keep them in in her life. Yes. So people want to be good sexual partners, don't they? They want to be good in bed. There is no such thing as being good in bed. It's an absolute myth. None of us can be good in bed because sex isn't a skill like, I don't know, playing the violin that if you practice it enough, you'll become very accomplished at.

25:08It's not a skill. It's about being able to talk, listen understand share accept growth and so we can never be good at that we can only ever have the intention to do those things but people have an idea that they want to be good in bed they want to be a good sexual partner and because of that there's all kinds of things that they do to achieve that whether that's um feeling that they need to perform in bed feeling that their bodies need to look a certain way feeling that their body hair has to be a certain way feeling that they have to orgasm so they'll fake it just so that their partner feels good about the sexual encounter.

25:46It's all linked to this idea of being good in bed, which it's interesting. It was largely popularized, that idea, by the kind of really the advent of the kind of latter half of the last century in psychology when we talked about learning and skill. And we started to see that replicated in the magazines that we consume. If you think about the, I don't know, lads mags from the, or the mags aimed at women as well from like the nineties and noughties, it's all about how to be good in bed. Missing the point entirely of what sex is and what good sex is. It's not possible to give the perfect blowjob.

26:32Somebody else's version of oral sex will be different to the person that you were last with in terms of what they like and don't like. So all you can do is ask. And if you want to hear the full unfiltered stories from today's guest, you can check them out on the We Need to Talk page. Drop a like, leave a comment, and hit subscribe. See you next week.

27:04you