The SEX DOCTOR: Women's Orgasms - What You Didn't Know! Dr. Karen Gurney

30:30You don't feel connected to them. There's nothing erotic about the experience. They don't know anything else about how your body works. They've not asked you what kind of pleasure you want. that's not going to feel good. Your brain is going to turn down that. You're not going to feel as much physically. Okay. Or you could be having sex with somebody who you feel really connected with. It's really erotic. It's really fun. The dynamic between you is a dynamic you want, whether that's sensual, aggressive, romantic, whatever it is. It does it for you. When we're in that kind of scenario, our brain turns up what we can feel.

31:09and everyone will have had experiences of not being able to feel much in their bodies and everyone will have had experiences of the slightest touch setting us on fire penis size is absolutely irrelevant because what's happening for us sexually is not just about the physical sensations that are produced from something touching something else that that touch that i feel there is being mediated by my brain and I'll feel a different touch if you touched my hand that and I was like oh I'm happy for Paul to touch my hand or if someone I didn't like touched my hand it would all feel different all right so I'm Jamaican and all the time it's like all right Jamaican you know you must have and this is a joke this is this is a it's it's a joke but then there's this it's not a joke as well it's not yeah so why are we so obsessed with penis size why are we so obsessed with penis size i mean i guess it's um there's lots of things about body image and the sexualization of body image that we're obsessed with also like breast size or waist to hip ratio or you know there's quite a lot of things like that muscle mass that we idealize and pinnacle and maybe it also comes from an idea that um because sex used to be seen as just about penetration and we didn't know then what we know now from sex science about what really makes a difference to sexual experience i.e it's not just about the body and anatomy but it's about the whole experience um perhaps that's one of the reasons why but it does upset me a lot actually like penis size jokes do really upset me because I see the impact of those jokes on the men that come and see me that are desperately worried about the size of their penis and see it as something that really matters maybe they're even avoiding sex and relationships which is when you think about what we've just spoken about is is I don't know it's just so sad and you know stereotypes based on race as well I think, you know, I'm glad you raised that because I think that's another thing that, you know, people make jokes about these things, as you say.

33:30But there's a lot of over-sexualization of certain people, certain groups based on these ideas. You know, ideas of certain groups of people being more submissive because of the color of skin. Certain numbers of people having more sexual prowess. And it's all racism, actually, kind of tied up within the sexual realm. And it means that people then go into their sexual encounter sometimes being fetishized. Yes. But Karen, I have a question. So what about the G spot? Yes. OK. The pelvic area is rich in nerves and sensation. and there's lots and lots of parts of the pelvic area for people with all body shapes that produce erotic sensation.

34:20So although we might say that the main pleasure centers are located within the glands, so that's the glands of the penis and the glands of the clitoris, there are lots of other parts of the body that also produce pleasure. So we have the prostate. For people who have a prostate, people assign male at birth, So that might be really pleasurable if you receive anal penetration from someone. And it's important to say that lots of men who identify as straight enjoy and they should absolutely enjoy the pleasure that comes from having the prostate simulated. It's not about sexuality. Yeah. You know, that's there.

34:58That pleasure giving part is there. It's not connected to sexuality at all. Yeah. All right. And we are going to go fully there. The G-spot, as it used to be called, it's now, there's a very long scientific name for it, which is like clitoral euthrial complex. It's a very long and less sexy name. Essentially, what it means is an area on the front wall of the vagina, maybe a half to two thirds up, where the clitoris, which I don't know if you've seen a picture of it, it's like a wishbone. Yes. Yeah. So where the clitoris branches out, that bit runs past there. So basically what you're going to get is the clitoris is a very large structure under the skin.

35:43It's around about five to seven centimeters in length. And you can't see most of it. Most of it is hidden in the pelvic area. when we become turned on the clitoris fills with blood just like the penis and becomes erect when it's erect sometimes internal stimulation can stimulate it indirectly okay so we believe that that's probably what people used to talk about when they talked about the g-spot and the people that do have orgasms from vaginal penetration it may well be that it's that part of the body it's still the clitoris just indirectly getting stimulated okay but you said it's a you said half an inch to yeah it's so penis once again nothing it seems as if and maybe because we're more openly talking about sex perhaps there's a rise of fetishes now is are you feeling that or not necessarily seen that backed up in any research but i think you're right i think it's probably that we're talking more about the things that we're into you know porn in itself is not inherently harmful but mainstream porn can be misogynistic and problematic and all kinds of things but But one of the things that mainstream porn, I think, has brought into today's sexual conversation is that there are quite a lot of niches.

36:57And I think people maybe find their niches in a way that they may not maybe didn't find them before when all you could get was like a magazine in the end that the shop at the end of the road that had some, you know, pictures of people in it. It didn't have, you know, people that are into this and this and this. And one of the things that our brains do around sex is they search for novelty. And so we might find ourselves looking into quite niche things and then discover, actually, that's something that I'm quite into. And that's probably what it's about, a change in the conversation. So is pornography good or bad?

37:38It's a bit like saying, is social media good or bad? It depends. It depends on what you're consuming. It depends on your relationship with it. It depends on how it makes you feel. Pornography in some way, shape or form has been around as long as humans have. So it's not new. You know, we know that we were looking at explicit images and creating explicit images, you know, as long as we've been humans. So it's very much part of what we're interested in. Can I ask, what was the first explicit image? I imagine it was a cave painting, but I'm not sure I could say when the first one is. But even if you look at kind of ancient Egypt, if you look at other parts of the world, you'll find representations of what we might call pornography.

38:27Wow. And you'll see that in all cultures all over the world. It's very much part of what humans do and are interested in. I would say that there is a bit of a cultural panic about pornography and there are quite a lot of misconceptions about it being addictive and it's not addictive. there are certainly people who find themselves watching more pornography than they would like to or only feeling comfortable with pornography and not feeling comfortable with a real life partner but that's not the same as something being addictive does that make sense yes um it meets a need it's easier it has less anxiety attached to it you don't have to communicate what you want you can go straight to the thing that you want without having to navigate that with somebody else that's a lot easier we're going to talk about communication later i'm sure um and it's harmful if it's your only way of learning about sex so there's a lot of panic about young people learning about what sex is through pornography and there absolutely should be because it's not real sex and it doesn't show a great depiction if you're accessing free mainstream pornography and of course there are other types of pornography that are more ethically produced and show much more diversity consent respect and are still hot and sexy but if that's what you're accessing to learn about what sex is that's a problem but that's not a problem with pornography that's a problem with poor sex education because it's like and this isn't this isn't my um my quote and i'm sorry that i can't remember whose idea this was but uh the quote that you know you don't learn to drive from watching Fast and Furious and you shouldn't learn to have sex by watching pornography.

40:15You know, can you imagine if we sat teenagers down and showed them a car chase film and said, this is driving. So it's not pornography, it's everything that surrounds it. And there's some fascinating research about, you know, the people that feel more out of control with pornography are the people who feel the most shame about pornography. They're not the people watching it more. If people come to a clinic like mine and say, I feel addicted to porn, it's often because they feel shame and guilt around porn, not that they're consuming it more than the person next to them. I often hear people debate if pornography is good or bad.

40:53And so I appreciate Karen's expert answer. She makes it clear that the pros or cons of pornography depend on how you engage with it. Explicit content has been part of human history reflecting our curiosity. But problems arise when people, especially young people, use porn as their only source of sex education. Mainstream porn often doesn't depict realistic or respectful relationships. The key is better sex education to set healthy, realistic expectations for real-life connections. Sex today versus sex when our grandparents were having it. Okay. I always feel as if we're having more sex today. That's how it feels.

41:38You're looking around, you're watching television, right? It feels like we're having more sex today. But I'm completely wrong, aren't I? Yes. We're having less sex now than we did a decade ago or the decade before that. We don't have the data going back before that, but we might guess it was similar. And that's data that holds up all around the world. So we're having less sex than we were before. we don't exactly know the reasons for that because obviously you know we can't look into every every variable but the suspicion that we have and I feel this quite strongly is that it's about the lives that we lead now so we're much more distracted we're much busier we spend a lot more time interacting with technology um something like eight or nine hours a day a typical person in the UK is spending time looking at a screen or a device which if you think about it is drastically different from in our grandparents day um we pick up our phone every 12 minutes so we probably give our phone more eye contact than we give our partners um it's probably linked to this and I should just say this quickly to ideas about how desire works because we we often have an idea in our society that desire is present as a drive like hunger or thirst and therefore we should just feel like sex but it's probably important for people to know that desire is something that emerges out of a certain set of contexts and those contexts might be feeling connected to a partner physical contact with a partner um feeling relaxed and content with ourselves perhaps having time on our hands and technology stops us doing all of those things so in terms of amount of sex it's declined whether we could say that the quality of sex has declined we don't know i would hazard a guess the quality of sex has improved and that people i mean don't get me wrong we've got a long way to go so far the orgasm gap is testament to that but i would say that the expectation of sex being something that should bring pleasure, that people should feel consent as part of the process, that people should feel agency and autonomy and should have freedom to have the sex that they want with whoever they want, that's very different to our grandparents' day.

44:06And long may that continue. But, Paul, we've got such a long way to go. Oh, my God. So just on the orgasm note, too, and frequency of sexes, so you're suggesting that the orgasm gap has actually decreased. So do you think it was worse? Oh, I mean, that's a great question that I don't have data for, but I would guess so, yes. Great. What could it have been? I mean, that's only speculation because we don't have any, well, we do have a bit of data actually from the kind of 50s era, Kinsey and Masters and Johnson era, but not as rigorous as the data we have now. So you can't compare it directly. But I would guess that people are having better sex now.

44:47And it could be one of the hypotheses about why we're having less sex now than we did 30 years ago is that we're more able to say no. And particularly women are more able to say no. And of course, that's a good thing. So it could be that the drop in the sex that we're having is a good move, a good turn in events in terms of the social milieu. But we don't know. We don't know. We don't know where we'll be in 30 years time. We might only be having sex with robots. I think this is where we're going. I think it's possible because you don't need to do the advanced communication with robots. Yeah, absolutely.

45:24I see it all the time with regard to AI being embedded into dating apps and chatbots and the propensity of people to fall in love with a chatbot now. Absolutely. And to your point of 95 % of, and I know sex is not about an orgasm, but if you can get an orgasm 95 % of the time masturbating, or with a tool, then why do you need anyone else? Why would you have another person? Why would you have another person? Absolutely. I really think that we will see a shift towards people's sex lives becoming more digital and connected to AI more than they are now. And I think for many people, that might be a really good and positive move for them.

46:12And I think we're not going to know what it does for the majority of people. until it's already happened. I think, you know, even now in my clinic, I see a difference in generations of younger generations feeling sometimes less confident to approach partners, to navigate what they want sexually, to be able to have the communication that they might need in a sexual encounter. And maybe in decades before, there wouldn't have been an option to automate that you know just get what you need from porn just what get what you need from a chat bot but now there is and so in some ways there's less incentive to kind of push through that and challenge yourself I suppose to develop those skills yes and I don't want to put a value judgment on it because people should be able to do whatever they want with their sex lives and if you enjoy sex with a robot and are happy with solo sex that could be perfectly right for you but it's just a really interesting cultural change.

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49:35you were the first person that i heard talk about this and i went and did some research around it and is it has blown my mind is the kinsey scale yes so could you describe what this scale is and and and then i'll give my opinion as to why it blows my mind to this day so probably before um alfred kinsey who for people that don't know was a kind of real pivotal sexual sex researcher in the States in the kind of 40s, 50s era. And Kinsey was the first person to take, I suppose, the study of science and apply it to sex. So before that, people had talked about sex. People like Freud were talking about sex, but they were talking about it from a kind of psychoanalytic framework.

50:21So not necessarily based in science and experiments, but based in theories and hypotheses. But Kinsey was the first person to say, well, let's look at it scientifically let's survey what people do and there were lots of things that Kinsey found out that were mind-blowing to the scientists of the time one of them was people's definitions of their own sexuality because I suppose at that time there was an idea that people were either straight or gay yes and very little thought to whether there may be any fluidity within that. So black and white, straight or gay. And what Kinsey found through his research was that actually it was more likely that the majority of people sat somewhere in the middle.

51:07If you think about a bell-shaped curve, you know, with small amounts of people being on either end and a majority of people sitting somewhere in the middle. And that was mind-blowing to America at the time. And in fact, very sadly, Kinsey had his funding pulled. Really? Because it wasn't just about the Kinsey scale, there were other things as well. But his work was so advanced at the time that it was seen to be damaging to the values, the family values of America. It explains things like, for example, there are many women in relationships with men that are quite happy in their relationships with men and enjoying sex with men, but exclusively fantasize about sex with other women.

51:50Yes. And vice versa with men as well. What's interesting about sexuality is that it is a spectrum, but because we have an idea in society that heterosexuality is normal and best, which of course it isn't, but that idea is very strong, people will usually pick a part of the scale that's more socially acceptable. Exactly. And so there may be a lot of people out there who might sometimes get turned on by the thought of sex with someone with the same body parts to them. If we were all free to explore our sexuality without that dominant cultural narrative, we would probably see much more variation than we do now.

52:30Right. And this is why, to me, this is incredibly sad. How many people identify as straight? Oh, in the population? In the population. Or like 90 percent? Yeah, 90 something percent. So you have one huge group right here at one end. And unfortunately, they're not accepting their true identity. Yeah. Right. And so you think about the psychological consequence. And the sexual consequence as well, right? So those people, they might be able to have sex with the partner that they're with. And that's, you know, not abhorrent to them. But actually, there could be a whole other set of sexual experiences out there that may give them more sexual satisfaction, more pleasure, more desire that they're closing their mind to.

53:19And that's shifting, which is great. I think, you know, there's, again, there's a long way to go. But I think people are much more comfortable. And certainly in younger generations, we see this, which is wonderful. Younger generations are much more fluid in their definitions of their sexuality and much less invested in an idea that they have to be straight. Yes. Yes. So we've talked a lot already about how to have sex. But now I want to unpack how to have sex. OK. Right. The Karen Gurney guide of how to have sex. There's no guide. That's the point. That's right. There's no rules. but I feel as if one part of the canvas though is uh you talk about sexual currency you've already alluded to this this is a this is part of the communication so can you describe sexual currency uh because it's interesting as as I started looking at this I thought to myself how strong is the currency that my wife and I have and and I and I looked and I thought I don't know how strong their currency is you know so so what is sexual currency and why is it so important so my definition of sexual currency and it's a term i came up with in in my first book mind the gap is about the sexual charge between you and your sexual partner not acts of sex so not what's happening when you're having sex which let's be honest is a very small amount of time in your month or year isn't it if about it the actual having sex bit no matter what a sexual act it is it's a very small amount of time is that our sex life that tiny amount of time no it's not our sex life is always happening it's not an on-off switch it's so we've not got a sexual relationship with our partner and then we have sex and we're having a sexual relationship we've always got a sexual relationship with our partner and that's the sexual currency how much charge is between us so what you'll see when you watch a couple who are newly together are very high levels of sexual currency.

55:18So what this means is all of the things that they're doing that they wouldn't do with a friend or relative, eye gazing, flirting, sexual compliments, bum grabs, sex texts, sending pictures, suggestive comments, talking about what they want to do. All of those things are sexual currency. passionate kissing okay really important one okay um and we see really high levels of sexual currency at the start of a relationship um then sexual currency tends to decline as we fall into other less sexual ways of relating and it's not a coincidence that levels of spontaneous desire often fall at that same time as well because what sexual currency does is it it provides us with a context to spark desire.

56:12So if we have a passionate kiss for the sake of a passionate kiss, we might not have felt aroused or desire before the kiss. But sometimes if the stars are aligned and the circumstances are right and we're not too distracted and the kids aren't screaming, that might well trigger desire. Does that make sense? Yes. So what happens the longer that we're with someone, and I see this all the time in therapy, is that that sexual currency starts to diminish, perhaps to the point of zero. So we've got months and months of nothing. It's have you had a nice day? Peck on the cheek. Have you put the bins out?

56:52Such and such has got the math homework due in tomorrow. And that's it. And then all of a sudden, this couple wants to transition into having sex. How do they do it? What do they do without sexual currency? Yeah. What do they do? they either have to come straight out with it and say do you want to have sex which will feel very dramatically different to how they've related for the last couple of weeks a couple of months and it will feel awkward and it will feel jarring and they'll feel like they don't know where to start so sexual currency is something that is about the culture of our relationship we can change cultures because we do it all the time right and i gave an example in this my latest book how not to let having kids ruin your sex life um that it's just like when we all started to recycle like at first it was really awkward and we were like what goes where and i keep putting things in the wrong bin i keep forgetting to do it but now we've created a culture shift just by doing it regularly and we now recycle automatically so we can have sexual currency feature as much or as little as we want in our relationship even if we're past those first heady 18 months just by being intentional that this is a culture we want to invest in and create.

58:08And, you know, I was listening to your episode with the Gottmans recently, who are, you know, wonderful. I reference them in my books and they talk about the six second kiss. Yes. So great example of sexual currency, building in a practice of we will have a six second kiss and we will be absorbed in each other in that moment. It's not about initiating sex. it's about marking each other out as you're my sexual partner i'm attracted to you i see you in this way i want to have this relationship with you the more sexual currency we have the easier it is to transition into sex because you've got high levels of sexual relating these are the couples who i see in the therapy room they can go from putting the online shop away to kissing passionately against the fridge that's easy for them because they do it regularly it's not awkward it's not weird it's what they do versus the couple i mentioned earlier who don't have any sexual currency and then they want to get sex going but how do they do that because as soon as they reach to their partner and touch them or kiss them in a way that they haven't done for the last four months right their partner goes what are you doing right i know what you want and i'm not feeling desire right now because this is all totally out the blue and I don't feel that way about you because we just don't relate that way and it becomes really high stakes and when sex becomes high stakes it becomes high pressure and pressure is an absolute desire killer okay this makes sense so I think I had misunderstood so so sexual currency in in almost an essence is how emotionally close you are to sexually close i would even go so far as to say sexually close you know it's it's the things you wouldn't do with your child so you think about your child you know you'll you'll kiss them you'll hug them on the sofa you'll be physically affectionate um this is the stuff that you would only do with a sexual partner it's saying um i give an example in my book of a couple that they're at their nct group and he gets text and he looks he looks at his phone and she's mid conversation with someone else the other side of the room and she looks up at him and it says you are by far the hottest man in the room with a flame emoji that's sexual currency yes he feels desired by her they've got that secret between them it's the kind of thing you would do at the beginning yes it doesn't take a long time it doesn't need to fade in a long-term relationship Karen you have to give us what are the what are some top ways to create sexual currency I mean The text, that's hot.

1:00:48Yeah, the text saying, you know, people love to hear they look nice, right? Oh, you look really nice in that top today, but they want to hear that they look hot. Yes. That's what they want to hear. If we don't, we all need that. We all want to feel desired. If we don't get that in our relationship, sometimes we're vulnerable to getting that elsewhere. So we want to think about what do we want to feel and how can we provide that? So it's the text. It's you look hot. It's sending them a song on your phone and saying, do you remember the night we had to this song? When I hear this song, I think about when we did X.

1:01:21It's passionate kissing. Passionate kissing is one of the biggest things. It often drops off in a long-term relationship unless it's part of sex. If you're watching or listening now and you only passionately kiss, either to initiate sex or during sex, change that up. Yes. Make it. Be intentional. Say to your partner, I was listening to this podcast. You know, we need to talk with Paul Brunson. It's amazing. You should listen to it. And they were saying that passionate kissing is a gateway drug to desire. It's a gateway drug to desire. Yeah, that's my new favorite phrase. I love that. Sexual currency is a concept that's new to me.

1:02:01It's what Dr. Gurney says is the ongoing charge between you and your partner, not just during sex, but in everyday interactions. It's what keeps passion alive in a relationship, from flirty texts to a lingering eye contact and passionate kisses. Over time, couples often lose the spark, yet it's easily rekindled with intentional acts like the Gottman six-second kiss or a quick text to remind your partner they're still the hottest one in the room. Small gestures build desire and connection, making sexual currency a powerful habit to invest in for long-term intimacy. Thank you. And I would also imagine that creating an alluring invitation to sex means making sure that anything that could destroy sex goes away.

1:02:49like you're a chihuahua that keeps jumping on the bed yes i think we might have talked about this before you and i but i discovered this not from sex research which is where i get most of my information but from my so my instagram followers when i was talking with them i did a poll on what gets in the way of their sex lives an incredible number of people said pets in the bedroom and then i did a series of posts on it and i discovered it's a thing i don't have any pets right so i know about this and the research doesn't talk about it either maybe i'll do some research on it but it turns out that a lot of people are distracted or put off by their pets in the corner of the room whether they want to come in or out whether they're watching whether they're trying to get involved all of that i i can attest to this you've got a pet i have see this little one right there where is he he's uh he's in this little photo he's a chihuahua super small what's he called his name is peter gabriel peter gabriel peter gabriel so peter gabriel lives with my wife and i like literally wherever we go he's with us he jumps in the bed and he's not just on top of the cover he's under the covers yeah and he will not go to anyone else no but but us it's a problem it's it's a massive problem he's sitting there he's staring at us and pets are a bit like bit like children aren't they for all of us you know people that have got pets they're like another a member of the family they're like a child you don't really want them watching getting involved i've this is terrible but i i have picked him up and i brought him to the to the to the bathroom i said all right look peter cabrini here's your wife here i'm gonna close the door here's a bone stay here and then you know what you hear which is distracting the door it's terrible remember we talked earlier about good sex as being in the moment anything that pulls us out of the moment And that could be hearing the pet scratching, thinking you've heard one of the kids get up, thinking about work the next day.

1:04:42Those are all things that pull us out of the moment. So the more we can do to reduce those distractions, the better for our sexual response. So that means arousal, desire, the way our body works, orgasms. All of those things are better when we are absorbed in the moment. OK. You know what, Karen? Never get a pet. I won't. Never get a pet. We actually have a hamster called Taco. But Taco obviously isn't in a cage in a completely different part of the house. It's fine. It's fine. I heard you once say that the best thing for our sex life is a good night's sleep. It's a great thing for our sex life, yeah.

1:05:18I mean, there are so many things that are good for our sex life. Talking about sex, getting a good night's sleep, feeling good about our bodies, emotional intimacy in our relationship if we're having sex with someone we know well. being aware of the types of things that work for us sexually and being able to communicate that to a partner, particularly if they're a new one. But yes, sleep is important. Sure. So how often should we be having sex? The million dollar question that, isn't it? Yes. And people are obsessed with the amount of sex that they should be having. I would like to, before we talk about numbers, to just say that sex science tells us that the frequency of sex is completely irrelevant to sexual satisfaction.

1:06:10So what that means is that there is no relationship between frequency and good sex or a good sex life. um that's really important because in our society we're so hung up on frequency as the yardstick of a good sex life that you'll hear people talk about that they'll say oh we have sex this many times a month they don't tell you whether they have great sex life-affirming sex sex that they lose themselves in sex that's high in pleasure and reward they don't tell you that they're just telling you how often they could be having the worst sex where they're distracted sex yeah where peter gabriel's walking in you know all of that so frequency is a total red herring but i think it is still useful to talk about numbers because although there is huge variation in the amount of sex that people have and although it doesn't mean anything because quantity and quality are completely different things i find that people are very hung up on the on a number and it's usually a number that's much higher than what we know to be the average so when i ask people in therapy how often do you feel like you should be having sex because everyone always comes because they want more sex people sometimes come because they want less but it's it's not as common people usually it's the number one reason people come to sex therapy because they think they should be having more sex and I'll ask them how much sex do you think you should be having and they'll say oh I don't know it's always the same maybe three times a week they'll always say that three times a week no idea where that's come from it's some kind of like societal myth I know three is the magic number i don't know but they'll always say that and that's not what they want that's just what they think they should be doing sure sure um it's fine if they want to have sex three times a week but usually it's this is what i should be doing this is what's normal that's driving that what we actually know from large-scale sex research and we have the biggest um sex census actually happens in the uk and that happens anywhere in the world and it's called natsal and it happens every 10 years.

1:08:12And what we know from Natsal data is that actually it's more like a bit less than once a week is the average. If you're in the kind of 35 to 45 year old age category, it's much more likely to be about twice a month. Wow. And that there are a third of people under the age of mid 40s who haven't had any sex at all in the last month. So it's also quite normal to not be having much sex at all. And I find that this is often quite reassuring to people who've got an idea that they're not having sex enough. But I would say take those numbers really with a pinch of salt, because if you're having sex three times a month, which we're saying is the average in the UK for people of all ages, and that sex that you're having isn't good sex, that's actually worse for your sex life than having sex once a year that's great sex.

1:09:12So really just forget about numbers. It doesn't matter. But when you say having sex once a year that's great is better than having sex three times a month. Absolutely. I think that's startling to a lot of people. Sex once a year that blows your socks off is a better sex life than sex three times a month that's average. because remember our sex life is not an on-off switch that's defined by those minutes when we're having sex. It might be that this person who's having sex once a year has got a whole year characterized by lots and lots of sexual currency and they feel very connected as a sexual couple.

1:09:53But in terms of acts of sex, they don't do that that often because they don't need it because they feel sexually connected without it. Right, because they have that. And I think also what we get caught up in is not only frequency, but also duration. Yeah, duration. This seems to be a massive thing. Yeah, so strange, isn't it? So I would imagine that duration is insignificant to you. Yeah, and it's insignificant, although it's quite interesting. I wrote about this in the How to Not Let Having Kids Ruin Your Sex Life book, because I talk about quickies as a potential strategy if you're time poor.

1:10:31But I say, be aware of the quickie if one person's pleasure is going to be sacrificed for another's. Interesting. So you're advocating for the quickie in certain... A quickie can be great if you're time poor. Because a lot of people get into an idea that, you know, sex has got to last a certain amount of time. A quickie can be great. And of course, it doesn't have to be penitentiary sex, something sexual. but it's what we know is that when women and men have sex together sometimes the quicker it is the less likely she is to experience pleasure so a quickie is good if you can privilege both people's pleasure but if you can't then a quickie is actually bad but some really interesting stats actually about the average length of time that people spend having sex and a fascinating fact is that women who have sex with women have sex sessions that last between 50 minutes and an hour.

1:11:23And women who have sex with men have sex sessions that last about 18 minutes. So it's actually three times as long. So some of the advice that I give to the lesbian couples that I work with is it doesn't need to go on for days. Let's just speed it up a bit. Because what I'm calculating is that's the average. 50 minutes is the average. It's the average. So you're talking about two, three hours. some people are going. And then, you know, people come to therapy and they say, we don't feel we're having sex enough. I'm like, yeah, but the sex you're having is lasting three times. You just can't, you know, you can't compare.

1:11:56But it's about what works for individuals. And for some people, they love to lose themselves in a long sex session. For other people, that's prohibitive because they haven't got the time. And so it might be finding ways to speed things up a little bit. Make it one-sided. Yes. Make it just about one person's pleasure and orgasm. It doesn't have to be touched to both people's body. Use sex toys. Sex toys are great to speed it up because they often work to give people the stimulation that they need. And that makes it more achievable to fit in. So, yeah, sometimes if you've got time restrictions, particularly for parents, you've got to think outside the box for how can we make this work for us and still make it time efficient.

1:12:42Right, right. I love it. I love it. All right. So a big topic for many people in a relationship is how do they keep the flame going? Right. And in particular is what are things that couples can do to increase that intimacy? Now, sexual currency clearly is one. The invitation. Yes. I've got the invitation down. I'm going to report back to you on the invitation. What are some other things that we can do to increase it, especially if it's reached a place where we're no longer having any sex with our partner? Yeah. I think one of the things we need to do is understand what the flame is. What do we mean by the flame?

1:13:21And I alluded to this earlier, but we know that the longer we're with someone, the more realistic it is that we won't experience out of the blue desire. So if we're talking about the flame being feeling like sex out of the blue, people need to first know that it's normal for that to decrease the longer we're together. Okay. And is the technical term spontaneous desire? Spontaneous desire, yeah. Which basically means, you know, you're just feeling like having sex out of the blue. You have it a lot at the start of a relationship and then it diminishes. We know that it diminishes so much, particularly for women, but not exclusively women, for lots of men too.

1:14:01And if you're thinking of that as desire and the only way of experiencing desire, you're going to be waiting a long time to feel like sex. It's useful for people to know then that the flame is also something that you can nurture and you can nurture it and experience what we call responsive desire. It's no different than spontaneous desire. It's just like stoking the fire instead of the fire spontaneously setting itself alight. We can stoke this fire and create responsive desire within ourselves by thinking about sex, engaging with sex, you know, reading, listening to erotic literature, connecting with our sexuality alone.

1:14:48so that will often trigger desire good sex scenes on TV erotic literature erotic audio porn these are all things that kickstart desire for us and if people aren't convinced they need to experiment with that on their own what happens if you do that what happened do you notice desire and people probably will but we can also nurture that as a partnership so we can nurture that by sexual currency sexual currency is basically stoking the fire okay um but we can also think about what else in our couple relationship supports or diminishes our interest in sex and sometimes it's about relationship dynamics so it might be about too much or too little intimacy so for some couples they need some separation they need to see each other from a distance i I don't know if you're familiar with Esther Perel's work, but she writes really eloquently about the idea of what happens when we see our partners from afar.

1:15:50Yes. And for some couples, that's exactly what they need. For others, actually, it's about creating distance. They're almost too intimate. There's no separation. There's no mystery. There's nothing that they don't know about each other. and so that might be an emotional intervention that they might bring in and then there are some really interesting things as well that have emerged out of sex research that you would never expect I know just really interesting things that we know support a good sex life that on the surface seem nothing to do with sex so one of them is conscientiousness which is possibly one of the most unsexy personality trait.

1:16:37Even saying it. Conscientiousness. Basically, it's obviously one of the big five personality traits. And sex researchers found that conscientiousness, people that are conscientious tend to have good sex lives. So that's people that like to plan, like to think in advance, like to kind of look at everything and think carefully about how to proceed. And the main reason for this is that we know keeping a flame going requires intentional action. So if you are somebody who thinks, well, I love this person and I'm attracted to them and therefore we're always going to have a good sex life, you're probably wrong.

1:17:17That actually a good sex life requires intentional action. And just like, you know, if you're really fit in your 20s and you enjoy exercise, you're not going to keep that by not doing anything about it. You have to nurture it by working out, going to the gym, doing whatever you do to feel good about yourself and stay fit. So conscientiousness helps people do that. So one of the things that people can do to nurture the flame is think, is a good sex life important to us? Do we think it's important? and it often is important in relationship satisfaction, what do we want to do to nurture it? We have this much time, a week or a month.

1:17:59Do we want to put aside some of this time to say, let's intentionally create a situation where we have emotional and physical intimacy because we know that the flame comes out of that. The flame is nurtured by doing that. What happens if you don't create that intentional action is that, number one, there's nothing to fan the flame. Number two, you might find yourself on a trajectory for your sex life that's deeply unfavorable. And years or decades later, I think, how did we end up here? Which seems like that's the route that so many couples go in. So many. And it's partly because of this myth that desire is a drive that we all feel like hunger or thirst, and we should just feel the spontaneous desire.

1:18:44it's completely not backed up by sex science. The concept of desire is a drive, the flame is eternal and everlasting. It's not backed up at all. So if you're choosing a relationship structure like monogamy, there's nothing wrong with monogamy. If you're choosing that structure, you're essentially choosing predictability in sexual partner. They're going to remain the same And so you have to do something to keep that sex good, interesting, room for growth, diverse, unpredictable and nurture it. So conscientiousness is a funny one. Yes. Yeah. But but but makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. It makes sense.

1:19:24But but the antithesis of what you would think, you know, you think the conscientious, the conscientious one is maybe not the the cool. Yeah. You know, that bad one. It doesn't sound so sexy. It doesn't sound sexy. But it is because it's the couple. You know, this is when sex researchers look at what makes a good sex life last the distance of time and what makes desire last the distance of time. These two things come up all the time. Being able to talk about sex and putting intentional nurturing into your sex life. These are the two things that maintain desire over time with the same person. Is this where the self-expansion comes in?

1:20:05Yes, that was going to be my next one. So this is the other strange thing. We know that when couples do something that is novel or fun or interesting together, that pushes their comfort levels or boundaries a little bit. So I'm not talking about sex here. I'm talking about things like, I don't know, instead of washing masks, I'm going to use maths every time. We're going to sit at home and we're going to draw a portrait of each other and we're going to have fun doing it. Or we're going to plan a road trip across the UK. Or we're going to go and watch a show that we've never seen before. Or we're going to do something.

1:20:47We're going to go rock climbing. Yes. Something that neither person is comfortable or familiar with. It's no good if one is an artist and the other one's not. That's not fun. OK, it's got to be something that pushes you both out of your comfort zone. This is called self-expansion activities. And this came out of some research in the US and Canada with some sex researchers that realised that what happened in relationships was this added to the quality of relationships. And they wondered, what would it do for sex? and they actually found that people that spent time on self-expansion activities in their spare time with their partner were more likely to have sex and more likely to maintain desire than people that didn't.

1:21:31If you're time poor then self-expansion activities are even more potent and it doesn't have to take a lot of time so one of the things I write about in the latest book is how people can structure their month if they're time poor and they want to think about what can we practically do to have a better sex life? We're talking about a couple of minutes a month of increasing sexual currency. We're talking about maybe one night a month of prioritizing emotional and physical intimacy. You know, that's the bath and massage, being in bed together, talking about your day that might trigger desire. And we're talking about maybe one night a month of turning off the TV and self-expansion activities.

1:22:13You don't need a babysitter. You can do stuff at home it's not masses of time to set your sex life on the course that you want it to be on even if all you're doing is getting through the challenging period of your life busyness stress parenthood whatever it is it doesn't take much time but for a lot of people they make the mistake of thinking well i'm spending loads of time with my partner because we sit and watch netflix together every night but you're not but you're not you're parallel you're doing parallel activities not communicating no this this all makes sense and and to me it also suggests that by doing all of these things that our sex life can actually become stronger over time which is counter to the myth is that it plateaus and falls off absolutely i'm glad you raised that because you know i talk a lot about sexual challenges and sexual problems but it's absolutely possible to have a sex life with the same person if you're choosing to be monogamous and that is the challenging scenario same person for years and years so if we go with that example it's possible to have a great sex life that lasts the distance of time that allows both of you to grow change develop accounts for changes to your body, changes to your sexuality, changes to your sexual interests, and becomes more and more satisfactory the longer you do it.

1:23:41Right. It's absolutely possible, but it doesn't happen without intentional action. It doesn't happen by not paying attention to it. Yes. So then what happens if you're with a partner who decides they're not going to put forth any intention? Yeah. No self-expansion. There's no sexual currency in the relationship. You've had the conversation over and over again, and they say, well, this is the way that it is. Is not having sex grounds to leave a relationship? So this does happen, and it happens quite a lot for people. And I get a lot of messages on Instagram. Obviously, I can't read them all, but I get lots of that.

1:24:24I see where people say, I have read your books. I understand this. I want to put it into action. And my partner is not interested. And it is heartbreaking for people because sex is something that happens often between us and another person and other people. We can't do all the change alone. It just doesn't work like that. It requires everyone that's involved to be involved in the solution. at that point people have to make a call you know is there anything else they can try is the first thing and i would say a conversation where you say this is what i want this is what impact i think it would have on me and on you and on us so you're giving the rationale why it's important this is what i worry will be the consequences if we don't do this over to you you know you have to really set the case of this is why it matters yes for people to really hear that but sometimes people still can't hear that and they still don't have an interest in joining you on that journey and then people have a choice to make how important is sex to me how important is sexual satisfaction it is absolutely grounds for leaving a relationship and um sometimes the work that i do is permission giving for people to say, it's okay.

1:25:50Like, you only live once. And we talked at the very beginning about how, for some people, sex is really important. It makes them feel good. It makes them feel alive. It's life-affirming. Is it okay for them to go their whole lives without that part of themselves being actualised? For other people, where it matters less, perhaps they make the call that everything else is good enough, that they're going to just stay, even though their sex life is lacking. So it's a very individual call. But I think it is important to give permission to say to people, it usually does matter. It isn't just a frivolous recreational pursuit that has no meaning.

1:26:34It's about our psychology. It's about our identity. It's about how we feel in relationships. It's about feeling alive so why not have that for yourself for some people they have what we call destiny beliefs so the idea that they there is a soulmate and you shouldn't have to work at it and this person will be your everything and if something goes wrong it can be disastrous to those people and it can be really difficult for them to be open to the idea of doing the work because they kind of feel like I shouldn't have to do work because if you were my soulmate, we wouldn't need to do the work. And the other group of people, if we split them into two, the other concept is growth beliefs.

1:27:21So this is ideas that people can work at something and can get better at something together or can become more aligned. And obviously people might have a mixture of these two or they may go through different phases of their life and feel different things. but sometimes the dilemma that you're talking about is because one person is team growth and the other is team destiny yes and the person with the growth beliefs is saying look we can change this we can do something about it and the other person is like we shouldn't have to work at it and we shouldn't have to try sometimes the way in there is for the person with the growth beliefs to hold the optimism and say, look, I know that this isn't something that you feel super optimistic about because you see it this way, but why don't we just experiment?

1:28:10It may be that the person who's unhappy about their sex life needs to be explicit about what the consequences might be. And by that, I don't mean a threat. I mean, I don't want a relationship that is this way. And so for me, if we don't make this change, it won't be enough. And I would really like you to join me in that. But also, I'm wanting to let you know that this won't work for me long term. Because I think sometimes we can get distracted into an idea that just because we are, you know, married or have kids or have a mortgage or live together or a monogamous or whatever it is, been together five years, whatever, that that means that that person is just ours.

1:28:52Right. And that we don't really have to meet their needs. And actually that's a myth. Again, just thinking about Esther Perel, one of my favourite quotes of hers is that she says, we never own our partners, they're just on loan with a chance to renew. Yes. And I really like that idea because we all should feel as though how we're working in a relationship, whether that's about sex or the wider part of the relationship, we should feel as though we are working to make that a good place to be for the person we're in it with. And if we stop working and we do what I call giving each other the scraps, give our best version of ourselves to other people, stop prioritizing the things that are important to our partners, then we're going to be in trouble.

1:29:40And I think what also happens so often to parents is you end up saying, okay, I'm going to give my best not to myself, not to my partner, but to my children. yeah and then i i think that empowers your children to then ruin your sex life absolutely yeah and yeah there's some fascinating research actually that i came across when i was writing that book around what sexual satisfaction does to a parental unit and the idea that when we're feeling sexually satisfied we actually operate better as a team which then makes parenting easier ironically um because obviously kids sometimes the thing that gets in the way of people's sex life in the first place.

1:30:21The other thing is that when we're sexually satisfied, it actually provides us almost with this like relationship, I don't know, overdraft. Okay. That allows us to borrow from it when times are tough. I once said, and this got me in a ton of trouble, I was on Lorraine. And I said that, you know, my wife and I, we prioritize ourselves over our children, in essence, to create a stronger foundation so that we could be better parents. And what you're saying from a from a sexual standpoint also endorses that yes is that the stronger we are as a unit sexually the better parents we are yeah absolutely and obviously you know different stages of parenthood that will be more or less possible you know obviously we're not advocating in the newborn days of the first year people need to put their sex life above all else of course it will take a back seat but parenthood's a long road as we both know and at some point you know sexual dissatisfaction if it starts to creep in can make parenthood harder yes and that can make the emotional climate of the whole family difficult uh we're almost at the end here and there's one there's actually there's 50 things that i like to say but two things in particular that i must say is that so we had a conversation a few months ago and something from that conversation i've taken and And I truly believe it's helped to change my children.

1:31:42I sat my 13-year-old and my 10-year-old down. And I said, we are going to look at anatomy. Great. We're going to look at male anatomy. We're going to look at female anatomy. Great. And at 10, my son Liam, that's right, I'm calling him out. He can tell you where a clitoris is. Good for him. He can tell you the difference between a vagina and a vulva. Good, good. This is so important. And why is it so important? Well, it's important for so many reasons. So it's important for young people's sense of agency over their own bodies. Unfortunately, there are very high rates of childhood sexual abuse, right?

1:32:15It's a very sad part of our society. One of the things that maintains that is children not having the words or feeling shame about that part of their body. So not being able to communicate it. So at a young age, it's really important for that reason. It's also important to understand pleasure giving parts of anatomy because you and I talked about the orgasm gap earlier. How can you even begin to address the orgasm gap if you don't know that the clitoris exists? And a lot of the people that I work with, people of all genders, don't know that the clitoris exists, even if they've got one. They've never heard about it.

1:32:51So how are we supposed to know? There are people on the planet that don't know that clitoris exists. Absolutely. I can understand that they don't know where it is. No, they don't know it exists. Yeah, that's absolutely the case. The third thing is that sex is, in essence, communication and negotiation with someone else, whether that's verbal or nonverbal. That's what it is. How can we, as we move into our sexual debut, communicate about sex if we can't say the words out loud? Because the message we got from our family was these words are off limits. Right. So not only do you feel like they're bad words, words that you shouldn't say, but also you've not ever practiced having those words in your mouth.

1:33:36I know it sounds like a silly thing, but if you've never said clitoris, then the first time you say clitoris, it feels weird. And so what we need to do is normalize those words, because a clitoris is no different to an elbow. If we can talk about elbows, we should be able to talk about clitorises. if the only word you've had as a young person for your vulva is front bottom which is a very common word in the UK bizarre um how are you then supposed to use that word in a sexual encounter it's not an appropriate word is it with a sexual partner so but you've got no other word because no one's ever given you another word and the other words feel strange for you so talking about sex is already hard, but we're really disadvantaging young people if we don't educate them and normalize talking about sex from a young age.

1:34:28Super important. Right. I'm glad you're doing it. And it was only because of that conversation. And I greatly appreciate it. That's great. I don't think they appreciated it initially. They will. They absolutely will. What are you doing? But even as an adult, a shockingly large percentage of women who couldn't distinguish the difference between a vulva and a vagina. Yeah, I think the stats I have to hand in my mind coming up just now from the Eve Appeal, which is a great gynecological charity, is something like 44 % of women can't identify the different parts of their vulva anatomy. It's a large number of people.

1:35:08All right, we're going to go way left. Okay. But you've said maths a few times. You said good old Married at First Sight UK. There was perhaps one of the most talked about scenes or talked about moments of Married at First Sight UK that happened that I see happens quite a bit. And that is when you have someone who is not sexually attracted to someone. Yes. And believes that by having sex, that will increase their sexual attraction. Yes. Is that true or false? Oh, that's a good one, this. Okay, so physical attraction is pretty important to sexual response. So we would say that physical attraction is a bit of a prerequisite to being able to enjoy a sexual experience.

1:35:58however it kind of depends doesn't it what your motivation is for going into that sexual experience you know we all have sex for different reasons you know we know there are 237 documented reasons why humans have sex attraction is usually something that you would say would need to be part of a sexual encounter but i can think of plenty of people that have sex where they're not attracted to the person they have sex with and they're doing it for another reason it's meeting another motivation um it might be difficult though you know for the person having sex with you to hear that and you know that's absolutely the case i've not seen this episode yet i'm behind oh wow yeah this is been out of the country a lot and i'm behind on my maths this this is a big moment yeah it's it's hot hotly debated i feel like i wish i had more context to give my answer i'm giving you the scientific version i'm gonna watch it and call you i find this to be such a major thing especially on on a lot of these shows that i'm on and what's your perspective on it i quite honestly i don't see it changing i don't see it changing yeah i mean there's no mechanism that it would no not not at all a matter of fact i think that there's a higher likelihood that you create more distance with that particular person yeah for a variety of reasons um but you're definitely not losing yourself you know in essence in in that experience uh you're probably you know A lot of that is a cisgendered, heterosexual relationship.

1:37:31The man normally walks away with an orgasm. So he's thinking, OK, I'm fine. The woman walks away disgruntled, disheartened, feeling used. And so for me, I just don't like it. No. And it also connects with what we were saying earlier about this idea of sex being like a water slide, that you have to kind of get on and you can only get off at the pool at the bottom. But we have this societal script running. We do. Because you have these other contributors saying, just have sex, just figure it out, just have sex, just shag him, just shag him. And you're thinking, but what is that going to do? Yeah, there's a lot of pressure for people to move to sex more quickly than they would like.

1:38:08And that comes up a lot in the work that I do where people say, I just wish that I could take it a bit slower. But there's a cultural expectation that I need to move to sex quicker than I actually feel ready to. The question is always, well, have you kissed? Have you had sex? Yes. Has the person said, I love you? These are the markers. And also what I find interesting is, is that 20 years ago, the marker was, have you kissed? Have you said, I love you? Have you had sex? Interesting. Today it's, have you kissed? Yes. And I believe it's changing to, have you had sex? Have you kissed? because a larger number of people that I'm talking to would much rather have casual sex than kissing.

1:38:51So to many people, casual sex is less intimate than a kiss. And also no one defines what they mean by sex either, do they? They say, have you had sex? That's true. No one's saying, well, we had oral sex or we made each other come with that. No one's saying that either. So there's this idea that it's only real sex. that what's implicit in that is that it's penetrative sex. Yes. I think that's what's implicit in that. Yeah, there. All right, last one, or we'll be kicked out. Okay. You've had many conversations. I have. Through life. Incredible. Especially, I would imagine, in your practice. When you think of the most memorable conversation, who was it with?

1:39:34What did you talk about? And most importantly, what did you walk away? What did you learn from that conversation? Oh, I can think of so many. I'm actually going to pick, you know, people don't often think this about therapists, but actually we learn a lot from our clients and emotionally moved a lot by our clients. I've had some very impactful conversations with clients of mine who've talked about the absolute joy and life affirming nature of their sex life into old age. The thing that we don't often talk about as a society, which is older people's sexuality being something which they hold dear, which is expansive, which is about growth, which is about spending your retirement, pushing the boundaries of your sexuality.

1:40:30They really challenge that thing that, you know, I know to be true from research, but you wouldn't think it from society. sex is not a young person's endeavor or a start of the relationship endeavor when everything's new and you know life was easy actually there is real beauty and real growth that is available to people that want to go there and that's lifelong and that's a huge privilege and changes the way I practice because then when I get couples who are like well you know we're this age now and I suppose we should expect it to take a back seat it could be easy to go yeah yeah that's true you know you've been together a long time you've got busy lives but actually no why why should you accept that yes so I'm gonna go with that one I love that one because for for for all of us right because we're all aging it gives inspiration it gives hope it gives aspiration and and um you know uh I will say kind of in in ending here what I think I appreciate most about your work is that you're helping to change this script.

1:41:39Because I know we talk about sexual scripts, but there's a script that I feel like as a society, especially in the West, that we just follow. We do. And Karen's like, no, actually, let's rip that script up. Rip it up. That's what I'm trying to do. Yeah, and you do a great job at that. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So that's it for my episode with Dr. Karen Gurney. and can I tell you how much I loved what she said and how much I'm going to apply to my life? And let me give you my top takeaways. The first is forget the myth of being good in bed. Sex isn't a skill that you master. It's a shared experience that requires openness, communication, and vulnerability.

1:42:22What makes a great sexual connection isn't expertise, but the willingness to listen, talk, and grow together. Real intimacy develops simply from mutual understanding and the freedom to explore. The next is faking orgasms creates a false reality for both partners. Do not fake orgasms. When one person pretends, it maintains the illusion that the other is satisfying them, which can mask the true needs of both partners. Over time, this erodes desire and satisfaction. as genuine pleasure is replaced with performance. Honesty and intimacy build stronger and more satisfying connections. The third is that sex isn't just about reaching orgasm.

1:43:11It's about the freedom to let go with one another. While orgasms are pleasurable, good sex goes deeper. It's about connection, presence, and shared enjoyment. When we focus less on the end goal and more on each other, intimacy becomes richer and more satisfying. And last but not least is bad sex often happens when one feels obligated or disconnected, leaving them feeling absent from the experience. So rather than enduring encounters that don't feel right, it's important to recognize and voice your own needs. This honesty leads to a deeper sense of agency and better, more fulfilling experiences moving forward.

1:43:54When it comes to love, we're all on our own journey. And that means any advice we're given should be tailored to our love goals, not someone else's. This is where my show and Tinder, who sponsor this podcast, have teamed up to help you. Each week on We Need to Talk, I'll explore love and relationships through a different lens. So you can get the advice that relates to your romantic situation. Tinder is for all types of relationships, and I truly believe it has the best tools to help you form the connections you're looking for. That might be long-term commitment or short-term experiences. Maybe it's friendship, but regardless of which part of the journey you're on, Tinder and I are here to support you.

1:44:39Their app is full of possibilities, and it's designed to help you explore every kind of connection. It starts with a swipe, so download Tinder today. Thank you.