Ep.48 Am I Having Enough Sex? Sex Expert Kate Moyle Answers Most Asked Questions On Your Sex Life

0:00How many times a week should we be having sex? The one thing is... I'm Kate Moyle, I'm a psychosexual and relationship therapist. What would you say to someone who has low libido and potentially their partner has high libido? The disproportionate amount of people that are struggling with sex, it's just massive. What is your opinion on porn? What is your approach with alternative sexual lifestyles? Should people be faking orgasms? For me, the biggest problem is...

0:40ladies and gentlemen today is the day we are learning to have better sex with psychosexual and relationship therapist kate moyle i have wanted to do this episode for so long as you know on this podcast we don't just talk about like the businessy bits obviously that's what it's focused on a lot of the time we talk about people's careers we talk about people's stories we talk about all of these different things that i think are relevant to enriching your life and included in that for me is very much being able to open up and remove the stigma on conversations about things like sex. I think that it is so important and I think that it's not talked about enough.

1:13I think especially women do not talk about sex and female pleasure etc etc enough and so I just wanted to do this episode to literally myth bust, answer questions to get clear on like how much sex we should be having, how we can have better sex, what causes a low libido, what kinks are, what all of these various different things. I really enjoyed recording this episode. I think you're going to love it. If you did enjoy this episode, please do me a favour and go and follow or subscribe, depending on which platform you are on, to this podcast. It makes a huge difference to the amount of guests that we can get on, the amazing guests, the calibre of guests, etc, etc.

1:49And I would like to talk about lots of interesting things on this podcast, so it helps me, it helps my ego, it helps the guests, it helps your ears, it helps your experience, and we love all of those things so please and thank you please do that if you wouldn't like to do that no worries and still have a lovely day psychosexual and relationship therapist Kate Moyle claims that difficulties in our sexual and intimate relationships are much more common than we think her aim to open the discussion by providing a unique and confidential space to have those important conversations Kate addresses the challenges couples are facing in their sex lives and relationships such as how much sex should we be having to how do we communicate better in order to have better sex.

2:30Sparking this conversation Kate looks to improve couples' sexual health, well-being and happiness, whatever that looks like for them. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me on. First of all to give everyone some background on you and your expertise and what your kind of point of view is when we're discussing these questions could you just give us a little bit of background on your career, who you are, your qualifications? So I am a psychosexual and relationship therapist. I'm also a psychosexologist. And for me, really, the crux of what I do is I offer talking therapy for people who are struggling with anything to do with sex.

3:04So it's a specialist branch of psychotherapy. And the reason that we need a specialist branch is that sex might come into the therapy room for loads of people, for loads of conversations in a small kind of general way. But for some people, they're really stuck with the specifics of sex, whether it's anxiety, fear, dysfunction, the impact of medication. They've had injuries, cancer, difficulties in relationships and fertility. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And sometimes we need a space to be able to really unpack that stuff. And because sex is still, even in 2023, quite taboo, a lot of people feel like they need to know that they can do that somewhere.

3:46and that it's okay to kind of put the hand up like you know I really need to talk about sex this makes me feel really embarrassed I am so uncomfortable and so psychosexual therapy really is the space to have those really uncomfortable conversations and to know it's okay I often say the sign above the door says you can talk about sex here and I've always been fascinated in psychology and what makes people work and what makes people tick even as early as university I was looking at research into sexual partners from a kind of evolutionary perspective and it all just really clicked into place for me and it kind of snowballed from there so I trained first as a psychosexual therapist then as a relationship therapist and tied those two things in together and now I host a podcast about sexual wellness work with lots of brands and try and take the learning from inside the therapy room to outside the therapy room and for me a massive part of that is almost every single person that I work with says I feel so embarrassed I feel so ashamed right this stuff isn't normalized am I broken and the disproportionate amount of people that are struggling with sex to talking about struggling with sex it's just massive right and that's because we don't have this kind of healthy sexual culture or narrative or conversation yeah what is people's um the kind of first reaction of people when you tell them you're a sexologist like what's the perception of that I think everyone thinks that I'm like the mum from me the focus right which is my job is very different to that but that's basically what everyone says they're like oh like can you meet the focus I'm like she's fabulous but then I do something very different highly rated a little bit different but I think it's intrigue I think Everyone would love to know what happens behind everyone else's bedroom doors.

5:39People either really want to talk to me or don't want to talk to me at all. Running away. I think that's kind of representative of the general feeling about when sex comes up as a topic. And I think I've been practicing for probably nearly 10 years. And the difference I've seen in that 10 years is massive. Really? Yes. But I think that it's that sense of, okay, like, what are we going to talk about then? or do we have to talk about it yeah sex is so personal but also such a big part of our lives but then not so it's in so many advertising campaigns and it's in you know on posters and we see so much stuff that's sexualized but then we don't have these kind of healthy foundation sex education conversations so it's very mixed yeah and we do have so much I guess legacy stigma based on the fact that there is still in people's lifetime now there have been I mean literally 20 years ago like as in or 10 years ago even like that there's been such a change in the way we see sex and the way we were able to talk about sex especially as women and I can imagine that like legacy stigma if people are being raised by someone who actually in their childhood could never ever ever ever could even go near the subject I can imagine there's that kind of lasting stigma there definitely and we are all initially taught about sex from the generation above and they've all been taught from generation above so we're probably always running a bit behind of course because we can only do so much with the information that we have and the social world so when we think about sexual revolutions you know the pill in the 60s was the first enormous one and really the second one is the internet right and those are big monumentous moments in terms of how we think about sex how sex has changed how we can view sex how we engage as a topic, our autonomy over ourselves sexually.

7:33And these are all massive, massive changes that happen kind of overnight. Of course. In your kind of practicing work, what would you say are the biggest things that come up time and time again from kind of first time clients? The one thing that comes up with everyone, irrespective of whether we are working on anxiety, you know, recurrent miscarriage, stress, desire, couple difficulties, sexual dysfunctions, lack of sexual experience, the one thing is shame. Right. Everyone comes in with the feeling of maybe I'm the broken one, you know, am I broken? I must be the problem. It doesn't look like anyone else has these problems.

8:18I don't see myself represented anywhere. For a lot of people, having to reach out to a psychosexual therapist or any therapist a lot of the time can feel terrifying yeah and feels like such a massive step and a massive ask for help and do you think there's a kind of misrepresentation of I mean a lot of those things in terms of shame and being like I'm not seeing myself represented and all of those things are based on like a misrepresentation of what like quote-unquote norm is and like whether there's a norm where do you think that generally comes from we live in what we call a heteronormative society of course which is that we assume that the standard is man meets woman and off they go into the sunset and that's what we kind of use as the standardized model yeah so anything outside of that is then considered to be not normal right in terms of when we when we use that terminology within that we then have a normal model of sex which is that intercourse is real sex and everything else isn't right or doesn't count as much or isn't as important and so really then when we're talking to anyone about sex that's the that's the what's considered the norm and we know that that just isn't the case we see such a massive diversity in sexualities in sexual practices preferences desires wants and when you think about it we accept that in almost every other area of our lives we don't all like to go to the same restaurants like food is a great analogy because we don't like the same restaurants we weren't all bought up or grew up eating the same foods we have different tastes some of us like our food spicy some of it like it mild some of us like different cuisine some of us like to eat the same thing every night for a week someone else might be like I like to eat cereal at dinner instead of at breakfast and we're completely accepting we don't go to a restaurant and expect everyone around the table to eat the same thing to pick the same thing off the menu and if we do I think it would probably think it was weirder than everyone doing something different.

10:20And do you think because obviously sex in its very nature is quite hidden in the way that obviously I might show my working day on social media but I don't generally show my sex life on social media and I feel like you know there's part of that that's pretty inherent I mean for obvious reasons do you think then those stigmas can ever properly change when obviously representation of food is shown everywhere because you're being like oh I love mushrooms or I love a burger or like whatever it might be and you're ordering that at a restaurant you're not seeing like the different people's like sex lives or sex patterns or whatever it might be do you think there's an element of that that will always be pretty underrepresented no I'm not suggesting everyone right no no of course I know it's not what you're suggesting social media at all but she loves only that well there is there are platforms that kind of do that That was one called Make Love Not Porn, which is like real couples having real sex.

11:14A woman called Cindy Gallop founded it. And that was a bit of a pushback against the non-representative versions. That's so interesting. I've never even heard of that. It's an amazing platform, actually. And that was a deliberate thing to show these more realistic versions of sex for people that wanted to see it and people that wanted to show it. but I think it's about the conversation much more than anything else and we see it I work with a luxury sexwear brand called Lilo and it's been amazing I love Lilo I gifted a Lilo to every single one of my close friends at Christmas one year the Lilo sonar too in case anyone is interested it's a great an excellent product um getting five star reviews I literally gifted it to everyone I was like and one to you I was like you're a good friend thank you so much I like to encourage her but for me even seeing and it's something I've noticed a lot recently that influencers and people are happy to advertise sex toys on their platforms and on their pages I think is a massive thing because 100 % what that's saying is I love sexual pleasure I like to experience this myself and that's another part of my well-being like I show you know my meals like I show my workout routine and you're not having to show yourself right but it's just a part of the conversation which positions it yeah alongside other areas for health it's just saying it's okay yeah and especially when we've seen there's so little out there on women's pleasure and I think that you know we talk a lot about the fact that in kind of sex education at school or wherever it might be we are never taught about women's pleasure and sex is seen as as you say penetrative sex between a man and a woman it's seen as like that is what sex is whereas obviously we know the stats on like how many women can actually ever orgasm through penetrative sex or you know women who spend I mean I put a question sticker up on my story before this and the amount of women that were answering being like I've never had an orgasm through sex like all of this and based on the fact that I've read up a lot on it I've kind of been like I really hope you know that that's like so not and I hope you're not thinking there's like you know something wrong which obviously is what we'll be going through we're gonna answer like a load of FAQs and everything and get your opinion on them but it's just there's I love the idea that kind of being able to normalize the fact that actually as you say it's almost like part of self-care and just being able to like share experience and increase that representation in terms of being like the more we're able to talk about things and as you say it's not about showing it it's not about kind of changing that entirely but it's about just being able to normalize and advocate for you know in that circumstance for example women's pleasure it's just about it being there right and being a part of the conversation and we know for example this has a massive impact on the health of women and people with vulvas that we so often use the word vagina right to mean vulva and when we're talking about vulva we're talking about the external genitals and we're talking about the vagina which is the internal canal yes and so often people colloquially use the word vagina to mean vulva and that is a anatomically incorrect but it's miseducation so how can we educate people about vulval cancers about right gynecological cancers when they can't identify exactly what's going on in which part of their body and the evapil have done amazing research on this which has found something like 45 percent of women couldn't correctly identify all of their anatomy on a diagram and it's I'm not sure if that's the exact stat but it's definitely around that number and that's an education thing so that's that's got health risks but then when we put that into pleasure the clitoris was not mentioned in sex education ever like it's not a yeah it's like it doesn't exist yeah and so the focus was always on not getting STIs and how to or not get pregnant and that denies the pleasure and there's an amazing researcher called Dr Laurie Mintz and she talks about how when we use the language incorrectly so when we say vagina we mean we're actually eradicating the part of the female anatomy which creates the most pleasure so it's not even then a part of the conversation and in the way we're kind of talking about representation as a sex therapist sexologist what is your opinion on porn such a big big topic and it's one that obviously brings up a lot of moral conversations people I was actually at a talk this week with Erica Lust who's an amazing feminist pornographer and director and I think that for me the biggest problem is that we haven't built in what we call porn literacy right which is we know it's there we know it's not going anywhere we know the internet isn't going anywhere so how do we build in when young people particularly can access it an educative element which closes the gap because that's the thing we have this gap between porn and real sex and we know that that gap is there and so by young people if they're going to the internet to get their education most of the time which they are because they don't have to ask anyone no one's embarrassed it's an easy way of getting it without having to kind of go through any mortifying conversations with adults who also don't feel comfortable then that's the first thing you're probably going to come across it's a huge huge percentage of the internet and what we can then do or what we should be doing is using our focus to say okay if that's what you're going to see which you're going to probably see without anyone else being able to get there first how do we say that's porn and real life sex is different and is not represented this is not representative of everything that actually might happen right and I think that that's the biggest thing that we really need to focus on because you don't also like as part of that conversation when we're saying you know even when we talk about educating on women's or female pleasure when you're you know talking about sex education all of these things the conversation that always comes back is like why are we showing children or early teenagers about sex we obviously know in the data that the more we're able to normalize something and the more we're able to educate where it's happening anyway is probably going to be an advantage but also you know I understand that in the conversation when we're saying oh you know we should be showing 13 year olds what real sex is like obviously there's going to be pushback on that too how do we kind of put that in between when you know people are I know obviously people at 13 are searching up porn and they're kind of trying to work out you know what sex even is what it even looks like what they should be kind of expecting from it all of that and obviously getting something that is probably vastly misrepresented how do we get that in there whilst not exposing people who aren't maybe at that stage yet and are there are some amazing amazing sexual health sex education charities doing really brilliant work in this sector but I think it's also giving young people a chance to ask all the questions and I think that they want the answers but they don't want to be faced with the awkwardness that can come about by having to ask them sometimes or the shame why are you asking that why would you want to know that and there are some brilliant sex educators at the moment and organizations who are helping parents right to have those conversations because again you know that thing we were talking about earlier one generation teaches the next I'm a parent and I don't know exactly how to perfectly have this conversation with my kids when we get to that point and I do this for a job yeah and that is a really normal part of our existence and that's because we want to get it right and so we then feel frozen and panicky about the idea of getting it wrong I remember that's the reason I was laughing because I was thinking about when my mum had clearly found out that I'd had sex with my boyfriend when I was like a teenager and I just remember we'd just broken up and we were like me and my mum were like we weren't home all the time like together and we were like sitting next to each other on the sofa and I remember she just came and sat down like didn't really look at me and she goes how are you dealing with a breakup and I was like yeah okay thanks and she goes you know it is really hard sometimes I was like yeah it's really hard she goes especially if it was sexual and we'd just sit in silence and then she kind of walked off and I just sat there like that was horrible I just so vividly remember that experience obviously had like never spoken about something like that at that point but I remember you know like when I first started having sex and I went to I remember finding out about at school about the fact that you know contraception was free and you could go to a clinic and like all of that and to be fair whatever age I was like I remember going to St.

20:07Mary's Hospital in Paddington like finding out about it going there sitting there in like my school uniform literally people looking at me like what the fuck and just being like can I get the pill please um and I just remember I mean there is obviously a lot of great access within the UK in terms of things like that I wouldn't say anyone sat there and you know kind of had a proper conversation with me but even the access to something like a contraceptive um without having to like have your parents there etc etc I think obviously very important but I assume the majority of the time if that's not like presented as an option then also that's why you know people feel too embarrassed to talk about it and therefore too embarrassed to protect themselves properly when they're not ready to maybe talk to someone about that a huge part of my job is helping people to make informed choices about their sexual well-being informed choices about their sexual health so how do we work out for them actually what they want rather than having the sex that they think they should be having because that's what they've been told or what we um kind of grow up with and there's an amazing author educator called emily nagoski and she wrote an incredible incredible book and she talks about how sex is a bit like gardening and so we can't choose like where we were planted where the garden was planted or where it started but we can fertilize the soil we can look after some bits we can decide which which we don't want to water which we don't want to grow and which bits we want to focus on which we want to nurture and I think that sex can be like that because so many of us take what we're given about sex and we don't ever question it and we don't ever think about it and we don't ever wonder okay well is this working for me or is there a reason I'm not really enjoying this or is there a reason that I'm feeling really embarrassed or really ashamed or this doesn't feel good for me but I think it's what I should be doing I think it's what is normal and therefore I should just carry on doing that because what if I said to my partner do you know what this isn't working for me and they said what yeah this that's just what we do I would be the one that would feel like I'm the problem yeah no that's totally fair enough and how would you encourage people to combat that and find out what parts you like do want to water I think it's um finding out what your normal is and I think that can sound quite therapy you know like there is no normal find out what your normal is but the reality is it's about finding what works for you all bodies although like mapped out in a similar way are unique are different we're gonna have learned from our experiences and have gone through life something's working for us and something's not and have learned what we like or don't like or what we're curious about and I think that not assuming is a big part of it that but the problem with that is often if we're the partner it takes the confidence and ability to know how to communicate with our partners which we're not taught you know I often say that trying to have a conversation about sex is like trying to talk in a language that we haven't been taught because where do we see the versions of people sitting down and talking about their sex lives we only ever see the kind of Hollywood version which typically are it's gone really well or it's gone really badly right sure you know a couple kind of awkwardly lying in bed like with the sheets up to here being like so um how do you think that went you know that that's like the you know the kind of version that we see and sometimes it's about being able to feel confident enough to say to our partners like can we talk about sex or can we talk about sex life or can we talk about what's working or not working or I'm really curious about this how would you feel about trying it and then if our partner says no say okay that's you know understandable what is it that you don't like the sound of or what do you think we could try and these are kind of conversations we have in so many other areas of our lives but we don't really know how to when it comes to sex what are the biggest kind of misconceptions or issues you see coming into your workplace as a therapist based on porn or based on people's experience with porn I don't think it's just porn I think it's I think it's everything yeah it's that sex has to look a certain way that our bodies have to look a certain way that you know particularly men have to have erections that perform in a certain way that last a certain amount of time that both partners have to simultaneously orgasm that certain acts are for everybody that we have to do certain things that we have to be kind of orgasming in every position and simultaneously and perfectly in sync with our partners that nothing ever goes wrong that people don't ever get cramp or their bodies make weird noises or a position doesn't work or they laugh you know we never see the everyday right of course and the kind of fumbling and the messiness of sex we don't see contraception in lots of those um scenes or films and I'm not just talking about porn I'm talking about sex on screen and I think this is again where intimacy coordinators have started to play a really good role in our tv scripts so things like normal people yes sex education there are intimacy coordinators on set who not only are protecting the actors but they're helping to navigate some of those scenes to make them look more realistic to make sure that the angles of bodies look like they're actually having sex because sometimes and historically we've seen bodies in positions that we all think oh I don't think I'd be able to do that yeah at home like how did they make that work and it's because they're not realistic and actually you know when you have someone on set who's also a movement coordinator they're saying okay guys this angle doesn't work because then you get people at home trying to reenact it and everyone's going what's wrong with me they could do it I can't do it and those thoughts when it comes to sex really burrow into you know our self-confidence our self-esteem if we are struggling with sex in a relationship and that relationship ends we kind of carry the hangover of the sexual struggles with us to the next relationship or if we're dating or if it hasn't gone well and you know perhaps we've had a partner who might have blamed us for that or we're feeling like we're the problem then we don't check it out with people like we do other areas of our health well-being mental health yeah you know if something wasn't working for you in another area of your life you'd probably sit down with a good mate or a sibling or someone you trust and be like can I ask you like yeah what's going on with that and we don't do it with sex yeah to be fair I think that's one of the things I'm also like most grateful for with like with my friends I feel so lucky to be like able to have that conversation and it's not grimy it's not like it doesn't feel like intrusive it feels like people trying to work themselves out like who you know we're not taught that from external sources and just being able to talk about that type of thing I think is so valuable and I'm completely you know aware of the fact that that's not always normal in every friend group or in every situation but I do think kind of having that open conversation is so important for being able to like normalize and that not every conversation about sex is sexualized of course and I think that's one of the fears that lots of people have always had is how do I how do I talk about this with it not being a sexualized conversation and you know that's that's exactly what psychosexual therapy is you know I'd say a lot of it is pretty unsexy right of course you know a lot really uncomfortable yeah and you know we're really kind of helping people to talk about the things that they they feel most you know challenged by and that's such a big thing you know because you go in so fearful like what is going to happen if I kind of open up a Pandora's box of this and yeah actually so much of the time it's because we have paired up sex with anxiety or something negative or something stressful and then we see the knock-on effect on our sex lives on our intimacy we don't want to date because we're scared about getting close to someone and then sex not working and then we would feel like a failure and all these words like failure broken I hear them all the time and then so someone might say not kind of let their friends like ever set them up with anyone or go on a dating app or because they don't want to risk meeting someone liking them and trying to have sex so they would rather just avoid the whole thing yeah but then it's difficult because all of their friends are starting to date or to settle down and that's what they want but they're the you know most scared of the thing that they want the most.

28:44Yeah. And that's a really generalised example, but it's a common one. Yeah. I asked my audience what questions they'd like answered to be able to find out more about sex, to be able to find out the norms around sex, to be able to have better sex. We're going to go through them. So first of all, what seems to be a very commonly asked question is libido-wise, how many times a week should we want to have sex or should we be having sex i knew this was the first question i could guess too um the girlies want to know everyone always wants to know how what what is a normal amount of sex and there just isn't a clear answer and that's because we know that sex is in the context of the rest of our lives so it's impacted by it's not a constant of course it's not like you know once twice a week we have sex that's it done and really again it goes back to that answer that people find really frustrating because it's not a straight answer which is the right amount for you and the biggest problem that we see in couples isn't kind of the regularity or the amount of sex it's where we see a desire discrepancy which is the difference between what if there's two people in that relationship those two people want and actually the amount of sex we're having or the regularity of sex we're having is a pretty it's a red herring for quality of sex we can't kind of say exactly that you're having sex three times a week means that you're having better quality sex than someone who's having sex once a month because the sex might that they might be having might be completely satisfactory and enjoyable for them and that's all that they need yeah and so for me I'm much more interested in the satisfaction and the quality of the sex that people are having than how much but when it becomes a problem or if you feel like it's a problem that's the time to kind of talk to a partner and to say okay do you know what's not working here because as soon as it becomes something that what lots of couples do is if something becomes stuck on it all becomes the center of every argument of course yeah and then you see it knock having a knock-on effect into other areas of the relationship and what would you suggest at someone who's at that stage where they're kind of finding that sex becomes the topic of every argument and it comes back to that and there seems to be a lot of frustration around it yeah I think there can be a lot of frustration I would try and just get to the bottom of what's going on so what often happens is for one partner sex might be and physical intimacy might be like a real indicator of love in a relationship that's how they feel valued that's how they feel desired for them it is a really important kind of core part for other people it's less of a priority and then if you understand that from each other you can understand that okay so why maybe I'm the one that needs to kind of just think about that a bit more or the other partner can say do you know what I understand that you might see this differently to me so how can we make a bit more space and time to work on this and this is how we understand that desire works desire isn't always spontaneous if it'll turned on and excited out of nowhere like a kind of bolt of lightning and then we have sex for a lot of people it's responsive which means that it emerges in response to starting something physical or some kind of sexual stimulation so that can explain why lots of people say I wasn't really feeling in the mood for sex I was thinking actually I'd rather just go to sleep but then we were kissing and we were touching and I started to feel excited and then we started moving into so some people are more likely to be generally turned on or have a high kind of libido throughout their you know day week or whatever and some people will only have that libido activated if it's activated by something like touch or some sort of stimulation yeah and we see that people can have both types of desire right and but we see that particularly in long term relationships because you know we're used to each other it's not that we're not as explorative we're not kind of getting to know each other in the same way and that we often see that responsive desire becomes a more dominant way of experiencing desire but then we can really take control of our sex lives when we know that but most of us think that spontaneous desire is the only type of desire so then as soon as we stop having that I've lost all desire so I've got no desire anymore actually responsive desire tends to be alive and well it's just not the version right that we've been taught and that we've seen and do you think then that a couple can have like a healthier sex life by maybe signposting you know maybe a night a week they have sex or like a occasion that they have sex or like something that you know that kind of like sleep hygiene thing that's like your body knows if you're about to go to sleep if you like turn on this music and turn down the lights or like whatever it might be would you advocate for that when it comes to sex I think absolutely making the space for kind of physical and intimate time as psychosexual therapists we don't prescribe that people kind of schedule sex right because it can create pressure and then especially bear in mind you know a lot of the time we're working with people who are struggling with sex yeah of course so kind of saying right on tuesday night you're going to go home and have sex just fills them with anxiety and fear and that's not helpful but creating a dedicated space where i often say to couples put your phones away you know screen free evening or screen free time just to focus on each other whether it's talking eye contact touching all the things that are basic parts of human communication that start to release the kind of neurochemicals that make us feel close to each other that start to make you feel like you've got someone's undivided attention all the things that play a big part in sex and then using that to kiss touch talk be together just be close that is a platform for which we can start to see responsive desire emerging.

34:40That's so interesting and do you think it's possible for a couple with two different sex drives or very different sex drives to be compatible long term? I would say it's more normal and expected for partners to have different levels of sexual desire, interest, libido than for them to be perfectly matched. and and just working around that in terms of communication and yeah absolutely and particularly in long-term relationships we have to nurture that part of our relationship of our sex life and again we think it's not sexy to have to work at this stuff we think it's not sexy to have to talk about it we think that it should just happen that relation and that's just not the case it's something that we need to kind of consciously and intentionally do sometimes but we don't like yeah I mean it's like anything in life like when you get used to something or you get into a routine like it's really it's easy to expect that if it's meant to happen then it's just going to happen but we don't actually expect that for anything else in our life like literally for like going to the gym for like going to see our friends if we have to make space in our schedule like any of those different types of things we don't expect it to just fall into place otherwise it's quote unquote like not meant to be or like not healthy or whatever we have to sign post time for it and we have to you know prioritize or deprioritize or whatever it might be and we very much do have this expectation almost like this kind of animalistic expectation that we'll just like have sex when we want to have sex and if we're not then we're you know maybe not into each other anymore or whatever it might be yeah and our relationships just work right sure and I think it's all tangled up in the same thing but I say this all the time our friendships we check in with our friends we book dinner we you know but weekends away or we you know with our kids we sit down with them we do stuff we do our homework we teach them to do their homework we teach them to learn we check in with our families we call our mom you know with our colleagues we work at it we're putting stuff in you know you've not built your business from not putting things in and then you get to that and so but we think that our relationships and sex lives are these magical unicorns that just look after themselves but the amount of times that people say to me i just thought this would work itself out and it doesn't and i always say but nothing just works itself yeah and what causes low libido everything you know we live in what doesn't um you know of course of course there are physical factors so some people might be having you know difficulties with hormone levels or um difficulties with their relationship their bodies painful sex So anything basically that can negatively impact sex can have a negative impact on desire because desire, our motivation for sex, our want to be sexual is not going to be thriving if sex itself is causing us pain, discomfort, emotional distress.

37:38So why would we want something that isn't working for us? and so when it's not working we aren't you know motivated or driven to do it but we don't necessarily always know how to kind of put our hand up and say do you know what this isn't how do I change this and I don't know how to word this properly but is low libido kind of a quote-unquote issue I don't mean that in the way of like obviously it will be a problem for some people's relationships or whatever it might be but when we're kind of saying there's no norm I guess if someone thinks they have a low libido and they need is it something that they need to fix it depends if they feel like they need to fix it so we need to differentiate between arousal and desire so desire is the motivation and the want for sexual experiences arousal is the body's physical and psychological processes of preparing the body for sex so if someone and when those two things are aligned we talk we call it concordance so and then when they're not we talk about arousal or sexual non-concordance which is basically when mind and body are out of sync which can explain why people have experiences like I'm really kind of I'm feeling like physically turned on in a physio appointment or something like that I'm not attracted to my physio but it's just my brain has responded to something which is sexually relevant which is that I'm being touched right and it's doing its thing it's preparing the body for something and people are horrified when they have this experience oh my god I feel so mortified this is not you know that I don't what if they notice something and that's because your brain is responding to what's sexually relevant in your environment right and then what's personal to you are those things that you find exciting and eternal and desiring and those things are about the person rather than the kind of mechanisms at play yeah and so what we want is for people to be having kind of body and mind in sync so psychologically I'm interested in sex with my partner and then my body helps me along but we see vaginal dryness for example is a really common symptom for women who are perimenopausal or going through menopause or breastfeeding and that can then make sex uncomfortable right which can mean that or we can start to feel you know embarrassed yeah god why is this happening to me like this is not what I've been shown and then we can start to kind of shy away from sex or we feel a responsive lack of desire because it's not giving giving us the benefits yeah what would you say to someone who was like listening to this and has low libido and potentially their partner has high libido and it's obviously causing some issues but they can't see like even with communication they can't seem to get past it what would you say to someone in that type of situation I'd try and work out what works better for you both so is it that actually you're someone who notices that when you start kissing or that you are feeling like your partner's hands on yourself and like on you and that feels really good or that you have to kind of switch off from your day and switch on to a sexual mindset you know I think a lot of people find it very difficult to be sexually interested when they're still really preoccupied with their day or they haven't switched off from work or you know they're getting into bed and they're checking their emails and they can see that they've got five emails from their boss and then they're distracted by that so work out the ways to help you that's what I call switch off to turn on to kind of get in the right space or head space and also sex education across the lifetime like I recommend podcasts TED talks books there's so much good normalizing non-stigmatizing non-shaming content out there at the moment by experts and researchers and I think when we understand more what's going on for us how our body works how our brain works how sex works suddenly we think okay well I can do something about this or because the minute we feel bad about ourselves that's not going to be a turn on that's not going to make us feel open to sex it does the opposite what is your approach with clients who have alternative sexual lifestyles like something that we wouldn't consider normal in terms of their their sexual desires?

41:53So the way that people most commonly talk about this is kink and vanilla is a phrase that people often use. So vanilla would refer to what we consider to be that kind of non-kinky sex but this whole thing is so subjective you know whilst your vanilla is not necessarily my vanilla and I think also what we've seen is the term vanilla has been used in quite a detrimental way and a colleague of mine always says vanilla is delicious you know it's creamy I love it it's my favorite flavor um and you know for me it really works yeah and so I think that if that's the type of sex that people like to have like there's no shame in that it goes back to the individual differences thing and again probably where it becomes a problem is where we see that partners might have different interests right sure and that's about how you manage that in your relationship and if you're for example really curious about trying something kinky with your partner or you're really interested in trying something um you might say to your partner if you kind of feel able to I'm really interested in this what do you think or you could send them a podcast or something I often say to people if you find an article about something send it to your partner and say what do you think about this and use that as a conversation starter and your partner might say oh you know not for me actually but then work out what could be an in-between right that you both feel comfortable with that you could try because obviously if we're nervous about something sometimes we might think well do you know I'd rather not like that might be a bit too much for me but there are so many ways that you can navigate that or things that you can try that can introduce those elements of excitement or novelty or something new or something that you're curious about so lots of people asked about kind of longer term relationships and marriage do you see marriage changing sex lives and if so why do you think it kind of changes I think that I don't think marriage in itself changes sex lives but commitment I think can change sex lives whatever that looks like for that couple or if there's more than two partners in a relationship but I think that it's all about what we talk about in therapy is the invisible contract so okay what's the contract that you guys have made is it that it's one of monogamy is it that that's something that's explicit is it that that's something that's assumed so whenever I'm working with couples we really get down to the nitty-gritty of you know what have you explicitly agreed to do in your relationship what is this model of your relationship going to look like because sometimes people might just think oh yeah well you know we just were on the same path and it just kind of happened and then we you know I thought we were agreed on that didn't we and it might have never been a conversation so I think it's about the rules that you set and the boundaries that you set for your relationships now what we do see is that in long-term relationships typically sex happens more at the start of relationships or sex might be more adventurous at the start of relationships we kind of see a decline gradually and that's a common trend but then what we need to do is to focus on the quality then of that sex and I think that that's where actually people that have been in long-term relationships can report a really good quality of sex because they know each other well they might feel more confident with someone that they're really close to and more able to relax particularly people with things like body confidence difficulties because they're with someone who shows them that they love them and appreciate them and desires them and are attracted to them and so they can feel more comfortable with someone that they feel familiar with yeah and and how would you recommend someone with body confidence issues that's kind of affecting their sex life approaches sex I think it massively massively impacts sex yeah I work with so many people who don't feel comfortable in their body for so many reasons whether it's about specifically about their genitals and the sexual parts of their body or just about feeling comfortable in their own skin yeah because if we are struggling with how we feel that we look or how we feel like our body appears or how we feel in our bodies then we have to be quite exposed and vulnerable to be sexual with someone because we're putting that part that we don't feel comfortable with in front of someone else for someone else to see and obviously we know that a lot of those things are our own stuff and our own internal critics and quite a lot of the time learned experiences or things people have said to us and our partners don't necessarily see that but it can be sometimes where people might need to manage their environments a bit more so to wear something that makes them feel good or to change the lighting or to focus on sensory input and this is where things like mindful sex can actually play quite a big role as well because when we're struggling with our body and how we feel about it we're so in our head preoccupied with our thoughts and actually that takes away from our pleasure yeah because where we direct our attention we experience more and that's why it's not uncommon for example to see people who are struggling with body confidence and sex say that they're also struggling with orgasm because it takes their attention away from what they're physically feeling and the pleasure which is most likely to drive them to peak pleasure and to orgasm because they're up in their heads preoccupied with what they think is going on by their thoughts by their focus on what their partner might be thinking and your attention's kind of off in different directions and what is mindful sex so mindful sex is basically incorporating mindfulness techniques so things like helping you to be in the present to channel your attention in a particular intentional direction and bringing that into sex so things like focusing on the senses trying to kind of be in the moment not distracted by your thoughts not focusing on a goal or so particularly with orgasm we see it's really common to become really preoccupied with yeah the goal orientated nature of sex which is if I'm struggling with orgasm I become so focused on having one that I then can't get to it it's like an ironic yeah yeah of course an ironic process and so then what we need to do is kind of get into the physical by things like focusing on the five senses so really bringing our attention into the here and now in order to experience more physically yeah and so if someone was struggling with reaching an orgasm and kind of having that as a persistent issue like what would you recommend as your kind of top few things to be practicing?

48:31So I think one of those would be focusing on the senses. So things like, okay, I can feel my partner's hand like running up my arm. I can feel like the warmth from their skin. I can smell them. I can see them. I'm running my hand through their hair. So you're kind of running through because you can't be out of the moment and experiencing those things in the right here and now. I think the other thing might be kind of unpacking what it is that's stopping you you know a lot of people it's shame around pleasure fear of being out of control worries they're about kind of narratives that they might have been taught about what it means to be someone that experiences this type of pleasure or enjoys sex there's so many undertones and stories about sex or what it is to be someone that likes sex or you know I think we we all know those stories from when we were younger you know about people used to say things like oh girls that dress like that or people that act like that and there is so much loaded in that and particularly when we're learning about sex we can internalize all those ways that we think we're meant to be and if we feel that we're different that can cause a real inner conflict yeah no I can completely understand that and what would you say the biggest misconceptions are around orgasms Oh, that simultaneous couple orgasm is like the holy grail.

49:57Right. Because that's, I think, what everyone thinks they should be aiming towards all the time. But as we know, the orgasm gap exists in heterosexual relationships and the difference between men and women's reported rates of orgasm in different sexual experiences. Right. And so there's just no problem with partners orgasming at different times, in different ways, through different methods. but I think we all got so preoccupied with that version yeah that's so interesting and also that it's always the goal yeah yeah great sex can happen without orgasm yeah you can really enjoy yourself without it ending in an orgasm and I think that that's another big thing for us to think about and for people who don't know could you talk a little bit about the orgasm gap so this is a piece of research again Laurie Minter I mentioned earlier basically found that there is a significant gap it's around 30 between how often men and women in different sex and male and female sexual experiences were orgasming and then were reporting orgasming and then it was how much men were reporting their female partners orgasming and that gap was again massively reduced because what it showed is that a lot of women were faking their orgasms and so then when you think about why they're doing that a lot of the time it was because I don't want to upset my partner because I don't want them to think that I'm not good at this because I don't want to look like I don't know what I'm doing because sex ends when we orgasm right and so we're kind of at the point now where I feel like we're trying so long so I'll just fake it to bring it to bring it to a close and a lot of them are social reasons and should people be faking orgasms no no it's a short-term solution sure yeah something which doesn't help long term because what it also does is it means that a lot of people feel like and men orgasm fake orgasms too yeah what happens is you then tend to get into a rhythm of repeating the thing which doesn't get you to orgasm and your partner thinks they're doing it right you know they're not doing it right and when I say right I mean right for you you're thinking oh this isn't going to work for me but I can't tell them because I've started this now and we've been doing it like this for six months and now if I say then they'll know that I've been faking it for six months and that's going to rupture our relationship and this is the person I love I don't want to hurt them just try and do something different or communicate to your partner you want to try something different or that it doesn't feel like it's not just you know a simple phrase like do you know what this isn't really working for me at the moment or I used to really enjoy this and it's not working for me as much anymore can we try something different because we can get then so stuck in that way of being but also it's you know sex is something that is pleasure focused and fun and to be enjoyed and it's not a performance and along those lines how do you keep the spark in a long-term relationship with when it comes to your sex life you have to do it with intention you have to try and I think the way that our brains work is we habituate we get used to things and so of course we're going to get used to having sex with the same person we're going to learn their body we're going to learn what we like what they like it might become more predictable we are busy you know if you think about the start of relationships we kind of almost forget everything else that's happening around us we throw everything into getting to know this new person and sex is a part of that for most people and so we we kind of forget to call our friends we might drop the ball at work a bit we're like throwing everything into this and then we have to kind of come back to reality a bit more and get into the rhythm of life and so I think that what we see consistently in couples research is the couples that make an effort with their sex lives are the ones that are reporting the most sexual satisfaction and again it's not the sexy exciting answer but it's the true one yeah which is that if we kind of sit back and wait for it to change it's not going to yeah so actually taking an active role in maintaining and restarting that spark definitely and routine we can talk about changing routine like changing something every time we have sex doing one thing differently whether it's lights on lights off starting with our clothes on clothes off with music on using a lubricant introducing a sex toy trying a different position having sex in a different room of the house where you know there are so many kind of micro ways that we can be constantly changing things which can make a difference yeah difficulty finishing from sex when it comes to a man in a gay relationship so it's not an uncommon thing we talk about it's kind of delayed ejaculation and again it's quite similar to the mindfulness stuff we were talking about earlier is if we become so focused on it we get preoccupied with the thought of I've got to finish I've got to reach orgasm I've got to get there I've got to I've got to come that that becomes in a way overriding of us focusing on the physical pleasure that's actually going to get us there and with sex because we feel like there's still this taboo because there's discomfort around it even if it happens maybe once or twice we get so in our heads then that the next time we go into sex we're already thinking oh that thing's going to happen again what am I going to do if that happens again you know we're building up that anxiety before we've even got there and it's such a quick cycle to start yeah yeah no that's so interesting and I can imagine as well in relationships especially that aren't heterosexual where I assume in the part like for however many years of your life where you're told one thing is quote-unquote wrong or not normal or something that you literally have to come out about which you know even the concept of that being like you have to reveal your sexual kind of orientation which seems kind of crazy I can imagine as well not even like conscious shame or like any of those things in terms of perpetuating while you're having sex yeah absolutely and I think that one of the best things to do is to just say to a partner do you know what I'm really struggling to orgasm a bit at the moment so don't think that if I don't that I'm not enjoying myself but it might not happen it's nothing you know it's not a big drama and I'm just gonna we're still gonna have sex and I'm still gonna enjoy it like if that's what you want to do but I can still enjoy sex without it and just even the act of taking the pressure off means that we don't have to then be focusing on and that's when it becomes performative sexing upon performative rather than pleasurable mid-20s be married less than a year is it normal to barely want to have sex at all I think that it's for me I'm interested in the change if there was like a big if there is a big change for someone um what we see is that also a lot of women don't experience a lot of spontaneous desire right and again then we feel that the problem is with us because that's the version that we see everywhere all the time or the version that we're told we should feel and i think that is about learning how to define desire for you there's some absolutely brilliant ted talks an amazing book called Mind the Gap, educating yourself on how desire works for you because suddenly you realise, okay, it's not me, it's how I was taught about this and we can reshape those ideas and suddenly you can start to be in control of it.

57:52And I think that that's a big part of it. Yeah, this one's really interesting. Why is going down on girls so much more stigmatised than with men? There's a lot of shame, particularly around female genitals or vulvas. It's been quite historical i mean there are certain cultures and histories where the bubble was celebrated and then we if you think about even when you're kind of at school and you're learning about periods and things what those teenage narratives are like oh disgusting your periods are disgusting like how many of us grew up with that kind of messaging and i think that there is and we see that because we see that the kind of feminine hygiene industry has really tried to hook in insecurities you know that there are now like supplements to make your vulva in your vagina smell better and things like that which are not necessary so the vagina is ph balanced and does not need interrupting please do not interrupt with it because then you can have repeated yeast infections and things like that but i think that so much of it has been because female sexuality sexual pleasure you know sexual bodies have always been seconded and perhaps and this is based on entirely no evidence but just my thoughts perhaps as well the emasculation of kind of service to a woman like in that way where you know we see especially probably in things like porn where like a blowjob is seen as like you know kind of like serving your partner in that way and we already as a society have issues issues when it comes to you know maybe a man serving a woman and so that kind of association of the flipping of I guess power dynamics even though it's not a power dynamic you know it's a it's a sexual act but I can imagine that probably plays a role yeah plays a role yeah I think absolutely and we know that female health you know research is behind right of men's you know we see a real kind of lacking and actually the sex toy industry is one where female pleasure has almost become much bigger you know there are much more sex toys for women than there are for men and it's an enormous enormous market and I think that's one of the ones where we've seen this kind of flipping of that dynamic where actually that is the priority yeah well wherever there's a kind of gap in terms of being underserved there's obviously a huge market opportunity as well do you think that the porn your partner watches says something deeper about them in terms of their kind of desire no not necessarily because a lot of people watch pornography that doesn't relate to what they want to do in life they're just engaging with fantasy and curiosity you know in quite a safe way a lot of the time if they're what and you know we see that I think the the ethical pornographers currently so people like Erica Last who I was talking about earlier are so she has something called ex-confessions where people send in their confessions and they're making them into porn films oh that's so interesting yeah particularly because that was what you know people kind of wanted to see and are interested in but no I think you know I think obviously for some people it might show like an interest for something they want to go and try further but for a lot of people how they engage with their sexual fantasies it's a lot of the time particularly if they're doing that in their imagination as well yeah is a way of engaging with it without having to explore it in in real life yeah that's really interesting I've not actually thought of it in that way because I know that there's like non-heterosexual relationships the way that kind of porn opens up that experience to being able to kind of experience that um obviously you know you're saying it's a way of experiencing it without actually experiencing it and might just be out of kind of curiosity or interest or you know being able to engage in a way without it being something that you kind of do as well we know that a lot of women that identify as straight watch female pornography so porn without male bodies in or and and why is that I have curiosity yeah just because they find that it turns them on but it's not what they want to do in real life so something can be sexually exciting but not your sexuality and preference and do you think it could also be porn is obviously aimed towards male pleasure and obviously two or more women is without a male there is kind of going to be you know aimed towards female pleasure in that way I think that's what's exciting about seeing the kind of new wave of pornography that's being made at the moment and feminist pornography, because it's being designed, I think, a lot of the time with users in mind and not necessarily kind of clickbait titles and things like that.

1:02:34and I think that can be something that's you know a lot of it's also paid porn and so there's there's the ethical side of it which is that there are levels of protection in there which are designed to create a safer space for everybody involved. Oh well this has been so incredibly interesting thank you so much for coming and sharing your expertise I have no doubt that lots of people are going to learn a lot from this episode and also just enjoy you know your work in terms of the kind of opening up the space and de-stigmatizing and just talking which I mean you'll know obviously how important that is but yeah I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us thank you