Most of the things that you are worried about when it comes to sex, you're performing your penis size, your body shape, the weight you're performing oral sex, your left boobs, your right boobs, whatever the things you're worried about, have literally zero to do with any sort of pleasure or satisfaction. And people will tell you they have the best sex, it was never because of the shape of the penis, all these things, it's about connection, it's about intimacy, it's about feeling safe, it's about experimenting, it's about really being with someone where you want them to have the most pleasure, and they want the same for you. Have you looked at how much sex people are having in the modern world? Are we having more or less sex than in previous generations?
Apparently we're having less sex than previous generations. Media can't get enough of these studies that they're doing that people are not having sex, young people aren't having sex. And it turns out people in relationships are having the same amount of sex that they've always had, but younger generations are not doing it. Interesting.
That's one of the first things that I learned when starting to look at this, which is almost all sex. It's something like 95% of sexual activity within any given year occurs only within relationships. So people think about the single turns that are spraying at all over the place, and it's not, it's the people that are in relationships that have almost all of the sex. It's true.
And that's been that way for a long time. It's just that, yeah, like you said, but people aren't just out there dating as much, or they're not having sex as much, and they're just more, you know, finding satisfaction elsewhere and not prioritizing it, which is really interesting. Wait, it's less of a sex problem than it is a singleton problem in that case. What about, OK, what have you looked at to do with the relationship between having sex and people's happiness?
Do people that have regular access to physical touch? Are they, do they live longer? Are they happy? Yeah, everyone who has more touch, more sex, more connection are definitely happier in life.
They report having more pleasure and more life satisfaction. They live longer. Touch is a requirement. It really is.
There's there's something called skin hunger, and that's a real condition that we need physical touch. We require it and as animals, like we just we want to cuddle. We want to touch. And I think a lot of times we talk about sex, but something that I always talk about is like sex is just part of it.
I think a lot of times we think we're craving sex and how we define sex as like penetration, but really we're craving intimacy and that could be holding hands. It could be kissing, cuddling, massage, you know, but sometimes you just, if you are feeling lonely and we know we also have a loneliness epidemic and a sex epidemic, apparently, but just getting a massage and finding out, cuddling, and popping up, holding a puppy, we require that as humans to thrive and boost our serotonin, our moods, everything. I remember reading during the pandemic about women who were touched, starved or touch isolated, trying to find a way to not risk COVID, but to also be able to get a hug off of a friend or off a stranger. And there were these support groups for women on the internet who hadn't touched another person for ages and it was affecting their mental health.
Yeah, no, I'm sure I didn't hear about that one, but I did have a massage therapist calling to my show during the pandemic saying there was all these women coming to him and they were like, you know, asking for like a little extra, a really happy, happy ending. Yeah, time to be alive. These are the real cost of the pandemic. I don't know about GDP and national debt.
I want to know about the massooses that have to do happy endings. That's what we're about. It wasn't complaining, but. Well, yeah, maybe.
Um, one of the other thing, I'm British, right? So our sensibilities, when it comes to opening up and talking about sex, are basically nonexistent, way to stiff up a lip and so weak for that to be the case. What's happened in your experience over the last, but since you began researching this around the conversation of talking about sex, that are people more open or less open, are we having a resurgence of new Puritans at the moment? You know, it's a great question because when I started this almost 20 years ago, there really wasn't anybody talking about sex.
You could really just point to Dr. Ruth. And, you know, she was in her 90s now and she started talking about sex, probably in the 80s. And there was a lot of resources people weren't talking about online.
Now, since then, there's definitely more people. There's more information available online. There's more people, podcasters talking about exactly the first podcast we're talking about it. However, so there's two things happening.
Yes, we're more open and we're comfortable talking about sex. And you can buy a vibrator at Walmart and, and, and, you know, we see more nudity on television and we're just more open, right? Actually, there's more TV shows with the word sex entitled Netflix, which wasn't even a thing five years ago. However, what hasn't changed at all is that we still live in a very pure technical society where we are just truly not comfortable getting into the specifics around sex and if you look at what's happening in like an America with like a rovy way, so now we're like, you know, and then was also we're limiting sex education.
Only 17 states require sex ed to be medically accurate in America, but yet we're rolling back rights too. So it's just, it's really pretty backwards that people just don't have the information, but yet there's a proliferation of porn. So now we have all this pornography without sex education. And that's just lethal, to be honest, because we know porn is not real, all it's fiction.
Someone wrote a script and it's not how you accurately have sex. So there's a crisis in that sense that, well, sex is ubiquitous on the internet and you can see it when on your phone, when you're like eight years old, kids are seeing porn, but you have to go out on the world having sex and there's not information and so it's not. So in a way, there's, we're in pretty much the same place where people still don't have information about pleasure, which is what I talk about a lot. And I got to be honest that even when I was in my publisher's probably going to kill me and I, I, but this is what it made me think of that.
So I have a major publisher of my books coming out, Smart Sex. I don't know how to say this, but they really came at me in like December. I'm like, we can't have sex in the title because it's going to get buried in the algorithms. And I was like, I've been doing my show for 20 years to make sex more accessible.
I have to put sex in the title. It's like I'm sexy, definitely. So this is what we're up against, right? It's still, if we live in a world, we are not as safe and comfortable talking about sex.
Right. So if it's not the sensibility that we have and the concern that everyone has about opening up about sex, it's getting keywords hidden on Google's search algorithm. Okay. Um, what is it?
Have you ever looked at why humans are nervous about talking about sex? Just generally, why is that adaptive? Why would that be an evolutionary adaptive reason? Well, because evolutionary speaking, I would say that there was a time when we weren't voted, we go back about 500,000 years.
We look at religions, impact on sexuality. And we look at the change in women's roles and men's roles and how sex sort of became more about procreation and women became the property of men and we started to police sexuality. And so, um, we didn't have a lot of, again, still enough information about it. And so I think if we look at modern day, why we're not, you know, evolutionary speaking, I think there's been a lot of change in it.
But even if you go back to Adam and Eve, which some people say that story isn't even real, Eve was blamed and shamed for her body and what she did to Adam, making him take about the apple. So since the beginning of the time, I would say there's been some shame around our genitals, but if we fast forward to modern day, I can tell you that we weren't even talking about sex in America until about 50 years ago, right? Till the kids Institute started doing research around it and in late 50s. But so it's still a pretty new field.
And even that, they still, even just yesterday, I have a friend who works at Kinsey Institute, so they were being defunded. So anyway, there's that. There's also just shame. I have to tell you that there is so much shame around our bodies and talking about sex.
And I do think it goes back to more conservative environments. We don't have information about it. If you grew up in a household where you were told it was wrong to have sex in marriage or unless you were married and that's excellent for procreation, you know, and without. So I think a lot of it is shame and we haven't normalized it that our parents, parents that want to talk to kids, kids that want to hear their parents talk about it.
And a lot of misinformation just leaves it shrouded in mystery. One thing that is interesting to add into that is that I'm not convinced that the modern world is as sex negative. You know, we've got kids that are now 16 years old who were born in what? 2007.
2007 wasn't pitch burning flag carrying, you know, like keep your, I mean, women's gay marriage legal eyes, not long, not too long after that. Right. So it seems like a relatively sex positive world. Yet young people still have a lot of reticence about talking about their sex.
So, you know, there may be some of the older people, the older generation, perhaps my parents generation, your parents generation who were influenced by that conservative thinking, I'm not sure. I wonder whether there's just something more embedded. I wonder whether it's something about, I don't know, the same way that you don't talk to your friends all the time about your bowel movements or about your athletes foot or about like your chronic flatulence or something. There's just something kind of sacred about, even sacred, shameful, inherently shameful.
And I guess what you're trying to do, opening up the conversation about sex, normalizing it, making it the sort of thing that people don't need to blush and look at the floor when they when they discuss. Well, you know, I think you're right. I think there is some shame out, like I don't want to, there's just some things that we don't want to talk about. But if I didn't have an example of in the Dutch countries, like in the Netherlands, it's the only place that I know of that we've studied where they actually talk about, they start teaching sex education when kids are very, very young, like, even when they're pre verbal, meaning they name the body parts.
They'll say those are your toes and your knees and your thighs and your vagina, your vulva, your penis. Whereas in America, we might skip right over and be like, your knees, your thighs, your stomach or your private parts. So at a young age, they start to normalize that, they name the parts. They talk about consent when it comes to touching like a young age, too.
They'll like say, this is your body and you have the right to have people touch it or not. And in their sex education, which they have every single year as kids get older, like literally from kindergarten to graduation, they talk about, they have sex education. But we're in America, it's fear, it's basically don't get pregnant, don't get an STI, basically don't have sex. It's all bearing mechanical and fear-based in these Dutch countries.
They talk about pleasure and they talk about orgasm and they talk about, yeah, like consent and asking for what you want. And I think that this lack of information here, we don't really talk about the female orgasm or there's like an orgasm gap or there's all these missing things that it just, it just, there's just a lot of missing information here where we don't talk about how it can be pleasurable and great. But again, when you look at these countries, they show that the pregnancy rate is lower, the parents, the kids talk to their parents about sex, the parents will say, well, if you had sex, I hope it was pleasurable. I hope you had an orgasm like that might seem so cringy to everybody who is listening to this, but that's because of the way we were socialized.
How much better is it to be in a free open world? Like your parents are like, you're playing on a soccer league, like how was your match? Did you win? Did you play with it?
How was your sex? Did you pleasure cool? Did you use protection? Amazing.
What's for dinner? Like why does it have to be so shameful? Right? Because the problem with that is that we walk around having pain, faking orgasms, like I did for many, many years, 80% of women are pain during sex at some point in their life.
Some women always have pain, but they never talk about it. We're like, well, I guess we got to periods and get birth and have pain during sex. We don't, there's an orgasm gap or men have orgasms in 99% of sexual situations. And women do not, only 20% of women have sex during penetrative sex.
We, you know, women and men take between like six and eight women in so I guess women take between 20, 40 minutes. So like there's all these ways that if sex is really supposed to be this pleasurable, collaborative effort where we're all having a good fucking time, then it'd be so great to have information about it. So we could actually do it in a way that feels good. So this is where the disconnect is like, yes, people are having sex with them, apparently not having sex.
But even when they are having sex, I think the quality of sex hasn't changed. And that is my mission. To be honest, my mission is to get people to have better sex and to, and everyone gets to decide what that looks like. And I don't even think that we know what that looks like.
And so that's what my mission is all about. And what my book is about that I just like literally it was like, I want people to know what's on the menu and what sex even can look like. And here's all the tears of foundation for knowing if you're sexually healthy and what you need to know. And then you get to decide like, here's everything.
Take what you like, leave the rest. But I think right now, since there's so much disparate information, we're just walking around like, why is sex so great at the beginning of the relationship? But it's not great six months in or year in. Like, no, let's just fucking deal with it and have information.
And have a lot more pleasure in our lives. That's what I'm all about. It is strange that we exist in a world that's got more information than ever before. We've managed to eradicate diseases.
We've mastered the climate. We can fly across countries. We can do all sorts of things, communicate. And yet the quality of sex by the doctor, as she says, doesn't seem to improve.
You know, the quality of our lives have improved by pretty much every other objective metric that you care to care about. I wonder whether part of it is this sort of current, it is like a puritanical world where people have focused so much just on work and pleasure or enjoyment feels lazy it feels like unnecessarily luxurious. You probably don't have time for it. It's the bottom of your list of priorities.
Exactly. That's exactly it. And that's what I mean. I this is my work is basically about pleasure getting people to prioritize pleasure and not put conditions on pleasure.
Like it's only once I work out, can I have dessert or once I check everything off my list, can I go do something that's fun for me? And my thesis hypothesis that really that sex that sex, well, that pleasure is productive, that the more pleasure you have, the more pleasure you work into your life, your schedule, your planning, you know, if you're planning your workout, so your time with friends or all the other things you're prioritizing, put pleasure on the map, put pleasure on your calendar, like whatever that is. And I actually have in my book a pleasure percentage that I help people figure out like their pleasure formula of how many, if you look it out, there's like a formula of how many minutes in the day, how many minutes in a week and you divide it up and you figure out like all the formula, literally for how you can insert pleasure into your life and like look ahead and be like, these are the things that make me feel good. Because otherwise they just don't happen to your point.
You're just like, I don't deserve it. I didn't do enough. And the next thing you know, like weeks go by months go by, you're like, when was the last time I did something that was just fun for me? What is fun?
Like what is pleasure really? Yeah, we work so much. We all work so hard to meet when our phones were left like we're always available. But we're not scheduling in.
We're not scheduling that pleasure time. OK, you said, you said before something that's an interesting question, which is, why is sex exciting at the beginning of a relationship and why does it wane over time? What have you come to believe about that? Well, I did this is our biology speaking.
There's something called the honeymoon phase, which is a real cycle of biological condition less anywhere from six months to two years. And what they show is that, you know, when something's new and exciting and we, you know, the novelty of being someone new, we actually have looked at the brainwave patterns of people falling in love or in lust. And it's, it's, it's looks like the people on cocaine. Like if you look at people falling in love and lust, it's the same exact thing.
You got the dopamine, the sartones, the most delicious cocktail of field, hormones flying around and we feel amazing, but just like everything that feels great. It also has to come down, right? It comes up, it comes down. And so then it stagnates and then we're like, OK, well, I'm not writing the waves of the fumes of the newness and excitement.
What do we do about it? How do we keep it going? And what we do crave after this period is, you know, if we start the sex started flat line is we do crave like novelty and newness and variety. And so, you know, but that's why that's why it happens.
And then that's when people usually come to buy me. We're like, OK, now what do we do? And since we don't have a lot of information about sex and we're not comfortable talking about sex and we compartmentalize sex, we really do. We kind of put it over there.
We're like, when it's close my eyes, get naked and hope for the best, hope it's good. And then it's not good. You know what the fuck to do. So I help people kind of figure out what they can do to make it, keep it hot, keep it interesting, keep it fresh and keep it going.
Pippiting from that, I think it's the passionate to the companionate. Those are the two systems in Eve's psych speak and you have the one that is all encompassing. You're concerned about why they've waited so long to text you back. You can't wait to see them again.
It ruins your day because you can't not think about them. And then things do pivot, but they put it for an adaptive reason, right? That you go from make retention to family building. You're no longer focused as much on trying to be obsessive to make sure that they're invested in you.
You're both invested in each other and now we need to move forward. But I imagine that given that pleasure is something that needs to be prioritized, given that it's something that determines our quality of life, it makes us live longer, et cetera, et cetera. These two things almost kind of work against each other. So one of the most common dynamics, I think that people will see, especially those that are in relationships, are sex becoming routinized.
The type of sex that you have when you have it, where you have it, the way you have it, how long it lasts, the things you do, what are your pieces of advice for people who feel like sex is the same as a trip to McDonald's now? I know my order. I know what to expect. I know how long the way it's going to be and I know what I'm going to feel like I've for a finished.
What should you do? Well, I think the first thing to do is to, if you're in a relationship is to start to talk to your partner about sex. Really, my whole thing is communication is a lubrication and the more that we talk about sex, the better sex we're going to have. So really it's finding out what kind of sex do we like having?
What's interesting to us? Like let's do a little bit of research, a little bit of digging, a little bit of reflective, you know, talking about what has worked in our relationship and what hasn't. So you can talk about, for example, okay, so here's the thing. I'm going to go out on a Wednesday.
The majority of people in long-term relationships haven't really talked about their sex life in a way that is useful, in a way that can help them answer this question of what can we do to keep it hot and interesting. And so, you know, I actually, in this book, Smart Sex, I write about these five pillars, which are sort of the foundation and the tools of the way that people can check in with themselves and understand their own sexuality. Because when I started writing this book, I was like, okay, I've got 20 years of knowledge, here's all my best tips and tricks. And then I thought, like, you know, everybody wants a quick fix when it comes to sex.
Like, what's the toy? What's the loo? What's the sex position? And I give that, like I give that in droves and smart sex.
I literally put everything in there, but then I realized that people really need an organizing principle around sex. I want people to understand there are five pillars and that's going to help them understand who they are as a sexual being. They don't see the relationship between their sexual being, their emotional being, their mental being, their physical being, their spirituality, their, their, you know, their self-confidence or self acceptance, all the things. So there's all these factors that come into play.
So when I tell couples to talk about their sex life, there's a lot of different things going on. There's all the tips and tricks, like try this position, try this toy. But then there's what's going on with the individual with you. And I really feel like I, when I said, I was people, what I help people who was understand who they are sexually, so then they can relate to a partner and they can figure out these like five pillars together.
For example, like what, like the first one is embodiment, right? How in our body are we doing sex? Do I know what makes me feel when I'm having sex with someone, am I present? Am I feeling my partner's body?
My hands? Do I, you know, feel my feet on the ground? Like in any moment, how embodied are you? Is this a conversation when it comes to embodiment in these five pillars?
Is this something that someone's supposed to broach with a partner? Is it best to do with a partner? Is it best to journal it? Is this supposed to be part of my morning meditation practice?
Yes, I love this that you're asking this. So I think so, I mean, because I'm getting into the penters, I have a really for couples. This is just, well, first all, there's sex IQ, is that you can take on my website and figure out where you're at and where to start. But I do this.
If I'm out of the mood for sex or I don't want something, I write down the five areas and I think about an old journal at the top of my notes and my phone and I go around, I'm like, have I paid attention to all of these players? Do I, how's my health and wellness? Have I been working out? What's my blood flow like?
Have I been communicating with my partner? That's another one of the pillars, collaboration. Have I talked to you about what my turn ons are? What makes me feel good in the bedroom?
What doesn't? Maybe I have some resentments too. So you're just a way of kind of analyzing where you're at, your sexual health and then figuring out, then talking a part about it. So really it's just, yeah, you could do this on your own, you could read this with your partner, you could figure out like what.
So the first thing is I have, and if you want to start more like at a base level, like if you're in a relationship with someone, you've never talked about your sex life. A great place to start, like if we're just talking quickly, and you're like, right now, I want to know what's going on. Talk about the three most memorable times you've had sex with each other, not with somebody else, but be like, what's our most memorable times you have sex? And then you look at that and you think, okay, what is, what, what was happening in those moments?
What, why was it so great? Was there a new sex move? Was it, was there a lot of foreplay? Was there a lot of build up?
Had we not seen each other in a while? Was there a lot of oral sex? Was it someone almost walking the room and we thought we almost got caught? Like what elements were happening?
So we can kind of reverse engineer what great sex feels like. When did we feel the most connected? What was happening? So that's a great place to start.
I have a yes, no, maybe less on my site that lists all of like the 80 sex acts out there that couples can kind of take a little quiz together and figure this is more like, what are we into? Are we into kissing, spanking, dirty talk? Like what would be great? But at the end of the day, Chris, at the end of the day, we have to understand, when do I get turned on?
When do I get aroused? What time of month? What time of day? What conditions need to be present for my arousal?
Do I need to have it? Like if it's freezing in my house and it's a mess, I'm shut down. I have no blood flow. I'm freezing.
I'm shivering. I can't relax because the dishes are in the sink. So if I'm in pain, I'm in pain. So there's a magical switch that's going to flip on at any moment because it did early on in the relationship.
Through this book, you can learn at any time. It's kind of like your health. If you're not feeling in shape, you don't just go to the gym. You have to go to the gym.
If you want to be healthy, you want to go to the gym, change your diet, get your blood work done, maybe you're going to amp your connections and your community and try to have your mental health. So the sex is the same way, but since we compartmentalize it, we're disconnected from it. I want to realize it's a holistic approach to understanding your overall wellness and that includes your sexual health. Cockblocked by the dishwasher.
What a scenario to make yourself into. Yeah, I think you're right. Not being intentional about sex is something that's super common. It's tied into by the shame.
It's tied into by the fact that it's more difficult to speak to other people about. You're not going to, I applaud you and I thoroughly hope that people can have a more organic relationship with talking about sex. I don't see a world in which I want to open up to my mom about whatever's going on in my sex life. So, you know, given the fact that that's the case, it is one of the more challenging things to do.
Talking about stuff that gets in the way, what are the most common emotions that get in the way or stop people from having pleasure? The most common things that get in the way of pleasure. So I call these the pleasure thieves and the first one is stress, anxiety, stress, worry. If we are at a place where we are worried all the time and anxious and we're in our heads and we're worried about money, our jobs, our lives, we are not going to be able to prioritize our pleasure and make as much time for it.
We're going to be in our heads, which means we're not in our bodies. So that's just a huge factor. And again, I think that people don't often see that connection between their lifestyle and their mental health and their sexuality. There's also shame as we cover that if we have shame around our bodies, around our sexuality, around how we show up, thinking that we shouldn't be having sex, it's going to be really hard to have connected intentional sex.
It really is. And then trauma. If we have on healed trauma, any kind of trauma, big tea trauma, little tea trauma. That our body is in fight or flight and we are disassociated during sex.
Also going to make it difficult for having sex. Those are some of these. All of these are, well, no, trauma, trauma to me feels like something, especially big tea trauma is the sort of thing that it's not just enough to speak to your partner about, right? You probably need to go and get therapy.
Yeah. Therapy. Listen, we all need therapy. We all need for, I believe that we all could use therapy at some point in our life.
I mean, it's just like getting a second opinion on your life. We do it in our business, right? We get a business coach or we'll be a car breaks down, we'll go to a mechanic. Like if our relationship or our mental health, it just, yeah, I'm just a huge fan of therapy.
I really can't even believe it's like that people still don't realize that they could use and it doesn't have to be like a traditional once a week therapist. People can find other ways to kind of do that internal work. I just think it's so important. I mean, another thing that's really keeping us from pleasure is medications.
I don't think that we realize that antidepressants, birth control pills, some blood pleasure medications will directly impact our libido, our blood flow, our ability to get aroused, turned on, erect, lubricated, wet. And so again, the disconnect with lack of information. I mean, no one's reading the side effects on the side of the pill bottle, but they probably should or maybe they heard it and they're like, oh, but it doesn't really affect me. It absolutely does.
And these are also things we could pay attention to. So you can talk to your doctor about it, your medical doctor, and you can say, I'm not okay with these side effects. Are there other things that I can do? These SSRIs are causing me to be basically impotent.
Have you had Dr. Sarah Hill on your show? No. Lady that wrote, this is your brain on both control?
No, but I've had a few other birth control people and I'll write it down. It'll be similar stuff to what you've seen, but she's phenomenal and she looks at it through an evolutionary lens, which is great. And she's got some ovulatory window shift stuff in there, which is interesting too. But they did a study with natural cycles, the thermometer under the tongue, people.
So they actually worked with the company to have an in-app study that was done. All of the women who are on the natural cycles app are currently off birth control, because why the fuck would you be tracking a cycle of birth control? They surveyed a bunch of the users and asked whether they met their partner when they were on birth control or when they were off birth control. They then asked them to rate their current level of sexual satisfaction with their partner.
And I think in the app, there is a journal entry that asks you to put your current level of arousal or sexual desire or something like that. They were then able to compare the level of sexual satisfaction from women that had met their partners when they were on and are now off or met their partners when they were off and are now still off. Women who met their partners when they were on birth control and are now off had a lower level of sexual satisfaction with their partner. But both groups had the same level of sexual desire and arousal.
So no difference in terms of sex drive, but a marked difference in terms of how much they were attracted to their partner. And you go, okay, has anybody ever told any girl ever when they go to go and get birth control at age 16 or something? Beware that the partner that you end up with, if you then decide to get off birth control, maybe you're married, maybe you've been together for four or five years and you've never released yourself from this hormone-induced stupor. And you go, holy fuck, I'm in a relationship with somebody that I'm not that sexually compatible with when I don't have a ton of progester on flowing through me.
It's really, really terrifying and fascinating. Yeah, I actually talked about the study in the book and I wonder what was the same study as there, I don't know if that's the name of it, but this is a known study that's been around that we do talk about a lot, that it's just, there are so many factors that when women take a birth control pill at 16, 17, they don't realize that it's going to impact their risk for depression, for anxiety, for, yeah, reduce libido, for concentration problems, diet, for their, just everything. I mean, I just, yeah, I take the pill for a year, I don't remember. And it was always like a non-pill, like back now there's more information, this is why I'm so thrilled there's so many people talking about this, but I remember going to the doctor, I was like, you know, 10 years and they go, are you whining medication, you're not just a pill, like it was never, no one ever talked about side effects, ever.
It was just, that's what you do, you know what I mean? It's just crazy to think now with all the information we have, how harmful it is. That's one of the pieces of advice I definitely give to people, which is if you and your partner are thinking about getting married and your missus has been on birth control for the entirety of your relationship, you really, really need to get her to come off this before you commit to buying the house, getting the dog, doing the marriage, starting the family, because, and it's brutal to say, like, you know, we are inexorably linked to our psychology and our biology work in tandem with each other and you just don't know how different the texture of your partner's mind could be if she comes off of birth control and you go, fuck, like, this doesn't work. And it's a non-zero number of people, it's like a not insignificant number of people to whom this happens.
So yeah, I think that's important. So going back to the communication thing, someone's listening to this and they go, that's me and my missus. We don't talk about sex as openly as we should do. This sex IQ thing sounds like I've never even considered it.
What is the best process for beginning a conversation, opening up this world of talking about sex with your partner? The best thing to do is to find a space and time to talk about it. I talk about the three T's of communication. I have a communication guide on my side.
It's like Timing Tone and Turf. I mean, this is a great tool for any kind of sexual conversation that you want to have, but you want to make sure that you are first off that you're entering any of these conversations from a place of curiosity and compassion and being intentional that this conversation is going to be about our collaboration and about us coming together in a place where we want to learn more about each other rather than defensive. Why don't you ever go down to me? Why aren't you initiating sex?
There's so much anger and hostility around sex. So Timing Tone and Turf is picking time when you guys are hanging out in its chile. It's not when you are in good chills. It's not when you've been fighting or whatever.
It's a date night. You're saying immediately after a rampant argument saying why do you never go down to me? It's terrible. It's never received well, but people throw it in at the time.
It's the most important thing to remember is that it's outside the bedroom. People do not have these kind of conversations when you are in the bedroom, when you are in a heightened state of arousal already or you're upset about something. I would just love everybody to keep their bedrooms for sleeping and for sex. What about tone?
The tone is light and curious and it's open and it's collaborative and I give a lot of tools in the book for actually, I just script upon scripts because what I know after 20 years, people are like, I still don't know how to do it. Even though I talk about timing tone and turf, it's light, it's open, you're not defensive, you're learning how to be active listening tools for people to learn how to actually reflect and listen. A lot of us just don't listen and we talk and we don't actually hear what our partner's saying. So there's methods to repeating back to what your partner says to make sure that you are hearing each other and the other thing to remember is that it's not a one time conversation.
My vision is for couples to have this conversation all the time. I mean, you don't just- Thanksgiving. Yeah. It doesn't do your parents around the table but when you're like, you know, yeah, we're ever because you talk about date and night, right?
What are we going to do tonight? Where are we going to go on an application? What? What can you talk about your own personal goals or your work goals?
I know my partner and I talk a lot about what our goals are professionally and personally and health goals and all those things but we talk about our sex life. We're like, okay, we're going away. What toys should we bring? What should we do?
What's our thing that we're into this week, this month? Like, I know when there's times that I'm turned on or not or he's like, should we have sex? We literally talk about it. It's so hot because it's not confused.
There's no confusion around my sex life. There's no like, resettments or are we going to sex? We're not going to sex because we're like, just like, are we ordering in? Are we cooking dinner?
Are we having sex? Are we not? Like, and then we clear all the confusion and upset stuff around sex, the weirdness and the thing that we just know, like when we want to do it, it's kind of like going to the gym. You know, like for your workouts, you optimize it like a great hack is to put your shoes out the night before, sign up for your class, have a trainer, keep yourself accountable.
Exactly. Exactly. And it's always charge. My assistant charges my sex toys.
I'm not kidding you. They're always ready to go. I hope that you pay your assistant unbelievably well. They're already clean.
She charges my laptop. She charges my iPad. She charges my iPad. She got a dock.
We've got everything in the nice clean line. Get tactical for a second. What are some of the favorite scripts that you have for how somebody should broach discussion about sex with a partner? Honestly, one of my favorite ways to do it is once we, because that time you turn into a conversation, you can just be, hey, I realize we've never talked about our sex life.
I was listening to this great podcast and they said that couples who talk about sex actually have better sex. Because literally you're like, if I, you have to remember this, when you approach your partner, if you've never talked about sex, there's a pretty good chance they're going to fight or fight. They're going to be like, why are you bringing this up to me? What am I doing wrong?
Oh my God. My penis really is a small dick. Or not as hard or not. Oh, you don't like my breast.
There's just a million things we go to this place. Not like, oh great. You want to talk about our sex life? That is, I've been waiting for that too babe.
No, it's usually met with animosity and fear. So just why the tone is so important and the timing and just saying, listen, I realize if this is something that we haven't talked about, but I want to have a growth mindset around our sex life and I hope that you do too. I hope that this is going to be a place where we can grow and learn together and evolve. Would you be down for that?
So that's just a general conversation. But let's say there's something that you really want to, you want to give feedback too. You want to give some constructive feedback. I love the compliment sandwich.
The sexual compliment sandwich is when you start with a compliment, you start with something that you really love about the sex life. Last night was so hot. I love when you, maybe my desire is to kiss more. In long term relationships, kissing is one of the first things that goes.
We stop kissing, we stop making out. I remember like early on, like if there's long makeout sessions and sex that's a lot longer. Well, maybe I've learned that kissing is a big part of my arousal process. So I would say, you know, I really love the sex we're having.
It was so hot last night, I love the way you silly and dress me. It was so, the orgasms and it was that butt plug. You really like use that really well last night babe. But I realize, and this is when you get to the constructive part, is that, you know, I really miss our kissing.
And for me, I know we kiss a little bit at the beginning, but I think it would be so hard if we could kind of bring back in some of those makeout sessions and then you end it with, I would be great for both of you. Because I think the more we kiss, the more connected we're going to feel and I know I'll be way more turned on and down from where sex. So you just sort of, yeah. Well, one of the things, I guess, almost everybody has performance anxiety in one regard or another, right?
Guys, how long they can last and girls for whether or not they're doing it right. And I think that trying to work out a way to dampen the landing to just make it a little bit more gentle is probably pretty important because you don't want to trigger a response in somebody that worsens the situation. I think that that's one of the reasons that people fear bringing this up is well, how's my partner going to respond? Exactly.
I'm trying to improve our sex, but what if I make it worse? What if I make the more self-conscious? Yeah. Well, I think that if you're in a relationship where you can be super vulnerable about your insecurities and your challenges, and I hope, I mean, I hope that everyone's in a relationship where they can't, they're able to talk about other areas like, oh, my boss at work didn't treat me so well today or I'm feeling, I didn't get that raise or I didn't get that thing in your vulnerable.
But sex is the same way. So if you have insecure, hopefully your partner is coming in from a loving place. Like if you're giving feedback and you're trying to grow into the sex life and trying to evolve it. So it's interesting and hot for both of you that we can take some of the shame and trust and know that your partner is with you because they love you and they're attracted to you and they find you sexy and hot and all the things that I want people to take a moment here and really hear what I'm saying, that most of the things that you are worried about when it comes to sex, your performance, your penis size, your body shape, the way you're doing, giving performing oral sex, the way your breasts, your left boobs, your right boobs, whatever the things you're worried about have like literally zero to do with any sort of pleasure or satisfaction.
And people will tell you they have the best sex that was never because of like the shape of the penis, that all these things, it's about connection, it's about intimacy, it's about feeling safe, it's about experimenting, it's about really being with someone where you want them to have the most pleasure and they want the same for you. It's a collaboration. It's a wonderful dance and so if I can leave this planet and let people realize that like all of this is okay, you are normal, your fantasies, your desires, it's all fine that you have to make peace with yourself and then find a partner that's open to collaborate with you on this and have these conversations, like that's the biggest roadblocks is our own fears around sex and worry. What are you hearing from women about what they wish that their partners would do more or less of in the bedroom?
I'm aware that this isn't a one-size-fits-all, I'm aware that every woman's body and fantasies are individual, but are there some common trends that you're hearing from women about things that are commonly do's and don'ts, some more's and less's? I would say that across the board and this is probably nothing new that women want more, they want sex to be slower. I'd say they go five times slower than you think. Slow everything down, kissing, undressing, making out.
If you're going down on your partner, like don't be like the one like wonder, stay down there a little bit longer. If you heard me earlier, it takes women and we're between 20 and 40 minutes to orgasm. I think that women want slowness, I think they want intentionality, they want compliments, they want to feel adored, they want to feel worship, they want to feel beautiful, compliments go a long way. The brain is our largest sex organ, so you know, besides our skin, people always get on the map, but find our skin also is important.
So I think that the more that we can connect sexually, I often say four play all day or four play starts after the last orgasm. So what can you do in the times in between sex to stay connected and hot and keep it sexy, whether it's like sexting, sending pictures, telling your partner what you want to do next, what you remember about the last time you had sex, keeping sex top of mind, keeping your pilot light lit. Because when you just like, think about it, I'm always going to use an L.D. of the gym.
You start working every day, you're feeling great and then you don't go for a while, you don't go for a month and it's a lot harder to get back in there. The same thing goes for sex. So I think that we all, not just women, remember we want to keep that fire going, we want to keep it lit. So I think that I just hear that we want more, like we don't want to just be going about our lives and then there's this expectation we should just want to go and have sex because our partner does.
So I think that we have to remember that women are slow cookers typically and men are like frying pans. So if you can just remember that, that we've got more bells and whistles and buttons and things that have to happen for us to be aroused. Again, not once I spit all, there's some women who feel differently, but overall in my 20 years of work, this is what I found that we need a little bit more of everything to keep it, to keep it hot and keep it interesting and collaborative. I mentioned about instigating sex and I think that initiating sex from all of the, I used to run an event business, so I saw a lot of 18 to 25 year olds that were in and out of relationships, making up and breaking up and stuff like that.
And one of the most common disagreements that was had around sex seemed to be who was initiating it, how it was initiated, communication about trying to start it. A lot of the time I think girls not instigating, which can sometimes cause guys to feel not desired, that's kind of a bit of a lame thing for a guy to admit to because you go, well, if I don't feel desired, what even is that? That's kind of a bit of a feminine trait that undermines my masculine confidence and essence that makes me less of an alpha or a high value man. What have you come to believe or learn about instigating sex philosophically, tactically?
What do you think? I think that we all need to initiate an instigate sex. I think that it has to be a two eight street. I think that there's, I also want to say that I get why usually in relationship there's one person initiates more than the other.
That's just how it is. Usually there's a high desire partner and a low desire partner. And typically those people get together in a relationship. And so one person's always initiating.
But what happens is there's just this, yeah, what happens is that then they get into this challenge where if you're always the one who's driving, it gets exhausting, you're not even sure that your partner wants to. And then they're the one who has the power, the low desire partner has the power in the relationship. They're the one who's deciding it's going to happen, it's not going to happen. So that can be exhausting too to be like, well, why am I not desired?
Am I not, why aren't you making an effort? I think again, like everything begins these patterns, right? We get into patterns and like, well, the sour sex happens. You make the move and I follow.
But the challenge around that is, yeah, someone feels rejected. They feel like they're doing all the work. They don't know what their desire to do. It does seem like it's a feminine thing, but we all have feelings and emotions and want to feel loved and adored and safe.
That is just blurs across gender lines. So the thing about initiation is it's really important to realize that it's a skill set, that you might not be as used to it. You might not have done it. You might not know what it looks like, but it's okay to tell your partner too, because these are the kind of conversations I want people to have.
I know that you want me into shame or I mean, this could be one of our conversations. If you're in a relationship, it's like, you know, I feel like, I know I love sex that we're having, but I feel like I'm always making effort. I would love to know that you're down with sex too. Doesn't ever just strike you.
Don't you ever just want to grab me? Like I grab you. Like I see you, I walk in the door and I want to throw it on the front, but you never do that to me and I would just love if you did what you did, would you be down with that, right? When you do it in a much more, you wouldn't say never or you would do it.
However, the problem is I might hear that and to be honest, I will be really vulnerable. I'm not the initiator as much in my entire sexual history. I typically rely on my partner to initiate, but I've had people who say to me, you know, again, it's my life work, but still I need to initiate. So what I realize is that what I need to do is it's just none of my habit.
I don't get struck by it like my guys do that I'm with. I'm just not that person. I'm somebody who is more responsive. I respond to stimuli.
So there's like, we get, there's people who are spontaneous arousal and responsive arousal. And again, I hate to do this stuff with gender, but usually men are more spontaneous and women tend to be more responsive. So I'm responding to my partner's kiss and my neck. He came in and he grabbed me.
He did something. He sent me sex. I'm responding to that. Okay.
So knowing that about myself and my partner saying he might be initiate more, I have to then do a trip of my brain and say, okay, since I know it's not going to strike me over that, I have to think about when am I going to initiate and then I'll plan it. I'm like, okay, well, I know that the house has to be clean, the dishwasher has to be worn. I have to have worked out, feel good, showered. I've got to be made.
My toys are charged, the lubes out. I mean, there's things that need to happen. I don't want to do it early in the morning because I don't want to miss my workout. I've got to get up and work out.
So like, and I think that in saying this, hopefully you are thinking about this too because what I encourage and what smart sex is all about is about getting smart about your arousal, your desire so you can hack it and you know, like, this is exactly what needs to happen. So then I have to think about it. So that's one thing. I'm like, these are all things that happen.
And then literally another thing to do is saying to your part if you're still like, but I still can't do it, I still kind of initiate another piece of advice I give as an ask your partner, like, thanks for letting me know, babe, I know you want me to shape more. What would that look like to you? What would a really hot initiation look like? Because maybe my head to the perfectionist, I'm thinking it has to be like some elaborate thing where I'm like naked on the bed wearing lingerie with rose petals everywhere, right?
And maybe I invited another woman over like, I don't know what's hot. If that's your fantasy, who knows? But literally you might be like, I just want you to grab me and just kiss me. I just want you to make out with me.
I want you to come behind me a kitchen, put your arms around me. I want you to send me a naked photo. And then I have some fodder, then I know, that's easy, right? And it's less fearful, it's not scary, it becomes a habit.
And you realize that's no big deal. It's literally no big deal. I did it and I'm done. Let's move on to some other sex problems.
So it's really again, I just try to get into the nuance and nitty gritty of where people get stuck. And that's what after all these years, I realized this is a really common thing. The initiation thing is huge and the thing is it might not sound like it's a big deal. But when you realize it, when you think you're the only one pulling the sexual weight in a relationship, it builds into resentment.
And then those resentments get out of control and there's a lot happening. So let's just nip it in the bud. But the second you start having sex with someone, you should start talking about all of these things, right? That's cool too, but start to understand who you are as a sexual being.
Here's something else that I noticed a lot, especially throughout my 20s, which was conversations that I had with some of my close guy mates about how it was always expected and almost resented, I think, sometimes from the girls, if they weren't hot to trot at all times, that there is an expectation that the man is the sexual protagonist and that the woman is the sexual cakekeeper and she's going to respond when you are forthcoming. But that if the reverse happens and you're not immediately just ready to go or you don't fancy this evening or you are whatever, that's much more accepted typically from the woman, you've seen it in million comedy shows, if the guy rolls over and tries to sort of fondle with the girl and she's like, I'm I'm sleeping, I'm tired tonight, I'm on my period, I'm a global boy. But the reverse, I don't think that we have a particularly good positioning for guys. There's a lot of shame around that around, do you know what it is?
Like, I don't want to do this. But if I say no, maybe initiation is rarer, maybe it makes me feel like less of a man, maybe I've got concerns about performance if I do try to have sex during a time when I'm not as in the mood for it. That's something that I think is a lot less talked about. Yeah, absolutely.
And I love that you're bringing that up because I want to normalize it too. My heart goes out to men, men have so much pressure, they're supposed to be turned on, ready to go hard or wrecked, making the moves and then knowing exactly what they're doing to turn their partner on and doing all the tips and tricks. And sometimes guys are not in the mood for sex just as much as women are. And in fact, I found again, to go back to this, I hear from just as many women who want more sex than their male partners.
So I just want to normalize that as well, that that's really, really, really common. And so, yeah, just having a compassionate for your partner, they don't want it again. This is where the normalizing the sex conversation comes in. If in just understanding that just because your partner doesn't want to have sex tonight, it can be not tonight, it doesn't mean not ever, it doesn't mean not now.
And putting some words around and say, babe, you know what, I tonight, I've had a long day, I'm not feeling it, but I can't wait for this weekend. Like Saturday night, like let's do something, let's go out just the two of us. So then your partner's feeling a little bit less rejected or less attached to that outcome. I just think that we don't, again, put words around it and then we get to create all these stories in our head.
If we could just kind of say, no, no, here's why. Let's talk about it later. Let's do it later. Looking at the reverse of this, what are the most common reasons that you hear from women about why they're not reaching orgasm during sex?
Usually, well, during penetration, if we talk about that, penetrative sex typically does not hit women where they need to be hit. There are clitoris as external and internal, but the orgasm starts with the clitoris being, you know, the most common orgasm is a clitoral orgasm, which is, you know, women being taught, usually the majority of orgasms are going to happen from a finger's mouth or toys. That's how the female orgasm happens. So women aren't having orgasms when it's just penetration without any foreplay or orgasm, or pleasure or stimulating the clitoris beforehand because you're just missing all the hotspots.
Like the inner third of the women's vagina is the most sensitive. And so those are some of the areas we need to pay attention to. And so that's one reason is that we're just, we don't really know how to advocate for that. We don't know how to move during sex.
Now, penetrative sex could elicit an orgasm if we had more stimulation first, if we used a toy, if we used fingers, you know, then we could have one in conjunction with penetration. So I would say just a really understanding our anatomy and how it all works is one factor. Another thing is, yeah, I guess not having people, it's kind of the same thing, but not having enough build up, not having enough arousal, not having enough foreplay. And then it could be also medication's birth control pill.
Here's another one, never having one before with a partner, but just having one during masturbation. So that's like a new, you know, everyone's body is different. So it's not feeling safe with a partner, not feeling that I'm with a partner that I can actually communicate my needs and that the know that these are the steps that need to happen. So one of the most interesting stats I'd seen about this was initiated by the declining rates of not having an orgasm compared with how many times you've had sex with that person.
So I think it's like 80% of women don't have sex on the first date or the first time that they have sex, not on the first date. And then it like relatively reliably declines as you get with somebody more. Now, there's something going on, you know, physically you can start to communicate more about compatibility and blah, blah, blah, but really what that suggests is that it's more about comfort. It's more about feeling relaxed.
It's more about being comfortable with the part that you're with. And I saw a really fascinating study a little while ago now that said the most common reason for women not reaching climax during sex was recursive self thoughts about not reaching climax during sex. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
That makes, yeah, we're in our heads performance anxiety of my not going to orgasm and I think I'm an orgasm is not going to happen so absolutely. And the same thing goes for men and their affections or their org has the same thing. I'm going to get hard. I'm going to come to quickly.
Oh, shit. I'm going to come. So yes, when we are in our heads during sex, the blood is leaving our genitals and going to our brains to fuel all of these thoughts that are not serving us and that are not advocating for our pleasure at all. So yeah, the worry that we're not going to get there, which is why I teach a lot of mindfulness meditation meditation.
I'm telling you, meditate and learn how to learn the skill set of bring yourself back to the present moment. And I also give a lot of tools and smart sex to how to bring yourself back to the moment during sex so you can be present, so you can breathe, so you can connect with your partner. I mean, there have been times too where I'm just, you know, when I get these examples too, it's like, I just sex sometimes starts to happen and you lose your weight. You're like, you're in your head or you're like, did I turn the oven off?
Did I, and it's okay? Like here's everything sex is that so precious? You're allowed to say, you know what, let's stop for a second. I'm going to run to the bathroom or I'm going to do something or let's breathe for a minute.
Sometimes again, it's just going, I'm like, Oh, I'm not here. I'm not present. I've left the building and then I'll just stop and I'll advocate for this. I'll do this my relationship.
And we just look at each other and breathe. Can we just like do five deep breaths for our inhales or exhales a little bit longer than our inhales and we breathe and we look into each other's eyes and like we reset and then you start again. So I think again, this misinformation that sex is sort of a sprint and not a marathon and that we all it's very linear. We make out we take our clothes off, we have sex is just not the case and it makes it so less fun.
Emily most ladies gentlemen, if people want to check out the stuff that you do, why should they go? Everything is sex with Emily that released a podcast called sex with Emily twice a week. My install my social media, sex Emily and my new book is smart sex. You can buy it wherever you buy books and you can take my sex IQ quiz on my website.
That will allow you know where to start on your sexual journey. Emily, I appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate you too.
Thanks for having me.