It was the question everyone was the last time. It's what is the single biggest killer of relationships in the modern age. Let's talk about sex. Today's podcast is very, very different, but incredibly important.
Today, I'm sitting down with Kate Moyell, who is a sex therapist and a relationship therapist to talk about some of the taboo topics which we don't normally discuss. Things like erectile dysfunction, sexual inadequacies, issues we all have in our relationships and sex lives. The single biggest killer of relationships in 2021, sexual anxiety, how to keep a sexual relationship exciting and everything in between. I'm going to share some very personal sexual stories that I've never shared before.
It's both things I've gone well and some of the problems that I've had that have caused relationships that I've meant the world to me to end. This is a very, very honest, open podcast today. You know, this is why this is called the diary of a CEO and Kate is the perfect person to put them to. So I think you're going to enjoy this conversation.
I certainly did. I feel very vulnerable sharing some of these stories with you. But as I always say, just keep it yourself. So without further ado, this is the diary of a CEO.
I hope nobody's listening. But if you are, then please keep this yourself. Sex. I think it's fair to say that everybody has some kind of challenge with sex, at least at some point within their life.
And I am no different. In fact, my last relationship, which was a very, I thought, I generally at one point thought that was going to be my wife, the reason that relationship broke down was because of a sexual issue and a sexual issue that showed up about seven or eight months into the relationship. And long story short, I know this isn't a therapy session, but it kind of is as well. At some point, seven or eight months into our relationship, she told me that she didn't like having sex.
And I didn't know what that meant. And as a guy that's never experienced that in my life, I read into it probably in the wrong way, but it definitely made me insecure. I was like, well, you know, like having sex, how's that possible? And I thought that was some kind of condemnation on me.
I thought that was something negative towards me or something that I was doing wrong. And I tried various things. I tried to be a bit more and listen, you know, listen a little bit more to what she wanted and how she wanted it. And then it, you know, it progressively got to a point where I was getting in bed and I was shitting myself because you don't want to, once you get rejected, I never been like, I never gone to have sex with my life and been rejected in that way.
And so you get in bed and you don't want to even ask them for sex. Because you might take an L and you don't want to take that L. And then how the hell am I meant to get an erection as a guy when I'm that fucking scared of rejection? And eventually, long story short, we're in a way, one time, and the same issue happened and she, we were having sex and I was looking at her thinking she clearly isn't enjoying this at all.
And we stopped. She started crying. She said, I've got a problem. She said, like, you know, I just don't enjoy sex.
I said, like, address it. I said, what do you want to talk about it? She said, I'm not comfortable talking about sex with you, even though we've been in a race for a year, and I left and then I broke up with her. And I do regret breaking up with her because I did so maybe too flippantly.
And I didn't understand it. And I didn't think it was fixable. And I didn't know how to fix it. And yeah, sorry for my brain.
Don't be that one. You're better. No, I think, you know, so much of what you've just said, there's so many points there that I hear all the time. So difficulties with desire, struggles with communication, struggles with knowing where to start in terms of talking about it, anxiety, you know, all of these points which can kind of get in the bedroom with us or be in bed with us.
And we just don't know how we're meant to address them. We don't know what we're meant to do about them. And we all feel that sense of what am I doing wrong here? Or what's wrong with me?
Do I have a problem? Am I broken? Because I'm actually working with all of the information that you've just given me, you know, as an example, we can kind of target or work with each of those problems in an individual way which isn't terrifying for people, which doesn't create more anxiety, which doesn't damage the other steam. But we don't have those conversations in a bigger, more normalizing way.
And I think one of the biggest things that I talk about is this idea that sex, like everything else across our lives has good days, bad days, average days, variability, but we expect there to be this constant and we expect it to be protected from everything else that we have going on in our lives. And that just isn't the case. And so automatically, right? Like we kind of expect it to take care of itself.
Yeah. And relationships as well, we kind of expect that once they're good, they're always good, that they shouldn't falter, that we shouldn't have to work at them, that they shouldn't struggle. And I think that there's such a problem with that as a basic foundation message around sex and relationships. How do you refrain that then?
How do I refrain my thinking in order to make sure that I'm, I guess that is a reframing of my thinking. If I think that this thing isn't going to take care of itself and it needs to be worked on like everything else in my life, I guess that's the answer to keeping it exciting. Yeah. So normalizing of the fact that our sex lives and our relationships are in the context of us.
They're not isolated. They're not protected. They don't have their own kind of special area where they aren't impacted by how we feel about ourselves, stress, anxiety, our health, our mental health, you know, physically what's going on for us, psychologically what's going on for us. But why don't we just give ourselves a break and be like, you know what, we're not perfect or good or great at everything else we do all the time.
So why would we be here? I don't think, you know, I think as professionals, we often talk about like why aren't we applying the logic that we apply everywhere else in our lives to this part of our lives. And in that particular case with me and my, this particular person, she turned to me, I remember we were away one time and she said to me, you know, there's loads of people that are like me that don't have like a high lead or whatever. And I have just never encountered these people in my experiences.
So I thought, Oh, that's rubbish. Was she right? Yes. Yeah.
And how right is she? Very right. And you know, we understand that this is a huge part of the conversation around sex lives at the moment and sexual violence at the moment is this idea about desire. Desire is not a fixed concept that we're born with.
We're not kind of given or holding a set amount. It's not like we kind of have an amount and we like use it up. It is context dependent, it's responsive and we understand that it changes. But actually how we can change that within kind of take power of our own, I suppose, or change that within the context that we're in, how we can feel in control of that is based.