Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Sex Expert: Every Girl Should Know These Facts by 25

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Note: At 58:37, we talk about sexual assault, traumatic sexual experiences, and PTSD - if you find these topics triggering, please skip to 1:02:56.Kate Moyle is one of the UK’s leading psychosexual and relationship therapists and authors.In this episode, we’ll explore how to manage uneven sex drive, the truth about libido and orgasms and how to rebuild intimacy in long-term relationships.What you’ll learn:👀 the biggest lies we’re told about what sex ‘should’ look like⭐ what to do if you find sex painful💬 why you may never have had an orgasm💗 tips for the girls who want love but keep pushing it away🏁 a free way to make sure new partners don’t have STDs❤️‍🩹 how to rekindle intimacy in long-term relationshipsBut first, please don’t forget to subscribe and share, it really helps us to grow this podcast.Resources & links mentioned:@katemoyletherapyKate’s book: https://geni.us/TheScienceOfSexKate’s podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sexual-wellness-sessions/id1527311547Links to subscribe / follow:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5viLYizHD4Zy6J42iqtPRoCan I ask you a BIG favour? 💙Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.Share with someone who needs this; it might help them live a happier, healthier life.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests. I'll leave the link here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==🛑 Disclaimers & legal:This podcast is for educational / informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. All opinions are those of the speaker(s).

Between 14, 50% of women couldn't correctly label diagrams of their own anatomy. If we don't know our own bodies, it's going to be really difficult. One of the things I think people get caught up in is it becomes a blame-bame of you take too long and you're too quick. Kate Moyle is one of the UK's leading psychosexual and relationship therapists and authors. We'll explore how to manage uneven sex drives the truth about low libido and orgasms and how to rebuild intimacy in long-term relationships. With the rise probably in born being a lot more accessible than it once was, do you think that that contributes potentially to decreasing sex that is happening?

People who've never had sex or sexual experiences kind of spans out from there, but there are so many things that can happen in life that can change someone's relationship with sex. Sometimes they can't get past that and they need a bit of help to do that. But first, please don't forget to subscribe or leave a five-star review. It really, really helps us keep growing the podcast and bringing you guests that help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. I'm Kate, Kate, we're saying to her discussions podcast. Kate, our community, you've sent in so many questions about painful intimacy or varying sex drives and long-term relationships.

And I'm so, so, so excited to get into those and hear your thoughts and answer the questions for our community. But first, I want to hear a little bit about how you got to where you are today. So you're a psychosexual and relationship therapist. What led you to that and how would you describe your works as someone hearing that title for the first time? Yeah, I think my kind of experience of getting into psychosexual therapy is actually quite boring. I was studying psychology. I was really academically kind of interested in kind of what made people tick sexually. And I was studying that.

And actually one of the most interesting things was in studying it, I was interested in other people's response to what I said. was studying and however I was like oh that's kind of interesting or strange or you know people's kind of body language shifted and I found that quite interesting around the dynamic of just like the topic of sex being studied academically and then I did my psychosexual therapy training back in 2011 I think it was and then I trained separately as a relationship therapist because I blend the two things together so I'm working with couples sometimes sometimes individuals and then I did my European psychosexologist qualification back in 2020. And really, if I could sum psychosexual therapy

up, it's a specialist branch of talking therapy, particularly for issues around sex, relationships, intimacy. And that covers a million different things. But the kind of top line ones are difficulties with the desire, difficulties with orgasm, painful sex, sex changing, things like dysfunctions, like erectile dysfunction difficulties, ejaculations. Ejaculation. sexual anxiety, sexual trauma, people who've never had sex or sexual experiences. And really it kind of spans out from there. But there are so many things that can happen in life that can change someone's relationship with sex. And sometimes they can't get past that and they need a bit of help to do that.

I'm really excited to dive into hopefully some of the practical tips to try and address all of those concerns. I'm going to start off with a community question. Okay. Is there a best time in the day to have sex morning, afternoon or evening? Well, what we see is kind of medically the testosterone peaks in the morning. And so, you know, if we were saying only examining that, then that might be something that could affect people. But the reality is this question is when it works for you.

And whenever I'm talking about sex, we're always talking about what we call biopsychosocial. So kind of biological, physical, social and psychological, kind of elements are working together. So people who have young kids, first time in the first thing in the morning is probably a no-go. It's almost definitely a no-go unless they have tiny people that sleep late or don't

have to get to school, but that's not going to practically work, but for some people who, for example, don't, then they might feel that having sex first thing in the morning is great because there's nothing in their heads. They haven't felt like kind of boggled from their day at work. They're not getting into bed with loads in their heads.

or it's completely like those are kind of top line examples but really it's kind of when it works for you and one of the things that we saw during kind of COVID lockdown when couples were together is lots of people were saying they were having sex during the day or in their lunch breaks because they were in the same place at the same time and sometimes there can actually be really basic factors like the practicalities of that that make a difference

I think that's such an important point and what one of the things I love most about this podcast is you we're able to take often prescriptive advice that comes from short videos on social media and we can give them more nuance and say you know what at the end of the day it's what works for you yeah you know another community question that we had is what's the role and importance of foreplay I think full play is a super interesting word because for a start what it does is it indicates that what you're doing in that time is only valid if it's followed by something else and so typically what we think of

is when we use this kind of word is non-penetrative sex and penetrative sex. But actually what we do in psychosexual therapy a lot is we kind of break all of these terms down and we're like, what do we mean by that? Now, if we were to think of it as people do in that traditional sense, it's basically a warm-up essentially. So it's creating arousal, which is the body and the brain's process of preparing for sex, but also desire, which is our motivation. So I'm enjoying this.

I want this to carry on. It plays a really important role because if we feel like we go from a cold start, often people don't feel kind of really turned on. It's that kind of time of warming up. But equally, that is a period of time that could take one minute for some people and 20 for others. But I think that it's really important that what we don't do is devalue what's done and what we would call for play as only meaningful or valid if it comes before something else. because actually plenty of people have non-penetriative sex lives and really enjoy them

and don't have that type of sex, don't enjoy that type of sex. And actually that doesn't mean anything lesser about the sex that they're having. Really glad that you said about the different timelines or the different times people might take to maybe get aroused. Along with how to deal with the difference in sex drive, that was another really common question that we got. What practical tips do you give to people if, say, they're in a relationship where someone, gets aroused quite quickly and they don't need much foreplay whereas someone else does. Yeah, it's a negotiation.

It's a kind of which every element of our relationship and our sex lives is. And it's about, for the first thing, it's about being able to tell your partner. The second thing is there's no normal, there's no average, there's no expectation. One of the things I think people get caught up in is it becomes a blame blame of you take too long and you're too quick. And so we tend to attack in the other what we feel like we don't have. or it's a kind of clash of those things. And really what we talk about is we talk about good conditions

and psychosexual therapy. So what are the kind of conditions for good sex that help you, that help you to think about kind of if we use a kind of commonly used metaphor like this pushing on the break or pushing on the accelerator? And really it's about that. Now one of the things that we see, particularly in the kind of psychological side of it, is people who become worried, stressed, anxious about the fact that they feel, for example,

they're taking too long, that becomes a distraction, which is only going to make it worse, is only going to kind of further kind of add to that, because what it is doing is it's keeping them in their heads and not in their bodies. And so the more they worry about the fact they're taking too long, this is a phrase we hear quite a lot, the more likely it is that it's actually not going to happen or they're going to struggle to get into their pleasure, they're going really struggle to enjoy what they're doing and they're going to be preoccupied with the fact that they feel like they're taking too long

rather than actually enjoying what they're doing which ironically would kind of get them to where they want to be. If you start to feel anxious about something and then you kind of tell yourself stop feeling anxious about it. It just makes it more anxious. It's like saying don't think of a blue elephant. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It's like in a restaurant when people are like, oh, don't look. And everyone turns to have a look. It's in your head, isn't it? Are there any, it's a really tough one, but are there any practical tips you have for, in that moment, if you realise you are getting anxious

and you're getting stressed about something, how to try and get yourself out of your head? Yeah, we talk about, so one of the most kind of useful tools for sex, and this is kind of really well researched and well studied by someone called Dr. Laurie Brotto, who is based in Canada, is mindfulness. and I don't mean that in the huge kind of like mindful practice like broad sense but it's the act of challenging your attention in a particular direction but without judgment or with self-compassion

and essentially what we want people to do is to kind of let themselves off the hook psychologically and to give themselves permission to enjoy what's happening in their body or to focus on what's happening in their body without kind of goal or agenda and what one of the things that we work on a lot in psychosexual therapy is something called performance anxiety so we hear about this kind of typically a lot with men because it can impact erection quality or erection reliability and things like that. But it also happens for women. It's just not as prominent kind of physically, but it happens in a different way. And basically what we want people to do is to be able to refocus their attention on the physical sensations that they are

experiencing. But that also involves kind of detaching from the idea that they have to get somewhere, that they have to achieve something that not achieving this is a failure, that it's going to have a negative impact on their relationship, that it's all of those things that we spiral with super, super quickly. We kind of run with our thoughts, and we actually need to kind of start to bring them back. So really basic mindfulness tools, like running through the five senses can be a really good one,

or kind of getting people to say, okay, well, look, just focus on what you're doing now. Don't try not to think about what's coming next. And it's about kind of trying to stay with that, anything that helps you to kind of focus on that and mindfulness is a practice kind of having a panic in the moment and trying to do that is unlikely to create a shift then and there but it is something that we kind of need to start paying attention to on a more regular basis to kind of build build the skill up of that I'm really happy you said mindfulness because we had an episode with a neuroscientist

recently and I kid you not every single answer or almost every single answer she gave the solution was mindfulness and then after that and I think it's a big big, big word for something that actually is quite simple. Yeah, absolutely. She made it seem like very unimidating and that night me and my boyfriend went for a walk and I said, right, we're going to do this a mindfulness walk based on this podcast recording and all we did was it's just the most childish thing and now we do it all the time is we go there's a blue car and we just say things that we see or my skin feels cold because it's cold or you know I feel this my coat and we go on a 10 minute walk and we just list off things that we're experiencing you don't need an app you don't need anything

but you build up that mindfulness muscle yeah and something that I often do with people that I'm working with is an exercise called a pleasure journal and so one of the things that they might do is say find three four five however many they want two things in their day focus on it completely for 20 seconds 30 seconds so it might be like you wake up in the morning and you have a really good stretch and you're like oh that feels really good and you just stay with it give it all your attention for a minute putting on a really soft jumper and feeling like the kind of soft texture against your skin or first sip of coffee delicious bite of chocolate sun on your face whatever it is a hug the practice is giving yourself

a moment to take a moment to enjoy it and if you think about the kind of hyperproductive culture that we live in at the moment, everything is encouraging us to do the opposite. I think there's a really interesting relationship between kind of that, these new set of cultural values and technology and the fact that we're seeing less sex being reported than ever, basically by the kind of long-term surveys

that we have. And we're talking, we're hearing terms like sex recession and particularly for younger generations. And, you know, we're trying to understand that, but the reality is everything is changing. around that and I think that there's a very kind of clear connection that's really interesting there's two points I really want to pick up on that first one is the pleasure journal it's quite a lot of not traditionally sexual work yeah and I was interested to know how much on obviously relates to sex at all

and then the other thing is I want to hear more about the sex recession let's start on the non-sexual causes or maybe sexual challenges yeah I think loads of my work isn't about sex. I will always say that to people I'm working with. I'm like, we may have plenty of sessions where we never talk about sex. And that's because sex is in the context of us as a person and what we have going on in our lives, how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about our bodies, what we think about intimacy, if we trust the person we're with, all of those things. And sensuality is a basic pillar of sexuality. And sex is both physical and psychological. And so the point of kind of pleasure exercise is being non-sexual.

is that we should learn to have a relationship with pleasure, which means that we feel that we can have it. Like our body is designed, it is mapped with nerve endings. We have a somatosensory cortex in the brain, which maps all of the kind of how we feel in our body out. So how our body in our brain are designed are to feel in that way. And so when we think about that, it's about being able to enjoy things and little things.

Now if we're someone who doesn't even give ourselves permission to do that, then we're probably going to struggle with the kind of permission to do the bigger things and to enjoy the bigger things or to be able to be like, yeah, this was really good for me and I really like that and I deserve it. And so the sensuality bit is about noticing also without pressure and expectation. Bear in mind a lot of people that I'm working with might feel highly anxious about sex or really avoidant of sex or anything to do with it as well. So these are basic, basic building blocks.

no pressure, no expectation, just feeling good for feeling good's sake. And the sex recession, so we have a piece of research which is called the Natsal Survey, which is done every 10 years and basically records kind of sexual behaviors and attitudes, and it's done in the UK, thousands of kind of participants. And what we've seen is decade on decade that people are reporting having less sex. Now, one of the things that I think we do need to kind of also consider is that there may also be an element of is it that people are having sex in different ways? So, kind of virtually, they're having online sex, they're sexting.

Rather than being kind of physically in person with someone, they are having sex in other ways. But that's probably a part of it, but unlikely to be the whole thing. Do you have any theories on why that might be? I think that if you think about what most people do in bed, they're on the devices. We've become so attached.

Our primary relationships are with our phones, ultimately. You know, we take them everywhere. with us like what else do people kind of take to bed, take to the bathroom, take to the loo, kind of take to work, do everything on them. And then they're kind of next to us in bed. We're in bed on them. Our partners embed on them. And there was research done, I think, in the 80s or 90s about how people who had TVs in their bedrooms reported having less sex. And it's a distraction. But also we're relating in that non-person-to-person way, all those cues that might lead to sex sometimes or a little touch or that eye contact.

We're missing a lot of that. And we've started relating in a different way. And I think that it's just something to be conscious of. But there's also that I think that's changed kind of the mechanisms or how we're doing things. And what we just see is that it's relationships in a different way, in a different form. One of the biggest changes that I made in my life maybe two years ago was charging my phone in a different room for my sleep for everything,

hands down the best habit that I've implemented into my life because before that I would be scrolling so, so, so late. There's, you know, I think people need to remember as well. Your motivation to put your device down is no match for psychologists in Silicon Valley who are designed to make this so much more entertaining than sex could ever be than sleep could ever be. You know, these are things that require attention

and probably quite a lot of work to get to a place where that's enjoyable, you know, you have to put down this attention grabbing machine. If that's another reason for people to charge their phones in a different room, then that's quite a good one. I'm going to come on to our section called buy or buy-bye. So I'm going to show you different products. Okay. And I would like you to let me know whether you think that is something that is worth buying or you would say bye-bye.

Okay. Starting with lubricants. Oh, buy. Bye. Bye. Yeah. 100%. Non-negotiable.

Non-negotiable, Fab. And why was that such a strong buy? I think that lubricant is the best and most cost-effective and least invasive way that anyone can improve their sex life. And historically, the attitude towards lubricants was, you're not turning someone on enough or they're not turned on enough, and that's indicative of a problem. It's just not the case.

And lubrication is a natural process that happens more for some people, or less for other people. It's impacted by our hormones. where we are in our menstrual cycle, if we're in the moment or if we're super distracted, what medications we might be taking. And the reality is, is it takes away elements of friction, increases sensation and pleasure, and there is absolutely no shame in using it whatsoever. And the only kind of analogy that I can also make is that in no other part of our life,

if we had like a cream or a liquid or a pill or something that would instantly make things, better would we ever think twice about it? Yeah. But for some reason we still have this kind of historical shame and difficulty around them and yeah. I mean at some points there are complete non-negotiable for example postnatally when people are breastfeeding because their estrogen is impacted and vaginal dryness is more common. Again why we don't tell women who are postnatal this I do not know. Menopause obviously. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. Parimenopause. And so there are times when it's really important, but also it's, it's really useful for people that are having painful sex or difficult penetration as well. Yeah. It's an easy win in my book. You say the

reasons why it's probably to do, it's people feeling like, oh, you're not tuning someone on yet. We filmed with Dr. Nagler about egg freezing and fertility earlier. And she talks about how the best thing you can do is a couple going through fertility treatments is to not see it. It's like against each other, see it as a team. It's not her fault. It's not his fault. You're in, you're in this in the team and I think that that's definitely something that you're probably seeing sex as well. It's like people seeing this as a solo sport rather than a team sport. And obviously it can be a solo sport, but in when you're with someone else, it should be a team sport. Yeah, definitely. And one of the things that I always focus on is this idea of together because I think one of the things is

we try and position the failing in one person and actually often it's about the dynamic and whether it's one person might be struggling more. But one of the things that make sexual problems worse is feeling like your partner doesn't understand or that you can't tell them what's going on or you're not being able to explain it and the miscommunications that come about as a result of that and the assumptions. And the assumptions are basically where we have information gaps. We often fill them with the worst case scenario when it comes to sex. God, I feel like you need to repeat that again because I think that that could be applied

to so many different areas of life. when there's knowledge gap, you can fill with assumptions of the worst case scenario. So someone is feeling super anxious about the fact that they take a really long time to orgasm. And they feel that their partner keeps trying and they feel really distracted every time they have sex because they want to please their partner and they want to be able to have an orgasm. And it becomes a kind of a bit like an orgasm hunt. And it becomes more and more stressful. And one partner is thinking, okay, well, it's because I don't turn you on enough.

the other's thinking, okay, it's because I'm not attractive enough to them. And actually, it's nothing to do with that. But the worst case scenario, kind of assumptions keep bouncing back and forth between each other. Sex becomes more stressful. Nobody's able to say, do you know what? Actually, it's because I'm finding sex really uncomfortable, or it's because I'm finding that I'm really in my head, or it's because it's never happened and I don't want to fake it with you

because I don't want to start that cycle. And the other partner is thinking, okay, well, what am I doing wrong? Am I not good at this? and these are things that it becomes this kind of back and forth between partners and they don't know how to communicate about it. So few of us are actually taught how to have these conversations where that kind of gap of information is actually we need to just do something differently here but we have to be able to have the conversation in order to do that

and that's where things can get really stuck and the more stuck they get the more round we go kind of cyclically with that. And often that's when people come and come and see someone like me. Do you have any tips for couples navigating those conversations or even just bringing up that conversation as a first step. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the first thing is you've just got to kind of sometimes take a deep breath and do it and know that it probably will feel a bit uncomfortable or probably feel a bit awkward that you can use something like a scene in a film to jump it off

or a conversation to say like, oh, I listen to that a podcast and they were talking about sex day, what do you think about this or, you know, and it's okay to laugh about it as well. It's to be like, we don't know what to do about this. There's now so many great sexual well-being book, resources, podcasts, you know. And I think it's not feeling like it is a disaster, not feeling like you've failed, not feeling like there's nothing that can be done. Because like we say, you know, in any other area of your health and well-being, you would probably feel more comfortable looking for answers,

addressing it, changing something. And seeing it is that together. So being like, okay, what can we do together to change? this makes it feel again like we're not blaming one partner because as soon as one partner feels blamed that's not going to be a good thing for desire that's not going to motivate someone to want to kind of change something sexually or to enjoy sex more yeah next step yes vibrators and sex toys solo and partnered yeah i mean i'm slightly biased because i work with a sex toy brand called leo so i'm their UK expert but yeah i think they are a great addition

And again, like quite an easy win, either partnered or solo pleasure. So functionally, when I'm working with people who are kind of learning about their bodies or having painful sex or haven't had an orgasm or things like that, then we can also kind of integrate sex toys and pleasure products into their psychosexual therapy. So exercises for them to be doing at home. But it's a great way of introducing novelty, different sensation. It is not a competition between sex toys and your partner. I think that's the kind of again, like the historical assumption is that one will kind of outsource the other.

But they're a great thing for couples to try together. They can be used all over the body to increase sensation. And they can increase arousal because it's basically like a nudge to the nervous system. So it kind of can awaken things a bit more as well. But yeah, and, you know, ultimately they're a lot of fun and a lot of people have a great time with them. Pelvic floor trainers. Yes. if people need guidance and they feel like they need something to guide them and motivate them and focus them,

then they can be a great option. I don't think that everybody needs them. I think that the pelvic floor conversation needs to happen more kind of across the board. Typically we only hear about it in pregnancy and kind of beyond a bit more kind of in menopause. But if it's something that helps you to focus on this area of your wellbeing, then yes, but I don't think they're an essential. In my third year of medical school I saw a bladder prolapse. Yeah, it is interesting. Pregnancy seems to be the focus, but your pelvic floor is important for every single phase of your life. It's such an important part of your health. And, you know, I work with a lot of pelvic health physiotherapists. There's a great book called Strong Foundations by someone called Claire Bourne,

who is an amazing pelvic health physio. And one of the things she talks about is pelvic health across the lifetime. And I've worked, for example, with lots of people that have had painful sex or having painful sex. And we can track it back to things like UTIs in childhood or really kind of recurrent thrash or tensing too much or feeling like you can't go to the loo and feeling really anxious about that. And I think that it's, you know, it gets ignored a lot of the time. And one of the things that I work with a lot is something called vaginismus,

which is an involuntary tightening of the pelvic floor muscles so that penetration is either impossible, painful or really difficult. and pelvic floor training is a part of that. Now a pelvic floor trainer is not going to be useful for someone who can't fit, you know, more than a little finger or a cotton bud inside themselves. But it's learning about the pelvic floor. We have to kind of understand the basic premise of what it does and it affects everything.

It's about our bowels. It's about sex. It's about, you know, orgasm strength. It's about incontinence. It's about exercise. It's about so many things. erotic books, audio books. Yeah.

There are some great erotica apps. There are some great kind of products for that. I think, you know, one of the things that is really good for that is that people can kind of conjure up their own imagery. And in a way, you know, kind of your imagination is the best pornography you've got in terms of that because it's tailored to what you like. And I think that the other thing is it can bring people's attention to sex. It can kind of introduce the idea of.

of something erotic which can kind of make them start to feel turned on or could start to feel kind of sexually charged or sexually interested. And when we talk about desire, that motivation for sex, for people who struggle to get in the moment, something like that can be a really helpful cue for helping them to start to kind of feel more ready for sex or kind of masturbation. Do you think with the rise probably in porn being a lot more accessible than it once was, do you think that that contributes potentially to,

the decreasing sex that is happening because in my head when I think about audio books or erotic books you're saying you know you kind of envision things in your head whereas in today's porn can be extremely full on especially you know teenagers I just think if you're if you've been watching extremely aggressive quite intense porn whilst you're a teenager and then you have sex real for the first time is that going to be disappointing or not what you expected and then people turn to porn before having sex. Yeah, I think we have a huge problem, which is a gap in the education around all of this, understanding that the two are very separate.

The age verification process for kind of pornography came in recently last year. You know, they are different things. One was not designed to be an educational tool. And I think that's where we have some of the biggest problems. If that's the most accessible content for people, rather than better sex education, more kind of nuanced open, educative conversations. And we have this kind of taboo and stigma around asking questions or not knowing where or how to ask questions or even questions are allowed to be asked,

then Google offers a kind of, you know, an unlimited amount of answers, unfortunately, that we're then not in control of. Intimate oil, massage oils. Well, is it different to lubricants? Yes. Yeah. I'm going to say no to these ones, bye-bye to these ones, because I think that A, you shouldn't be using any products

that are not designed for your genitals, on your genitals, as number one, particularly, you know, ingredients on things are really important. We don't want to be using things like glycerins or anything kind of, you know, flavoured or scented. So that would be a no. And also, like, there are great quality, like, gynecologist-approved, medical-approved lubricants that can do that job for you. how to approach the conversations with a new partner

if you've got endometriosis and sex is very painful. Yeah. This is such a big one and I think, as we know, one of the things like conditions like endometriosis is they're invisible from the outside. So so many people are battling them. And it's also incredibly hard to get a diagnosis at the moment and is multiple years of appointments for lots of people.

I think one of the things to say about it is it's about adaption. of sex and saying to a partner, you know, I'm happy for us to have sex, but I just want you to know a few things first that work and don't work for me or some things that I need and that, you know, certain positions aren't going to work for me or actually like deep penetration, which is often the pain that people with endometriosis report struggling with a lot. How a partner also responds to that is going to give you quite a lot of information about how you're going to navigate that on an ongoing basis if that relationship continues. There are really good products.

There's a product called the O-Nut, which is basically a set of stackable rings, which can help to buffer the depth of penetration if you're having sex with someone with a penis. And things like that can be an amazing addition for people with conditions that endometriosis. But again, it requires a conversation because it's an addition. But for me, I think I would talk about it outside of sex. So before you're having sex so that what you're not doing is having sex that is really, hurting you or that you can't explain what's going on. So take it kind of pre-sex. And, you know, often I say people have these in a non-sexual situation. So it's not that you're about to have sex,

but actually that it's in a kind of context that you feel it's more relaxed or more comfortable. And I think that that person's response to that will tell you all that. There's nothing to say that someone who has a condition like endometriosis can't have sex that they enjoy, can't have sex that feels good for them and their partner. It just might be that there is a little bit more kind of negotiating or adapting that means to be done around that for them. But no one should be having sex that is painful for them in a way that they don't want it to be. That's an absolute bottom line.

And I think a lot of people historically have had a kind of grin and bear it approach. And that's not good for you. It's not the type of sex that you should be having. And also it's not going to help anything because it's only going to demotivate you and demotivate you kind of in terms of desire, in terms of your motivation to want to have sex, if you're doing something that doesn't feel good for you and isn't rewarding or enjoyable.

A common thing people might be thinking is having that conversation before maybe having sex removes the spontaneity, removes the fun. Yeah, I think it's a really, you know, I think we often hear that about consent. We're like, oh, consent's not fun. I mean, yeah, there's absolutely like no way that it can't be fun.

It's super, these are super, super, super important conversations to be having. And I think that, I think it's a really old fashioned, outdated perspective, actually, because the reality is if you're having sex with a partner, they probably want you to have good sex as well. And they probably want you to enjoy it. And, you know, a conversation about what works for you and what doesn't shouldn't be a kind of negotiable or something that we kind of put to one side because of an outdated view of what we think that might do. And I think if you are having that conversation with a partner who isn't willing to hear it or to discuss it or to understand it a bit more,

then that's something that you've got a question around, okay, well, this is someone I'm hoping to have kind of repeated sexual experiences with. Do I not want someone who's kind of open to hearing that in the way that you would for them? And, you know, in the way that we see people with, for example, like unreliable erections or erectile dysfunction or erection difficulties having to have conversations, it's about, okay, well, we just might need to do things a bit differently sometimes or I just want you to understand if I say stop or slow down or that I need you to listen to me or that we might have to change things.

But that doesn't have to be anything more than what it is. The whole spontaneity thing as well is I read something recently about how spontaneity is also just a little bit of a myth anyway. I think it was in the context of long-term relationships where maybe you live with someone and like the idea of scheduling and it being kind of un-suffer. sexy but then actually if you weren't living with someone you're going on a date. Yeah, yeah. You're sharing, you're making sure you're like nice and prepped, you know, that's like,

that's not spontaneous. You kind of in your head, you know what's probably maybe likely going to happen and you pre-plan what your thoughts and feelings are about that. Yeah. So I think, yeah, the whole spontaneity adds to it. I don't necessarily, yeah. Yeah, I think the idea we have this kind of holy. great idea of spontaneous sex and essentially if you ask people what it means they're like oh like

i see on netflix like i see in films it's the you know through the door against the wall like can't keep our hands off each other kind of that kind of sex and actually that's not how most people are having sex it's how people might be having sex more commonly with people that are quite new to them or at the start of relationships and like you know some couples are really good at keeping that kind of alive in their relationship and really working on that. But as you said, it's often not spontaneous. They've, you know, been on a day or been kind of doing something together or spending some quality time together or whatever it is. But also, again, when we talk about it, if, for example, someone is having a really painful period and endometriosis just means that penitative sex is

off the agenda for that period of time, that doesn't mean that they can't be having a good sexual time with their partner in another way. It doesn't mean that they can't pleasure their partner or kind of have some sexual pleasure in a different way or still do something that feels satisfying to them. But it's, it's, again, it's this, because we hold this kind of pedestal version of sex, which is that spontaneous sex is the best. And that's what often people say, they're like, oh, we used to be like that. I think we need to, again, like frame, we kind of, we kind hold that as more valuable than other types of sex

which actually what we know about long-term relationships is that couples that intentionally prioritise this part of their relationships report having the best sex, report the kind of highest levels of sexual satisfaction. The next big community question that we had

was never had an orgasm, what are the possible routes for help and potential causes? Yeah, I think we're kind of different understandings of why someone might have never had an orgasm. So we've kind of got physical capability and we've got the kind of psychological elements and so a lot of people think that if they haven't had an orgasm that there is something wrong with them now if everything is anatomically

typical or normal and there is kind of no reason as to why someone shouldn't we kind of talk about it it's like pre-orgasmic sometimes so it's actually a combination of like the right type of physical stimulation kind of psychological arousal and kind of being in the moment this is the kind of triangle of conditions that we were talking about earlier. And so sometimes it's about learning how to find our perfect version of those things. So it might be about different types of touch, introducing something like a sex story, which is a more intense type of stimulation. Is it about learning to relax?

Is it that we feel like shame and embarrassment about the fact that we are trying to have an orgasm or we're not orgasmic or we're self-pleasureing or we feel negatively about sex or we're hung up on kind of what's going on in our body or we're really self-conscious or we feel really distracted or we're highly anxious like what's going on around that and how would we unpick the full picture so there's a really great product called OMGS which is basically was created by the Kinsey Institute which is the biggest kind of sexuality research center we have in the world and they created a product where they basically taught different kind of self-pleasure techniques through like videos and kind of follow along guides

and that is a really useful place for people to start if they feel like they know nothing you know a lot of people don't even kind of know like the basics of their anatomy the eve appeal have done research on this where they found I think it was something like between 14-50% of women couldn't correctly label diagrams of their own anatomy

and we're not taught it that's not anyone's you know it's not their fault but if we don't know our own bodies it's going to be really difficult for us to then kind of translate that also into partner and sex. So I think getting to know your own body, working out if you feel psychologically or emotionally blocked around it, is that you have ideas that what you're doing is wrong. Does it feel in some way, shame is really commonly attached to sex? Is it that you're feeling kind of blocked in terms of what you think you're doing something you shouldn't be doing?

What are the messages that you've got about sex and pleasure and your body? and it's kind of working through that stuff. But yeah, there's both physical and psychological elements. And I would say working out what turns you on, you know, whether it's one of the things on the list, you know, like whether it's audio or erotica, whether actually you haven't worked that stuff out for yourself yet. Would you say a lot of your working clinic is unlearning

probably past messages about sex? And what are the most common damaging narratives, maybe that society feeds us about sex that feeds into these issues later in life? Yeah, I think quite a lot of it is undoing or unpacking. I talk a lot about shoulds, so people will often say to me, oh, well, I should be able to, and I'll say like,

okay, but who said should? And the answer often kind of is like society. Yeah. Kind of there. You know, we pick up messages about sex invisibly, we get told them, we hear them, we get them based on assumptions, you know, a lack of sex education, all of these things kind of working together.

And we kind of collect sexual messages and ideas like throughout our lives about, you know, how certain people might do or what the right kind of sex is or our assumptions that we make about someone based on how they dress or what they look like. It's all of this stuff. Bearing in mind every generation is kind of taught by the generation before where we see that kind of history and context and things are different. I think sometimes what we need to do is we need to think about why we think something and where that idea came from and if it still serves us, is it still useful for us? Emily Nagoski, who's a very famous kind of sexologist in my world, she's kind of the queen in my world, talks about this idea of a garden, which is, you know, we can't kind of choose like where it's planted or like what's in there at the start, but we can think about like what we weed, we can think about what we water, what do we want to fertilise, what do we want to look after, what do we want to take out?

and we think about those messages kind of in those kind of ways and you know an exercise I do with lots of people I work with is this is around kind of like myths and truths or like all of the ideas and I get them to write down tell me all of the things that you believe about sex and let's literally go through them and pick them apart and think about where they came from

think about are they helping you you know what's that doing for you is that the reason that you feel really stressed about this lots of the messages about you know we we unfortunately still live in quite a culture of blame. And so there are a lot of messages about certain behaviours or what we should be doing or what we shouldn't be doing or what type of sex is good sex and what type of sex isn't.

And we internalise all of those. And because we don't have this wide raging kind of normalised conversation about sex, we then tend to hold on to them and assume that it's us rather than kind of sounding it out in different ways. Yeah. speak yeah we don't realize we're holding it and then once you speak it out in the open it yeah what you face you conquer is often often what happens i'd imagine yeah and it's complicated you know sex is you know is really it's both simple and it's both complicated and because it means

because of the meaning that it holds it's never just the what of what we're doing it's the why and i think that that you know we have a quite kind of broken kind of unhealthy culture around sex and lots of ways and sex is becoming much more accessible. You know, I've been a psychosexual therapist for over 10 years, and the change in that time has been absolutely massive. And we see kind of big brands now, kind of releasing sexual well-being products, and Selfridges did a Sex and Sleep pop-up. I think it was last year or the year before,

where we went into Selfridges, and they were, like, amazing sex toys by the main doors of Selfridges. Wow. Sex toys are on supermarket shelves now. And it's an interesting time because there's the kind of history of it's still being quite a taboo kind of meeting sudden visibility. But a lot of the time the visibility is only a certain type of sex or like the kind of right type of sex. The conversation about sexual difficulties and problems is still a bit further behind that. I think it's really interesting at the beginning.

You said that people sort of maybe had funny reactions when you said that academically you were interested in sex. Yeah, I think sexual well-being, again, when we think about. It's quite a new term. And again, it probably wasn't really being used that much, kind of 10 years ago, pre 10 years ago. But we are positioning sex and our sexual wellness as an important part of our sexual well-being, as an important part of our wellness.

And we can see that. I work with a lot of people, for example, who are like everything else in my life is great, but sex isn't working or it's painful or I can't have a relationship or I'm scared of dating. And it is really affecting my mental health because I can't be honest with my friends about why I don't want to date.

I feel like I'm hiding something about myself. I really want to be in a relationship. I'd really like to just meet someone and see where it goes. Or when I get talking to someone, if I feel like I'm starting to like them, I immediately shut it down because I'm scared that if it goes somewhere and it gets close to sex,

that I'm then not going to be able to have sex. And all that stuff's going on in the background. And they're like, my mental health is good apart from this, but it is affecting me. And it affects now how I feel about myself, how I feel about myself as a man or as a woman. And it's that. That's why we can't kind of separate sex off

and be like, oh, that's that thing that happens over there in the corner and it has nothing to do with everything else. But no one talks about. Yeah. And it does really affect people. Yeah. And I guess, you know, that's the kind of main part of my job in terms of that is helping people to understand. Well, of course it does.

Like, it's affecting how you see yourself, how you feel about yourself. You mentioned dating, and I'd be really interested to hear your opinions on how you feel maybe dating. The current dating climate is very different to even what it was. God, the last time I was single, probably, you know, it's even changed so much since then. Yeah. How do you think that that has impacted sex in society? Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's such a big question and I think everything has changed, you know, how the kind of whole like mate selection process like through kind of initial images. And I think that I was hearing about something really interesting the other day, which is a trend of first dates happening whilst you're kind of doing something else. So you're like, oh, I've got to walk the dog. So like, let's meet and have a dog walk because then it's not taking up. not taking up extra time and it's kind of not investing in something that you're not going

of already being doing. And I was like, isn't that interesting what it's so the productivity factor is even impacting those kind of things. And I think it's because a lot of people were saying also they were like, I'm spending a lot of money and a lot of time going on eight first dates that I don't feel are going anywhere. But yeah, I think it absolutely has changed things. I think it changes how we assess people. I don't think we give people a chance very much anymore. I think that things like ghosted. are basically a product of that, you know, whilst those behaviours did used to happen,

people did used to kind of disappear. Yeah. We tend to still be able to see people on social media. We can kind of see what they're up to. It gives us a window into other people's lives. But there's a kind of, I feel like we've become a bit less responsible with each other and for each other's feelings, whereas actually before previously people might have been a bit more honest

about things not working out and given someone an explanation. And I think that can have a really damaging effect on people's confidence. Yeah. Because they feel like they're unwanted in lots of ways. And I think that that's really, really difficult. Yeah. I'm going to share a bit of a personal story that I've actually never shared, but I think it's really relevant to this conversation.

I think it's an important one to share because I, most, a lot of my friends that I speak to in London who are single and they're dating, like especially London, very disposable. Everything is very, very disposable. And you're right. people don't give people almost like time. The reason I say it's an important conversation is because myself and my boyfriend who I've lived with for two years, like, when we first got together, we were not seriously like dating

each other. We were just friends who got together. And he was, is quite like a shy person, but very like calm, really like lovely, lovely person to be around. And he won't mind me saying this. I found him extremely boring. And, but like we got on and he was just like a really lovely person to be around. And there was one point maybe like a couple of times into seeing him meet up.

And I was like, do you know what? I think I'm just going to call this off now because he is really boring. Almost as if like in an instant like the flick of a switch, he just became really comfortable around me and was this little chassy person and became someone that actually was almost he needed time to settle in and be himself. Like no one is their true form on a first day. It's like a job interview. It is like, you're so like, you're not yourself and we need to give relationships space to be awkward to not be perfect.

This instant, like there's so much pressure. I say this as in like if he had been someone who wasn't a very nice person to be around, I didn't feel like he was quite a, maybe had some traits that weren't aligned with my personal beliefs. Like he was maybe a little bit of a misogynist. Then, okay, cut, cut, right away, done. You know, that's a red line for me. But if someone's quite kind and genuine and things are maybe a little bit like all. It doesn't necessarily mean that we need to throw them away. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the idea of performance anxiety relates to kind of life outside of sex as well. And we often see that. And, you know, I think there's also a big shift in relationships, which is at the start, you know, we kind of give our best selves in lots of ways. And then that starts to fade. And we start to, as you said, like, settle in. Again, it's about negotiating, okay, well, you've got a job, I've got a job.

You've got a timetable. I've got a timetable. I've got a dog. You live in this part of the country. I live in that. And there's always these negotiations. And that doesn't change through relationships. Because if people start to live together,

if they start kind of working in different ways or having kids or buying a house together, there's constantly, okay, how do we do this? I would do it this way. You would do it that way. How are we going to work out? How we can do this in a way together? And I think because dating apps mean that there's so many options, we're kind of always looking.

And it's that phrase that the grass is always green. where you water it. And I think that sometimes that we can get kind of really caught up in that. And particularly at the moment because everything is like the next thing, the best thing, the next thing. We're always that maximizing. And relationships are some of the hardest work will ever do. And that is complete true because they are so activating.

They bring up so much in us. And, you know, if we are in an intimate relationship with someone, emotionally intimate relationship, of course they're going to kind of bring stuff up for us. Of course we're going to be furious with them. sometimes, of course, it's not going to be perfect all the time because it can't be. But it's about, I think, the difference between knowing and your kind of, and its gut instinct, I think is a really kind of interesting thing because no one can kind of entirely explain it. But you know the difference between something that doesn't feel right and good and not being sure

or kind of taking your time with things a bit more. When you're saying about moving or negotiating things, I think that goes against everything in society now that is so much more individualistic, how the productivity, hustle culture, mindset just seeps into every aspect of our life. I wanted to share a little story from one of my friends that I was speaking to. He said, oh, I've met this really lovely girl. We've been on three different dates, three dates,

but they went on a date Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So he's a serious, like he was putting some shifting on hinge. There was a lot of dates that weren't happening. Three dates. He did Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And I think on the Thursday, he went on a date with another girl. This is a full-time job. And he said she's really lovely.

I'm really attracted to her. She got great personality. They had sex the Monday after and he couldn't get hard. So he said I ended it there. There's not sexual chemistry. Okay. And slept with another girl on the Tuesday. And I had quite strong opinions on it personally.

That's just the poster story for disposability in today's relationships, in my opinion. but also I don't think that not being able to get hard once on the first time you have sex if you're quite anxious is necessarily a good indicator. But I'd love to know what your thoughts would be if you were their friend. Often if you're really anxious, people struggle to get aroused. Like that's a really, really kind of common thing. I wouldn't even pretend to kind of like get in your friend's head and know what was going on. There's like a couple of things going on.

One is that's the physical side of things. Only I guess he would know kind of what was going on with that. but this lack of sexual chemistry is a super interesting idea and one that we hear a lot because we really want to know the answer to sexual compatibility and everyone kind of has these questions about sex and I think we see the same questions coming up time and time again because it's this kind of hunt for like the magic formula

when it comes to sex, you know, how do we have good sex, how do we make it last, are we sexually compatible? And I think sexual compatibility is something that is to be, be built rather than that it's just a kind of green light or it's a given or it's a kind of, you know, some people have it and some people don't. Obviously, some people have great sex the first time and they are super attracted to each other and it all just kind of falls into place and it's great. But sometimes people have average sex, good sex, bad sex. I mean, sex can come in a million different formats like anything else. But I think this idea that if it's not there

the first time that it will never be there is something that isn't necessarily true because sometimes we need to get to know each other, each other's bodies, what we like, what we don't like. And also, you know, sexual compatibility largely it's about kind of communication, consent and the negotiation part

of it, which is about, okay, well, this is what I like, what are you like? Shall we try that? How does that feel? This is my no. I'm really interested in that. How do you feel about this? And that's an ongoing process that will change through different kind of phases and stages of relationships as well. The next community question that we've got is how can I fix low libido?

I guess as a therapist I'm always really interested in the language that people use. Fix indicates that something's broken. So when we're talking about libido, people kind of use words like sex drive or desire or motivation. So again, when we kind of think about the difference between arousal desire. So arousal, the brain embodies physical process of preparing for sex and desire the motivation or kind of wanting of sex kind of moving towards. I don't know whether this person means one or the other. So for example, like an impact on arousal would be lack of lubrication,

kind of lack of increased blood pressure to the genitals, which increases lubrication and sensitivity. It would be that kind of not physically feeling turned on lack of erection for someone with a penis. And so that's the kind of physical arousal bit, whereas the desire is, I don't feel like I want to have sex in this, or I'm not motivated to want to do this. Now, one of the things that we really need to understand about desire

is that it comes in this kind of, what people are term, kind of responsive and spontaneous. So spontaneous is where we feel like it kind of hits us out the blue. We're suddenly really turned on, and we kind of want to do something with our partners. Again, we see this at the start of relationships a lot where we're getting to know someone. But when you think about it,

at the start of a relationship, everything's on your side. So your dopamine system is on your side. Your reward system is on your side. You're interested in this new person. You're attracted to them. There's a lot of eye contact, a lot of touching. Everything is there.

All of those cues for also starting desire are there. And we're really kind of focusing on that person and making a lot of effort with them and all of that. We're not, you know, we're showing them that they're special and vice versa. That tends to shift also in long-term relationships or longer-term relationships when we have to integrate all the other things that we have kind of going on in our lives. And we stop to make, we stop making such a acute effort. But when we think about desire as being responsive, what we do is we start something and the desire to continue emerges. So instead of it being,

again, a bit like the kind of Netflix, Hollywood version, which is, kind of like a spark and then we do something about it, we start something and then desire tends to emerge. It's super, super important that people know that it is totally normal to never feel like sex kind of out of the blue. A colleague of mine called Dr. Karen Gurney, who wrote an amazing book on desire, always talks about this,

about how for some people, and like, you know, often we see this reported by women, if we sit and we kind of wait for like a lightning strike of sexual desire, it might never happen. We might be waiting forever. Yeah. But if we kind of are touching our partners or we start kissing them or we kind of cuddling up to them bed and it starts kind of becoming a bit more physical,

then it's fine for it to start that way and to then kind of like melt into something else. And it's really, really important. And that's where the scheduling point that you made earlier comes in, which is why we see people kind of leaning towards scheduling. And again, I don't think that it has to be unsexy or unspontaneous because it can create excitement from a, earlier in the day. And also we schedule everything, our gym classes, our work calls.

We kind of call, you know, call our friends. We book dinner. We arrange our weekend. We schedule everything in our lives. And so what we're not saying is, right, what we're going to do at 6 o'clock is we're going to have sex and it's going to be in the missionary position that's going to last for 12 minutes. We're saying we're putting the time aside for us. Yeah.

And to have like some physical time and to be together. whatever it looks like during that time, even if it's sex or not, is going to positively contribute to that part of your relationship. So to kind of answer this person's question, I would think about, A, I'd go and read Karen Gurney's book,

which is brilliant. She's also been a guest on loads of podcasts. I would think about what are the things that help you to feel desire? When do you feel most interested or most motivated? Actually putting your phone down half an hour before you get into bed

and saying to your partner, like, should we just chat? Is it like watching something which has like a sexy scene on and you're like, oh, okay, I feel a bit like interested now? Is it something like, you know, a break from work and being like, do you know what? I always feel really good when I've had like a hot shower before I get into bed and I'm all nice and warm and or I like moisturised my body or they're all basic, basic things that

can be applied whether you're on your own or with a partner. The next community question may be triggering for some people. So there are mentions of sexual assault. So if you do just want to skip, there will be time stamps in the description. So the next community question is tips to tackle sexual assault PTSD. This person says because before I met my current partner in a previous long term relationship. Sexual assault and consensual sex are two completely different experiences, but it can feel like and your brain can start to respond like they are similar enough

that it can kind of bring up those. kind of triggering experiences, kind of people can feel like they're kind of back there, that they're having flashbacks. If there's kind of work to be done on your own, someone like a psychosexual therapist who is also trauma-informed or a trauma therapist who has a kind of speciality in sexual assault, I think would be really a really useful thing to do.

But essentially one of the things is about communicating with your partner, about like the absolute nose and what you need is going to be super, important because what you don't want to be is in a situation where your new partner who isn't doing anything wrong is triggering you in a way that they don't understand and that you feel like you don't know how to tell them and so a really kind of important conversation to be had there if you feel able to have it with your partner because what that can do is that can for example avoid any situations like a particular body part being touched or a particular kind of sound or is there anything that is particularly specifically activating for you.

And other ways are about kind of grounding techniques to help you to kind of feel safe in your body to be able to remind yourself where you are, that this is now and not then, and that this is not a kind of reliving of that. And that is a process of kind of separating what happened to where you are now. But evidently if it's around something like sex

and we see this with lots of PTSD, where your kind of brain recognises that it is similar enough you are then kind of responding kind of in accordance with that. From like your practice, have you, I'd imagine everyone is different in their like response to these situations. But I think for the listeners who maybe have experienced that, how likely if they have been through something like that,

is it that they will be able to get to a place where they can enjoy sex and not be not be triggered by those past experience? Yeah, recovery is definitely possible. I'm not saying it's possible with work, unfortunately, you know, if we could kind of find a quick way of helping people to work through that, that would be amazing. But I think that it's about, it's about a kind of process of learning, but also understanding that you are a human and that sometimes you might be triggered by something unexpected. That's the thing often about feeling triggered or feeling activated is we can't always predict it. And that, that, you know, it's about taking care of yourself in those moments and that's really important and it's not about a self-blame thing it's not a self-attack thing it's about understanding being like okay well that you know that makes sense given what I've been through how can I help to look after myself if and when that happens and also communicating with a partner that if you start to feel activated or triggered that you need to tell them and let them know what they can do because for some people it

might be like no physical touch and it might be for their partner to kind of give them some space for some it might be for them to stay close by or to talk to them for some people they might need silent it's whatever you need in that and you know the difficult thing is only they can only know if you tell them and if you don't know what will help you in that moment say to them I'm not going to know what's going to help me if that happens so I just need you to be able to listen if I'm able to tell you what I need right then that's a really interesting point just for life in general because I think we tend to respond to other people's challenges in the way that we would want other people to respond. So like I'm a over communicator and I think that when other

people are going through difficulty, I tend to yap to try and help and that's not, you're so right, that's not always what someone else needs, but that has to be communicated or even if you don't know to say, yeah, I don't know. It's really, really powerful. Now what I'd like to do is come on to a trend on social media. Basically, I'm just gonna ask what your opinion is. This is a message for all the girlies out there who feel like birth control absolutely wrecked, and I mean wrecked your libido.

Or maybe it happened after you had kids, but hear me out whenever I say this. I felt the same exact way, and my doctor actually recommended taking goat weed and maca, and those two things I'm telling you whenever I started taking them, I did not even recognize myself anymore. Even my husband was like, whoa, whoa, what is happening right now? But let's just say he didn't mind it.

But Ms. Courtney Kardashian just came out with this line. It's called Let Me Play. and those are the top two ingredients in it. She is a freaking genius for this. Plus, I don't know how she did it, but these literally tastes like candy. I'm telling you, they're so freaking good. Now, you're supposed to take two to four on a regular basis. But I've heard a lot of people just taking them like right before the moment,

and they say it works just as well. I'm telling you, just give them a try. You'll be thanking me later. But I'll go ahead and put the link down below for you. Thoughts? I personally feel like there's a lot of things like this which are untested or unregulated that are trying to solve the problem of female low desire or lack of interest.

And I think that that's a kind of very interesting kind of point to be made. We do know that one of the side effects of kind of hormonal birth control commonly reported by people is a change in libido. Until we can see like really solid research about supplements and about kind of benefits of these things that is kind of scientifically backed, data backed. I'm dubious currently. Yeah, and I would also say whenever I see commission paid, especially if someone's saying I take it right before. I don't think anything is metabolised that quickly. Recommending supplements is not part of any of your recommendations you give.

Not currently. If there is kind of data, evidence, you know, I would consider it, but it's not currently a part of my practice because I don't know the benefit of that right now. But one of the things that I would say is, you know, with something, you're taking it instantly, perhaps it could give someone enough confidence that they're feeling good. And the feeling good bit could have a kind of positive effect on how they feel about sex or whether they feel open to sex. From a placebo perspective or from a, yeah, just from a kind of feeling, particularly people where they have a level of, for example, like anxiety around it. And, you know, we see this sometimes with things, medications like Viagra.

So PD5 inhibitors. So common names like Viagra, Sealis. it's they create a positive effect on erections but they are not an aphrodisiac and so you don't take them and kind of sit and wait just kind of patiently for them to take effect they inhibit a reaction which has to be started which is that you have to create the sexual arousal you have to kind of get turned on and but I think that sometimes people take them and if that has given them enough of a confidence boost that can be really helpful for them. but also if someone takes those medications and they're highly anxious, it doesn't mean that they really work as effectively. And so we have to kind of have these holistic conversations around anything like this. I mean, that's a completely different medication group, obviously, very proven, kind of medically regulated, etc., very different to kind of where supplements are at the moment.

People in this economy or, you know, the reality is we have a finite pot of money. And I think that is your money best spent on supplements, that aren't proving or, you know, investing in potentially if there are issues that you are struggling with that looking at a psychosexual therapist or resources like books and so on. I did have a question earlier about the recommendation you gave for women who've never had an orgasm from the Kinsey Institute. Is that free or paid for? It's a paid for online product, I think. It's online or it might be in an app form now. It's called OMGS. There's also.

an app called Furley, which is a kind of audio guided follow-along exercises and content for people who kind of want, it's basically like a kind of mindful sex guide for kind of people getting into their bodies. I am an advisor for them, so I have to obviously flag that. There are, you know,

there's kind of lots of interesting, like sexual apps and products coming out now that are grounded in the data, grounded in the research. And I think it's really interesting that there are, loads of supplements coming into the space that are advertising to have positive effects on sex lives. And I think one of the interesting things about that is that there's clearly still kind of lots of

sexual difficulties and problems to be solved. And taking a supplement feels like a kind of probably quite easy way of doing that. And I think that, you know, I'm a kind of big advocate for kind of do what works for you. Like if, if you feel like that kind of has a positive. effect for you but I think that anything that's kind of in the space is I'm cautious about and I'm interested in about and I want to see kind of data I want to see research I want to see those things and then you know I'm very kind of open to seeing what anything looks like when someone is so firm on something it raises red flags because if you speak to any experts on anything they always have such a nuanced perspective and what's really frustrating is that

so unsexy and it doesn't sell on social media it's the videos that are at absolute truths that do really well. Well, the reality is like the only thing normal is different. And, you know, in the way that one therapist won't be the right therapist for everyone. And, you know, one of the things I say to anyone that comes for a first session with me is I'm like, have an initial call with a couple of therapists. See how you feel talking to that person. You know, get a feel for it because you can't be the right therapy. You can't be the right personal trainer for everyone.

You can't be the right diet for everyone. You can't be the right toothpaste for everyone. You know, it's, but it's, and it's not binary. It's not, you know, it's both and it's not clear cut. This isn't, you know, we can't kind of make human psychology kind of completely black and white. We have to understand that, you know, and that's why I go with this kind of biopsychosocial approach, because I want to understand that person in the context of their life and their experiences, you know, how they were brought up, the current relationship, what physically has happened for them,

you know, what they think and feel. about sex. What have they, what's their medical history look like? All of those things together paint a picture and that whilst we can have themes that come up in psychosexual therapy and that absolutely are them, you can't just kind of apply like a one size fits all approach to everyone. You have to understand what's going on for them. You know, what's, what's important for one person isn't going to be important for another? What makes a initial kind of difficult tampon use or painful or impossible tampon use, what makes for one kind of 13 year old girl that turn into vaginismus and what for one is a tricky month and the next month they work it

out? Like how can we determine any of that stuff? We can't really without kind of looking at the person and being like, okay, well, you know, for you, that's what's what's what's got you here, what's keeping you here and what are the barriers to you changing this? We've got a community question on how to feel comfortable having sex when you have not done it before. Yeah. I think think this is a thing that I actually see kind of quite a lot in my practice and one of the things that people that are describing this experience is that also as they get older that anxiety kind of grows and grows and grows because whilst we don't have kind of like a set age that people feel that they should have had their sexual debut or like their first sexual experience by people feel like

there is like a time window that that should have happened in and again you're hearing me use the word should all the time um one of the things I would say. One of the things I would say say is get comfortable with your own body first. So get to know yourself what you like, what feels good, and get comfortable with your body because then you're going to be able to feel comfortable when you're with someone else. But it's kind of doesn't have to be the biggest thing for you. It doesn't have to. It's more likely that you feel like it's such a huge thing. And what you do with that information is yours in terms of that. But I think there's, there's no reason that you can't explore things like sensation. There's no reason that you can't kind of get used to feelings

and then have a knowledge of that because that still means that you can go into a sexual situation with a partner and say what you like and what you don't like. But I would say don't feel like you're the only person in the world because it's way more common than actually you'd think. There was a community question. How to ensure safe sex with new people asking for tests, honesty about sex life without it being awkward. Yeah, I think we kind of are taught, interestingly that these conversations are awkward. Yeah. And, you know, we even use, and I kind of talk to colleagues of mine about this quite a lot,

the fact that we use the word clean. Yeah. Infers that if someone then has something that infers the opposite, that they're dirty in some way. And that's language that is just so unhelpful and not positive. And it's like taking care of any area of your health. And, you know, if you are having regular kind of regular partners or different partners. I mean, the most, the best way you can look after yourself is a barrier method. So using

condoms is the best way to prevent against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. And, you know, having regular tests between partners. You know, we have amazing kind of sexual health services in this country and communicate, you know, with partners. And if you're having a regular, partner and you decide that you, for example, don't want to use condoms anymore, it's a really good idea to both have a sexual health screening first to just kind of make sure that neither of you are passing anything between each other. And obviously there's so many methods of contraception nowadays that are available. And some places offer kind of sexual health testing by post if you're low risk. So you can do them from home. But yeah, absolutely. Don't feel afraid

to advocate for yourself because a lot of sexually transmitted infections are asymptomatic, which means that people don't know that they have them and can have have kind of long-term effects if left untreated. It's interesting you said about the at-home tests because I've seen a lot of startups that are selling these at-home STI tests, but guys, you can get them free from the NHS. Like, don't pay 30 quid for these. Well, I mean, if you want to, that's your money.

But I would say they are available on the NHS. Next community question, is watching porn when you're alone bad for your relationship? The difficulty that most people get into with this, is if their partner doesn't like it or if they're hiding it from their partner or it's become kind of a secret behaviour. On paper, if it's not interrupting your sex life with your partner, not kind of having any negative effects, then no.

And, you know, I come from a stance where I am not kind of anti-pornography. I believe that not all pornography is created equally, that like anything, there is some good, there is some bad. I think the important thing is like, role is it having here? You know, it becomes a problem often for people when they feel that they can't take sexual experiences out of a solo setting into a partner setting or if they partners kind of feel threatened by porn use or that it's because something is missing and they're supplementing that and that's when it tends to become a problem for people. But if it isn't a problem

for those of you in a relationship, then no, it doesn't need to be. a problem. Last question and then we're going to come on to the question that I've been asking all the guests. So why does libido decrease in long-term relationships for some women and tips for keeping a happy marriage until we're both

old? Couples that prioritise this part of their relationship, where both want to prioritize it, are the ones reporting kind of good sexual satisfaction and you know sex in relationships changes but everything

in a relationship changes when it goes from being a short-term relationship to a long-term relationship. And, you know, one of the things is that same place at the same time physically for people, that there are competing priorities, that people are often juggling kind of life, work, home. There's a domesticity that goes with kind of being in a long-term relationship, that we see our partners in a less exciting way. You know, we're negotiating about who kind of puts the bins out and who fed the cat and who's going to take the kids, to school and those things aren't that sexy. Yeah.

Actually, they're Emily Degovsky again to kind of go back to her. One of the things that she says that long term, people in long term relationships don't talk about when it comes to their sex lives is spark. She's like, it's just not a thing that people in long term relationships talk about. And it's because sex is a part of all of those things. But we do have to prioritize it because it is very easy for it to slip down the priority list.

They'll pretty much always be something else. that we need to do. And we typically move, you know, that shift in desire is that kind of exchange of those two things. So the kind of things that desire thrives on at the start. So the novelty, the unknown, getting to know someone exploring kind of curiosity, attraction, like all of those things. Plus your kind of neurological kind of biochemical system is encouraging you.

And then we see kind of the predictability, the safety, the security, the security, the known the familiarity like the kind of all of those things that are really good for long-term relationships are really good for building intimacy we kind of see these things this kind of weighing scale approach of these things kind of doing that and it doesn't often actually people who are in relationships where they know each other well sexually report having better sex because they're having sex that they really enjoy but it's when it becomes less when it becomes more predictable and more routine we also see that has a dampening effect on desire because it's we know what's coming and so a kind of good tip for people in long-term

relationships is every time we have sex change one thing even if it's something as simple as turning the lights on or having the lights off or kind of what room of the house you're in or like the position or introducing a sex toy which is it doesn't really matter what you're doing but the whole thing is that it's not just following an exact routine all of the time nice that's I think a really helpful tip that people can can take away. Yeah. Yeah. So we've been asking all our guests to this question.

Kate, what do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? I wish that they knew that sexuality is completely unique to you and isn't something to be ashamed of and that it's not about adhering to a set of shoulds. And I think that for me, like I go back to this thing about should all of the time, because I believe so much of the conflict that we feel around this topic comes from the difference between what we want and enjoy and we have and what we think we should want and enjoy and are having. And a lot of the time, that's an unnecessary conflict.

It's that mismatch. And again, it's kind of like the me I know myself to be and then the me I think I'm expected to be. And I think that, you know, we see that there's so much socialising that goes on around those things. and actually if we kind of strip it back a bit, most of us, you know, it's not that, it's just about us kind of working at what feels good for us.

I mean, okay, like that's what feels good for me. Like I, you know, and again, we see it in every other area of our lives. Let's take like gym, for example. Some people are like, oh, I like reform it. I like weightlifting. I like soul cycle. I like, you know, and we don't have the judgment around that, but we have, we pose such heavy judgment when we do.

about sex and I'm not saying that everything has to be public and kind of out there all the time and all of that like it can still be private but it's about not shaming yourself for enjoying what you enjoying kind of feeling how you feel I think there's so many really really important lessons that I think the listeners will have taken so much value from so thank you so so so much for coming on the podcast I'm sure everyone is very very very grateful Monster Energy. Everybody knows white monster, Sierra Ultra. That's the OG. It kicked off this whole Zero Sugar Energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole line up now.

You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian, Sunrise, and Vice Guava. And they all bring the Monster Energy Punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is Zero Sugar. Tap the banner to learn more. Thank you.