LATE BLOOMERS - SEXPECTATIONS: The pressure, the shame, and the reality of sex in long-term relationships

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Sex is everywhere—movies, TV, social media—but it’s always the honeymoon version. No one talks about what happens when the obsession fades, when life gets in the way, or when desire feels more like a pressure than a passion. In this episode, Rox and Rich dive into the unspoken struggles of long-term intimacy, from the countdown clock of “how long it’s been” to the shame of lower desire and the weight of unrealistic expectations. They unpack the pressure society puts on both men and women—why Rox feels hyper-aware of when they last had sex, and why Rich worried he wasn’t "good enough." They get real about sober sex, the anxiety that comes with it, and how neurodivergence (like PDA struggles and black-and-white thinking) can make intimacy even more complex. How often should couples be having sex? Is there a magic number? And most importantly, how do you build intimacy without making it feel like a chore? Spoiler: it’s all about communication, trust, and ditching the expectations. This one’s raw, real, and maybe a little too honest. But no one’s alone in this—so let’s talk about it.

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Welcome to the Late Bloomer's podcast where we are. Getting our lives together eventually. It's a big one today. It is a big one today. Romance time. Romance time. It's another thing that nobody talks about, can I just say, ever.

Feel like I've been lied to forever from everyone. Me too. And it's also another thing that society makes you feel pretty rubbish about if you're normal. On both sides, men, women, everybody in between, you don't escape the expectations that are put on your gender. Sexpectations. Sexpectations for your performance, passion, enjoyment, schedule. Oh man.

Oh man. Like it's... It's horrible, isn't it? Where do we even start? Pretty horrible. Well, let's start with the good bit. Okay. Which is the honeymoon phase. Oh, wow. Because I feel like romance time in the honeymoon phase is one of the best things known to man. Yep. However, you don't get much else done. It's all you can think about.

It's the desire, isn't it? So not only is it the act that's like next level, but I remember us at the beginning, both of us just wanted it all of the time. You're right, like nothing else gets done. You almost become a bit of an addict. Everything else out the window, all you're focused on is getting back to bed. So it's loads of fun, but you also couldn't sustain that for 10 years because we wouldn't have a life. I agree, but I also like, not only could we not sustain it, and it's, and it's, I still don't understand it. It's like, the desire goes from really opposite, doesn't it?

It's like, I can't think about anything else. We just need to go and do this. Let's go to bed. Don't bother putting the telly on. It's all good. Like, let's just go to like, quite often, like, can't really be bothered I'm a bit tired. Like it's so what a such a wild swing that clearly everyone goes through and that's I think another thing that the fake TV or in music or in a magazine, they're always

talking about the honeymoon version, how to have the best, the most all the time, but no one talks about the slow grind of keeping it going when that wears out. And I think it's just biological, right? I'm sure there'll be reasons why when you meet someone sex drive is super high because you're trying to woo them or impregnate them. But then also in gay sex it's really high so it can't just be that it's about novelty, newness, obsession, desire, passion, all that jazz. But then it leaves you feeling, well, it left me feeling absolutely rubbish when

the desire on both sides changed. Yep. And that still is with you today, right? It's something that you sometimes struggle with. Sometimes. I struggle with it all the time. I am constantly aware of how long it's been. And the longer the gap is, the greater the shame and anxiety is that either

you're going to leave me or cheat on me. Yeah. Um, that I'm not doing my duties. me or cheat on me. That I'm not doing my duties. And by the way, I'm like, when it comes to feminine ideals or gender stereotypes, I don't fit very neatly into the female box. I don't shave my legs or my underarms. I'm quite aggressive and dominating in my work life. Yeah. Certainly don't do the cooking or the cleaning. No, you do not.

But this one area, it's like that pressure, that societal pressure has really got me. I don't know why. How do you even begin to combat that though? Like that pressure, that feeling that, or is it just something that you've got to just accept? I don't know. I honestly don't know because I can compare it to not shaving my legs, right? Okay. When I first started to do that, I felt awkward, I felt ugly, I felt unattractive. I knew I was going against the grain of what I was meant to do. But actually throughout that,

I found loads of power. I loved not giving a shit. I loved when people would stare or make mean comments because I felt really good holding a sort of rebellious space. But with sex, I don't feel very good. In my mind, it's like you need to be doing it three times a week. You have to please your partner or else you are failing. And I can't find, I've always struggled to find where's like my powerful position. And we've had so many conversations and tried so many different things to sort of make me feel better. It's probably a little bit less stressful for me than it was in the first couple of years.

Yeah. But the countdown clock is still there. What? The countdown clock. What? What's the countdown clock? So the minute we've had a lovely romance time. Lovely.

Lovely. The clock begins and it's counting down how long it's been. And the longer that timer goes, the more anxious and worried I become. And obviously anxious and worried aren't really... Doesn't get you in the mood. Doesn't get you in the mood. Yeah. Like it's you in the mood. Yeah.

Like it's not a work project. It's not a deadline. It's like pleasure and intimacy. So it totally like ruins the situation. But I think it's so common for a lot of people to have the countdown clock. Well how often do you like check in with the countdown clock? Every day. So once a day you'll be like right now it's been two days, now it's been three days, now

it's been four days. It's more, no, it's like a constant awareness. It will drop in a few times a day. I'm thinking about that a lot of the time. Wow. That's mad. People say that men are always thinking about it. I'm not always thinking about it.

Are you not? Are you really not? Definitely not, no. No. I stare into space. I'll watch Marvel films. I'll let the dog lick peanut butter off my fingers. I'm not always thinking about it. So interesting. So that's not the pressure. I can't obviously speak for all men, but I do think there is a difference between sex drive of men, between men and women, I would say. But I find the pressure in society is like, you need to be good at it, or you're a rubbish man. Do you know what I mean? Like that's where the pressure is for men, I think. And it's something that, pretty interestingly, I don't know if you remember this, I went

for a bit of a spell of not being very good at it or sort of lasting very long. Oh! Yeah, right. This is embarrassing already. But I think all men go through the spell, right? Like it's just, you just go for a spell. You think, oh my God, I'm now rubbish at this act. I used to be pretty good at what's going on.

And like the more you think about that and get in your head, then you go and do it. And it's quick again. You're like, oh shit. Don't you remember like having a conversation about it? It's so funny because when I think about our sex life, I only ever see my shame, my embarrassment, me letting us down. I don't even remember that. But when you speak about it, I'm like, Oh yeah. And I didn't mind at all. I took it as a compliment. It was like in the early days of savagery. I didn't mind at all. I loved it. And in fact, it opened up loads of conversations about sober romance time. Oh my God, sober. That was a problem for me. Me too. Because it's well easy when you're drunk, isn't it?

It's like the one area of my life, I don't romanticise drinking anymore because it ruined my life, but that is one area where I really miss what alcohol did. Which is, I don't know, make you get out of your head, into your body, you can really be a bit more animalistic and just follow the pleasure vibes. Oh, it's like a movie scene, right? Like it's, you create like movie scenes when you're a bit drunk. Yeah.

I mean, you're sober. Awkward can be a problem, can't it? Like, oh dear. Yeah. Was it the first time sober for you? With you? Yeah. Yeah, ever. How do you get to mid thirties, having not had sober? I don't know, but it was scary. Well, what about you?

You kind of had loads of sober encounters before me. I mean, there's obviously both of us have had childhood experiences. Yeah. We won't go into that. On this episode, but they would have been sober. Yeah. Perhaps a reason why we then had to be drunk. But no, from the first time losing my virginity, I was drunk in a mate's spare room and remained

drunk ever since. And then had done 18 months sober and celibate when we met. So I was repressed and anxious and very worried about the whole thing. I mean, it's the anxiety for me. When you're sober, probably not night one actually, like our first night that was, I was sort of probably drunk on dopamine. Drunk on love.

Yeah, but then after that. That's so true. When you're in like reality. And that's the thing, like maybe certainly for me, my drive, my want and desire is lower, sober than it ever was drunk. Like now, I'll think, do we want to do it? That means I need to have a shower. That's how much effort is that? How tired am I? Like none of that would have, I mean, you wouldn't have probably bothered having a shower to be honest, if you were drunk. Well, I think when you are drunk, you kind of access your non-thinking self.

It's like the animal part of you. Have you heard of, I think it was Freud that breaks it down into the id, the ego and the superego? No. So the superego is like the headmaster or headmistress keeping you in check. The ego is kind of the structure of who you are day to day. And then the id is the animalistic desires. Okay.

I think I've got that right. So like getting drunk is like unleashing the id. Unleashing the id. Funnily enough, I was talking about it in therapy the other day. And my therapist was helping me it in therapy the other day and my therapist was helping me to understand what the id was and described it as rocket, our dog. It's just a pleasure seeking machine. Want to eat, sleep, play and when he's older, hump.

I don't know, his pink unicorn he's become accustomed to even at a few months old. He has a go on that. Definitely. Do you know what I mean? I don't know how sexual it is. Oh, only to be as sexually free as a puppy. But yeah, so when you drink, you basically become a sort of, just your desires come out, which in some ways can be really freeing and exciting, but in other ways, it's what can lead people to make bad decisions, end up gambling in casinos or cheating or buying drugs. You're not as controlled when you're in that zone. So it's no wonder that we both look back almost fondly in terms of sex anyway, at the times when we were drinking. Yeah, I've got a question and I think I can summarize. You know I said at the start of this, I feel like I've been lied to forever by everyone. I would like us to answer the

question. How many times a week should a healthy relationship do the deed? Do you think? So my mind has seriously changed. Go on talk me through that process because it has for me as well. Historically, I would have said two to three times a week. If you're not doing that, you're failing, the passion's going, you're going to break up. Yeah. So then when we slipped down to once a week, I was like, oh bloody hell, things are falling apart here. But then actually sort of like adapted and

that was fine. And then this year, when we moved house And got a puppy. We're talking months. The well went dry, didn't it? Dryer than dry. And that was really confronting to some deeply held beliefs I had about relationships that if you weren't having regular sex, you were on the road to breaking up. And it was the first sign I've heard it on podcasts. I've heard sex experts talk about it. What is a sex per come on. I want to speak to the husband. I want to know what's going on. Yeah. And I think I had to confront the very natural cycle of life. If you are stressed out and move in house and get in a puppy within four months of each other was a very stressful

situation, it's going to impact your sex life, especially when you're sober. I think if we were drinking it would be fine. Definitely. Yeah. Cause like every Friday night, let's have a few wines and crack on with it. But when you're stressed and you're knackered and the dog's getting up at 4am because it needs a wee, it's not like the best aphrodisiac, is it? It's not conducive. So I would now say, I honestly don't think there is a weekly schedule or aim. And I think having a weekly schedule or aim can be incredibly destructive. Even looking at through the cycle

that women, people with periods go through. That will wildly change your sex drive, depending on where you are in your cycle. So even not taking that into account, it's just so myopic and it's so silly. And it leads to loads of shame. Well, that's sort of why I asked the question because you would be led to believe that you need to do it, like you said, a few times a week, otherwise it's unhealthy. And they use that phrase as well, do you have a healthy or unhealthy sex life? It's so shaming and judgmental. It's so shaming. And it makes you feel like everybody else has got it together and everybody

else is doing it. You wait, I hope the comments on this podcast aren't everybody going, I'm doing it two to three times a week, because I'm going to feel way worse. But okay, let me ask you the same question. What do you think a couple should be doing a week to be healthy? I completely agree. It's changed. I would have been probably before meeting you, would have been in there, if you're not doing it two or three times a week, it's a bad sign. Now it's like not a number and it's a good job it's not a number because we'd be doomed. This year we've moved house and broken up. But it's more like the feeling, right? Like I have been with you and we're not, after this year particularly, we're not probably as active as we both would maybe

like to be, like and like to enjoy but no pressure from either side. But I've also been in relationships where the number's the same, but the is because I just don't I don't want to like I've got no desire to want to like if I if I do I'm sort of forcing myself and that's not the case with us. We're just knackered. Well, I can speak for me. I'm just knackered and tired and working too hard and building podcast studios because I'm dating someone with ADHD and you have to do things at a whim. It's like there's still loads of intimacy and connection and love like it's the feeling like that

so it's not it's not a number it can't be a number. That's so interesting because that's something that has never changed with us, which is probably a reason why we can weather the storm for a few months of moving house before getting back on it. Getting back on the saddle. Back on the saddle is because we are constantly kissing, cuddling, slapping the old arse. Stop it. No, but that has never changed from when we met. Yeah.

So we're still at like honeymoon levels of physical touch, intimacy, even sort of like sexual touching and like kissing is still like 24-7 a day. Yep. Like, seer is just like, oh, cringe, you guys, because we're just always cuddling and kissing. So I feel like sex is so often seen as this solitary act, this one thing where you do it until he's done and then it's done. And if you're a man, if your partner doesn't finish, you're rubbish. Yeah, it's horrible. So much pressure. But it's an intimate act and that's just like one part of the intimacy spectrum and it's great and it's amazing, but you've got to have all the other parts as well.

But you've got to have all the other parts as well. One thing that used to confuse me when we were sort of first together, but after a couple of years, my sex drive definitely sort of declined or normalised. And it would go through peaks and troughs depending on how I was feeling about my body, how stressed I was, where I was in my cycle. But you were always... Up for it. Up for it. Like any time I asked you... I'm like, not a problem.

Not a problem. Like the answer, unless you're eating like a massive pizza. A couple of times you were like, sorry babe. I'm like... I can't, I'm bloated. I'm like, I can't, I'm bloated. But other than that, you had quite stable, like you could have just done it every day. Whereas I noticed it was me that had the up and down, which I think led to me feeling like I would way rather the ready to go at any moment with you? Yeah, it's a tough one, right? Because well, the answer to that is we just, we're different humans. So it sort of tailed off at different times.

But wanting to go, you may well prefer being in the situation where you're like ready to go like you're doing it. But that comes with its own problems in that you can sometimes feel rejected or undesired or whatever if you want it all the time and your partner doesn't, you start overthinking that and it's like, oh, maybe they don't find me attractive anymore. Maybe there's something wrong here or I don't want to be pushy. I certainly with my past, I would never want to be coercive or anything like that or put or not coercive but apply pressure to you. So yeah, like they've both got their own problems, I think.

It's so interesting bringing that to the table and obviously this isn't the episode about sexual trauma, we'll get there. But for those that don't know, you were sexually abused when you were eight. And that definitely does play out in our relationship. And I think you've hit the nail on the head with, because you never want to coerce. You never want somebody to feel pressured or do something they don't want to do. Which is amazing and wonderful. And I just think you're the most loveliest human in the whole wide world. And on the other hand, there might be a time in a really healthy sexual relationship for Eva to be aggressive in a way that's wanted and initiating. Because I definitely have felt like the initiation falls on me and I'm all over the place. I'm anxious. I've got my countdown

clock. I'm not always feeling great. I'm an over thinker. So I sometimes need, do you know what I mean? I almost need you to step into the initiator role, but you've got this whole history. So it's to step into the initiator role, but you've got this whole history. So it's so interesting understanding how our histories play out in just getting going. But the one lesson I've learned, which nobody tells you and they need to tell you because honeymoon, whatever, it's well easy. Anyone can fall in love and have a few great shanks for six months. Are you doing it five years, 10 years, 20 years later? It's that it takes work and it takes conversation. We've had to have difficult chats.

We've had to experiment with stuff, be a bit awkward. And also very often your mind can get in the way. I can overthink stuff or you can be a bit tired. If you're willing to just cross over and just be like, let's just get down to it. It's always lovely, isn't it? Of course it is. Yeah. So sometimes it's about showing up. I think there's a word, it's like reactive desire. It becomes really normal if you've been together for quite a while. You have to prioritise it and you have to make time. Plan it in, schedule it in, pop it in the calendar. Well, kind of. Yeah, I know what you mean. Kind

of. But then all other things come into play if you're looking at it for a neurodivergent lens, kind of PDA and sex. And all or nothing. Like when you get to a dry spell, it doesn't mean everything's over. Because your brain can do that to you as well. Oh, I'm all or nothing. And we'll go through phases where it's every night and then weeks where it doesn't happen. So it's, I guess it's just about loosening the shackles of society's expectations and finding your own way through and just ignoring all the messaging out there. I remember growing up reading Cosmo at a young age, as a teenager, 10 ways to

be great in bed, five ways to give him maximum pleasure. And you start to believe that that is your role as a partner to be a sexual machine, giving your partner the best experience. You're very disconnected from your own pleasure. Yep. And when you said about my history, it made me think like in society, and it's probably a good place to sort of summarise this episode, because there's a couple of things I want to say. There's like, statistically, one in four females have experienced some form of sexual abuse, one in six men. So like, mental maths do that together, probably 50% of relationships. Now out there, there's some complicated history that will have an impact. And the beautiful thing I think about this episode is,

I don't think we can sit here and say we're late bloomers in romance time. We're messing it up. We're making mistakes. It's really hard. So I think if anything, it's like if you're listening and struggling, you ain't alone. Like, get on the train because I'm pretty sure everyone is or a lot, most people are. Do you know what? That is so true because late bloomers, we can look at love and relationship, parenting, work, finances, mental health, and we've made unreal progress. And yet sex is the one area. I'm really glad you said it because I still feel like I'm messing up and I'm not doing it right.

And I'm a perfectionist. But there's safety in that, right? That probably means we're not doing anything wrong because everyone's messing it up. Maybe getting it right is talking about it honestly, without shame, being okay with a dry spell, putting it on the table if it's going to come back. It's nice to talk about actually, isn't it? Yeah, but that's hard as well because you get defensive, shameful. Remember the first time I ever brought it up to you, you started crying because you thought the relationship

was going to go over. The first time it happened, it was in the flat. We had done a yoga and I just went, don't think we're having a sex as much as we were. That was it. And you like, do you not remember? You like started crying. You were like, this happens in every relationship. I'm like, oh my God, what have I done? I do remember now.

And that's so lucky. The point is, it can feel really hard to talk about. So you almost need to talk about talking about it first. In that moment, actually, it was another moment of, he's going to leave me our relationships over. And I hated myself because I'd had a very similar sexual pattern in every relationship. Great honeymoon, then I struggle with desire and then I ruin the relationship. And that had

happened with both men and women. So it's not about me playing a woman's role. It's about me and my journey with desire. Since getting sober, getting therapy, I've overcome and changed so many patterns and I've changed so many patterns with you. It was horrendous to realize that this old one was rearing its head again. And I felt like I've done it again. It's over again. What am I going to do? But that was five years ago. Now look at us. Not having sex for months covered in piss of a puppy.

Just get a dog you've got an excuse then. Do you know what I mean? Don't say that. Anyway, if you like this episode, we'd love to hear what you think. So leave us a review. Let us know if you're getting down two or three times a week or if like us, it can be a bit of a challenge in a long-term relationship. See you next week. See you next week.