Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Am I Normal? All of Your Sex Questions Answered with Kate Moyle, Dr Karen Gurney and Dr Amani Zarroug

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Am I normal? That is the question sex therapist, Kate Moyle, says she gets asked most frequently in the therapy room. That and, ‘am I broken?’. In her debut book, “The Science Of Sex” Kate sets out to answer all of our most pressing sex and relationship questions and to reassure us that yes we are normal and no we are not broken. By reframing commonly held assumptions about sex and confronting the many myths and taboos that still surround it, Kate is determined to move us away from a shame-based approach to sex, to one focused instead on pleasure. I, for one, am here for it. To celebrate the launch of this much-needed piece of sex re-education, Kate joined me on the Sex Talks stage, alongside sex therapists Dr Karen Gurney and Dr Amani Zarroug, for a discussion all about, well, sex. If you want to send your own agony aunt question to the podcast, head on over the sextalks.co.uk and if you'd like to join an upcoming live podcast recording grab your ticket here. A big thank you to Sex Talk series partners, The London Edition hotel and Don Julio.  Sign up to the Sex Talks newsletter here https://view.flodesk.com/pages/6241f65d78ed98531daef0fd

Hello and welcome to a live recording of the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, M Louise Boynton. Sex Talks is dedicated to engendering more open and honest conversations around typically taboo topics, specifically sex, relationships and the future of intimacy. Today's episode has been recorded at the London Edition Hotel. If you'd like to attend a live event in the future, please do head on over to the event right link in the show notes as we have lots of exciting events coming up. Okay, I hope you enjoy the show.

Now without further ado, let's talk about sex. Woo! By way of introduction, if anyone who hasn't been to sex talks, my name is Emma Louise Boynton and I'm the host and founder of sex talks and I am sitting here with our three IRL favourite sex therapists. Beginning with, let me actually get you all in order, otherwise, oh, didn't get my... Oh yeah, clinical psychologist and psychosexual and relationship therapist, Dr. Armani Zarug. My letter. And we have, sitting to her left, left,

sitting to her left. We have clinical psychologist and psychosexologist. Guys, your titles really do. Are they all? They're sexy, right? They're sexy, and they are tongue twisters. Director of the Havelock Clinic, an independent sexual problem service

where she's been helping individuals and couples overcome sexual problems since 2003. and author of Mind the Gap for The Truth About Desire and How to Future Prove Your Sex Life, Dr. Karen Gernie. I love the fans in the audience. This is excellent. It's my mom. And last but not least, psychosexual and relationship therapist, psychosexologist, host of the Sexual Wellness Sessions Podcast,

on a Sessions podcast and now author, does that feel good to hear, author of The Science of Sex, Every Question About Your Sex Life answered Kate Moyle. Yes. Oh, God, I love this. Let's keep this energy this high for the whole evening. Let's get started.

I thought we'd begin by deep diving into the ins and outs of sex therapy. Oh no, I didn't. thought we'd begin with the book so that's me haven't got my glasses on because they you know the lights reflect off of them and it's unattractive but I actually can't I can't actually see that clearly so bear with Kate if that is your name it is we're here to celebrate the launch of your brilliant new book the Science of Sex so I want to start with actually got a simple question

why did you write this specific book and why now for me we as you guys all know, we all get the same questions in a hundred different versions from clients, from people approaching us, and so many of them come from the fact that we all didn't get the sex education that we needed. And so it is the sex education that we all wanted, and we all need even as adults, in one place. Who here feels their sex education was adequate? Wow. For everyone listening to the podcast, which whenever this will be. No one put their hand up. How many people felt their sex education was great? Oh, okay. We have Cameron from Lalo. Go figure.

I mean, I'm in California, Northern California, my mom was sexy. So for those listening to the podcast, Cameron from Northern California. Her mom was sexy and taught, her, everything she knew about sex. Well. At 12. I have said this everything was, when it would have to be, what did it happen?

At 12. At 12. I have said this so many times, but it bears repeating, for a reason I'll let you know shortly. My only conversation around sex was when I put together my illness, my folder

of pictures of Draco Malfoy and showed my mom at 11 years old and I said mum I'm in love I kid you not I made it a ring binder filled with picture of Draco Malfoy and my mum just looked at me

turned off the light and said you mustn't have sex until you're 18 and left and I was like that was my sex chat and then we all have to tell her at some time exactly we did all played around with the shower

thinking of Draco and that was my second the reason I bring that up today of all none other than Draco Malfoy was sat up Thursday. Maybe he's sitting here, he's not. But he was upset. I was so tempted to go up to him and say, you don't know what you meant to me. And my sex educational lack thereof.

Anyway, we digress. Kate, you just mentioned there that you, and I think this is true of all three of you, you get asked the same questions again and again and again in sex type of problem. We've spoken about this before, but you just, that's indicative of the fact that our culture around sex is broken.

Can you delve about it? a little bit deeper into that. Why specifically do you think our sex culture is so broken? Because the most commonly associated feeling that we will pick up when it comes to sex is shame. And so our earliest messages are

based in shame. We get taught that it's something we shouldn't ask about, shouldn't talk about, shouldn't do, but then we turn the legal age of consent and we're meant to be experts and know exactly what we're doing without trial and error without any form of really good education.

or being able to say, actually, does this work for you? Is this feeling good? And I think that we're trying to move from a shame-based model of sex education to a pleasure-based model of sex education and something more positive. I love that. I mean, we all remember, I'm sure remember our first horrifying sexual experiences. No help from my mom, let me tell you. Although I did often wish you'd come and rescue me. Yeah, weird.

I'm going to ask, this might sound quite a basic question, but Dr. Gertie, can you briefly explain for us what sex therapy actually is? Because I actually get asked this question all the time. Now that I've become an evangelical for sex therapy. You are evangelical. In another life, I would have been a Mormon. Let's be, we know I'd be knocking on those doors telling you about God, but here I am telling you about sex therapists instead.

What is sex therapy? Okay, so therapy generally is something that helps us get from one place to somewhere else in all its different forms. And sex therapy is no different. So it's about thinking about somewhere we'd like to be that we're not currently at. And I would say that there's a common misconception that sex therapy is for people with sexual problems. And that's a really low bar for a good sex life. Like good sex is more than the absence of problems. and I'm on a mission

I think people should really think about sex therapy much earlier on in their sexual career because we've all got bits and pieces well we have but we've all got bits and pieces of hang-ups about sex and actually sex therapy is a great place to think about

not just where it's okay now but also how can it be jaw-dropping and that's what sex therapy is it's a vehicle to get there that involves somebody trusted who knows their stuff, who can talk you through how sex intersects with every other part of yourself, your gender, your sexuality, your personality, your relationships,

your culture, your faith, your body, your politics, like it's all part of sex therapy. I love that explanation of sex therapy, because I think, as you articulate so well, our relationship to sex, one is indicative of our relationship to our body, and also to ourselves, but it's so dictates how we show up in the rest of our life, how the confidence we have in our kind of public self is so informed by the confidence we have in our private self. And if anyone who hasn't been to sex therapy, anyone hasn't been to sex talk before, I set sex talks up because I did sex therapy and found it so transformative. And for me, it was for the first time sitting across from someone and laying bare the intricacies of my

not that sort of in sex life problems ridden sex life and not being not feeling shame and not feeling embarrassed about all the issues that I'd felt had been storing up for years and it was the first time I felt this amazing release and also to have someone

not only not shaming but to be like oh that's totally normal because I felt completely broken and completely alone in my sexual dysfunction not being able to orgasm issues I have my body etc let me behold we all have those problems So I definitely wasn't alone, as I've learned, doing sex talks. So Dr. Zarug, Karen has just told us that it might be beneficial

if more people thought about sex therapy a little bit earlier on in their sexual career. I certainly wish I had done sex therapy earlier. I think I would have saved myself a lot of bad sex to begin with, but lots more. Can you perhaps tell us maybe some kind of tell-tale signs that might suggest that someone should consider sex therapy now? I totally agree. Sorry, I wasn't used to hearing my voice on the mic. It's always shocking, isn't it? You're like, whoa! I completely agree that, anyway, sex therapy, I think, is for anyone who's curious about their own relationship with themselves, with their body, with their pleasure.

So I think that it should, it kind of should, we tend to think of certain things as things that we do to maintain our lives. We go to the dentist, we go for an optician, but we don't think of sex therapy as an option like that, and I think that it should be thought of more widely in that way. But some of the more common issues might be people with mismatched sexual desire or... That's if you have a different kind of sexual appetite to your partner, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or people who are struggling. Maybe they have experiencing some kind of pain that's not part of their consensual play

or perhaps they are finding themselves talking to other people about their fantasies rather than their partner and just kind of wanting a sounding board to think about how do I negotiate that in my current relationship, what are my needs, what are my desires and just having somebody to reflect

with them about what that might be going forward. And I'm curious to now actually from all of you, what some of the most common issues people who come to see you, sex therapy, have when they show up in your therapy room. Can I want to give them with you? It's always

desire. And we know that from research as well. It's the number one reason people seek sex therapy. Either concerns that there's something wrong with their desire usually that it's too little. But mostly, and this is really crucial, you don't really see people for problems with desire who are single. It's not a problem with your desire.

It's the fact that you and the person or people you're having sex with have different ideas about desire. So it's, in my experience, I'd say that's the number one reason. And define desire? Well, this could take a long time. As you know, it's my favourite subject. I mean, I think there's a bottom line, which is that we used to think that desire was an,

appetite like hunger or thirst and that it was something innate within humans that were driven to have sex, that that's part of being human. And we actually know that desire doesn't operate like that at all. It's more of an incentive motivation system, which basically means that the thing we're moving towards, like a partner, needs to be an incentive. So we need to have feelings of desire for them. And we listen to my voice. And we also need to have reward from that experience to make that incentive incentivising and it's an emotion because it's more of a feeling of wanting to do something or wanting to feel desire and it's something that can be nurtured or extinguished moment by moment day by day hour by hour depending on all other aspects of who we are

so it's very much something that we could think of as a system of reward and motivation rather than anything else. And if you think of it that way, it becomes quite easy to see how it could be problematic. So I'm just thinking, so if I'm feeling turned on, and I indicate that to a sexual partner,

and they reject me or make me feel like shame around that, that extinguishes my desire in that moment, and might then create a. It might, and a simpler way to see it might be... Not me a friend, obviously. It might be easy to think of it as if the sex you're having isn't rewarding but also if the sex you're having is repetitive

if it's boring, if it's predictable then you're not that incentivised to do it because there are other competing demands on your time like Netflix. There was a big yes in the audience as you said when you're having boring repetitive sex there was a oh yeah. Kate you've obviously written a whole book

addressing the numerous questions that you get posed around sex. and intimacy, is there a kind of common issue that people who come to your therapy room most frequently present you with other than around desire? Yeah, I think for me, well, the theme of tonight's conversation, Am I Normal? And then the other end of that is Am I Broken? And those are massive, massive themes in almost every single person that I work with. Because we think if we are not having sex in a way which we consider fits the norm

or what is expected of us or what looks normal or what it should be like, then we are some way damaged. We are the problem. And then that's exacerbated by the fact that we can't ask anyone, shouldn't speak to anyone, shouldn't seek advice about it because it's us.

And actually what you get down to almost every time is the fact that our sexual culture is broken and that these are not just individual problems, that most people have some kind of challenge with sex at some point in their life. and you've banned the word should from your therapy room I have yes why because so many people say to me I should be having sex like this I should be having this much sex I should be having sex this often I should be having this type of sex we should be orgasming at the same time and I said

who said should and no one can ever give me an answer apart from society that's kind of the really once we bottle it down where we get to and there are are no 10 commandments of sex. There isn't a Bible. There isn't a list anywhere of what we should be doing. Really, what we should be doing is what works for us. I wish there was a Bible, though. It's right here. The science of sex, the new sex Bible. So study it with all the focus and attention you would give to your other studies, which we all have. And maybe life would be easier in the bedroom. Dr. Zurich, what about you? Is there a specific issue that people who you see in the sex therapy room are presenting when they come to see you? Obviously, as Karen and Kate have already

said, desire, shame, I think I see a lot of anxiety around sex that feeds into this. You know, the am I normal question that comes with a lot of anxiety. Anxiety feeds into a lot of psychosexual issues as well. And generally, kind of not. being present in the room being kind of maybe catering to the shoulds to the performance to you know and kind of thinking that that that is the good outcome rather than checking in with with your body how many people have found themselves in the middle of having sex with someone where they are like zoomed out and they're watching the situation and you're just like moaning and groaning and

being like ah oh oh oh just like when this finish anyone else Have that before? Yeah, we've all done. That's spectatorship. That is complete body disconnect. I've definitely been there recently. Kate. You mentioned in the book that the brain is often referred to as the biggest sex organ. What do you mean by that? And how does that, what does that mean for our approach to sex? Because we have to approach sex with what we call a biopsychosocial approach, which is how we'll work, which is, understanding the biology, the psychology, and the social world that we're living in sex is in context, which is why desire can change day by day, which is why we can feel different in our relationships, the longer they go on, or whether we're going through IVF and it completely kind of knocks us out, whether we are really stressed at work, and we find that we're completely distracted when it comes to sex. It's always in context, and we focus so much on the genitals when it comes to sex, but actually the brain is the moderator

of everything that happens. So we have... Clap in the audience for that. Brain is the moderator of sex. But, you know, we have to have our mind on our side. You know, we know that distraction is one of the biggest inhibitors of desire and arousal. And, for example, is the key reason that people don't orgasm.

It's not that physically there is an organic dysfunction. Most of the time, it's because we are not able to get our head in the game. And I've said this before it's sex, but I often feel so aware when I'm really stressed, or recently I've had a really bad neck injury, I'm a bag lady and it's caught up with me

and I've pulled all the muscles in my neck. You're just nodding. No more bags for me. Don't look how many bags I have here today. But I notice I've had quite a lot of pain here and so if I masturbate, it's like a circuit has broken. It's like my head has been cut off and I'm just totally my mind just isn't present and I just

feel totally disconnected and it's literally like someone just like, I'll say, scratch my leg, scratch my clip. But it just feels, I can feel so clearly that I'm just not mentally present. And I've become, I think, as I've now talked more about sex and understand more about it, how that to me is always an indication when the circuit's broken that I am probably living more in my head than I have in my body. And that's often due to stress, to anxiety, body image issues, etc. So I've become kind of hyper-aware of that.

The brain is the moderator. Well, like Armani was saying earlier, the distraction, the mindfulness bit is massive. but what we have to do is intentionally direct our attention towards the experience that we're having and we're all fed this version of sex which looks like it does on Netflix and in films which is that it's amazing within seconds and we don't need to work at it and everyone has it right and it feels good and when we directly and intentionally direct our attention in a particular direction we experience more it's how our brain works so I often describe it like turning up the volume on sensation Handing up the volume on the sensation.

I'm down for that. And Dr. Gany, you have also written a book called Mind the Gap, which is an accompanying Bible to the science of sex. Best selling, bestselling Mind the Gap, in which you explore the truth about desire, favorite topic, and also how to future-proof your sex life. Now, you've said to me before that you wrote this book because a lot of times you see people coming into your therapy room

who don't really need to be there. So you're trying to do yourself out of a job through the book, which is nice. All of us. Explain for us what you mean by that. Pretty much everyone, and I'm sure the others will agree, pretty much everyone we see doesn't really need to be there. People come to see us thinking that the problem that they're having with sex is with their body. That's usually how people feel about it to start with.

They are open to thinking that it's also in relationship to perhaps the people they're having sex with in relation to the kind of person they are, their personality. you know they might factor in all of these things but the truth is problems with sex exist between politics and society as Kate was saying earlier and so events like this are exactly what we need because if we could talk about how sex happens what makes good sex how desire works what's normal

if we can talk about that outside of the therapy room people won't need to come and see us because the reasons people come and see us is because they believe they're not normal Totally, totally agree. I still think that we need sex therapists as well, but nonetheless, I can kind of channel them. Come to sex talks, begin to realize

all the kind of things you need to iron over and then straight to sex therapy. Because I'm a Mormon, evangelical for sex therapy. Obviously we can't, I was going to say start this conversation, continue this conversation. without addressing the elephant in the room, and you know I'm talking about, the orgasm gap.

First and foremost, who here knows the orgasm gap is? That's pretty good, actually. I've asked this question at quite a few sex talks in the past, and given we're quite a self-selecting audience, let's be real, you could choke, you've got three sex therapists on a panel and a room full of people who have come to a talk called sex talks, but I'm always surprised to see that more than, I've been, three quarters of the room, don't put their hand up. So just for anyone who isn't aware of what

the orgasm gap is, Kate, can you just give us a quick explanation? So the orgasm gap was primarily researched by someone called Dr. Laurie Mintz, who is in the UK, in the US. And what it shows is that in different sex, so heterosexual, sexual partners, there is about a 30% gap between how often men and women report their orgasming. So men are reporting their orgasming over 90% of the time. 60%. It also, a secondary part of that, is that if you ask both people, if they think their partner orgasmed, a lot of the time the statistics change because women are faking it a lot in order to close the gap. But the important thing about the gap is that it does not exist when women are masturbating and it does not exist in female-female relationships.

So that we know, based on that research, that it's not an analytical. intomical issue. It's not that we're just, it's more complicated to make women orgasm. It's a societal issue. It's a societal issue and educative issue. The fact that quite often people describe their vulva, which is their external genitalia as their vagina, is hugely problematic because it eradicates the clitoris in one quick move. And that is the way that most women and people with vulva's orgasm is through direct clitoral stimulation. And so intercourse is not the best way that that is achieved. But that is is what most people consider sex. Well, that's what we all grow up seeing in films, on TV, a lot of the porn that many of us have grown up watching

has been very kind of focused on that primacy of male pleasure, I guess, through an over-emphasis on penetration. Karen, I was listening to your TED talk earlier, and you mentioned during the talk that the conversation around sex and sexual wellness, and indeed the orgasm gap, has really grown publicly, quite notably, and I think we've seen a massive kind of exploits, in the sexual wellness industry in the past few years.

A huge money-making industry. It's now growing rapidly as kind of sexual wellness is being seen as part of the overall wellness industry more broadly. But you said that that growing public conversation hasn't translated to women's experience in the bedroom, that women are still coming to you in the sex therapy room and saying that, yes, I feel empowered in this aspect of my life. I feel empowered and more confident in my work, for example,

but I don't feel that in the bedroom. Why do you think that is? patriarchy who knows what that is I mean it's also silence and it's also sex education and a lack of knowledge about pleasure giving parts like the clitoris

it's also about socialisation it's about how when women are with cis het men there's an idea that women are kind of there to please and it's important to be polite and it's important to put someone else's needs first and yes many people would see themselves as feminists and their partners would too and they'd reject those ideas but patriarchy seeps in even if you're both feminists your male partner included

and I think it shows itself a lot when I work with people with painful sex so people with vulva's that have painful sex who are in relationships with cis het men usually and there is a real focus on I have to be able to have vaginal penetrative sex but why it's people with vulva's least favorite sexual act it's the sexual act least likely to result in pleasure or orgasm for people with vulvas but it's seen by society as the main course of sex because of patriarchal ideas and old ideas about procreation and sex being linked as well and it's just so prevalent the idea that that's something that someone should be doing and I think we can learn a lot here

from the queer community who have much more expansive ideas of what sex can look like and who does what in what order and have very different types of sex and don't have orgasm gaps and and amani when we spoke last week you you mentioned to me how broader kind of sociocultural issues also show up in the bedroom ones use with your focus on your work. Can you explain those for me a little bit more? What else do we see crop up in the bedroom, the context of our sexual relations with others? It's kind of more like what don't we see, honestly, because one of the sexiest sentences I heard when I was doing my doctor was that the brain, as you said, is the most sexual organ we have. And so you have to think about all of the messages that we have received growing up and where they

come from. So culture will be present in the room. Religion will be present in the room. Power dynamics will be present in the room. Gender politics will be present. All of these things are there in your head and between you and the roles that you might slip into consciously, unconsciously. And so that's where culture and other things like that are going to be playing a role in your sex life. And how do you get people to shake off those, I guess the public role that they have in society? How do you get them to take that off when they get into the bedroom to have a more equitable, personal, enjoyable sex life? Yeah, it's talking about it before you get into the bedroom. So becoming aware, shedding light, shedding light on these things, really questioning yourself, where did these ideas come from?

Where did you hear them? Are they serving you? You know, let's think about playing with it in a different way. How would that feel? So that's the way to maybe experiment to get to something that's more satisfying. What did my sex therapy say to me? Communication, communication, communication. There's one way that she was always, I can see clapping in the back.

Yes, we love a bit of communication. It's really hard, though. Communicating is so, I talk about the power of communication, ad nauseum. at sex talks and yet time and time again I find myself without anything to say or lots to say but not able to verbalise it which is often a shame and given that I love to talk that is quite shocking I was actually looking at your Instagram the other day and you did a poll not too long ago in which you asked your Instagram community how many of them had sex when they didn't want to and I was actually 63% of people you polled said that they often had sex, penchant of sex, when they didn't want to because they felt some sort of like obligation or duty, which I thought 63% is a really high stat. Yeah, and I think it's important to point out that people of all genders are having sex, that they don't want to.

And there's a bit of a misconception that men, particularly cis men, are always up for sex and that they're always ready for sex and that if they've got an erection, it means they want sex. And often we kind of shine a spotlight because they're usually, sadly, have a lot. the worst sex on cis het women but actually men also have challenges where they feel kind of pushed into sex they don't want to be having and society says well you shouldn't really turn it down and men are always up for sex and if you've got a lower sex driver than your partner that's somehow a problem so it's it's people of all genders that are finding themselves in that situation I guess that just comes down to that pressure we feel like we have to perform and sex isn't

something that we can actually be like I guess it's about advocating for yourself when it comes to sex. And if we haven't learned the language of sex prior to reading Kate Moyle's book, The Science of Sex, we are doing ourselves a disservice. I was going to say on that note, though, I would say performance anxiety and related sexual dysfunction is one of the most crippling things

that we are seeing young men experiencing at the moment and is one of the most common presentations in my therapy room for sure because of all of the expectations that come with gender norms. And we will delve into that in a little bit more depth momentarily. But I want to go, throughout the book, as you explore this question of what it means to be normal, am I normal? You debunk many myths around what normal sex and intimacy is. I mean, is there such thing as normal sex and like normal sexual desire and normal sexual appetite?

No, normal is what we assume to be normal is vanilla heterosexual. intercourse. That is what, if you ask most people what they kind of had an idea of normal, that's what it would look like. The reality is you have to work out what the normal is for you and we see that, as Karen said, the queer

community, very good at adapting sex lives, people who have had injuries or disabilities have to adapt her sex lives, that actually when we can be creative with it, we can make that normal, whatever it is. But the most normal, if we're going to use that word, thing about sex, is

that it changes, but we all think that it's this static, stays the same, never changes entity. And the most normal thing we can actually be doing is adapting it on an ongoing, constantly kind of assessing it basis. And I always think that's true of whether you're having sex with different people frequently or whether you're having sex the same person. Every time you have sex, you should kind of treat it like the first time that person because you're, what you want changes day to day, how you feel in your body changes day to day. Our hormones fluctuate, experiences we have in our day-day lives, invariably affect how we're showing up for sex any different day. And so I think never, or I've learned, I think through getting to mind the brains of people like you, that it really is, I think every time you have a sexual encounter with someone taking it as the first time, being like, what do you want today, what do you feel like now, what feels good and what doesn't, not assuming that we kind of learn the sexual scripts.

of even like a long-term partner and just kind of know how to press their buttons which I think can be quite a kind of a toxic thing throughout this conversation we've noticed at a certain point the role that shame often plays in sex and you mentioned at the very beginning that it's kind of the most common emotional response

to sex you've noted here that a lot of that has to do with the sexual script society hands us with regards to what normal sex is how do you begin peeling away the layers of shame with people that you work with in the sex therapy room to help recalibrate and move away

from that kind of shame-based place. So one of the first things I do when I'm working with anyone is we do what we call a full history take which is essentially an A to Z of someone. So not just sex but everything in their lives and then another exercise we do is we write down all of the beliefs

that they have about sex and we work through every single one see where they came from and a lot of the time what we're not saying is that your parents are to blame here because what we have to remember... My parents are to blame. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Cameron's mum was teaching her about sex from day dot. My mum was telling me not her sex as 18. Think of it. I could have been fucking Draco-Malphoid and here I am. Looking at him from across the bar upstairs. So, sorry, we mustn't blame our parents but sometimes we should, Kate.

Sometimes we must. But we also remember they were taught. by their parents. So every generation, you know, this generation, the iPhone is, what, 12, 13 years old, that is transformed everything quicker than any of us can keep up with. And we have to sometimes kind of take responsibility and address the things for us when they're happening for us as adults. And we can't, we have to understand that the education we often get

is from people who've got it from a generation before. So there is a huge gap and the internet has absolutely, you know, cause what we call the second sexual revolution, the first one being the pill. And now we have smartphones, which are a different thing, because we have accessibility, availability to information all the time. But sex education can come in so many forms, both the said and the unsaid.

And I think the unsaid is such a big thing. And so you said you get your clients to kind of go through a, like write down all the things that they believe about sex, and then we question where they come from, what they mean, are they helping, are they not? whether they're true, and a lot of it boils down to education, and often assumptions, like the amount of times people have said to me, oh, someone told me that in the playground when I was 14,

and I didn't know anything else, and so I took that message home, and I have held onto it ever since. And we're at a really impressionable age at that point, but also we don't know who to ask or to fact-check with, and so we carry those messages. We carry so much stuff with us until it's challenged. I mean, I've been so burned by the people I had sexual encounters with at 14. Let them burn in hell for eternity.

I'm joking. I wish them all semi well. Dr. Gurney, research suggests that over half women and nearly half of men will have experienced some form of sexual dysfunction in the past year alone. Now, Kate mentioned just now that performance anxiety amongst men is particularly common, especially now because of the pressure being placed on a man to perform. to be sexually strong and hard and all the things. What other kind of forms of sexual dysfunction do we most commonly see amongst all genders in the sex therapy room?

Yeah, so it's desire first. I mean, we know that about half of everyone in the UK is dissatisfied with their sex life. Over half? Over half. Yeah, so it's just over half for women. It's just under half for men. We don't have good enough data on non-binary people to really calculate it correctly, but we will in the next sex research.

census but yeah it's a lot so that's just general dissatisfaction it's basically most people can I ask who feels sexually unsatisfied in this room ah who feels sexually satisfied satisfied oh we've got oh there we go this science of sex herself is satisfied that's good to see so we know we're learning from we're learning from the best it would be disappointing if you were, once I'm sorry. Then I do run sex talks and I am unsatisfied. That's interesting. So for the people listening to the podcast

who can't see the hands on it, I'd say the majority of people in this room were sexually satisfied, which is, you know, self-selecting crowd. Yes. Yes. There'll definitely be something there. So there's something in being a bit more kind of conversant in their sex lives.

But so, Karen, you were saying that most people are unsatisfied with their sex lives, and then that pertains to sexual dysfunction. About half of people in the UK between the ages of 18 and 70. So it's common, and, you know, Kate and Amani will know that in our jobs, that's pretty much all we hear about at a dinner party, isn't it? Like, literally will be kind of a quiet word to one side, and we don't have sex anymore, and it's this, and it's that.

That's all we hear in a social interaction. And we would, because of our jobs, I guess people that work in mortgages get asked about the interest, right? I think you've got the better deal, though. Ours is more interesting, yeah. So, yeah, people are generally dissatisfied, and that's different than having a sexual problem that would kind of fit a diagnosis of a sexual dysfunction.

But in terms of sexual problems, the top ones are desire. And a kind of common myth is that that's just for cis women. And actually, we know that cis men also experience high levels of a concern about their interest in sex. It's about one in five men in the UK say, that they're worried they don't feel like sex enough. And I don't know about the two of you,

but a common question I get, especially through Instagram, is they say things like, I want to read your book, but it's not me, it's my male partner. So what's wrong with him? Because it's obviously normal for women, but is it normal for men? And of course it is, because desire works the same for all of us. That's really interesting.

So I actually wanted to ask the whole panel, really, what proportion of men versus, women are coming to sex therapy because I think as you just said that it feels like perhaps that's something that maybe women feel more comfortable saying they perhaps have an issue with and and even then I think it's probably not the majority of people who are going to be comfortable to do that but do you have a kind of gender equal split of people coming into your therapy room I do it's it's pretty much half and half obviously it fluctuates but but yeah it's it's pretty much half and half and there's a lot I would say a lot

No, it's hard to quantify whether there's more anxiety with men. But I think it's just, the focus is different, maybe. And tell me a little bit more about that, though. So I think we're talking much more openly publicly at the moment about the social crisis of masculinity. And I was just listening to Women's Hour yesterday, and there was an MP whose name has momentarily left my brain. He was on saying, calling for the kind of dire need for us to have

a men's minister. So obviously you have a women's minister, but saying that we need a men's minister to address the spate of specific issues that men are facing today, which he feels are getting worse. And we're really kind of losing sight of the specificity of these issues facing men. What other pressures are you seeing show up in the therapy room? So we mentioned the performativity thing. Is there anything else that men specifically are distressed about? There's such a broad range right now of issues that I see men struggle. with. So sometimes I'm speaking to a male client about consent where, let's say, there's a fantasy and there's, and if he doesn't subscribe to the fantasy, then the relationship is kind

of in jeopardy. Now, when I flip that around and talk about, okay, so if you were, if you were female, and I was having this conversation to you, and he would instantly see that that's not okay. At the same time, sometimes I'm having clients where I'm saying to them, send me your favorite Andrew Tate video because I want to know what it is that you're enjoying about, I want to have this conversation with you because I'm not informed about him, because I don't watch, but I will watch because I want to know what you're thinking so that we can have a conversation. So there's, there's so much, there's a lot of, I don't watch. I suppose, yeah.

How does Andrew Tate show up in the bedroom? I have no idea how he shows up in the bedroom, but I have an idea about... Not him personally, but the impact. Really? I thought he was a champion for the orgasm gown, for closing the orgasm cap. Not what I've seen. But are you really seeing the impact of people like that in terms of men's relationship to sex and how they... Men's relationship, well, not obviously, I'm generalising, but men's relationship to self.

and what it means to be a man and kind of the pressures of that plus the lack of support I think these conversations are maybe starting to happen but not to the same degree that they happen more commonly amongst women

I was just going to add to that and say it's a really interesting question I think for me it's body image issues with queer men and that's something that we know is on the rise and really gets in the way of enjoying sex and I think I see quite a lot of that and that's actually something we've discussed before at sex talks I think as you say it's so it's so prevalent I think we generally talk about body image issues of being very much kind of female

preserve this is not something we wanted to catch on we wanted to knit the body images in the bud not have everyone get them so that we can all be totally fucked up about our bodies together I'd actually really interested to know as I was listening to that interview with the MP whose name is forgotten Nigel Can't get. Not nida frrage. Anyway, I'll remember, and then I'll tell you. But about a men's minister, and immediately when you hear that listening to that,

I go into like, wait, hang on a second, we have in nowhere come close to cracking gender equality. There's so many areas of public life that women are underrepresented, the pay gap, maternity leave, there's so many issues. But then I do think, as you've just said, I think there are a lot of issues that really are, we're not addressing publicly when it comes to men. and I think perhaps in not having these conversations, we're now getting more men coming to sex talks. Excellent, fantastic, to all the men coming here.

But there definitely is an underrepresentation of men there. Hands up who would think it would be a really good idea to have a men's minister? I've changed my mind. Okay, so that's about half the room. Interesting. I'm loving these in-situ polls. Now, I want to now talk about the evolution of sex. So, Kate, you said before that one of the things that can really trip many of us up

when it comes to our relationship to sex, is thinking that it needs to be static, that we kind of have sex in the same way in perpetuity. We kind of maybe find a certain sexual pattern with a partner. We know how to press the right buttons. Hopefully we learn how to make them come. Please, God, they learn how to make us come. And then we repeat ad lausium until the day we die.

You said it's important that we do change things up. How do you recommend that people stay sexually curious in the context of perhaps a long-term relationship? One of the things I talk about is how the phrase, how to spice up your sex life, puts the fear of God into so many people because they envision, like, going out, yeah, exactly, going, having to be kind of dragged by their partner to a soho sex shop and choosing the sorts of weird outfits and toys that they're terrified of. But it doesn't have to be, and actually that puts people off most of the time.

They're like, I don't even want to go there, so I'd rather just avoid it completely, which is the most natural reaction to anxiety. so when people feel nervous about anything most of the time they will just completely kind of lock down avoid it and that happens with sex all the time. So one of the things that I talk about is every time we have sex change one thing and that one thing

can be lights on, lights off starting with the clothes on, clothes off, putting your pillows at the other end of the bed, changing the room, changing position, adding loop, using a sex toy, not having intercourse that time. Like whatever it is, that there's a minor tweaks that you continuously make because the way

that the brain works is that we habituate to things that we do again and again and again like we learn anything in life think about learning to drive a car and sex is no different which is why routine sex can become unexciting we don't get the same neurological hits we don't get the same releases and we the anticipation that carron was talking about earlier that's such a main part of desire thrives on novelty excitement things that we don't know much about which is why at the start of relationship it's there without us even thinking about it. Or forbidden relationships, the bad ones.

And you're like, oh, we shouldn't, but we should. And we are, and it's good. What about for the single solo sexes amongst us? Is it just as important to spice up how you masturbate? Because, let's be real, I got a routine going. And I know how that five minutes is going to play out. And I have a like roller decks of sexual fantasy. that I'm like,

this one. The hot tennis player who I'm sexting from Italy. Let's pluck that one out and then masturbate. But it is routine. Is it important? And how hell do you spice up

a solo sex life? Yeah, it's as important. I mean, Cam is here from Lilo and the goody bag. The giveaway will help some people. What file will I be drawing on tonight? But everything from positions to using loop to knot to fantasies.

There are amazing. like audio erotica apps now, ethical porn sites, that what can happen is we get stuck in tunnel vision. So again, we can get used to something and then we might struggle in sex with a partner because we're so used to doing something one way and it's very unlikely that your partner is going to exactly replicate exactly what you like.

And that's where people can get stuck. So mixing it up is as important more on our own. I only have digital WhatsApp boyfriends ever and therefore I feel like I'm in no risk. of it not translating, I am so good at getting stuck in the digital realm, but whatever. Makes for some great sexting, and as I said, my rolodex, my bank of sexual fantasies is getting bigger and bigger. Obviously, Dr. Gurney, children, having children, or not having children in a context of relationship, can change our sex life quite profoundly in relationships.

How do you typically see desire sex drive change in the aftermath of social? of having children and how do you work with people to kind of regain maybe the sexual confidence that might get lost yeah so depending on the route people have gone down to become parents usually there's been some level of stress involved so that's worth thinking about because sometimes challenges with sex start before conception or before adoption depending on you know how you how the process unfolded for you and something that I think people often overlook is the fact that often although of course not always people have been having sex with the that person maybe for quite a long time already before they've even had children, not everyone,

but that can bring with it already challenges for desire that just get exacerbated around having kids. Pregnancy is another time. Some people feel the sexiest they've ever felt if, you know, if they're carrying and sex is great and it can really open up people's sexual horizons because maybe all of a sudden there's a reason to change things up. Like one position isn't comfortable and so that's just one thing they're changing they've never changed before and it's often a time where people say that they feel the least self-conscious about their belly and their body so that can be great to wear the tank top if i if i ever have a pregnant i'll only be wearing midriff bearing top there you go time that i can hide my bloat behind the baby case in point

and so sometimes pregnancy can be a time of really improving people sex life and for other people they're so worried about damage to the baby which of course is usually not a thing but people do still worry about it they perhaps don't have sex the whole time and asking yourselves to reinstate a sex life when a bomb has gone off in your relationship when the baby's been born

is the most impossible task that people could ever ask of themselves so one of the things that's really important to think about is what's come before but then it's about give yourself a break I mean you've just had a baby you're not sleeping, like your body's not your own, like your nipples are leaking, whatever, you know, it's not a good time to be thinking about sex. Obviously, breastfeeding also reduces desire and can make vaginal penetration painful.

So that's something often people don't know. Why don't they teach that on NCT courses? I'll never know. But often my advice in the early stages is really, please don't worry about sex. It's not a priority right now, but do not let what I call sexual currency fall off the agenda. Don't stop relating to each other as sexual partners because you can do that in small moments even when you're tired. You can say someone looks hot. You can have a very brief passionate kiss. You can talk about, I can't wait until we can have sex again. You can keep your

sexual relationship going even when we're not having sex. After maybe a year, but it depends, are you getting any sleep? Sleep is a massive sex drive killer. So if you're not getting enough sleep, it will affect your sex drive. If sleep's all right, if you're getting back into the routine of things, and then it's challenging, that might be the time to try and do something about it. Seek sex therapy, do some reading, depending on what, you know, your budget allows. But it's different for every person, and I think you need to create a tailor-made understanding for the people you're sat with around why they're at where they're at, because there can be so many different factors that might need tweaking to get sex better again.

And I was really surprised, actually, Kate, in your book, you note that I think we often associate the postpartum, post-pregnancy, a loss of desire or issues around sex with women, but actually men experience a decrease in their libido once they have a child. Is that right? Yeah, so anthropologists have found that there is a 30-ish percent drop in testosterone in new fathers. Did you know that? You did? Oh, well, I didn't, so I was shook. It's basically the theory of investing fatherhood, so it happens so that basically they are less incentivised.

This is an evolutionary theory to stray. Our bodies are so smart. Shall I get them to stick around? Just got one final question or two final questions, just to give you a little heads up. I know it's still hot, I know we'd be sweating. But we are going to do an anonymous... We're going to have a quick break after this,

so you can all refresh yourselves with some cold, delicious G-Spot drinks, but we will also have an anonymous Q&A at the very end. So as you're sitting here in these last final questions, do be racking your brain for what sexy, saucy, intimate question you want to ask under the veil of anonymity. How exciting is that?

So Dr. Zruke, you discussed couples therapy on a podcast not too long ago with sexologist Katrina Beaufort. I always pronounce her name incorrectly. Sorry, Katrina. And she noted actually that couples tend to wait six to seven years when they're going through some issues, whatever issues they're going through as a couple, before they finally make it to the therapy room.

I imagine it's probably not that dissimilar with sex therapy. We wait, these kind of issues they kind of fester. What do couples tend to come to you for when eventually they do seek professional help? So that research, the six to seven years, that was taken from Gottman and Goldman. research. They've done extensive research on couples and what works in a relationship and what doesn't. And so they say that on average couples coming into, for relationship therapy will come around that time, which is kind of when they're on their way, it's like the last step before they're on their way out, you know, of the relationship. So, sorry, what was your question?

What are the issues of those couples who do find their way to your therapy? what are they typically facing when it comes to yeah whatever there's kind of breaking apart that relationship the issues that they're that they're typically facing are kind of I suppose lack of hope in the relationship they may be really struggling as you said with communication that will that will definitely be there they may also have different perceptions of each other now completely maybe you know because of historical events or maybe because they've grown apart and really aren't curious about each other anymore.

So those are maybe the... And when you say they're not curious about one another anymore, what do you mean by that? I mean, sometimes we tend to think we know each other because simply we live with each other or we're in a relationship and we kind of take each other for granted and people grow. We all, you know, things happen, we change, our interest change. and we sometimes have blind spots to being curious about that process in the other person and then they might see that

and then they're not sharing and so that kind of happens over time where we're now disconnected and we're not friends anymore, we're not having fun. I think that curiosity is something I think needs to be applied to all the relationships in our life because I think I have to really catch myself and I find myself really taking a lot of relationships in my life totally for granted.

And you're busy at work, you're busy with like self, self, self. You know, but you're distracted by all the things that are going on in your life. And you kind of forget to show that constant curiosity, I think, not just in romantic context, but with all the people alive. And it's so important to the evolution of relationships. I know that. I live with my best friend, and we've now lived together for like three years. And we are like husband and wife.

It's like we talk about bills. we talk about our shared account our shared bank account and we talk about who's taking out the rubbish and I was like, oh my God, I can so see how people in like long-time marriages end up just kind of forgetting the reasons that they fell in love

or they became best friends and moved in together. You really have to be very active with that curiosity and go on dates and remind yourself why you're together, why you found these children so compatible in the first place. What do you tend to see as the indicators of a couple being able to resolve their issues

that they're facing in the couple's therapy room versus indicators that perhaps suggests it over? I think the things that would indicate that there's hope is firstly the couple having some degree of hope, which is very scary. You know, you have to be very brave to walk into that room. You have to be brave to face the relationship. I think people who can take accountability and responsibility

and who are self-aware and understand the impact of stressors on their life and how that kind of then impacts the relationship. These things, I think, kind of indicate to me that this is workable. We can do something here. I think from Gottman's research, there's four major indicators of a relationship kind of being on its last legs, maybe. He calls that John Gottman calls that the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So, yeah, it's all kind of, you know, very sexy language.

So those are criticism. Obviously, these can exist, they will exist in any relationship. It doesn't mean that just because it's there, that that means it's going to be over. But if, you know, if they're very prevalent, these are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, which means kind of like almost like. a barrier like you're not really there like I'm reading the paper and you're talking to me but I don't notice kind of thing and the the most kind of crucial one would be contempt and so so those are not good no no so that's when things are done that's the apocalypse right

if you feel contempt towards your partner you might want to well think about breaking up with them a whole panel question just to round us off and this is really a personal question because I have just been reading a brilliant book called this Ragged Grace. I don't if anyone's read it here by Octavia Bright. It is so good. I would highly recommend it once you read Kate's book obviously. But in it she talks about, Tavia talks

about her experience of falling in love in the context of overcoming addiction. So what it's like to fall in love when you are in recovery and how confusing that can be when you're used to when recovery is very reliant on you kind of getting in control of your emotions

and feeling kind of in control of your body kind of ordering your life when falling in love obviously requires you being kind of a little bit out of control, kind of letting things a little bit loose. But she makes one point that really stuck with me. She says that our addicts often mistake intensity for intimacy

since intensity alone is a way of avoiding feeling, being really seen for who they are. She writes if intensity is about the experience in the moment, intimacy is about closeness over time. It resonated. And Amy Paul's

the thought as I reflected on actually how my own relationship patterns definitely intense and not intimate, love my WhatsApp boyfriends, and how difficult is to break them. And I think we hear a lot about attachment styles, relationship styles now all over social media. And I think it's kind of a lot of pseudoscience that does get peddled on TikTok, particularly around these relationship styles. But I am interested to know kind of from all of you, can we break whatever relationship pattern, relationship style

we gravitate towards. Can I become less intense and more intimate? That's what I'm asking. And how? Yes. Woo! I just interviewed for my podcast Dan Tatkin, who's written loads of books about this and he said

lust can get you in the room but it will not keep you there. And I thought it was a really good representation of how we can kind of fall hard. We know actually that lust, love and attachment have different chemical profiles. So we have different kind of hormonal neurochemical releases

when we're in those different stages. So again, you know, back to the brain being the moderator. So really it's about how we kind of work with what's going on for us biologically, but also kind of consciously adapt to what's happening in our environments. And sometimes it's catching ourselves and stopping us doing the thing that we might, our default might be a way of acting. And sometimes we need to challenge that. So if I was looking to be more intimate,

to like nurture my intimacy. How'd I do that? Give them a chance. Give them a chance. I'm trying. They won't come and see me. It's really hard. Digital dating is tough.

Okay, we're going to follow up on that later. I need some hot tips. But just to round things off before I turn to all of your brilliant questions, maybe someone else is struggling with intensity over intimacy. If you are, let me know. We can cry together. I'm just going to jump in. Oh, please.

Sorry. Please. One of my favorite sentences that someone said to me was, like, I thought I was in love, but it turned out it was just anxiety. That's brilliant. It's brilliant, that statement. That is so true, wasn't me. It might have been, because it's true.

To wrap up, I'd love to hear from each of you. What is one piece of sex re-education? you want everyone here to walk away with from tonight. It's your book launch? One piece of advice. That you can get the sex education you want at any time.

Even later on life when we think we're broken, we can be fixed. Yes. Because we're not broken. So no fixing. Just improvement. Just little tweaks here and there. And Dr. Gurney, what about you?

Oh, it's hard to narrow this down, isn't it? I would say probably the most useful one is nobody's having. as much sex as you think they are. And nobody's having as much mind-blowing sex as you think they are. I thought I was so alone in my sexual dysfunction and then, yeah, people started to admit,

suddenly they started to admit to me how crap their sex lives were. Can I tell you my favourite sex research fact about that? Please. Which is that men typically overestimate the number of sexual partners in comparison to women, but the best thing about that is they usually round it up to end with a five or a zero. It's one of my favourite bits of sex research.

Sounds more neat. I kind of like that. I'm going to take a leaf out of everyone's sake. I'm sort of rounding up. Five hundred. Not true. Dr. Thuruk, what about you? I think I advocate that what's most important is your relationship with yourself.

And from that, all other relationships kind of mirror that are stemmed. of mirror that or stem from that. So if you can tune in with what's really genuinely happening for you, you're likely to have not only better relationships, but also better sexual relationships as well. Woo! That's such a good piece of advice. And I have to say it, when I did sex therapy,

I was single at the time, so I didn't work in that regard, but no, I'm joking. But a lot of my friends said to me at the time, there's like, how can you be doing sex therapy? I'm like, you're not having sex? It was also the pandemic, so it was like tough times for everyone and sex therapy happened online.

But first of all, I was like, the indignity. Like, I didn't need to remind you of that, first of all, so thanks to my unhelpful friends. But second of all, I think as I very quickly learned in the sex therapy room, as you said, Dr. Zaruch, your relationship to sex is so much about your relationship to yourself.

And personally, I actually found it really helpful having sex therapy alone and addressing a lot of the issues that I had particularly with my body that then translated into my relationship to sex before then going out and having sex with different sexual partners I found it very helpful to do it alone first

and I think even if I'd been had a partner at the time even if I had a partner I would still want to do it alone because I think it was actually very beneficial in that sense so I do think that relationship to self is so much at the core of your relationship to sex Before we head to the anonymous Q&A section, aka my favourite part of sex talks, a quick reminder from me that if you're not able to attend a live event, but you would like to submit anonymously a question either to be answered at a future event or on the podcast, please do head to the link in the show notes and feel free to ask whatever you want. Right, enjoy this last section of the podcast. This question gets asked all the time to me personally.

Can your clit desensitise with over-stimulation? If someone said yeah, go on then, Dr. Go on then, Dr. Goh. It will for a period of about 60 seconds, and then it will just go back to normal. Sometimes my click goes numb. For how long? I can't get it back. The next day it's fine But the next day it's fine

But when I'm masturbating And it hasn't happened recently But sometimes overuse the vibrator It does go numb and I can't get it back But it won't cause it any harm or desensitize you Well it's annoying because then I haven't come You need to slow it down Slow it down right

But I love instant gratification So that's hard As a queer woman When I first had a girlfriend my friends would ask or say that I couldn't have sex because it wasn't penetrative drop these friends what advice do you have for queer people educating their friends slash talking to their friends about non-penetitive sex big up the queer community who we have so much to learn from as we said throughout the panel so clues in the name

oral sex yeah it's like the best bits happen outside the penetration let's be real I think sorry one of the biggest myths is that sex is defined by just penetration and and there are so many ways to have sex that have nothing absolutely nothing to do with penetration and I don't think it's just about I think what was the quick how to talk to your friends about it yeah educating I don't think it's just educating the queer community I think it's just educating people in general and changing the language we use totally Dr. Gain, where are you going to add something to that? I would say ignore them. Like, it's not your job to educate them. It would be great for them if they were having better sex. And you can just let them know that women having sex with women are having more orgasms

and sex that lasts three times as long. Exactly. You can wear a strap on, as an audience member said. I think you just need to tell them about the orgasm gap and probably shut them up. We should all talk about the orgasm gap more, because I feel the more people know about it, hopefully the more the gap will close. It's a bit normal to not be able to climax by yourself

without watching porn. Kate. We have to learn how to bring ourselves to climax. So particularly in women and people with vulva as we see that orgasm is a learned response. So it's all there, but we have to learn how to make it work for us. And so just because,

because porn is arousing for some people. What the brain does is it responds to things that are sexually relevant, but what is sexually kind of pertinent to us as individuals is all about personal preference. And can we become, I guess, as a tend to, can we become desensitized by porn? We can get used to it, but we can also get unused to it. And what can happen is habituation, like anything else in life,

like we talked about earlier. We can get used to something and then we need more to get the original high. and so we can increase intensity whereas actually what we can do is pair that back and try other things. Do you think monogamy has a part

to play in sexual dissatisfaction in the UK? Yes. Oh, this is a huge bugbearer of mine. Like, monogamy's great if that's what you're into but please don't confuse monogamy with easy sex with one person for the rest of your life. Like, if you're going to be monogamous,

you're going to have to find well, to keep it interesting, to allow yourself to grow and change, to allow each other to grow and change, and to talk about it. And you can't have good sex in a monogamous relationship without that. Younger boy toy. I love... Younger boy toy, Cameron from Leela was saying from the audience.

Younger boy toy. I'm learning more from you than I learned from my mom. I can probably be your mom I'll adopt you as my In the age of online dating How are you expected to have good sex When you have known someone for less than 24 hours Face to face

Oh my God Someone tell me this because all my digital dating Eventually someone has to come through And show up at my door What about it? How do you have good sex? I actually desperately need to know this. Having good sex after 24 hours, is that the question?

Yeah, so in the age of online dating, how we expect you to have good sex when you've known someone for less than 24 hours, or if you've been sexting loads for ages and ages and ages and ages, and then eventually months later you meet. Is this your story? Yeah, that's it. Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend.

Were they a catfish? What is my friend? Was there a catfish in the end? No. They're so verified. So how do you have good sex after knowing someone for 24 hours? I think, was that? Oh, sorry, I heard, I heard a murmur.

I think, firstly, any pressure that you might feel to have sex is going to impact your pleasure. so if you want to have sex and you've met someone then the way to enjoy it is maybe to slow things down to communicate about what you like maybe pause things maybe change it up just make sure that you're comfortable and happy about what's happening and that you know you feel like they are too that you feel safe that you feel like you've done what you need to do for yourself in that situation. I was just going to add to that.

I was just going to say that some people can have the best sex of their life with strangers because they get the ability to be a different version of themselves. And so you can have great sex with someone you've only just met. But I think it's worth considering what you want to get out of that sex. And if your goal for that sex is pleasure, then it's worth looking at if you're someone who's going to be a fairer. by the orgasm gap because it's much wider for casual sex.

It's about between 8 and 16% of the time women orgasm with men in casual sex compared to 65, which is still terrible, in a regular sexual partner. So think about what you're going into it for. If you're going into it for a great time and connection and to be a version of yourself sexually and the orgasm isn't the main reason, then great. And we don't know the gender of this person, but if the orgasm gap affects you, then consider that. Maybe my friend sent the person they're chatting to online your video about desire. Maybe they did.

Might have helped. Who knows? I've got so much to relay back to my friend, so thanks, guys. Are some people just sexually incompatible? Is it always work outable if you want it to be? Actually, this is such a good question, and I was just chatting to someone in the audience about this. if you say for example have like really strong kinks you're like really in the kink community for example

and then you meet someone who perhaps isn't that sexually inclined is there a way of finding some sort of kind of sexual like establishing a sexual relationship between you two in a relationship or is your kind of sexual differences do they potentially mean that you just you can't be together come on I'm going to start calling on you no I would say that sex is a skill to be learned. And so whilst you can, with the intention, with the intention that you can have,

if you both want to work at it, you can always find a way to find something. And then if you feel comfortable, it's working out if there are different ways that you can explore your different interests, which don't challenge your relationship. So we live in a time when there are amazing sex tech and sexual wellness products,

and parties and clubs and meetups and porn, audio porn. There's so many options available for exploring of sexuality nowadays that you can do it within the confines of your relationship. That's what you need to. I think also context makes a big difference, like how you feel in a particular relationship. You might not want to explore some sexual things with one person, but you might want to with somebody else.

so trust safety those those kind of things and also knowing okay like some of these some of these sexual things are green lights for me I know I like them others are ambers others are reds they're hard no I don't want to go there and maybe having that kind of a dialogue where there's a spectrum yeah totally I feel like historically I haven't been very sexually exploratory I have sometimes but not really went to sex therapy with lots of sexual issues but I feel like If you make me feel safe, I couldn't try anything. But it's that safety that I realized doing sex therapy

was so missing from so many of my sexual relationships. It's that I didn't feel like the context had been set for me to feel relaxed and comfortable and present in my body. And it's only when I began to feel that with now ex, but like a newer partner at the time, following sex therapy. He'd just kind of, he'd do certain things throughout the day, like always reach back and hold my hand, put his arm out me,

I kind of always felt noticed and always felt kind of held and protected. By the time we got to having sex, I felt so relaxed and so safe, and the difference was so notable. It really did shock me. So I think it's, yeah, as you say, setting that context

through which then exploration and play can be really fun and exploratory and you can try new things together. There are also websites called the sex menus where you can make yes, no, maybe lists if you're trying to navigate it in a relationship, a yes, no, maybe list that you both do separately, and then sit down and do with each other

is a really good way of navigating those conversations. I love this question. What advice would you give to young girls about to have their first sexual partner? Godspeed. Joking, joking, joking, joking, joking. Obvious are joking. It makes me feel quite sad, if I'm honest.

Spoire up. Sorry. Most people don't have a good first sexual experience. And one of the things that I suppose is quite useful to know is that research tells us that the quality of your first sexual experience dictates your sexual satisfaction in later life. And if I could give advice to that young person, it would be like who's driving this how in it are you how confident do you feel about asserting what you want

how on the ball are you both of you thinking about contraception and safer sex like making sure that they're what we call as sexually competent as possible because we know that sexual competence at first sex dictates sexual problems and sexual satisfaction in later life and sadly most people aren't sexually competent when they first have sex sorry to be the bearer of terrible news but I'm sure you if we did a poll, we wouldn't find many people that had a good first sexual experience. Most people say it was bad. Some people say, it was okay. It's very rare for it to be great. Maybe most people wouldn't have gone to a talk like this before their first sexual experience. That's the advice I'd give. Come here. Come here. Well, you've been here, so great. Get on you. But now you're well versed in the conversations and the language that might set you up for success in that first sexual experience. And maybe from this, you're going to go away

and sit down with this partner and be like, you know what? We need to do some deep chatting first. Some DMC is my favorite thing of all time before we get down and dirty. One person has asked, how much sex is too much sex? When it gets painful.

Oh, yeah, carpet burn. Like, not carpet burn, friction burn. All both. Oh, both, depending on your pubic situ. Or when it starts to interfere with other stuff you enjoy. Well, yeah, I was going to say, if in terms of, it's so tricky because I think in, you know, we've been talking a lot about kind of low sexual desire and a lot of the inhibitors to people having, you know, strong libido, things that can impact on that.

But actually, what happens if you think about sex all the time? When does it veer into actually being quite a problematic thing? Dr. Zarug? Yeah, I think, I think, as Karen said, if it, if it starts to get in the way of you going to work or, yeah, honestly, or doing the things that you need to be doing during your day that you're now regretting that you were too preoccupied with something that you, you know.

So when it starts to become, I don't know, on the verge of compulsive or obsessive, that sort of thing. This person's written, I'm 35, and when I was with my ex, I thought I simply lost my libido because of my age. The relationship was causing me a lot of stress and anxiety because I realized we weren't truly aligned where we kids in the future. Do you think that impacted my sex drive? Yes.

The number one factor correlated with feeling worried about your interest in sex is being in a long-term relationship. Not age, not medication, not mood, not stress, being in a long-term relationship. So what do you do? Get out of it. No. I mean, some people, yes. I mean, it's really important to understand how desire works. It's very different to how we've been sold. And if you understand that, you can have it feature as much or as little as you want in your relationship. But we're not told that. So people are experiencing changes in desire because of a long-term relationship. And then just thinking, well, this is about me. This is about my relationship with this person. And actually, it's not. It's a long-term relationship thing that happens. and you need to learn about it so that you can navigate your way around it. But for some people, leaving, you know,

maybe was the right option as well. And as Esther Perel says, in order to sustain a long-term relationship, you need to fall in love several times with one another. And I used to say that to my ex-boyfriend. I used to say, I really love you because we'd stayed together for ages. So I was like, you have the capacity to make me fall in love with you again and again and again.

And then one day we broke up. This person is saying what many of us may be. thinking. As a single woman, I don't have regular sex. One night stands, perhaps once a year. Do you think there will be any long-term consequences? Kate? No. I did once listen to a woman's hour episode going through a particularly long dry spell in which they said not having regular sex in women can lead to early onset menopause, which I felt was just I was like not only am I not having sex I'm not orgasming and I'm going to get early onset menopause

there is no justice in this world is that untrue? I've not seen any research that suggests that's the truth but the consequences for this person I mean enter the Lilo Raffled and that will help exactly we've got a box of names which we're I'm actually gonna can you keep mind of the time can I actually forgot my what time is it oh shoot okay we're gonna do three more because he's so good but we'll take them to social media afterwards, can't we?

This one. How do you choose, oh, what does it say? How do you choose? Oh, how do you choose the therapist that is right for you? Kate. I always say to people when they ask this, ask for a 15 minute or 10 minute phone call with someone first.

Most therapists will offer you that for free. It gives you a really instant feel, asking the questions that you might be scared about asking, and it will give you a really good gift. of how they work. And most therapists will be happy to offer that. It's kind of like a... You should do that for dating, screener calls.

It's like speed dating. Speed date, your sex therapist. And if you have a first session with a therapist and they're not the right therapist for you, just say, dump them. This is not right for me and find someone else. It's a doggy dog world out there.

How... This is a great question. How do you create stronger connection to yourself and your sex life when you live with gender dysphoria. Dr. Barney, do you love to work in this way? Yeah, I couldn't answer that one. I work in trans health care as well as sexual problems.

I think this is a really common issue, and it comes up quite a lot. I think one of the things that happens in our world is that we kind of gender genitals quite a lot, and we gender words for genitals, and we gender sexual acts even. We also gender sexual roles, like who's more active. and I think it's about kind of letting go of those but also understanding how those fit for you finding the right words that don't kind of bring dysphoria

but most importantly because you might know the right words already for you is being able to assertively let partners know that what words are okay what isn't what parts of your body are okay to touch what bits of clothing or what other things you might want to wear or not wear and I think one of the most important things that comes out of the work I do with people is to have that pride and confidence in yourself that you don't need to settle for people that won't do that. And I think that's the case for all of us, but that's something that comes up a lot, a sense of they didn't really respect my boundaries around this word, but, you know,

I don't know, is it all right for me to really assert that? Yes, it is. Hell yeah, it is. So kind of having that as well, I think, is a good way forward. And obviously, if you can access gender affirming care, but we all know the challenges of that. And then on the flip side of that, what can someone, how can someone whose partner is experiencing gender dysphoria help to navigate sex and sexual exploration in a way that will make their partner feel as comfortable as possible? Yeah. There's a lot of internal questions that need to be asked. And these are questions that all of us could benefit from asking. Why do I think that sex should look like this?

Why do I think that my role in sex is this? we all should be asking those questions really but they're useful in this context to understand what are you bringing to the sexual experience that might inadvertently trigger dysphoria and to just be really good at asking is this okay what word do you want me to use for that

what should we wear or not wear what should sex look like how are you going to let me know if this is triggering dysphoria for you and just keeping that conversation going and actually really that's how we should approach sex always all the time and actually exactly this next question might also give rise to some

answer what what your suggest for people who have suffered sexual trauma example how to deal with triggers disassociating talk to a partner it's really what you've just said in terms of actually making sure that you had that open line of communication with a partner isn't it don't sir would you add to that i i completely agree i think definitely these are the questions to be to be asking i think i think Again here it's really important to go mindfully with it and get comfortable in pausing and making things slower and taking whatever time that you need, nothing has to be fast. And sometimes actually, you know, so often we think of better sex as having kind of bells and whistles. Well, actually, it can just be that really slowing things down and being very intimate.

intimate and present during sex is mind-blowing sex. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Get that on a t-shirt. I love missionary sex. There's nothing greater.

A little bit of missionary. Legs behind your head. Is that mystery? No. Missionary like squared or so, whatever. Plus. I enjoy sex and have good sexual desire. But when things become more serious,

the pressure of having bad sex, and not delivering for my partner ruins my sex life slash drive. Am I alone and how do I overcome this? You are not alone. Most, well Karen said earlier, actually people have really good sex sometimes when they're not emotionally connected because as soon as it matters, we can feel pressure, we can get in our heads. And one of the things that when people experience sexual dysfunction out of nowhere

in a long-term relationship, they think is what is my partner going to think? How am I going to explain this? And actually it can be due to stress in other areas of life leaking in, medical problems, like so many reasons. So just explaining that you don't know why things aren't working. You don't know why you're feeling this pressure, but taking it off is the best thing that you can do because the more pressure you add, the more anxiety

and the more that's going to interrupt arousal. Thank you so much to everyone for coming. Congratulations Kate Moyle on your debut book, Science of Sex. If you haven't bought one of her books yet, you know where to go. And thank you to my other wonderful panelist, Dr. Karen Gurney, Amari Zarug. You were fabulous. And see you at the next sex talk. Don't forget to listen to the podcast.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to this live. recording of the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Em Louise Boynton. This was recorded at the London Edition Hotel. If you'd like to attend Sex Talks Live, head on over to the eventbrate link in the show notes. We have lots of exciting live events coming up. In the meantime, don't forget to submit whatever Agniant question you'd like us to tackle on a future episode via the sex talks website. That's sextalk.com.uk. And finally, if you've enjoyed the show, I hope you have. Please don't forget to rate review. and subscribe on whatever platform you're listing for this on. So apparently it helps others to find us. Have a wonderful day.