Sex With Emily - The Sex Advice I Got Wrong After 20 Years | Sex With Emily

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

For 20 years, people have asked me the same questions: what's the best position, how do I get better oral sex, is anal sex supposed to hurt. And honestly? I still love answering those. But after two decades of doing this podcast, I've realized something. People rarely come to me with the real problem. Underneath the sex question, there's almost always shame, rejection, resentment, or the big one: "am I normal?" In this episode, I'm doing something I've never done before going back through 20 years of advice and telling you what I'd change. I'm a Doctor of Human Sexuality and I've talked to millions of people about their sex lives, and here's what I know now that I didn't then: "just communicate" isn't enough, "spice it up" doesn't fix resentment, spontaneous desire is mostly a myth for people in long-term relationships, and sleep and stress matter more than any toy in your nightstand. I'm breaking down the five pillars of sexual intelligence, why I think we're all obsessed with the wrong metrics, and what actually predicts great sex (hint: it's not technique). If you've ever wondered whether you're normal, this one's for you. You are. #SexWithEmily #EmilyMorse #SexAdvice #SexualIntelligence #Relationships ABOUT EMILY: Emily Morse is a Doctor of Human Sexuality, author and host of the #1 rated Sex with Emily podcast. Known as a renowned sexologist, Dr. Emily has helped millions of people around the world navigate their sex lives. Her candid and often funny conversations challenge cultural taboos, misinformation and awkward sex talks to create a future where people can deeply connect and embrace pleasure-filled lives. Because, life is too short for bad sex.  CONNECT: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexwithemily/  X: https://twitter.com/sexwithemily  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sexwithemily  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sexwithemily  Threads: https://www.threads.net/@sexwithemily WANT MORE? Visit the Website: https://sexwithemily.com/ which includes FREE guides. Free Downloadable Guides: https://sexwithemily.com/guides/  Text With Me: https://sexwithemily.com/text  Receive Sex Tips On The Regular: https://sexwithemily.com/subscribe  Interested in 1:1 Coaching with Emily? Go to http://sexwithemily.com/coaching to apply!    ============================= Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:50 20 years of sex advice, updated 03:03 What's really underneath people's sex questions 05:46 Why "just communicate" isn't enough 07:18 "Spice it up" won't fix resentment 08:03 Rethinking "schedule sex" 08:18 Spontaneous desire vs. responsive desire 11:04 Sleep, stress, and your libido 14:16 You are not broken 14:58 The permission problem 15:38 Why perfect sex doesn't exist 20:01 Mastering yourself, not just technique Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am so excited to finally share this with you. I am going on tour. It is the best sex ever tour. And I hope you'll join me. And the show is all about you, the audience. Every night, I'm going to be answering your questions, win prizes, and leave with secrets to have the best sex ever. Every night is different because the show is all about you. So here's the date in Nashville on September 29th.

Come with your partner, your friends, fly solo. You'll leave with practical tools. Plenty of laughs. Maybe some surprises. Well, definitely some surprises. Visit sex withemly.com slash events for tickets and tour information. I will see you there. Can't wait to meet you. 20 years ago, I thought it was about mastering techniques, right?

It was about the positions and the toys and the lubs. And yes, it was always about communication. But really, I think it's about mastering yourself. The techniques still matter. They're fun. They're going to enhance your pleasure. But they only work when you have. have a stronger foundation and the foundation is there because that's why I talk about becoming

better at sex is more about building your sex IQ. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Emily Morse and this is Sex with Emily. My mission is to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. Thanks for listening. Before we jump in, just make sure you're following me everywhere. It's at Sex with Emily on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and Facebook and all the places. For more resources, if you have questions, head to sex withemly.com.

Sign up for my free newsletter. People love it. They say I give good newsletter. Check out my site. My curated sexual wellness site with shop sex withemly.com. I've got hundreds of articles on my site. Download free guides and find everything you need to have your best sex ever. And speaking of which, I am taking sex with Emily on the road is the best sex ever tour.

Coming to a city near you. just go to sex withemly.com slash events for dates and tickets. So thanks for listening and watching Sex with Emily. And thanks for prioritizing your pleasure. All right. Let's get into the episode. Today's episode is all about the sex advice I'd update after 20 years of doing the podcast. So when I started, people always want to know what's the best position.

How do I get better oral sex? What's the best vibrator? Is anal sex supposed to hurt? And honestly, I love answering the best position. questions, I will still answer those questions. But after all of these years, I realize that people rarely come to me with the real problem. They're asking about sex, sure, but underneath it, they're asking so many other things. You know there's the layers. Usually it's shame or there's been, you know, rejection or they have resentment with their partner. They have confidence

issues in the bedroom and they wonder whether they're normal. That is a really big one. People always want to know if they are normal. And so, well, the tips and tricks and answer and all that stuff helps, there's just so much more to it. Back then, I thought that better sex came from learning, you know, more techniques and positions. But I really think that better sex, and I know that better sex comes from increasing your sexual intelligence, which is a process that I developed about three years ago my book, Smart Sex, How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure, and I talked about the five pillars of sexual intelligence, which are so important to understand that there's not just one area where you could be a master at oral sex

or you have all of the toys. But if you are leaving your body during sex, feeling disassociated, less connected, you have some untreated trauma, you have and communicate with your partner. None of those techniques are going to help you at all. People ask me questions like, how do I have, what's the best position, you know, after having a baby, I'm not feeling as comfortable in my body. What often the real question is not just the sex position,

but they're saying like, I don't recognize my body anymore. And I'm terrified my partner won't find me attractive, right? So there's so many more things going on than just the surface level question. And I really do love talking about all the positions in toys and oral and anal, but, you know, if our nervous system doesn't feel safe, none of those tips are going to matter. And, you know, I started thinking about this when I was at a party this weekend with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a really long time. And someone pointed at me across the room and said, and came up to me and they were like, oh, I used to listen to your podcast all the time.

I got so many great tips about oral sex and anal sex and used to do a lot of shows about anal sex. And part of me, well, first of all, I love that. I love that I was able to help that person. But then something inside of me says, like, that's really not what sex. There's so much more to sex than that. It makes me cringe a little bit. Like, I'm not just the anal sex and oral sex girl, although I'm super proud of all the people

who have gotten through their fears in that area. But again, there's just so many other places to learn. So that's something I would have changed from early on. But we are always learning. We're always learning. I'm always learning. And thank God we are studying sex more. And there's more research and information.

So another thing is I wish I'd never early on oversimplified, just communicate. Just talk to your partner. Just communicate. You know, I will always say communication is. a lubrication and I still believe that and it's a great way to remember really have to get better at talking about sex. Communication is just so much harder than we than it sounds and I know this, you know, usually one partner saying I wish we had sex more. The other partner is hearing I'm failing. What am I doing wrong? Why aren't we having more sex? What's wrong with my body?

and when we measure sex by just the frequency of sex, really we have to think about that it's more about the connection we're having and someone's thinking they're failing. Someone wants more sex. The other partner wants to know why they don't want sex and they feel broken. So it's a little bit more complicated. Someone says, can we try something different? And their partner hears everything we've been doing the last 10 years has been bad. Are you telling me that our sex life sucks and I'm a terrible lover? You don't have to just hear communicate.

We have to learn how to stay regulated while communicating. And communicating isn't just we should be having more sex or why don't you go down to me anymore. Another thing is this always felt cringy. after the first few years I was doing this, but saying, just spice it up. Because that's probably the most common question is how do we spice things up? And no, buying new laundry isn't going to fix the resentment.

And a new vibrator that you buy isn't going to, isn't going to solve the emotional connection and the rejection you've been feeling from your partner and all the underlying issues, right? New vibrator is wonderful. And I think we should always be buying new toys, but just spice it up is not going to work for most people. And role play isn't going to help you if you are really furious with your partner. You're not going to be able to role play your way out of that because your partner hasn't, you know,

unloaded the dishwasher in three weeks. Schedule sex. I'd probably update that. Schedule connection, schedule intimacy. You know, I think it's important to have to have. time in your week to feel more connected. But if scheduled sex feels like, no, it feels like a chore. I actually can't get over the fact that I, the more I schedule sex is still not going to

take away the fact that sex hasn't been enjoyable, it's been painful, I don't feel connected to my partner. So scheduling sex could also be scheduling intimacy, scheduling a time to connect or scheduling time for a therapist. Every time you schedule something or schedule sex and it feels like a performance review and you're going to fail already or it's not going to be enough, nobody wants to show up. When people come to me feeling that they're broken or there's something wrong with their libido, they are thinking about spontaneous desire. That feeling that just hits you over the head and you're ready for sex. Your partner walks across the room and you want to have sex.

And so most of what we're measuring ourselves against isn't at all what really. sex looks like. For a lot of us, it's responsive desire. It's going to respond to things to what's happening with our sex life. For many people in long-term relationships, the desire is going to happen after the arousal starts. So after we have touch or after we have a great conversation, after we feel more connected, whatever ways you feel connected. But just to think it's just going to, you know, strike you over the head. You know, most people are thinking, I rarely crave, I never randomly crave sex anymore and then they assume their libido is broken. But again, the research is that people in long-term relationships need to understand that their desire is responsive,

meaning you don't wait to want sex. That is the key. Do not wait to want sex. This is, This is it. If you're just like, it's not striking me over the head anymore. I don't feel arousal anymore. Desire shows up because you start kissing. Desire might show up because you start talking. Desire might show up because you went on a vacation together. And this takes so much pressure off.

Another thing that's really important is sleep. You know, low libido could also be, you know, our research, all the great research we've had over the years about sleep. There was a really well-known study that showed for women. every additional hour of sleep increase the odds of having sex the next day about about 14%. So you can imagine like after you have a baby, after, you know, you are just stressed or exhausted or up all night. Think about that increase. It happens when you better sleep. Of course you're not going to want sleep when you are exhausted. That's huge. So again, might not be a libido problem.

You might just be exhausted. Of course you're not going to want sex if you are sleep-depribe. you're going to want sleep. And the more deprived you are with your sleep, the less sex you're going to want. I mean, this is a crucial study. And so many of us have insomnia or sleep issues or sleeping with our partner just doesn't work. You know, you just might be exhausted. The other big thing is stress. I mean, we are all, we are living in like, what, the anxious generation, the stress generation.

And now I think, like, stress is one of the biggest killers. Stress is one of the biggest libido killers I see. your brain can't simultaneously think. I am laid on my taxes. I have 400 unread emails and I really love passionate sex right now. I can't wait to rip my partner's clothes off. You know, our biology just doesn't work that way. So early on, if I'm talking about earlier advice,

we really now decades later understand how it's all, all just deeply related. And I have always said the brain is a largest sex organ. That is still true. And that is what is also regulating our entire nervous system. And it's just important to know that like we got to regulate our stress and our anxiety first. Maybe we have stress in the bedroom, right, too, about about the sex that's having. But that has to be worked on, you know, before we just start trying superficial things to fix our sex life.

Another thing I've learned is through a lot of you. So my listeners and my audience have taught me so many things. You know, I think I thought I'd spend my career just answering all these questions about sex. But really, I've been answering questions about humanity. It's really just not about sex. Every question ends with, am I normal, you know? And that's really what people are thinking, even if they don't say, am I normal, right? So a lot of it, what I've done in this is help people feel like they're okay because you are okay.

All the worries that you have about, you know, is it okay that I can only orgasm with a vibrator or my partner wants sex more often than I do or I've never had an orgasm or I fantasize about other people or actually don't even like oral sex? I don't like giving it or receiving it. Am I normal? Or I need 30 minutes to get turned on. I mean, all of these things and all of the questions. and all of the questions I've answered

and all the things that we have talked about it's like most of it's like am I broken? And it should just start with like, no, you are not broken. It's so great that you're asking, or asking the questions, but we are not broken.

We are all normal. I mean, the most normal thing about sex is that everybody wants to know that they're normal. Like that's probably the most common thing is that we are all struggling. And the reason why it's so uniquely stands out when it comes to the conversation about sex is because we haven't had enough,

we haven't had enough places in our life where we've experienced healthy conversations about sex and better role models about sex. And so a lot of this stuff has been just bottled up inside of us. Now, you've been listening to this show for two decades. You're not that person. But I know when I'm out in the world and just meeting people that a lot of people are still with these questions, first off, really have a hard time

even asking them, but are still feeling like I'd rather just silently suffer through a life of really mediocre sex and bad sex than ask these questions because I don't think I'm normal. I think that everyone else is having better sex than I am and I, it feels so painful to have to bring this. Another thing is that people think, they have a libido problem and I found that a lot of people have a permission problem. Hear me out. Permission to be themselves in the bedroom.

Permission to slow down. To say, you know what? I need to slow the sex down. Permission to stop sex altogether even if they're not feeling it. Permission to ask for what they want. Permission to say yes, to need foreplay, to laugh, to make noise, to not orgasm, to orgasm, just permission. Like, it's all okay. So a lot of it is just permissioning people and saying like, yeah, you get to have a life of pleasure.

And you are allowed to ask and to have your needs met. That's what I would want to switch up in my advice over 20 years. You know, a lot of people go back and listen to the old episodes, which I love because they are evergreen. but if I could go back and infuse more of this information in there that there are so many more layers to it in depth and it's about our nervous system and our sexual intelligence, I would do that. All right, but what I think we're getting wrong right now

and what's really pissing me off is this. We are obsessed with metrics. I mean, this has been going on for a long time, but I just have to say this. I'm obsessed that this is still happening. How many times a week should we be having sex? This question drives me insane because it's going to be different for every single couple, every single person. I hate that we're obsessed with how many orgasms we have, how many partners have you slept with?

This whole body count conversation drives me insane. Do you know the number of people you slept with means absolutely nothing about what kind of lover you're going to be to somebody? There's people who have had a lot of lovers. It does not mean that they're better in the bedroom, right? So I just think it's these metrics. It's how many partners, you never have to answer that question if your partner, new partner says to you, how many people you've slept with, you're allowed to say the only sex I'm focusing on right now is the sex that we're having.

I don't think that's a useful question to answer. You don't have to answer it because we always know that our partner is going to usually people weaponize it, meaning they're going to make meaning of it when I'm telling you it doesn't mean anything. Who's initiating? I do think that's an important one, but it's so nuanced because initiating sex looks so different, just saying why don't you initiate more?

I just did an episode on this that's going to be coming out. I did a whole episode about initiation talking about the fact that for many of us, it just has never felt safe to initiate. This whole focus on initiating, it's never equal in a relationship. Usually there's one person's initiating and one person is not. There's a reason why the person is not initiating and no one's better off in the situation. It's just that the person who isn't initiating doesn't have the same skill set around it. They don't feel arousal like they're part.

does, they don't, they might have more responsive desire. And so just saying will you initiate more has blown up so many relationships and their sex lives because they get so pissed about it, but it's really something deeper about this. It's not safe to initiate or I don't really understand in my arousal. So that is just bothering me if that comes up a lot. How long should sex last? I think that this whole last thing is like, you know when you're having great sex, it doesn't have to last It lasts as long as each couple wants it to last, but this whole like, I should last for two hours, an hour. I mean, who has time for that? Those are some of the metrics I think are overmeasured.

Meanwhile, no one's asking this, which I would love you to be asking, is did I actually feel connected? Did I laugh? Did I feel like I could totally be myself and ask for what I want? You know, did I leave feeling closer? Did this sex we have help us feel better about our relationship? You know, these are the questions that I care more about now, and I would love you to care more about and to be thinking about. And so 20 years ago, I thought it was about mastering techniques, right?

It was about the positions and the toys and the lube's. And yes, it was always about communication, but really, I think it's about mastering yourself. The techniques still matter. They're fun. They're going to enhance your pleasure. But they only work when you have a stronger foundation and the foundation is there, because that's why I talk about becoming better at sex is more about building your sex IQ. Because the best lovers have never been the ones who know all the moves,

who have the biggest collection of toys, who know the right things to say. They're the ones who know themselves, who know how to communicate, they regulate their emotions, they know how to stay present, and they're really able to create a space where people feel safe enough to show up and actually enjoy the sex that they're happening.

So even if you ask me today, what's the best position for mind-blowing sex? It's a position where I guess neither of you are annoyed at each other and both of you have decided that this is the position that feels great for both of us. The best sex advice I want to give you today is about what you do in bed. It's about what helps you feel safe and present and connected.

curious enough to want to get in bed in the first place. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. I hope this episode gave you something to think about, talk about, maybe even try it. Try. So remember to share this episode with a friend or a lover. And if you are listening to this podcast, you can check it all out on YouTube or wherever you watch podcasts. Follow me everywhere.

It's at Sex with Emily. And thanks for being here. And thanks for making pleasure your priority. Stay curious.