The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 113 - Why You're Not Having Sex & How To Get It Back: Jay Shetty

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

If you go onto social media or talk with friends it seems that everyone is having sex, however if you look at the statistics it seems that sex is at an all time low. In this moment, ex-monk and relationship guru, Jay Shetty discusses why there is a rise in sexless relationships and marriages, going for months or even years without sexual intimacy. To bring back sex, Jay says that we need to regain intimacy in relationships, through open and honest conversations, as sex is a byproduct of connection and intimacy, rather than a source of it. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/QyDqNAoUsAb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Jay: https://jayshetty.me https://www.instagram.com/JayShetty/

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you that listen to this show let's continue you were just talking about doing hard things so let's talk about sex sex is a huge part of relationships yeah and one of the one of the really interesting things i want to talk to you about is if again if i look at my friendship group my small friendship group of maybe six guys right my best friends i'd say three of them are currently having a really really hard time as it relates to sex with their partner um for a variety of reasons reason number one that i've

heard my partner doesn't like having sex we have sex once every three months reason number two i've heard my partner doesn't like the way that i have sex. On those first two points, I'm horrified, surprised that so many people I speak to are struggling in that department with sex. And there's not, the conversation around sex is either non-existent or porn influenced. What's your take on sex and what's going on in the world? I'm so glad you brought it up because I think that because of social media, there's this image that everyone else is having sex and I'm not.

Like, I feel like that's like a very big feeling that a lot of people have. And all the stats show that people are having less and less sex. There are more and more sexless relationships and marriages every single year. And it's so much more common yet in our groups and online everyone feels like oh they're getting some and they're getting some and they're getting some but i'm not and the truth is most people are not getting any and and that's just i don't have the stats offhand right now but whenever i've looked at the trends that's what the trends show to me it comes back down to everything we've just been talking about. Sexual chemistry and attraction and connection is all based on, A, how someone feels about themselves. If someone themselves

is not feeling taken care of by themselves, attractive, investing in themselves, growing, feeling like they're becoming more and better, it's very unlikely that they're going to want to share their body, mind, emotions, and heart with anyone else in the most physically intimate way, which is sex. It's just unlikely. And chances are, if you don't think you're having those conversations you want to have with your partner, where you are being open, where they are working on their values, where we do see each other striving, chances are that you're not going to want to have sex with them either. And so what we're seeing is that the challenge we're having in sex is actually coming from everything else that's going on. That there isn't a sense of growth, joy, purpose. Great sex is a byproduct of great connection and intimacy. It's not a replacement

for or a source of. If I asked everyone who's listening right now, put your hand up if you've had amazing sex, but no connection in a relationship. Right? That's been real. We've all used sex as a crutch. We've had relationships where every time we argued we had sex, it solved the problem. Every time something was going wrong, we had sex, it was figured out somehow. And the studies show that the chemicals released during sex make you feel like you're getting closer, even though you're not actually emotionally closer. So when you look at all of the stats, when you look at all the research, when you look at everything we've just described, sex is a byproduct of a healthy individual and a healthy individual and a growing individual

and a growing individual coming together, sorting out their differences, having the fights they need to have, having the conversations they do, that naturally creates vulnerability, which leads to being able to expose ourselves at the deepest, most physical way that we possibly can. How can you expose yourself that vulnerably if you can't even have a vulnerable conversation with your partner because you just switch on the TV every night and avoid that difficult conversation? It becomes like a transaction. It becomes a transaction. And then sex becomes, in the best case, a crutch and a hopeful aspiration on a special night or whatever it may be, or something we wait for and plan for

and it never works out. As opposed to in the worst case, it just becomes something we're both not talking about, comfortable about, or even doing. And so- Or an obligation. Or an obligation, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like an obligation. Someone's just sitting there like, you know. Come on, three minutes. Literally, yeah, all right, let's get it over and done with. Like that mindset. And I'm like, you know. Come on, three minutes. Literally. Yeah, all right, let's get it over and done with. Like that mindset. And I'm like, all, like there isn't, because we've lost intimacy in relationships.

There is no intimacy. And so you can't force it physically. There's no intimacy in porn. There's no intimacy in porn for sure. They don't like do the small talk. I don't pay for that. Exactly. There's no intimacy in porn.

There's no, and the problem is, and this is, you know, the book starts with this quote, but it solves this problem very, very neatly and carefully. And it's this idea that the Buddha was once approached and asked, what's the difference between I like you and I love you? Which is a brilliant question. And the Buddha replied, when you like a flower, you simply pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it every day. And to me, the one night

stand, the porn, the dopamine hit, the release of chemical is the plucking, right? That's why we're all plucking all day long because that's all we can do. But the watering, the intimacy, developing intimacy, growing from entertainment to experiments to experiences to education to engaging in service together, all of this creates so much intimacy that physical intimacy is a natural byproduct. It's not something you have to manage or engineer or manufacture. It's not this separate thing. It's based on how close I feel to you. And the point is, we don't feel close to our partners because we don't do anything that makes us closer every day.

Sleeping in the same bed as someone does not make you close to someone. Living in the same house as someone does not make you close to someone. The only thing that makes you feel close to someone is when you feel you can be open and when you feel seen, heard, and understood in your most vulnerable, darkest, and open times. If you can do that, everything else is going to work. But if you can't do that, you can't just make it happen in a moment because you're meant to be together. You're meant to be in love. What about masturbation? Do you think masturbation to porn helps or hurts relationships? I think in the long term, it hurts. I think it's

unhealthy because it's an avoidance and an escape, right? That's the point. It's like, what is it being used as? It's not being used as self-connection or self-understanding. It's being used as escape and avoidance of the actual topic. And all that's doing is rewiring your brain for false expectations, diminishing returns as well. All the studies that I did look at show that porn is making you work harder. You're going to have to find something more extreme. All the stats that I saw showed that you had to watch more extreme porn to get the same feeling. So the most searched porn and the most watched porn was abusive, sometimes violent, sometimes rough, hardcore. All the search terms were more extreme to get

the same feeling because of the diminishing returns of the chemicals that are being released. And so now you're rewiring your brain to not feel as much pleasure from normal sex or more traditional conventional sex. You're now saying that I'm only going to feel pleasure from sex when it's potentially abusive, violent, somewhat rough, hardcore, whatever else it may be. So I think that's massively unhealthy. There's something it does to your expectations as well. And expectations are the key of... That's what we're saying. Yeah. Your expectations of sex become completely unrealistic.

Your expectations of intimacy are just thrown out the window. There must be so many people listening to this, both men and women, because both sexes do watch porn. It's quite naive of one to assume it's just men that are jacking off in their of course in their bedrooms or whatever but um i bet there's people listening to this who have a partner that's constantly watching it and they know they watch it potentially maybe they've caught them a few times and they really want them to stop they think it's maybe killing their desire in the relationship it's a difficult conversation oh god you know, it's really tough.

And like I said, when I was, you know, I think it'd be interesting to look at this and I would be fascinated to see whether the people that are watching porn, and I need to talk to more people than I have about it, the people that I know that watch porn, and that's why I'm only speaking from my experience, don't feel good about it. They internally, deeply at the root, when we're in a coaching session and we get to the core of it, they feel guilty, they feel shameful,

they feel embarrassed about it. It doesn't make them feel good. And they wouldn't openly admit it in a community of people. Now, I'm speaking about a very specific group of people that have come to me for help or support in their relationships. They don't feel good about it. That doesn't mean they don't feel good when they're watching it. I'm saying they don't feel good afterwards. When they think about it, when they reflect on it, they're like, that's not what I imagined would be my sex life. That's not where I thought I'd turn to for satisfaction and enjoyment. So to me, that's, again, comes back to down the same approach. And that's why the approach is always the same. We're always approaching the problem from or the challenge from empathy and compassion. We're not approaching it from judgment and accusation of like, oh, you're such a waste. You're such a lazy, you know, like that mindset doesn't ever make someone want to open up. Like if you went up to your partner and said, God, you just watch porn all the time. Like, you know, you're just one of the worst guys. Like, haven't you seen all my mates? They're doing this and they get this from their partners.

And what are you doing? That person's never going to tell you when they watch porn or what their challenge with it is or how embarrassed they feel or whatever it may be. Was if you went up to them and said, hey, you know, I know that you watch porn and I wanted to know when it started. Like, when did you get into it? Like, allow yourself to be an interviewer about it, not an interrogator. And I feel like one of the biggest mistakes we make in our relationships

is we interrogate our partners, not interview them. Let's be curious. Let's actually try and understand it. Let's look at it because it's human. It's natural. Like we said, like 99% of people are doing it anyway. So why are we pretending like it's only in our relationship? Why are we pretending that, oh, no one else does this,

but only my partner does this? That's not true. So if it's that widespread and it's that common and there's this huge industry that's been built off of it, why are we judging our partner and why are we making them feel less than? Do you watch porn? I don't.

I mean, when you, you know you know i mean three years of being a celibate monk with no access to the internet or phone gives you some good training uh i yeah i feel like so i grew up and i'll explain why too i feel like i started having sex early and so early in the sense for me for me so i felt that when were the years where most of my friends were watching porn i was having sex and so i didn't get into it as a habit early on in life which is where i found it formed for most of my friends and then by the time they would get having real sex i became a monk and so it was it was a really weird order of stuff does that make sense yeah for me it was that idea of like yeah it was just i think i had i had the real thing when

my friends were watching porn and then by the time they were having the real thing i was on such a different path three years of celibacy three years of celibacy would do it to you it was one of the hardest no thanks it was one of the hardest and best things though because one of the things we don't realize and i want to address this and celibacy is really interesting thing to address i would love to see more people and this may be not a popular concept and i'm good with that i would love to see more people date people without having sex for a committed number of months. So committing with a new person that you're dating to not make sex a connection point. So one of my good friends did this recently as well. And he found that it gave him the ability to make better decisions as to whether there was

real intimacy, whether there was real intimacy, whether there was real connection, and whether there was something real here that could be built upon with sex, as opposed to, God, I'm just so attracted to her, and she's so attracted to me, and we just have the best sex ever, or we don't. And then that's what it's all hanging on. And so I actually would go down that route and say that celibacy doesn't have to be practiced how I practiced it as a monk. Celibacy can be practiced in small doses, not because you're trying to be celibate and you're trying to repress yourself.

That's not what I'm encouraging. What I'm encouraging is why not use it as a way of making healthier decisions? Because studies show we don't make good decisions after we have sex. And studies show that we don't make good decisions when we've had sex with someone for a long time because that's completely rewiring how we feel about them. So that's one way of looking at it. And the other way I'd say, even going even more extreme, is being celibate as a monk allowed me to redirect all that energy. And the word for monk in the tradition I stayed in is brahmacharya

or brahmachari. And what that means technically is proper use of that energy. So celibacy is not a repression or a suppression or a closing off. It's reutilizing that vital energy in a different direction. If you think about how much money, time, and energy you've spent chasing someone that you liked, the amount of time in your head, the amount of time on your phone, text messages, dating apps, the amount of money you spent. I would have been so rich if I never took anyone out on a date before 21. Like think about all the money I wasted on showing off to women before I was 21. Wait, that Dom Perignon's not true. Yeah, exactly. Take all of that energy. Think about what you could achieve creatively if you

used all that energy you use to pursue another person, if you use that energy to create, because it's creative energy. So to me, celibacy was far more about, I got to use three years of creative energy in doing a lot of self-work that I otherwise could have taken years to do because of so many distractions and pursuits that kind of spread that energy across. My girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when I was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the Huel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you getal Protein Shake, which lives on my fridge over there. And she said, it's amazing. Low calories, you get your 20 odd grams of protein,

you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete. If you haven't tried the Heal Protein product, do give it a try. The salted caramel one, if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you try it, is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market.

So,