The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - The No.1 Sex Expert: How To Have Great Sex EVERY Time! (And Fix Bad Sex) - Tracey Cox

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

In this new episode Steven sits down with the British sex and relationship expert, Tracey Cox. Tracey is one of the world’s leading writers on sex and relationships, having 30 years of expertise and research, she has written over 17 books on these subjects and has a weekly column for the ‘Mail Online’. Formerly the Associate Editor of *’*Cosmopolitan’ in Australia, Tracey returned to the UK to co-present television programmes such as ’Would Like To Meet’ and ’The Sex Inspectors’. Currently Tracey co-hosts the weekly podcast, ‘SexTok with Tracey and Kelsey’. In this conversation Tracey and Steven discuss topics, such as: The difference between lust and love How you can predict infidelity and why people cheat How long-term couples can bring sex back to sexless relationships Why you should communicate and design your perfect sex How porn and AI affects peoples sex lives You can purchase Tracey’s most recent book ‘Great sex starts at 50’, here: ****https://bit.ly/3BiYSPW Follow: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3M49FnB Twitter: https://bit.ly/3M3BLPF Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

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 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 Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. You've written 17 books on the topic of sex. So, my first question. How do we have the best sex of our lives? That's the question everybody wants to know. The first thing is... Tracy Cox. The world's most celebrated sex expert. She's got the answers to the questions you've always wanted to know

and has a secret to a great sex life. There is a decline of sex, isn't there? Yes, there's a sex recession. If you haven't had sex for a year with your partner, it is very unlikely you're going to have sex again. Oh, really? Are you hopeful that we can turn that around? Yes, absolutely. The key thing is...

Women's fake their orgasm. We have known that women don't orgasm through penetrative sex since Kama Sutra. And yet most men will go, Yeah, yeah, I've heard about that. Women aren't having very many orgasms during partner sex. They're always fake. The way to solve the whole orgasm thing is... How do we predict if someone's going to cheat on us?

Number one, being close doesn't actually protect you against infidelity. You become so close to your partner, they're your best friend, you just don't see them as a sexual partner anymore. If you understand how sex works and if you can make sex good with your partner, affairs can be so preventable in so many different ways. Women get bored way quicker than men. Men don't get bored because they get the orgasm as a reward. You need to give women interesting, erotic sex and then they'll be interested. Otherwise, they're not going to be interested. I've noticed a trend that amongst my friendship group, a startling amount of them are in

sexless relationships. Yep. What are some of the most important solutions? If you want to have great sex, you need... That's what you have to do if you want a good sex life. I think that's phenomenal advice. Tracy, I reached out to my team and I told my team that I wanted to have a conversation with the individual in the world that was best and most educated and most engaging on the subject matter of sex because I've noticed a

bunch of things in my personal life, in the lives of my friends and those around me. And I feel like people aren't having the right types of conversation about sex. I feel like we're avoiding it as a society. And I feel like sex is so intrinsically linked to performance and well-being and business and all the things I usually talk about. So they found you and that's why you're here. So my first question is, who are you and what do you do what is your mission right i'm not a trained sex therapist which is what everybody thinks i am i'm a sex educator

um which is which i think means that what i do is i look at all the research and look at all the sort of what's going on in the sex world in sort of an academic sense. And then I work out, okay, so that's all well and good, but what does this mean for you and I? Well, not necessarily you and I together, but people in the bedroom. So I bring it down to a sort of level that is more practical, that all my books are very much like, right, so here's what we now know about sex. Here's how this is going to help you in bed. So I think my job is to sort of get the research and make it into something that, you know, the average person can understand and make it work for them. So I sort of, yeah, I'm a sex educator is a better way to describe me. You know, part of the reason I wanted to speak to you, as I said at the start of this conversation, is because I've noticed a trend I've started to like smell it amongst my friendship group where a startling amount of them are in sexless relationships yep

and they're not they're not you know your book here says great sex starts at 50 my friends are the friends I'm talking about are in their 30s yes and I and there's lots of things here there's lots of thoughts and I want to figure out which ones are true. So I'm going to say a bunch of things which are inherently naive and I know they are. So the first one is like, why aren't they having sex more often? And is that a problem? Are their partners to blame

because they seem to want to have sex and their partners don't? Is it wrong? Are those relationships therefore broken and should they break up with their partners because they're not having that much sex? So we'll go into all of that but let's start with this this the point you raised about how lust and love are not necessarily great bedfellows um how does one if they're in that situation where they really love their partner they're

really really close to their partner um but they're feeling like the intimacy has ran out the back door because of you know that sexual intimacy has ran out the back door how do we create that balance you talk about something called otherness which i thought was really compelling yes in your new book yes such a such a big question that is because that's the question everybody wants to know how do you keep desire going long term? The otherness thing is all about the close couples kind of become like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They don't do anything separately, but you need to have separateness from your partner. And this is why during COVID, no one had sex at all. In the beginning, it was like, fantastic. We can have sex at 11 o'clock in the morning. And then it was like, oh, we can have sex anytime we want.

How unappealing is that? You know, the more available something is, the less we want it. But you need to separate from your partner. You need to be, you know, have your own identity and your identity with your partner. And that's the otherness that I talk about is seeing your partner in the real world and seeing them when you're not with them. Like so many couples only ever see each other at home in their house. They never see each other out. And if you go out, I remember once very early on into the relationship with my husband, Miles, he was walking through a restaurant and I'd arrived first and he hadn't seen me. And he was walking through the restaurant and I saw a couple of women look over at him and I was like, shit, you know, he's really attractive. Well, I knew that, but he's,

you know, and if I don't, you know, he's out there all the time, you know, like people are going to be attracted to him. So it sort of makes you lift your game a bit. So you need that. If you see your partner at home and, you know, hi, hi, you only ever see them come through the front door, they become too safe. And I think when people say, oh, my partner would never cheat on me, I think how rude is that to think that your partner's never going to treat on you, no matter what you do to them, no matter how horrible you are. That's terrible. That's like saying your partner, you know, it's just a doormat that you can do whatever. I like to think that, you know, my partner's not going to cheat on me. But, you know, it's just a doormat that you can do whatever. I like to think that, you know, my partner's not going to cheat on me, but you know, that makes me think that if I pledge

monogamy, I pledge that I'm going to sexually satisfy my partner. I think you have an obligation to do that. And I'm going to keep myself looking good because love is, you know, kind, but it's not blind. And I'm going to do all sorts of things. I think it's a real insult. If somebody, if Miles said to me, I know you'd never cheated on me, I'd be like, I don't take that as a compliment. Would you? I think it's important to know that your partner will go and leave you if you drop the ball

in a variety of different ways. And I think that one of the interesting points you raised there is about like physical appearance or keeping yourself well or keeping yourself attractive do you think and i've asked a few people this over time do you think we have an obligation to stay in shape attractive whatever it might be for our partners yes absolutely i don't mean like you have to have facelifts or you know anything like that but you you should keep yourself as attractive as you can, each of you. And I think, you know... That's not just a physical thing, I have to say.

It can be an intellectual thing. Yes, exactly. It's an intellectual thing as well, because desire goes, and especially, you know, the, you know, grumpy old man, grumpy old woman thing. When people age, I think that they become very set in their ways and, you know, become quite, you know, you don't want to be the bitter and twisted person. You could look like, you know, a Greek god. And if you're bitter and twisted, your partner's still not going to want to sleep with you. So, yes, I do think we owe it to each other to say, you know, to look as good as you can and to be as positive as you can. There is nothing less sexy than being with somebody who's miserable all the time who's a negative person

it's so interesting that i thought some of the most attractive things i found in my partner are when i look over and see her doing her work and her things so actually it's funny i she she doesn't actually know this but but last night i came home from work very very late because i was i was out did some talks at the and i came home and I got in through the door and I my partner was sat at the kitchen table it was about 11 p.m at night designing her new studio on her laptop with her headphones on and I just found that really I took a photo and it's on my phone and I took a photo because I'm like I'm proud of her in one sense but it was really lovely that when I walked through the door, it wasn't about me. She was busy doing her own thing.

Absorbed in her own stuff. Yeah. And I kind of like walk past, and I can almost see how some people might find that threatening. I like, hey babe, give her a kiss. Like on the, she kind of like kisses me back, but then goes back to the laptop.

I'm like, this is nice. And I went over and I sat on the sofa on my own and just watched Manchester United, but there was something really attractive about it. Yeah, of course there is. I mean, watching somebody at work doing what they love is the moment when, yeah, that you're like, wow, this person's amazing.

I mean, I would hate to be a person who, you know, the partner's at home waiting for you and where are you and it's all about, so what have you done? Nothing much. How was your day? Yeah. That's not, it's not healthy for a relationship.

That puts it too much on one person. If you want to have great not, it's not healthy for a relationship. That puts it too much on one person. If you want to have great sex, you need to have an interesting life. You need to be doing interesting things. You're not going to be having great sex if you're boring and you do the same thing every single day, because you just end up doing the same boring sex. You need stimulation all the time. And that routineness is the enemy. The killer. The killer for Yeah. The killer for women. The killer for women. Because women are the ones that find monogamy boring, not men. If you say to men, right, you could have the same sex, pretty much do the same thing every single

time, three times a week for the rest of your life with this person. Most men would go, all right, sounds right to me. If you said that to a woman, men would go, all right, sounds right to me. If you said that to a woman, she would go, you are kidding me. But this is what's happening. Women get bored way quicker than men. And they do so because our orgasm is far more complicated than yours. I mean, intercourse is usually the main event for most couples sex. Intercourse is like the big bit that everyone aims for right and that's great for men because intercourse very successfully stimulates the penis you know the penis wants to rub it in out of something the vagina does a great job fabulous for women the clitoris is outside the vagina that some of it is inside and you know because the clitoris isn't

that little tip by the way it looks like abone. Imagine a wishbone and the tip of the clitoris is at the top and then it goes down the sides of the legs, right? That's the clitoris. Amazing. 10 centimeters long. So because the clitoris is on the outside of the vagina, intercourse doesn't cut it for most women. No, 20% of women can climax through penetrative sex.

20%, right? That means 80% of women are not having their orgasms through intercourse. So if you're going to serve up the same routine sex, and most couples have sex the same way over and over again, every time they have sex, and that's your lot as a female, you're having sex which doesn't give you an orgasm. You're having sex which isn't exciting, isn't erotic, isn't in any way really interesting, women get bored. Men don't get bored because they get the orgasm as a reward. Women get bored because the sex is just not the right sex for them. So women's desire for sex goes down

so much faster than men's does. So you need to give women interesting erotic sex and then they'll be interested but otherwise they're not going to be interested there are 80 of women listening now that can relate yes so and it's funny because i was speaking to a friend of mine i told them that i was going to have this conversation with you and i said what would you like me to say and they this was the question they had and it's linked to what you just said they said I'm in a relationship where my partner is having um the same sex over and over again he's coming very quickly during sex and I don't know how to broach the conversation with him about like this isn't working for me um without like embarrassing him or whatever it might be what advice would you give to that person gosh talking about sex is is just the thing i mean do you talk about sex

with your girlfriend how long have you been together four years now oh well just very open with things yeah well done that's really good because most people talk a lot about sex in the beginning when it's all going well like aren't we amazing that wasn't that great lots of stuff the minute there's problems they tail off and every sex problem can be solved if you talk about it. If you don't talk about sex, the tiniest sex problem can ruin your whole sex life. And the reason people don't talk about sex is that they worry exactly as you just said, that they're going to hurt their partner, that they're going to upset them. Well, you just be really tactful about it. And I always talk about the compliment sandwich. So say you want to say so she wants him

to be what give her more foreplay something like that yeah just he's he's cut he's reaching orgasm too quickly and then she's obviously not enjoying it because he's over and she's still not you know her orgasm no well the mantra for that is she comes first. Always. The way to solve the whole orgasm thing in several ways, one of the ways is to have, you know, give her her orgasm through oral sex, fingers, vibrator, and then you go on to intercourse, which is when he gets his orgasm. So that's a very, I mean, it's what a lot of couples do, a lot of straight couples do. You'll notice actually, when I talk about sex, I talk about straight couples. The reason why is that gay couples have a lot better time of it because they've got the same issues going on.

So it sort of helps if you go in lots of ways. But I would say, don't worry so much about, if you say, if she said to her partner, look, I really love our sex. I love our sex. I particularly like it when you do X, but you know, when you used to do Y, give me more foreplay, give me oral sex. I really, really love that. Can we do more of that? So you're not saying actually you're not lasting long enough and not lasting long enough is not going to be an issue with most women because they don't have their orgasms through intercourse anyway. So I think that men need to calm down about that. They feel like they have to go on forever and ever and ever. And's like well she's not going to orgasm that way anyway she's going to feel like she has to and then you get the faking it and all that sort of stuff comes into it but talking about

sex is such a huge issue for people and the funny thing about talking about sex is that once you've done it once it's it's the first conversation, especially, you know, I deal with couples who haven't talked about sex for 30 years. And that first conversation is excruciating. You know, you're like, oh, my God, this is awful. I just want the, you know, earth to open and get rid of me. But once you move past that, that initial awkwardness, which seriously lasts like three minutes, then all of a sudden this relief, the amount of couples who say, oh my God, like I can say, actually, I don't really like it when you do that. Can you do this? And like, you know, does it worry you that, you know, my erection isn't as hard as it

was when I was young? And you get reassurance and then they're falling over themselves. You will never, ever, ever regret trying to talk about sex with your partner. It is the number one thing you can do for your relationship. So she should think about what she wants, be very specific. Men particularly, like they respond best to very specific instructions. So instead of saying, look, this sex isn't working for me because, you know, you're climaxing too fast and then all of a sudden it's over and I'm just left high and dry. If you say, this is my

idea of the perfect sex session. Can you just like, let's just take turns. You know, we each have, we each design our own perfect sex session. You know, could you start with kissing? You could move on to kissing my neck. I really like it if you play with my breasts and then I love oral sex, but could you do it for a bit longer? Very specific. And people are like, well, that's like telling, you know, saying, can you say you love me? And then they say, I love you back. But no, giving instruction in sex is really, most people are really grateful for it. And it might feel a bit awkward, the session after that, where he's thinking, oh my God, I'm just doing exactly what she says. Isn't this embarrassing? And then all of a sudden you forget

about it. And then the next session and the next session is like flowing and great. Okay. So a couple of counterpoints here, just from personal experience. One of the things I've always been a bit conscious of, or one of the things that I think has irked me a little bit is, and this goes back to what you said about lust, this kind of spontaneity and then the riskiness of it is I don't want rules. You know, like I don't want rules you know like i don't want rules i don't want to be i don't want to be in instructed during sex or or even worse i don't like that do it like this oh no no it kind of kills the like i think sometimes you can

become a little bit like boy being told off by his mom you know what i mean yeah i that can then that can have an impact on one's erection or erection and their their like mindset but i think sometimes for guys so much of sex is flowing feeling like you can flow and sometimes if you get like if you've got critical feedback during sex that's like a pressure stress which then the erection might not you know hold out well first of all it's natural for an erection to come and go during any sex session so that's not really important but maybe yeah criticism isn't great like don't do it like that move over here or in a very barking you know sergeant major you know can you move to the left that's not so great but if you if you do it i mean often men do it's do you don't hit the spot and they are doing it wrong and so

do you want women to just lie back and go it's not even remotely close to where you should be but i'm going to pretend because that's what and this is why women don't give men instruction in bed is because they know that a lot of men don't like it. A lot of men, you know, it is, you know, it does disrupt the proceedings, but then it's very quickly back on track if you do it. You know, if you go and do what exactly she wants. Personally, I think sexual instruction, you can say, oh, just over to the left a bit or that feels great there. And, you know, whenever you can give positive feedback rather than negative is great so giving i'm sure you wouldn't mind if she says no that's perfect stay there stay there do it for longer yeah exactly thing is the positive framing yeah yeah

that's the key thing the key thing is absolutely that and then if if maybe you've still haven't haven't hit the spot then afterwards you say actually um you know that didn't quite work can i just tell you where or what works for me? And then demonstrate on your hand or something. That's always a really good way to do it. But yeah, the key is in the positive. No one's going to respond to sex where somebody's going, oh, that's not right. Why are you doing that for?

That's terrible. You know, don't go there. That doesn't feel anything. You know, no, that's terrible. That's awful. And those instructional sessions should happen when? Before sex, during sex, after sex? Well, it depends on the couple.

A little bit. I mean, you can use body language during sex. I don't know about before sex. I think maybe sometimes after sex, when you're getting on really well and, you know, having a few drinks, maybe, if you're a drinker, and relaxed and just talking generally, that's sort of the time to say, by the the way you know that I always think that's a good time if you want to try something new to say oh by the way god my friend was talking about doing x you know what do you think about that I always think things like conversations about sex that are positive and exciting and you know talking about trying new things should happen outside the bedroom really um but otherwise yeah you do have to have those instructional sessions, I'm afraid.

What if you want to do something and your partner doesn't want to do it? Generally, a request for something new, a request for anything is just a request for variety. So say your partner says, I want to try having sex outside and you really don't want to have sex outside. The correct answer to that is, is look that's really not my thing but you know why don't we try x most people if they want to try something new if you give them you know i'm not open to that but i am open to something else then they'll be fine about it but i mean where you get into problems with somebody wanting to try something other other partner not wanting to try is if it's something a bit fetish yeah yeah yeah and that's

when you get did you ever watch um billions you know where they she she had the fetish you know being whipped and wanting to be the submissive and and he just let her go off and be satisfied by um a sex worker that's one option by the way if your partner has a fetish is to just go okay i accept that you've got this fetish and it's not for me. So if it's really so much part of your makeup that you can't live without it, then go off with a sex worker and satisfy it. That's the extreme version. But most of the time I think, oh, you can meet halfway. Like say your partner, say you want to have a threesome with two women. Well, then the meeting halfway might be that you have phone sex with the sex worker maybe you role play it maybe you go to

a lap dancing club and she gets a lap dance by someone there is there's always some kind of compromise in there where you can capture a sense of what the other person wants okay so let's go back up to this this this initial question my friends they're in their 30s sexless sexless relationships they are increasingly frustrated about it, it seems. It's funny, I've got like, you know, I've got this collection of my best friends. We're very talkative and communicative around our sex lives and stuff. And I just noticed that in various ways, they're in situations where they don't feel like they're getting enough sex from their partner. And they see it as a critical problem, which might result in them for example being um cheating or um ending the relationship even in my own um

sort of sexual experience what got me really engaged with this subject matter was i was in a relationship where the part my partner turned around to me one day after six months and said like i don't like having sex and as a young man or just i don't like having sex with me oh and as yeah as a young man i i think with you know with an ego i thought well what does that mean that's super emasculating does that mean that i'm not hitting it right or like do i maybe it's her problem you know whatever and so i went on that journey what did she mean so it's interesting because we separated yeah my reaction was very like and also I turned to her and said like why and she said the next sentence was I'm not comfortable talking about that with you oh yeah so for me that was like the door had closed

of course it did because where do you go with that yes exactly so I broke up with her yeah and um year passes we both go to different places we both kind of you know figure ourselves out a little bit and on her journey she really got to understand that at the heart of her relationship with sex was this fear that had derived from previous relationships where the partner was very forceful you know um apparent cheating all of those things that we kind of discussed earlier so it wasn't that she necessarily didn't like having sex there was a lot of psychological work to be done on removing that fear of like abandonment and really if i made her feel safe really really safe then the sexual appetite would return that's what happened oh so a year later we get back together

we end up having the best sex of our lives on an ongoing basis um and it was because she was able to understand i was okay so if she was able to understand what was really going on i was able to like be patient enough to like listen and you know go from weeks and weeks and months with not having sexual intimacy and just be there which allowed her to feel safe and then beyond that we were able to kind of like rebuild it and experiment and we're still together today oh my god so this is your girlfriend yeah i'll have to ask her for permission to say this so i'll show her the clip and make sure she's comfortable with it but um but that's an extraordinary story so we went from a point of i don't like having sex i don't like having such a really really bad situation to the best situation i think one can

imagine in that department obviously communication was at the heart of it letting my ego down always yeah and giving her space to you know and i give the credit to her because she figured that out but that's what got me really into the subject matter because i've now got loads of friends that are in that situation what i would say to your friends is if your partner doesn't want to have sex with you i wonder whether how good the sex is because a lot of women say no i'm presuming these straight couples a lot of women say no to sex because the sex that's on offer is not that interesting to them so for this we need to talk about sex drives

spontaneous desire versus responsive desire have you heard of that yes yeah from reading your book so spontaneous desire is two-thirds of men have spontaneous desire and it's the desire that everybody has at the beginning and by the way if you want to know somebody's resting libido you can't you've got to wait about a year you have to wait about a year to find out what their real libido is because it's always so artificially inflated at the start right but? But so spontaneous desire, two thirds of men have this. It's the, you know, want it, seek sex, want sex, seek sex. They can go from people with spontaneous desire could be like scrolling through Instagram, somebody sexy walks past, and it's like, wow, I'm instantly aroused for sex. They go from zero to 100 very quickly.

They seek out their mate, want sex, and they're off, right? Responsive desire means that you have no desire for sex or very little desire for sex until somebody is actually doing something to you sexually. So this is somebody who, you know, maybe is with their partner. Their partner wants to have sex. They're not even slightly interested, but goes, okay, look, I'll give it a go. Then once things start happening, if their partner is very good at stimulating them and they enjoy the stimulation, all of a sudden they're like, yeah, actually, yeah, I'm enjoying this. That's the warming up. That's the warming up, right? Now, 30% of women have responsive desire. The rest of them are a mix between spontaneous and responsive.

So you've got this situation where most men have spontaneous desire, most women are responsive. Most men are very happy to go straight to genital sex. They don't need warming up the way their anatomy works. For women, foreplay isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Because in order for sex to be comfortable, you need the vagina to tent. So it literally puffs up so that it can take a penis comfortably. So if you don't wait for that to happen and you go male style sex, go straight for penetration, she's not even off the starting blocks and suddenly you're penetrating, sex isn't great

and then it's all over. So for men, you could have like not even thinking about sex to having finished within 10 minutes. For women, they need time to warm up because their sex drive is responsive. So they're almost like blinking it's over and they haven't even got to 5% desire. And this is the problem with couples. And that's, that's with, I'm talking about a very basic couple who probably don't talk about sex and who aren't terribly sexually savvy. So I think, cause I think people have an understanding, vague understanding that women need more foreplay. I mean, that's been drummed into men, hasn't it? But I think that what women don't understand is that women think, you know, at the beginning it was great. It was all spontaneous. Desire was there.

You know, when you get into a long-term relationship, desire doesn't tap you on the shoulder anymore. You have to create it. And women, I think, think because that spontaneous desire is gone and they don't feel like sex, it just doesn't come out of the blue unless they start having sex. They think, oh, that just must mean I don't want sex anymore. Well, something's wrong with me. I don't want sex anymore. You do want sex. It's just that you've got to have sexy things happening to you before you feel the desire for sex. And if people understood that, if women understood it better and stopped saying, oh, well, it's obviously means my sex drive's gone. No, it hasn't. It's there. You've just

got to have great stimulation and great sex to get it back. And the other thing about women is that women, we have this thing about that women want tame and they want romance and stuff. That's not true. So much research now shows that women like erotic wild sex. I mean, they've done these experiments with women where they'll show them erotic videos and they'll wire up the genitals to measure genital response. So when you're aroused as a woman, blood flows to the genital same as men and you lubricate. So they're watching all these videos, various sexy videos, and they have to say, you know, full anything is disarousing you. No, because society says, no, we're not supposed to be. And the genitals are like, are you kidding?

What are you thinking? This is fantastic. I'm absolutely, say yes to this, say yes to this. So there's such a big difference between what we're taught and what we would like. So if your girlfriend's saying no to sex and you're in a long-term relationship, it's because you're not giving her interesting enough sex. Give her exciting, erotic sex. Give her something like, actually, this is what we're going to do. I mean, look at Fifty Shades of Grey that got middle-aged women wanting sex, women who hadn't wanted sex for 20 years. I remember being on a holiday with my husband and we started talking to this couple. And it was around the time when Fifty Shades came out and she knew what I did. She said, God, I hadn't really had great sex with my partner.

I wasn't interested in sex for like 10 years. She said said I read the book I'm sitting there two o'clock in the morning I'm looking down at my partner I'm thinking I really just want to wake him up and have sex with him and she said and I've never and and then she said and I read the books and suddenly I was back into this erotic sex with my husband that I'd just forgotten I'd forgotten about like you think of sex it's like oh god here we go kissing a bit fumbling you know and then the routine sex but give people something interesting that I'd just forgotten, I'd forgotten about. Like you think of sex, it's like, oh God, here we go, kissing, a bit fumbling, you know, and then the routine sex, but give people something interesting.

Like all your friends, give her really interesting scenarios. Take her somewhere sexy, push her out of her comfort zones. Don't give her romance. Don't give her, you know, give her sexy sex and then they'll be interested. I'm sure i'm thinking of my friends like posing that and how uncomfortable they'd feel really like babe i want to drive to the countryside and because you know when you've been with someone and you've become that kind of sibling thing that you described earlier they might almost look at you with a bit of horror horror yeah yeah you wouldn't go straight from not talking about sex to like and we're going to go to a lap dance club tonight and no you have to you have to have the conversation you

have to bite the bullet and have the conversation because the thing about sexist relationships if you haven't had sex for a year with your partner it is very unlikely you're going to have sex again with your partner unless you confront it head on if If you just think, yeah, this will pass, this will pass, it will never pass. You're not going to suddenly go, oh my God, look at that. We haven't had sex for five years. Let's go to bed now. No, it's got to the awkward, awkward, awkward stage. So, I mean, 30% of couples who have been together for two years or more don't have sex. Two years, not 10 years, two years, 30%. It is very easy to get out of the habit of sex. And once you're out of the habit of sex, the less often you do it. And then couples get into this thing where it's like, God, we haven't had sex for ages, but you know what?

Next weekend, we'll have this marathon sex session and that'll make up for it all. And then the marathon sex session is like, God, how am I going to find time for that? Or, you know, that's a bit daunting. And then of course you'd have to have sex for like six weeks to make up for the session. So it just becomes more and more insurmountable. So I always say to people, just have little bite-sized bits of sex. You know, don't have, sex doesn't have to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Like have a big snogging session, have a thing where he gives you oral, you don't do any you know give nothing back or you give him oral or you know you just do something sensual together you have a bath together that counts as sex you know people think sex has to have intercourse in

there it doesn't it's the least favorite bit for women take the intercourse out start doing little bite-sized stuff to reconnect sexually it's like a frog in a frying pan that old analogy of how slowly that you know the frog doesn't realize it's being heated in the frying pan until the water's boiling and it's dead like it happens very very gradually in relationships and then you get to a point where you go how the hell did we get here yeah and at that point you have to have the talk the talk this is interesting because one of my friends was talking to him about it and i was saying like you've let it gradually stray so far and you're currently letting it, you're not addressing it. You need to stage a crisis. It's kind of the way I framed it to him, which is like,

you need to say, stop. Like this relationship has to stop. We have to have a conversation now because I'm at a point now where I'm either going to leave this relationship or I'm going to end up cheating or something. So we need to fix this together. And it needs to feel important. Yeah. Or else it'll be allowed to simmer. That's exactly right. And of course, what lots of people do in that scenario is they just turn to porn. Yeah.

And they just satisfy themselves with porn. But that's not ideal, obviously. Why? Well, because it's pretty soulless sex, isn't it? Just watching porn and masturbating. You know, it's really funny about porn actually, because I used to have a great relationship with porn. I used to say to people all the time, like porn is your friend, watch it with your partner. It's great for, if you've got a high

sex drive and your partner doesn't, you can satisfy yourself. It keeps your imagination peaked. You can satisfy that sense of newness by watching porn and now porn's moved into a really ugly stage with you know there's such a concentration on aggressive acts like spitting choking choking is terrible um slapping across the face it's become very much like that and young men are growing up to think that this is what a normal sex session is like. This is normal, real life sex. It is not. Porn is nothing like real life sex. And then women look at it and go, gosh, right. Okay. That's obviously what's expected of me. This is what I have to do. And it's, it's moving into a very nasty direction. They say unmet expectations equal unhappiness. So by setting expectations up here is like, we're going to do this for an hour and

I'm going to tie you up and spit on you and choke you and you're going to make this sound and you're going to scream and you're going to tell me i'm this and you're going to say that i'm your father whatever yeah yeah first thing it might be then for those unmet expectations equals unhappiness in the bedroom you go well you know i'm gonna have to go looking for something else exactly and that's what young men do because they think that's what sex is going to be about it's not so then they keep looking for the girls who will give them that. And then girls very quickly figure out, okay, if I want to be liked, I have to do that. I've just done a big thing on choking. And I interviewed all these young girls and it was horrifying. I mean, between 58% of college students between the age of,

you know, like had all been choked. I think 30% of them had been asked. And I'm not talking about, you know, symbolic choking of just putting a hand on the throat, which even that freaks me out. But I'm talking about, you know, cutting off wind supply. There was one girl who told me she was 21. She'd gone out with this guy. He seemed really nice. He started choking her.

She said no. She passed out. She woke up next to this guy who was asleep. He then said to, and then she got herself out of there and was like, oh my God, you know, terrified. He texted her the next day and said, oh my God, babe, this sex was awesome. Let's meet up again. And she was, she was just like, how could you possibly think that that was good? And that worries me a lot. I think that, I mean, sex, I think is moving in a great way in lots of ways, particularly for young women,

except for things like that. I think that is terrible. So no, you don't want to be satisfying yourself with porn, but you have to have the conversation. If sex is now out of your marriage, you cannot just let it go and be the elephant in the room because exactly what you said is going to happen. You're going to leave or you're going to cheat so you sit down with your partner and you say listen we really need to have a discussion about this I love you desperately um but I miss our sex I really we used to have lovely sex I love having sex with you you're really desirable it's it's you know and I can we talk about why this isn't happening anymore are you having the sort of you know is it that the sex that we're having isn't doing it for you what can i do to make you you know want to have sex more often with me because i would really

love to have sex with you more often can we have a discussion about this okay i've got friends that have tried that and what happened um the partner doesn't necessarily know it's a similar situation to what i thought the one in the situation i described that i was in where my partner turned around and said something because they might not have the information themselves they go well i just don't like having it and they might not know that the you know the responsive sex language that you talked about and they might not know what's going on with oh i see the partner might not know why she doesn't want to have sex why she or he doesn't like having sex um and then you kind of hit a wall don't you well that's when you educate yourself that's when you give read a few of my books to give you a bit of education but i mean okay so the partner who

wants sex is generally more driven so maybe they could sexually educate themselves and say you know i've been reading up about this perhaps it might be because of this can we try having sex this way but it's all about breaching the topic and then I mean depending on the reaction I mean I know I've you know encouraged some people to have this talk and then they've got an answer which is just startling well they'll say I don't want to have sex anymore I'm not interested in solving this so that's it so you just have to put up with it that's what i that's basically well what i got if somebody says that to you and they really and you've tried on several occasions and you i i think that is grounds for walking out myself and i did yeah yeah and a miracle seems to yes

because then people did some soul so and sometimes maybe you walk out and then the person thinks well gosh actually that's not very fair because monogamy is all about, you know, I pledge to only have sex with one person. But if that person withdraws sex, then where are you left? Apart from having solo sex and, you know, or you have an agreement. Okay, well, if you won't have sex with me, then what are my options? My options are to satisfy myself, to cheat. Are you happy for me to seek the sex elsewhere and lots of lots of times people will say yeah actually i am i don't want to know about

it i don't want it to be in our friendship group and we're going to have to have rules about this but you know some women are more than happy for that to happen or some men are more than happy for that to happen it's not just a female thing here men go off sex as well on this point of porn as well there was i read something recently about the shame that it's causing in in people like i think the study that i read and i'm yeah i think i read that too about 40 of men that use um that masturbate to porn report to feeling a sense of shame and then when we think about the sort of macro where we are in sex as a society right now there is a decline decline of sex, isn't there, going on, which is quite concerning. Yeah, there's a sex recession. And that's very much because, I mean, basically,

there wasn't a sex recession before social media, streaming, phones. It's all to do with that. We have too much to do. We basically just go off sex because we have other things to entertain us. You know, pre all that 1034 on a Saturday night, most couples were having sex. There was nothing else to do. That was it. We just did too, you know, there's that going on. So we're too busy. We've got too many other things on our plate. That's the main problem with long-term couples. Then you have like, I think less face-to-face communication, which makes people quite nervous if you haven't had sex before and you're dealing mainly with you know FaceTime calls you know video calls which is what lots of young people are when you're face-to-face they get very nervous

they don't know anything about body language they don't know how to connect and sex becomes scary. In Japan, there's something like 30%, no higher, I think more like 45% of people get to the age of in their 30s and they're virgins. They've never even had a sexual encounter. And they just, and if you don't give your body sex, your body doesn't want sex. So they could quite happily go through life completely sexless. That's what's going to end up happening with sex. We are becoming less and less and less and less and you know the more we go into virtual worlds the more i mean the amount of people who rely on porn for sex who can't even be bothered going out and finding a partner because it's all too difficult i mean we're it's becoming less and less about the intimacy and more and more about just the getting off part we're now in an ai

world as well yes terrifying which is very interesting yes because you're now you know we've heard about sex dolls and stuff like that over the years but a sex doll that can speak to you with such depth and reason and apparent emotional uh nuance and understanding is really really scary you can think i was thinking about thinking about this thinking about all the different ways that ai is going to disrupt us as like the social fabric of society and one of the really clear ways that was you can now have a sex doll in your house that speaks to you that comforts you that understands your problems understands what you're going through and can

give you unbelievable advice will never shout at you will never criticize you and will please you in a in a personalized way it will learn how to please you sounds great doesn't it fantastic let's just swap our partners for that but that is we're right there we're on the doorstep of that world and you know what though think about all the lonely people think about all the lonely people that can now have a companion i think is it like that is it real connection if you're somebody that can now have a companion. But is it companionship? Is it real connection? Yes, of course it is. If you're somebody who can't find a companion in real life or you're lonely,

I mean, it's better than a dog, isn't it? I mean, I think that's got some really nice applications to it. But it's also got some dire applications to it. Because then, you know, ultimately we'll end up with no population, will we? Because no one will be having sex with a real person. So I think you can see the short term oh well you know dave's going to be slightly more less lonely potentially yeah right but if we if we go up that exponential curve of improvement we get to a point where this thing is walking it's talking it is making you making your breakfast your dinner your whatever then it's satisfying you on demand and then you look over a human and you go oh they're gonna be more

interesting than humans aren't they that's what i'm saying they're gonna be more interesting they're gonna be better in every way you know well no i think humans will be more interesting surely you think do you want like somebody like it's like a yes person i don't want a yes person in my life i want somebody do people think they do yeah people i think people will choose the short term without thinking about the long term of like connection and companionship over time and challenge and different solving problems and you'd you know i think the average person if they could be faced with with if they were to draw their perfect partner they wouldn't say i want difficulty and challenge and sometimes to walk out arguments and to be interrupted when the football's on you know you're not going to put that in there

but then i think surely over time i don't know i i do worry about ai with humans and i don't share you know like some people present the argument like we'll be free to do all these amazing esoteric things we won't we'll just sit there and look at social media and get fat and drink and sit in our rooms watching porn that's what we'll do yeah because we choose the like short-term dopamine over the long term instant gratification gosh that is scary that's going to be a huge industry yeah i mean it already is a big industry but these these living ai sex dolls will be a huge industry i don't think they've quite perfected the robot bit though have they um so there's a couple of things happening in in tandem i mean elon musk is is working on his own

um robots at tesla we have boston robotics i believe they're called who have been working on robots for a long time but um it's going to move very quickly as as all exponential curves do so now we've got the kind of machine learning modeling um mlmlm agi they call it artificial general intelligence stuff moving quickly the robotics side i think is going to gain pace because now there's a greater demand but it's really really it's one of the things i am did you see that film blade back in the day no i saw lars in the real real girl do you remember that that was about a guy who had a sex doll oh really and the whole village um sort of accepted it and then when he didn't need her he got a real person at the end but no i didn't see blade just there's a

scene in this film called blade where he puts on a headset and it's set i mean it was 20 years ago but it was set in the future in the future puts the headset on and this headset you know is exactly that it's an ai that basically gets him off and it's the time of his life and actually they sit his cup his partner sits opposite him and they both put the headset on. Yeah, I actually think I did see that. It's a scary world. But that's what we'll be doing. We will be doing that.

I mean, we're kind of going that way already with porn and we talked about this sort of macro decline in sex. Are you hopeful that we can turn that around? Yes. And I have great hope with the young generation of women. I think this is the first generation of women who really have probably the least sexual hangups that we've ever had. And I think that, I mean, young women are much more adventurous than young men. It's sort of going in a weird direction, I think, that way.

And all the young women that I'm in contact with, I'm talking about young women in their 20s, early 30s. We know that young women are more bicurious than men. We know that young women are more interested in threesomes with two women than men are. We know that young women are more interested in going to a sex club than men are. We know that young women are more interested in going to a sex club than men are. We know that young women are more interested in polyamory. And they don't want several love relationships. They want the love relationship.

And then they want to be able to have sex with men on the side. It's not men thinking like this. This is women thinking like this. And I think that it's going to make for more interesting relationships. And because the whole women are overturning everything, like the motivation for affairs now has completely reversed. So men used to have affairs for sex. Now, most men, if they're in a good relationship, will satisfy that with porn, right?

Most men. Now, men have affairs for love and affection. Women have affairs. They used to have affairs for love that they weren't getting from their partner. Now they have affairs for erotic sex, sex where they're not looking after their partner. They can be selfish. They don't have to care about whether they hurt his feelings or say, don't do it that way. They're not going to care about whether Stephen doesn't like it. If he's being instructive, it's like, do that, do this. They want that sort of sex, right?

And that's why they're having affairs. So I feel like my hope is that women are going to take the charge and go forward. And we're going to end up with sex that's more interesting, sex that's less doing everything to please a man, more equal. You know, this is what I need. This is what I want. This is what you need. This is what you want. is what you need this is what

you want let's work out the best way to do that together not where you know because so many women still now that's the thing that does disappoint me is still have sex to please men still pretend to have orgasms during penetrative sex because society's brainwashed we have known that women don't orgasm basically through penetrative sex since Kama Sutra, which was written in the third to fifth century. And yet most men will go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard about that. I've heard about that. It hasn't happened to me. I've just been really lucky. All my girlfriends, you know, I mean, it's just like, they're faking. They're faking because the girl before faked and they feel they have to fake. And, you know, every depiction of sex is that, you know, everybody has this mutual orgasm, simultaneous orgasm together.

And that's just how sex is. Well, it's not like that. It's totally not like that at all. Speaking of young women, in your book, Great Sex Starts at 50, one of the things you talk about is the issue of sort of sexual confidence and sexual self-esteem. Talk about that in the opening chapter of the book. And I found it really compelling, really interesting that women view themselves differently when they look in the mirror, which has a libido impact. Body image is terrible. They've just done a study which looked at 20 years of studies. So they did a study on all the studies

on body image. And it turns out that it impacts every single area of sex, regularity of sex, enjoyment of sex, arousal, desire, orgasm. And it makes sense that if you don't like your body,

you're not going to want anyone to look at it or touch it. It is the biggest problem with women today and their sex lives is that often, you know, this is the other thing with your friends, you know, have they just had babies? Has their body changed? You know, are they not feeling so desirable? You know, desire, I think feeling desired by your partner is much more important to women than, you know, anything else. If your partner looks at you, you know, like, God, you're so hot. You're so sexy.

That is the biggest turn on of all. And if you're feeling not great about yourself and your mindset is so much down on yourself that you think, I don't even, how could he possibly look at me and think that I'm attractive? Then you'll never feel that. Your partner could fancy you to death, but you're never going to feel it because your brain's just gone, nope, I am not sexually attractive anymore. So that is a real problem. It's a real problem. And do you know what the solution is for that? It's not to go off and get a facelift or get your hair done or lose weight or go to the gym more. Though actually going to the gym more is one. Exercise is really good for your sex drive and for your self-esteem. But the other thing is that Cure's body image is actually to

have sex more. If you have sex more often and your partner enjoys it, your brain goes on a subconscious level, well, you know what? I can't be that bad because he's having sex with me or she's having sex with me or she's having sex with me, whoever's having sex with you, they're enjoying it. And so your brain starts to make sense of it all and go, okay, right. I'm obviously not as undesirable as I think. And it starts to sort of become better and more able to be dealt with. So the more you have sex, the better because it gives you confidence. And sexually confident women, women who think they're good in bed. So increase your skills as well. If you're worried that you're

not a great lover, read up on it, buy some of the books, go online, look up technique, you know, because technique is very important. And the better lover you think you are, the less you worry about what you look like in bed. We all know that sexually confident women win all the time. And sexually confident women put on weight the same way other people do as they get on in life, et cetera, et cetera. You know, their bodies are different after pregnancy, but they don't focus on that. They're like, hey, I'm a brilliant lover. Who cares? You know, he's not looking at that. He's just thinking how fantastic I am. So it's more about increase your confidence as a lover, exercise

more. And I mean mean then the obvious take yourself on social media stop comparing yourself to other people all that sort of stuff but it's it's difficult it's very difficult and i think men suffer from this as well that's so unbelievably true especially um especially the part that it also relates to men because i've got multiple accounts from female friends of mine that are in a heterosexual relationship that have told me their partner won't have sex with them with his top off or with the lights on. And also the point there about how you solve that body confidence issue, that confidence comes from the evidence you get from doing the thing. Yeah. And also, if you are worried about your body, when you're having sex, close your eyes.

Like close your eyes and think about what you're feeling. It's about what you're feeling, not like how you're looking. Because if it's stressing you out and you're looking and thinking, oh my God, he's looking at my thighs, he's looking at this. Just close your eyes and go into yourself or become more active. That's the other way to overcome body issues is if you're really active in bed and you're like looking at your partner and you're talking dirty and you're making lots of eye contact that way, anything to sort of take yourself out of yourself is good. You either go into yourself and focus on what you're feeling rather than what you're looking like, or you sort of become way more active. That also works. Three things that boost sexual self-esteem easily in your book. Initiate sex to feel more powerful. Yes, absolutely. Initiation is such a big thing on so many levels. And if you don't ever initiate sex with your

partner, you're essentially saying, I don't actually enjoy having sex with you. I'm only having sex with you because you've asked me to have sex with you. And people argue about that. It's like, well, his sex drive is way bigger or, you know, higher and all this stuff. It doesn't matter. You really need to have a thing where, you know, if your partner's got a much bigger sex drive than you, you need to say to them, look, okay, it's really sexy being the person who's the sexy one in the relationship. That's why, you know, it's great. It's nice to be that person, but I want to be the sexy one in the relationship. So hold off on initiating for a while and give me a chance to initiate so

that I can feel more powerful. And it's such a great dynamic that that power dynamic in relationships is really important that you have to be sometimes the dominant person, you have to be the submissive person. And if you swap around, it makes for a much more interesting sex life. But if you don't initiate, I mean, it's a real cop out to never initiate sex. I really do think so. And when women do it, who don't often initiate sex, what often happens is that

they'll be so subtle that the man misses the point completely. It's like, well, I gave him this really sexy kiss. And it was like, yeah. And yeah, anything else? Anything else that went with that? And he didn't even, you know,

and now I'm not going to do that again. It's like, oh, for God's sake, just be really obvious about it. Be really obvious about it. And going back to initiation, just be aware that how you initiate sex will influence way, your partner might say no to sex because you just approached it all the wrong way. Whereas if you approach your partner that you know has got a responsive sex drive by talking, cuddling, connecting, whatever she wants could be, you know, she might want you to initiate sex like that but you know and getting her in the mood the way she wants to be in the mood not the way you would like her to get in the mood but the way she wants to be in the mood she'll probably say yes to sex so a lot of people saying no to sex isn't that they don't want sex they're just being approached the wrong way and they're not being warmed up the right way so if you can solve those two basic things it can change everything feels like there's something really fundamental here that we we assume sex will take care of itself never oh my god writing all those sex books when i go to a dinner party people either want to sit next to me or they go

as far away from me as they possibly can because they're terrified and the people who say to me oh god but i don't need a sex book. I'm like, yes, you do. You're the person that needs a sex book. I've written 17 of them and I'm still learning about sex. There is so much to learn about sex. How can you think you possibly know everything about sex without ever educating yourself? And it's changing. Of course it is.

But people who think that they're born great lovers, they don't, you know, I think the female response system is complicated. Who knew what a clitoris was back in the day? You know, like they're difficult to stimulate. Actually, they're not that difficult. You just give it a vibrator and then they're fine. But, you know, it's not easy being a great lover. And can I just say one more thing about orgasms is we worry too much about orgasms and how we get them. There is no right way to have an orgasm because everyone is no right way to have an orgasm because everyone thinks the right way to have an orgasm is during intercourse with your partner

and preferably them climaxing at the same time. Simultaneous orgasms hardly ever happen for a start. They're always faked. So the easiest way to give a woman an orgasm, I mean, great women can be very easily orgasmic if you use the right finger technique, if you give her the right oral sex technique. But the thing that is most expert at stimulating the clitoris is vibration.

Most women can have an orgasm within three minutes with a vibrator. So we have this big orgasm gap problem where men are having lots of orgasms during partner sex. Women aren't having very many orgasms during partner sex because they don't understand each other very well, because sometimes people just can't relax with another person there, right? So the solution is to put your hand in the bedside drawer and bring out a vibrator and she would have an orgasm every single time the same way you have an orgasm every single time. Why don't we all just do this it's the easiest solution in the world but we don't young men are better at it they'll often say or you know and she'll say if women are honest and they'll say look you know that was fantastic but i kind of missed the moment

a bit which you can as a woman can i just use my vibrator or can you use the vibrator on me sorted but we have this like that's a cheating orgasm yeah or that it takes something away from the coupleness yes but it's a solution i'm not saying have all your orgasms like that but just maybe now and then have the vibrator in the bed and why is it inferior if you can have all that intimacy if you've had the oral sex you've had the intercourse you've thoroughly enjoyed it but it just hasn't given you that tip over what i mean by that question about this fundamental belief that kind of sex is supposed to take care of itself and i think that's why we don't talk about it enough we don't research about it enough we

don't um try put invest in making it new and exciting and different and all the things you've said is because we just just because at the start it kind of takes care of itself doesn't it does yeah first couple of months and then all the sex hormones are there yeah driving us driving us without even us having to think about it and then we you don't think about sex as something you've got to work on and talk about and invest in and buy stuff for and you know change all the time i've already got a job you know i don't know well unfortunately that's what you have to do if you want a good sex life it's just it's what you do and the thing is it makes me laugh because we put effort into every other thing you don't like eat the same meal every single night you find it buy a good cookbook and look up recipes and experiment with different things and no one goes oh that's terrible that's

so much effort i don't have to do that one and know how to cook a three course cordon bleu meal without even looking at a cookbook. Well, in the movies, they never do this. There's no movie where they sit and talk about sex. What did you like? Okay, you liked it when I did that. In the movies,

they come in the door and they pick them up and they put their hands back and they rip the dress off. Oh, you know, and then... Do you know what? I'm the worst person to watch TV with because I shout at the television.

Honestly, there was a thing called Dr. Foster. Did you watch that? Saran Jones was in it. And there was this couple. They'd been together watch that saran jones was in it and there was this couple they'd been together 10 years they woke up on a sunday morning right sunday morning just woke up she's of course full makeup lingerie everything um and next minute he's like thrown her against the wall they're having sex standing up and you know like all the and i thought oh for god's sake this is a couple 10 years in it is not happening like that

and then even me who knows that this doesn't happen this is not the norm i'm like a little bit like and i always turn to poor obama's and i say you realize that's not true you realize this is not a real and he's sort of like sitting there going yep yep i do know like cover your eyes don't have unreal expectations don't think you're missing out on this and because it's sad because people try and they think that that hot sex at the beginning should last a lifetime and when it goes and you think the next person you meet is this going to last forever this is this one's going to last forever and then of course it dies down and dies down and dies down you're like damn, I've got the wrong person. You haven't got the wrong person. It's because all the sex and love hormones have stopped working.

That's the only way to keep having sex like that. The only way to keep having that beginning sex over and over is to swap partners constantly, constantly swap partners. And you can have that beginning bit over and over again. It is impossible to have the type of sex you have at the start when you're fueled by all these chemicals at the end of a relationship or during a relationship, anything over two years. You can have satisfying sex, great sex, exciting sex, but it's not fueled by the same hormone. So you cannot recreate that. And if people knew that, no matter what person you end up with, then they would stop leaving perfectly good relationships in search of something that's not ever going to be found

i've talked in this conversation as if sexless relationships are unhappy relationships yes but that is not true is it no it's not true you can often have i mean people do instantly think if they're not having sex oh my god you know divorce is, divorce is coming soon. No, I mean, you can get, sex isn't the be all and end all for everybody. Lots of people are very low sexual libidos. If you've got two people who have low sex drives, they have a lot of sex at the beginning or maybe not even that much. And then all of a sudden it fades off. They're perfectly happy. Some people are happy having, you know, one great session every six months. That's enough for them. It keeps them perfectly satisfied. So long as both of you are like that. But what doesn't work is if one of you is highly sex driven. In the beginning, you know, we all worry about compatibility.

Please match up with somebody who has the same sex drive as you. And I know it's artificially inflated at the beginning, but don't commit to anything until you're six months in, eight months in, a year in. Don't marry anyone under that because you don't know what their sex drive is. Wait until after a year and then you see. And it's very difficult if you've got a massively higher sex drive and your other one doesn't. But you can be perfectly happy in sexist relationships so long as both of you are happy with that. And also, you know, they used to define a sexless relationship as couples who had sex 10 times a year. Now, plenty of couples, especially couples over 50, only have sex 10 times a year, and they were like indignant to be described as sexless.

So now they've changed it to a sexless relationship is one where sex hasn't happened in a year. And that's a low sex relationship to be 10 times a year. But it's all dependent on where you're at in life. Like if you, if you've just had babies and they're under two, you're not going to be having a lot of sex. If you're 18, you just got together, you're going to be having an awful lot of sex. You know, if you're part, if you've just gone through menopause or perimenopause and everything's gone to hell, you're not going to be having sex at that period of time. So you can't, there is no one size fits all thing. So find your normal is what I would say. And if your normal is no sex, so long as you have a conversation about it, that's fine. But

what you cannot do is stop sex and not talk about it. That is really, really dangerous. You've got to have some kind of discussion, even if that's getting into bed one night and one of you says, we don't have sex much anymore. Does it bother you? No, it doesn't really bother me. Good. Even if it's that. But you do need, and you need to have lots of affection, lots of, you need to make up for that. Don't stop touching physically because when sex stops people often stop touching each other because they're worried that that's going to lead to sex and that's going to be awkward so keep up the effect that's why you've got to have the chat if you don't have the chat affection stops and if affection and sex stops then you are in trouble if you've got lots of

affection you're okay so long as both of you are happy interesting Interesting. But you're not going to be happy if one person doesn't want sex to stop and the other one does. That doesn't make for a happy relationship at all. And in that situation, is it right to then just leave? No, you have to chat. And the chat is,

but they say in the chat, no, I want more sex. I don't want more sex. Then what do you do? Well, then you look at exactly, you sort of go through a process. So you have the chat. You talk about, you make sure the sex that's on offer is good sex for the person who doesn't want

it. You look at anything around it, like, you know, have they got any childhood issues that need dealing with? What are their, you know, why don't, do they not want to want? If they don't want to want, then you need to look at what happened, you know, sexual trauma. There's, I mean, if the person that doesn't want to have sex with you is willing to look at ways to become more sexual, stay, of course, stay. You know, there's always hope. Yes, there's tons of stuff you can do. You know, you can take strip sex right back to basics where you don't have penitentiary sex for a year. You might do the Sense8Pocus program, which is all about touching each other without sexual intent. And it might be that you have to go almost like you've got to learn how to have sex all over again.

If your partner's willing to try, anything's possible. Definitely don't walk out. But if your partner says, I don't want to have sex with you and I have no interest in having sex, I've got no interest in trying to get back my desire and you're not allowed to have sex either you're not allowed to seek it anywhere else or you know apart from running off to the office and masturbating to porn well what choice have you got i mean some people stay some people stay in that scenario because the love is very strong and they've got kids or whatever but i think that's an incredibly selfish thing to say to a partner chapter nine of your book it says that 33 percent of um couples said that they rarely or never have had sex and one quarter of those rated themselves as being extremely happy that's right something like 75 percent of people who are denied sex

nearly all of the time stay if the love is strong people choose love over sex and of course they do because how often are you having sex even if you're having sex a lot even if you're having sex once a day twice a day it's still only really for half an hour each time so you know in the proportion of the time you spend together your the love bit's more important than the sex bit it definitely is unless the sex bit is really bad and then it tends to poison the rest of the relationship do you do any sort of therapy for couples the couples ever come to face no and do individuals come to you for advice in a professional context to get no therapy i do friends and friends of friends and stuff like that i don't because

i lack the skills to disassociate this is why i never became a therapist because i'm not very good at there are ways to solve a problem where you can stand outside the problem or you stand right in the middle of it all and take it all on and i'm the stand in the middle person and i and i wouldn't ever be able to i would have no boundaries they'd be calling me day and night so now i can't do that what are the most common questions that people ask you about sex and i'd like the ones that we don't talk about enough so you know i don't know whether it's erectile dysfunction or whether it's oh my god erectile dysfunction for men is women don't i appreciate how having not being able to get an erection or you know is is the biggest psychological catastrophe men experience.

We can't fake it. No, no. Penis envy, who wants a penis? I certainly don't want a penis. It's all out there to see. We can fake everything. But it's really difficult for men. And I think men, I mean, we have a problem with Viagra, by the way.

Viagra is a big problem because young men take Viagra because they want to have the biggest, hardest erections ever and they're worried about, they're so performance, they have so much performance anxiety because they want to have the biggest, hardest erections ever. And they're worried about this. So performance, you know, they have so much performance anxiety because they're watching too much porn and they think that that's real. So they take Viagra because they think just this once, you know, I'll be, I'll just, you know, it's the first time I sleep with her. I want to be really hard.

And then of course, you know, eventually you stop it or try to, and your girlfriend says, oh, this isn't, you know, you're not as hard as you normally are. And suddenly you're back on this cycle. And then young women expect that that is a normal erection, which it's not. Anyone who's looked at a Viagra driven erection and a normal erection, they're completely different. And then on the other end of it, you've got older couples who, you know, we've got two problems with when you get over 50 or 60, men have erectile dysfunction and women have, you know, dry vaginas and very, you know, we've got two problems with when you get over 50 or 60. Men have erectile dysfunction and women have, you know, dry vaginas and very, you know, the vagina basically atrophies. So they've solved it for men. Great. Take this pill. And suddenly you're like, you were 18 again,

but you're still with this vagina that's not 18, where it's going to hurt like hell. And then the man who suddenly got the swinging penis is like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? And then he goes off and cheats with somebody because he's so happy to have this big rock hard erection again. Is there a relationship between age and infidelity? I'm not sure about that. I would say... As in men cheating later, more likely to cheat later in life or...

I know that middle-aged people cheat a lot because that's when you've... Got choices. Yeah, yeah. You've got because that's when you've you've got choices yeah yeah you've got choices you're traveling you've got money it's probably easy to get away with you're bored you've had the kids you know you've started to take everything for granted um you know things like that make people cheat it's opportunity temptation and your moral code you know it's not to do with love it is to do with respect though red flags in relationships the most compatible couples have compatible life goals something i've heard you say before yes i think that is really important because it is all about its timing is so important

and and life goals say you've got you know you've got the perfect relationship now your girlfriend's great say suddenly you decided right i want to go off to africa and work with pygmies for five years this is my life goal you know what she's supposed to do of course it's important to have the same goals if you've got one person who wants adventure and you like to be hiking every weekend and you know camping my idea of hell they're not going to match well with somebody like me who wants to be in a nice hotel and, you know, having lots of cocktails, you know what I mean? Like, I don't mind the odd camping and hiking, but do you know what I mean?

Like, you've got to have, you've got to be compatible. There's some stereotypes that still sort of exist and linger around sex and men and women being, you know, one of the ones that I was reading about in chapter six of your book is studies show it's not true men have a higher sex drive than women women have a different desire for sex which you talked about studies also show it's not true that monogamy is harder for men than it is for women we tend to think that men are the ones that cheat which has never made sense because if we

just pretend the world for a second was do the heterosexual equation every time a man is having sex in a heterosexual heterosexual world so is a woman so you know the numbers don't quite add up with one would assert just from the looking at the numbers that it's got to be quite close to like 50 50 to some degree yeah of course and also like if you look at the stats on who's happiest the happiest people are single women and married men they're the two happiest groups of people always single women and married men are the happiest but the happiest groups of people like not married women married women like end up doing all the jobs and you know married women aren't happier than single women single women

are happier than married women and married men are really happy because they get everything done for them basically what role do kids play in this whole equation oh my god kids i think really make the love part better i suppose because you've created that thing but they're terrible for sex terrible for sex i mean the minute the kids come along you can kiss goodbye for sex for five years really really and people freak about it and they're like it's never going to come back and it will come back of course it will but you know all your energy is going to children so i think if you're going to have kids you've got to accept that your sex life is going to take a back seat for a long long time don't panic about it keep having little sexual connections that aren't necessarily including intercourse little bite-sized

pieces of sex and you'll be fine but don't kid yourself that it's not going to change your sex life because it will boy will it people Some people think that having kids will save the relationship. Oh God, no. It's so stressful. I do not understand this. Every time I see somebody with a child, you only have to hang around children for about two seconds to realise how stressful they are. If you've already got problems in your relationship and suddenly you're going to sleep deprive

yourself, you're going to have somebody dependent on you 24 hours a day. How is this going to make you more, you know, happier with your husband? It doesn't even make sense to me. It might stop people leaving because of, you know, obligation. But who wants to be with somebody out of obligation? You said something that in your work that a neuroscientist told me in this podcast, which is that after the first year, non-parents are generally happier over time than parents. It's kind of a controversial idea.

It is a controversial idea, but I mean, there's a trade-off with kids. There's such a trade-off. You can never, I mean, and I think there's, I'm a step-parent. My husband has a daughter. And when we're going through hassles with Sophia, which she's a little darling, but also could be a little devil, let me tell you. He can sleep. I mean, sorry, I can sleep. Miles can't sleep.

And I lie there and I think, gosh, if I had given birth to Sophia, if she'd been, you know, I wouldn't be able to sleep. There's no way that I'd be able to sleep. It's you are knowing that you're going to be worrying for the rest of your life once you have a kid it's it's such a big responsibility and when you have that responsibility it means you know you're not going to be able to do you're not selfless you become selfless then don't you can't be selfish and have a kid well you can you can be a really bad parent but it's different isn't it it's really different i'm sure but then

parents say well you're the one that's missed out because you don't have this incredible and i have such a good relationship with my mom and my dad and and us three kids are all milling around them they're like 87 and 89 i'm thinking no one's going to do that for me who's going to do that for me i have to pay for it so there is that when i hear that stuff i do wonder if it's the term happiness is the confusing thing because you know a parent might say it's giving me such a sense of purpose or meaning yeah of course if you ask me in a survey on a tuesday how i'm feeling after staying up till fucking 2 a.m because this kid was screaming i'm probably more likely to report at any given moment to being less happy but if you zoom out there's more meaning and purpose one might say that to try

and provide the counter argument um i mean how many people who say what's the best thing you've ever done they say having children yeah everybody says that yeah and they can't all be lying no one says a promotion at work or whatever else they say they don't so it must be you know i mean not everybody says that but i i do know mothers who say god you know what if i look back maybe i wouldn't have done this but they're very brave and they told childless women that they never tell a woman with a child by the way yeah of course yeah women's libido i was reading in um in chapter six about women's libido tends to drop as as as they age whereas men's um seems to remain fairly stable throughout the relationship stable but then they have the you know women struggle with the drop of um because menopause with all the drop of testosterone and all the, you know, estrogen,

all those things that keep your genitals in good shape and keep your sex drive high. Men's testosterone drops as well, but then they're struggling with erections. So if you're an older man and you can get your head around that you're not going to get erections as easily as you did, and it doesn't bother you, you're going to be fine um if you're a woman and you actually you know get all the things that are available to you take hrt if you can like there's solutions for all of this and don't think to yourself oh well we're old now we're not going to be sexual you'll be fine as well but i think people panic you know when they hit a certain age and there's this perception you know like you know people get i did a campaign for Replens, which is a vaginal moisturizer,

which most men blink at and good to see you didn't. And it was all about, and had these beautiful images of older people kissing passionately or naked from the back. And, and they were quite old. They, and they, they were the most beautiful images. and so many people were threatened by that they were really threatened because it was old people doing sexual things and we're not treated to that we don't see that very often so when somebody does that they um yeah people freak they don't like to think about older people having sex so when you're old you have it already in your head i'm not supposed to want sex anymore which is completely untrue and is that why you wrote a book called Great Sex Starts at 50? Yes, because for me, that's what happened. I went through the whole of my life with a high libido.

I've written about sex. I thought this isn't gonna happen to me because I know everything about sex, of course. And then I hit like 50, no, actually probably even before that. And suddenly I realized, I remember typing away one day and thinking, Christ, I was single at the time. I hadn't masturbated for ages. What's going on? I haven't even thought about sex for ages. And it's the drop in hormones.

And, you know, and it's quite extraordinary to that whole spontaneous desire. I had very high spontaneous desire and suddenly it went. So I just suddenly became like other women, I suppose. And suddenly it was like, oh my God god i see what everyone's going on about so i thought yeah for my own sake i might write that book and it's very good writing that book there's a lot of solutions in there what are some of the most important solutions for my listeners that are maybe experiencing a similar situation again manage expectations keep having sex that whole use it or lose it you've got to keep having sex that's very very important um get your head around the whole thing about that old doesn't mean that you can't be sexy you can be it doesn't matter what

you look like it's what you feel like it's it's so many many different things and also you don't have to put i think as a society particularly people, we all put up with stuff. Like there are solutions for all of these things. You know, like if you've got a dry vagina, go and get a vagina moisturizer, go and get a, you know, estrogen pessary. There are solutions for everything that happens with menopause. You don't have to sit there and just put up with it all because if you do, then you won't want to have sex. Definitely. So seek all the solutions. Don't be scared to, to try and find solutions to all these things because they really are out there. Change your headset, you know. And the women,

it's interesting that they did a big thing about what really influences women's desire post-menopause. And it wasn't menopause. It was your attitude to sex. If you'd always loved sex and you wanted sex to continue you can you found the solutions and you kept on having great sex if you were never that keen it's like oh actually you know what here we go an obstacle what a great salute what a great sort of excuse to never have sex again so its attitude was way more important to how good the sex was after menopause nothing to do with menopause it seems again like the one of the foundations behind all of this that's kind of hiding in the back room when it as it relates

to people's libido and their attitudes to sex is that kind of childhood experiences we talked about which is super tricky to unpack and even become aware of and we all have our own childhood experiences of sex intimacy relationships some cases in the worst cases abuse and all those things terrible that we need to find a way to overcome first or address first before we can even that's right have a and i mean particularly for men often their first experience childhood experience of sex is being caught masturbating and how the parent deals with that is very formative because if it's like absolutely what are you doing you know like do you it's really filthy it's dirty it's like what are you doing then they are going to continue to masturbate

because pretty much they do but they're going to try and do it faster and faster and faster so every time they masturbate they're going to be trying to get it down to as quick as possible time so that they don't get in trouble again and then they end up with rapid ejaculation they can last two seconds before they ejaculate so So that's affected their sex life in a purely physical way. It sets us up in so many different ways, our childhood. And I mean, I was lucky to grow up in a household where, I don't know why a household was like that, but we just talked about sex openly. I suppose my sister worked for family planning, which helped, but that was later. So I don't know, my mom and my dad

were really cool talking about sex and things and so i grew up thinking oh yeah all households are like that but they're not it's an unknown unknown so how do you go about even solving for those things i guess you have to go to therapy and start unpacking it yeah well just unpack it yourself you have to just think about you don't necessarily have to go to therapy there's so much i mean the joy of the internet is there's so much online that you can do if you typed in you know i don't like sex as my parents you know taught me there's there's a book called sex smart actually which is very good about childhoods sex sex smart it's called sex smart yeah you can still buy it's an old book but it sort of delves into all of this and yeah i mean i think i'm so pro therapy i think everybody should go to therapy no one has a perfect childhood in fact having a

perfect childhood can also set you up for things. So, you know, if we, if we have a problem, if you have a problem with sex, you know, going to see a really good sex therapist is, could sort it out very quickly. So don't leave it too late. I work out and I can't even pick all these books out. This isn't even all the books, is it? No. So you've got Hot relationships how to have one great sex starts at 50 the sex doctor fix your love life fast hot sex how how to do it we've got

dare oh that looks fantasy oh that looks very uh 50 shades it is a bit more hot more hot sex would um would like to meet yeah that was the tv show i did about dating oh yes okay interesting with that there's there's a question there i should ask because i'm thinking again about a friend that just popped to mind is there something going on with male and female dating in terms of it becoming more difficult in the modern day and age there's some stats that one of my podcast guests shared about how women are um having less children and they're finding it more difficult to date and to find a compatible male in the modern way that society is designed and i've got friends that are you know around that sort of mid late 30s range that are really really really struggling in the

modern world it's almost i almost men or women or both? Women. I almost suspect that, I actually don't have that many friends that are in that region that aren't. But it's almost like there's a generation almost caught in a gap where you're Gen Z native to social media, the internet, you know, that's where they grew up.

And then maybe the older generation already partnered off because, you know, they met someone at church. Yeah, yeah. And then you've got this generation who were caught in the gap are they all high achieving women yeah yeah exactly that's the problem so what happens is you get and this is why there are more and more single women now because more and more women are high achieving so they're not like looking for a husband straight away and when you've got a big gene pool of people to you know like when you come out of uni or even before you go into uni, because lots of people meet at uni and stay together.

You've got this big, you know, like numbers game. You've got loads of women single, loads of men single, and you sort of all hook up. And if your motivation is to get married and have kids and that's your only motivation, you're going to find a partner early and that's it. Job done. Keep going. Right. Assuming it all goes well. But if your motivation isn't necessarily that, if you want to go on to university, you know, get your career sorted and then turn around and have kids like at 30, okay, right now, achieved, I'm at the past, you know, where I want to have kids and I can take a bit of a break here. And then suddenly, where is he? Well, he's not there because he's already been taken up by everybody else. And men traditionally don't like dating high achieving women unless they're high achieving themselves.

And the amount of high achieving women is getting higher and the amount of high achieving men is getting lower. So you've got even less of a pool to choose from. So the answer for the women is to think outside the square and think, right, okay, do I really need the guy who's got the degree? Because women, high achieving women like to go for high achieving men. Is that statistically? It's just generally what happens, isn't it? You sort of, if I've got a degree,

I want somebody else who's got a degree. So then you have to change your wishlist a little bit and think, okay, I'm going to, you know, look in a, I'm not going to be as rigid with my, you know, must haves and perhaps, you know, think about things like'm not going to be as rigid with my, you know, must haves and perhaps, you know, think about things like, well, does it really matter how much he earns if I'm already earning lots of money? You know, isn't kindness, you know, generosity, sense of humor, attractiveness, you know, just general chemistry, isn't that enough? So if you go for those qualities, you end up a lot better off and end up happier as well. Is that against our innate wiring

because you know some people sometimes say that men care less about the financial resources of their partner um so does that kind of go for me if i'm a if i'm a woman and i'm looking for uh a partner am i going to look for someone who is kind of up into the right probably but that doesn't necessarily work see for me that didn't work because if i'm i'm like very alpha female so whenever i went out with an alpha male we were just like hated each other so i'm the boss no i'm the boss no fuck off now i'm controlling you know you know no it didn't work at all didn't work at all very competitive i'm too competitive they were too competitive that didn't work so so i've i mean my partner is really proud of me he's not at all um threatened in the slightest by any success any

success i've had he's my biggest proudest supporter he and and we work differently like you know if if my thing is to you know um if you know I make more money than him he doesn't mind me saying that because he's he's fine with it and so if I've got more money that's great so therefore you know if he's got more time than me to do the traditional female things then he's fine with that and then sometimes other times I'll do it and you know he know, he assumes the male role. So it's very, you know, we're comfortable with each other. We, you know, we don't care that I tick the male boxes in some roles and he ticks the female boxes and it works very well. And I think you have to, I think that's hopefully where we're headed. But there is, there are some times where, I mean, I mean, I know I'm not typical with females.

I know that a lot of women, you know, won't go out with a man unless he makes a lot of money, particularly if they make a lot of money. They won't. I've never been like that. I've never been get their money. If I want money, I'll make it myself, thanks. I don't want to have someone else's money. That's not mine. So I do think it's a big problem for women and men i think we

both have to especially women have to stop being so rigid with that you know and how expect the man to provide i think men have to stop being so feeling emasculated if it's the woman who's owning more so what who cares as long as someone's got some money somewhere along the line who cares which one if you're in that age range between say 30 and 40 and you're a woman and you're single and you don't want to be single i think that's important so you don't want to be single you want to have you know you want to meet a partner you want to have a family whatever it might be what advice would you give to that person i'm thinking now about my a series of my close um friends that are women that are single in that range and that have expressed that they they don't want to be single um but they're struggling for all the reasons you said super

high achieving um you know they're they've got great careers they're very very busy because of that as well they've you know yeah that was the issue isn't it it's um i mean i was talking about helen girley brown the cosmo founder and she always said you can it all. And that's the biggest lie when we've been sold. You can't have it all. There is something that gives. And these high achievers, yeah, they have compromised their chances of finding a partner by putting it all into their career. You can't have it all.

And I did that. I mean, it took me to 50. I had lots of relationships. It took me to 50 to find somebody that I was compatible with. It's not easy. It's really, really difficult. And I was out there meeting tons of people. So first accept that it's nothing to do with you. It doesn't mean that you're not attractive or anything. You're probably less marketable because you're too intelligent. And some men would be

freaked by that. And you're too successful. And some men would be freaked by that. They don't know what to do with you. And it makes them feel bad because they're going to those traditional patterns like how, she's not going to go out with me. You know, I'm not as successful as her so I'm not even going to try. So you have to make the approach, number one. Change your wishlist to become qualities, personality qualities, not, you know,

must be a certain height, must be a certain income, must drive this car, must, you know, all those sort of things because they really don't matter. And also date outside of type. Like go out with people. Look beyond the exterior. See what's inside.

Like I think they'll be very quick to go, oh, no, I can't go out with that person. You know, like go on a couple of dates. And even if the first date's a disaster, go on two or three dates. Go on at least three with people. You know, go out all the time. Often on two or three dates. Go on at least three with people. Go out all the time. Often these women are so busy. It's like, well, when do you actually go out to actually put yourself in a situation where you can meet someone? Never. They're not going to walk in your lounge room, are they? Unless you sort of order delivery. They're really not. So come on, you've got to make some effort here. You've got to do the numbers game. And I don't know whether

that dating apps are the right way forward but they're probably the only way it's the way that most people meet so you kind of have to just suck it up and get on there i think i think that's phenomenal advice i was really really happy you said that as well because i know certain friends of mine are gonna be listening um and hate me for it no i don't think so i think it's an it's it's an opinion it's one that makes um sense and i think that's all that anyone can deliver on this podcast and that's that's why i like it it's and it actually matches the opinion i had from a man previously on this podcast who received quite a um when a man says those kinds of things i don't think it's received as well

necessarily because they're speaking from a place of like they don't have the lived experience and there's a lot of like gender inequality things that are you know historical things with men and um the term one of my previous guests used to describe it was um tall girl problem that you see what i mean it's not a good it's not necessarily the most um you could also say yeah yes you could say small man problem yeah exactly it's the same that you know this is an interesting question it's probably the question i should have started with what is sex well sex certainly isn't intercourse and people need to stop thinking of sex as intercourse sex is any type of any type of feeling word thought that makes you feel aroused that's

how i describe sex and what purpose is it solving why does it exist to create other human beings this is why you know our going right back to the beginning this whole thing that we have that you know why can't we have the sex at the beginning all the way through because it doesn't suit it wouldn't work if you were have so in you know lust driven and all you wanted to do was shag like rabbits you would never get anything else done you certainly wouldn't have children you certainly wouldn't have a job so we are designed to keep the world in a safe place we go through lust and infatuation romance attachment for a reason so that we calm down we don't have the hot sex and we keep the world you know we bring up our children in a sensible way and the world continues what does that say about monogamy though because if it's probably not natural that's what i was going to

say because if my sex drive is deteriorating to any degree one would suggest that's encouraging me to go shag someone else well it is but you don't because you love your partner so you you it's a trade-off it's always a trade-. You can have the love and this contentment and the companionship. And this is why older, you know, you asked about infidelity statistics. Older people don't cheat very much who are in good relationships because they're not having that drive, that lust is gone. You know, your sex drive is lower as you get older. And it's the trade-off.

It's like, yeah, I could go out and cheat and have really hot sex, but I'm going to have to look my partner in the eye. And I really love my partner. So I'm happy to wave goodbye to that hot sex. I've had enough of it in my life. So it depends on your motivation. So if you are driven by sex, then just don't settle down. Keep swapping partners and get that out of your system. And then you're not going to be dishonest to anyone. But if you do want a relationship, sometimes you have to go, okay, we can have great sex. It's not going to be like the sex that you have at the beginning. But you know what?

I've got two kids. I've got a great wife. I've got, you know, it's a trade-off in life, isn't it? Everything's a trade-off. So you don't think monogamy is natural? I think that for sex, no. I think for sex, no, it's absolutely not.

For our sex drive, it's the worst thing is to give some security and predictability and stuff and the same person over and over. No, not for our sex drive. But the problem is, is that the alternative is polyamory, right? So you have this one love relationship and then you seek sex elsewhere. Now, in theory, that really appeals to me. I can see that that would be great, right? But I'm not going to feel comfortable waving off my husband. Bye, darling. You have a great time. You know, don't worry about what time you get back. No way. He's mine. You know, it's possession, isn't it? It's ownership. It's sexual ownership. You know, you're not going to, you might want to do it yourself, but you're not going to send your partner off and they might want to do it

themselves, but they're not going to send you off. So I don't know what the solution is. I really don't. Well, as you said, in life, you can't have it all. So everything is trade-offs. And that is another trade-off where I'm sure some people would love to be able to have sex with other people, but they wouldn't want to reciprocate that to their partner. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

And the question that's been left for you okay when you are near the end of your life and looking back over it what will you be proudest of and what will you regret the most gosh um proudest of my career and having helped people i'm one of the really annoying people when you're in a dinner party who's just knew what they wanted to do really early on with the writing and then that happened very early with my parents um so i'm really proud of that my first book i was so excited literally you know that when you just jump on the spot i was literally jumping on the spot i don't really do regrets. I don't really do regrets, actually. I don't really do regrets. Maybe I wish that I was more or had been more confident.

I'm confident on the outside, but not on the inside. I'm the most confident, unconfident person you'll ever meet. So, and probably realize that no one's looking at you. They're too busy worrying about themselves. I wish I'd sort of calmed down a bit and was more confident what's the symptoms of that inner lack of confidence um insecurity like going away and like every you know the first time i listened to this for instance it'll be like oh my god i was terrible look at me look at the way i look look at oh my

god why didn't i do something else with my hands what you know like i'll go through it then then i'll go don't be silly and then i'll listen to it and then i'll have an okay opinion about it but yeah there's still that little bit there any idea where that's come from yeah parents when you're left on your own and you're abandoned at the age of 15 that's not great is it and then all these small things are a potential abandonment maybe people don't think i don't get on me yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's funny i'm confident of i'm confident of my abilities um professionally i'm confident that i'm intelligent um i don't know i suppose yeah you never really i mean i remember when i studied psychology and the and the guy just got up there

and said he was a great lecturer and he said it's all about your childhood and we all just rolled our eyes and went oh for god's sake it's so like how ridiculous it's not it's not and it is it really is like I'm still that 15 year old girl that stood there terrified you know this she's still there and um yeah so it's interesting but i put on a good show like everybody you certainly do put on a good show thank you so much tracy um thank you giving me so much answered so many of my questions and i know for for sure for sure people are going to tell you i'm sure they're going to message you but for sure for sure i can say on behalf of all of the people that have listened you've helped them oh i hope today thank you and i think everybody will take away something different from that which is why it's so incredible i'm

going to do something i've never done before because i really want to illustrate how i believe you've helped people the previous guest that left you a question and you know i don't usually tell people this is a guy called robert waldinger and what he has committed his life to is something called the harvard study of well-being i'm going to call it that i know i've got one word there wrong right i'm going to call it the harvard study of well-being which was the longest ever study done on a group of people to understand what makes people fundamentally happy happy at the most basic level so they followed people for almost 90 years the same group of people even you know the founders of the study have actually died so they've passed the study on to robert and at the very heart of what they found on this study

which ended up being a ted talk which has done 45 million views it's the most one of the most listened ted talks of all time is that the thing that makes us most happy in life and also healthiest in terms of an insulation from stress is relationships it's number one men that have positive romantic relationships um live 14 years longer women seven years longer that's right and one of the things that ends ends great relationships and leads us to isolation and loneliness is sexual issues i see it in all of my friends and the work you're doing is therefore um in its very essence helping people to to solve the most important problem of all which is connection

relationships so it's incredible work to be doing and it's work that not a lot of people will want to do and confront because of the stigmas and taboos that still remain so thank you so much Tracy thank you thank you for being so wonderful wonderful compliment you're captivating no you really are you're really really captivating and you're super smart and you know your stuff and you've looked at all the research um you really are the the best at this so thank you for being here thank you for helping me you have um and thank you for helping all of our wonderful listeners thank you i'm going to walk away very confident now thank you awesome and you look amazing by the way your dress is fantastic everything about you is fantastic so yeah thank you Thanks for watching!