WHOOP Podcast - The Connection Between Pleasure, Performance, and Recovery with Sexologist Chantelle Otten

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

This week on the WHOOP Podcast, WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist, Dr. Kristen Holmes, sits down with Chantelle Otten, world-renowned psycho-sexologist, author, and advocate for evidence-based conversations around sexual wellbeing, mental health, and relationships. Chantelle and Dr. Holmes break the taboo around sex in this episode, promoting a more holistic view of sexual health, highlighting the importance of intimacy, desire, and emotional regulation. This episode combines the importance of data and self-awareness, using tools like WHOOP, to support stress management and sleep, and how they contribute to confidence, connection, and satisfaction in and out of the bedroom. 00:27: Chantelle Otten: Psycho-sexology and Why It’s Important07:00: WHOOP Podcast Rapid Fire Q’s08:20: Importance of Stress and Sleep Management on Your Sexual Health11:30: Unlocking Your Sex Life15:19: Best Practices to Self-Audit: How to Stay Grounded21:21: How to Detect Red Flags In Your Environment24:27: Best Ways To Facilitate Conversations With An Intimate Partner28:36: Creating Safety in Intimacy29:28: Peri-Menopause and Menopause’s Effect on Relationships 37:36: Navigating Performance Pressure45:53: The Rules of Curiosity: Responsive and Spontaneous Desire51:23: The Two Key Takeaways That Will Change Your Sex LifeFollow Chantelle Otten:InstagramTiktokWebsiteSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Great sex can be built. Aim for pleasure, not performance. Learn how to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a superpower. It's going to create such a beautiful life for you, the people around you. And, you know, if you have younger people that you take care of, it's going to create a great foundation for them to also have a better life. And then again, come back to curiosity and just have some fun.

Chintel Artin, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to thank you. I know. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So you are a world-renowned psychoso-sexologist. Sexologist. Sexologist. Psycho, not psychotic. Not psychotic. Psychology. So the biggest sexual organ, sexologist. It is a bit of a mouthful, though, isn't it? Amazing. Yeah. So tell us what that is. It's just a very fancy word for a sex therapist. You know, you can be a sexologist in multiple different domains. So I used to be in research and I used to study mainly like menopause and sexuality and gynecological concerns

and sexuality and yeah when I lived in the Netherlands you know a lot of my work there was was base of femme health and women's health as well and then when I moved back to Australia around age 26 or so I decided to open my own clinical psychology well sexology practice that focus on the psychological elements of sex. Amazing. So emotion regulation, intimacy, desire, like a whole. Yeah. Yeah. And sex ed. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you. Did you get good sex ed? No. No, I definitely did not. Yeah. What does good sex ed look like? I think it's evolving more and more because I think that we are learning to be more open-minded when it comes to binary topics. I think our world and our views around sexuality and around people, orientations, interests, identities are evolving.

I believe that sex ed is just, it's just about accuracy. It shouldn't be biased by culture or religion or background. It should be really about the biopsychosocial interpersonal perspective. So biological, what's happening in our bodies, which we'll talk about a lot today. Psychological, what's happening in our minds, mental health and, you know, medications, et cetera, interpersonal, our relationships with ourselves, with others, with our friends, with our family, and socio-cultural, it's happening around us, and there's a lot going on right now. When you think about sexual education, what is missing? If you were just to kind of

try to identify a few areas that we just get it dead wrong? Yeah. What would it be? I mean, I think we're going to have to bounce up each other here because I'm an Aussie, so it's a little bit different. I never got sex ed at school. I went to a very strict Catholic school. And for us, the topic of sex was off the table and we learned really about fear-based education. So STIs and, you know, pregnancy and there was nothing healthy. There was no discussions around consent or being sweet or being kind or pleasure or, you know, femme pleasure, the clitoris. Even the fact that sex gets really hard sometimes for people, everyone will suffer from sexual concerns at some point, erectile dysfunction, promissue ejaculation, performance anxiety,

you know, difficulty to orgasm, painful sex. One in five vulva owners will have painful sex at some point in their lives. So when I say penis owner or vulva owner, it's just I really want to be inclusive to everyone. And people can do with that what they will. they want. But sexual pain for one in five vulva owners is a huge amount. And I, in the medical schools in Australia, a lot of the time there's like a one hour lecture on sexual medicine. So if you're going to the doctor with the sexual problem, a lot of the time, they're trying their best within 15 minutes to help you with a concern that they probably haven't had enough

education. That took a lifetime to develop. Yeah, but they have their own biases and they probably never, they probably haven't had enough education themselves. So everyone's just trying their best to catch up with a profession that I've had to study for seven years to, and I'm learning every single day. Yeah. Yeah. It must be wild, you know, when you're working with clients, just the things that you learn, you know, that you probably had never encountered before. They're my biggest teachers. I'm so grateful for my patients. Is there anything that has come to you recently where it just stopped you in your tracks? I get stopped most days in my tracks around around what people disclose. There's two elements, or multiple elements, my work, but if we talk

about it in two main ways, we have the pleasure side of things where I teach people how to have more fun, which we all need to learn how to do. And then I have the side that is really heavy and traumatic. I hold people's secrets. My job is to hold people in a safe space where they can feel free to tell me things that they have never told someone in their life. Where do I get stopped in my tracks when I see the amount of shame that people have had to hold for decades around their preferences that are not even remotely bad. They're like really positive, but they've just been taught that they're not okay. Something that has stopped me in my tracks probably, I'm seeing so much more burnout, you know. I'm seeing so many people who are

struggling because the world is getting more expensive. The world feels like it's on fire. We're all trying to make sure that we are fit and healthy and getting enough sleep, but having enough fun and partying and being social, but we're anxious or depressed or on medication. Everything is, all of that is normal. It's just how do we let ourselves rest? The main thing that I think I encourage people to do is learn that they have permission to rest because that is the only way that we are going to be able to connect with other people, regardless of whether that's romantic or sexual or just making friends. I mean, sex is recovery promoting.

Yeah. You know? But it's, I think, to your point, like you have to be in a position to give and receive, right? And that does require some element of energy, you know, which you need to be arrested for. Yeah. Sex should be something that you want to go towards, not something that you feel like you should have to do. Sex is an umbrella term for many other activities. and, you know, types of touch and types of movement, it doesn't have to be.

If we're talking about it in really binary ways, it's not penis and vagina. It's not about orgasm. It's about pleasure. And so many people are not taught that pleasure is for them. We're going to do a very quick, rapid fire icebreaker. Oh, good. All right, so this is true or false. Great sex always starts with great chemistry.

I think great sex can be built. And I think that chemistry is something that. can be built as well. True or false, the best orgasms happen when you stop trying to impress. 100%. True or false. Men think about sex more, but talk about it less. I'm not going to give you a good, true or false answer there because I believe that

femmes and women, they need emotional connection in order to have sex, and men need to have sex. and men need to have sex in order to have emotional connection. Again, we're talking in binary language here, so this is a full spectrum, and I don't want to generalize. That is a theory that I cannot prove. I can't prove it because everything is individualized, yeah, but don't get me wrong. The girlies are talking about sex a lot, and they want really good sex. That is definitely true.

True or false, the brain is your most powerful sexual organ. True. True or false, you can't have great sex without emotional safety. True. All right. So we know sleep and stress are major drivers of intimacy and just the capacity to be emotionally connected and just to feel desire and to feel desirable. What just in your role, you know, as a clinician, a therapist, you know, how do you see stress and sleep manifest in your, in your, in your, your pain? patients. It's everything. It's everything. We have higher stress levels, and I'm not talking about

healthy stress. I'm not talking about stress that is productive. I'm talking about, you know, rushing, beating yourself down, wanting to achieve. I think even in regards to just like anxiety, cortisol levels, all of that seems to be getting, it's getting tougher, it's getting worse. I'm seeing a lot more stress in my clinic. And I think like the national averages certainly in the U.S. that's consistent with national averages. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely pretty substantial increases in anxiety over the course of the last two years. Well, I mean, why wouldn't there be yet? And I also think that it's more also like about finances as well these days. It also costs money to go see therapists, right? And it costs money to get help. It

costs money to be healthy. It costs money to eat good food. And if we are working our asses off in order to feed ourselves, our families, our lifestyles, and we're not getting enough exercise. If we're that stress that we're eating badly, not exercising and our cortisol through the roof, then we're not sleeping well. And then it becomes this terrible, terrible loop where emotional regulation is out the window, so you're not able to relate to the person that you care about. You're not able to relate to yourself. I think even having like a sensory experience, I'm not even talking about eroticism, but like a beautiful, like warm shower or hot shower, rubbing lotion on your skin, having time to do your hair in the morning, having time for some

fresh air and some sun on your skin, all of that is interconnected. If we are not getting enough recovery in there and enough overall wellness to support our quality of life, then our sex life is going to suffer and then we're going to feel disconnected from our partners and then our relationships are going to suffer and then all of it's just like it's all over again it's just suffer and I don't want to be doom and gloom I want to be like optimistic here but we need to remember that if you take care of yourself even if it's a 20 minute walk every day getting some really good fresh air not hiding your emotions learning how to be vulnerable call a friend tell them that you're struggling let them help you try and eat like a

Even if it's just like a piece of fruit, some apples or something like that that is within your budget, within your reach, anything you can do to fuel your body to decrease your cortisol levels will help you with your recovery index and that's going to help you with your overall quality of life and your sex life. No one can have sex when they're stressing out. Yeah. What are you thinking about the projects, the reports that you're having to like do tomorrow while you're like bouncing around? No, it's not happening. Yeah. You know, you mentioned people who might not be able to kind of afford a therapist or maybe you aren't prioritizing it. You know, you know, if people listening are like, you know what, my sex life is not great. Where would you recommend they look first? Is it, is it anxiety levels? Is it, is it something else? Like what, you know, based on what you see in terms of patterns, what would you, what would you, where would you recommend people start if they want to really improve their, their sexual intimacy and, and overall sexual. When they think my sex life is not great, think about what am I talking about here? Is it quantity?

Am I not having enough sex? Is that it? You can have sex every day, but it might be bad quality. Right. I would prefer quality over quantity, really good quality, soul-connecting, bonding sex with someone that makes you feel safe. Even if it's solo sex, feeling safe enough to do that, feeling like you have enough time and ease, that's really, really important. Think, is it what is happening within me and within my

body? Because we're all works and progress, right? We're all trying to optimize our quality of life every day and ourselves. Am I being kind to myself? Am I being kind to others around me? Or is it what is happening around me? Is it my friendship circles? Is it my relationship? Where is the energy being taken from? Is it internal or external? What can I do to change that? So I would sit there with a piece of paper and I would write down every glimmer that you have in your life. And when I talk about glimmers, that's the opposite of a trigger. That's the things that's going to make you feel really happy and fulfilled. Like, for example, we're recording this around, you know, midday. I went for a walk this morning. It's very hot and humid here. I'm not used to it. But getting some coconut water, some

some heat, some sun on my skin. You know, so many people said such nice things to me about my outfit, which is so different for me. You look beautiful. Thank you. But like, you know, like look for those glimmers, look at the things that make you feel really happy. And then look at how many of them are you cultivating for yourself in your daily life? That's going to boost, A, your ego for me, my ego was boosted this morning. But B, it's going to boost your morale and your sense of self-esteem and you'll want to connect with others. And then look at the things that are the vampires. What's sucking your energy out of there?

Is it the fact that you've overcommitted yourself? That's okay. You can say no to a few things. People need to learn how to say no a little bit easier. Is it your workplace? I understand we all need to pay our bills, but we can also look for new jobs if we need it. If it's not working for us, it's not working for us.

Is it the location of where you live? Is it your family members? Is it people in your life that are bringing you down? Let's look at the glimmers and the suckers. And we want to make sure that we have more glimmers in our lives. More things that make us want to put our foot on the accelerator than on the break. Take our foot off the break a little bit so we can move forward in our life. I love that.

That's a great analogy. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free.

You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. Do you find that people create enough space? and time to think, to audit their life in that way. That's one of the things that I worry about for, I think, society. And when I look at just as a psychophysiologist and I kind of look, and I zoom out and kind of look at it from a theoretical perspective in terms of the health of our country, for example, and the globe, I worry that there isn't a lot of time to think.

People don't carve out that time to really audit their life in the way that you just outlined. You know, you kind of went through a laundry list of things that could impact your ability to show up, you know, and be intimate in a relationship, right? So I don't want to lead you into this, but, you know, I guess I wonder if people are taking the time to think critically about the things that allow them that are glimmers versus suckers and, you know, do you feel like people are really auditing their life in that way? Or is that what you do in your practice? You know, is that where you start? I don't think people are doing that because we do tend to have a negative bias. it's not what we want, but I don't think that we focus enough on the things that make us feel happy and beautiful and whole. And I think you would also, you know, I'm actually

curious to bounce off you if you're okay with that. Do you think that people maybe get caught up in their own stats of what wellness looks like within their body rather than what's in their mind? You know, we can look at HRV and we can look at our recovery index and we can look at our stress levels and I think it's actually so wonderful how invested people are in getting good quality sleep getting their steps up getting a good recovery index it tells us what we physiologically can bounce back from or what we can maintain or what we can improve does it tell us what's going on in our mind that takes work and that takes time and attention and a lot of the time that stuff's quite painful so we want to move away from it and we'd rather focus on what our body's telling us

it's doing rather than what our mind is screaming at us to do once in a while what do you think about that though yeah i mean as i mean i'm a psychophysiologist because i really believe that these you know our psychology and physiology should not be siloed right like to your point they're completely intertwined and integrated right and i i think about it from this standpoint of how do i show up each day with as much capacity to do the things that I love to do, the glimmers, right? Like, how do I, what do I need to do behaviorally to ensure that I can show up for my children and my partner and the folks that I work with?

And, you know, in a way that feels really good to me. I know that there are certain behaviors related to my circadian rhythms and my sleep and recovery and training that is going to create conditions that allow me to pursue my purpose, that allow me to have this self-efficacy. Right now we're talking about the brain, right? and have enough control throughout my day and just even the ability to foster positive connections, right? Like I know if my physiology is not in line, I'm not going to be able to create conditions that allow those things to be true or it's going to be a lot more difficult, right? So I kind of think about it from that perspective is I'm building a foundation.

Drackers like, whoop, you know, help me understand where to apply my effort so I can spend less time on that and more time on the people and things that I love. So it's kind of how I think about it. You know, I think for me, it's allowed me to be closer and more intimate with my body in some ways, you know, and see when I'm getting off track. And then to be able to know what I need to focus my energy on to get me back on track. So again, I'm able to show up in my life for the things that I care about. It's telling you what you need to focus on here. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. Your stats are saying, hey, your body's reacting in all. way it's a warning sign yeah take a moment pause reflect what what's happening around you right now that's making you start to feel derailed maybe it's illness right maybe it's people around you maybe it's workload whatever it is i think using you know your woodband and using the stats that it gives you to have it as a catalyst for you to go okay i actually need to take an hour or two or maybe a little bit longer a couple of days of rest and do a little bit more of an audit so that I can get back on track. But I think one thing that is very prominent that

we do need to mention is you can be doing the best that you possibly can in staying in line with, you know, whatever makes you feel efficient, whatever makes you feel good. If you are around people that are unstable, they will derail you. For sure. Yeah. So get them off. Yeah. Kick them off your train. Right. There's only a few people that are allowed on your train. Right. And they need to be helping you push it forward. So I think that is one thing that we need to talk about a little bit more as well because people are very lonely right now. Loneliness is an epidemic. And as soon as we feel like we've got someone around us that's going to create or that we feel connected to just like that, you know, that beautiful limerence phase, the first 12 to 18 months of any relationship that is more

romantic or more intimate. and we feel so good and we're so in love and we can't believe we found that person. Once you start seeing the cracks form or the red flags or, you know, the things that are going to start to make your train come off the tracks a little bit, that's when you need to take a pause and re-evaluate and re-listen because this is your life and you need to feel strong in it and you need to be around people that are going to help you succeed. So stats, great, mind, try and keep it steady, energy around you, make sure it's healthy. And what are some of those red flags?

And people? Yeah. You know, I think connection obviously is a core psychological need that we all have as human beings. And I think to your point, like when it's great, it's great, you know, but when it's not, you need to recognize that it's not and make change. You know, what do you see as red flags? And maybe is there something from a sexual perspective early on?

that is a red flag that maybe people aren't aware of. Yeah, that's a really great question. As you know, with sex, we can go so broad. I know. Sex is the last thing that I talk about sometimes in my, most of the time in my clinic, actually. Roads lead there. Exactly. Sex is a symptom for so many other things that are happening in your life.

So if I go off course, please bring me back on it because, yeah, sex is often a symptom for many other things that are happening. Red flags in intimate relationship, I think that it's getting. harder and it's different in the US I've noticed to you know I've lived in a few different countries now you start to learn the the patents I believe that if we look at an intimate relationship we can look very fondly on the nice things that people do for us and maybe they're going to go get us matro and a croissant and wake up us you know in the morning and we've got this beautiful thing that you know they've they've heard us say but

it's actually about those things are wonderful and they're nice but safety safety is the biggest green flag that we need to look for what does safety look like though because i you know i think some people when they haven't experienced safety don't even know how to recognize it right like and it's complicated yeah it's it's very complicated there's no um you know there's no global definition of what that actually means but i think safety is where you have the ability to be vulnerable and say I'm not feeling sure right now or I don't feel safe right now. Maybe this is connected to an experience from my past because trauma is like a string, right? It pulls us back into an experience. If we are around people that understand us, wonderful. They're going to be able to

help us regulate. If we are around someone new or someone who doesn't understand us, see how they react to your distress. See how they can help you get to a place of safe. and I mean containment where you're able to be moved to a safe space, whether you're out, you know, in public. Maybe it's sitting in a dark corner, in a bar instead, maybe instead of like a busy restaurant with overhead lights, we have a lot of neurospicy people out there these days and a lot more diagnosis. So understanding what your comfort levels are and helping you find your comfort levels.

Safety is about listening, hearing, reflecting back, mirroring without trying to fix the problem. You don't always need to fix the other person's problem. They need to be heard. They need someone to help them work it out themselves. The hardest person to talk to about intimacy, sex, safety, love, control is your intimate partner. How do you facilitate that? well do you see what we what we just did then you know you said i need some help looking for red flags or green flags a red flag would be someone that wouldn't help you see that what you're

experiencing is okay and normal and human if i was like tell me what it is let me fix it i'll go do it right now are you having a problem with your with your you know with your colleague or are you having a problem with your partner? All right, this is what you're going to say to them. That's not safety. You can create your own safety with the right person next to you. It's you and me against the problem. It's not me fixing your problems. Because that actually robs the person of their own agency. Yes. A lot of people are robbed of their own agency, not by their own fault. But my job is to be your partner in crime against whatever problems that you had. Our conversation just now was about me making you feel seen,

heard, validated and safe in your experience. Then in therapy we move on to, okay, so what can we do there to get you to a place where you're feeling safe enough to control yourself and your immediate surroundings? And then how can we create a healthy dialogue with the person that you need to have these conversations with. It doesn't have to be a volatile person. It doesn't have to be an unsafe person. It can just be a very difficult conversation because of many different circumstances. It can be background. It can be family environments intergenerational trauma. Their background, their environments, the way they react, their stress levels. It doesn't always have to be about volatility per se. But we're speaking about emotions. And we're also speaking about growth here.

That conversation that we had about safety and about vulnerability and you saying, I don't feel safe letting go of control, I don't feel safe being vulnerable, that's you growing. Growth is destabilizing. Growth is going to feel unsafe. So you're going to feel anxious when you grow. And I just want people to know that whilst that stuff is hard, those conversations are hard, that growth is hard, that in a dialogue, that in a reflection is difficult. it is necessary for you to get to the next step in your life.

And my job is to be that safe space for people. And if we can translate a conversation like that into sexuality, can you imagine the topics that come up? We're talking about preferences. If we're talking about red flags, does your partner give you pleasure? Do they ask you how you receive pleasure? If you don't know how to receive pleasure,

can they say, can we try and find out together? do they give you time? Are you allowed to maybe have some help with your fingers or with hands or a toy or an aid or something like that? What if we add into like the mixed vulnerabilities around chronic illness, mental health concerns, disability, injury, you know, even like a lack of a safe environment to be able to be close to someone, let alone like a roof of your head or somewhere to go. You know, as I was saying to you, off air, I'm just moving to the US now. It's destabilizing moving to a new country where you don't know people and you don't know where to go if you're feeling upset or out of control or unsafe. Making friends, making creating a community, it can be

small enough, but it has to be safe enough. Those are the people that are the ones that you want to have these conversations with, not the ones that are like, fuck that person. Let's do this. la la la la la no you just want to be able to have a couch to go sleep on when you're not feeling safe now if we talk about intimacy are you going to go to bed at night and feel like a you can either get a really good night sleep next that person maybe they're going to hold you at night even if you're not having a good time with them maybe there might be a little bit of a pinky hold there or like just like a touch on the on the back of your on your lower back or on your arm or are you going to go to bed with some sort of expectation. Do I have to perform tonight? Are we going to have sex

for pleasure or because that person needs it? You know, the dialogue is so vast when it comes to eroticism and sexuality. And my job is to make it safe, more fun and where people are on the same level. It's tough. Yeah. But it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure for me, you know, to be invited into people's intimate lives, really. It's really interesting. I was talking to Robert Waldinger. Yeah, he's the kind of the godfather of the happiness Harvard study. He's been, you know, stewarding it for the last study, I don't even know, three decades, four decades or something. But he was talking about this idea that the average age at which people are getting divorce is around 45. And I wonder, you know, and that kind of coincides with perimenopause

and menopause, wondering if there's some sort of, if you see that in your practice, you know, of people coming to you with sexual intimacy issues at these different inflexible. points across the lifespan or is that you don't see those patterns i don't think it has to do with perimenopause or menopause actually oh tell me more yeah tell me more no i'm really i think that that's like just a really um i don't i don't know if it's an out or you know i i don't know um i don't know what that i that seems to be a very common um refrain you know and just on social media a reason why. So the dialogue is that it's around perimenopause or menopause?

Yeah, that's kind of kind of a, because of the changes in desire and, you know, the things that are happening hormonally with women during this time frame, you know, the declines in estrogen and that downstream effect on how women sleep and their ability to train and they gain weight. and, you know, there's just repercussions, right, that if you're not on it and are not getting ahead of it, they kind of come out you pretty hard and fast with that mood changes and all of those things. So I think it's being used as an explanation for why people tend to get divorced, you know, in that midlife. I think if there's a factor there for sure, I definitely think that there's a factor. Do I think that there's so many other factors? Absolutely. I think that

around that age, you know, it depends. People are having children later and later. I'm 34, you know, that's not on my horizon right now, but it will be one day. I believe that a lot of people have subscribed to the dream of having a house, a dog, of children. The children have grown up, and they've started to realize, okay, we've done what we needed to do, we've raised them, they're feeling good, they're healthy, they're well. Did I live enough during this time? sex lives and relationships change we can't you either upgrade your software together with that person or you upgrade it maybe at grow the old software both of you need to be upgrading at the same time and

I think a lot of the time it doesn't happen it doesn't coincide I see a lot of femmes a lot of women realizing their sexuality later in in life around that age and realizing hey actually maybe I wasn't as into this cis heteronormative lifestyle as I thought I had to be and, you know, I wasn't allowed to talk about it and I wasn't allowed to explore it. I think that having children and, you know, like divorce rates are just a lot, they're a lot higher and also children understand them a lot more. I'm not saying I'm pro anyone, you know, moving away from their relationship without having worked on it or found a place of compassion and friendship.

Friendship is the most important thing within a relationship. But people change, people grow. And in this day and age, with the amount of information that we have, with the amount of access to information that we have, why wouldn't we be changing and growing? Why wouldn't we want more for ourselves and better? We can try that with the person that we've been with. You know, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear,

but I'm sure a lot of people fucking love that person. You know? Does it mean it's always going to work out? No, it's devastating when it doesn't. It's devastating. But it doesn't have to equal hatred and it doesn't have to equal animosity. There will be times, don't get me wrong, in every long-term relationship, there will be times where you might love your partner, but you might really not like them at all. You have to have conversations where you go, hey, this is how I'm feeling. Do you want to try and upgrade together? This is our time frame. If we can't do it within this time. Can we make an agreement that we start thinking about alternative options for our lives and being kind to each other in the process? Now, I'm a therapist. I analyze way too much. I go way too much into it. But I think also, like, I'm going to bring AI into this too. I'm pro-AI, by the way, very pro-AI. I think it's an accessible form of information for people. It has a bias, though, you know? I encourage my patients to use AI when they're away from me, when they don't have access to me.

I encourage them to learn more and dig deeper, learn about what medications that they're on. A lot of people are on medications that are going to impact their libido and their energy levels and their intimate lives. What are the top medications that impact your libido? Mainly antidepressants, anti-anxieties. I don't want anyone to go off them. If you're listening to this, I want you to talk to your psychiatrist. There are medications that are more readily available in the U.S. that can help you with depression, and there's a lot of people with attention difficulties here. There's medication that can help

with depression and attention difficulties and will not impact on your libido or your sex drive. It's harder to access in Australia. There is, oh my gosh, I totally lost track. What is not hormonal birth control? Yeah, I think there's a huge correlation between hormonal birth control and sexuality and desire yes however it can be negative can be neutral it can be positive because if you have a gynecological concern you know maybe you've got endometriosis you'd rather be on the birth control or the medication you might not be birth control it might be one of the other medications to help you control your pain so that you're able to have an intimate life so I'm not going to get into the depths of which medication is good and which isn't good.

That is something that people have to discuss with their psychiatrist, or they can book a session for their individualized, you know, analysis. However, we have to take into account that medication is going to impact on that. If you're in that 45, you know, perimenopausal range, if you have no, you know, contraindications to hormonal help, then I would be speaking to your doctor about getting hormonal help. Like an HR T. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it's just, we're living a lot longer. If you're going through menopause at age 50, 50% of the population will go through menopause at age 50. You've probably got another 30 or 40 years ago. Yeah. You want to have a good time. Yeah.

You know, and I'm not just talking about, again, when we come back to sex, I'm just not talking about intercourse here. You want to feel like you can be touched. You want to feel like you can get lubrication. You want to be able to have enough out of course. so not intercourse, not penetrative, outcores, rubbing, grinding, you know, licking, sucking, just skin-on-skin contact that's going to bring up all those beautiful bonding hormones that are going to make you feel like you want to be close to that person.

But again, it's all about upgrading. It's about upgrading your software intimately as a relationship, as a person, and as friends as well. You're invited to join the waitlist for Whoop Advanced Labs. Advanced Labs delivers clinician reviewed lab results right into your WOOP app for the most complete view of your biomarkers and biometrics and the most comprehensive understanding of your health. Unlike other tests, WOOP integrates your lab results with your WOOP data. See how your habits and behaviors influence your biomarkers and get clear guidance on what to change to improve your results. To join the wait list, visit our website or the health tab in the Woop app. Let's talk a little bit about performance and pressure.

Do you work with couples or just individuals? I work with couples. You work with couples. And sometimes groups. Okay. I don't think about that. Not that often, but I prefer working with individuals, but I do work with couples as well. Yeah.

I have a team as well, you know, that work with me. Would you say men think about it from a performance standpoint or like an outcome standpoint? Like you have to orgasm or ejaculate it. or refer it to be a successful kind of session. You know, like, do you feel like people are kind of raiding how it's going? And that impacts their desire and their connection. You know, how do people think about, like, performance and pressure and how does that impact the intimacy and just the relationship in general?

Performance anxiety is consistent across the board for all genders. I just think that it's more obvious. when someone has a penis and they have performance anxiety because either they will lose their erection or they will ejaculate quicker or you'll just see their body tense up, freeze up and it's really uncomfortable. It's difficult. What's the root cause of that generally? Your mind, I mean, there's no root cause. It's like what has someone said to you in the past? What do you think about your own body? What do you think about your looks? Who are you comparing yourself to? What is the story that you have told yourself about your own erotic performance in your own

erotic self and well-being? What is your religious background, your cultural background? What have your parents said about sex? Did anyone walk in on you once while you were masturbating? And make you feel shamed or guilty? Yeah. You know, how long are you lasting? Are you giving them pleasure?

And I think that, you know, for women or vulva owners, it's more subtle. Now, is this a blessing or a curse? I'm not quite sure because you can't. It's easier to then fake an orgasm. I'm not anti-faking an orgasm. If you're not in a comfortable situation and you need to get out of that situation, you can fake an orgasm and get out of there and keep moving. However, if you're in a loving relationship with someone or you are entering into a relationship with someone and you have struggled with pleasure and you've struggled with performance in the past, I would just be honest about it because maybe that person's going to be the one that's going to change yourself. sex life. And I'm always going to cop flack for saying that once in a while, like if you need to fake an orgasm to get out of there, there's so many reasons that you're allowed to do that. However, if you are in a relationship with someone that you care about, you love and you want

to have a fruitful experience with, be honest with each other. Make a list. These are the things that we can do. So this is green light. These are the things that I like doing. You still have to ask me for consent. You still have to check in on me. Does this still feel good? Can I do more? You know, do you want it to the left a little bit? Show me where it feels good. This is my maybe list, so my Amber, if we're thinking about traffic lights, my Amber, it's a maybe yes, maybe no, you know, let's just like check in, see how we feel. And this is my red list.

This is a stoplight. We are not going there. I don't want you to, I don't want to do that. We can have a conversation about that. It's not going to be in here in the bedroom when you want it. It's going to be when we have a check-in about our own sexual audit. So performance anxiety is probably the bread and butter of my clinic. That and sexual pain, I would say, because when penis owners have performance anxiety, it's much more obvious.

When vulva owners are having sexual pain, that's their body tensing up. When we're stress or we're scared or we're unsure, it doesn't have to be about even the erotic scenario. It could just be that you're, you know, maybe you are grieving something or maybe you're stressed at work. It's our shoulders and our pelvic floors that contract and our pelvic floors surround our vaginal walls. And if that's closed off, it's going to be hard to get a finger in, a tampon, a penis, a vibrator, anything. Is that the primary cause for pain in women?

The pelvic floor, yes. So a good way to explain that actually, I wish I had a pen that I could throw at you because if I saw you, so if you had an experience, maybe you went to have sex and you didn't really feel like it and then you were you were tense because you were stress and maybe it was about work with the kids or you had a uti or thrush and it was painful your body's going to go oh this isn't safe for me i'm going to tense up so it would be like me grabbing a pen throwing at it your eye your eye is going to anticipate that the pen is going to go in it so it's going to blink right if i saw you again i said hey it's so good to see you and then i was like hey i really want to um you know

I want to get close to you, and I threw a pen at your eye, your eye would blink again. If I did that to you the next time, you would just keep your eye closed around to me. You'd be like this, and that's what we call vaginismus. It sounds like Christmas of the vagina, but it's not. It's the opposite. It's like Halloween, and that is one of the... I've never heard of that before. Vaginismus, you've never heard of it?

No. There's not one. It's definitely not like Christmas. Vaginismus. Vaginismus is a painful sex condition that. is very, very, very common. It is treatable, well-treatable with the right practitioner. So is penetration not even possible when you're in that state? Yeah. So for some people, it's like hitting a brick wall. Is it a condition or a state? It's a condition. So it's a, it is

psychological and physiological. So you need a pelvic floor physiotherapist and a sexologist to work with. Wow. And it is very treatable with the right practitioners. And there's some many different ways to treat it, but this is what we need to work through the most. And it's actually one of my favorite conditions to work with because so many people suffer for years, decades. Some people may never have had pleasurable pain-free sex in their life. That must be so gratifying when you help a person finally be able to experience sex in a way that is amazing and pleasurable. Yeah, and it might not even be through penetration. I might just be to get them to a place where they have pleasurable sex without penetration, you know,

and that, like, for me, someone coming to me and saying, hey, I achieve something because of our conversation, that is what is gratifying to me. Absolutely. And I think if I, you know, I wanted to just double back on this for a second with the AI topic as well. Because a lot of people are turning to chat CBT as they should for therapy. Again, I'm pro it. You're chat TBT, your AI, cannot see the way that your body flinches when you talk about a topic. It cannot see your eyes drop. It cannot see the heat rash coming up your neck. It can't see the way that you're, you know, the subtle signs that I'm trained to see.

You can't see when you're lying. You can only see what you're putting in there. And what you're putting in there is your own knowledge. So if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't know that painful sex is abnormal, it's not going to be able to help you. That's why it's still seeing someone like myself, seeing a sexologist, if you can, it's very important. And we can work together to make it as affordable as possible. But I think, you know, you are a company that helps people feel better about themselves.

Part of that is, you know, encouraging them to also look past the stats and look past the information and look into the deeper layers. My job is being, I like to call myself a sex detective. It's not even a sexologist. I am a detective into your sex life and I will find out why you are feeling that way. And I will help you in the most efficient and affordable way possible because I don't want to take your money. I don't want to be seeing you for years. I will help you get to where you need to go.

That's good enough, if not great, if not fucking fantastic. And I'm very good at it. I can tell. So talk a little bit. We talked about connection and I think communication. Talk about curiosity. Curiosity is the biggest blessing that you can give yourself and someone else. It's actually the main motivator of my work.

My job is to remain curious because I can speak to someone for like a year and then they might drop a little hint of something and I go, what was that? And I'll catch something. My mom taught me always be curious about people, always because you never know what is going on behind the scenes. they might not even know what's going on behind the scenes in their own lives. So curiosity into yourself and into your partner and into your friends and your colleagues and your family members and anyone around you is it's going to be your biggest superpower. I also think if you're in a long-term relationship, that's probably the thing that you should be aiming for the most because we start to assume that we know everything about our partners.

Such a great point. We don't. There's so many layers we don't know. If they've been upgrading their own software in their own time, you're actually going to know less about them than you thought you did. Yeah, yeah, because there's so much happening in the background that you're not even aware of, you know. How much stuff do you learn here at work that you come home and your partner would have absolutely no clue what you've learned about? Yeah. No clue.

If you're not having conversations around that, if you're not having those dialogues that are vulnerable where they're repeating back to you so you feel seen, heard, validated, and they're curious. Is there more? Tell me more about that. What does that mean? Are you going to be able to keep relating to them? Probably not. Because you need to know that they're curious about you and they're interested in you. Just like they need to feel like you're interested in them. Same thing in the bedroom. If you're going to be having the same, you know, you find your sex menu, right? And, you know, you might have been together for a little bit, a couple of months, a couple of whatever. And you go, okay, I know when we get into bed, we're going to talk about responsive's desire here. Do you know much about responsive and spontaneous desire? Okay, let's talk about that quickly before we get into this. Spontaneous desire is what we see in the movies. It's like the TV shows, right? It's like, I look at you.

You're like, it's on. And we're on. Yeah, yeah, totally. And that's like, that can happen at the start of a relationship and it can happen throughout a long-term relationship as well. but you need to have enough responsive desire, which is where you go, you know what, I don't know if I'm feeling like it tonight or I'm feeling like it today or I'm feeling like a little tense and uncomfortable, but you lie down next to each other and you go, hey, I don't think I feel like being intimate with you right now, but they start maybe like just stroking your shoulders

or just like kissing, you know, the nape of your neck. You start going, ooh, ooh. That feels a little good. And then it's the, your arousal actually starts coming. So arousal is the way that your body reacts. Desire is the wanting of that experience. So you start to feel aroused and then you start to feel desire. That is responsive. Got it. Now, if you have found your sexual menu with someone, so you can equate it, as you can tell,

I love an analogy, but, you know, maybe you and I go out for date night. We're going to go to our favorite Italian restaurant. We're going to get some garlic bread. We're going to get some vodka pasta. We'll get a side salad and then we're going to get tiramisu for dessert. And we're like, God, that was phenomenal. That was so good. And then I go, hey, babe, should we go back to that restaurant and get that meal again?

And you go, yes, that was amazing. Let's go. We go back. Same thing. It's garlic bread. It's, you know, it's vodka pasta. It's salad. And it's a tiramisu.

we go we've got it we've got the formula that was so yum now i go babe date night again i've got a great idea let's do it you're like uh ready mix it up i'm like you're like i've got that okay we're going to go there again yeah you start to lose the desire you start to lose the wanting the longing for that experience because you've got that sexual menu down pat the curiosity is gone you're not wondering about what else is on the menu because you know what you're going to be getting, you know how you're going to feel, how it's going to taste, how it's going to smell, how you're going to feel going home. You start to lose the excitement.

So what we need to do is be curious about what variations we can have. We don't need to have Italian every time we go out. Same thing in the bedroom. We can have lots of different experiences, lots of different locations. We can do it in the bathroom. We can go in the shower. We can do it in the car. We can have a, you know, it doesn't also have to be a three-course meal.

It can be an entree. It can be just like kissing and maybe some like handplay. It can be the full three-course meal. Or it can be just like just making out for like 10 minutes. All of that is under the sex umbrella and all of that is what we should remain curious about and going, what's going to make you feel really good right now and what's going to make us feel connected and strong and a little bit cheeky and a little bit, you know, excited about each other. Because you can pull that off in a 24-hour day, you know.

Yeah. In your profession, you know, this is what you think about all the time. What, you know, if you were to say just, you know, there's a couple things that if people could just do these two or three things, it would change their life. Two or three things to change your life. Just from a, you know, being able to kind of experience the sexual intimacy that we know is really is correlated with longevity and happiness and fulfillment. I think aim for pleasure, not performance, learn how to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a superpower, and it's going to create such a beautiful life for you, the people around you, and, you know, if you have younger people that you take care of,

it's going to create a great foundation for them to also have a better life. And then again, come back to curiosity and have some fucking fun, just have some fun. You know, life doesn't have to be so serious. There's enough. There's so much serious stuff going on in the world. Look for the glimmers. Look for the fun. And be kind to each other.

Always. I love that. But don't stand for bullshit. But be kind to each other. Yeah. I'm thinking of that Taylor Swift song, Marjorie. She says something to that effect. Yeah.

It's like this idea of like, you know, like there's a difference between trusting and, you know, being gullible and kind of knowing the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I love that. Thank you. That was beautiful. And thanks so much for having me. I've had such a great time talking to you. You're just phenomenal. Well, your expertise is, you know, mind-blowing and really appreciate you being able to share your wisdom with our listeners. I know they're going to appreciate it.

Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question what's answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast at Woop.com. Call us 508, 443, 4952. If you think about joining Whoop, you can visit whoop.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial membership. New members can use the code Will,

W-I-L, to get a $60 credit on Whoop accessories when you enter the code at checkout. That's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the Whoop podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.