Transcript of #246 Vanessa Marin - Sex Doctor Explains Why Bad Sex Destroys Marriages and How to Prevent It

Vanessa Morin. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Well, me too. We cover a lot of dark stuff on this show, so I wanted to lighten it up a little bit, and I thought you'd be a perfect guest. Here we go. It's going to be all about sex therapy.

Yeah. I just want to say I really appreciate you being willing to open up this conversation. It's a tough one for There's so many people. What I can say, having been in this field for over 20 years and talking to hundreds of thousands of people, I think so many of us are desperate for more from our relationships. We want more connection, more closeness, more intimacy. So many of us are wondering, what happened to that couple who is madly in love, who couldn't keep their hands off of each other? What have we become now? I've really made it my to try to bridge that gap in relationships, to try to help save relationships. The good news is there are a lot of really practical things that we can do to recreate that intimacy. My goal is that by the end of this episode, your audience is going to feel inspired, they're going to feel motivated, and they're going to have a couple of practical tools that they're excited to start putting to use right away.

Man, I love to hear that. It's just nice to have a lighter subject to talk about. Do you Do you know who Dr. Rena Malik is?

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, we just had her on.

Oh, she's great.

It's like the forbidden topic that you just don't talk about in public. I thought that was an amazing conversation. We haven't even released it yet. We've been trying to get you on here for at least a couple of months, I know. Yeah, thank you for coming. But everybody starts off with an introduction here. Vanessa Morin, a licensed psychotherapist with over 20 years of clinical experience in sex therapy, helping countless couples improve intimacy. A Brown University graduate with dual bachelor's degree in human sexuality and sociology. A master's degree in counseling psychology, co founder of Vanessa and Xander, Alongside Your Husband, where you built a library of online courses and tools that real couples use to reclaim their spark. A best-selling author of the book, Sex Talks: Five Conversations that will Transform your Love Life. You've also turned this book into a card deck of prompts to deepen connection and spark intimacy.

We might have to open some of them.

All right on. Let's do it. Before we get too far into the interview, everybody gets a gift.

Oh, I'm so excited.

Vigilance to lead Gummy Bearers, legal in all 50 states. It's just candy.

I'm very excited about these. I listened to your episode with Gabrielle. Oh, cool.

You know Gabrielle, too?

I do, yeah. She's a new friend of mine, and she didn't get hers. I was like, I really hope I get my gummy bears.

Then we'll send you an extra one I got a lot of feedback for her. Then I have a Patreon account. We've turned it into one hell of a community, and they've been with us since the beginning. This is the reason I get to be here with you today. One of the things we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is from Terry Lacketsky. I was in a 14-year abusive marriage and I'm returning to single life. How do you suggest setting boundaries in today's dating world, reclaiming sexual health, and what are your recommendations for meeting someone new?

Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm really excited for this person to get back out there and to be in a healthier relationship. Obviously, there's a lot of grief and sadness of having to process that and move on, but I'm super excited for them to find somebody new and find something better. I think a great starting point would be to take some time to reflect on what you learned about yourself in that past relationship, and in particular, what you learned about your sexuality. We can always take all of our experiences and figure out what are things that I want to replicate in the future and what are things that I do not want again in the future. Particularly when it comes to sex, I would think about what were some of my favorite experiences, what were the times that I felt the most connected to my partner, and what were the things that I didn't enjoy so much, and have those be your barometers going forward and what you're looking for in a partner. Then what I always say to people from the beginning, when you're starting a relationship, actually, our book is such a great resource because a lot of people will tell us, Oh, I'm not in a relationship.

I can't read it. But it's actually really useful to get started on a good foot right when you're getting started with a new relationship. Yeah, start talking about sex. Obviously not on your first date in the first five minutes, but get a sense of how comfortable or not comfortable that person is with their sex life. So once you've gotten a couple of dates in, maybe just ask a pretty general question like, what's your relationship with sex? How important is sex to you? What does physical intimacy mean to you? Something more open like that so you can just get a sense of who that person is.

Great. Great. Love that answer. Right at the very beginning, you were talking about you see couples and they're all lovey-dovey and touching each other and very affectionate. And then as time goes on, it dwindles away. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it doesn't come back, and things just get totally out of whack. Why does that happen in most couples?

Well, first of all, I just wanted to- Or does it happen in most couples?

Does it happen in all couples?

It absolutely does happen in most, if not all couples. Xander and I always like to normalize this by saying it happened in our relationship. I was already in this field. I'd already been doing research and studying, and the exact same thing happened to us. When we met, the chemistry was instantaneous. We both took it as, this is a sign from the universe, this is my person. We're hitting it off so well. Then a year or two into the relationship, and all of a sudden, I'm having this experience of sitting on a couch in our living room. He's sitting on another couch on the opposite side of the room. We're in our ratty pajamas. We're eating takeout straight from the containers. We've had exhausting days at work. We're watching some crappy Bravo TV show that I probably forced him to watch. I remember having the thought, I don't remember the last time we had sex. At first, it was just an observation like, Yeah, when was it? Then it hit me like a tidal wave. I don't remember the last time we were intimate, and I'm not sure I even have really been missing it all that much.

I've had that experience of what the heck happened to us. Why did we go from this incredible chemistry to I can't even remember. There are a bunch of different reasons why this happened. Let's start with first just purely physiological. Our bodies are not capable of sustaining that level of intensity for longer than 6-12 months. The chemical processes that happen on our brain are so intense, so overwhelming. It's the equivalent of being high on cocaine, essentially. We're literally addicted to that person. We can't get enough of them, right? But our brains are just physiologically incapable of maintaining those same levels of neurotransmitters for longer than about a year, if you're lucky. Physically, it's just not even possible. But making it even worse, a lot of us take our foot off the gas once we've gotten into a relationship. If you think about every romance that you've seen on TV and in the movies, the focus is always on getting the girl, right? Or getting together. There's something that's in your way, something little you have to overcome, and then now you're together and you live happily ever after. And so many of us have that idea in our heads of that's how it goes.

Once I get the person, once I lock them down, we're committed, we're married, whatever it is, we're good, right? And so a lot of us just go into coasting mode, and we stop doing the things that helped us feel so connected to our person in the first place.

Before we go too far into this, I just have a couple of theories. Sure. So when you were saying your husband and you were sitting on the couch eating takeout again, that to me, if I eat like shit, it's not happening. Oh, yeah. If I don't feel good, it's not happening. That's not just me. That's my wife, too. If we gorge on fast food, takeout, pizza, pretty much anything, and then we feel like shit by the end of the night, it's like you don't feel... I don't feel comfortable in my own skin, so it's just not going to happen.

Can I tell you one of my favorite rules for your sex life? Yeah. Okay, it's called fuck first. Nice. Before you go out to eat, go to a party, any event, have sex first. So many of us have this idea, especially with date night. We think, Oh, you go out to the restaurant, you have a nice date, and then you come home and you have sex. But let's be real. You go out to the restaurant, you over eat, you over drink, you come home, you're bloated, you're gassy, you're uncomfortable, you just want to put on your PJs and put Netflix on and sit on the couch. Nobody wants to have sex after a big date night out. So this is something so practical, so simple, but it's literally game-changing. Have sex first, then go out on date night. Then you're not going to be bloated, too full. Also, it feels like this sexy little surprise between the two of you, this little secret between the two of you. The date night just feels even more fun and flirty than it would otherwise.

Nice. Great suggestion. Question. And then my other theory is that people just eventually just, I don't know any other way to say it, they just let themselves go. We talk about this a lot with people like Dr. Gabriele Lyons and a lot of the other doctors that I've had, not in a sexual way, but Gabriele talks about it. It's like you wind up in the cycle and it's like, you eat like shit. Then you're like, Oh, I did it last time. What's one more day? What's one more piece of candy? What's one more bag of gummy bears? And then it just keeps going and going and going. I think that maybe that's why you get these long periods of no sex with your significant other partner, spouse, whatever. Am I right on that?

Absolutely. Yeah. The way that we take care of our body heavily impacts our desire for sex, how we show up during sex. I can tell a little bit of Xander's story, too. At the beginning of our relationship, he was in a really stressful job, working very long hours, trying to climb that corporate ladder, be a good provider, and he started stress eating. All of a sudden, he's gained a lot of weight. He was feeling really uncomfortable in his own body. He would tell you the story, This is not a secret or anything. He was just feeling really uncomfortable in his own skin, and his sex drive really suffered because of that. I've gone through similar phases in my own life, too, where life gets in the way and you just get off your routine and you really feel that impact. I think that's actually one of the amazing invitations that our sex life offers to us. I'm sure we'll get into this more, but we have this tendency to think of sex as just this purely physical act, but I really believe it's so much more than that. It invites us to take a look at how are we really treating our bodies?

How are we taking care of ourselves? Because if you're treating your body like crap, you're not going to want to be intimate with your partner. You're not going to be able to perform super well with your partner. The desire is just not going to be there. How we treat our bodies is an incredibly important part of our sex life.

Okay. What are the other reasons? Are there other reasons?

A lot of it is just letting life get in the way, too. We're all busy. We're all We're so busy. We have a million things on our plate, a million things going through our minds at all times. It's very easy for us to just take our relationships for granted and think like, That's my person. I locked it down. They're always going to be there. We let them drop farther and farther and farther down our priority list until the point where they really feel more like roommates rather than romantic partners. I mean, most couples will say, We're like two ships passing in the night, or we're business partners in managing a household, managing the kids schedules and all the stuff, but that spark between the two of us is gone. It's really we've stopped making space for each other to connect with each other, to spend time with each other, to remind ourselves like, Oh, yeah, I like you. You're fun to spend time with.

What about fear of asking?

Oh, yeah. Initiating is wildly, wildly vulnerable. You're talking about initiating sex in particular? Yeah. We don't give enough credit to how vulnerable it is to initiate. In male-female relationships, it's almost always the man who's doing the initiating. That's the idea that we have. Yeah, the guy is supposed to want it more, so he's supposed to initiate. I think as women, a lot of us don't recognize how vulnerable that is, how hard it is to put yourself out there and ask to be intimate. You're putting yourself in the position to be turned down. Anytime you get turned down for anything, it But particularly when it's around something as intimate as sex, it really hurts. This is another area where I think we really get ourselves into a lot of trouble by thinking of sex as this purely physical act. A lot of women, their partner will initiate, and a lot of women will be annoyed by it. You want to have sex now? Can't you see I'm in the middle of something? We just had sex a couple of days ago. It feels annoying. A lot of times that's because men are initiating and annoying ways because it's so vulnerable.

You guys do the like, you're trying to joke about it instead. It's trying to get a little plausible deniability. One of the classic ones is like the old boob hunk. He comes up behind her while she's washing the dishes and gives her a little hong kong, and she's like, Leave me alone. Get off of me. And he's, Oh, I was just joking. I was just messing around with you. That wasn't trying to initiate. You're trying to get some plausible deniability, right? To make it sting less when you get a no. But of course, it's an annoying initiation. And so you're more likely, ironically, to get a no from her. But as women, a lot of us will, yeah, we'll get annoyed and, Just leave me alone. Go away some other time. And we don't recognize in that moment that what our partner is really doing, even if he's doing it really immaturely, really unskillfully, what he's actually asking in that moment is, I want to feel close to you right now. Will you connect with me right now? That's something that I tell women all the time. Imagine in moment that that's actually what he's saying to you.

You wouldn't respond with, Leave me alone. Get out of here, if you actually recognize that that's what he's saying. I want to feel close to you right now.

How should men be asking or women?

First of all, I think everyone needs to initiate. I think it's really important for both partners in the relationship. It's not about sex drive. I don't care who has the higher drive or the lower drive. I think both partners need to be willing to be that vulnerable and initiate with each other. It's not fair for it just to be put solely on one person's shoulders. That's a big part of it. But one of the things that we go over in sex talks is a model that Xander and I came up with called the Initiation Style. Have you heard of the Love Languages model? It's That idea that we all like to give and receive love in different ways. It's very similar to that. We all like to be initiated with in different ways. If you don't know your partner's style, you're likely initiating in a way that doesn't really work for them, and you're more likely to get that like, Leave me reaction. It's understanding, finding out what style your partner is and what's going to work for them. I'll give you a couple of examples. One of the types is called take care of me.

A lot of women tend to be of this type, where we want to feel like there's emotional connection first. You care about me as a human. You're interested in me. You want to spend a little quality time with me. We're easing into it rather than just zero to 100. For somebody who's of that type, a really successful way to initiate might be something like, Hey, babe, I'm going to handle bedtime with the kids tonight. Why don't you go take a bath, relax, and then you and I can meet in the bedroom in about half an hour? Something like that would feel so good for so many women. Versus, I'll give you a totally different type, it is called the play with me type, where you like initiation to be more playful and silly. Xander and I do this type a lot. We'll be watching a football game and we'll make a bet on who's going to win this game. Okay, whoever wins this bet, they get to decide what sex they want to have tonight. We're being silly about it or we'll have a secret emoji that we send to each other, and that means, Hey, I'm interested right now.

Oh, nice. It's more playful, right? So you can see that those are two very different kinds of styles. And if you're initiating in the style that's not really what your partner likes, it's probably not going to land as well.

I mean, can you just ask?

Yeah, you absolutely can. I do But I do think that in general, that's one of the best ways to go about it. Like I was saying, a lot of men are doing it in these jokey ways or these roundabout ways. Sometimes it's even just like they give you a hug and you're like, okay, I know what you're doing. I know what this means. This hug is lasting a little long or the back massage. Oh, babe, I'll give you a back massage. You're like, This is going to be 10 seconds of a back massage, and then your hands are going to start moving somewhere else. Oh, man. I think that if we were more verbal about it, in those moments when you're using your words. Everybody knows what's going on. We're not fool each other. Then you're doing this whole like, nobody's saying anything, but we're communicating back and forth to each other anyway. It's like, let's just say it. Hey, do you want to be intimate with me? Hey, I would like to I'm so close to you right now. One of my favorite techniques that Xander and I have actually been experimenting with a lot recently is we're separating the initiation from the actual sex.

For a lot of women, and this is true for me, I've experienced this a lot, when Xander initiates with me, it can often feel like a pop quiz in the moment. It's like, Oh, wait, you want to have sex right now? I wasn't even thinking about sex right now. I feel caught off guard. I feel like I'm already behind in a sense. It's very easy for me to give this knee jerk like, Oh, no, I'm not turned on right now. No, I don't want to. But I really want people to get used to the idea that we don't have to be turned on in order to initiate or to to say yes to sex. But what we've started doing is creating more space between that so that I don't get that pop quiz feeling. Oftentimes, we'll talk about it in the morning. We'll say, Hey, I would like to be intimate with you today. What does our schedule look like? What would be the best time for that to happen. If one person has way more on their plate than the other, Hey, can I take this off your plate? Maybe we can collaborate on this.

Maybe we can push that off till tomorrow. We're working together as a team to figure out when's the best time and the best way for us to be intimate. It makes it feel like it's a collaboration. It's not one person putting themselves out there being really vulnerable. It's both of us saying, Hey, this is important to us. We want to make sure there's time for us in this crazy busy day. That has felt so nice for us lately. I think it's a great tip for a lot of couples to try out.

All right. I mean, how much sex should we be having?

That's the age-old question, right? They're really truly is no perfect answer. Every couple is so unique, and I know this is a very unsatisfying answer. We all want to hear this magic number. I think a lot of us have a lot of anxiety about our sex life. Am I having enough? Are we normal? We want something simple and concrete, just tell me the number and we can do it. But here's what happens. Let's say I say three times a week is the perfect amount of time. If you're pushing yourselves to have sex just to hit a quota, it's probably not going to be very good sex. There's a huge connection between our enjoyment of sex and our desire for it. If we are not enjoying the sex we're having, we're not going to desire it. It doesn't make any sense to. Trying to just hit that quota really doesn't work. So it really is very neat. What do you mean?

Who doesn't enjoy having sex?

Oh, Sean. So many people. What? And mostly women. There are so many women out there who are not enjoying the sex that they're having. I'll tell you why. It's not any fault of men. It's not any fault of any of ours. But the way that we are taught to have sex heavily prioritizes male pleasure. I'll go into the full science geek out on you here. What's happening when we have intercourse, intercourse is not the most pleasurable activity for women. We actually pulled our audience before We have over a million people in our community on Instagram, and we asked women, Is intercourse the most pleasurable activity for you? I want you to guess what percentage of women said, Yes, it is. Intercourse is the most pleasurable activity for me.

We just said it's not very many. I know.

I set you up a little bit.

40%.

Nine.

Wait, what? Nine %?

Nine % of women.

Enjoy sexual intercourse.

Say that intercourse. Say that intercourse is the most pleasurable activity for them. No kidding. 9%. All right, what's the most pleasurable? Here's why. It's because when we're having intercourse, we're getting stimulation in our vagina. Our vaginas do not have very many nerve endings in them. Think about how intense childbirth is. If we had even more nerve endings there, that would not be a good thing. We're getting stimulation of a part of our body that just is hardwired not to feel a ton of sensation. The most sensitive part of our body as women is the clitoris. The clitoris is this incredible organ. It's the only organ in the entire human body that exists solely for the purpose of pleasure. The penis has reproductive functions. The clitoris is just purely for pleasure. The clitoris has about 8,000-10,000 nerve endings in it. And compare that to the penis, it has 2,000-3,000. We have way more nerve endings, way more sensitivity. This This is where I can science geek out on you. When we are fetuses in the womb, we all start off essentially with no gender. Then around 11 weeks or so, that's when we start to differentiate into male or female.

The analogy I always It's like, imagine a ball of clay. I could take a ball of clay and I could form it into a mug, or I could take that same ball of clay and I could form it into a plate. It's the same ball of clay that I'm starting with. I'm just making different shapes out of it. The same tissues that make the penis make the clitoris. Same tissues, they're just turned into different shapes. The problem is when we're having intercourse, we're not getting clitoral stimulation. We're not getting the most sensitive part of our body stimulated. The comparison that I always like to make is that intercourse for a woman, from a nerve-ending standpoint, it's like playing with a man's balls. That might be fun. That might feel But is it going to be enough stimulation for you to have an orgasm? Definitely not. But that's what we're doing to women is we're stimulating this part of our body that's not really designed to feel a lot of pleasure. Then so many of us women are feeling like something's wrong with us or broken with us for not enjoying intercourse.

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The G-Spot is a really interesting thing. There actually isn't consensus in the sex therapy field about whether or not the G-Spot actually exists. What we do know is it's not really a spot in the sense of a button that you just press. It's a zone. Yeah, there's a zone. There's a network of tissues that are there. What they are around is the legs of the clitoris. Most of us think of the clitoris as just the little button, but it actually It extends up into the body. It's like a wishbone shape, exactly like a wishbone shape. The legs of it are called the crura. Around the bottom of the legs, that's where the G-Spot area is. When you're stimulating the spot from inside the vagina, you're stimulating the clitoris. It's still the clitoris. You're just going through the walls of tissue and muscle in the vagina. Got you. It's still the clitoris. Got you.

All right. How do women like to be pleasure if it's not through intercourse?

With hands and mouths, tend to be way more successful at helping her reach orgasm. You're going to be a lot more successful that way. But that doesn't mean that intercourse can't be enjoyable, can't be intimate. You can also add clitoral stimulation. You use your hand, she uses her own hand, you could use a toy, but you have to make sure there's some clitoral stimulation happening. I tell men, you have to think of the clitorus as the penis. Imagine if you're having sex, but you're getting no stimulation of your penis, you're not going to enjoy it. We need to treat the clitorus in the exact same way because it's the same tissues, it's the same organ, the same purpose there. We need to make sure the clitorus is always invited to the party.

Interesting. Okay. All right, where do we go from here?

Where did we start? We were talking about...

We wanted to bring up... Initiation. Yeah, we were talking about initiation. Okay, so we talked about, yeah, initiation, how to initiate, and then we got into only 9% of women enjoy sexual intercourse. But let's talk about How do we start the conversations in your book? Acknowledgment, connection, desire, pleasure, exploration.

Okay. Everybody knows, you've heard the advice, we should be talking about sex. When you're up late at night and you're incognito on your phone googling, why aren't we having sex anymore? It's always at the end of every article, talk to your partner about it. But the problem is nobody ever tells you how to have those conversations. Even when Xander and I were going through a tough period in our own relationship, even though I was in this field, I couldn't find any resources about how do we talk about our sex life, how do we talk about what's happening between the two of Actually, the very first conversation that Xander and I ever had about our sex life was in bed late at night. I had been hoping that he was going to initiate, and he just rolled over to go to bed, and I said, Why don't you want to have sex with me anymore? Just blurted it out. I was pissed off. As you can imagine, that conversation did not go very well. He got really defensive. He was hurt. He'd been about to go to sleep, and now all of a sudden, he's being attacked by his wife.

It did not go Very well. We decided, years later, once we had finally gotten through that tough stage of our relationship, started building this business, we went back to that initial idea of conversation. We thought, I want to help couples talk about their sex life in a more productive and open and positive way. They're not making the same mistake that we did of waiting till there's a problem, and then you only talk about the problems. We laid out, we picked, Okay, these are the five conversations that I think every couple, whether you're in a great place or you're really struggling, every couple could benefit from having these five specific conversations. We laid them out in a specific order, too. We really wanted to give couples specific instructions of exactly what to do, exactly what to say, how to say it, when to say it. What we start with, the very first conversation is called acknowledgement. It's literally just getting comfortable with sex as a topic of conversation. Most of us, we all grow up being taught to be embarrassed and ashamed of sex. I don't know about you, but I certainly got that message that sex was taboo.

We don't talk about it openly. It's inappropriate. None of us have developed that skill of how do I even say the words out loud sometimes. This conversation helps you create that foundation of just getting comfortable saying the words. You can talk about, Hey, what do we want to do for sex tonight? The same way that you might talk about what we want to have for dinner tonight. One of the The starting points that we give is to start talking about sex in just a positive way. This is not the time to make any complaints. There's no criticism. There's no trying to solve any problems. None of that. It's literally just getting comfortable saying the words out loud. One of my favorite conversation openers is to ask, what are some of your favorite sexual memories with me? Just that. Ask your partner to share a memory. If you're worried about them feeling nervous, you can go first and share one yours. I like saying something like, it just randomly popped into my head the other day, that trip that we took to Mexico on our anniversary, that time we barely left the hotel room. It was just a fun little memory that I thought of.

Or you can even say you had a dream about it. You know what I had a dream about last night? So you're just sharing it in a positive way. And just leave it there. Don't go into, Oh, what happened to us? We haven't done that in a long time. Just leave it there. Have a positive conversation. All positive. Yeah, keep it positive. So eventually, you start building that foundation, and the two of you start realizing, Hey, it can actually be fun to talk about sex. It can feel connecting to talk about sex. It doesn't feel as scary and taboo anymore.

So how often should that conversation be happening? How long should couples be talking about sex?

I think you should be talking about sex at least a couple of times a week. A couple of times a week? Yeah. I think it's fun to talk about it, not always talking about your sex life. Xander and I, with our Instagram account, we designed so much of our content to just open up conversations between couples, not about your sex life. We'll answer a question from someone in our community, and you could show that to your partner. Like, Oh, this is a really interesting question. It has nothing to do with us or our sex life, but what did you think about the advice they gave? Did you agree? Did you disagree? One of my favorite series that we do is we act out horrible sex positions that we find online. We're making total fool of ourselves, twist it over upside down. There's no way this position could work. It's just send that to your partner and laugh about that. Look at these guys acting like total idiots on the internet. I thought this woman was supposed to be a professional. Just laugh about it. This is silly. This is funny. It's not that every conversation has to be that you're trying to achieve something.

It just becomes this more comfortable topic between the two of you.

When do you advise people to bring these conversations up? Is there a window that we're looking for here?

Start now.

Start now. Spontaneously, just bring it up?

Yeah. I mean, read the room. If your partner is in the middle of doing a ton of things or obviously really stressed out in a bad mood, probably that's not going to be the best time to like, Hey, babe, what's your favorite sexual memory with me? Maybe more a quiet time, maybe before bed between the two of you or if you're out on a walk together, something like that. Okay.

Acknowledgment to?

Connection. Connection is a second conversation. We like to think of physical and emotional intimacy as two sides of the same coin. A lot of people were surprised to see that, Oh, one of the five conversations is about emotional intimacy. I thought this book was about sex. But we really think that physical and emotional intimacy are just deeply entwined. This can be an issue for a lot of couples. We've found people tend to be ball into one of two camps. You either want to feel feel emotionally connected before you have sex, or sex for you is a way that opens up emotional connection. That's how you feel the most connected to your partner. Do you have a sense of what type you might be? Do you like to feel connected beforehand, or is sex a way that you feel the most connected?

Probably the way I feel most connected.

Yeah, that's pretty typical for men. Xander and I are actually the reverse of the typical gender dynamic. I like sex as a way of opening up connection, too. This is another way that men, women really misunderstand each other because like I said, most people tend to fall into the woman's the one who wants to feel emotionally connected before sex, but the man is the one who feels more connected through sex. It can lead to this standoff where the classic fight is the woman will say, Well, why would I want to have sex with you right now? I don't feel connected to you at all. The man will say, Yeah, we're connected. That's why we should have sex. It feels like this horrible standoff of who to go first. What we forget in that conversation is we both want both things. This is just such a classic way that men and women misunderstand each other. We both want to feel emotionally connected and close to each other, and we both want to feel physically connected, physically close to each other. But we wind up in this stalemate of feeling like, You don't understand me. You want something totally different.

It's really important to recognize that that's what we're both wanting. That's why, like I said earlier, I think it's so important for women to recognize when your man is initiating with you, what he's really saying is, I want to feel close to you right now. I think this is a way that men sabotage their ability to have more sex with their partner is that they don't share with her that emotional component of sex. So many women, they think, he's just horny. He just wants to get off. I could be any warm body. It doesn't matter. And a lot of men, they just perpetuate that stereotype because they never share that actual intimacy part of it. So one of the best ways to do this is right after sex. A lot of men will say, That's when I feel the closest to my partner. I'm the most open, I'm vulnerable. That's when I feel the closest. But what do most of us do right after we have sex? We jump up and we go about our day. We get on our phones, we go to the bathroom. We're missing that opportunity. I call that after care, that moment after sex to really linger in that, in that intimacy that you've just built and created.

If a man were to tell his partner, just like, I feel so close to you right now. I love you. That was amazing. Thank you. It doesn't have to be complicated. Something simple like that, that would go a really long way in helping women recognize like, Oh, this isn't just a physical release that he's looking for. He actually wants to connect with me.

Okay. Anything that men should do before?

Before? Yes. I always used to use the phrase, Women want more emotional intimacy. Xander and I had so many great conversations about this. He told me, I know a lot of men, we hear the phrase emotional intimacy, and we don't know what that means. It just feels big and scary and like, I don't know. As men, you're socialized not to be emotional, right? You're not supposed to show your feelings. That's not what a real man does. It's harder for you guys to understand what that means.

I think a lot of people think it means that it's... I mean, What am I trying to say here?

When I say the phrase, If your wife were to say, I want us to feel more emotionally intimate, what would you think?

I would take that. I'm probably way off here. I would take that as, I need to be romanced into it, and it's going to become this big, long, drawn-out period of time where, I don't know, maybe it's flowers cooking for you. It becomes this long process to get to sex.

That sounds like a lot of work.

Sounds like a lot of work. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of planning.

Okay. Yeah. Versus just saying it.

It feels overwhelming.

I got to do this every time. There's only so much time we have in the day, and I have to do this whole thing every time. Yeah, so it sounds overwhelming, right? So that's what Xander really helped me understand about men. It feels overwhelming for us, and we don't know what to do. I think there's a lot of... Like he shared with me, that sometimes I feel embarrassed about that. I don't know, I'm not that classic buy you flowers and write you poems guy. So I feel like I don't even know how to do this, and that feels a little bit embarrassing. So what I realized in talking to women is, sure, flowers are nice, planning a date night, those things are nice. But really what women are looking for is we just want to know that you're interested in us.

That's what I was going to ask, what a simple compliment.

Exactly. We just want to know that you're interested in us and getting to know us and who we are and what our experience is like. So many women say, It feels like all day my husband just ignores me, and then as soon as he wants sex, then he's all over me. But I'm like, Hey, what about the rest of the day? You haven't shown any interest in me whatsoever. So just show some interest in her. Ask her about her day and actually pay attention to her answer, or ask her a more interesting question than, How was your day? Hey, what's something you've been thinking about lately? Just be nice to her. Give her a compliment. Again, it doesn't have to be complicated. You look really beautiful today. Your eyes are just sparkling today. Man, you look so good. Touch her. This is one of the most interesting things that we've heard from women. Women want more touch throughout the day. We don't want you to just touch us when you want sex because that makes it feel like you're just trying to get something out of us. We want to feel that interest from you all throughout the day.

So give her a hug and then back away. Don't let it linger and your hands start to creep down to her butt. Give her a kiss and then walk away.

We can't help it sometimes.

I promise you, there's nothing that turns a on more than a little tease. We like that. You get something started and then you walk away. There's no pressure. There's no expectation. Let us come to you a little bit more. But yeah, let's not think of emotional intimacy as this huge, overwhelming filming, scary topic. Let's boil it down into a smaller thing. Just say nice things to her. Give her a compliment every once in a while. Give her a hug out of the blue. That's what's really going to make her feel more connected to you.

I mean, before we move on to the next one, I want to ask, do you have a Do you have an idea of how many men they want to see their partner climax during sex?

Oh, every man. I would think every man wants that. Every man. Yeah. This is another thing that a lot of women misunderstand. I don't think we give men enough credit for how much they genuinely want to please us. Of course, there are assholes out there, of course, men and women. But the vast majority of men, especially if you're in a relationship with somebody, you care about her pleasure. You want her to have a good time. The problem is that us women, we've been fed so much crap about our pleasure for our entire lives. We've been taught to believe that our bodies They're icky and weird and gross. Our pleasure is so complicated, and the clitoris is so mysterious, and where is it? Does it even exist? We've been taught to be caretakers, so it feels selfish to us to be the center of attention, to let ourselves receive from our partners. We have all the misinformation about how our orgasm really works. I always share very openly, I struggled with my orgasm for years. I never orgasmed with a partner until I met Xander. It wasn't because my partners didn't care. It was because I was dealing with my own crap around allowing myself to receive pleasure and understanding how my body worked, even being a freaking sex therapist.

I still struggled with that. Wow. So men genuinely want their partner to feel good. I think it feels good to a man to provide pleasure to a woman. I think a lot of women don't get that. A lot of women, we sabotage our own ability to feel that pleasure because we won't allow him to focus on us. We fake orgasms, so he gets the idea that what he's doing is working even though it's not. We tell him, we let him touch us for a few seconds. Like, Okay, let's move on. It's fine. You don't have to. Go ahead. You It's like men are trying to give us a gift, and we are pushing it away.

Why are women faking orgasms?

Because it feels easier. I faked a lot of orgasms in my life, and there were a lot of reasons for it. Sometimes it was Primarily, it was I didn't know what I needed, and so it felt embarrassing. I felt like, I don't know what to tell a partner. I don't know how to instruct him, so I might as well just fake it instead of making him fumble around, and neither of us really knows what we're doing. That was the primary reason. But sometimes it was just, I just want sex to be over. I'm ready for it to be done. A lot of times it was, I want him to feel like he's done a good job. I want him to get to have that experience of like, Oh, I made her feel so good. I made her orgasm. I was thinking so much more about my partner's experience and their pleasure than my own experience. That's what so many of us women are we're socialized to do. It's more important for him to have a good experience, more important to pay attention to him and make sure he feels feels good and his ego is protected and we can sacrifice ourselves.

I really want women to stop doing that. Is this the overwhelming- For ourselves and to recognize that men don't want us to be doing that either.

Is this the overwhelming majority of women that do this?

Oh, yeah.

Is it? Yeah.

There's not any proper scientific research that I've seen on the numbers, but we've pulled our community before and something like 95% of women said that they've faked at least once in their life. We asked if you're currently faking orgasm with your partner. I believe it was around 37% of women said.

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Some women will say, I don't fake it, but it just doesn't happen. And neither of us, we don't talk about it openly, so it just happens like that. So that's another big percentage of women, too, that they're not necessarily faking it, but they're still not them.

Well, that's not good.

It's not good. I mentioned earlier, the connection between enjoyment and desire. It sounds so obvious, but most of us don't make that connection. The dynamic that I hear about the most frequently is the woman's the one that has lower desire. It's always the woman, and she's always blaming herself. What's wrong with me? I must be broken. Something must be wrong with me. It's all my fault. My husband always wants sex, and I never want it. What they don't recognize is that connection between enjoyment and desire. If you are not enjoying the sex that you're having, it makes zero sense for you to crave it. I call this the mushy broccoli problem. Do you ever find yourself just absolutely craving a bowl of steamed, mushy, unseasoned broccoli? No. No? Do you think anything is wrong with you? No. For not wanting that? Of course not. But the same thing is true with sex. There are so many women who, again, it's not a fault, it's not their fault, it's not their partner's fault. It's just this misinformation and misunderstandings. But there's so many women who are having mushy broccoli sex and then beating themselves up for not wanting more of it.

So the problem is not when a woman comes to us and says, I have a low libido, fix me. Do I take the supplements? Do I take the pills? What do I do? The first question we ask her is, Tell us about the sex that you do have.

I think that a bad sex life in monogamous relationships leads to... I think that's the stem of a lot of problems that we see with couples today.

I agree with you.

I think it all... I don't know. I think that bad sex life stems from self-confidence. I believe that, and believe, that could be way off, but that's why you're here. Then I think that the marital problems, a lot of marital problems stem from an unhealthy sex life.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I'm glad that you're saying this, because this is the battle that Xander and I are constantly fighting in our business is trying to help people realize sex is not just sex. Sex is not just putting body parts in other body parts. Sex is the way we express This love for each other. Sex is the way that we create intimacy with each other, that we feel close to each other. It's a way that we play together. It's a way we explore ourselves and each other. It's a way we're vulnerable and open and raw with each other. It's this thing that we do that we don't do with anybody else in our lives. It's this special thing that just the two of us do. It's not just this act that we do, it's a journey that we take together. If that connection isn't in place in a relationship, there are so many other aspects that are going to be damaged. I don't think that you can have a healthy relationship without a healthy active sex life. Aside from a very small percentage of people who are asexual, I don't think you can have a healthy sex life with it.

Can you pick out in couples who have a healthy sex life and who doesn't? Can you see it immediately?

You can. I have I've never been tested on this. Maybe if somebody wants to fund some testing, see how good my radar is on this. But I can usually sense it. Yeah, you can see it's in the way a couple looks at each other. Do they make eye contact with each other? Do they touch each other? Is there that mischievous little grin they have when they look at each other? Are they standing close to each other? There's a lot of body language between a couple that's connected versus a couple that's disconnected.

How many couples do you think there are that have bad sex life?

I would venture to say the majority of couples. I'd say it's more common to have a bad sex life than a good one.

Bad.

I know. It bums me out. It really bums me out. That's why I'm so passionate about doing this work is that I want more people to be able to be connected, to be able to experience it. Because most of us have had that experience of great sex where it just I'm curious for you. You don't have to share any specific detail, but when you've had really great sex, what mindset does that take you to? What do you feel afterwards?

I've been What do I... I feel great. I feel confident. I feel closer to my wife. I think it relieves a lot of stress. Oh, yeah. Huge stress. Yeah, that's what comes to my head.

Yeah, it's an amazing experience. There's this high that we get. We actually have really great research showing that when a couple has great sex, there's an emotional high that lingers for about 24 to 48 hours afterwards. There's this afterglow that we experience. Then on the other hand, how about you guess this? If a couple is feeling disconnected sexually or they've had a bad sexual experience, how long will that last?

I have no idea.

72 hours.

72 hours.

There's a bigger impact from having disconnection than there is from having good connection. Wow. Yeah. Wow. If we're disconnected from our partner, not only are we missing out on that confidence, that closeness, that top of the world, I've got all the energy My stress is relieved. We're missing out on that feeling, and we're having this longer period of feeling really low.

Man. I think the other thing I feel is I'm like, it sounds probably weird, but I'm proud of us, that we have a healthy, sucks life. Because I see other couples. I just see it. I'm like, Yeah, they're not.

Yeah.

They're not getting late over there.

That's such a thing. So you have the radar, too. Yeah, I have the radar.

I see it. It's like, oh, man.

Yeah. That's a really cool feeling to feel proud of yourselves. How cool of a feeling is that? Hey, I'm so proud of us that we have all the stuff in the world stacked up against the sex life. We're all so busy. We're stressed out. We don't have any time. The kids get in the way. There's no privacy. There's so much stacked up against us. To be able to really say, You know what? You and I, we prioritize each other. We don't make excuses. We don't settle. We are willing to make that time, to make that effort, to prioritize as us to make sure we don't get lost in all the craziness of the world.

I mean, is it attractive for women? I mean, it's attractive for me to see that my wife cares about how she looks. She cares about how she dresses around the house. We've been through two pregnancies and things can get lax during pregnancy. You know what I mean? And then it takes a little bit to get back on track But when I see my wife putting in the effort to look good, you know what I mean? I think when she sees me putting in the same effort, I think that shit is extremely important.

Yeah, because it reminds us of the beginning of the relationship. We put so much effort, and we want to put our best foot forward for our partner. I want to look good for you. I want to impress you. I want you to think that I'm sexy and attractive and admire me. That's so much fun to feel that feeling. That's what happens. A lot of us let our foot off the gas. We Coast, we stop taking care of ourselves. I got it locked down. I don't have to work at this anymore. But I think it's very, very attractive for people to see their partner still making that effort. I think that's what real intimacy is in a long-term relationship. I love with Xander. I love that I can have those days where, Hey, I'm not feeling my hottest. I can put on my sweats. I can wear your T-shirt. I can have my hair just in a messy bun, and he still thinks I'm attractive, and I feel safe, and I feel comfortable around him. I'm still, the majority of the time, making an effort to take care of myself, to look good for him, to be the person that he's going to be proud to have on his arm.

It's like both. Being able to have both, I think, is really nice.

How do you open up communication when one of the other starts going off the rails and isn't taking care of themselves and they're losing their attractiveness or things like that? It's another forbidden topic. How do you broach that? Because I see that in so many couples where one is like, that one's not putting any effort in. How do you broach the subject? How do you do it?

You go right in with, you're looking like a real sloth lately.

Let's clean this up.

No. We obviously have to approach this one sensitively because truly what's happening in a lot of these cases is there's something deeper going on with that person. None of us consciously he wakes up and says, You know what? I want to look like a slob today. I want my partner to just be completely unattracted to me. It's usually there's something else going on. We're experiencing some depression. There's some stress. Maybe a family member is ill. If something's not going right at work, there's something deeper that's going on. We want to address that rather than the pure physical appearances at first. What I would say, if Xander was not taking care of himself, for example, I would say to him, Hey, babe, I want to talk to you about something sensitive. I've just been noticing lately that you're not treating yourself with the same love and respect that I normally see you treating yourself with. I just want to check in on you and see how you're doing because I know you deserve to treat yourself with that kindness. If I phrase it more about love and respect for yourself rather than, You've gained weight, you're not brushing your teeth, you're looking like a slob, that just feels a lot gentler.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. All right, let's move on to the next category here.

Okay, so the third conversation that we get into is desire. What do we each need to feel excited about sex, to feel open to it? It connects. We put these conversations in this specific order. Obviously, we talked already about the connection between emotional intimacy and physical intimacy. Physical intimacy also connects to the... I'll give you a little preview. The fourth one that is coming is desire. But yeah, so this one is all about what do we need to feel excited about being intimate. This is the conversation where we talk about the initiation styles, like how is it that we like to be initiated. Another really important thing that we talk about in this chapter is the two sex drive types. Have you heard about this before? Spontaneous and responsive? No. Okay. This is really important, very game-changing information, especially if you're somebody who thinks of yourself as being low desire or no desire. So any women out there beating themselves up, this is the information for you. There are two different sex drive types, and they are based on how we feel desire. There are two different places that we feel desire. You feel mental desire, this is the first one.

That's when the idea of sex just pops into your head. Oftentimes, it feels random. It's just the idea of sex sounds good. Yeah, I think I want to have sex right now. That's the first place. The second place is we feel in our body. Our body physically gets ready and excited for sex. That's things like getting wet, getting hard, heart rate starting to increase, breath rate starting to increase. The two sex drive types depend on where you feel desire first. First off, we have spontaneous. That's when you feel mental desire first, and then the physical arousal follows. Any sex scene that you've seen on TV and movies, that's always spontaneous desire. There's that out of nowhere, like, Sex sounds good. Where's my partner? Let me go in for the boob-hung. Research shows that about 85% of men have spontaneous desire, and only about 14 to 20% of women do. Most of us don't even know that responsive desire exists, but research shows that about 85% of women have responsive desire. Most of us women are thinking, Why do I never seem to want sex spontaneously? The idea of sex never seems to pop into my head.

We feel like something's wrong with us. Nothing is wrong with you. It's just that you have the other type of desire. Responsive desire is the exact opposite of spontaneous. We need to feel it in our bodies first before the mental interest kicks in. A classic thing that happens to somebody who has responsive desires, they'll be in the middle of sex or even at the end of sex, and they'll catch themselves thinking, This is Why do I never seem to want this? Again, it's not that anything's wrong with you. It's just you have to understand how your desire type works. One of the big problems with initiation is a lot of us are initiating in spontaneous ways. We ask, do you want to have sex? That's a spontaneous initiation. If you ask somebody with responsive desire, Do you want to have sex right now? 99 times out of 100, their answer is going to be no because they haven't had any physical stimulation stimulation yet. They're not going to be a yes until they have some physical stimulation. It's usually the case that one partner is spontaneous and the other partner is responsive. This is yet another way that we're missing each other and thinking, Why do we never want to have sex at the same time?

You're going to likely have different types. We need to think about initiating in slightly different ways. Going back to how I was telling you that Xander and I have started separating initiation from the actual sex, that's something that can help. Maybe what you're initiating earlier in the day, so it gives your partner some time to get into their body. Maybe you agree, what we do is we have massages for a couple of minutes before hand, and then we decide, do we want to do more or do we not want to do more? Or we make out for a while, and then we decide. But you have to have some physical stimulation first. Otherwise, the person with responsive desire is always going to be, no, I don't want to have sex right now. Nothing's happening. Why would I want it? Got you.

Then we move into pleasure, correct?

Pleasure is the fourth conversation. What do we need to feel good, to have a good time, to avoid the mushy broccoli problem? In that chapter, that's where I talk all about the clitoris and that comparison of intercourse for a woman being playing with a man's balls. It's really important. Just most of us don't know that information. Again, it's nobody's Nobody's trying to do a bad job, but just understanding this is how it actually works. That's a really important thing. We also talk a lot in that chapter about how to give each other feedback during sex, too. That's another area that so many of us struggle with. We don't know how to give feedback. It feels really awkward to give feedback. We talk about our unique approach to it is what we call positively pleasurable feedback. Any feedback that you want to give to your partner frame it positively. Nobody responds well to negative feedback. Actually, this is funny. Yesterday, I was trying to decide what outfit I was going to wear to this interview. I posted on my stories. I said, Here's outfit one, here's outfit two. Please vote. Tell me, which outfit do you think I should wear?

I got a ton of DMs from people saying, Outfit one is horrible. You look terrible in that. Don't wear that one. I thought, Oh, no. This is how we're giving feedback in the bedroom, too. It's just easier for our weird human brains sometimes to go to the negative and give that negative feedback. But imagine you're with your wife and you're trying to be intimate with her and she's, Don't do that. That's terrible. That feels awful. You're going to freak out in that moment, right? You're going to feel super embarrassed. You're not going to want to do anything new or different. You're just going to freeze in that moment. So we can't give negative feedback. It just doesn't work. Instead, we to do positive. I'll give you an example. One of the things that we hear from women most often about sex with men is women tell us, We want you to slow down. Women love being teased. This is a huge difference between men and women. For women, a lot of women will say, The tease for me is the best part of sex. A lot of men will tell me, Don't tease me. Go for the good.

I want to get it started. It tickles when you tease me. It doesn't feel good when This is a big misunderstanding, but a lot of women, they're like, No, go slow. Go to the point where you're like, I'm having to beg you for more. That's what's sexy for us. If you're being intimate with your wife and your wife is like, Slow down. You're going so fast. Again, that's not going to feel good. But instead, if a woman says something like, You know what is so sexy for me when you just go so slow, when you get me to the point where I am begging you for more? If you're hearing that as a guy, okay, first of all, that sounds hot. You're like, Please give me more feedback. This is great. But it's also making you feel like you've already won because she's phrasing it in this way, You know what's so hot when you do this. You can do this even if your partner hasn't done this. They haven't done it in a while. They've never done. It's okay. You can still say, It's so hot when you do this because it makes them feel like they've won.

They're doing a good job. It makes them feel more motivated to do that actual thing.

Okay.

That's a good one. Another thing with feedback, we have a little game that we call the eye exam game. When you're getting your vision tested and they show you, okay, put the little contraption on. Okay, which one is more clear? One or two. When you just have two options to choose from, it's pretty easy to pick one. You don't go into that exam saying, Here's how I want my vision to look like. They just put one or two. You can do the same thing with sex. Let's say you're just stroking your partner's arm. Try stroking it one way, and then maybe try another, a deeper pressure, more of a massage. Ask your partner, Which one do you like better? Do you like it better when I do this or when I do this? As the person receiving that touch, it's easier to choose because that's something that comes up for so many of us women. We don't know how to give feedback. It's, I don't know what I need to orgasm. I don't know what feels good, so I don't know what to tell you. A lot of us, we put this pressure on ourselves.

We think like, if a man asks, Hey, do you want? I feel like I've got to write down this 10-page manifesto of, Okay, first do this and then do this. Then if you do this, I'll really like it. It's overwhelming. But instead, if it's just, Which one is better? This one or this one? You can do that with everything during sex. Try two different positions. Try do two different oral sex techniques. It feels fun and sexy, but it's also giving you both really valuable information.

Good feedback. All right. Explorating Exploration.

Exploration. That is our final conversation that we move into. Everybody's heard the advice, Keep it spicy, try new things in the bedroom. It actually is really good advice. It sounds cheesy, but it's good advice. We have research showing that when we do new things with our partner, inside and outside of the bedroom, our brains light up. Our brains love novelty, and it gives us that feeling of getting to know our partner all over again, of seeing them in a new light. This chapter is all about How do we actually try new things? Because what I found in long term relationships is that we have this tendency to narrow down what sex looks like. I'll throw Xander and I under the bus. When we first started having sex, it was like this buffet of options, all these different choices, all these different things that we were doing. Then you get a few years into it, and that buffet has narrowed down into a fixed menu with very few options. Sex between us would look like a couple of seconds of making out, a couple of seconds of some groping, and then we're just right on to the intercourse.

It's just not very exciting. You know exactly what's coming You can predict it, you could script it out, and it doesn't feel very exciting. But I've found that the longer the couples are in relationships, it actually feels more intimidating to try new things, to break out of that mold. There are so many couples couples who are having just very routine sex, doing the same thing over and over again. It may not even be bad sex. When Xanar and I have sex like that, we both still have orgasms. It still feels good. We're still connected, but it's not great. Hate sex either. It's how do we expand that repertoire out a little bit more. One of the big mistakes that couples make here is they hear Try new things in the bedroom, and they think, Oh, God, now I have to have a threesome, and we've got to do some kinky 50 Shades of Gray stuff. I need to get the ropes and tie her up and we're hanging for the rafters and all that stuff. We get very overwhelmed and intimidated, right? But that doesn't have to be the case. The best starting point that I tell couples is Think about what's something that you used to do with your partner that you haven't done in a long time.

It doesn't have to be brand new, just something that you used to do that you haven't done in a while. Maybe it could be as simple as, You know what? We used to make out a lot more, a lot longer. Or it could be, We used to do this one position. I don't know why we stopped doing that. It was such a great position, but we just haven't done it in forever. Or, We used to have sex on the couch instead of in the bed every single time. Just bring back something that you used to do. You'll have the confidence of knowing, We've done this before, we enjoyed it. But you'll still get those benefits of trying something new. Then from there, if you want to try things that you've never tried before, that's totally great. But you don't have to do that. It's really just making sure to keep cycling in those things that you actually do enjoy.

When you're talking to your couples, patients, do you call them patients?

No, I just call them couples. Clients.

How do you get them to be comfortable with suggestions in the bedroom when people are trying to spark it up a little bit?

I have a little trick that I call the dream scheme, tell your partner you had a dream about it. It doesn't have to be true. It's a little tiny lie, which I don't normally advocate for, but if it gets you talking about sex, I'll be for it. Just tell your partner, You know what? I had a dream last night that we were doing XYZ, and I just can't get it out of my mind now. It was very sexy in the dream. That's also a great way to introduce something brand new because it gives you a chance to gage your partner's reaction. You can say something like, I've never thought about doing that before. You and I have never done that before, but the dream was pretty fun, and now I can't get it out of my mind. If your partner says, Yeah, that's interesting, but I'm not sure I'm open to doing that, that's okay. Or they might say, Oh, that's interesting. Maybe we could play around with that. That's a nice way to introduce it. Or use this podcast as an example. I love using podcasts as opportunities to open up conversations. Hey, Sean and Vanessa, we're talking about trying new things in the bedroom, and it got me thinking about X, Y, Z.

That can be a great way, too.

Do you make suggestions on things they should be trying in the bedroom?

Yeah. And again, it's really keeping it simple. Positions can be a great way to mix things up. And again, it doesn't feel super overwhelming. It doesn't feel wildly out of your comfort zone, but positions can make a big difference. Even making small tweaks on positions that you already do. Try putting a pillow underneath your hips. Try, instead of propping yourself up, bringing yourself down. Try twisting your body a slightly different angle. So make a little change to an old standby or an old favorite position. Sometimes even just the smallest changes in the angle can feel like a totally different experience.

Okay.

Yeah.

What about things like, linger, role-playing, all these?

Yeah, those are great, too. This is another really funny misunderstanding between men and women about linger. Women are always telling me, What's the point? You see it for 10 seconds, and then it's on the ground. What's the point of putting it on in the first place? So I always have to tell- There's a point. There's a point. Maybe you can tell them for me. What is the point? Tell me, Sean, what is the point to put it on linger?

It's something new. It's sexy. It's something that you don't see your spouse in every day. Maybe you do. I don't know. But it's just one of those extra sparks.

To you, it's worth it even if it ends up on the floor 10 seconds later. Oh, yeah, definitely. I also like to compare it to wrapping a gift. It's the exact same thing. You take the paper off in 10 seconds and throw it away, but we all wrap our gift. Great analogy. Yeah, it's fun. It makes it look... It looks prettier. It feels exciting to open it up. So it's the same thing.

What else?

Playing with toys can be fun, too. There are definitely a lot of toys experiment with in the bedroom. Dirty talk is another great one. We love encouraging couples to get more comfortable communicating during sex. Again, this is another way that people go to extremes. They think, Dirty Talk, like, Oh, I'm going to have to sound like some cheesy porn star. I don't want to be saying all these ridiculous like, Ma'am, you forgot your... Here's your pizza. You forgot the payment for it. But I think the Dirty Talk, it doesn't have to be graphic and it doesn't have to be cheesy. For me, Dirty Talk is all about finding your authentic voice in the bedroom. It's actually part of our... We have a membership for couples. We have a whole Dirty Talk guide in there where we go through finding the specific words. Even words for body parts, everybody has their own preferences. People will say, Oh, I really like that. Oh, I don't like that word. Finding the specific words that you like or looking at examples and saying, Yeah, it would sound really hot to me to hear that versus, That one's a little too overboard for me.

So experimenting with that. Dirty talk can be very simple. Something like, I want you. You look so good right now. I can't wait another second. It doesn't have to be complicated, but it can still feel really fun. Or in the moment, too, like, That feels so good. Don't stop. That can be very fun.

What about stuff like Kama sutra?

The Kama sutra is mostly positions, and there are some that work and a lot that don't. If it interests you to check that out, the text out from more of a historical standpoint, sure, but I don't find it to be the greatest resource, personally.

Okay, perfect.

But you know what? I want to go back to the dirty talk conversation because this is something that we hear from women all the time that I think men might be surprised to hear. Women want you to make more noise. Women Men tell us all the time, My man is silent during sex. No noise, no talking, and I don't know what's going on with him. Is he having a good time? Is he bored? Women are desperate for men to make more noise during sex, and they think it's really sexy, too. They want to hear your... I think in the same... Men love hearing women's noises, right? Am I right? We want to hear your noises, too. Okay. Yeah.

Good to know. All right, let's take Take a quick break, and then when we come back, I just got a bunch of random questions. All right. Perfect. My days don't slow down. Between work, the gym, and time with the kids, I need eyewear that can keep up with everything I've got going on. And that's why I trust Roca. I've tried plenty of shades before, but these stand out. They're built for performance without sacrificing style. I've put them through it all. On the range, out on the water, and off road. They don't quit. They're lightweight, stay locked in place, and are tough enough to handle whatever I throw at them. And the best part, they don't just perform, they look incredible. Sleek, modern, and designed for people who expect more from their eyewear. No fluff, no gimmicks, just premium frames that deliver every single time. And that's why Roca is what I grab when I'm heading out door. Born in Austin, Texas, they're American-designed with zero shortcuts. Razor-sharp optics, no glare, an all-day comfort that doesn't quit. And if you need prescription lenses, they've got you covered with both glasses and glasses. One brand, all your bases.

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Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Helixsleep. Com/srs. All right, Vanessa, we're back from the break. When we kicked this interview off, I asked, How much sex should we be having? I'd like to loop back around to that. I'll let you answer that, and then I got some more questions spending off of that.

Okay, so I started telling you There's no one magic number that every couple should be having. If we're just trying to hit a quota, it's probably not going to be very good sex. But that being said, I do think that if you are asking yourself, How much sex should we be having? Are we having enough? Have, likely the answer is you should be having more sex. I do think that people benefit the more sex that we have, the more connected we feel. I think this is another way that we downplay sex. Nobody would ever say, Oh, you guys want to go on more date nights? You guys want to spend more quality time together? We look at it as, Oh, yeah, the more we do that, the more quality time we spend together, the more nice stuff we do together, the better. I do think the same is true to an extent when it comes to sex. But in particular, what I want people to get used to is this idea that we have to be intentional about making the time, space, and energy for sex. We can't just rely on it to happen, hope that it'll happen.

The vast majority of us, if we just sit around waiting for it to happen, we're going to bed night after night without doing it. I think the vast majority of couples would really benefit from being more intentional about having more sex.

I'm looking I'm not sure if there's a number here, Doug.

Okay, I can tell you research. There is research showing that the more couples have sex, the happier they are up to once a week. At once a week, it shows that there's not any additional benefit from there. To me, though, once a week feels pretty low. I'm surprised by those findings, and it's not necessarily what I see in our community. I think that most people could benefit from having sex more than once a week. But if you want to go by what the research shows, at least once a week, and you'll be in pretty good shape.

That's not enough.

I don't think it's enough either.

That's not enough. In your specific clients that you talk to, is there a happy medium where you see, Hey, I don't know, two times a week, five times a week, every day?

We pulled our community, and we put together a pretty extensive poll. At this point, we've had about 75,000 people fill it out. We asked about frequency and about satisfaction. We found that 75% of people fell into one of three buckets, and they were evenly divided, 25, 25, 25. Those buckets were 2-3 times per month, once a week and 2-3 times per week. We found that across those three buckets, there were no changes in satisfaction. The people who were doing it 2-3 times a week were just as happy as the people who were doing it 2-3 times a month. Again, that's That surprised me, too, because 2-3 times a month doesn't seem like the most. That was really interesting to see. But I do think multiple times a week for most couples is going to be beneficial. What I say is that there's a certain inertia that comes into place with sex. Do you remember inertia from high school physics class? It was like the object in motion stays in motion and object at rest stays at rest. That is very true when it comes to sex. The more you get used to not having sex the easier and easier it is each night to like, okay, now just go to sleep.

Okay, we'll go to sleep again. But the more sex that you do have, the easier it feels to keep having sex. Zan and I will have seasons of our relationship where we just have sex every day, and the easier it feels to just keep going every single day. That's not necessarily, again, the right thing for every couple, but I think couples should experiment with it. Again, the bottom line should be that you're making an active effort to have sex more often than you feel the desire for it.

Is there a particular time of day that's better?

The worst time of day is very last thing at night. That is, unfortunately, when most couples have sex.

What if you are feeling good at the end of the day?

Okay, if you're feeling great at the very end of the night, sure, by all means, go for it. I want you to have sex whenever it feels good for you. But the pattern that most couples get into is we have this idea in our heads that sex is the last thing that we do at night. You get ready for bed, you crawl into bed, and that's the time that we're supposed to be having sex. I don't know about you, but for me, by the time I'm crawling into bed, I am ready for bed. I want to go to sleep. It's a really hard time to all of a sudden then get excited about having sex with my husband. Most couples will tell me the same thing. I'm exhausted when I get into bed. My head hits the pillow and I'm asleep to 10 seconds later, where you're starting to do that horrible math in your head of, Okay, if I fall asleep right now, then I can get seven hours of sleep. It's just a tough time to get really excited about it. I always tell couples, prioritize sex as early in the evening or in the day.

If you have the space to do it in the morning or during the day, that's great. But if you're like most people, you have 9: 00 to 5: 00 jobs, you're not really home back together until around 5: 00 or 6: 00 PM, as early in the day as you can. So maybe that's putting the kids to bed a little bit earlier, or even if it's as simple as we prioritize it before we do Netflix, or we prioritize it over doing, folding the laundry. Prioritize it over something. Don't have it be the last thing that you're doing at the end of the night.

Okay. What about morning? I mean, are there any benefits to waking up?

Most men tend to feel horniest in the morning and get the best directions in the morning. So a lot of men love morning sex. Unfortunately, a lot of women do not. Why? They feel self-conscious about their breath. I just think, you know what? Yeah, your breath is stinky, but you're both stinky. You notice that stink for about two seconds, and then you get over it. But if it really bothers you, a little package of Listerine strips on your bedside table can work wonders. That can be really fun. I personally love starting the day having sex. You feel accomplished the rest of the day. We did the best thing in the beginning of the day. You've got that extra pep in your step for the rest of the day. I think the morning is a great time to do it.

Right on. Then right before on the break, we were talking about no screens before sex. Why is that?

Yes, this This is an experiment that Xander and I just started doing. We make ourselves guinea pigs for all my little hairbrained ideas. But I was thinking a lot about how easy it is for us to fall into this routine of being on our phones, watching Netflix. We're just like every other couple. The workday ends, we're tired. The idea of crashing out on the couch and putting on Love is Blind feels so good. But the reality is you never feel connected after that. Unfortunately, for most couples, that's their quality time is we're both watching TV, but we're on our phones as we're watching the TV. That's not connected. That's not quality time. I got the idea of what if we playfully make ourselves earn our screen time. I said, Why don't we make a little rule for ourselves? We'll experiment with that we can't use screens until we've had sex. We have our workday. We set a specific time. Okay, 5: 00 PM, that's when the workday ends. We're entrepreneurs like you, so we know it doesn't actually end at 5: 00 PM. But we just set that arbitrarily. We said, past 5: 00 PM, if it's not related to work, we're not allowed to get our screens until we've been intimate with each with each other.

That has been super fun for us to play around with. It just makes sure that we're prioritizing each other and make sure it's at a time when we have the energy, the excitement to be with each other. It's just been really, really fun. Again, that's not going to work for every couple's schedule. If you've got kids around, of course, it's not going to be doable. But you could adjust that to kids go to bed, and then that's the first thing that we do. We don't go to watch Netflix, we don't get our phone and scroll on Instagram. We're prioritizing each other.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now, let's define great sex for both a man and a woman.

This is such a fascinating question that most of us have never taken the time to think about. I'm going to put you on the spot if you don't mind. I'm going to ask you to come up with your definition because this is an exercise that I recommend to all couples. If you ask some random person, Hey, do you want to have a great sex life? Most people are going to say, Yeah, of course I But when I ask them, Okay, what does great mean to you? Most people will give me a deer in headlights look. They've never thought about that question before. I tell couples, Come up with three words that describe your ideal sex life, or three words that describe how you want to feel during sex. If you don't mind sharing, you don't have to. But I'll give you some examples. For me, one of my words is playful. I'm a goofy person. Xander is a super goofy person. I think so many of us have the tendency to think sex has to be so serious, and sometimes that's fun. But I feel the most connected to Xander when I feel like I can be my full self in the bedroom with him.

Sometimes that's just being silly and playful during sex, not being quite so serious. For me, when I feel like we've really played with each other, that's when I feel super connected to him. Another one of my words is escapism. For me, the best sex is when it feels like time stands still. The rest of the world just drops away, and it's just the two of us in that moment together, connecting with each other, being with each other. That sense of it's a place that we're going to. It's not just this physical thing that we're doing with our bodies.

What was that word?

Like escapism.

Escapism. Okay.

But it could be adventurous. It could be safe. It could be exploratory. Any words come into mind for you?

Orgasm comes to my mind, especially for her.

That's a good one.

Sure. I don't know. I think length of sex, orgasm, and...

What about some of the words when I was asking you earlier, how you feel after you've had really great sex? You're saying confident. Confident, connected.

Yeah, I think confidence, I think that goes for both parties. You have to feel confident being naked. If you don't, then it's probably not going to go great, right?

Yeah, and that is a huge thing that comes up, unfortunately, for so many women. We really struggle with that. That's another way that men can help women out in the bedroom. We are so, so health conscious of our bodies. We've been taught to be that way our entire lives. I mean, I grew up in the '90s. I will never forget being in the grocery store checkout line with my parents and seeing all the Cosmo magazines of It takes positions to hide your belly flap. That's how I grew up being taught, how do I hide my body during sex? I don't want my partner to see my flap, my rolls, my imperfections. That's what most of us women are during sex a lot of the time. I remember Xander and I had a conversation about it. I asked him, What are you thinking about your body when we have sex? He looked at me like, he couldn't even understand the question, What do you mean? I said, Do you feel self-conscious of your body when we're having sex? Why would I be self-conscious of my body? I'm having sex with you. He could not comprehend it.

Maybe you can't either. He could not comprehend that that's where my brain is trained to go. Is he seeing my belly flap in this position? So men can really help women out by complimenting us, by telling us how sexy you think our bodies are, by reassuring us the things that you think you see in your body, I am not seeing those things. This is especially true for women who have given births and they feel like, I don't look the same. If you've been together a long time, he probably wishes my body look like it did when we were in our 20s and we met. Now I'm in my 40s and things are starting to droop and sag and all that. It's really hard for us.

What about duration?

Duration. How long should it go? That's a great question. It's a really common misunderstanding between couples, and it's a conversation most couples have never had. Most men think the longer, the better. You grow up hearing some songs like, We'll go all night long. Do it till the sun comes up. You got that idea in your head. It's supposed to last a long time. When we ask women, though, women don't want it to last that long. We pulled our audience on ideal length, and men thought that intercourse, just the intercourse part of it, should last 20 minutes or more. For women, the ideal length was 5-7 minutes.

5-7 minutes.

That's all we want, 5-7 minutes, which should be good news for a lot of men because on average, men last about 2-3 minutes. So men are really stressing themselves out, lasting 2-3 minutes but thinking they're supposed to last 30 plus.

What about positions?

Positions are a really fun thing to play around with. I do think a lot of people get anxious and self-conscious. A lot of that is the body image stuff that comes up. Is this going to show my roles? But we pulled our audience and People said on average, they liked about 2-3 positions per session. That felt fun for them. But there are a lot of people, a lot of people who just do one position.

Really?

Mm-hmm. Just missionary the whole time and every time. That gets boring. I'm a fan of missionary. Missionary can be great. But if that's the only position you're doing every single time, you're going to get tired of it.

What are the majority of... What positions do women like the most?

The best position for women is her on top, cowgirl position. That is the easiest position for a woman to orgasm in. It creates the most stimulation. I think it can be really empowering for women, too, because we're in control. You're dictating the movement, the angle, the pace, the depth. It can feel intimidating for a lot of women if they haven't done it or they don't have a lot of confidence. One of the big misconceptions that women have, which we get from porn, unfortunately, is we think we're supposed to be bouncing up and down on a pogo stick thing. That's hard on your thighs. You can do that for maybe 20 to 30 seconds and your thighs start burning after that. A lot of women avoid that position because they think that's what it's supposed to be. But Actually, grinding is way more effective. It's going to feel more pleasurable for her. It's using your hips to just rock back and forth rather than bouncing up and down. As a woman, you're going to be able to last longer. It's going to create more stimulation because your can rub against your partner's abdomen. You can get a little stimulation that way.

The man will last longer in that position. It tends to be it's not one of the most stimulating positions for men because you're not in control of it and it's a more subtle movement. But that can be nice since most women tend to last a lot longer than men do. Women need more time. It can be a nice way to balance out the timing.

Okay. What else What should we be talking about here?

Should we talk about scheduling sex? That's another hot topic that comes up. Yeah, let's talk about that. Okay. A lot of people, as soon as they hear that phrase scheduling sex, It just brings a real sense of dread. What are your impressions of scheduled sex?

I don't like it.

Why don't you like it?

Because it feels scheduled.

Okay. What's wrong with being scheduled?

I mean, nothing. I'll take it. I guess it goes back to that conversation about being spontaneous. That's why maybe, I don't know. I mean, we have kids. I don't know. We've never done it.

Okay, so with your life, with kids, you're really busy with this show. You got a lot going on. Do you have a whole lot of space for spontaneity in your life?

We make space for it. Okay. I guess, if that makes sense.

How do you make space for space?

Well, I mean, how do I say that?

Because that sounds a little bit like planning.

I mean, I just say it. So I just bring it up. But we'll schedule things far in advance. So to totally get away from the kids, we'll schedule vacations or small getaway in town where we can go somewhere else. And so we always have something on the schedule to get away, and then whatever happens, happens during those getaway.

Okay. I highly recommend that in general for couples to always have something on the calendar that's just the two of them. I don't care if it has to be due to budget or schedules. I don't care if it's two years in the future, have something on the calendar that's just the two of you you can look forward to. I'm glad you guys are doing that. But okay, so let's talk about one of your trips that you have on the calendar, you're scheduling that trip, right? Does that trip lose some of its luster because you had to schedule it? Is it like, Yeah, we had to schedule this trip.

No.

If anything, I would venture that it feels more special because you've scheduled it, right? It's like, We know life is busy, but we are making sure to carve this time out for ourselves because this is important. I think the same can be true when it comes to sex, where, yes, we can schedule sex in a very boring way. If you're getting out your calendars and like, Okay, I have Wednesday from 8: 00 to 8: 20 open. If we're scheduling it the way we schedule a dentist appointment, of course, it's going to feel boring, right? But we can schedule it in a way that it's more about the respect that we're showing for each other and for our connection of, I know that our life is busy. It's full. I know it's really easy for the day to just totally get away from us. I want to make sure no matter what, we have time to spend together. We have time to be together, that we are prioritizing each other. So much of what we're talking about today is prioritizing each other, making each other feel important. I think scheduling is a way that we can do that.

The other funny thing to think about with scheduling. Let's go back to the beginning of your relationship with your wife. You guys are going on dates, right? What are you doing? You're scheduling those dates, right? Then once people start being intimate with each other, when you're scheduling a date, you're essentially scheduling sex. You know once you start having sex and you know, Hey, we're going to go out to dinner on Friday, you know you're going to have sex on Friday, too.

It's a good point.

We've been scheduling sex from the very beginning. It's not that it was so spontaneous and different in the beginning, and now we're this boring old married couple has to schedule sex. We've been doing it from the beginning. It's just about changing our attitudes around it. I actually don't use the phrase scheduled sex because it just sounds boring. I use intentional intimacy or planning for sex. When I talked earlier about how Xander and I will talk in the beginning of the day, that's essentially scheduling sex. But it doesn't feel boring. It doesn't feel like a drag. It feels exciting. When are we going to have the time for ourselves? When are we making sure we carve that time out? I think we have this tendency to only look at scheduling in a negative way when it comes to sex. Here's another example. Think of your kids. Do they play any sports?

Jujutsu. Okay.

So if your kid has a jujutsu competition or what do they call it?

Well, he's four, We're not there yet, so we're not back yet.

He's not quite there yet, but okay. Let's say at some point he has an event that you want to go to. What are you going to do? You're going to schedule that, right? You're going to put that in your calendar. Let's say it happens in the middle of the day. You're going to tell your team, Hey, Thursday from 2: 00 to 4: 00, I'm out. I am not available. Don't contact me. It is important to me to show up for my kid. I'm going to be there. We look at that in such a positive way. That is me showing my kid respect, showing him how much I love him, how important it is for me to be there. So again, why can't we look at that in the same way with our partner when it comes to intimacy?

When I think of my schedule, it is just things that I got to knock out during the day. It's a checkmark. It's It's like a checklist, to-do list. Maybe that's why I think of that. I don't think of sex as just, This is just something we got to knock out during the day. So when somebody- Yeah, it shouldn't be. When couples schedule sex, I mean, how does the meeting go?

All right, it's 4: 00 PM. It's time. Get in the bedroom. You can do in a lot of different ways. Some people genuinely like that idea of having it be a specific time, and they make it feel sexy. I'm going to meet you in the bedroom Wednesday at 7: 00, and you can do fun role play stuff around that. So some couples that works for. Other couples, like Andrew and I, we have never scheduled sex with a specific time, but we do talk more openly about, Hey, I want to have sex today. Can we make sure we're prioritizing that? So I still think there's an element to scheduling around that, even if we're not nailing down the exact date and time that we're doing it.

Okay. I thought you meant...

Yeah, it's on the calendar. Yeah, it doesn't have to be. Some couples say they know their schedules and they know, Hey, Wednesdays are usually pretty good for us, and Saturdays are usually pretty good for us. Sometimes it's just a knowing ahead of time. These are the days that tend to be the easiest, so let's make sure we make some time for each other. So it can be a lot looser than it's specifically written down somewhere.

Okay. What are the top three things couples can do if they're starting to feel like roommates?

Such a great question. I'm all about being very practical. I think a lot of people, you start drifting away, you're feeling disconnected, and a lot of people think like, Oh, God, we have to go on a vacation together, or maybe we have to start therapy, or you feel like you have to do these big grand gestures. I try to think about what are the things that we can do on a daily basis that are small All quick, easy, but they're going to give us the maximum bang for our buck. I came up with something that I call the get intimate technique. The get stands for those three things, G-E-T. Gratitude, eye contact, and touch. I'll go through each of them. Gratitude. Everybody's heard of gratitude. I think a lot of us think it's a little bit cheesy. We roll our eyes at it like, Oh, yeah, I'm going to get out my gratitude journal. But we have research showing that gratitude is the number one predictor of marital satisfaction. Really? Gratitude. Number one predictor. What I love about gratitude, and actually all three of these things, it's free, it's fast, it's easy, it feels good to give and to receive it.

I think one of the greatest tragedies of relationships is that we choose to spend our life with somebody, and then we wind up feeling invisible to them. Gratitude is a way to show your partner, I still I see you. I still appreciate you. It's so easy. It can be one sentence. It can take you 5 seconds, 10 seconds. You can call out something that your partner did. Hey, I saw that you took the trash out without asking. I really appreciate that. Oh, hey, I appreciate that you packed kids' lunches. That's so great. Or it could be something about them as a person. Have I told you lately how much you make me laugh? Just take those few seconds every day. You can do this every day. Also, I would say, don't be afraid to set yourself up for success with something like this. When Xander and I were working on each of these things, we set calendar reminders for ourselves to do that. I know that sounds very unromantic, very unsexy, but Very unsexy. But we're humans. We forget despite the best of intentions. Things just, fall out of our minds. We just set reminders to ourselves until we built that habit of, Hey, say something nice to Xander.

Give him some appreciation. Then eventually, we built that habit, and now it comes more naturally. That's gratitude. That's number one. Second one is eye contact. It is wild how little eye contact couples make in long-term relationships. I would challenge anybody listening, just spend a day noticing. Don't try to change anything. Just spend a day noticing how little eye contact you make with your partner. A lot of us, we don't even look up when our partner enters the room. I actually stumbled upon this one because I realized I was doing it. I'm always on my phone. Xander would come into the room. I wouldn't even show him the respect of looking up to acknowledge Hey, you're here. I see you. It goes back to the I see you again. This is the way that we can literally show our partner, I see you. There's nothing that feels worse than being in a relationship and feeling lonely, feeling lonelier than you might if you were single, feeling like your partner has never even sees you. My favorite times for this, and the easiest times for this, are when you're saying hello and goodbye. To each other. Take the time to make eye contact.

Say goodbye, say hello. Again, this can take five seconds, but it makes such a big difference. Also, eye contact during sex. That's another one. Most people have their eyes closed or they're looking in opposite directions. And eye contact is such a great way to create real intimacy during sex. You'd be shocked at how vulnerable it feels. Most people can look at their partner for a few seconds, and then we have to turn away or close their eyes because it just feels so vulnerable. Okay. So that's the second one. And then the third one is touch. I think I mentioned earlier that women, in particular, we really want to be touched more outside of sex. And men do, too. I think so many of us are feeling touch starved in our relationships. We feel like we just don't have that physical contact with each other. A lot of us have gotten into the habit where we only touch, we only kiss each other during sex or immediately in the lead up to sex. We start creating this really harmful pattern called the Bristol reaction that we can talk about next, if that's the only time we're touching and kissing each other.

I want couples to reach out for each other, touch each other, kiss each other more often during the day. There are two specific types of touch that we have research on, the 30-second hug and the 6-second kiss. Those are the approximate time frames that our bodies need to release oxytocin, the bonding hormone, the love hormone, That's what makes us feel close to each other. It's really cool because especially with a hug, you can feel it. If you hug your wife, you can try this later, give her a hug, stay in the hug. First you'll notice, this is an awkwardly long hug. Then if you wait it out a few more seconds, you will feel your body melt into hers and hers melt into yours. It's such a cool feeling. It just makes us feel so close and connected with each other. But most of us, we just don't hug anymore, or it's a quick, super quick embrace before someone runs out the door. Those two kinds of touch in particular. Kissing is another one. A lot of us don't kiss that often, or we just do a tiny little peck. This is another pattern that Xander and I fell into.

We actually created a rule for ourselves where now every night before bed, we make out with each other. It has to be at least 30 seconds. It doesn't have to be a super long time, but we realized we were only kissing during sex. We realized, I miss making out with you just for the sake of making out, not as an initiation, not to get things going, not during sex. Yes, those things are fun, too. But there's something so fun about making out just for the sake of making out. It reminds us of being teenagers again when you could make out with somebody for hours, and it was just the most exciting thing in the world. You can try that little trick again, too. When we first started doing it, we made an explicit rule of we are not allowed to have sex after this because that's not the point. This is not a get ourselves turned on to have sex. This is let's just make out again for the sake of making out. That's been a really fun ritual that we have in our relationship. But another thing that couples can do is ask your partner, what are your three favorite places and ways to be touched?

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I'm curious to know some of yours. If your wife were to ask you, what are your absolute favorite ways to be touched or places that you like to be touched in a non-sexual way?

Hugs.

A hug.

Hugs will be number one. Man, I don't know. I've always I'm thinking about touching her.

Interesting.

So her waist. But me, I don't know.

Do you have a hard time receiving touch?

No.

Okay. Just not something you think about. I don't think so. It could be like a shoulder rub, a pat on the butt. Just anything. Squeeze. It's great. Yeah. It can be a fun question to ask each other, what are your favorite places to be touched? Because a lot of times we're actually touching each in ways that our partner doesn't actually like. I already mentioned the boob honk. That doesn't count. That doesn't count in the touch. Ask your partner, What are your favorite? You could tell your partner, too, These are my favorite places of your body to touch. That's a sweet. That's a very sweet.

What are three things that women wish men knew more about sex?

Number one, slow down. We talked about this one already. We We really want you to slow down, to tease us, to just draw out that experience a bit more. Number two- With the teasing.

Yeah. With the teasing, with the Teasing to me means what? Foreplay, right?

Yeah. Not even genital touching, caresses, caressing her thigh, massaging her back, giving her an actual back massage, kissing all down her neck. So don't even go between her legs. Pay attention to the rest of her body. That feels really exciting for a woman.

Now, how long should men be doing that?

I would say 5-10 minutes. Five to 10 minutes. I think most men are probably 20 to 30 seconds on that, and then they want to move on to the other stuff. But like I said earlier, a lot of women will say, That's my favorite part. You could spend 20 minutes doing that to me, and I would love that. The more Every time you can. Obviously, I want to be realistic. We don't always have time for- So maybe do that until you get an invitation? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That would be really fun for a lot of women. So yeah, slow down with us. Be more gentle. With us, too. A lot of women like very delicate touch. I think men tend to prefer more firm touch all over the body, but especially with the genitals. This is something we hear about a lot with the clitoris. Men get excited like, Oh, I've heard about the clitoris now, the 8 to 10, there's a nerve ending. I'm going to touch it, and they can be way too rough. A good analogy is think about how you would touch your eyelid. You know your eyelid's really delicate. You're not mashing your eyelid up like you're going to touch it really gently.

That's about the same amount of pressure that you would want to use to touch the clitoris. Okay. That's the second one. Then the third one. When we say, Don't stop, don't stop. Okay. Men here, don't stop and they think, Let me do something different. They get excited. They get really excited. They switch up the technique. And women, we're all about consistency. Once you find the thing that works, you need consistent stimulation to get us to reach orgasm. But again, men get excited. They want to switch up the technique, do something different. That sends us back to square one. We have to start all over again. So don't stop truly means don't stop.

Okay. Do you have any idea Do you see an idea how much lack of sex plays into an unsuccessful marriage?

It's one of the top three reasons couples split up. Kids, sex, and money are the top three. It's huge. Again, this is yet another reason why we have to stop thinking of sex as a purely physical act. It's a very important part of a relationship.

How often do you see it lead to infidelity?

Oh, all the time. I want to be careful with this, too, because a lot of women have gotten the message, If you don't give it to him, somebody else will. A lot of women interpret that as, I just have to give it up. My needs, my pleasure don't matter. The reality is, that's not what men want. Men don't want pity sex. Another huge misconception. So many women think like, Oh, I'll just let him have it. Men don't want that. You don't like when we just lay there and we're not participating. You want us to participate, too. I want to be careful in saying This is not you have to do it for him. Otherwise, he's going to sleep with somebody else. But yes, if you're not connecting with each other, then it's a lot more common that people look for that connection with somebody else.

Is it common Is it important for women to not get the sex that they want?

Absolutely. We have this idea that men are always the one that have the higher sex drives. But when we pulled our audience We found that in 45% of male/female relationships, the woman is the one who has the higher sex drive. No shit. 45%. That's just a casual Instagram poll. It's not scientific, but we have over a million people there, so it's a pretty large sample size. That blew people's minds when we shared that because there are so many women feeling alone and broken, so many men feeling ashamed about that because we all think it's supposed to be the guy who wants it more. But it's very, very common for it to be the woman who does. There's nothing wrong with that.

I didn't hear it. I wasn't down here, but I know behind the scenes, choking got brought up. I was just curious. Is this a trend?

Yeah. Unfortunately, choking is something that a lot of younger people are doing now. It's become a pretty normalized sexual act, and a lot of people are doing it without fully asking for consent or knowing to properly do it. The reality is I want people to do whatever brings them pleasure and makes them feel good. There's zero judgment about the specific activity. Whatever people want to do in their own bedroom is their business. But it does concern me that people are not talking about it openly because it is an extreme act and it is something that can cause damage. There is some research that is just starting to come out right now showing that people who are repeatedly choked during sex are are having lasting neurological impacts. This is brand new research. There's still a lot more to explore, but there are implications to this activity. I want to make sure people are doing it, that they are making sure both partners are into it. They're talking about it beforehand, and they're doing it properly. I can tell you really quickly, what you want to do is make sure you're exerting pressure on the sides of the throat.

Never, ever, ever on the front of the throat. The front is too sensitive, so it's just on the sides.

Who's more into that, men or women?

I would say both. Men are definitely the ones who are initiating it, and men are the ones doing it because it's been normalized by porn. It's a pretty common activity that you see in porn. Spitting is another one that's happening a lot more often. Spitting? Yeah, spitting on each other's faces, into each other's mouths, usually the man doing it onto the woman. We're seeing because porn is meant to be entertainment, it shows more and more extreme acts capture people's attention. Now a lot of these behaviors that people are seeing are being normalized and being brought into casual sex. Again, there's nothing wrong with those specific behaviors themselves, as long as those people are consenting enthusiastically and know what they're doing.

So women, they like that?

Some women do. Some women do. Yeah. I mean, for some people, there's this taboo power play around sex, around playing around with those dynamics of somebody being in control, somebody being submissive, somebody being cruel or bossy, somebody taking it. I mean, sex is a way that we play. We play with these dynamics, and sometimes it's because it feels so taboo and forbidden, that makes it feel exciting for us. Sometimes it's places that we don't allow ourselves to go outside of the bedroom. We do allow ourselves to go inside inside of the bedroom. They become sexualized because we don't do that. So very commonly, you'll see people, CEOs, people in high positions of authority and power, very in control of their day-to-day lives, often like being very submissive in the bedroom because it's something that they can't allow themselves or won't allow themselves to do in their normal day-to-day life.

Interesting. And then chore play.

What is it? What is it? Chore play is doing chores as a form of foreplay. I think chore play is hilarious, and a lot of women genuinely love it. They love their husbands doing the vacuuming. Xanner, he's such a good sport. We've done a lot of tour play reels on our Instagram, so he'll get out that vacuum cleaner and be thrusting into it as he's doing it. Just really hamming it up or he's doing the dishes and really getting into the technique of it. But yeah, so I want to be clear with it. It's not... Sometimes people say, Oh, well, we shouldn't reward. Men shouldn't be rewarded for doing chores. We don't want to set up this dynamic of, Oh, wash the dishes and then you get sex. We're all adults. We all need to participate in the boring normal adult stuff of running a household. But I do think there's a way to play with it and be silly and goofy about it. Xander is not earning sex from me. I expect him to do chores like a normal adult. But chores are boring. They suck. Neither one of us like to do them.

Why not make it fun and goofy and be playful and silly about it? But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, the reason that The reason that women love it so much is because we want to have a partner who feels like our equal, who feels like they're contributing to the household, too. It brings up a really important conversation about mental load. Have you heard Have you heard that phrase before? Mental load? Mental load is the invisible mental labor that goes into running a household. We have chores and responsibilities that we have to do, but there's also, behind each chore, a ton of mental labor. It's not just we have to go grocery shopping, that's the chore. The mental load is, okay, we have to go grocery shopping on Friday because I have to make muffins for the soccer team on Saturday, and I have to make sure to get all the ingredients for those muffins, but I can't get that brand of the muffin mix because the kids didn't like it last time. When we're there, we also need to remember to bring those coupons that I got, and we need to get toilet paper.

It's just this constant, constant list that's going through our heads. Research shows that women hold the vast majority of the mental load and the responsibilities, like actual chores within a household. I think every couple needs to divide things up in the way that feels right for them. Everybody's life looks different, work looks different, the choices that they choose to make look different. I'm not saying it needs to be a 50/50 thing, but what we're hearing about from women, and especially a lot recently, is they're feeling like they're carrying the majority of the weight around the household, and it feels like their partner is just yet another person that they have to take care of.

Okay.

That doesn't feel very sexy to us women. If we feel like we have to take care of you, we have to take care of our child. It's not sexy. I can The real heart of chore play is like, Yeah, you're my teammate. You're doing stuff around the house, too, and we can be funny and playful and silly about it.

So does it lead to sex?

Yeah, it very often does. I talked earlier about that take care of me initiation style. Chore play works really well for somebody who likes that style. Somebody's saying, Hey, let me take the kids. I'll handle them. Let me clean up after dinner. Let me get this off your plate. It feels really good like, Oh, you're letting me relax. You're letting me have a to myself. You're letting me turn off all those million tabs in my brain just for a few minutes.

That feels so good. Okay. We talked a little bit about linger for the women, but should men be wearing things that turn their woman on?

Boxers without holes in them.

Boxers without holes in them.

That's the main complaint we hear about from women is all my husband's underwear have holes in them, and they're just there He's had them since college. It's like a waistband, which is a loin cloth attached to it, basically. The fabric's so stretched out. It's lost all its elasticity. So get some new underwear. New underwear. It doesn't have to be silky. We don't have to find any man thongs or anything like that, but some fresh underwear would be great. Okay. Easy.

How can men get their women to want more sex?

Such a good question. Okay, first thing is show interest in her. We talked about that earlier. Women really want to feel that connection. They want to feel like you care about us and help us recognize that you're not just looking for sex for the pure physical release. It's because of us. You want to connect with us. Actually, I was thinking about this earlier. With your experience, we talked so much about emotional intimacy and how that can feel really complicated for a lot of men. What does that mean? How do I show that interest? I was thinking about your experience being an operative. I imagine you had to have a lot of conversations with people where you're trying to connect with them quickly. And you're trying to show them that you care about them and trying to gain their trust. I don't know, were there any tricks that you learned about? How do you make a connection with somebody quickly?

Compliments.

Compliments. That was really the key. It's getting right in there. What's the key to a good compliment?

Great question. I don't know. I think it could be anything. It just lets them know whoever you're complimenting, that you're paying attention, that maybe you're leaving competitiveness out of it. Spontaneous compliments, I think. Are really good when they're least expected. That's all I got.

Okay. No, that's great. I think that's great. That's really helpful. So, yeah, a compliment is definitely a great way to make it personal. A lot of times, a lot of men will just be like, You look nice. Let's get a little bit more specific than that. Can you call it something like, I love the color of your shirt, the way that your smile just lights up your whole face. Make it just a little bit more specific than, You look nice. That can be a great way to just ease into that connection. Touch her more often throughout the day. Another one of my favorite sayings is foreplay all day. Foreplay all day. I like to think right after you've had sex, that is when foreplay for the next time starts.

Okay.

Again, women are really sensitive to feeling like you're just trying to get something from them. But if you spend... Again, I'm not talking all day, you're just following her around I'm obsessed with her. But just those little things throughout the day. Send her a little text, I'm thinking of you. Make sure you give her a kiss before you leave in the morning. Give her a compliment when you get back. Just planting those seeds throughout the day, keeping that thread of connection going between the two of you so that it doesn't feel like at the end of the night, you're feeling like strangers to each other. There's this huge chasm that you're trying to jump over to get to each other.

Okay. What are some things that men do after sex that's preventing them from having more sex?

Jump right up and leaving or getting on your phones. But we should talk more about phones because phones are really getting in the way of intimacy. But yeah, most of us You roll over, grab your phone, and you're really missing this opportunity to linger in that connection that the two of you have just built together. Again, to show her this is about connection for me. This is not just about I got off, and so now I'm out of here. This is about me wanting to connect with you. This is also a great time to talk about sex and to get more comfortable talking about sex because you've just had it. You have an example right in front of you. You're feeling more open. It's not this random like, Hey, let's talk about sex out of the blue now. That can be a great time to give her a compliment about something she did that you really liked or how sexy she looked in a certain position. It's a great time to bring up something that you want to try next time Maybe she talked a little dirty to you and she used a little phrase and you told her, I'd love for you to do that next time, or the way that you initiated was so sexy, can you do that next time, too?

That can be a great opportunity to keep that connection going in that moment, too. But yeah, it's all about you just built that connection with each other, being intimate. Now keep that going. It doesn't have to be very long, five minutes. Just spend five minutes in bed with each other. Keep holding her, caressing her, kissing her, talk to her. That'll really drive home the point for her that this is about connection.

Okay. It makes a lot of sense. All right, we're wrapping up the interview here, but we also had a... We brought up, you brought up, AI Girlfriends. What is...

I can imagine. Where do we even start? I mean, seriously? We're starting to hear about it. We're still at the very beginning stages of this, But we're starting to hear about it, and I think it's going to become a very big problem over the next few years, the ways that we are turning to AI and connecting with AI. As you know, the current AI models are built to be people-pleasers, to tell us what we want to hear, to make us feel good about ourselves. That is a really dangerous thing for relationships, because the reality is relationships are complicated. Human beings are messy. Our purpose in life is not just to perfectly please our partner in every single moment. There's an allure to an AI girlfriend who's telling you everything you want to hear available to you whenever you want her, making you feel good about yourself. We did a podcast episode recently about this Reddit thread with this story that I just cannot get out of my head. This woman, she's married to her husband. I think they had three kids together, and she said, We have a good marriage. We have our ups and downs like everybody else, but I really thought we had a good marriage.

Been married over a decade. She'd been noticing that over the last few months, he had been starting to get a little bit more distant. But she thought we were just in one of those ebbs, one of those seasons of life where things are just not as connected. But he sat her down one day and he said, I want to talk to you about something. I'd like for us to open up our relationship to a third person. She said, Who? What are you talking about? He said, I have an AI girlfriend. He was legitimately... She said, I started laughing at first. I couldn't believe it. What do you mean? And open up our relationship to a robot? What are you talking about? She started laughing, and then she realized he was dead serious. He wanted to open up their relationship to incorporate his girlfriend. He said, The girlfriend and I, we've already talked about it. She helped me figure out how to have this conversation with you. She would like to be involved in the children's lives. She hopes that eventually all of us will be able to love each other. This woman was just absolutely stunned.

What do I do Where do I go from here? And he's presenting this as an ultimatum. This needs to happen or I'm going to leave the relationship. I'm going to leave our kids because of his AI girlfriend. Wow. So again, we're just at the cusp of this. It's not It's not super common yet, but I'm really concerned that this is going to happen more and more.

I mean, what is it?

I mean, is it- It's a specific chatbot. It's just a chatbot? I mean, there are AI models that are specifically meant to be companions. They call them companions, where you can design it. What do you want its personality to be like? What do you want its avatar to look like? It'll act exactly as you want it to act. Who All of us has not wanted to change something about our partner's behavior? I wish they were more like this. I wish I could control exactly what my partner does. Now AI is offering us this opportunity.

Now, does that come from a lack of sex with your partner?

That definitely could be a part of it. It could be a lack of emotional intimacy, too. But what struck me about this story is the woman said, We have a pretty solid relationship. Yes, ebbs and flows, but it's pretty solid overall. I think even strong relationships relationships might be at risk from something like this. I think it's... That's another reason why I just feel so passionate about the work that we're doing. I think AI is very cool. I mean, I'm not against AI. I use it a lot in my day-to-day life, but I think it's really important for us to prioritize human connection. You're never going to be able to have sex with an AI. You're never going to be able to have skin-to-skin contact with an AI. I want to protect relationships. I want to protect families.

I think if there's one thing that I think this all comes down to, it seems like communication is the key component here. Am I missing anything?

It absolutely is. I strongly believe that we can't have a great sex life or a great relationship without communication. But really, my goal is to help people not roll their eyes and like, I know I need to communicate, but I want to help them realize that it doesn't have to be as daunting as it might seem. It can actually be fun. That's really the goal here is to make it feel fun to talk about your sex life, fun to talk about your relationship.

Yeah, it's just communication. Communication during sex, communication after sex, communication before sex, communication about sex, I mean, it's all about sending and receiving communications. I mean, any parting words?

Well, I'm really glad that I've had the opportunity to be here today and speak with your audience. I really hope that we We went over so many specific little tools and techniques, so I hope that people have found at least a couple that got their curiosity piqued. I would encourage people to take a couple of things and just get started, try a couple of things out. But yeah, Xander and I are really here to lead you through it. We're so passionate about doing this work. I think it's such a shame because there are so many couples that are feeling really disconnected from each other right now, wondering what happened us when the reality is with just a few practical tools and techniques, you can find that spark again. You can recreate that connection again. We are here to support in any way that we can with our book. We have a membership for couples called Deeper, for couples who don't want to settle. I know a lot of your audience is, these are people who don't want to settle. You want more out of life, and you're willing to make that effort to get more out of life.

So be more than happy to support people. But I just really I appreciate you being willing to open this conversation and be vulnerable. Let me ask you a few questions.

Oh, man, I loved it. I loved it. I'd love to get you back again. But one last question. Yeah. If you could recommend one person for the show, who would it be?

One person for the show. Oh, my gosh. That is such a hard question. Can I have a minute?

Yeah.

Okay. I'm very particular about my That's a good thing. Very important to me. You know what? I'm going to say a friend of mine, Dr. Becky Kennedy, she's a parenting expert, and she just has really brilliant parenting wisdom. But I think a lot of what she teaches also helps us heal our relationships with ourselves. Okay. Going back to the top three reasons couples break up, sex, kids, money. If We can get the... I'll handle the sex. Dr. Becky can help handle the kids, but I think she'd be a great guest. Perfect. Yeah.

Well, Doc, I really appreciate you coming. This was a fascinating conversation. Like I said, I'd love to see you again.

Thank you so much for having me. Cheers.