0:00:07 I was looking through some statistics earlier on because I know that you’ve talked quite
0:00:11 extensively on relationships and sex and sexless relationships.
0:00:17 I found this stat that says a 2022 study by Relate to UK based counselling network found
0:00:24 that 26% of people in relationships were having sex less than 10 times per year and 8% were
0:00:25 having no sex at all.
0:00:33 This is a stark rise from 2018 where the numbers were quite significantly lower than that.
0:00:38 It seems like as a society we’re getting increasingly sexless.
0:00:42 Yeah, so the question is, where’s the problem?
0:00:44 Is the problem in the body or is the problem in the mind?
0:00:48 Now, being the kind of guy I am, I’m going to shift us to the mind.
0:00:52 I’m sure sometimes there are bodily issues and they deserve attention too, but if I can
0:00:59 talk about the mind, why is it that sex is easier at the beginning than in a long term
0:01:01 relationship?
0:01:05 One of the leading answers is anger.
0:01:10 It’s not very easy to have sex or want sex with someone that you’re angry with and in
0:01:17 many relationships there’s a lot of stored anger that neither party knows is there and
0:01:21 that anger has come from micro incidents of disappointment.
0:01:24 People didn’t quite call when they said they would.
0:01:27 Someone didn’t laugh when they might have done.
0:01:31 Someone didn’t show generosity when it might have been required.
0:01:35 These things get stored up and the result of too much of this is that you don’t want
0:01:38 someone going anywhere near you because you’re furious.
0:01:42 You’re essentially furious, but in the way of these things, you don’t know you are.
0:01:44 You don’t know you’re furious.
0:01:49 Again, the mind is not obvious to itself.
0:01:54 If you want to have more sex, don’t just invest in candles and fancy linen, a quite
0:01:59 useful thing to do is to go and have dinner with your partner and say to them, “We’re
0:02:04 both going to ask each other how we’ve annoyed each other because we have annoyed each other,
0:02:07 not because we’re evil people, but because we’re human and we’re in a relationship and
0:02:11 no relationship survives more than an hour without a buildup of frustration.”
0:02:16 The more we can let out that frustration at the dinner table, the more it won’t create
0:02:19 a blockage in the bedroom.
0:02:25 A chance to discharge frustration and often the reason why we don’t tell our partners
0:02:29 what our frustrations are is that they sound ridiculous.
0:02:31 It’s like, “Hang on.
0:02:35 You’re upset with me because I use the word ‘really’ in what you thought placed too much
0:02:38 emphasis on the ‘why’ when I was speaking to your mother.
0:02:41 Are you crazy?
0:02:45 You are laying yourself open to your partner pointing to you going, “Are you crazy?”
0:02:52 I think that we’re all in love, very small children, at least a small part of us is.
0:02:56 As we know, small children get upset about really weird, tiny things.
0:02:58 You’ll move a button and they start wailing and you go, “What’s happened?”
0:03:00 And they go, “You moved a button?”
0:03:01 And you go, “I did.”
0:03:03 “Why does that matter?”
0:03:04 But for them it matters.
0:03:06 A pencil has slightly changed direction.
0:03:07 We should learn.
0:03:10 We should remember what it felt like to be a child and we should acknowledge that there
0:03:16 remains, even an adult who’s very competent in all sorts of areas, a small child who is
0:03:19 liable to be getting very upset about small things.
0:03:20 Triggered.
0:03:21 Triggered.
0:03:25 But because they’re an adult, this is the problem.
0:03:29 We think an adult can’t possibly be having such childish reactions.
0:03:35 Again, we need to just cast aside our fears of shame and say, “You know what?
0:03:36 Yes.
0:03:38 An adult can get very upset about tiny things.
0:03:43 An adult probably is upset about tiny things and we’re doing ourselves an honor when we
0:03:47 can dare to reveal this to our partner and they can do likewise.
0:03:53 So if I’m someone listening to this now and I’m in a relationship where I don’t think,
0:03:57 because it’s interesting, even when I say I don’t think I’m having enough sex, the idea
0:04:01 of how much sex is enough sex has probably come from movies, which is a bit of a trap
0:04:02 as well, right?
0:04:08 But if I’m in a relationship and we are in a sexless relationship by whatever definition,
0:04:14 solution one you presented there is try and resolve the anger, the underlying contempt.
0:04:19 Are there anything else that you think is effective ways of solving for that?
0:04:23 Look, I think one useful thing to do is to go, “Why does sex matter?
0:04:24 What is this thing called sex?
0:04:26 Why does it matter?”
0:04:32 And when people get very upset, I think the answer tends to be that sex is a symbol of
0:04:38 something very poignant and very delicate, which is, “My partner loves me.”
0:04:42 And the reason why it becomes such an acute issue is that they cannot hold on to the
0:04:45 idea that the partner might love them and might not want sex.
0:04:48 This is psychologically impossible.
0:04:51 Now it is important to say, “It is possible.
0:04:54 It is possible that your partner both loves you and doesn’t want to have sex.”
0:04:55 There could be other reasons.
0:04:58 They’re feeling unwell, etc.
0:05:01 And then we can ask ourselves, “What does sex really aim at?
0:05:02 Sex aims at intimacy.”
0:05:10 Even we’ll say, in polite language, they became intimate, which means they had sex.
0:05:15 So what we know about sex is that the really exciting thing about sex is not the sex bit,
0:05:17 it’s the intimate bit.
0:05:21 It’s the idea that someone is without their guard.
0:05:25 Most of the time we approach other people with our guards on.
0:05:30 And in this very rare and unusual thing we do, we meet another human being in a vulnerable
0:05:31 state.
0:05:37 This is such a relief from the normal limitations of life.
0:05:39 And there are other ways of doing this.
0:05:42 Sex is not the only way of doing it.
0:05:48 By understanding better what sex is, we can also have a chance to get some of what we
0:05:51 get in sex in things that are not sex, if that makes sense.
0:05:56 I had Tracy Cox on the podcast and she said something to me, which really stuck with me,
0:06:01 because I hadn’t noticed it until she said it, which is this idea I believe she called
0:06:07 otherness, which is when your partner almost becomes like a family member, or you start
0:06:12 seeing them as like a sibling because they are in their sweatpants around you.
0:06:17 And she made the claim, which I think I’ve read in your books as well, that in many respects,
0:06:24 that’s the very opposite of the spice that makes sex so appealing in those early days,
0:06:27 when it’s new and novel and risky.
0:06:31 And so she kind of alluded to the fact that love and sex were actually set on two different
0:06:33 ends of a pole.
0:06:34 Right.
0:06:37 And again, to come back to my theme, what does a romantic say?
0:06:42 A romanticism tells us sex and love belong entirely together.
0:06:47 But I think what you’re saying, and many of your viewers will know, is that the relationship
0:06:48 is trickier.
0:06:53 And again, let’s not torture ourselves about this.
0:06:58 Let’s get curious and then let’s communicate about this.
0:07:05 And I think that, look, a growing child has a paradox to deal with.
0:07:10 And this is what Freud famously, doesn’t matter what you think of Freud, it’s a very useful
0:07:17 observation really, that the child experiences love.
0:07:22 In the first instance, at the beginning of life, we all experience love at the hands
0:07:28 of people who, everything’s gone right, we will have no sexual connection with, right?
0:07:34 So given the debt that adult love owes to childhood, that sets us up with a problem.
0:07:39 When we as adults start to fall in love with people and start to build up relationships,
0:07:44 which is that the more we get cozy with someone, the more we feel like we did a little bit
0:07:52 with our parents when things were really cozy, which is oddly why people like going to hotels.
0:07:55 Why do people like going to hotels to revive a relationship?
0:07:58 It’s because the furniture doesn’t remember you.
0:08:00 The curtains don’t remember you.
0:08:05 You are allowed to be, for a chosen moment, somebody without history.
0:08:10 And it’s the history that is making intimacy hard because that history, while it’s knitting
0:08:20 you together and making you emotionally close, is also rendering sexual freedom problematic.
0:08:25 And I think it’s just, we need to go very easy on ourselves for the fact that this happens.
0:08:27 And what do we do about it though?
0:08:31 Do I need to book a lot of hotel rooms, do I need to spend a lot of time away from my
0:08:32 partner?
0:08:35 I noticed even that you’re laughing, you’re smiling as you say that.
0:08:36 And I think that’s partly the clue.
0:08:42 You know, when we come up against the hardest conundrums in life, having the tolerance of
0:08:48 a sense of humor, a shared sense of humor, you know, if a couple can turn the sexual
0:08:55 challenges from a tragedy into something, you know, closer to a comedy, it’s an enormous
0:08:56 achievement.
0:08:58 Think of, you know, think of teasing, right?
0:09:02 There are sides of couples that they find really, really hard.
0:09:06 Isn’t it wonderful when a couple learns with affection to tease one another?
0:09:09 They go, ah, Steven, there’s that thing that you do, it gives you a little nickname, it
0:09:13 calls you whatever it is, you know, a little affectionate nickname.
0:09:20 That’s a wonderful moment because it means that irritation has been sublimated into tender,
0:09:23 compassionate understanding for why someone is as difficult as they are.
0:09:28 So the best thing we can do with our irritations with our partners is to be able to tease our
0:09:30 way out of them.
0:09:33 And we may need to do this in troublesome areas like sex.
0:09:37 It’s an enormous achievement if your partner can call you, you know, can go from thinking
0:09:46 that you are an idiot to smiling at you and thinking you’re a lovable idiot.