The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: E247: The No.1 Sex Expert: How To Have Great Sex EVERY Time! (And Fix Bad Sex) - Tracey Cox

You've written 17 books on the topic of sex.

So, my first question, how do we have the best sex of our lives?

That's the question that everybody wants to know.

The first thing is...

Tracy Cox!

The world's most celebrated sex expert.

She's got the answers to the questions you've always wanted to know

and has a secret to a great sex guy.

There is a decline of sex, isn't there?

Yes, there's a sex recession.

If you haven't had sex for a year with your partner,

it is very unlikely you're going to have sex again.

Oh, really?

Are you hopeful that we can turn that around?

Yes, absolutely.

The key thing is...

Women's fake their orgasm.

We have known that women don't orgasm through penetrative sex in skamasutra.

And yet, most men will go,

Yeah, yeah, I've heard about that.

Women aren't having very many orgasms during partner sex.

They're always fake.

The way to solve the whole orgasm thing is...

How do we predict if someone's going to cheat on us?

Number one, being close doesn't actually protect you against infidelity.

You become so close to your partner, they're your best friend.

You just don't see them as a sexual partner anymore.

If you understand how sex works,

and if you can make sex good with your partner,

affairs can be so preventable in so many different ways.

Women get bored way quicker than men.

Men don't get bored because they get the orgasm as a reward.

You need to give women interesting, erotic sex,

and then they'll be interested.

Otherwise, they're not going to be interested.

I've noticed a trend that amongst my friendship group,

a startling amount of them are in sexless relationships.

Yep.

What are some of the most important solutions?

If you want to have great sex, you need...

That's what you have to do if you want a good sex life.

I think that's phenomenal advice.

I have some breaking news.

And no, this is an emergency.

I've spent the last two years writing a book,

and I've written 33 laws for business, marketing and life

that are derived from all of these conversations I've had here.

I traveled the world to write this book.

I interviewed some of the most incredible people.

I did six months of extensive research

on scientific studies and principles

to corroborate everything that I wrote into these 33 laws.

And ladies and gentlemen,

that book called The Diary of a CEO,

The 33 Laws for Business, Marketing and Life

is now available for pre-order.

And there are 5,000, only 5,000 signed copies

and it's first come, first serve.

The link is in the bio right now.

So if you want that book, honestly,

it's the best book I've ever written.

It's the book I always should have written.

It's the book I also wish someone had written for me

when I was starting out on my career.

I'm really proud of it.

I'm really, really proud of it.

Really, really proud of it.

And I can't wait for all of you to get to read it.

It's out in August.

I couldn't be more excited about this as you can probably tell.

I don't know what to say other than the words I've said

to emphasise my excitement because I think it's important

and I think it's really valuable.

Link in the description.

I reached out to my team and I told my team

that I wanted to have a conversation

with the individual in the world

that was best and most educated and most engaging

on the subject matter of sex

because I've noticed a bunch of things in my personal life

and the lives of my friends and those around me.

And I feel like people aren't having

the right types of conversation about sex.

I feel like we're avoiding it as a society

and I feel like sex is so intrinsically linked

to performance and wellbeing and business

and all the things I usually talk about.

So they found you and that's why you're here.

So my first question is who are you and what do you do?

What is your mission?

Right, I'm not a trained sex therapist

which is what everybody thinks I am.

I'm a sex educator which I think means that what I do

is I look at all the research and look at all the sort

of what's going on in the sex world

in sort of an academic sense.

And then I work out, okay, so that's all well and good

but what does this mean for you and I?

We're not necessarily you and I together

but people in the bedroom.

So I bring it down to a sort of level

that is more practical, that all my books are very much like,

right, so here's what we've now know about sex.

Here's how this is going to help you in bed.

So I think my job is to sort of get the research

and make it into something that, you know,

the average person can understand and make it work for them.

So I sort of, yeah, I'm a sex educator.

It's a better way to describe me.

You know, part of the reason I wanted to speak to you

as I said at the start of this conversation

is because I've noticed a trend.

I've started to like smell it amongst my friendship group

where a startling amount of them are in sexless relationships.

Yep.

And they're not, they're not, you know,

your book here says great sex starts at 50.

My friends are, the friends I'm talking about are in their 30s.

Yes.

And I, and there's lots of things here.

There's lots of thoughts and I want to figure out

which ones are true.

So I'm going to say a bunch of things

which are inherently naive and I know they are.

So the first one is like,

why aren't they having sex more often?

And is that a, is that a problem?

Are their partners to blame?

Because they seem to want to have sex and their partners don't.

Is it wrong?

Are those relationships therefore broken

and should they break up with their partners

because they're not having that much sex?

So we'll go into all of that,

but let's start with this,

this the point you raised about how lust and love are not

necessarily great bedfellows.

How does one, if they're in that situation

where they really love their partner,

they're really, really close to their partner,

but they're feeling like the intimacy has ran out the back door

because of, you know, that sexual intimacy

has ran out the back door.

How do we create that balance?

You talk about something called otherness

which I thought was really compelling in your new book.

Such a big question that is

because that's the question that everybody wants to know.

How do you keep desire going long term?

The otherness thing is all about the close couples

kind of become like tweedledum and tweedledee.

They don't do anything separately,

but you need to have separateness from your partner.

And this is why during COVID, no one had sex at all.

In the beginning it was like fantastic,

we can have sex at 11 o'clock in the morning

and then it was like, oh, we can have sex any time we want.

How unappealing is that?

You know, the more available something is, the less we want it.

But you need to separate from your partner.

You need to have your own identity

and your identity with your partner.

And that's the otherness that I talk about

is seeing your partner in the real world

and seeing them when you're not with them.

Like so many couples only ever see each other at home in their house.

They never see each other out.

And if you go out, I remember once,

very early on into the relationship with my husband, Miles,

he was walking through a restaurant and I arrived first

and he hadn't seen me.

And I was, he was walking through the restaurant

and I saw a couple of women look over at him

and I was like, shit, you know, he's really attractive.

Well, I knew that, but he's, you know, and if I don't,

you know, he's, he's out there all the time, you know,

like people are going to be attracted to him.

So it sort of makes you lift your game of it.

So you need that.

If you see your partner at home and you know, hi, hi,

you only ever see them come through the front door.

They become too safe.

And I think when people say, oh, my partner would never cheat on me,

I think, how rude is that to think that your partner's never going

to cheat on you, no matter what you do to them,

no matter how horrible you are.

That's terrible.

That's like saying your partner, you know,

it's just a doormat that you can do whatever.

I like to think that, you know, my partner's not going to cheat

on me, but, you know, that makes me think that if I pledge

monogamy, I pledge that I'm going to sexually satisfy my

partner.

I think you have an obligation to do that.

And I'm going to keep myself looking good because love is,

you know, kind, but it's not blind.

And I'm going to do all sorts of things.

I think it's a real insult.

If Miles said to me, I know you'd never cheat on me,

I'd be like, I don't take that as a compliment, would you?

I think it's important to know that your partner will go and leave you

if you drop the ball in a variety of different ways.

And I think that one of the interesting points you raise there

is about like physical appearance or keeping yourself well

or keeping yourself attractive.

Do you think, and I've asked a few people this over time,

do you think we have an obligation to stay in shape,

attractive, whatever it might be for our partners?

Yes, absolutely.

I don't mean like you have to have facelifts or, you know,

anything like that.

But you should keep yourself as attractive as you can,

each of you.

And I think, you know...

That's not just a physical thing, I have to say.

No, no, it's an everything.

Yes, exactly.

It's an intellectual thing as well because desire goes.

And especially, you know, the grumpy old man,

grumpy old woman thing.

When people age, I think that they become very set in their ways

and, you know, become quite, you know,

you don't want to be the bitter and twisted person.

You could look like, you know, a Greek god.

And if you're bitter and twisted,

your partner's still not going to want to sleep with you.

So, yes, I do think we owe it to each other to say, you know,

to look as good as you can and to be as positive as you can.

There is nothing less sexy than being with somebody

who's miserable all the time, who's a negative person.

It's so interesting that I thought that some of the most

attractive things I find in my partner are when I look over

and see her doing her work and her things.

Yes.

So, actually, it's funny, she doesn't actually know this,

but last night I came home from work very, very late

because I was out, did some talks at the,

and I came home and I got in through the door

and my partner was sat at the kitchen table.

It was about 11 p.m. at night designing her new studio

on her laptop with her headphones on.

And I just found that really, I took a photo.

It's on my phone and I took a photo

because I'm like, I'm proud of her in one sense,

but it was really lovely that when I walked through the door,

it wasn't about me.

She was busy doing her own thing.

Absorbed in her own stuff.

Yeah.

And I kind of like walk,

and I can almost see how some people might find that threatening.

I like, hey babe, give her a kiss.

Like, she kind of like kisses me back,

but then goes back to the laptop.

I'm like, this is nice.

And I went over and I sat on the sofa on my own

and just watched Manchester United,

but there was something really attractive about it.

Yeah, of course there is.

I mean, watching somebody at work doing what they love

is the moment when, yeah, that you're like,

wow, this person's amazing.

I mean, I would hate to be a person who, you know,

the partner's at home waiting for you.

And where are you?

And it's all about, so what have you done?

Nothing much.

How was your day?

Yeah.

That's not, it's not healthy for a relationship.

That puts it too much on one person.

If you want to have great sex,

you need to have an interesting life.

You need to be doing interesting things.

You're not going to be having great sex

if you're boring and you do the same thing every single day

because you just end up doing the same boring sex.

You need stimulation all the time.

And that routine-ness is the enemy of-

The killer.

Yeah.

The killer for women.

The killer for women.

Because women are the ones that find monogamy boring, not men.

If you say to men, right, you could have the same sex,

pretty much do the same thing every single time,

three times a week for the rest of your life with this person.

Most men would go, all right, sounds right to me.

If you said that to a woman, she would go, you are kidding me.

But this is what's happening.

Women get bored way quicker than men.

And they do so because our orgasm

is far more complicated than yours.

I mean, intercourse is usually the main event for most couples' sex.

Intercourse is like the big bit that everyone aims for, right?

And that's great for men because intercourse

very successfully stimulates the penis.

You know, the penis wants to rub it in and out of something.

The vagina does a great job.

Fabulous.

For women, the clitoris is outside the vagina,

that some of it is inside.

And, you know, because the clitoris isn't that little tip, by the way,

it looks like a wishbone, imagine a wishbone.

And the tip of the clitoris is at the top

and then it goes down the size of the legs, right?

That's the clitoris.

Amazing. 10 centimeters long.

So because the clitoris is on the outside of the vagina,

intercourse doesn't cut it for most women.

Only 80, no, 20% of women can climb extra-penetrative sex.

20%, right?

That means 80% of women are not having their orgasms through intercourse.

So if you're going to serve up the same routine sex,

and most couples have sex the same way over and over again,

every time they have sex, and that's your lot as a female,

you're having sex which doesn't give you an orgasm.

You're having sex which isn't exciting, isn't erotic,

isn't, you know, in any way really interesting, women get bored.

Men don't get bored because they get the orgasm as a reward.

Women get bored because the sex is just not the right sex for them.

So women's desire for sex goes down so much faster than men's does.

So you need to give women interesting erotic sex

and then they'll be interested.

But otherwise, they're not going to be interested.

There are 80% of women listening now that can relate.

Yes.

So, and it's funny because I was speaking to a friend of mine.

I told them that I was going to have this conversation with you

and I said, what would you like me to say?

And this was the question they had and it's linked to what you just said.

They said, I'm in a relationship where my partner

is having the same sex over and over again.

He's coming very quickly during sex.

And I don't know how to broach the conversation with him

about like this isn't working for me without like embarrassing him

or whatever it might be.

What advice would you give to that person?

Gosh, talking about sex is just the thing.

I mean, do you talk about sex with your girlfriend?

How long have you been together?

Four years now.

Oh, well done.

They're just very open with things.

Yeah, well done.

That's really good because most people talk a lot about sex in the beginning

when it's all going well.

Like, aren't we amazing?

That wasn't that great.

Lots of stuff.

The minute there's problems, they tail off.

And every sex problem can be solved if you talk about it.

If you don't talk about sex, the tiniest sex problem

can ruin your whole sex life.

And the reason people don't talk about sex

is that they're worried exactly where as you just said

that they're going to hurt their partner,

that they're going to upset them.

Well, you just be really tactful about it.

And I always talk about the compliment sandwich.

So say you want to say...

So she wants him to be what?

Give her more foreplay, something like that?

Yeah, just he's reaching orgasm too quickly.

And then she's obviously not enjoying it

because he's over and she's still not had her orgasm.

No.

Well, the mantra for that is she comes first.

Always.

The way to solve the whole orgasm thing in several ways,

one of the ways is to have...

Give her orgasms through oral sex, fingers, vibrator,

and then you go on to intercourse,

which is when he gets his orgasm.

So that's a very...

I mean, it's what a lot of couples do,

a lot of straight couples do.

You'll notice actually when I talk about sex,

I talk about straight couples.

The reason why is that gay couples have a lot better time of it

because they've got the same issues going on.

So it sort of helps if you go in lots of ways.

But I would say don't worry so much about...

If you say to...

If she said to her partner,

look, I really love our sex.

I love our sex.

I particularly like it when you do X.

But you know, when you used to do Y,

give me more foreplay, give me oral sex.

I really, really love that.

Can we do more of that?

So you're not saying actually you're not lasting long enough.

And not lasting long enough is not going to be an issue

with most women

because they don't have their orgasms through intercourse anyway.

So I think that men need to calm down about that.

They feel like they have to go on forever and ever and ever.

And it's like, well, she's not going to orgasm that way anyway.

She's going to feel like she has to.

And then you get the faking it

and all that sort of stuff comes into it.

But talking about sex is such a huge issue for people.

And the funny thing about talking about sex

is that once you've done it once,

it's the first conversation, especially, you know,

I deal with couples who haven't talked about sex for 30 years.

And that first conversation is excruciating.

You know, you're like, oh my God, this is awful.

I just want the earth to move like open and get rid of me.

But once you move past that initial awkwardness,

which seriously lasts like three minutes,

then all of a sudden this relief,

the amount of couples who say, oh my God, like I can say,

actually, I don't really like it when you do that.

Can you do this?

And like, you know, does it worry you that, you know,

my erection isn't as hard as it was when I was young?

And you get reassurance

and then they're falling over themselves.

You will never, ever, ever regret trying to talk about sex

with your partner.

It is the number one thing you can do for your relationship.

So she should think about what she wants, be very specific,

men particularly, like they respond best to very specific instructions.

So instead of saying, look, this sex isn't working for me

because, you know, you, you're climaxing too fast

and then all of a sudden it's over and I'm just left high and dry.

If you say, this is my idea of the perfect sex session,

can you just like, let's just take turns.

You know, we each have, we each design our own perfect sex session.

You know, I, could you start with kissing?

You could move on to kissing my neck.

I really like it if you play with my breasts

and then I love oral sex,

but could you do it for a bit longer?

Very specific.

And people are like, well, that's like telling you, you know,

saying you like, can you say you love me?

And then they say, I love you back.

But no, giving instruction in sex is really,

most people are really grateful for it.

And it might feel a bit awkward the session after that

where he's thinking, oh my God,

I'm just doing exactly what she says.

Isn't this embarrassing?

And then all of a sudden you forget about it.

And then the next session and the next session

is like flowing and great.

Okay. So a couple of counterpoints here,

just from personal experience.

One of the things I've always been a bit conscious of,

or no, one of the things that I think has irked me a little bit is,

and this goes back to what you said about lust,

this kind of spontaneity and then the riskiness of it,

is I don't want rules, you know, like I don't want.

Rules.

I don't want to be instructed during sex or even worse.

I don't like that.

Do it like this.

Oh, no.

It kind of kills the like,

I think sometimes you can become a little bit like

boy being told off by his mum, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And that can have an impact on one's erection or erection

and their mindset.

I think sometimes for guys, so much of sex is flowing,

feeling like you can flow.

And sometimes if you get,

like if you've got critical feedback during sex,

that's like a pressure stress,

which then the erection might not, you know, hold out.

Well, first of all,

it's natural for an erection to come and go during any sex sessions.

So that's not really important.

But maybe, yeah, criticism isn't great.

Like, don't do it like that.

Move over here or in a very barking, you know,

Sergeant Major, you know, can you move to the left?

That's not so great.

But if you do it, I mean, often men do,

don't hit the spot and they are doing it wrong.

And so do you want women to just lie back and go,

fuck it, it's not even remotely close to where it should be.

But I'm going to pretend because that's what,

and this is why women don't give men instruction in bed.

It's because they know that a lot of men don't like it.

A lot of men, you know, it is, you know,

it does disrupt the proceedings,

but then it's very quickly back on track if you do it,

you know, if you go and do what exactly she wants.

Personally, I think sexual instruction,

you can say, or just over to the left a bit,

or that feels great there.

And, you know, whenever you can give positive feedback,

rather than negative, is great.

So giving, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if she says,

no, that's perfect, stay there, stay there, do it for longer.

100%.

Yeah, exactly.

The key thing is the positive frame.

Yeah, yeah, that's the key thing.

The key thing is absolutely that.

And then if maybe you still haven't hit the spot,

then afterwards you say, actually, you know,

that didn't quite work.

Can I just tell you where or what works for me?

And then demonstrate on your hand or something.

That's always a really good way to do it.

But yeah, the key is in the positive.

No one's going to respond to sex where somebody's going,

oh, that's not right.

Why are you doing that for?

That's terrible.

Yeah.

You know, don't go there.

That doesn't feel anything.

You know, no, that's terrible.

That's awful.

And those instructional sessions should happen

when, before sex, during sex, after sex?

Well, depends on the couple a little bit.

I mean, you can use body language during sex.

I don't know about before sex.

I think maybe sometimes after sex,

when you're getting on really well and, you know,

having a few drinks maybe, if you're a drinker,

and relax and just talking generally,

that's sort of the time to say, by the way, you know,

that always think that's a good time

if you want to try something new.

Or to say, oh, by the way, God,

my friend was talking about doing X.

You know, what do you think about that?

I always think things like conversations

about sex that are positive and exciting

and, you know, talking about trying new things

should happen outside the bedroom, really.

But otherwise, yeah, you do have to have

those instructional sessions, I'm afraid.

What if you want to do something

and your partner doesn't want to do it?

Generally, a request for something new,

request for anything is just a request for variety.

So say your partner says,

I want to try having sex outside

and you really don't want to have sex outside.

The correct answer to that is, look,

that's really not my thing.

But, you know, why don't we try X?

Most people, if they want to try something new,

if you give them, you know, I'm not open to that,

but I am open to something else,

then they'll be fine about it.

But, I mean, where you get into problems

with somebody wanting to try something other partner,

not wanting to try, is if it's something a bit fetish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and that's when you get,

did you ever watch Billions, you know,

where she had the fetish of being whipped

and wanting to be the submissive

and he just let her go off

and be satisfied by a sex worker?

That's one option, by the way.

If your partner has a fetish, it's to just go,

okay, I accept that you've got this fetish

and it's not for me.

So, if it's really so much part of your makeup

that you can't live without it,

then go off with a sex worker and satisfy it.

That's the extreme version.

But most of the time, I think,

oh, you can meet halfway.

Like, say your partner,

say you want to have a threesome with two women.

Well, then the meeting halfway might be

that you have phone sex with a sex worker.

Maybe you role play it.

Maybe you go to a lap dancing club

and she gets a lap dance by someone.

There's always some kind of compromise in there

where you can capture a sense

of what the other person wants.

Okay, so let's go back up to this initial question.

My friends, they're in their thirties.

Sexless.

Sexless relationships.

They are increasingly frustrated about it, it seems.

It's funny, I've got this collection of my best friends.

We're very talkative and communicative

around our sex lives and stuff.

And I just noticed that in various ways,

they're in situations where they don't feel

like they're getting enough sex from their partner

and they see it as a critical problem,

which might result in them, for example,

being cheating or ending the relationship.

Even in my own sort of sexual experience,

what got me really engaged with this subject matter

was I was in a relationship where the pot,

my partner turned around to me one day

after six months and said,

I don't like having sex.

And as a young man, with me,

as a young man, I think with an ego,

I thought, well, what does that mean?

That's super emasculating.

Does that mean that I'm not hitting it right?

Or do I, maybe it's her proper, whatever.

And so I went on that journey with...

What did she mean?

So it's interesting because we separated.

My reaction was very like, and also,

I turned to her and said, why?

And she said, the next sentence was,

I'm not comfortable talking about that with you.

Yeah, so for me, that was like the door had closed.

Of course it did, because where do you go with that?

Yes, exactly. So I broke up with her.

And year passes, we both go to different places.

We both kind of figure ourselves out a little bit.

And on her journey, she really got to understand

that at the heart of her relationship with sex

was this fear that had derived from previous relationships

where the partner was very forceful,

apparent cheating, all of those things

that we kind of discussed earlier.

So it wasn't that she necessarily didn't like having sex.

There was a lot of psychological work to be done

on removing that fear of like abandonment.

And really, if I made her feel safe, really, really safe,

then the sexual appetite would return.

That's what happened.

So a year later, we get back together.

We ended up having the best sex of our lives

on an ongoing basis.

And it was because she was able to understand

if she was able to understand what was really going on,

I was able to be patient enough to listen

and go for weeks and weeks and months

with not having sexual intimacy and just be there,

which allowed her to feel safe.

And then beyond that, we were able to kind of rebuild it.

Fantastic.

And we're still together today.

Oh my God, so this is your girlfriend?

Yeah. I'll have to ask her for permission to say this.

So I'll show her the clip and make sure she's comfortable with it.

But that's my girlfriend.

That's an extraordinary story.

So we went from a point of, I don't like having sex,

I don't like having sex in a really, really bad situation

to the best situation I think one can imagine in that department.

Obviously communication was at the heart of it,

letting my ego down and giving her space to, you know,

and I give the credit to her because she figured that out.

But that's what got me really into the subject matter,

because I've now got loads of friends that are in that situation.

What I would say to your friends is,

if your partner doesn't want to have sex with you,

I wonder whether how good the sex is,

because a lot of women say no.

I'm presuming these are straight couples.

A lot of women say no to sex because the sex it's on offer

is not that interesting to them.

So for this, we need to talk about sex drives,

spontaneous desire versus responsive desire.

Have you heard of that?

Yes. Yeah.

From reading your book.

Oh right. So spontaneous desire is two-thirds of men

have spontaneous desire,

and it's the desire that everybody has at the beginning.

And by the way, if you want to know somebody's resting libido,

you've got to wait about a year.

You have to wait about a year

to find out what their real libido is,

because it's always so artificially inflated at the start.

But so spontaneous desire, two-thirds of men have this.

It's the want to seek sex, want sex, seek sex.

They can go from people with spontaneous desire,

could be scrolling through Instagram,

somebody's sexy walks past and it's like,

wow, I'm instantly aroused for sex.

They go from zero to 100 very quickly.

They seek out their mate, want sex,

and they're off.

Responsive desire means that you have no desire for sex

or very little desire for sex

until somebody is actually doing something to you sexually.

So this is somebody who maybe is with their partner.

Their partner wants to have sex.

They're not even slightly interested,

but goes, okay, look, I'll give it a go.

Then once things start happening,

if their partner is very good at stimulating them

and they enjoy the stimulation,

all of a sudden they're like, yeah, actually.

Yeah, I'm enjoying this.

That's the warming up.

That's the warming up, right?

Now, 30% of women have responsive desire.

The rest of them are a mix between spontaneous and responsive.

Most men, so you've got this situation

where most men have spontaneous desire.

Most women are responsive.

Most men are very happy to go straight to genital sex.

They don't need warming up the way their anatomy works.

For women, for prey isn't a luxury, it's a necessity

because in order for sex to be comfortable,

you need the vagina to tent.

So it literally puffs up so that it can take a penis comfortably.

So if you don't wait for that to happen

and you go male-style sex, go straight for penetration,

she's not even off the starting blocks

and suddenly you're penetrating, sex isn't great,

and then it's all over.

So for men, you could have not even thinking about sex

to having finished within 10 minutes.

For women, they need time to warm up

because their sex drive is responsive.

So they're almost like blinking it's over

and they haven't even got to 5% desire.

And this is the problem with couples.

And I'm talking about a very basic couple

who probably don't talk about sex

and who aren't terribly sexually savvy.

So I think people have an understanding,

vague understanding that women need more foreplay.

I mean, that's been drummed into men, hasn't it?

But I think that what women don't understand

is that women think at the beginning it was great,

it was all spontaneous, desire was there.

When you get into a long-term relationship,

desire doesn't tap you on the shoulder anymore,

you have to create it.

And women, I think, because that spontaneous desire is gone

and they don't feel like sex,

it just doesn't come out of the blue

unless they start having sex,

they think, oh, that just must mean I don't want sex anymore.

Wow, something's wrong with me, I don't want sex anymore.

You do want sex, it's just that you've got to be,

have sexy things happening to you

before you feel the desire for sex.

And if people understood that,

if women understood it better and stopped saying,

oh, well, it's obviously means my sex drive's gone,

no, it hasn't, it's there,

you've just got to have great stimulation and great sex

to get it back.

And the other thing about women is that women,

we have this thing about that women want tame

and they want romance and stuff, that's not true.

So much research now shows that women like erotic, wild sex.

They've done these experiments with women where

they'll show them erotic videos

and they'll wire up the genitals to measure genital response.

So when you're aroused as a woman,

blood flows to the genital same as men and you lubricate.

So they're watching all these videos, various sexy videos,

and they have to say, full anything is disarousing you,

no, because society says no, we're not supposed to be.

And the genitals are like, are you kidding?

What are you thinking?

This is fantastic.

I'm absolutely, say yes to this, say yes to this.

So there's such a big difference

between what we're taught and what we would like.

So if your girlfriend's saying no to sex

and you're in a long-term relationship,

it's because you're not giving her interesting enough sex.

Give her exciting, erotic sex.

Give her something like, actually, this is what we're going to do.

I mean, look at 50 Shays of Grey,

that got middle-aged women wanting sex,

women who hadn't wanted sex for 20 years.

I remember being on a holiday with my husband

and we started talking to this couple

and it was around the time when 50 Shays came out

and she knew what I did and she said,

God, I hadn't really had great sex with my partner,

wasn't interested in sex for like 10 years.

She said, I read the book.

I'm sitting there two o'clock in the morning,

I'm looking down at my partner and I'm thinking,

I really just want to wake him up and have sex with him.

And she said, and I've never, and then she said,

and I read the books and suddenly I was back into this

erotic sex with my husband that I'd just forgotten,

I'd forgotten about, like, you think of sex,

it's like, oh God, here we go, kissing, a bit fumbling,

you know, and then the routine sex,

but give people something interesting,

like all your friends, give her really interesting scenarios,

take her somewhere sexy, push her out of her comfort zones,

don't give her romance, don't give her, you know,

give her a sexy sex and then they'll be interested.

I'm trying thinking of my friends,

like posing that and how uncomfortable they'd feel.

Really?

Like, babe, I want to drive to the countryside and da-da-da-da,

because you know when you've been with someone

and you've become that kind of sibling thing

that you described earlier,

they might almost look at you with a bit of horror.

Yeah, you wouldn't go straight from not talking about sex to,

like, and we're going to go to a lactose club tonight,

and no, you have to have the conversation,

you have to bite the bullet and have the conversation,

because the thing about sexist relationships,

if you haven't had sex for a year with your partner,

it is very unlikely you're going to have sex again with your partner,

unless you confront it head-on.

If you just think, yeah, this will pass, this will pass,

it will never pass, you're not going to suddenly go,

oh my god, look at that, we haven't had sex for five years,

let's go to bed now.

No, it's got to the awkward, awkward, awkward stage.

So, I mean, 30% of couples who have been together for two years or more

don't have sex, two years, not 10 years, two years, 30%.

It is very easy to get out of the habit of sex,

and once you're out of the habit of sex, the less often you do it,

and then couples get into this thing where it's like,

God, we haven't had sex for ages,

but you know what, next weekend we'll have this marathon sex session,

and that'll make up for it all,

and then the marathon sex session is like,

God, how am I going to find time for that?

Or, you know, that's a bit daunting,

and then, of course, you'd have to have sex for like six weeks

to make up for the session,

so it just becomes more and more insurmountable.

So, I always say to people,

just have little bite-sized bits of sex.

Sex doesn't have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Like, have a big snogging session.

Have a thing where he gives you oral,

you don't do anything, give nothing back,

or you give him oral, or you just do something sensual together,

you have a bath together.

That counts as sex.

People think sex has to have intercourse in there.

It doesn't.

It's the least favourite bit for women.

Take the intercourse out.

Start doing little bite-sized stuff to reconnect sexually.

It's like a frog in a frying pan,

that old analogy of how slowly

the frog doesn't realise it's being heated in a frying pan

until the water's boiling and it's dead.

Like, it happens very, very gradually in relationships.

Yes, it does.

And then you get to a point where you go,

how the hell did we get here?

Yeah.

And at that point...

You have to have the talk.

The talk.

This is interesting, because one of my friends was,

I was talking to him about it,

and I was saying like, you've led it gradually straight so far,

and you're currently letting it, you're not addressing it,

you need to stage a crisis.

It's kind of the way I framed it to him,

which is like, you need to say, stop.

Like, this relationship has to stop.

We have to have a conversation.

Yes.

Because I'm at a point now where I'm either going to leave

this relationship or I'm going to end up cheating or something,

so we need to fix this together.

And it needs to feel important.

Yeah.

Or else it'll be allowed to simmer.

That's exactly right.

And of course, what lots of people do in that scenario

is they just turn to porn.

Yeah.

And they just satisfy themselves with porn,

but that's not ideal, obviously.

Why?

Well, because it's pretty soulless sex, isn't it?

Just watching porn and masturbating.

You know, it's really funny about porn, actually,

because I used to have a great relationship with porn.

I used to say to people all the time, like,

porn is your friend.

Watch it with your partner.

It's great for, you know, if you've got a high sex drive

and your partner doesn't, it, you know,

you can satisfy yourself.

It keeps your imagination, you know, peaked.

You, you know, can satisfy that sense of newness

by watching porn.

And now porn's moved into a really ugly stage with,

you know, there's such a concentration on aggressive acts

like spitting, choking.

Choking is terrible.

Slapping across the face.

It's become very much like that.

And young men are growing up to think that

this is what a normal sex session is like.

This is normal real life sex.

It is not.

Porn is nothing like real life sex.

And then women look at it and go,

gosh, right, okay, that's obviously what's expected of me.

This is what I have to do.

And it's, it's moving into a very nasty direction.

They say unmet expectations equal unhappiness.

So by setting expectations up here is like,

we're going to do this for an hour and I'm going to tie you up

and spit on you and choke you.

And you're going to make this sound and you're going to scream

and you're going to tell me I'm this and you're going to say

that I'm your fire, whatever the first thing it might be.

Then for those unmet expectations equals unhappiness

in the bedroom, you go, well, you know,

I'm going to have to go looking for something else.

Exactly.

And that's what young men do.

Because they think that's what sex is going to be about.

It's not.

So then they keep looking for the girls who will give them that.

And then girls very quickly figure out,

okay, if I want to be liked, I have to do that.

I've just done a big thing on choking.

And I interviewed all these young girls

and it was horrifying.

It was, they've been, I mean, between 58% of college students

between the age of, you know, like, and all being choked,

I think 30% of them had been asked.

And I'm not talking about, you know, symbolic choking

of just putting a hand on the throat,

which even that freaks me out.

But I'm talking about, you know, cutting off wind supply.

There was one girl who told me she was 21.

She'd gone out with this guy.

He seemed really nice.

He started choking her.

She said, no, she passed out.

She woke up next to this guy who was asleep.

He then said to, and then she got herself out of there

and was like, oh my God, you know, terrified.

He texted her the next day and said, oh my God, babe,

this sex was awesome.

Let's meet up again.

And she was, she was just like,

how could you possibly think that that was good?

And that worries me a lot.

I think that, that, I mean, sex, I think,

is moving in a great way in lots of ways,

particularly for young women, except for things like that.

I think that is terrible.

So no, you don't want to be satisfying yourself with porn.

But you have to have the conversation.

If sex is now out of your marriage,

you cannot just let it go and be the elephant in the ring

because exactly what you said is going to happen.

You're going to leave or you're going to cheat.

So you sit down with your partner and you say, listen,

we really need to have a discussion about this.

I love you desperately, but I miss our sex.

I really, we used to have lovely sex.

I love having sex with you.

You're really desirable.

It's, it's, you know, and I,

can we talk about why this isn't happening anymore?

Are you having the sort of, you know,

is it that the sex that we're having isn't doing it for you?

What can I do to make you, you know,

want to have sex more often with me?

Because I would really love to have sex with you more often.

Can we have a discussion about this?

Okay. I've got friends that have tried that.

And what happened?

The partner doesn't necessarily know.

It's a similar situation to what I felt,

the one in the situation I described that I was in,

where my partner turned around and said something,

because they might not have the information themselves.

They go, well, I just don't like having it.

And they might not know that the, you know,

the responsive sex language that you talked about,

and they might not know what's going on with...

Oh, I see. The partner might not know

why she doesn't want to have sex.

Why she or he doesn't like having sex?

And then you kind of hit a wall, don't you?

Well, that's when you educate yourself.

That's when you read a few of my books

to give you a bit of education.

But I mean, okay.

So the partner who wants sex is generally more driven.

So maybe they could sexually educate themselves and say,

you know, I've been reading up about this,

perhaps it might be because of this,

can we try having sex this way?

But it's all about breaching the topic.

And then, I mean, depending on the reaction,

I mean, I know I've, you know,

encouraged some people to have this talk,

and then they've got an answer which is just startling.

Well, they'll say, I don't want to have sex anymore.

I'm not interested in solving this.

So that's it.

So you just have to put up with it.

That's what I, that's basically what I got.

If somebody says that to you and they really,

and you've tried on several occasions,

and you, I think that is grounds for walking out myself.

And I did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And a miracle, it seems to me.

Yes, because then people did some soul.

So sometimes maybe you walk out and then the person thinks,

well, gosh, actually, that's not very fair.

Because monogamy is all about, you know,

I pledged to only have sex with one person.

But if that person withdraws sex,

then where are you left?

Apart from having solo sex and, you know,

or you have an agreement.

Okay.

Well, if you won't have sex with me,

then what are my options?

My options are to satisfy myself, to cheat.

You happy for me to seek the sex elsewhere.

And lots of times people will say, yeah,

actually I am.

I don't want to know about it.

I don't want it to be in our friendship group.

And we're going to have to have rules about this.

But, you know, some women are more than happy

for that to happen.

Or some men are more than happy for that to happen.

It's not just a female thing here.

Men go off sex as well.

On this point of porn as well,

I read something recently about the shame

that it's causing in people.

Like, I think the study that I read,

and I'm...

Yeah, I think I read that too.

About 40% of men that use that masturbate to porn

report to feeling a sense of shame.

And then when we think about the sort of macro,

where we are in sex as a society right now,

there is a decline of sex, isn't there, going on.

Absolutely.

Which is quite concerning.

Yeah, there is a sex recession.

And that's very much because...

I mean, basically, there wasn't a sex recession

before social media streaming phones.

It's all to do with that.

We have too much to do.

We basically just go off sex

because we have other things to entertain us.

You know, pre-all that, 10.34 on a Saturday night,

most couples were having sex.

There was nothing else to do.

That was it.

We just did two...

You know, there's that going on.

So we're too busy.

We've got too many other things on our plate.

That's the main problem with long-term couples.

Then you have, I think, less face-to-face communication

which makes people quite nervous.

If you haven't had sex before

and you're dealing mainly with FaceTime calls,

you know, video calls,

which is what lots of young people are,

when you're face-to-face, they get very nervous.

They don't know anything about body language.

They don't know how to connect.

And sex becomes scary in Japan.

There's something like 30%, no, higher.

I think more like 45% of people get to the age

in their 30s and their virgins.

They've never even had a sexual encounter.

And they just...

And if you don't give your body sex,

your body doesn't want sex.

So they could quite happily go through life completely sexless.

That's what's going to end up happening with sex.

We are becoming less and less and less.

And, you know, the more we go into virtual worlds,

the more...

I mean, the amount of people who rely on porn for sex,

who can't even be bothered going out and finding a partner

because it's all too difficult.

I mean, we're...

It's becoming less and less about the intimacy

and more and more about just the getting off part.

We're now in an AI world as well.

Yes, terrifying.

Which is very interesting.

Yes.

Because you're now...

You know, we've heard about sex dolls

and stuff like that over the years.

But a sex doll that can speak to you with such depth and reason

and apparent emotional nuance and understanding

is really, really scary.

You can think...

I was thinking about...

I'm thinking about this.

Thinking about all the different ways

that AI is going to disrupt us

as like the social fabric of society.

And one of the really clear ways

that was you can now have a sex doll in your house

that speaks to you, that comforts you,

that understands your problems,

understands what you're going through

and can give you unbelievable advice.

We'll never shout at you.

We'll never criticise you.

And we'll please you in a personalised way.

It will learn how to please you.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

Fantastic.

Let's just swap our partners for that.

But that is...

We're right there.

We're on the doorstep of that world.

And do you know what, though?

Think about all the lonely people.

Think about all the lonely people

that can now have a companion.

But is it companionship?

Is it real connection?

If you're somebody who can't find a companion

in real life or you're lonely,

I mean, it's better than a dog, isn't it?

I mean, I think that's got

some really nice applications to it.

But it's also got some dire applications to it.

Because then, ultimately,

we'll end up with no population, will we?

Because no one will be having sex with a real person.

That's what I'm saying.

So I think you think you can see the short term.

Oh, well, Dave's going to be

slightly more, less lonely, potentially.

But if we go up that exponential curve of improvement,

we get to a point where this thing is walking,

it's talking, it is making your breakfast,

your dinner, your whatever,

then it's satisfying you on demand.

And then you look over at a human and you go...

Ugh.

They're going to be more interesting

than people, aren't they?

That's what I'm saying.

They're going to be more interesting.

They're going to be better in every way.

No, I think humans will be more interesting, surely.

You think?

Do you want somebody like...

It's like a yes person.

I don't want a yes person in my life.

I want somebody who's in a challenge.

But do people think they do?

Yeah.

I think people will choose the short term

without thinking about the long term of connection

companionship over time and challenge

and different solving problems.

Yeah, challenge, yeah.

I think the average person,

if they could be faced with...

If they were to draw their perfect partner,

they wouldn't say,

I want difficulty and challenge

and sometimes to walk out arguments

and to be interrupted when the football's on.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, you're not going to put that in there.

But then I think surely over time,

I don't know,

I do worry about AI with humans

and I don't share...

You know, some people present the argument

like we'll be free to do all these amazing esoteric things.

We won't.

We'll just sit there and look at social media

and get fat and drink and sit in our rooms watching porn.

That's what we'll do.

Yeah, because we choose the short term dopamine

over the long term.

Yeah, instant gratification.

Gosh, that is scary.

That's going to be a huge industry.

Yeah.

I mean, it already is a big industry.

It already is, yeah.

But these living AI sex dolls

will be a huge industry.

I don't think they quite perfected the robot bit though,

have say.

So there's a couple of things happening in tandem.

I mean, Elon Musk is working on his own robots.

Tesla, we have Boston Robotics,

I believe they're called,

who have been working on robots for a long time.

But it's going to move very quickly,

as all exponential curves do.

So now we've got the kind of machine learning,

modeling, MLM, AGI,

they call it artificial general intelligence stuff,

moving quickly.

The robotics side, I think,

is going to gain pace because now there's a greater demand.

But it's really, really, it's one of the things I am.

Did you see that film Blade back in the day?

No.

I saw Lars in The Real Girl.

Do you remember that?

That was about a guy who had a sex doll.

Oh, really?

And the whole village sort of accepted it.

And then when he didn't need Terry,

got a real person at the end.

But no, I didn't see Blade.

Just there's a scene in this film called Blade,

where he puts on a headset and it's set,

I mean, it was 20 years ago,

but it was set in the future,

puts the headset on and this headset is exactly that.

It's an AI that basically gets him off,

and he has the time of his life.

And actually, his partner sits opposite him,

and they both put the headset on.

And they...

Yeah, I actually think I did see that.

Gosh, it's an amazing...

It's a scary world.

But that's what we'll be doing.

We will be doing that.

I mean, we're kind of going that way already with porn,

and we talked about this sort of macro decline in sex.

Are you hopeful that we can turn that around?

Yes.

And I have great help, hope, with the young generation of women.

I think this is the first generation of women

who really have probably the least sexual hang-ups

that we've ever had.

And I think that...

I mean, young women are much more adventurous

than young men.

It's sort of going in a weird direction, I think that way.

And all the young women that I'm in contact with...

I'm talking about young women in their 20s, early 30s.

We know that young women are more bi-curious than men.

We know that young women are more interested in threesomes

with two women than men are.

We know that young women are more interested in going to a sex club than men are.

We know that young women are more interested in polyamory.

And they don't want several love relationships.

They want the lovely relationship

and then they want to be able to have sex with men on the side.

It's not men thinking like this.

This is women thinking like this.

And I think that it's going to make for more interesting relationships.

And because the whole women are overturning everything,

like the motivation for affairs now has completely reversed.

So men used to have affairs for sex.

Now most men, if they're in a good relationship,

will satisfy that with porn, right?

Most men.

Now men have affairs for love and affection.

Women have affairs.

They used to have affairs for love

that they weren't getting from their partner.

Now they have affairs for erotic sex.

Sex where they're not looking after their partner.

They can be selfish.

They don't have to care about whether they hurt his feelings

or say, don't do it that way.

They're not going to care about whether Stephen doesn't like it.

If he's being instructive, it's like, do that, do this.

They want that sort of sex, right?

And that's why they're having affairs.

So I feel like my hope is that women are going to take the charge

and go forward.

And we're going to end up with sex that's more interesting,

sex that's less doing everything to please a man, more equal.

This is what I need.

This is what I want.

This is what you need.

This is what you want.

Let's work out the best way to do that together.

Not where, because so many women still now,

that's the thing that does disappoint me,

is still have sex to please men,

still pretend to have orgasms during penetrative sex,

because society's brainwashed.

We have known that women don't orgasm

basically through penetrative sex since karmasutra,

which was written in the third to fifth century.

And yet most men will go, yeah, yeah, I've heard about that.

I've heard about that.

It hasn't happened to me.

I've just been really lucky.

All my girlfriends, you know, I mean, it's just like, they're faking.

They're faking because the girl before faked

and they feel they have to fake.

And, you know, every depiction of sex

is that, you know, everybody has this mutual orgasm,

simultaneous orgasm together.

And that's just how sex is.

Well, it's not like that.

It's totally not like that at all.

Speaking of young women, in your book, Great Sex Dance at 50,

one of the things you talk about is the issue of sort of sexual confidence

and sexual self-esteem.

Talk about that in the opening chapter of the book.

And I found it really compelling

really interesting that women view themselves differently

when they look in the mirror, which has a libido impact.

Body image is terrible.

They've just done a study which looked at 20 years of studies.

So they just study on all the studies on body image.

And it turns out that it impacts every single area of sex,

regularity of sex, enjoyment of sex, arousal, desire, orgasm.

And it makes sense that if you don't like your body,

you're not going to want anyone to look at it or touch it.

It is the biggest problem with women today and their sex lives

is that often, you know, this is the other thing with your friends.

You know, have they just had babies?

Has their body changed?

You know, are they not feeling so desirable?

You know, desire, I think feeling desired by your partner

is much more important to women than, you know, anything else.

If your partner looks at you in a, you know, like,

God, you're so hot, you're so sexy.

That is the biggest turn on of all.

And if you're feeling not great about yourself

and your mindset is so much down on yourself that you think,

I don't even, how could he possibly look at me

and think that I'm attractive?

Then you'll never feel that.

You're partly convinced you're dead,

but you're never going to feel it

because your brain's just gone, nope,

I am not sexually attractive anymore.

So that is a real problem.

It's a real problem.

And do you know what the solution is for that?

It's not to go off and get a facelift

or get your hair done or lose weight

or go to the gym more.

Though actually going to the gym more is one.

Exercise is really good for your sex drive

and for your self-esteem.

But the other thing is that Cura's body image

is actually to have sex more.

If you have sex more often and your partner enjoys it,

your brain goes on a subconscious level,

well, you know what, I can't be that bad

because he's having sex with me

or she's having sex with me, whoever's having sex with you,

they're enjoying it.

And so your brain starts to make sense of it all

and go, okay, right, you know, this is,

I'm obviously not as undesirable as I think

and it starts to sort of become better

and more able to be dealt with.

So the more you have sex, the better,

because it gives you confidence.

And sexually confident women,

women who think they're good in bed.

So increase your skills as well.

If you're worried that you're not a great lover,

read up on it, buy some of the books, go online,

look up technique, you know,

because technique is very important.

And the better lover you think you are,

the less you worry about what you look like in bed.

We all know that sexually confident women win all the time.

And sexually confident women put on weight the same way

other people do as they get on in life, et cetera, et cetera.

You know, their bodies are different after pregnancy,

but they don't focus on that.

They're like, hey, I'm a brilliant lover.

Who cares?

You know, he's not looking at that.

He's just thinking how fantastic I am.

So it's more about increasing your confidence as a lover,

exercise more, and I mean, then the obvious,

take yourself for social media,

stop comparing yourself to other people,

all that sort of stuff.

But it's difficult.

It's very difficult.

And I think men suffer from this as well.

That's so unbelievably true, especially the part

that it also relates to men,

because I've got multiple accounts from female friends

of mine that are in a heterosexual relationship

that have told me their partner won't have sex with them

with his top off or with the lights on.

And also the point there about how you solve

that body confidence issue,

that confidence comes from the evidence

you get from doing the thing.

Yeah.

And also, if you are worried about your body,

when you're having sex, close your eyes.

Like, close your eyes and think about what you're feeling.

It's about what you're feeling,

not like how you're looking,

because if it's stressing you out and you're looking at

thinking, oh my God, he's looking at my thighs,

he's looking at this,

just close your eyes and go into yourself.

Or become more active.

That's the other way to overcome body issues

is if you're really active in bed,

and you're like looking at your partner,

and you're talking dirty,

and you're making lots of eye contact that way,

anything to sort of take yourself out of yourself is good.

You either go into yourself

and focus on what you're feeling

rather than what you're looking like,

or you sort of become way more active.

That also works.

Three things that boost sexual self-esteem easily in your book.

Initiate sex to feel more powerful.

Yes, absolutely.

Initiation is such a big thing on so many levels.

If you don't ever initiate sex with your partner,

you're essentially saying,

I don't actually enjoy having sex with you.

I'm only having sex with you

because you've asked me to have sex with you.

People argue about that.

It's like, well, his sex drive is way bigger,

or higher and lots of stuff.

It doesn't matter.

You really need to have a thing where,

if your partner's got a much bigger sex drive than you,

you need to say to them, look, okay,

it's really sexy being the person

who's the sexy one in the relationship.

That's why it's great.

It's nice to be that person.

But I want to be the sexy one in the relationship.

So hold off on initiating for a while

and give me a chance to initiate

so that I can feel more powerful.

And it's such a great dynamic that,

that power dynamic in relationships

is really important that you have to be sometimes

the dominant person.

You have to be the submissive person.

And if you swap around,

it makes for a much more interesting sex life.

But if you don't initiate sex,

I mean, it's a real cop out to never initiate sex.

I really do think so.

And when women do it, who don't often initiate sex,

what often happens is that they'll be so subtle

that the man misses the point completely.

It's like, well, I gave him this really sexy kiss.

And it was like, yeah, and yeah, anything else.

Anything else that went with that.

And he didn't even, you know,

and now I'm not going to do that again.

It's like, offer God's sake, just be really obvious about it.

Be really obvious about it.

And going back to initiation,

just be aware that how you initiate sex

will influence whether or not your partner says yes.

So if you initiate sex the wrong way,

your partner might say no to sex

because you just approached it all the wrong way.

Whereas if you approach your partner that you know

has got a responsive sex drive

by talking, cuddling, connecting,

whatever she wants could be, you know,

she might want you to initiate sex like that.

But, you know, and getting her in the mood

the way she wants to be in the mood,

not the way you would like her to get in the mood,

but the way she wants to be in the mood,

she'll probably say yes to sex.

So a lot of people saying no to sex

isn't that they don't want sex,

they're just being approached the wrong way

and they're not being warmed up the right way.

So if you can solve those two basic things,

it can change everything.

Feels like there's something really fundamental here

that we assume sex will take care of itself.

Oh my God, writing all those sex books.

When I go to a dinner party,

people either want to sit next to me

or they go as far away from me as they possibly can

because they're terrified.

And the people who say to me,

oh God, but I don't need a sex book.

I'm like, yes, you do.

You're the person that needs a sex book.

I've written 17 of them and I'm still learning about sex.

There is so much to learn about sex.

How can you think you possibly know everything about sex

without ever educating yourself?

And it's changing.

Of course it is.

But people who think that they're born great lovers,

I think the female response system is complicated.

Who knew what a clitoris was back in the day?

They're difficult to stim.

Well, actually, they're not that difficult.

You just give it a vibrator and then they're fine.

But it's not easy being a great lover.

And can I just say one more thing about orgasms

is we worry too much about orgasms and how we get them.

There is no right way to have an orgasm

because everyone thinks the right way to have an orgasm

is during intercourse with your partner

and preferably them climaxing at the same time.

Simultaneous orgasms hardly ever happen for a start.

They're always faked.

So the easiest way to give a woman an orgasm,

I mean, great women can be very easily orgasmic

if you use the right finger technique,

if you give her the right oral sex technique.

But the thing that is most expert at stimulating the clitoris

is vibration.

Most women can have an orgasm within three minutes

with a vibrator.

So we have this big orgasm gap problem

where men are having lots of orgasms during partner sex.

Women aren't having very many orgasms during partner sex

because they don't understand each other very well

because sometimes people just can't relax

with another person there, right?

So the solution is to put your hand in the bedside drawer

and bring out a vibrator.

And she would have an orgasm every single time

the same way you have an orgasm every single time.

Why don't we all just do this?

It's the easiest solution in the world.

But we don't.

Young men are better at it.

They'll often say, or you know, and she'll say,

if women are honest and they'll say,

look, you know, that was fantastic,

but I kind of missed the moment a bit,

which you can as a woman,

can I just use my vibrator?

Or can you use the vibrator on me?

Sorted.

But we have this like, that's a cheating orgasm.

Yeah, or that it takes something away

from what sex is supposed to be.

Yes, but it's a solution.

I'm not saying have all your orgasms like that,

but just maybe now and then have the vibrator in the bed.

And why is it inferior?

If you can have all that intimacy,

if you've had the oral sex,

you've had the intercourse,

you've thoroughly enjoyed it,

but it just hasn't given you that tip over.

What I mean by that question

about this fundamental belief that kind of sex

is supposed to take care of itself.

And I think that's why we don't talk about it enough.

We don't research about it enough.

We don't try invest in making it new

and exciting and different.

And all the things you've said is because we just shoot

because at the start it kind of takes care of itself, doesn't it?

Of course it does, yeah.

The first couple of months and then...

All the sex hormones are there.

Driving us, driving us,

without even us having to think about it.

And then you don't think about sex

as something you've got to work on and talk about

and invest in and buy stuff for and change all the time.

I've already got a job.

You know, I don't...

I know.

Well, unfortunately, that's what you have to do

if you want a good sex life.

It's what you do.

And the thing is, it makes me laugh

because we put effort into every other thing.

You don't eat the same meal every single night.

You find it by a good cookbook.

You look up recipes and experiment with different things.

And no one goes, oh, that's terrible.

That's so much effort.

I don't want to have to do that.

I want to know how to cook a three-course

caught-on-blown meal without even looking at a cookbook.

Well, in the movies, they never do this.

There's no movie where they sit and talk about sex.

What did you like?

Okay, you'd like to want to do that.

In the movies, they come in the door and they pick them up

and they put the hands back and they rip the dress off.

Oh, you know, and then...

Do you know what?

I'm the worst person to watch TV with

because I shout at the television.

Honestly, there was a thing called Dr. Foster.

Did you watch that?

Saran Jones was in it.

And there was this couple.

They'd been together 10 years.

They woke up on a Sunday morning, right?

Sunday morning, just woke up.

She's, of course, full makeup, lingerie, everything.

And next minute, he's like, thrown her against the wall.

They're having sex standing up and, you know, like all the...

And I thought, I'll forget for God's sake.

This is a couple of 10 years in.

It is not happening like that.

And then even me, who knows that this doesn't happen,

this is not the norm, I'm like a little bit like...

And I always turn to poor old Miles and I say,

you realize that's not true.

You realize that this is not a real...

And he's sort of sitting there going, yep, yep, I do know.

Like cover your eyes.

Don't have unreal expectations.

Don't think you're missing out on this.

And because it's sad, because people try and...

They think that that hot sex at the beginning

should last a lifetime.

And when it goes, and you think the next person you meet

is going to last forever.

This one's going to last forever.

And then, of course, it dies down and dies down and dies down.

You're like, damn it, I've got the wrong person.

You haven't got the wrong person.

It's because all the sex and love hormones have stopped working.

That's the only way to keep having sex like that.

The only way to keep having that beginning sex

over and over is to swap partners constantly.

Constantly swap partners.

And you can have that beginning bit over and over again.

It is impossible to have the type of sex you have at the start

when you're fueled by all these chemicals

at the end of a relationship or during a relationship.

Anything over two years, it's virtual.

You can have satisfying sex, great sex, exciting sex,

but it's not fueled by the same hormone.

So you cannot recreate that.

And if people knew that, no matter what person you end up with,

then they would stop leaving perfectly good relationships

in search of something that's not ever going to be found.

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I've talked in this conversation

as if sexless relationships are unhappy relationships.

Yes.

But that is not true, is it?

No, it's not true.

You can often have, I mean, people do instantly think

if they're not having sex, oh my God, you know,

divorce is coming soon.

No, I mean, you can get,

sex isn't the be-all and end-all for everybody.

Lots of people are very low sexual libidos.

If you've got two people who have low sex drives,

they have a lot of sex at the beginning

or maybe not even that much.

And then all of a sudden it fades off.

They're perfectly happy.

Some people are happy having, you know,

one great session every six months.

That's enough for them.

It keeps them perfectly satisfied

so long as both of you are like that.

But what doesn't work is if one of you is highly sex driven.

In the beginning, we all worry about compatibility.

Please, you know, match up with somebody

who has the same sex drive as you.

And I know it's artificially inflated at the beginning,

but don't commit to anything until you're six months in,

eight months in a year in.

Don't marry anyone under that

because you don't know what their sex drive is.

Wait until after a year and then you see.

And it's very difficult

if you've got a massively high sex drive

and your other one doesn't.

But you can be perfectly happy in sexist relationships

so long as both of you are happy with that.

And also, you know, they used to define

a sexist relationship as couples who had sex 10 times a year.

Now, plenty of couples, especially couples over 50,

only have sex 10 times a year.

And they were like indignant to be described as sexist.

So now they've changed it to a sexist relationship

is one where sex hasn't happened in a year.

And that's a low sex relationship to be 10 times a year.

But it's all dependent on where you're at in life.

Like if you've just had babies and they're under two,

you're not going to be having a lot of sex.

If you're 18, you just got together,

you're going to be having an awful lot of sex.

You know, if you're part,

if you've just gone through menopause or perimenopause

and everything's gone to hell,

you're not going to be having sex at that period of time.

So you can't, there is no one size fits all thing.

So find your normal is what I would say.

And if your normal is no sex,

so long as you have a conversation about it, that's fine.

But what you cannot do is stop sex and not talk about it.

That is really, really dangerous.

You've got to have some kind of discussion,

even if that's getting into bed one night.

And one of you says, we don't have sex much anymore.

Do you, does it bother you?

No, it doesn't really bother me.

Good. Even if it's that.

But you do need, and you need to have lots of affection,

lots of, you need to make up for that.

So don't stop touching physically,

because when sex stops,

people often stop touching each other,

because they're worried that that's going to lead to sex

and that's going to be awkward.

So keep up the effect.

That's why you've got to have the chat.

If you don't have the chat, affection stops.

And if affection and sex stops, then you are in trouble.

If you've got lots of affection, you're okay.

So long as both of you are happy.

Interesting.

But you're not going to be happy if one person doesn't want sex to stop

and the other one does.

That doesn't make for a happy relationship at all.

And in that situation, is it right to then just leave?

No, you have the chat.

And the chat is, but they say in the chat,

no, I want more sex.

I don't want more sex than what you do.

Well, then you look at exactly,

you sort of go through a process.

So you have the chat.

You talk about, you make sure the sex that's on offer

is good sex for the person who doesn't want to.

You look at anything around it,

like, you know, have they got any childhood issues

that need dealing with?

What are they, you know, why don't,

do they not want to want?

If they don't want to want,

then you need to look at what happened,

you know, sexual trauma.

There's, I mean, if the person that doesn't want to have sex

with you is willing to look at ways

to become more sexual, stay, of course, stay.

You know, there's always hope.

Yes, there's tons of stuff you can do.

You know, you can,

you can take strip sex right back to basics

where you don't have penitentiary sex for a year.

You might do the Sensei Procus program,

which is all about touching each other

without sexual intent.

And it might be that you have to go almost like

you've got to learn how to have sex all over again.

If your partner's willing to try anything's possible,

definitely don't walk out.

But if your partner says,

I don't want to have sex with you

and I have no interest in having sex,

I've got no interest in trying to, you know,

bring, get back my desire

and you're not allowed to have sex either.

You're not allowed to seek it anywhere else or, you know,

apart from running off to the office

and masturbating to porn.

Well, what choice have you got?

I mean, some people stay.

Some people stay in that scenario

because the love is very strong

and they've got kids or whatever.

But I think that's an incredibly selfish thing

to say to a partner.

Chapter nine of your book, it says that 33% of couples

said that they rarely or never had sex

and one quarter of those rated themselves

as being extremely happy.

That's right.

So something like 75% of people

who are denied sex nearly all of the time

stay if the love is strong.

People choose love over sex.

And of course they do

because how often are you having sex?

Even if you're having sex a lot,

even if you're having sex once a day, twice a day,

it's still only really for half an hour each time.

So, you know, in the proportion of the time

you spend together,

your, the love bit's more important than the sex bit.

It definitely is.

Unless the sex bit is really bad

and then it tends to poison the rest of the relationship.

Do you do any sort of therapy for couples?

No, not face to face, no.

And do individuals come to you

for advice in a professional context

to get therapy or anything?

No, no.

I do friends and friends and friends and stuff like that.

I don't because I lack the skills to disassociate.

This is why I never became a therapist

because I'm not very good at,

there are ways to solve a problem

where you can stand outside the problem

or you stand right in the middle of it all

and take it all on

and I understand in the middle person.

And I wouldn't ever be able to,

I would have no boundaries.

They'd be calling me day and night,

so no, I can't do that.

What are the most common questions

that people ask you about sex?

And I'd like the ones that we don't talk about enough.

So, you know, I don't know whether it's erectile dysfunction

or whether it's like-

Oh my God, erectile dysfunction for men is,

women don't, I appreciate how having,

not being able to get an erection or, you know,

is the biggest psychological catastrophe men experience.

We can't fake it.

No, no, penis envy.

Who wants a penis?

I certainly don't want a penis.

It's all out there to see.

We can fake everything.

But it's really difficult for men.

And I think men, I mean,

we have a problem with Viagra, by the way.

Viagra is a big problem

because young men take Viagra

because they want to have

the biggest, hardest erections ever.

And they're worried about,

they're so performance,

you know, they have so much performance anxiety

because they're watching too much porn

and they think that that's real.

So they take Viagra

because they think just this once, you know,

I'll be, I'll just win it as the first time I sleep with her.

I want to be really hard.

And then of course, you know,

eventually you stop it or try to

and your girlfriend says,

oh, this isn't, you know,

you're not as hard as you normally are.

And suddenly you're back on this cycle.

And then young women expect that

that is a normal erection, which is not.

Anyone who's looked at a Viagra driven erection

and a normal erection, they're completely different.

And then on the other end of it,

you've got older couples who, you know,

we've got two problems with

when you get over 50 or 60,

men have erectile dysfunction

and women have, you know,

dry vaginas and very, you know,

the vagina basically atrophies.

So they've solved it for men.

Great. Take this pill.

And suddenly you're like, you were 18 again,

but you're still with this vagina that's not 18

where it's going to hurt like hell.

And then the man who suddenly got the swinging penis is like,

well, what am I supposed to do with this?

And then he goes off and cheats with somebody

because he's so happy to have this,

this big rock hard erection again.

Is there a relationship between age and infidelity?

I'm not sure about that.

I would say as in men cheating late,

more likely to cheat later in life

I know that middle age people cheat a lot

because that's when you've got choices.

Yeah. Yeah. You've got choices.

You're traveling.

You've got money.

And it's probably easy to get away with your board.

You've had the kids that, you know,

you've started to take everything for granted.

You know, things like that make people cheat.

It's opportunity, temptation and your moral code.

You know, it's not to do with love.

It is to do with respect, though.

Red flags and relationships.

The most compatible couples have compatible life goals.

Something I've heard you say before.

Yes. I think that is really important

because it is all about, its timing is so important.

And life goals.

Say you've got, you know, you've got the perfect relationship now.

Your girlfriend's great.

Say suddenly you decided, right,

I want to go off to Africa and work with Pygmies for five years.

This is my life goal.

You know, what's she supposed to do?

Of course it's important to have the same goals.

If you've got one person who wants adventure

and you like to be hiking every weekend

and, you know, camping, my idea of hell,

they're not going to match well with somebody like me

who wants to be in a nice hotel

and, you know, having lots of cocktails.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't mind the old camping and hiking,

but do you know what I mean?

Like, you've got to have, you've got to be compatible.

There's some stereotypes that still sort of exist

and linger around sex and men and women being, you know,

one of the ones that I was reading about

in chapter six of your book is studies show

it's not true men have a higher sex drive than women.

Women have a different desire for sex,

which you talked about.

Studies also show it's not true that monogamy

is harder for men than it is for women.

We tend to think that men are the ones that cheat.

Oh, exactly.

Which has never made sense,

because if we just pretend the world for a second was...

Do the heterosexual equation.

Every time a man is having sex in a heterosexual world,

so is a woman.

So, you know, the numbers don't quite add up.

With one would assert just from the looking at the numbers

that it's got to be quite close to like 50-50 to some degree.

Yeah, of course.

And also, like, if you look at the stats on who's happiest,

the happiest people are single women and married men.

The other two happiest groups of people always.

Single women and married men.

Are the happiest.

But the happiest groups of people.

Like, not married women.

Married women, like, end up doing all the jobs.

And, you know, married women aren't happier than single women.

Single women are happier than married women.

And married men are really happy,

because they get everything done for them, basically.

What role did the kids play in this whole equation?

Oh, my God.

Kids, I think, really make the love part better,

I suppose, because you've created that thing.

But they're terrible for sex.

Terrible for sex.

I mean, the minute the kids come along,

you can kiss goodbye for sex for five years, really.

Really?

And people freak about it.

And they're like, it's never going to come back,

and it will come back.

Of course it will.

But, you know, all your energy is going to children.

So, I think if you're going to have kids,

you've got to accept that your sex life is going to take a back seat

for a long, long time.

Don't panic about it.

Keep having little sexual connections

that aren't necessarily including intercourse,

little bite-sized pieces of sex, and you'll be fine.

But don't kid yourself that it's not going to change your sex life,

because it will.

Boy, will it.

Some people think that having kids will save the relationship.

Oh, God, no.

It's so stressful.

I don't, I do not understand this.

Every time I see somebody with a child,

you only have to hang around children

for about two seconds to realize how stressful they are.

If you've already got problems with your relationship,

and suddenly you're going to sleep to pride yourself,

you're going to make,

have somebody depend on you 24 hours a day.

How is this going to make you more,

you know, happier with your husband?

It doesn't even make sense to me.

It might stop people leaving because of, you know, obligation,

but who wants to be with somebody out of obligation?

You said something that in your work that a neuroscientist told me

in this podcast, which is that after the first year,

non-parents are generally happier over time than parents.

Kind of a controversial idea.

It is a controversial idea,

but I mean, there's a trade-off with kids.

There's such a trade-off.

You can never, I mean, and I think there's,

I'm a step-parent.

My husband has a daughter.

And when we're going through hassles with Sophia,

which she, she's a little darling,

but also can be a little devil, let me tell you.

He can sleep.

I mean, sorry, I can sleep.

Miles can't sleep.

And when I, and I lie there and I think,

gosh, if I had given birth to Sophia,

if she'd been, you know, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

There's no way that I'd be able to sleep.

It's, it's, you are knowing that you're going to be worrying

for the rest of your life once you have a kid.

It's, it's such a big responsibility.

And when you have that responsibility,

it means, you know, you're not going to be able to do,

you're not selfless.

You become selfless then, don't you?

You can't be selfish and have a kid.

Well, you can.

You can be a really bad parent, but it's different, isn't it?

It's really different.

I'm sure, but then parents say,

well, you're the one that's missed out

because you don't have this incredible,

and I have such a good relationship with my mom

and my dad and, and us three kids are all milling around them.

They're like 87 and 89.

I'm thinking, no one's going to do that for me.

Who's going to do that for me?

I have to pay for it.

So there is that.

When I hear that stuff, I do,

do wonder if it's the term happiness is the confusing thing

because, you know, a parent might say,

it's giving me such a sense of purpose or meaning.

Yeah, of course.

If you ask me in a survey on a, on a Tuesday,

how I'm feeling after staying up till fucking 2am,

because this kid was screaming,

I'm probably more likely to report at any given moment

to being less happy.

But if you zoom out, there's more meaning and purpose.

One might say that to, to try and provide the counter-argument.

I mean, how many people who say,

what's the best thing you've ever done?

They say having children.

Everybody says that.

Yeah.

And they can't all be lying.

No one says a promotion at work or whatever else they say.

No, they don't.

So it must be, you know, not everybody says that,

but I do know mothers who say,

God, you know what, if I look back,

maybe I wouldn't have done this,

but they're very brave.

And they told childless women that.

They never tell a woman with a child, by the way.

Yeah, of course.

Women's libido, I was reading in, in chapter six,

about women's libido tends to drop as, as, as they age,

whereas men's seems to remain fairly stable

throughout the relationship.

Stable, but then they have the, you know,

women's struggle with the drop of, because menopause

of all the drop of testosterone and all the, you know,

estrogen, all those things that keep your genitals in good shape

and keep your sex drive high.

Men's testosterone drops as well.

But then they're struggling with erections.

So if you're an older man and you can get your head around

that you're not going to get erections as easily as you did

and it doesn't bother you, you're going to be fine.

If you're a woman and you actually, you know,

get all the things that are available to you,

take HRT, if you can, like there's solutions for all of this.

And don't think to yourself, oh, well, we're old now,

we're not going to be sexual.

You'll be fine as well.

But I think people panic, you know,

when they hit a certain age.

And there's this perception, you know, like, you know,

I did a campaign for replens, which is a vaginal moisturiser,

which most men blink at and good to see you didn't.

And it was all about and had these beautiful images of older people

kissing passionately or naked from the back.

And they were quite old.

And they were the most beautiful images.

And so many people were threatened by that.

They were really threatened

because there was old people doing sexual things.

And we're not treated to that.

We don't see that very often.

So when somebody does that, they, um, yeah, people freak.

They don't like to think about older people having sex.

So when you're old, you have it already in your head.

I'm not supposed to want sex anymore, which is completely untrue.

And is that why you wrote a book called Great Sex Dance at 50?

Yes, because for me, that's what happened.

I went through the whole of my life with a high libido.

I've written about sex.

I thought this isn't going to happen to me

because I know everything about sex, of course.

And then I hit like 50.

No, actually, probably even before that.

And suddenly I realized, I remember typing away one day

and thinking, God, I was single at the time.

I hadn't masturbated for ages.

What's going on?

I haven't even thought about sex for ages.

And it's the drop in hormones.

And, you know, and it's quite extraordinary

to that whole spontaneous desire.

I had very high spontaneous desire and suddenly it went.

So I just suddenly became like other women, I suppose.

And suddenly it was like, oh my God,

I see what everyone's going on about.

So I thought, yeah, for my own sake, I might write that book.

And it's very good writing that book.

There's a lot of solutions in there.

What are some of the most important solutions

for my listeners that are maybe experiencing a similar situation?

Again, manage expectations.

Keep having sex.

That whole use it or lose it.

You've got to keep having sex.

That's very, very important.

Get your head around the whole thing about

that old doesn't mean that you can't be sex.

So you can be, it doesn't matter what you look like.

It's what you feel like.

It's so many, many different things.

And also you don't have to put,

I think as a society, particularly English people,

we all put up with stuff.

There are solutions for all of these things.

If you've got to drive a vagina,

go and get a vaginal moisturizer,

go and get an estrogen pestery,

there are solutions for everything that happens with menopause.

You don't have to sit there and just put up with it all.

Because if you do, then you won't want to have sex, definitely.

So seek all the solutions.

Don't be scared to try and find solutions to all these things

because they really are out there.

Change your headset.

And the women, it's interesting that they did a big thing about

what really influences women's desire post menopause.

And it wasn't menopause.

It was your attitude to sex.

If you'd always loved sex and you wanted sex to continue,

you found the solutions and you kept on having great sex.

If you were never that keen, it's like,

oh, actually, you know what?

Here we go, an obstacle.

What a great sort of excuse to never have sex again.

So its attitude was way more important to how good the sex was after menopause.

Nothing to do with menopause.

It seems, again, like one of the foundations behind all of this

that's kind of hiding in the back room,

when it, as it relates to people's libido and their attitudes to sex,

is that kind of childhood experiences we talked about,

which is super tricky to unpack and even become aware of.

And we all have our own childhood experiences of sex, intimacy, relationships,

some cases, in the worst cases, abuse and all of those things.

That's terrible.

That we need to find a way to overcome first or adjust first before we can even have a.

And I mean, particularly for men,

often their first experience,

childhood experience of sex, is being caught masturbating.

And how the parent deals with that is very formative.

Because if it's like, absolutely, what are you doing?

You know, like, do you, that's very filthy, it's dirty.

It's like, what are you doing?

Then they are going to continue to masturbate because pretty much they do,

but they're going to try and do it faster and faster and faster.

So every time they masturbate,

they're going to be trying to get it down to as quick as possible time

so that they don't get in trouble again.

And then they end up with rapid ejaculation.

They can last two seconds before they ejaculate.

So that's affected their sex life in a purely physical way.

It sets us up in so many different ways, our childhood.

You know, and I mean, I was lucky to grow up in a household where,

I don't know why a household was like that,

but we just talked about sex openly.

I suppose my sister worked for family planning, which helped, but that was later.

So I don't know, my mum and my dad were really cool talking about sex and things.

And so I grew up thinking, oh yeah, all households are like that, but they're not.

It's an unknown unknown.

So how do you go about even solving for those things?

I guess you have to go to therapy and start unpacking it.

Yeah, we'll just unpack it yourself.

You have to just think about, you don't necessarily have to go to therapy.

There's so much, I mean, the joy of the internet is there's so much online

that you can do, if you typed in, you know,

I don't like sex as my parents, you know, taught me,

there's there's a book called Sex Mart, actually,

which is very good about childhoods.

Sex.

Sex Mart, it's called.

Sex Mart.

Yeah, you can still buy.

It's an old book, but it sort of delves into all of this.

And yeah, I mean, I think I'm so pro therapy.

I think everybody should go to therapy.

No one has a perfect childhood.

In fact, having a perfect childhood can also set you up for things.

So, you know, if we, if we have a problem, if you have a problem with sex,

you know, going to see a really good sex therapist

is could sort it out very quickly.

So don't leave it too late.

Oh, I can't, I can't even pick all these books.

This isn't even all the books, is it?

No.

So you've got Hot Relationships, How to Have One,

Great Sex Starts at 50, Sex Doctor, Fix Your Love,

Life Fast, Hot Sex, How, How to Do It, We've Got Dare.

Oh, that looks, that looks very 50 shades.

Tis bit.

More hot, more hot sex, okay.

Would, would like to meet the ultimate dating makeover.

Yeah, that was the TV show I did about dating, yeah.

Yes, okay.

That's interesting.

That's a good one with that.

This, there's a question there I should ask,

because I'm thinking again about a friend that's just popped to mind.

Is there something going on with male and female

dating in terms of it becoming more difficult in the modern day and age?

There's some stats that one of my podcast guests shared about how

women are having less children and they're finding it more difficult to date

and to find a compatible male in the modern way that society is designed.

And I've got friends that are, you know, around that sort of

mid-late 30s range that are really, really, really struggling in the modern world.

It's almost, I almost-

Men or women or both?

Women.

Right, yeah.

I almost suspect that, I actually don't have that many friends that are in that region that aren't,

but it's almost like there's a generation almost caught in a gap

where you're, you know, Gen Z native to social media, the internet,

you know, that's the, where they grew up.

And then maybe the older generation already partnered off,

because, you know, they met someone at church or-

Yeah, yeah, or it's, yeah.

And then you've got this generation who were caught in the gap.

Are they all high achieving women?

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the problem.

So what happens is you get, and this is why there are more and more single women now,

because more and more women are high achieving.

So they're not like looking for a husband straight away.

And when you've got a big gene pool of people to, you know, like,

when you come out of uni or even before you go into uni,

because lots of people meet at uni and stay together,

you've got this big, you know, like numbers game,

you've got loads of women single, loads of men single and you sort of all hook up.

And if your motivation is to get married and have kids,

and that's your only motivation, you're going to find a partner early,

and that's it, your job done, keep going, right?

It's seeming it all goes well.

But if your motivation isn't necessarily that,

if you want to go on to university, you know, get your career sorted,

and then turn around and have kids, like at 30, okay, right now,

achieved, I'm at the past, you know, where I want to have kids,

but then I can take a bit of a break here, and then suddenly, where is he?

Well, he's not there, because he's already been taken up by everybody else.

And men traditionally don't like dating high-achieving women,

unless they're high-achieving themselves.

And the amount of high-achieving women is getting higher,

and the amount of high-achieving men is getting lower,

so you've got even less of a pool to choose from.

So the answer for the women is to think outside the square and think,

right, okay, do I really need the guy who's got the degree?

Because women, high-achieving women like to go for high-achieving men.

Is that statistically?

It's just generally what happens, isn't it?

If I've got a degree, I want somebody else who's got a degree.

So then you have to change your wish list a little bit,

and think, okay, I'm not going to be as rigid with my must-haves,

and perhaps think about things like, well,

does it really matter how much he earns if I'm already earning lots of money?

Isn't kindness, generosity, sense of humor, attractiveness,

just general chemistry, isn't that enough?

So if you go for those qualities, you end up a lot better off,

and they'll end up happier as well.

Is that against our innate wiring?

Because, you know, some people sometimes say that men care less about

the financial resources of their partner.

So does that kind of go, if I'm a woman and I'm looking for a partner,

am I going to look for someone who is kind of up into the right?

Probably.

But that doesn't necessarily work.

See, for me, that didn't work, because if I'm like very alpha female,

so whenever I went out with an alpha male, we were just like,

hated each other.

It's like, I'm the boss.

No, I'm the boss.

No, if I were off now, I'm controlling you.

No, you know, no, it didn't work at all.

It didn't work at all.

Very competitive.

I'm too competitive.

They were too competitive.

That didn't work.

So I've, I mean, my partner is really proud of me.

He's not at all threatened in the slightest by any success.

Any success I have, he's my biggest proudest supporter.

And we work differently.

Like, you know, if my thing is to, you know, if, you know,

I make more money than him, he doesn't mind me saying that

because he's fine with it.

And so if I've got more money, that's great.

So therefore, you know, if he's got more time than me

to do the traditional female things, then he's fine with that.

And then sometimes other times I'll do it.

And, you know, he assumes the male role.

So it's very, you know, we're comfortable with each other.

We, you know, we don't care that I tick the male boxes

in some roles and he ticks the female boxes

and it works very well.

And I think you have to, I think that's hopefully where we're headed.

But there is, there are some times where, I mean, I know,

I know I'm not typical with females.

I know that a lot of women, you know,

won't go out with a man unless he makes a lot of money,

particularly if they make a lot of money.

They won't.

I've never been like that.

I've never been get their money.

It's make my, if I want money, I'll make it myself.

Thanks.

I don't want to have someone else's money.

That's not mine.

So I do think it's a big problem for women and men.

I think we both have to, especially women,

have to stop being so rigid with that, you know,

and how expect the man to provide.

I think men have to stop being so feeling emasculated

if it's the woman who's owning more.

So what, who cares?

As long as someone's got some money,

somewhere along the line, who cares?

Which one?

If you're in that age range between, say, 30 and 40

and you're a woman and you're single

and you don't want to be single,

I think that's important to say.

You don't want to be single.

You want to have, you know, you want to meet a partner.

You want to have a family, whatever it might be.

What advice would you give to that person?

I'm thinking now about my series of my close friends

that are women that are single in that range

and that have expressed that they don't want to be single.

But they're struggling for all the reasons you said,

super high achieving, you know, they've got great careers.

They're very, very busy because of that as well.

They've, you know.

Yeah, that was the issue, wasn't it?

It's, I mean, I was talking about Helen Gurley-Brown,

the Cosmo founder.

And she always said, you can have it all.

And that's the biggest lie when we've been sold.

You can't have it all.

There is something that gives.

And these high achievers, yeah, they have compromised

their chances of finding a partner

by putting it all into their career.

You can't have it all.

And I did that.

I mean, it took me to 50.

I had lots of relationships, but it took me to 50

to find somebody that was, I was compatible with.

It's not easy.

It's really, really difficult.

And I was out there meeting tons of people.

So first accept that it's nothing to do with you.

Doesn't mean that you're not attractive or anything.

You're probably less marketable

because you're too intelligent

and some men will be freaked by that.

And you're too successful

and some men will be freaked by that.

They don't know what to do with you.

And it makes them feel bad

because they're going to those traditional patterns

like how she's not going to go out with me.

I'm not as successful as her.

So I'm not even going to try.

So you have to make the approach.

Number one, change your wish list to become qualities,

personality qualities, must be a certain height,

must be a certain income, must drive this car,

must, you know, all those sort of things

because they really don't matter.

And also date outside of type, go out with people,

look beyond the exterior, see what's inside.

Like, I think they'll be very quick to go,

oh, I know, I can't go out with that person.

You know, like go on a couple of dates.

And even if the first date's a disaster,

go on two or three dates,

go on at least three with people, you know,

go out all the time.

Often these women are so busy, it's like,

well, when do you actually go out

to actually put yourself in a situation

where you can meet someone?

Never.

They're not going to walk in your lounge room, are they?

Unless you sort of order delivery.

They're really not.

So come on.

You've got to make some effort here.

You've got to do the numbers game.

And I don't know whether that dating apps

are the right way forward,

but they're probably the only way,

it's the way that most people meet.

So you kind of have to just suck it up

and get on there, I think.

I think that's phenomenal advice.

I was really, really happy you said that as well

because I know certain friends of mine

are going to be listening.

And hate me for it.

No, I don't think so.

I think it's an opinion.

It's one that makes sense.

And I think that's all that anyone

can deliver on this podcast.

And that's why I like it.

And it's actually matches the opinion I had from a man,

previous on this podcast,

who received quite a...

When a man says those kinds of things,

I don't think it's received as well necessarily

because they're speaking from a place

of like they don't have the lived experience.

And there's a lot of like gender inequality things

that are, you know, historical things with men.

And the term one of my previous guests used

to describe it was tall girl problem.

You see what I mean?

It's not a good...

It's not necessarily the most...

You could also say...

Yeah, you could say small man problem.

Yeah, exactly.

It's the same that, you know...

This is an interesting question.

It's probably the question I should have started with.

What is sex?

Well, sex certainly isn't intercourse.

And people need to stop thinking of sex as intercourse.

Sex is any type of...

Any type of feeling, word, thought

that makes you feel aroused.

That's how I describe sex.

And what purpose is it solving?

Why does it exist?

To create other human beings.

This is why, you know,

going right back to the beginning,

this whole thing that we have that, you know,

why can't we have the sex at the beginning

all the way through?

Because it doesn't suit.

It wouldn't work.

If you were so in, you know, lust driven

and all you wanted to do was shag like rabbits,

you would never get anything else done.

You certainly wouldn't have children.

You certainly wouldn't have a job.

So we are designed to keep the world in a safe place.

We go through lust and infatuation, romance,

attachment for a reason

so that we calm down.

We don't have the hot sex

and we keep the world, you know,

we bring up our children in a sensible way

and the world continues.

What does that say about monogamy though?

Because if...

It's probably not natural.

That's what I was going to say.

Because if my sex drive is deteriorating

to any degree,

one would suggest that's encouraging me to go

shag someone else.

Well, it is, but you don't

because you love your partner.

So you, it's a trade-off.

It's always a trade-off.

You can have the love and this contentment

and the companionship.

And this is why older, you know,

you asked about infidelity, statistics.

Older people don't cheat very much.

Who are in good relationships

because they're not having that drive.

That, that lust is gone.

You know, your, your sex drive is lower

as you get older.

And it's the trade-off.

It's like, yeah, I could go out and cheat

and have really hot sex,

but I'm going to have to look my partner in the eye

and I really love my partner.

So I'm going to, I'm happy to wave goodbye

to that hot sex.

I've had enough of it in my life.

So it depends on your motivation.

So if you are driven by sex,

then just don't settle down,

keep swapping partners and get that out of the system.

And then you're not going to be dishonest to anyone.

But if you do want a relationship,

sometimes you have to go, okay,

we can have great sex.

It's not going to be like the sex

that you have at the beginning,

but you know what?

I've got two kids.

I've got a great wife.

I've got, you know,

it's a trade-off in life, isn't it?

Everything's a trade-off.

So you don't think monogamy is natural?

I think that for sex, no.

I think for sex, no.

It's absolutely not.

For our sex drive,

it's the worst thing is to give some security

and, you know, predictability and stuff

and the same person over and over.

No, not for our sex drive.

But the problem is,

is that the alternative is polyamory, right?

So you have this one love relationship

and then you seek sex elsewhere.

Now, in theory, that really appeals to me.

I can see that that would be great, right?

But I'm never going to,

I'm not going to feel comfortable waving off my husband.

Bye, darling.

You have a great time.

You know, don't worry about what time you get back.

No way.

He's my, you know, his possession, isn't it?

It's ownership.

It's sexual ownership.

You know, you're not going to,

you might want to do it yourself,

but you're not going to send your partner off

and they might want to do it themselves,

but they're not going to send you off.

So I don't know what the solution is.

I really don't.

Well, as you said, in life, you can't have it all.

So everything is trade-offs.

And that is another trade-off where,

I'm sure some people would love to be able

to have sex with other people,

but they wouldn't be able,

they wouldn't want to reciprocate that.

Exactly.

To their partner.

We have a closing traditional in this podcast

where the last guest leaves a question

for the next guest,

not knowing who they're leaving it for.

And the question that's been left for you.

Okay.

When you are near the end of your life

and looking back over it,

what will you be proudest of

and what will you regret the most?

Gosh.

Proudest of my career and having helped people.

And what did the really annoying people,

when you're in a dinner party,

who just knew what they wanted to do really early on

with the writing,

and then that happened very early with my parents.

So I'm really proud of that.

My first book, I was so excited.

Literally, you know that when you just jump on the spot?

I was literally jumping on the spot.

I don't really do regrets, actually.

I don't really do regrets.

Maybe I wish that I was more or had been more confident.

I'm confident on the outside, but not on the inside.

I'm the most confident,

unconfident person you'll ever meet.

So, and probably realize that

no one's looking at you,

they're too busy worrying about themselves.

I wish I'd sort of calmed down a bit

and was more confident.

What's the symptoms of that lack of confidence?

Insecurity, going away.

The first time I listen to this, for instance,

it'll be like, oh my God, I was terrible.

Look at me.

Look at the way I look.

Look at me.

Oh my God, I didn't do something else with my hands.

You know, I'll go through it.

Then I'll go, don't be silly.

And then I'll listen to it,

and then I'll have an okay opinion about it.

But yeah, there's still that little bit there.

Any idea where that's come from?

Yeah, parents.

When you're left on your own

and you'll abandon at the age of 15,

that's not great, is it?

And then all these small things are

a potential abandonment?

Maybe people don't think, I don't get it.

Maybe I should do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's funny, I'm confident of my abilities professionally.

I'm confident that I'm intelligent.

I don't know.

I suppose, yeah, you never really...

I mean, I remember when I studied psychology

and the guy just got up there and said,

he was a great lecturer and he said,

it's all about your childhood.

And we all just rolled our eyes and went,

oh, for God's sake, it's so ridiculous.

It's not.

It's not.

And it is.

It really is.

Like, I'm still that 15-year-old girl

that stood there terrified.

You know, she's still there.

And yeah, so it's interesting.

But I put on a good show.

Like everybody.

You certainly do put on a good show.

Thank you so much, Tracy.

Thank you.

You've given me so much, answered so many of my questions.

And I know for sure, for sure, people are going to tell you.

I'm sure they're going to message you.

But for sure, for sure, I can say on behalf

of all of the people that have listened,

you've helped them today.

Oh, I hope so.

Thank you.

And I think everybody will take away

something different from that,

which is why it's so incredible.

I'm going to do something I've never done before,

because I really want to illustrate

how I believe you've helped people.

The previous guest that left you a question,

and you know, I don't usually tell people this,

is a guy called Robert Waldinger.

And what he has committed his life to

is something called the Harvard Study of Well-being.

I'm going to call it that.

I know I've got one word there wrong.

Right.

I'm going to call it the Harvard Study of Well-being,

which is the longest ever study done on a group of people

to understand what makes people fundamentally happy

at the most basic level.

So they followed people for almost 90 years,

the same group of people.

Even, you know, the founders of the study

have actually died,

so they've passed the study on to Robert.

And at the very heart of what they found on this study,

which ended up being a TED Talk,

which has done 45 million views.

It's one of the most listened TED Talks of all time,

is that the thing that makes us most happy in life,

and also healthiest in terms of an insulation from stress,

is relationships.

It's number one.

Men that have positive romantic relationships

live 14 years longer, women seven years longer.

That's right.

And one of the things that ends great relationships

and leads us to isolation and loneliness is sexual issues.

I see it in all of my friends,

and the work you're doing is therefore,

in its very essence,

helping people to solve the most important problem of all,

which is connection relationships.

So it's incredible work to be doing,

and it's work that not a lot of people

want to do and confront

because of the stigmas and taboos that still remain.

So thank you so much, Tracey.

Thank you.

Thank you for being so wonderful.

That's a wonderful compliment.

You're captivating.

No, you really are.

You're really, really captivating,

and you're super smart,

and you know your stuff,

and you've looked at all the research.

You really are the best at this.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you for helping me.

You have, and thank you for helping

all of our wonderful listeners.

Thank you.

I'm going to walk away very confident now.

Thank you.

Awesome.

And you look amazing, by the way.

Your dress is fantastic.

Everything about you is fantastic.

So yeah, thank you.

You know, I never really usually pick

the chocolate-flavored heels.

My favorite are the banana flavor.

I love the salted caramel flavor.

But recently, I think I, in part, blame

Jack in my team, who is obsessed

with the chocolate-flavored heels.

I've started drinking the chocolate-flavored

heels for the first time,

and I absolutely love them.

My life means that I sometimes disregard

my diet, and it's funny.

That's part of the reason why I've had

a lot of guests on this podcast recently

that talk about diet and health

and those kinds of things,

because I am trying to make an active effort

to be more healthy,

to lose a little bit of weight as well,

but to be more healthy.

And the role that he'll plays in my life

is it means that in those moments

where sometimes I might reach for,

you know, junk foods,

having an option that is nutritionally complete,

that is high in fiber,

that is incredibly high in protein,

that has all the vitamins and minerals

that my body needs,

within arm's reach that I can consume

on the go

is where he'll has been a game changer for me.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.