The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Moment 113 - Why You're Not Having Sex & How To Get It Back: Jay Shetty

We were just talking about doing hard things.

So let's talk about sex.

Sex is a huge part of relationships.

And one of the really interesting things

I wanna talk to you about is, again,

if I look at my friendship group,

my small friendship group of maybe six guys, right?

My best friends, I'd say three of them

are currently having a really, really hard time

as it relates to sex with their partner,

for a variety of reasons.

Reason number one that I've heard,

my partner doesn't like having sex,

we have sex once every three months.

Reason number two I've heard,

my partner doesn't like the way that I have sex.

On those first two points,

I'm horrified, surprised that so many people I speak to

are struggling in that department with sex.

And there's not, the conversation around sex

is either non-existent or porn influenced.

What's your take on sex and what's going on in the world?

I'm so glad you brought it up,

because I think that because of social media,

there's this image that everyone else is having sex

and I'm not.

Like I feel like that's like a very big feeling

that a lot of people have and all the stats show

that people having less and less sex.

There are more and more sexless relationships

and marriages every single year

and it's so much more common,

yet in our groups and online,

everyone feels like, oh, they're getting some

and they're getting some and they're getting some,

but I'm not.

And the truth is most people are not getting any.

And that's just, I don't have the stats off hand right now,

but whenever I've looked at the trends,

that's what the trends show.

To me, it comes back down to everything

we've just been talking about.

Sexual chemistry and attraction and connection

is all based on, A, how someone feels about themself.

If someone themself is not feeling taken care of

by themselves, attractive, investing in themselves,

growing, feeling like they're becoming more and better,

it's very unlikely that they're gonna wanna share

their body, mind, emotions and heart with anyone else

in the most physically intimate way, which is sex.

It's just unlikely.

And chances are, if you don't think

you're having those conversations you wanna have

with your partner, where you are being open,

where they are working on their values,

where we do see each other striving,

chances are that you're not gonna wanna have sex

with them either.

And so what we're seeing is that the challenge

we're having in sex is actually coming

from everything else that's going on.

That there isn't a sense of growth, joy, purpose.

Like, great sex is a byproduct of great connection

and intimacy.

It's not a replacement for or a source of.

If I asked everyone who's listening right now,

put your hand up if you've had amazing sex,

but no connection in a relationship, right?

Like that's been real.

We've all used sex as a crutch.

We've had relationships where every time we argued

we had sex, it solved the problem.

Every time something was going wrong,

we had sex, it was figured out somehow.

And the studies show that the chemicals released

during sex make you feel like you're getting closer,

even though you're not actually emotionally closer.

So when you look at all of the stats,

when you look at all the research,

when you look at everything we've just described,

sex is a byproduct of a healthy individual

and a healthy individual and a growing individual

and a growing individual coming together,

sorting out their differences,

having the fights they need to have,

having the conversations they do,

that naturally creates vulnerability,

which leads to being able to expose ourselves

at the deepest, most physical way that we possibly can.

How can you expose yourself that vulnerably

if you can't even have a vulnerable conversation

with your partner?

Because you just switch on the TV every night

and avoid that difficult conversation.

It becomes like a transaction.

It becomes a transaction.

And then sex becomes, in the best case, a crutch

and a hopeful aspiration on a special night

or whatever it may be, or something we wait for

and plan for and it never works out.

As opposed to in the worst case,

it just becomes something we're both not talking about,

comfortable about or even doing.

And so-

Or an obligation.

Or an obligation.

Yeah, yeah, it's like an obligation.

Someone's just sitting there like, you know-

Come on, three minutes.

Literally.

Yeah, all right, let's get it over and done with.

Like that mindset.

And I'm like, all, like there isn't,

because we've lost intimacy in relationships.

There is no intimacy.

And so you can't force it physically.

There's no intimacy in porn.

There's no intimacy in porn for sure.

They don't like do the small talk.

I don't pay for that.

Exactly.

There's no intimacy in porn.

There's no, and the problem is,

and this is, you know, the book starts with this quote,

but it solves this problem very,

very neatly and carefully.

And it's this idea that the Buddha was once approached

and asked, what's the difference between I like you

and I love you?

Which is a brilliant question.

And the Buddha replied, when you like a flower,

you simply pluck it.

But when you love a flower, you water it every day.

And to me, the one night stand, the porn,

the dopamine hit, the release of chemical is the plucking.

Right, that's why we're all plucking all day long

because that's all we can do.

But the watering, the intimacy, developing intimacy,

growing from entertainment to experiments to experiences

to education to engaging in service together,

all of this creates so much intimacy

that physical intimacy is a natural byproduct.

It's not something you have to manage or engineer

or manufacture.

Like it's not this separate thing.

It's based on how close I feel to you.

And the point is when don't feel close to our partners

because we don't do anything that makes us closer every day.

Sleeping in the same bed as someone

does not make you close to someone.

Living in the same house as someone

does not make you close to someone.

The only thing that makes you feel close to someone

is when you feel you can be open

and when you feel seen, heard and understood

in your most vulnerable, darkest and open times.

If you can do that, everything else is gonna work.

But if you can't do that,

you can't just make it happen in a moment

because you're meant to be together.

You're meant to be in love.

What about masturbation?

Do you think masturbation to porn

helps or hurts relationships?

I think in the long-term, it hurts.

I think it's unhealthy

because it's an avoidance and an escape, right?

That's the point.

It's like, what is it being used as?

It's not being used as self-connection

or self-understanding.

It's being used as escape and avoidance

of the actual topic.

And all that's doing is rewiring your brain

for false expectations, diminishing returns as well.

All the studies that I did look at

showed that porn is making you work harder.

You're gonna have to find something more extreme.

All the stats that I saw showed

that you had to watch more extreme porn

to get the same feeling.

So the most searched porn and the most watched porn

was abusive, sometimes violent, sometimes rough, hardcore.

All the search terms were more extreme

to get the same feeling because of the diminishing returns

of the chemicals that are being released.

And so now you're rewiring your brain

to not feel as much pleasure from normal sex

or more traditional conventional sex.

You're now saying that I'm only gonna feel pleasure

from sex when it's potentially abusive, violent,

somewhat rough, hardcore, whatever else it may be.

So I think that's massively unhealthy.

There's something it does to your expectations as well.

Expectations are the key of...

That's what we're saying.

Your expectations of sex become completely unrealistic.

Your expectations of intimacy

are just thrown out the window.

There must be so many people listening to this,

both men and women,

because both sexes do watch porn.

It's quite naive of one to assume

it's just men that are jacking off in there,

in their bedrooms or whatever.

I bet there's people listening to this,

who have a partner that's constantly watching it.

And they know they watch it,

potentially maybe they've caught them a few times

and they really want them to stop.

They think it's maybe killing their desire

in a relationship.

It's a difficult conversation to...

Oh, God.

You know?

Yeah, it's really tough.

And like I said, when I was...

You know, I think it'd be interesting to look at this

and I would be fascinated to see

whether the people that are watching porn,

and I need to talk to more people than I have about it,

the people that I know that watch porn,

and that's why I'm only speaking from my experience,

don't feel good about it.

They internally, deeply at the root,

when we're in a coaching session

and we get to the core of it,

they feel guilty, they feel shameful,

they feel embarrassed about it.

It doesn't make them feel good.

And they wouldn't openly admit it in a community of people.

Now, I'm speaking about a very specific group

of people that have come to me for help

or support in their relationships.

They don't feel good about it.

That doesn't mean they don't feel good

when they're watching it.

I'm saying they don't feel good afterwards.

When they think about it, when they reflect on it,

they're like, that's not what I imagined would be my sex life.

That's not where I thought I'd turn to

for satisfaction and enjoyment.

So to me, that's again,

comes back to down the same approach.

And that's why the approach is always the same.

We're always approaching the problem or the challenge

from empathy and compassion.

We're not approaching it from judgment and accusation

of like, oh, you're such a waste.

You're such a lazy, you know, like that mindset

doesn't ever make someone wanna open up.

Like if you went up to your partner and said,

God, you just watch porn all the time.

Like, you know, you're just one of the worst guys.

Like having seen all my mates, they're doing this

and they get this from their partners

and what are you doing?

That person's never gonna tell you

when they watch porn or what their challenge with it is

or how embarrassed they feel or whatever it may be.

Was if you went up to them and said, hey, you know,

I know that you watch porn

and I wanted to know when it started.

Like when did you get into it?

Like allow yourself to be an interviewer about it,

not an interrogator.

And I feel like one of the biggest mistakes

we make in our relationships is we interrogate our partners,

not interview them.

Let's be curious.

Let's actually try and understand it.

Let's look at it because it's human.

It's natural.

Like we said, 99% of people are doing it anyway.

So why are we pretending like it's only in our relationship?

Why are we pretending that, oh, no one else does this,

but only my partner does this?

That's not true.

So if it's that widespread and it's that common

and there's this huge industry that's been built off of it,

why are we judging our partner

and why are we making them feel less than?

Do you watch porn?

I don't.

I mean, when you, you know,

I mean, three years of being a celibate monk

with no access to the internet or phone

gives you some good training.

I feel like, so I grew up and I'll explain why too.

I feel like I started having sex early.

And so early in the sense for me,

so I felt that when were the years

where most of my friends were watching porn,

I was having sex.

And so I didn't get into it as a habit early on in life,

which is where I found it formed for most of my friends.

And then by the time they were having real sex,

I became a monk.

And so it was, it was a really weird order of stuff.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

I think it was that idea of like, yeah, it was just,

I think I had, I had the real thing

when my friends were watching porn

and then by the time they were having the real thing,

I was on such a different path.

Three years of celibacy.

Three years of celibacy would do it to you.

It was one of the hardest.

No, thanks.

It was one of the hardest and best things though,

because one of the things we don't realize,

and I want to address this

and celibacy is a really interesting thing to address,

I would love to see more people.

And this may be not a popular concept

and I'm good with that.

I would love to see more people date people

without having sex for a committed number of months.

So committing with a new person that you're dating

to not make sex a connection point.

So one of my good friends did this recently as well.

And he found that it gave him the ability

to make better decisions

as to whether there was real intimacy,

whether there was real connection

and whether there was something real here

that could be built upon with sex

as opposed to, God, I'm just so attracted to her

and she's so attracted to me

and we just have the best sex ever or we don't.

And then that's what it's all hanging on.

And so I actually would go down that route

and say that celibacy doesn't have to be practiced

how I practiced this through as a monk.

Celibacy can be practiced in small doses,

not because you're trying to be celibate

and you're trying to repress yourself.

That's not what I'm encouraging.

What I'm encouraging is why not use it

as a way of making healthier decisions?

Because studies show we don't make good decisions

after we have sex.

And studies show that we don't make good decisions

when we've had sex with someone for a long time

because that's completely rewiring how we feel about them.

So that's one way of looking at it.

And the other way I'd say even more extreme

is being celibate as a monk allowed me to redirect

all that energy and the word for monk

in the tradition I stayed in is brahmacharya or brahmachari.

And what that means technically is proper use of that energy.

So celibacy is not a repression or a suppression

or a closing off, it's reutilizing that vital energy

in a different direction.

If you think about how much money, time and energy

you've spent chasing someone that you liked,

the amount of time in your head,

the amount of time on your phone, text, messages,

dating apps, the amount of money you spent.

I would have been so rich

if I never took anyone out on a date before 21.

Like think about all the money I wasted on showing off

to women before I was 21.

Like that Don Perion's not cheap.

Yeah, exactly.

Take all of that energy,

think about what you could achieve creatively.

If you used all that energy used to pursue another person,

if you use that energy to create,

because it's creative energy.

So to me celibacy was far more about

I got to use three years of creative energy

in doing a lot of self-work

that I otherwise could have taken years to do

because of so many distractions and pursuits

that kind of spread that energy across.

My girlfriend came upstairs yesterday

when I was having a shower and she said to me

that she tried the Heel Protein Shake

which lives on my fridge over there.

And she said, it's amazing.

Low calories, you get your 20 odd grams of protein,

you get your 26 vitamins and minerals

and it's nutritionally complete.

If you haven't tried the Heel Protein product

do give it a try.

The salted caramel one,

if you put some ice cubes in it

and you put it in a blender and you try it

is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.