The Leading Sex Expert: How To Have Great Sex EVERY Time! (And Fix Bad Sex): Tracey Cox | E247

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 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 life. 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 fake their orgasms. We have known that women don't orgasm through penetrative sex since Kama Sutra. And yet most men will go, "Yeah, 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 that you're 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 2 years writing a book and I've written 33 laws for business, marketing, and life that I derive 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 6 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 in 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 to say other than the words I've said to emphasize my excitement cuz I think it's important and I think it's really valuable. Um, link in the description. Tracy, 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. Um, 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 well-being 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. Um, which is which I think means that what I do is I look at all the research and look at all the the sort of what's going on in the sex world in sort of in academic sense. And then I work out, okay, so that's all well and good, but what does this mean for you and I? Well, 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 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 I'm a sex educator is 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 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 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 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 uh more often and 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? Um, is it wrong? Are those relationships therefore broken and should they break up with their partners because they're not having that much sex? Um, 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. Um, how does one, if they're in that situation where they really love their partner, they're really, really close to their partner, um, 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 in your new book. Such a such a big question that is because that's the question everybody wants to know, how do you keep desire going long-term? Um, the otherness thing is all about it the close couples kind of become like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They don't do anything separately. But you 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 11:00 in the morning. And then it was like, oh, we can have sex anytime we want. How unappealing is that? You know, the more available something is, the less we want it. But the you need to separate from your partner. You need to be you know, 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 restaurant and I'd arrived first and he hadn't seen me. I was he was walking through the restaurant and I saw a couple of women look over at him and I was like, [ __ ] 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 a bit. So, you need that. If you see your partner at home and you, 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, is 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 some If Miles said to me, "I know you'd never cheat on me." I'd be like, "Huh." I don't take that as a compliment, would you? Um, 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 raised 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 you should keep yourself as attractive as you can, each of you. And I think, you know, And that's not just a physical thing, I have to say. It's it can be an intellectual thing. exactly. It's an intellectual thing as well because desire goes and especially, you know, the, you know, 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 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, I she she doesn't actually know this, but but last night I came home from work very, very late cuz I was I was out did some talks at the and I came home and I got in through the door and I my partner was sat at the kitchen table. It was about 11:00 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. And it's on my phone. And I took a photo cuz 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. Mhm. She was busy doing her own stuff. Doing her own stuff. Yeah. And I kind of like walked past and I could almost see how some people might find it find that threatening. I like, "Well, hey, babe." Give her a kiss like on then she kind of like kisses me back, but then goes back to the laptop. I'm like, "This is nice." And I went 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 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. Yeah. 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 know, 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 routineness is the the enemy of 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 all right to me. If you said that to a woman, she would go, "You have 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 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, but 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 sides of the legs, right? That's the clitoris. Amazing. 10 10 cm long. So, because the clitoris is in on the outside of the vagina, intercourse doesn't cut it for most women. Only 80 No, 20% of women can climax through 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 doesn't isn't exciting, isn't erotic, isn't it 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 cuz 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 to say?" And they 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 um 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 um without like embarrassing him or whatever it might be. What advice would you give to that person? Gosh, talking about sex is 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. We'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. All that sort 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 she 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 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 he's he's reaching orgasm too quickly and then she's obviously not enjoying it because uh he's over and she's still not, you know, had her 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 One of the ways is to have, you know, give her her orgasm through oral sex, fingers, uh 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 um 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. Um but I would say, don't worry so much about like 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 you're not 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 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 so like, "Oh my god, this is awful. I just want the you know, earth to move like open and get rid of me." But once you move past that that initial awkwardness, which seriously lasts like 3 minutes, then all of a sudden it this relief. The amount of couples you 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 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 instructions 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 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 uh the riskiness of it is I don't want rules. You know? Like I don't want Rules. I don't want to be I don't want to be in instructed during sex or or or or even worse, I don't like that. Do it like this. Oh, no, not It kind of kills the like I think sometimes you can become a little bit like boy being told off by his mom. You know what I mean? Yeah. I I that can then that can have an impact on one's erect erection erection and then their like mindset. I think sometimes for guys, so much of sex is flowing, feeling like you can flow. Mhm. Sometime if you get like if you 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 session. So, that's not really important. But maybe yeah, criticism isn't great. Like, don't do it like that. Move over here or 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 if you do it I mean, often men do it's 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's not even remotely close to where it should be, but I'm going to pretend." Yeah. Because that's what And this is why women don't give men instruction in bed is because they know that a lot of men don't like it. A lot of men say, 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." Yeah, exactly. is the positive framing. Yeah. Yeah, that's the key thing. The key thing is absolutely that. And then if if maybe you've still haven't aren't haven't hit the spot, then afterwards you say, "Actually, um 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." You know, "Don't go there. Eh, 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 relaxed and just talking generally, that's sort of the time to say, "By the way, you know, that" I always think that's a good time if you want to try something new. Or to say, "Oh, by the way, 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. Um 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, a 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 at the 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 um Billions? You know, where they she she had the fetish of, you know, being whipped and wanting to be the submissive. And and he just let her go off and be satisfied by um a sex worker. That's one option, by the way, if your partner has a fetish, is to just go, "Okay, I accept that you've got this fetish and it's not for me. So if you 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 or you can meet halfway. Like say um 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 is 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 this this initial question. My friends, they're in their 30s, sexless sexless relationships. They are increasingly frustrated about it, it seems. Um It's funny, I've got like Yeah, I've got this collection of my best friends who are 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're not they don't feel like they're getting enough sex from their partner and they see it as a critical problem, which would which might result in them, for example, being um cheating or um ending the relationship. Even in my own um sort of sexual experience, what got me really engaged with this subject matter was I was in a relationship where the part my partner turned around to me one day after 6 months and said like, "I don't like having sex." Oh. Did she say you or did she say she or with me with me. Oh. Great. And as he as yeah, as a young man, I I I think with, you know, 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 like do I maybe it's her problem, you know, whatever." And so I went on that journey What did she mean? So it's interesting because we separated. Yeah. My reaction was very like And also, I turned to her and said like, "Why?" And she said the next sentence was, "I'm not comfortable talking about that with you." Oh. Yeah, so for me that was like the door had closed. Of course it did, cuz where do you go with that? Yeah, so exactly. So I broke up with her. Yeah. And um year passes, we both go to different places, we both going to you know, figure ourselves out a little bit. And on her journey, she really got to understand that the at the heart of her relationship with sex was this fear that had derived from previous relationships where the partner was very forceful, you know, um a parent 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 Right. 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. Mm. Oh. So a year later we get back together. We end up having the best sex of our lives on an ongoing basis. Um and it was because she was able to understand I was Okay, so first she was able to understand what was really going on. I was able to like be patient enough to like listen and, you know, 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 like rebuild it. Thanks for sharing that. 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. I'll show her the clip and make sure she's comfortable with it. But um but that's my kind of girlfriend. story. So we went from a point of I don't like having sex, I don't like having sex, 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. Of course. Of course. Always, yeah. And giving her space to, you know, and and I give the credit to her cuz she figured that out. But that's what got me really into the subject matter cuz I've now got loads of friends that are in that situation. Mm. What 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 straight couples. A lot of women say no to sex because the sex that'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. So spontaneous desire is 2/3 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 can't 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, right? But so spontaneous desire, 2/3 of men have this. It's It's the, you know, want to see want to see, you know, seek sex. Want sex, seek sex. They can go from People with spontaneous desire could be like scrolling through Instagram, somebody 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, right? 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, you know, 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 start 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, foreplay isn't a 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, you know, take a 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 like 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've almost like blink and it's over and they haven't even got to 5% desire. And this is the problem with couples. And that's that's with 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 cuz 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, you know, at the beginning it was great, it was all spontaneous, I desire was there. You know, 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 think because they 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. Well, 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. I mean, 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 genitals same as men, and you lubricate. So, they're watching all these videos, various sexy videos, and they have to say, you know, "Will anything else dis-arouse 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, the the you know, the there's such a big difference between what we're taught and what we would like. So, if your girlfriend is 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 Shades of Grey. That got middle-aged women wanting sex with 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 that 50 Shades came out. And she knew what I did, and she said um she said, "God, I hadn't really had great sex with my partner, wasn't interested in sex, you know, for like 10 years. She said, "I read the book. I'm sitting there 2:00 in the morning. I'm looking down at my partner. I'm thinking, I really just want to wake him up and have sex with him." And she said, "And I've never And 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 as like, 'Oh God, here we go, kissing, 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 sexy sex. And then they'll be interested. Mhm. I'm I'm 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 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? Horror, yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't go straight from not talking about sex to like, "And we're going to go to a lap dancing club tonight." And No, you have to you have to have the conversation. You have to bite the bullet and have the conversation because the thing about sex is 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 5 years. Let's go to bed now." No, it's got to the awkward, awkward, awkward stage. So, I mean, 30% of couples who've been together for 2 years or more don't have sex. 2 years, not 10 years, 2 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 6 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-size bits of sex. You know, don't have 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 any, you know, give nothing back. Or you give him oral. Or, you know, you just do something sensual together. You have a bath together. That's counts as sex. You know, people think sex has to have intercourse in there. It doesn't. It's the least favorite bit for women. Take the intercourse out. Start doing little bite-size stuff to reconnect sexually. It's like a frog in a frying pan, that old analogy of how slowly that, you know, the frog doesn't realize it's being heated in a frying pan until the water is boiling and it's dead. Like, it happens very, very gradually in relationships. 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 cuz one of my my friends was I was talking to him about it, and I was saying like, "You've let it gradually stray so far, and you're currently letting it You're not addressing it. You need to stage a crisis." Mhm. It's kind of the way I framed it to him, which was like, "You need to say stop. Yeah. Like, this relationship has to stop. We have to have a conversation now 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? But you Well, because it's it's pretty soulless sex, isn't it? Just watching porn and masturbating. I do you know, there's 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 it, you know, you can satisfy yourself. It it keeps your imagination, you know, piqued. 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 a concentration on aggressive acts like spitting, choking. Choking is terrible. Um 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 as like, Mhm. "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 father whatever." Yeah, yeah. Whatever the thing 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 cuz 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 done a big thing on choking, and and I interviewed all these young girls, and it was it was horrifying. It was that they'd been I mean, between 58% of college students between the age of, you know, like had all been 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 who 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, the 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, I 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, you know, 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 room 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. Um 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? Um the partner doesn't necessarily know. It's a similar situation to what I 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. Um And then you kind of hit a wall, don't you? Well, that's when you educate yourself. That's when you give Read a few of my books. Yeah, yeah. you a bit of education. But I mean, okay, so the partner who wants sex is generally more driven. So, maybe they could sexually actually 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 Well, what I got. If somebody says that to you, and they really and you've tried on several occasions, and you I I think that is grounds for walking out myself. And I did. Yeah. Yeah. And a miracle seems to have Yes, because then people do themselves a favor. And 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 pledge to only have sex with one person. Well, 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, to you happy for me to seek the sex elsewhere? And lots of 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 with 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, there was I read something recently about the shame that it's causing in in people. Like I I I think the study that I read and I'm Yeah, I think I read that, too. About 40% of men that use um that masturbate to porn report to feeling a sense of shame. And then it 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? Which is quite concerning. Yeah, there is a there's 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. Mhm. 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, like, I think less face-to-face communication, which makes which makes people quite nervous. If you haven't had sex before and you're dealing mainly with, you know, FaceTime calls, you know, video calls, which is what you 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 of in their 30s and they're 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 cuz 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 uh nuance and understanding is really, really scary. Mhm. 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 a 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, will never shout at you, will never criticize you, and will please you in a in a personalized way. It will learn how to please you. Sounds great, doesn't it? Fantastic. Let's just swap our partners for that. No, but that is we're right there. We're on the 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. I think Think about it like that. Is it a 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, it's I I 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, you know, ultimately, we'll end up with a with no population, will we, cuz no one will be having sex with a real person. Yeah. Dave's going to be slightly more less lonely potentially, right? But Mhm. if we 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 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 uh They're going to be more interesting than humans, 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 at, you know, every way at will be more interesting, surely. You you think? like somebody like a It's like a yes person. I don't want a yes person in my life. I want somebody who's going to challenge me. they do? Yeah. People I think people will choose the short-term Mhm. without thinking about the long-term of like connection and companionship over time and challenge and different solving problems and You'd you know, I think the average person, if they could be faced with a with if they were to draw their perfect partner, they wouldn't say, "I want difficulty No. and challenge and sometimes to walk out on arguments and to be interrupted when the football's on." Yeah. Yeah, you're not going to put that in there. But then I think surely over time I don't know. I I do worry about AI with humans and I don't share, you know, like some people present the argument of 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, cuz we choose the like short-term dopamine hit 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. But but these these living AI sex dolls will be a huge industry. Mhm. I don't think they've quite perfected the robot bit, though, have they? Um so, there's a couple of things happening in in tandem. I mean, Elon Musk is is is working on his own um robots at Tesla. We have Boston Robotics, I believe they're called, who have been working on robots for a long time. But um it's going to move very quickly as as all all exponential curves do. So, now we've got the kind of machine learning modeling um ML MLM AGI, they call it, artificial general intelligence stuff moving quickly. The robotic 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 and the Real Real Girl. Do you remember that? That was about a guy who had a sex doll. Oh, really? And the whole village um sort of accepted it. And then when he didn't need her, he got a real person at the end. But no, I didn't see Blade. I 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 in the future. Puts the headset on and this headset, you know, is exactly that. It's an AI that basically gets him off. And he has the time of his life. And actually, they sit his cup his partner sits opposite him and they both put the headset on. And they Yeah, actually, I do think I did see that. Yeah. It's a scary world. 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? Um 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 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. Um 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 instructed. 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, you know, "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, you know, 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 Kama Sutra, which was written in the 3rd to 5th century. And yet most men will go, "Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've heard about that. I've heard about that. It hasn't happened to me. I've just been really lucky." Or 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 it's totally not like that at all. Speaking of young women, in your book Great Sex Starts at 50, one of the things you talk about is the issue of sort of sexual confidence and sexual self-esteem. Um talk about that in the opening chapter of the book. And I found it really compelling that it really interesting that women view them selves 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 two decade 20 years of studies. So, they did a 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 and they, 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 your partner could fancy you to death, 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 cures body image is um 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? It 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, you it start 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 if that you're not a great lover, read up on it. Buy some of the books. Go online. Look up technique. You know, cuz 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, etc., etc. 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 increase your confidence as a lover, exercise more, and I mean, then the obvious, take yourself off of social media, stop comparing yourself to other people, all that sort of stuff. But it's it's difficult. It's very difficult. And I think men suffer from this as well. That's so unbelievably true, especially um 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. Um 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 it what you're feeling, not like how you're looking. Because if it's stressing you out and you're looking and 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. And 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." And people argue about that. It's like, "Well, his sex drive's way bigger or, you know, higher and all that sort of stuff." It doesn't matter. You really need to have a thing where, you know, if if your partner's got a much bigger sex drive than you, you need to say something, "Look, okay. It's really sexy being the person who's the sexy one in the relationship. That's why, you know, 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 it's such a great dynamic that. That power dynamic in in, you know, 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, 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 and he didn't even, you know, and now I'm not going to do that again. It's like, "Oh, for 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 fun- fundamental here that we we assume sex will take care of itself. It never 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, they don't, you know, I mean, the female response system is complicated. Who knew what a clitoris was back in the day? You know, like they're difficult to stimulate. Actually, they're not that difficult. You just give it a vibrator and then they're fine. But um you know, 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 then 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 who 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 3 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 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, "Oh, 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. 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 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 um try put invest in making it new and exciting and different and all the things you've said is because we just just cuz at the start it kind of takes care of itself, doesn't it? it does, yeah. 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 we you don't think about sex as something you've got to work on and and talk about and invest in and buy stuff for and, you know, 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 it's it's what you do. And the thing is, it makes me laugh because we put effort into every other thing. You don't like eat the same meal every single night. You find it buy a good cookbook and 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 cordon bleu meal without even looking at a cookbook." Well, in the movies, they never do There's no movie where they sit and talk about sex. What did you like? Like you liked it when I did that. In the movies they they come in the door and they pick him up and they put their hands back and they rip the dress off. You know, and then Do you know what? I'm the worst person to watch TV with cuz I shout at the television. Honestly, there was a thing called Dr. Foster. Did you watch that? Suranne 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 throwing her against the wall. They're having sex standing up and you know, like all the I thought, oh for God's sake. This is a couple 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 Miles and I say, you realize that's not true. You realize this is not a real and and he's sort of you know, like sitting there going, yep, yep, I do know. Like cover your eyes. Don't have unrealistic 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 this going to last forever. This is this one's going to last forever. And then of course it dies down and dies down and dies down and 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 the 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 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 2 years it's very You can have satisfying sex, great sex, exciting sex, but it's not fueled by the same hormones. 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. As you might know, this podcast is now sponsored by the incredible Airbnb. And Airbnb have saved me many, many times whenever I'm working away or on business trips or on holidays. But have you ever thought about whether your home could be an Airbnb when you're away on business or on holiday? Or even just a part of your home. Let me explain. Maybe your roommate is moving out and you're thinking about what to do with the extra space. Or maybe you have a spare bedroom that you've never used. You could Airbnb it and make some extra cash for bills or to pay for anything in your life, holidays, or just for some extra money. I Airbnb'd my place previously and honestly the process couldn't have been easier. It's something I'd highly recommend you all to check out. Your extra room, that extra space you have in your house, you might be surprised how much it's worth. I was surprised how much it was worth. And you can find out how much it's worth by going to airbnb.co.uk/host. That's airbnb.co.uk/host. Check it out. 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 have 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 6 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, you know, we all worry about compatibility. Please measure, 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 6 months in, 8 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 sexless relationships so long as both of you are happy with that. And also, you know, they used to define a sexless 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 sexless. So now they've changed it to a sexless relationship is one where sex hasn't happened in a year. And that's low sex relationship to be 10 times a year. But it's all dependent on where you're at in life. Like if you 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 your partner 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 you 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. 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 to chat. And the chat is But they say in the chat, no, I want more sex. I don't want more sex. Then 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 it. You look at anything around it like, you know, have they got any childhood issues that need dealing with? What are their, 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 penetrative sex for a year. You might do the sensate focus program which is all about touching each other without sexual intent and it might be that you have to go almost like you 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've 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 9 of your book is that 33% of couples said that they rarely or never have had sex and one quarter of those rated themselves as being extremely happy. That's right. Something 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. They 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, you're the love bit's more important than the sex bit. 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? Do Do couples ever come to you for No. And And And do individuals come to you for advice in a professional context to get No. No. I do friends and and friends of friends and stuff like that. I don't because I lack the skills to disassociate. Oh, okay. That's 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'm the stand in the middle person. And I 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 a god, erectile dysfunction for men is Women don't appreciate how having not being able to get an erection or, you know, is is the biggest psychological catastrophe Yeah. men experience. We can't fake it. No. No. I Penis envy, who wants a penis? I certainly don't want a penis. It's all out there to see. We can fake everything. Mhm. 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 They're so performance, you know, they have so much performance anxiety cuz 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 be I'll just be 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's 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? Um, I'm not sure about that. I would say As in men cheating later more likely to cheat later in life or I know that middle-aged people cheat a lot because that's when you've you've Got choices. Yeah. Yeah, you've got choices. You're traveling. You've got money. It's probably easy to get away with. You're bored. You've had the kids. You know, you've started to take everything for granted. Um You know, things like that make people cheat. It's it's opportunity, temptation, and and your moral code, you know. It's not to do with love. It is to do with respect, though. Red flags in relationships. The most compatible couples have compatible life goals. Mhm. Something I've heard you say before. Yes. I think that is really important because it is all about it's timing is so important. And 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 5 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 odd 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 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. Mhm. Exactly. Which has never made sense because if we just pretend the world for a second was do the heterosexual equation. Mhm. Every time a a man is having sex in a heterosexual heterosexual world, so is a woman. So, you know, the numbers don't quite add up. 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. They're the two happiest groups of people always. Single women and married men are the happiest? are 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 do do kids play in this whole equation? Oh my god, kids, I think really make the love part better, I suppose, cuz 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 5 years, really. Really? 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, it 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 backseat for a long, long time. Don't panic about it. Keep having little sexual connections that aren't necessarily including intercourse, little bite-size 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. 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 2 seconds to realize how stressful they are. If you've already got problems with your relationship and suddenly you're going to sleep deprive yourself, you're going to make have somebody dependent 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 um in your work that a neuroscientist told me on this podcast, which is that after the first year non-parents are generally happier over time than parents. Mhm. It's 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 a I've 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 could be a little devil, let me tell you. Um 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'd 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 mean, 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. And 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'll have to pay for it. Mhm. 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 given me such a sense of purpose or meaning. course. If you ask me in a survey on a on a Tuesday how I'm feeling after staying up till [ __ ] 2:00 a.m. cuz this kid was screaming, I'm probably more likely to report at any given moment to being less happy. Mhm. But if you zoom out, there's more meaning and purpose. One might say that to to try and provide the counterargument. Um I mean, how many people if you say, "What's the best thing you've ever done?" They say having children. Yeah. 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, I mean, not everybody says that, but I 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 tell childless women that. They never tell a woman with a child, by the way. Yeah, of course not. Women's libido I was reading in um in chapter six about women's libido tends to drop as as as they age, whereas men's um seems to remain fairly stable throughout the relationship. Stable, but then they have the, you know, women struggle with the drop of um because menopause with all the drop of testosterone and all the, you know, test um 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. Um 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, people get I did a campaign for Replens, which is a vaginal moisturizer, which most men blink at and 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 and they were quite old. They and they 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 it we we're not treated 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 are 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 Starts 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, "Gosh David, I was single at the time. I hadn't masturbated for ages. What's going on? 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, "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. Um get your head around the whole thing about that old doesn't mean that you can't be sexy. You can be It doesn't matter what you look like. It's what you feel like. It's 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. Like, there are solutions for all of these things, you know, like if you've got a dry vagina, go and get a vaginal moisturizer. Go and get a, you know, estrogen pessary. 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 to try and find solutions to all these things because they really are out there. Change your head, sir, you know. And the women It's interesting that they did a 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 can 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 What a great sort of excuse to never have sex again." So, it's attitude was way more important to how good the sex was after menopause, nothing to do with menopause. It seems again like that 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 those things. terrible. That we need to find a way to overcome first or address first before we can even That's right. 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 know, it's really 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're masturbating, they're going to be trying to get it down to as quick quick as possible time so that they don't get in trouble again. And then they end up with rapid ejaculation. They can last 2 seconds before they ejaculate. So, that's affected their sex life in a 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 our 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 mom 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, or 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 Sexmart which is very good about childhoods. Sex? Sexmart, it's called. Sexmart. Yeah. You can still buy It's an old book, but it 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. And 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. God, I work out and I can't even pick all these books up. This isn't even all the books, is it? No. So, you've got 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. Ooh, that That hard to see? Ooh, that looks very uh 50 Shades. It does a bit. More hot More hot sex. Okay. Would um Would Like to Meet Yeah, that was the TV show I did about dating, yeah. Oh, yes, okay. That's what I did with that. You There's There's a question there I should ask cuz I'm thinking again about a friend that just popped to mind. Is there something going on with male and female dating in terms of it it becoming more difficult in the modern day and age? There's some stats that one of my podcast guest shared about how women are um 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. Mhm. And I've got friends that are uh 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. Right, yeah. I almost suspect that um I actually don't have that many friends that are in that that region that aren't um but it's almost like there's a generation almost caught in a gap where you're Gen Z native to social media, the internet, you know, that's the where they grew up. And then maybe the older generation already already partnered off because, you know, they met someone at church or And then you got this generation who are caught in the gap 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 you When you come out of uni or even before you go into uni cuz 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. You job done, keep going, right? Assuming 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 and I can take a bit of a break here, and and then suddenly, where is he? Well, he's not there because he's already been taken up 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?" Cuz women high-achieving women like to go for high-achieving men. Is that statistically It's just generally what happens, isn't it? You sort of 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 going to, you know, look in a I'm I'm not going to be as rigid with my you know, must-haves, and perhaps, you know, think about things like, "Well, does it really matter how much he earns if I'm already earning lots of money? You know, isn't kindness, you know, generosity, sense of humor, attractiveness, you know, just general chemistry, isn't that isn't that enough?" So, if you go for those qualities, you end up a lot better off. And you'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. Mhm. Um So, does that kind of go For me, if I'm a if I'm a woman and I'm looking for uh 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 I'm like very alpha female. So, whenever I went out with an alpha male, we were just like Right. hated each other. So, I'm the boss. No, I'm the boss. No, [ __ ] off now, I'm controlling you. No, you know. No, it didn't work at all. Didn't work at all. Very competitive. I'm too competitive. They were too competitive. That didn't work. So, so I've got I mean, my partner is really proud of me. He's not at all um Threatened. It's threatened in the slightest by any success any success I've had. He's my biggest proudest supporter. He And And we work differently. Like, you know, if if my thing is to, you know, um if you know, I make more money than him, he doesn't mind me saying that cuz he's 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 um you know, we're comfortable with each other. We We, you know, we don't care 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 sometimes 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 if it's the woman who's earning 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 a 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 a series of my close um friends that are women that are single in that range and that have expressed that they they don't want to be single. Um but they're struggling for all the reasons you said, super high-achieving, um you know, they're they've got great careers. They're very very busy because of that as well. They've you know, Yeah, that was the issue, isn't it? It's um 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 women have been sold. You can't have it all. There is something that gives. And And these high-achievers, yeah, they have compromised their chances of finding a partner by putting 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. 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 they it makes them feel bad because they're going to those traditional patterns like how she's not going to go out with me. You know, I'm not as successful as her so I'm not even going to try. So you have to make the approach number one. Um change your wish list to become qualities, personality qualities, not you know, must be a certain height, must be a certain income, must drive this car, must you know, all those sort of things cuz they really don't matter. And um and also date outside of type. Like 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. 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 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 you know, I know certain friends of mine are going to be listening. Um They'll hate me for it. No, I don't think so. I think it's an it's it's an opinion. It's one that makes um sense and I think that's all that anyone can deliver on this podcast and that's that's why I like it. It's and it's actually matches the opinion I had from a man previously on this podcast who received quite a um 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 um the term one of my previous guest used to describe it was um tall girl problem. The You see what I mean? It's not a good It's not necessarily the most um You could also say Yeah, you could say small man problem. Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing, 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 what purpose is it solving? Why does it exist? To create other human beings. This is why, you know, our 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 have 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 That'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 the contentment and the companionship. And this is why older, you know, you asked about um 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 your 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 um 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 someone 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. I He's my You know, it's possession, isn't it? It's ownership. It's sexual ownership. You know, I 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's 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 tradition on 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. Um proudest of my career and having helped people. I'm one of the really annoying people when you're in a in dinner party who's just knew what they wanted to do really early on with the writing and then that happened very early with my parents. Um so I'm really proud of that. My first book, I was so excited. I 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 realized 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 inner lack of confidence? Um insecurity. Like going away and like every, you know, 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 Oh my god, why didn't I do something else with my hands? What you know, like I'll go through it." Then 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 feel abandoned at the age of 15, it's not great, is it? And then all these small things are a potential abandonment. Uh maybe people don't think I don't get on with me. Maybe they don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I'm confident of I'm confident of my abilities um professionally. I'm confident that I'm intelligent. Um I don't know. I suppose Yeah, you never really I mean, I remember when I studied psychology and the 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 like How 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, this she's still there. And um 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, Tracey. Um You've given me so much answered so many of my questions and I I know for 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 Oh, I hope so. Thank you. And I think everybody will take away something different from that, which is 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 one word they're wrong. Right? 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 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 the study, which ended up being a TED Talk, which has done 45 million views. It's the most one of the most listened TED 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 um live 14 years longer. Women 7 years longer. That's right. And one of the things that ends ends great relationships and leads us to isolation and loneliness is sexual issues. Mhm. I see it in all of my friends. And the work you're doing is therefore um in its very essence helping people to 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 will 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. 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. Um you really are the the best at this. So thank you for being here. Thank you for helping me. You have. Um 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 Huel's. 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's obsessed with the chocolate flavor Huel's, I've started drinking the chocolate flavor Huel's 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 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 Huel 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 arms reach, that I can consume on the go, is where Huel has been a game-changer for me. You got to the end of this podcast. Whenever someone gets to the end of this podcast, I feel like I owe them a greater debt of gratitude, because that means you listened to the whole thing. And hopefully that suggests that you enjoyed it. If you are at the end, and you enjoyed this podcast, could you do me a little bit of a favor and hit that subscribe button? That's one of the clearest indicators we have that this episode was a good episode, and we look at that on all of the episodes to see which episodes generated the most subscribers. Thank you so much, and I'll see you again next time.