Most Replayed Moment: The Gottman Doctors Guide to Better Sex and Stronger Connections

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What do you think about the subject of sex, Julie, and

how important it is for a relationship?

How much should we be having sex?

Does it really matter?

Is it a predictor of long-term success in marriage?

Great questions that my clients ask me a lot.

And there's huge variability in sexual preference.

Some couples actually don't want to have sex at all.

Both people don't want to have sex.

They'd rather have kind of a sibling relationship almost.

If they're both content with that, then they can have a very successful relationship.

Some couples really want to have sex a lot, you know, all the time, and it's a really important component of the relationship

and everything in between.

When you run into trouble, is the following, and I've seen this so many times.

The men who, I guess I would say, are hyper-masculine, they think that cuddling is too infantile, so they don't want to cuddle, and the only way they can accept physical contact, which they desperately need, is through sex, period.

Penetrative sex.

Penetrative sex.

That's right.

And the woman has 17 children.

She's trying to make dinner.

You know, she's exhausted.

She may not want to have sex nearly as much as he does.

So he begins to feel deprived of touch.

But instead of complaining about that, he says, We're not having enough sex.

And she says, I'm not getting enough affection.

And there you have, you know, some conflict that has to get sorted out.

It's like they're speaking two different languages of intimacy.

Do you know what I mean?

Basically, in a sense, they are.

They are.

Though typically, the men in these relationships really basically need touch.

And can they accept cuddling as something that's just as masculine as penetrative sex?

Well,

if they really think about it and if they experience it, then yeah,

they can.

Then things really will tend to improve.

The research there, John, is suggesting there, as you said, that life is foreplay.

Because if like the kissing on the way out the door and the touching my partner's back and the cuddle leads to a better sex life, then we should see life, public displays of affection, all that kind of thing, as an investment in what happens tonight in the bedroom.

Right.

I think that's really true.

Every positive thing you do in a relationship is foreplay.

And the couples who, a lot of times the couples who stop having sex have also shut down, high conflict couples who stop having sex, have shut down other things, other sensual parts of their lives as well.

You know, they're not having much fun.

And, you know, 80% of the 40,000 couples we studied said that fun had come to die in a relationship.

There wasn't much play.

There wasn't much adventure.

It wasn't just sex.

Everything shut down.

All the things that were really delightful, you know, exploring new kinds of cuisine, you know, traveling,

playing games together, you know, playing sports together.

How do we stop that happening though?

You know, because I've often wondered, people often said to me that eroticism and attraction is about novelty and spontaneousness and doing all that kind of thing.

And then they've said that love is about familiarity and, you know, comfort, which are, these are two opposite things.

Let me answer that.

The person who said that it's all about spontaneity and mystery and so on has never done any research.

The research shows that

the familiarity, the emotional connection, really knowing your partner creates, in the long run, much more passion.

What?

Much better sex, actually,

than

maintaining mystery, but not

really connecting to one another the way people need to.

There's a wonderful book by Emily Nagowski called Come as You Are that reviews this research.

And it shows that, first of all, women have more prerequisites for eroticism than men do.

Jeffrey Chase once said, women need a reason for sex, men need a place.

That's all.

So, you know, but it's true.

Men don't need to feel safe

to feel sexual.

Women do.

Women need to feel psychologically safe and that means emotional connection.

It also means there can't be a long to-do list of things that they have to get done that's been neglected.

The dog's been taken out, you know, and has done his business and all of that.

And then the situation feels erotic to a woman and she's receptive.

Let me point out something in addition to that that most men don't know.

At least in the United States, one out of four

women have been sexually molested or sexually assaulted by the age of 18.

And that's only the women who report it.

It's probably one out of three, maybe 40%,

including the ones who haven't reported it.

So

when women have that history,

not to mention thousands of years in their bones of being seen only as sex objects and being raped, you know, every other day,

you get to understand

why women need safety much more so than men.

And we wrote a book called A Man's Guide to Women to convey all of these bits of information that have been researched.

So familiarity

is the basis for eroticism, not for the absence of eroticism?

That's a myth.

So, I've heard a lot about epigenetics recently, which is this idea that trauma can be passed on from

one generation to the next.

And with that in mind, if women have been sort of sex objects throughout history and have been raped and those kinds of things, it's understandable that, as you say, Julie, that they have like an inbuilt need for safety that men might not understand in the same way.

Exactly.

Which, what does that say to a man?

What advice do you then give to a man?

Is the advice you have to make your partner feel safe for them to be aroused?

Right.

Okay.

Yes.

What else was in that book, by the way?

It's quite an interesting book.

I feel like I need to read it.

Yeah, it's well, you know, it's really that awareness of emotional connection and psychological safety being so important to women and also realizing that men who do housework get a lot more sex.

Is that something Julie told you, or is that

actually

an empirical result?

Yeah, but specifically, honey, they have to do the vacuuming.

Yeah, get the books off the bed.

Interesting.

Okay.

Are you seeing a difference in our relationship with sex as the world is changing?

Because there's some stats that suggest we're getting more and more sexless as a society.

Have you seen any changes in your 50 years studying love towards attitudes about sex?

Or, you know, gender roles have changed in that time as well in society.

So.

You know, I wouldn't say it's sexless, but I would say it's loveless,

more loveless.

In the sense,

you know, again, I don't know what it's like in England or in other countries so much, but in the United States, the hookup culture is,

you know, alive and thriving.

There's so many websites in which

men and men, women and women, men and women are just hooking up, meaning meeting up for the first time, having sex, and departing the end.

Is that a problem?

Yes.

You know why?

Because in that kind of sex, there's no emotional connection.

Zero.

And I've heard this from both men and women, actually,

that when they leave, they feel more empty than before they started.

having that sex.

Why do you think that is?

No emotional connection.

It's impersonal sex.

They don't know who they're having sex with.

So,

you know, it's almost like masturbating practically.

So, you know, there's a lot of couples who are doing that, but they're not committing in

long-term relationships as much as they used to.

And I think there's several factors involved in that.

One is they've seen their parents divorce, so they don't believe in marriage or commitment as an institution that they should live to.

Secondly, women have come into the workforce again in the last 50 years and career

is equally important to many women as it is to men.

On that point, do you see issues with women becoming more successful in that emasculating men to some degree?

Because I read about a study that

said there's an expectation in society for men to provide more at home, financially.

And then a separate study showed that

women's sort of equality with men in terms of their pay and education is getting closer.

And then the third study says that

men

can feel emasculated in the presence of a smarter, more successful woman, and they find it less attractive.

So, if you put all this together and you go, okay, women are getting richer and more intelligent.

Men are emasculated by that, but men still have this ex-social expectation that they will pay the bill.

In that framework, you go, Jesus Christ, this is going to be difficult for

you know, and you can look at it another way and say, there's less of a pool for women who typically want to date men that have a certain level of education and a certain level of money.

The pool is smaller than ever before.

So, is this, you know, this is some of the issues of the

some of the challenges of the modern world.

You're right.

You're absolutely right about that.

The roles are really changing.

And,

you know, I remember this feeling myself, actually, as I built my career and John and I were together and I kept thinking, no, no, no, I should be a housewife.

I should just be a mom.

I should just be taking care of the home.

I shouldn't be devoting all this time to my career, but I love my career.

I want to work.

And so, there would be this turmoil inside about who should I be.

And I think men are feeling that too.

For example, as I said earlier, men are really wanting to be fathers more.

But how can you be an involved father when you're working like crazy extra overtime to make more money?

Right?

It's impossible.

Also, those old myths have a hard time falling away.

That men who make more money have more status, have more value as human beings, are better partners.

That's so true.

Are more male.

Are more male, are more masculine.

It's so not true.

Another thing to keep in mind is that women used to make 79 cents for every dollar that men made.

Now they make 81 cents for every dollar.

You think that's a big change?

It is not.

So women are still fighting for

equality in terms of career opportunities, work opportunities, and so on.

And valuing their career,

men

sometimes, you know, are struggling.

Who should I be now?

I used to be the provider.

Who should I be?

Well, that's what we've learned, right?

Because we come from a generation where, like, my father might have been the provider and my granddad was the provider.

So I've modeled that and said, well, for me to be a man like my father, then I need to be able to do this.

That's right.

That's right.

It's a good thing that we're getting closer to equality, of course.

And I know the pay gap is still, there's still a distance there between men and women, but it kind of you can see there being some kind of challenge for men who now don't know their role, but society still has an expectation that they'll pick up the bill.

You bet.

It's a difficult conundrum, isn't it?

But it's.

Well, it's really hard on men.

You know, I think men in many ways are having as hard, if not harder, time now

in figuring out what their role is and who they want to be

compared with women.

I mean, our fight started earlier, right?

Started in the 70s with women's liberation.

And men kind of sat back and went, what?

What's happening?

I I think men are discovering the importance of relationships.

We typically have had worse emotional support systems.

Many men don't have the best friend, don't have close friends.

And their only

really close connection is with...

the woman that they live with and are married to.

And so I think men are discovering how important social connection is in their lives compared to achievement.

I I mean, there's this lie that got

sold to women that if they really are the caretakers of relationships, they'll be happy.

The lie to men is, if you are successful in your career, you'll be happy.

Neither lie is really useful because both men and women need close connections.

We need friends.

We need, you know, there's an epidemic of loneliness, you know, in the world right now, and that's a killer.

We really need to reach out more, not only to make good friends, but also reach out to strangers, create community.

And that needs to change.

You know what's really interesting?

I mean, just think about it.

If you go on the internet and you look at what women are looking for in a partner, what's the first word they say?

They don't say rich.

They don't say highly successful, great achievements.

Typically, they say sensitive, right?

Sensitive, emotionally aware, caring.

So hopefully, men can absorb that.

Is that it's interesting because they do say that.

Yeah.

And then they also say strong.

And they say,

can protect me.

And again, it feels like a poll because on one end, it appears that that sort of sensitive emotional openness at somewhat since in contrast to like the

very well, you have a very lucky part.

Most people are probably listening, don't even know what I did, but I was just flexing my guns.

It was the gun show.

So like, you're sort of saying it feels like a contradiction.

It's like, how do you be this and this, the testosterone-filled beast that's going to save the day?

And then the.

True.

But keep in mind that being strong doesn't mean being unemotional

sometimes it takes more strength and courage to voice emotion than it does to shut them down and what they're talking about you know let's not forget that women are still getting raped still getting assaulted still getting attacked everywhere still getting murdered right

so they want a man allegedly who can physically protect them, for sure.

That would feel great because women still feel unsafe.

However,

that doesn't necessarily correlate with being unemotional.

I guess the contradiction goes both ways because men also want a woman that is, you know, compassionate and soft, but they also want her to just be like, to not be emotional and not keep that.

So it's like a contradiction both ways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We want everything, right?

All at once.

And that's part of the problem.

Just closing off on this point about sex, because I had one last question, which is, does the research show that couples that have the best sex life talk about it the most?

Yes.

I had this debate with my friend and I was wondering.

Yes.

No question.

Couples who talk about it have a better sex life.

And how should they be talking about it?

Give me some advice on how to talk about sex with my partner.

You need to talk about it in a way that is

accepting and loving.

So you talk about what's really great in the relationship, what you've enjoyed, what you love about your partner, what you find sexy about your partner, what you wish for more of, you know, and

right.

We have, we created what we call got sex.

It's, isn't that a, we didn't think of the title, I promise.

So it's, it's a kit that includes seven different

structured conversations to have with your partner about sex that have to do with what do you prefer specifically,

how would you like sex to be initiated, when would you like it initiated, how can we refuse sex without massacring each other's egos,

how should sex be completed, etc.

So the couples who talk much more openly and more comfortably about that do much better sexually.

And for love maps, we have 100 questions you can ask a man about his erotic world and a hundred questions you can ask a woman about her erotic world.

And they're not the same questions.

Men and women often, well, just people generally, even in sort of homosexual relationships and heterosexual relationships, have very different fantasies, often linked to their trauma, wherever they've come from, whatever.

What happens in a relationship when one partner isn't willing to do the fantasy that the other partner is really craving?

How does one navigate that?

Well, a couple of ways.

One is the person person who's not willing to do it can maybe describe it verbally because couples who talk

more during sex actually have better sexual relationships too.

So

if the partner who doesn't want to do what the other wants at least describes it verbally, whispering it in some kind of really cool tone, well,

the guy can get off on that or the woman can get off on that, right?

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And I'm six foot four, not five foot seven.

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