Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Most Replayed Moment: The Gottman Doctors Guide to Better Sex and Stronger Connections About this episode Renowned relationship experts Drs. John and Julie Gottman share valuable and actionable insights on building stronger emotional connections and enhancing intimacy. With decades of research in the field of relationships, the Gottmans explain how to foster trust, improve communication, and deepen your bond with your partner.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Steven Bartlett? What do you think about the subject of sex, Julie? And, you know, 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?
0:11 Speaker 01 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.
0:56 Speaker 01 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.
1:16 Steven Bartlett? Penetrative sex.
1:17 Speaker 01 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.
1:50 Steven Bartlett? It's like they're speaking two different languages of intimacy.
1:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, 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, you they can. Then things really will tend to improve.
2:23 Steven Bartlett? The research that 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.
2:43 Speaker 02 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, eighty percent of the forty thousand couples we studied said that fun had come to die in the 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
3:24 Speaker 02 new kinds of cuisine, you know, traveling, playing games together, you know, playing sports together.
3:32 Steven Bartlett? 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.
3:52 Speaker 01 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.
4:07 Speaker 01 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.
4:32 Speaker 02 There's a wonderful book by Emily Nagoski 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. Chevy Chase once said, "Women need a reason for sex. Men need a place. That's all." So, you know, but it's true. Men, 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.
5:18 Speaker 02 And then the situation feels erotic to a woman, and she's receptive.
5:23 Speaker 01 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,
6:07 Speaker 01 you know, every other day, you get to understand why women need safety, much more so than men.
6:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, we wrote a book called The Man's Guide to Women, to convey all of these bits of information that have been researched. So familiarity...
6:27 Speaker 02 Is the basis for eroticism not for the absence of eroticism? That's a myth.
6:34 Steven Bartlett? 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 sex objects throughout history and have been raped and those kinds of things, it's understandable that, as you say, Julie, that they have an inbuilt need for safety that men might not understand in the same way.
6:53 Speaker 01 Exactly.
6:54 Steven Bartlett? 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? Or to, okay.
7:03 Speaker 01 Yes.
7:03 Steven Bartlett? What else was in that book, by the way? It's quite an interesting book. I feel like I need to read it.
7:06 Speaker 02 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.
7:22 Steven Bartlett? Is that something Julie told you? Or is that?
7:25 Speaker 02 Actually, an empirical result.
7:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, but specifically, honey, they have to do the vacuuming.
7:31 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, get the books off the bed.
7:35 Steven Bartlett? 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.
7:58 Speaker 01 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 alive and thriving. There are so many websites in which men and men, women and women, men and women are just hooking up, meeting, meeting up for the first time, having sex and departing. The end.
8:33 Steven Bartlett? Is that a problem?
8:35 Speaker 01 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.
8:57 Steven Bartlett? Why do you think that is?
8:58 Speaker 01 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, they're not committing in long-term relationships as much as they used to. And I think there are 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.
9:38 Speaker 01 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.
9:52 Steven Bartlett? 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 and women's sort of equality with men in terms of their pay and education has, is getting closer. And then the third study says that... Men can feel emasculated in the presence of a smarter, more successful women, and they find it less attractive. So if you put all this together and you go, okay, women are getting richer and more intelligent,
10:36 Steven Bartlett? 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, I mean, 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, 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.
11:03 Speaker 01 You're right.
11:03 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
11:04 Speaker 01 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.
11:45 Speaker 01 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. Are more male. Are more male, are more masculine. It's so not true.
12:16 Speaker 01 Another thing to keep in mind is that women used to make seventy-nine cents for every dollar that men made. Now they make eighty-one 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?
13:00 Steven Bartlett? 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, but...
13:11 Speaker 01 That's right. That's right.
13:12 Steven Bartlett? 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 broadly.
13:31 Speaker 01 You bet.
13:31 Steven Bartlett? It's a difficult conundrum, isn't it? But it's...
13:33 Speaker 01 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 seventies with women's liberation. And men kind of sat back and went, what? What's happening?
14:00 Speaker 02 I think men are discovering the importance of relationships. You know, we typically have had worse emotional support systems. You know, 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/or are married to. And so I think men are discovering how important social connection is in their lives compared to achievement. You know, I mean, there's this lie that got... Sold to women that if they really are the caretakers of relationships, they'll be happy.
14:40 Speaker 02 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 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.
15:12 Speaker 01 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.
15:49 Steven Bartlett? Is that, it's interesting because they do say that.
15:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:53 Steven Bartlett? 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 is somewhat sensing contrast to like the err, err, err.
16:11 Speaker 01 You did that very well. You have a very lucky part.
16:15 Steven Bartlett? Those people that 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 said, I'm saying it feels like a contradiction. It's like how do I be the this and this? The testosterone filled beast that's going to save the day and then the.
16:27 Speaker 01 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.
16:54 Speaker 01 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.
17:16 Steven Bartlett? 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, to not be emotional and not keep that, so it's like a contradiction both ways.
17:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, we want everything, right? All at once.
17:31 Steven Bartlett? 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?
17:41 Speaker 02 Yes.
17:41 Steven Bartlett? I had this debate with my friend and I was wondering.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yes.
17:44 Speaker 01 No question.
17:45 Speaker 02 Couples who talk about it have a better sex life.
17:47 Steven Bartlett? And how should they be talking about it? Give me some advice on how to talk about sex with my partner.
17:51 Speaker 02 You need to talk about it in a way that is accepting and loving. You know, 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.
18:08 Speaker 01 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, et cetera?
18:48 Speaker 01 So the couples who talk much more openly and more comfortably about that, do much better sexually.
18:56 Speaker 02 And for Love Maps, we have a hundred 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.
19:07 Steven Bartlett? Men and women have, well, just people generally, even in sort of homosexual relationships and heterosexual relationships, have very different fantasies.
19:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:14 Steven Bartlett? 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?
19:27 Speaker 01 Well, a couple of ways. One is the 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?
20:03 Speaker 02 I'm imagining you're a cheerleader right now and I'm the football player.
20:09 Speaker 01 And I'm six foot four, not five foot seven.
20:13 Steven Bartlett? Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show. Thank you.
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