The Science of Great Sex in Long-Term Relationships

podcast where I answer questions about sex with science. In this episode, we're going to be talking about out sex in long term relationships. I'm writing my next book on this, so it is always on my mind. Plus I have come across so much interesting research. So here's my producer, mo Hi mo Hi, Emilie. We've had such a great season and I can't believe it's already coming to an end.

I feel like these episodes have been an updated like Sex Said, what a one course for everyone like me who didn't get the Sex said they deserved absolutely, and people could listen to it while they were folding laundry or commuting to work. Among the many reasons. I love podcasts. Yes, now this question today, Okay. I immediately thought that we needed to answer this on the show because I know

you're writing a book about sex in long term relationships. Yeah, there are so many stereotypes too, and so many questions about sex and aging. The New York Times this year did a story on sex and aging and there were like some photographs of people in situations and on Instagram. The comments half of them were like, this is so great for them, and the other half were like, uh,

get this off my feed sterilize my eyeballs. So I love addressing a topic that carries this kind of taboo, even though it's a topic that a lot of us would love to live long enough to have it apply to us. Totally. Lucky him that he is thinking about this and wanting to improve his sex life at eighty. That is incredible. So why did you choose the topic of sex and long term relationships for your next book?

It's based on a true story. Tell me. It took me about a year and a half to write Come as You Are, which is a book that is all about the science of women's sexual well being. So I was thinking and writing and reading about sex all day, every day, And ironically, after all that time thinking about sex, I had zero interest in actually having any sex. As you know, I am married to somebody, and that's somebody

because of me. Went months with nothing from me, and then the book was published, and I traveled all over the country talking to anyone who would listen about the science of sex. And when I got back from those trips, i'd be so tired that we'd try to get in bed together and I would just cry and fall asleep. So there were more months of nothing right, and I missed the sex. I missed my partner, and I missed the part of myself that plays in the erotic realm.

Like I have always imagined myself having an erotic connection that develops and grows with a certain special someone far into our old age. I want us to be giggling and licking and snuggling until we're ninety five, if we're lucky enough to live that long. So here I was sixty years ahead of schedule already losing that, and I

was was pretty shocking. But I had spent all that time reading a lot of science about sexuality, so there were some things I knew about sex and a long term relationship that helped us find our way back to each other. But it wasn't stuff I was finding in other books. So this new book is the book that I wanted to read in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. It's the science that helped us stay connected even through twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen. And then oh gosh, here's a

global pandemic. Right, So this is the science I couldn't find another books, but that I knew because I was reading the science and because I was putting it to work in my own relationship. It seems like you are perfectly equipped to answer today's question. So are you ready to hear the whole thing? So ready? My name is archer Man. Not alive, she said in it five and I and I'll like shick and she does not. I take all natural to help me to get my potential.

So why is it she don't like to have relations with me when we can? Are you supposed to have sex when you get that old? What I'm saying if you want it, I do want it. I love to have it, and so I just want to nip. There's sometimes a rule on that. So that's all I asked him by now and have a good day. I love Arthur so much. On a certain level, it's really heartbreaking to hear like the loneliness and isolation. Why doesn't my

wife like having sex with me? And also I feel really optimistic and hopeful about it, because if he's willing to ask the question out loud, that suggests to me that they might be able to answer the question together. You were saying that you have been researching and reading all about on long term sexual relationships. Can you explain to us what science that we might need to know in order to answer this question. Yes, I would love

nothing more. It's one of my favorite things to talk about, so to begin with, of course, there are no rules. That's what Arthur is asking, and if he has listened to the rest of the series, he will know that by now. And I would point out that Arthur doesn't actually tell us how long he and his wife have been together. Maybe they have been together for fifty years, or maybe they just met and got married five or

ten years ago or less. We don't know. I was wondering before we get too far into this answer, like, how do you define a long term relationship? Oh, that's a really great question. Yeah, what counts is long term. For me, it's any relationship that has lasted long enough for things to change. So you look back and you're like, wow, things have really changed since we first got together, and

maybe that's three months, or maybe it's ten years. I love that definition because I have been with my girlfriend for three years, but we've got together in twenty nineteen, and it feels like we are so close. And you know, this is explaining to me the phenomenon of the pandemic couple basically having a really intense connection. Yeah, it's a phenomenon in social psychology that people who have to solve a problem that they can only solve by solving it

together naturally bond in a really deep way. But regardless of how long people have been together, regardless of their age or their health status, regardless of their genders or any other characteristic of their identities or relationship structure. What the research shows me is that couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over many years have two things in common. First, they are friends who trust and admire each other, and second,

they prioritize sex. They decide that it matters for their relationship and they're shared lives, that they close the door on all the other things they could be doing, right, like they maybe they've got kids to raise, or work to go to, or letters to their representatives to write, other friends or in family to spend time with. Maybe

they want to sleep. God forbid, we are busy, right, But these folks who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term stop everything else and just turn toward each other's erotic selves. And my question is, why would anyone do that? Why stop all the other really important things in our lives and do this, let's face it, pretty silly thing that humans do. So I have actually asked people what is it that you like when you like sex? And what is it that you want when

you want sex with a partner? And the first thing people say is connection. We want and like and long for the vulnerability and authenticity and co presence with another person that sex can bring. And I hear that so powerfully in Arthur's question. And the second thing that people say they want and like about sex with a partner, I mean, I bet you could guess this. The second

thing people say, after connection, they want pleasure. But let's think through how this wanting and longing for connection and pleasure actually plays out for a couple like this, a couple with a desire differential. Let's imagine Arthur and his wife in a sex therapist office. Picture of them. They're They're sitting on a couch, probably at opposite ends of

the couch. I want us to give them the A real sex therapist and researcher, doctor Peggy Klein Plots, who is the leader of the Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Group in Canada. I'm a gigantic fan. Her book is called Magnificent Sex. Please everyone read it. It will change your life. She studies people who have extraordinary sex lives to find out what they can teach couples like Arthur and his wife.

So there they are sitting in her office, and Arthur's wife might say something like, I know he wants to have sex, but I'd be happy if we never had sex again in my life. I'm sorry, that's just how it is. Peggy's response would be, tell me more about the sex you don't want. As Arthur says, he likes it and his wife doesn't like it, so probably the sex that Arthur's wife will describe might not be very pleasurable.

Maybe she spent a lot of years feeling sex was something she needed to do out of obligation, or something that she did because he wanted it and not because she wanted or liked it. Maybe it's even painful, maybe it's boring. Whatever the case, what we often find is that a difficulty like this with desire is not actually because a person doesn't want sex exactly. The problem is

they don't like the sex that's available. The way Peggy says it is sometimes low desire is evidence of good judgment, and my way of saying it, the thing I say over and over is that pleasure is the measure of sexual well being. So, as Peggy describes her interactions with couples like this in the past, she has said things like, well, I rather like sex, but if I were having that sex, I wouldn't want it either. And so her next question to clients is what kind of sex is worth wanting?

The couples who sustain a strong sexual connection of the long term have sex worth wanting. And when I say wanting, this is the essential caveat. I'm not talking about spontaneous desire.

Remember back from the Spontaneous Desire episode, These couples have sex, not because they're so horny they can't help themselves, but because they feel that it does good things for their relationship and for their shared lives and for their individual spirits, that they not do all the other things that are so important in our lives and they just spend this time with each other. I love that you started answering

this question talking about basically their relationship and their emotional selves. So, if we're going to talk about long term relationships, I think one of those questions that comes up all the time for people in long term relationships is the question of frequency, like are we doing it enough? Or is our relationship at risk if we haven't had sex in X period of time however long that is. And there is so much cultural messaging around what's enough sex in

a long term relationship? What regular sex quote unquote should look like in a long term relationship. Yeah, and you know what the answer is going to be, because you use that word should stop shooting on ourselves. And I do I get this question all the time. How often are people supposed to have sex? Or how often do couples have sex according to science? People definitely want that answer, but the science answer, it's not going to help you, and sometimes the science answer can do harm. Right, So

how do science get this answer? We ask a thousand couples how frequently do you have sex? And then we add their answers together and divide it by the number of couples, and there we have the average frequency of couples in long term relationships. So you hear that number and you can't not compare yourself to that number and judge yourself as doing it right or doing it wrong, like few, we're better than those people, or oh no,

there must be something wrong. But in reality, what in the world do those people who participated in their research have to do with you and your sex life? Nothing? Right? You don't know those people. Those people don't know your life, So I don't actually give the answer to the question how often does the average couple have sex? Because it's you can't hear it and not use it against yourself

as a way to decide that you're not normal. Like if you have sex more often than those people, than you're normal and you feel a certain way about that, and if you have sex less off and you feel a different way, and it's a reflex like you cannot help it. But again, the sexual frequency of all those other couples has nothing to do with you and your relationship and this season in your life. That scientific data is relevant to literally no one. It is deadly squat

It is meaningless. Sorry. I know people want a number. People want the number so bad. Y'all can look it up if you want to, But I'm not going to be the one who hands you that weapon. I found the number very recently, in fact, while we were working on this show together, and it caused me to spiral in my relationship that I wasn't doing it enough. And then there's also the horrible, terrible trope of I don't even know if I should say it, of lesbian bed

death that I'm so afraid of. Girl. I have a whole chapter on lesbian bed death in the book You Do, Yes, Lucky Me. And the thing the thing to know is that there isn't really a strong relationship between frequency of sex and sex or relationship satisfaction. You know what is predictive of sex and relationship satisfaction pleasure? It is whether

or not you like the sex you are having. And to compare your relationship to some standard in the research is to apply cis heteronormative, patriarchal standards to your sex life. You're letting the man win if you let yourself spiral about sexual frequency. And while it might be the case that lesbian couples have sex less frequently as their relationship goes on, that's true for lots of different kinds of couples.

And also it's the case that those couples, compared to heterosexual couples, have more oral sex, more variety of sexual behaviors. They're more likely to say I love you, and they have sex longer. If that matters to you, Yeah, it does. It clicks for me. That definitely resonates. So it's not the frequency that matters, it's the quality, whether or not you like it. Okay, So the other big elephant in the room, which you talked about right at the beginning,

is how your body changes as you age. And when you talk about a long term relationship, you are also inherently talking about aging. What do we need to know about sex and aging? Oh? Yes, it's real that bodies change over time. For sis gender men, testosterol levels drop

across their adult lives. I think the peak is in the late teens, and by the time you get to your sixties, seventies, eighties, erections take more time, and maybe you know if you're lying down, your erection is going to point where the ceiling instead of pointing at your chin. For sis gender women, the hormone changes of menopause can result in physical changes like thinning of the tissue of the vulva and vagina, which can lead to tearing, which can lead to pain, which of course is going to

reduce your interest in sex. But a lot of other changes that are sometimes attributed to menopause, including reduced sexual interests, aren't actually about hormones. They're about psychology, how you feel about your changing body and how the other symptoms are affecting your sense of who you are as a person. And of course, for transfolks will be completely unsurprised to know that there is a dearth of research about aging insects.

I can say that for anyone who has or ever has had a uterus, I would recommend heathercorn As Menopause book, What fresh hell is this? This book is like your non binary best friend has become an edrocrinologist and they take no shit. I would also point you to Amassani, Bernie Scott's multimedia project Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause.

I think gen X's really pushing progress so that as we my generation gets to menopause, we are not accepting the cis gender, heteronormative, medicalized crap the Boomers had to experience, and that includes not making assumptions about what's going to happen to our sex lives on the other side of menopause. We want to be who we are without conforming to somebody else's narrative of who they say we're supposed to be.

And it is real. While I say that people respond differently to aging, for some people, really it does feel like I never have to worry about that again, in which case do you. But for others it's now I am liberated from all those ridiculous standards against which I was always supposed to be measuring myself. None of that applies to me now, and I am free to do what I want. I will be sure to put the links to those books in the show notes. Oh, that'd

be great, thank you. Of course. I have heard tell of the papery and often tearing post menopausal vagina, and I have to say the first time I heard the word papery. I was like, it was like times slowed down. I was like, what do you mean PAPERI And medical treatments for that do exist, hormonal vaginal implant treatments and by the time you get to menopause they'll be even more in better interventions. M okay. So Arthur asks, are you supposed to have sex when you get this old?

And obviously, like you said, there are no rule, no obligations, but you are saying like it's normal for your body to have big changes. Yeah, like your body changes so much when you age. In general, your body and your brain. Yeah, oh okay, tell me more, you know. Sex therapist and neuroscientist doctor Nan Wise. She writes that as you age, all of your senses stored of start to diminish in their intensity. The connections between your body and your brain

kind of wear out a little bit. Your eyesight, you're hearing your eyesights as the person who is currently wearing reading glasses to look at her screen, So your eyesight, you're hearing your sense of smell and taste, and the same goes for your sense of arousal. So that's called interreception, your awareness of your own body sensations and so orgasm and other genital sensations and arousal might feel less intense too.

So if your idea of sex worth want is sex that is the same as when you were younger, or sex that is full of intense, spontaneous desire and lots of athletic positions, then maybe you will feel dissatisfied with sex as you age. But there's a very simple fix

for that. All you have to change in order to increase your satisfaction is shift your understanding that the sex that is accessible to you in your body as it is right now, as long as it's pleasurable and of course consensual, it's worth having if you decided is worth having. There's no rule. There's just what rule sex, however you define it, what role it plays in your life and your relationship. Can I let me plug here Nan Wise's book.

It's called Why Good Sex Matters. It is hilarious. So if you like humor and affective neuroscience together, this is a book for you niche audience that I think might be listening right now. In fact, okay, let's take a break and when we get back and we can talk about how we apply the science to hopefully give Arthur and his wife an answer to the question of like, what is sex that is worth wanting? Fantastic, So, Emily, you and I are here answering probably my favorite question

that we've gotten all season from this absolute king. He's eighty years old and his wife is seventy five. Let me just play a little bit of the clip to remind you, are you supposed to have six when you get that old? I'm saying, if you want it, I do want it. Do you think this is the oldest person you've ever gotten a question from? Oh, he's not the oldest people in their eighties? Is the oldest that

I hear from. I have not yet been the teacher to a nonogenarian, but for example, a woman attended a workshop I led, who told me afterward that she was there because she had recently had her first orgasm and she was seventy five. Oh wow, good for her. There was also a couple who attended a workshop I led. I'll be honest, they were definitely in their seventies, but they were there for fun. They did not actually need

any help from me. Also, very good for them. Like I think everyone saw that news story a few years ago about how STIs are on the rise and nursing homes and how seniors gets and there was a Parks and rac episode about teaching seniors to use condoms. Yes, I remember that. Today we are here to talk about safe sex. I know this is a personal question, but how many of you out there are sexually active? Oh? My, I have two partners often at the same time. Wow,

thank you. We know old people bang, but we don't talk about it. Culturally. It's like we just de sexualize people as they age. Yeah. I kind of wish it were as simple as just de sexual I think a lot of people are raised to feel that older people's sexuality is like ick, because we're taught that if a person's body doesn't conform with this fictional cultural ideal, which definitely involves a young adult body, then those people shouldn't

be having sex. And the thing is all of that stuff is a lie, and we get to choose to challenge that experience that in ourselves and our relationships with all the people around us. We want to be those people at that sex workshop when we're eighty, or calling

into a sex hotline when we're eighty. We do want to be those people so I want to give Arthur and his wife some real practical advice, and also for every couple that's maybe in a long term relationship, or maybe somebody who is confronting age and their body changing. What would be your like practical day to day advice for people in this situation. This is a variation on the question I'm asked most by people in long term

relationships is what to do about a desire differential? So for anyone who is a higher desire partner in a relationship, once the relationship is stable, because again, the couples who sustain a strong sexual connection are friends who admire and trust each other. When that's in place, the first thing to do, your first step is to talk to your

partner about what kind of sex is worth wanting. And the hard part is that maybe their answer is no kind of sex I've ever had has been worth wanting, or I can hardly imagine any sex that would be worth wanting. And if that's the person's answer, therapy and let me normalize that. Yes, couples this sage definitely do seek therapy. There's a whole book by sex therapist Barry McCarthy and his wife Emily they're both in their seventies,

themselves married to each other for over fifty years. They've seen so many older couples that they wrote this whole book to help therapists work with these clients. It's called Couples Sexuality after sixty. So Step one talk about sex worth wanting and if you need help with that conversation therapy step two. So I've said the couples who sustain a strong sexual connection are friends who admire and trust each other, and they prioritize sex. But I'm going to

add a third characteristic. Couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term reject the binary gender rules that were assigned to them, especially around their sexuality. Both the McCarthy's and there's a sex educator and researcher named Jane Fleischmann who emphasizes the importance of this third characteristic.

So Jane wrote a book called The Stonewall Generation, which is about the sex lives of LGBTQIA two plus elder boomers who were part of the revolution that's often marked by the Stonewall Riot, and she interviewed them to find out what their sex lives were like, and she found that the predictors of sexual satisfaction among these folks were so. The first one was, of course, lowered internalized homophobia, and second,

higher acceptance of their aging bodies. When older LGBTQIA too plus people have better sex, it's when they are rejecting the binary. It's when they're rejecting the script that says, this is who you're supposed to be, and that is something we can all do. So when I hear Arthur talking about taking something to I think he says, get to his potential. Yes, what I hear there is erections, and I even hear the assumption that it's penis and vagina sex that he means he wants when he says

he wants and like sex. That's the intercourse imperative. It is assis heteronormative script of what counts as sex. A long time ago, when viagraph first came out, for example, there was a study done at the Kinsey Institute that found that wives in heterosexual couples where the husband had started taking viagra were actually less satisfied with their sex lives because they liked that intercourse had become decentralized in their sex lives, and when erections came back because he

was taking a medication. All the other pleasurable things they were doing went away because now the erection was here, And so penetration. People expand their access to pleasure when they reject the scripts that tell them what emotions they're allowed to feel and who's allowed to initiate and what kind of sex you're supposed to have because of whatever body parts you have. So maybe this doesn't sound like practical advice, but it actually is concrete, specific practical advice.

Write down the script that you were given about who you're supposed to be as a gendered person and start crossing out the stuff that's getting in the way of your access to pleasure. I'm hearing this, and I obviously know this to be true. Like, what you're saying makes a lot of sense, but it requires two people in a relationship to both be doing that work of like deconstructing the lives they've been told about sex and gender and their body and shame and finding pleasure and joy.

Like if just one of them is doing it, I don't think it would maybe have the same magnificent sex effect on their life. You know, Yeah, there is magnificent sex that's available through masturbation through solo sex. So if Arthur can do nothing else like as his partner, if his wife is really just like no and no, I don't like it, I don't want it, I don't want

to think about it anymore. Right then what he absolutely like, he can make a bunch of choice for himself, and one of those choices is to practice masturbation in an ecstatic, authentic, deliberate, exploratory way. Again full circle. We started out with someone

who's not interested in masturbating. Yeah, our second episode with the question from Sarah, and we end up with the advice to masturbate a whole lot like in like, don't do it quick, let it take time, don't make it about orgasm, make it about what am I going to say? Make your masturbation about pleasure? Pleasure? Of course I knew pleasure was going to come back. Okay, on that note, I think we should take a quick break. No, I want to stay here and talk about sex and long

term relationships forever. But yeah, probably yes, we should take a ridk Okay, and when we get back, I want to revisit some of the big lessons you covered in this episode. All right, Emily, we're back. Our final episode of this season is coming to a close. No rip my heart out, I know what am I ever going to do? In the meantime, can you just recap some of the takeaways from this episode about sex in long term relationships and in long term relationships like Arthur's yes

we assume, we assume Yes fantastic idea? So four things. First of all, aging is real and normal, and sometimes it's inconvenient and disappointing, But whatever happens, the ones who get old are the lucky ones. And different people respond differently to aging, including in how they feel about sex in their aging bodies. For some people, it really is few. I never have to worry about that again, And for

others it's few. I am liberated from all that nonsense, all the standards against which I was supposed to be comparing myself. Two. Couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term are couples who admire and trust each other and who prioritize sex. Three. Sex is easier to prioritize when everyone involved likes the sex, So talk to each other about what kind of sex is worth wanting.

And if you haven't read it yet, please go read Peggy Cliine Plots and Danna Maynard's Magnificent Sex, which is about the research on the extraordinary lovers. And finally, the ultimate real answer to having great sex in the long term is releasing yourselves from the six heteronormative scripts about how you're supposed to experience sex and who's allowed to have it or do it and what's supposed to happen

while you're doing it. Wow. You mentioned so many amazing books in this episode, and they are all going to be in the show notes. Well, Emily, that puts a bow on this puppy. That wraps it right up. I just want to thank you so much for being the best sex head teacher I've ever had, DAP. It has been a delight in a pleasure. I am absolutely sincere.

You have just described my actual literal reason for being on earth, which is teaching people to live with confidence and joy in their bodies, letting them know that they're normal, and teaching them how to create pleasure with science. And I feel like I feel like we're doing it. You're doing it, and I'm just learning along the way. And now I'm off to finish my book. It's called Come Together, and I'm very proud of that. Oh my god, that's

so good. Get it see because it's not about simultaneous orgasm. It's about people turning toward each other. Prepare yourself for Come Together, coming out in twenty twenty three. Thank you all so much for listening. Come As You Are is a production of Pushkin Industries and Madison Wells. It's hosted and executive produced by Emily Nagowsky. You can find Emily on Instagram at e Nagowsky and on Twitter at Emily Nagowski.

You can also sign up for her newsletter at Emily Nagowsky dot com, where she writes about everything from the clitterest in your mind to orgasm after having hysterectomy. It's an incredible newsletter. Highly recommended. This show is co hosted and lead produced by me Mola Board. You can find me online at Mola Board and on TikTok at podcast dot slut Sorry mom. My co producer on this show is the fabulous Brittany Brown. Our editor is Kate Parkinson Morgan.

Sound design and mix by Ann Pope. Executive producers are Mia LaBelle and Lee taal Mallad. We also want to give a special thank you to the many people who talked to us while we were developing this series. That's Robin Manning, Samuel's Nadine Thornhill, Angela Chin, Aubrey Lancaster, Shine, Louise Houston, Ericamohen, Doctor China Usai, and doctor Nan Wise at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, Sophie Crane, Courtney Guarino, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnars, and Jacob

Weisberg at Madison Wells. Thanks to Kylie Williams, Elizabeth Goodstein and Gg Pritzker. Additional thanks to Rich Stevens, Lindsay Edgecombe, Frolick Media, and Peter Acker at Armadillo Audio Group. Original music for this series was composed by Ameliagoski and arranged and reported by Alexandra Kalinovsky. Additional music from Epidemic Sound. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin

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