How couples can sustain a strong sexual connection for a lifetime Emily Nagoski
I’m sitting in a bar
with a couple of friends –
literally, a couple, married couple.
They’re the parents of two young children,
seven academic degrees between them,
big nerds, really nice people
but very sleep-deprived.
And they ask me the question
I get asked more than any other question.
They go, “So, Emily,
how do couples, you know,
sustain a strong sexual connection
over multiple decades?”
I’m a sex educator, which is why
my friends ask me questions like this,
and I am also a big nerd like my friends.
I love science, which is why
I can give them something like an answer.
Research actually has
pretty solid evidence
that couples who sustain
strong sexual connections
over multiple decades
have two things in common.
Before I can tell my friends
what those two things are,
I have to tell them a few things
that they are not.
These are not couples
who have sex very often.
Almost none of us have sex very often.
We are busy.
They are also not couples who necessarily
have wild, adventurous sex.
One recent study actually found
that the couples
who are most strongly predicted
to have strong sexual
and relationship satisfaction,
the best predictor of that
is not what kind of sex they have
or how often or where they have it
but whether they cuddle after sex.
And they are not necessarily couples
who constantly can’t wait
to keep their hands off each other.
Some of them are.
They experience what the researchers
call “spontaneous desire,”
that just sort of seems
to appear out of the blue.
Erika Moen, the cartoonist
who illustrated my book,
draws spontaneous desire
as a lightning bolt to the genitals –
kaboom! – you just want it
out of the blue.
That is absolutely one normal,
healthy way to experience sexual desire.
But there’s another healthy way
to experience sexual desire.
It’s called “responsive desire.”
Where spontaneous desire seems
to emerge in anticipation of pleasure,
responsive desire emerges
in response to pleasure.
There’s a sex therapist in New Jersey
named Christine Hyde,
who taught me this great metaphor
she uses with her clients.
She says, imagine that your best friend
invites you to a party.
You say yes because
it’s your best friend and a party.
But then, as the date approaches,
you start thinking,
“Aw, there’s going to be all this traffic.
We have to find child care.
Am I really going to want
to put my party clothes on
and get there at the end of the week?”
But you put on your party clothes
and you show up to the party,
and what happens?
You have a good time at the party.
If you are having fun at the party,
you are doing it right.
When it comes to a sexual connection,
it’s the same thing.
You put on your party clothes,
you set up the child care,
you put your body in the bed,
you let your skin
touch your partner’s skin
and allow your body
to wake up and remember,
“Oh, right! I like this.
I like this person!”
That’s responsive desire,
and it is key to understanding the couples
who sustain a strong sexual connection
over the long term,
because – and this is the part
where I tell my friends
the two characteristics of the couples who
do sustain a strong sexual connection –
one, they have a strong friendship
at the foundation of their relationship.
Specifically, they have strong trust.
Relationship researcher and therapist,
developer of emotionally focused therapy,
Sue Johnson,
boils trust down to this question:
Are you there for me?
Especially, are you emotionally
present and available for me?
Friends are there for each other.
One.
The second characteristic
is that they prioritize sex.
They decide that it matters
for their relationship.
They choose to set aside all the other
things that they could be doing –
the children they could be raising
and the jobs they could be going to,
the other family members
to pay attention to,
the other friends they might
want to hang out with.
God forbid they just want
to watch some television or go to sleep.
Stop doing all that stuff
and create a protected space
where all you’re going to do
is put your body in the bed
and let your skin
touch your partner’s skin.
So that’s it:
best friends,
prioritize sex.
So I said this to my friends in the bar.
I was like, best friends, prioritize sex,
I told them about the party,
I said you put your skin
next to your partner’s skin.
And one of the partners
I was talking to goes, “Aaagh.”
(Laughter)
And I was like, “OK,
so, there’s your problem.”
(Laughter)
The difficulty was not that they did not
want to go to the party, necessarily.
If the difficulty is just a lack
of spontaneous desire for party,
you know what to do:
you put on your party clothes
and show up for the party.
If you’re having fun at the party,
you’re doing it right.
Their difficulty was that this was a party
where she didn’t love
what there was available to eat,
the music was not her favorite music,
and she wasn’t totally sure she felt great
about her relationships with people
who were at the party.
And this happens all the time:
nice people who love each other
come to dread sex.
These couples, if they seek sex therapy,
the therapist might have them stand up
and put as much distance
between their bodies as they need
in order to feel comfortable,
and the less interested partner
will make 20 feet of space.
And the really difficult part
is that space is not empty.
It is crowded with weeks or months or more
of the, “You’re not listening to me,”
and “I don’t know what’s wrong with me
but your criticism isn’t helping,”
and, “If you loved me, you would,”
and, “You’re not there for me.”
Years, maybe, of all
these difficult feelings.
In the book, I use
this really silly metaphor
of difficult feelings as sleepy hedgehogs
that you are fostering until
you can find a way to set them free
by turning toward them
with kindness and compassion.
And the couples who struggle
to maintain a strong sexual connection,
the distance between them
is crowded with these sleepy hedgehogs.
And it happens in any relationship
that lasts long enough.
You, too, are fostering
a prickle of sleepy hedgehogs
between you and your certain
special someone.
The difference between couples
who sustain a strong sexual connection
and the ones who don’t
is not that they don’t experience
these difficult hurt feelings,
it’s that they turn towards
those difficult feelings
with kindness and compassion
so that they can set them free
and find their way back to each other.
So my friends in the bar are faced
with the question under the question,
not, “How do we sustain
a strong connection?”
but, “How do we find our way back to it?”
And, yes, there is science
to answer this question,
but in 25 years as a sex educator,
one thing I have learned
is sometimes, Emily,
less science,
more hedgehogs.
So I told them about me.
I spent many months writing a book about
the science of women’s sexual well-being.
I was thinking about sex
all day, every day,
and I was so stressed by the project
that I had zero – zero! – interest
in actually having any sex.
And then I spent months
traveling all over,
talking with anyone who would listen
about the science
of women’s sexual well-being.
And by the time I got home, you know,
I’d show up for the party,
put my body in the bed,
let my skin touch my partner’s skin,
and I was so exhausted and overwhelmed
I would just cry and fall asleep.
And the months of isolation
fostered fear and loneliness
and frustration.
So many hedgehogs.
My best friend, this person
I love and admire,
felt a million miles away.
But …
he was still there for me.
No matter how many
difficult feelings there were,
he turned toward them
with kindness and compassion.
He never turned away.
And what was the second characteristic
of couples who sustain
a strong sexual connection?
They prioritize sex.
They decide that it matters
for their relationship,
that they do what it takes
to find their way back to the connection.
I told my friends what sex therapist
and researcher Peggy Kleinplatz says.
She asks: What kind of sex
is worth wanting?
My partner and I looked
at the quality of our connection
and what it brought to our lives,
and we looked at the family
of sleepy hedgehogs
I had introduced into our home.
And we decided it was worth it.
We decided – we chose – to do
what it took to find our way,
turning towards each
of those sleepy hedgehogs,
those difficult hurt feelings,
with kindness and compassion
and setting them free
so that we could find our way back
to the connection that mattered
for our relationship.
This is not the story we are usually told
about how sexual desire works
in long-term relationships.
But I can think of nothing more romantic,
nothing sexier,
than being chosen as a priority
because that connection matters enough,
even after I introduced all of these
difficult feelings into our relationship.
How do you sustain a strong
sexual connection over the long term?
You look into the eyes
of your best friend,
and you keep choosing
to find your way back.
Thank you.
(Applause)