Episode 9: How Often Is Everyone REALLY Having Sex? And What's Healthy For Your Relationship?

What is the magic number of sex that you should be having to have a healthy relationship? The answer is. Hello, and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Xander Marin. I'm a sex therapist with 20 years.

Of experience, and I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step by step techniques for improving yours.

So make sure to to subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. I have a magic trick today.

Oh, this is going to be good. Since I'm the only one listening to this podcast who can see the magic trick you're about to do.

It's going to be an aural magic trick. A U, not O R. We'll have to stop recording if we're gonna do an oral magic trick right now. No, I have a magic trick. I'm going to read our audience's mind. Okay, so, dear listener, if you could sit down with Xander and with me and ask us a question, think about what question you would ask us. You only get one. I think that I can guess what question you would ask us. I think that it would be, how often should we be having sex? Shoot me a DM on Instagram. Let me know if I was right, if my magician training is paying off. Vanessa Marin therapy on Instagram.

Vanessa Marin, magician.

Vanessa Marin, magician.

Maybe we should grab that handle real quick.

We should second career for me. I guessed this because this is the most frequently asked question that we get. People always want to know, how often should we be having sex? What. What's a healthy amount of sex in a relationship? Or how much sex is everyone else having?

So you're telling me that you don't know magic now?

I'll pull my rabbit out of the hat later for you.

Vanessa and I have actually recently seen a really amazing magic show.

You can't see, but I'm pulling tons of scarves out of my mouth right now. Okay, let's continue on. So I think, you know, this question is such a common one, because people really have this idea in their heads that if they're hitting this certain quota, this magic number, if they're having sex two times a week or three times a week or whatever they think it is in their head, that means that their relationship is successful, they're doing okay, they're in a good place, they don't have to talk about it, like, it's okay.

I think this. This manifests itself in a lot of areas of life. Like, I think a lot of people have this idea of, if I get a certain salary, like, a hundred thousand dollars, I'm set. I remember when I was a kid, a million dollars was so much money. If I just had a million dollars, I would never have to work a day in my life. I would be rich.

It's like Scrooge McDuck when he's, like, swimming in his money vault. That's what I thought it would be. Yeah. I think that there's this really. This idea that, you know, we'll be okay if we hit this certain number. And I think there's also this kind of comparison that comes in, too. Like, I want to make sure, are we having as much sex as the neighbors are having or my friends are having? Like, I want to be keeping up with the Joneses and the sack.

But does that really make you feel better inside? I feel like that's the question.

Oh, and we will get to that. So we decided to do a little experiment, and we wanted to know, okay, we get this question all the time. Let's get an answer to it. So we wanted to see what the sex lives of our followers and our listeners really look like. So we put together a survey, and we have now had 12 people respond. No, 12,000 people responded. We're actually still pretty blown away by how many people fil filled out this survey.

So, yeah, this is, like, some real research here.

Well, it's not scientific research.

Not exactly.

Not exactly. I think probably the. The people who follow us, they're slightly different from a random sampling of the population, But, I mean, 12,000 people is a lot of people. We got some very diverse responses. So we are going to share all of those, you know, findings with you, and we're going to share an answer in this podcast about how much sex is. Is everyone really having?

At least of those of you who follow us and listen to us. Before we get into that, we want to get into our review of the week. So this week's review is. Xander and Vanessa are so good at what they do. Thank you. They talk about every aspect of relationships and how it all works together in a very approachable, thoughtful, fun way. Been such a huge help. My husband and I have had so many good conversations that spin off of the podcast and instapage and keep it coming, please.

We are going to do something brand new with reviews. We know we have asked you for reviews before. It really really does help the podcast. It's really the only way that the podcast can grow. So we rely on you guys. We appreciate the reviews so much and just as a little way of saying thank you and encouraging you to spend two minutes to leave a review, what we're going to be doing is, you know, have you leave a review, take a screenshot of it, and DM it to us on Instagram. Because sometimes Apple takes a while to.

Load the reviews or they don't go up.

Yeah. So just DM us a screensh shot of it and we will enter you into a weekly giveaway. We're going to be giving away a prize every single week. As soon as you submit your review, you are eligible to win that prize every week going forward.

And what's the prize?

So the prize is if you're the winner, you can send us a DM describing your situation or asking us a question, and we will send you back a personalized video or an audio message.

Maybe you'll get video. Who knows?

Okay, sure. Maybe it'll be video. But we will be giving you our advice. So we'll just have, like, a little bit of one on one connection with you. We'll give you some feedback, our best advice, and again, it's just our way of saying thank you. We know that it is an effort to write a review, and we just appreciate it so much. So that's going to be our giveaway. Our weekly giveaway.

All right, so now that we got into the review of the week, let's get back into the answer that everybody is waiting for.

Vanessa, the big reveal. What is the magic number of sex that you should be having to have a healthy relationship? The answer is there is no answer.

God damn it.

There is no magic number that is going to work for every couple. There is no magic prescription for this exact sexual frequency that'll save your marriage or, you know, make your relationship be incredible. There really and truly is no normal or healthy. I'm putting those in little air quotes. Amount to have every couple is so unique.

So there's just, like, no quick fix for me.

There's not. I'm sorry, babe.

No fair.

So I know that this is kind of a frustrating answer to receive, and we're going to get into more of the findings from the survey. So we are going to give you some data. We're not just going to say, oh, there's no answer, but we just really want to drill in the fact that every couple is unique and what works for one couple is just not going to Work for another. So as an example for you, you know, I've worked with couples. I remember one couple, they had sex every single day, multiple times a day.

That sounds painful. I'm just not going to lie.

I would be pain in a lot of sex.

I would be seriously pain in. If. If I were doing that regularly.

Do you remember? This is one of my favorite memes of all time. It was an Oprah meme. I think she was doing, like, bungee jumping or probably something like that. But she had one of those harnesses hooked up to her. Yeah. Like a climbing harness. And she's swinging through the air with the harness, and she's like, my vajayjay be painting y'.

All. If I had a vajayjay, my vajayjay would be painted for multiple times. For multiple times, for sure.

Yeah. It's one of my favorite open memes, aside from the bees is really good. But, like, you get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car, and then someone took that one and was like, bees. I don't know.

Anyways, Vanessa does the Internet. This is a window into the world of Vanessa's brain.

Just Oprah memes. That's all I need to be happy. Okay, so going back to the story. Yes, I worked with a couple who had sex multiple times a day, every single day, and they felt like they were not having enough sex. They were both miserable. They said they felt disconnected, and there were other things going on in their lives that was preventing them from having the amount of sex that they wanted to have. On the other hand, I also worked with a couple who had sex two or three times a year, and they were so happy. The sex that they did have, it was really special sex. They felt really good. They always felt, like, emotionally connected. They had a lot of intimacy. They were coming to see me for totally different reasons, but they were so happy. But it just really goes to show you, there is no magic number. So I couldn't tell both couples, hey, well, actually, what you need to be doing is have sex twice a week to that first couple. They torture to them.

You know, just do. Just do four times a week. Four times a day, and you'll be happy.

Yeah. And I couldn't, you know, if I said two times a week to the couple who's having it two times a year, that would sound like torture to them, too. So it's just, you know, there really is no magic number. I also know I keep saying, like, two or three times a week because that's the most often, you know, thought that we get. People seem to have that in their head as a magic number. But I just want to be clear. Two or three times a week is not the magic number. Actually, just the other day somebody sent me a like a TikTok story that some weird guy had done. He was a doctor, I think, but he was claiming that you needed to have sex every 48 hours.

That just especially because he's a doctor and he probably understands precision and whatnot. If you say every 48 hours, that implies a level of specificity that is a little scary. Then it's like it must be on the 48th hour. He did not say every two days. So I would be stressing out about like the very first time we have sex. Like, we are locked into having sex at that time of day every other other day. Wow.

You gotta choose that really carefully. Like, what if you.

Yeah, what would you pick? What would you pick? What do you do? Like 5, 5pm I was like, what if I have an appointment one day? Oh, sorry, I can't go to the doctor. I have to have sex.

What if you accidentally, like, woke up in the middle of the night and had sex and then all of a sudden that had to be your time for the rest of eternity?

You're screwed.

You're screwed.

You're never sleeping well again.

Let's go to our survey now. So before we share the results of the survey with you, we want to just tell you a little bit about the sur itself. Here are the questions we asked. First, we asked, how often are you currently having sex? And we emphasize the word currently because we know everyone goes through seasons in life. Sometimes you're having a lot more sex, Sometimes you're not having as much. So we just ask people just tell us right now, how much sex are you having? And the answers that they could choose from were none or less than a few times a year. A few times a year, Once a month, Two to three times a month. Once a week, Two to three times a week, Four to five times a week, Six to seven times a week and multiple times a day.

Yeah, so we got pretty specific on that one.

Yeah, we did.

Yeah. When we were analyzing the results, we ended up grouping things into wider, into wider categories because you didn't always get a ton of responses in some of those categories. On the very end.

There weren't a lot of people having sex multiple times a day, every single day.

Yeah, there weren't.

Then we also asked about quantity versus quantity quality. So we asked how do you feel amount. About the amount of sex you're having? How do you think your partner feels about the amount of sex you're having? Are you satisfied with the quality of the sex you're having? So that was on a one to five scale. One was very unsatisfied, five was very satisfied, and three was somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle.

Neutrally satisfied.

Neutralize.

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

Can you imagine, like, you have sex with your partner and they're like, how was it for you, babe? And you're like, I'm neutrally satisfied.

It was just straight up neutral.

Oh, God, I would die. Okay, yeah.

If you're just like, eh, we should have made three. Just be eh.

That little emoji with his hands on the shrug. Little shrug. I'm gonna start rating you afterwards in emojis. Only emojis. I'll send you an emoji after we have sex. I'll send it you. To. To you to describe your performance.

I mean, one little, like, random. This is very random. But, like, one little tip that we sometimes give people that struggle to talk about sex with their partners is to send an emoji that means something like, you can pick an emoji or two that kind of means like, hey, you up for sex later?

Do not have it be the shrug emoji.

Don't, don't. If you, if you try that, do not send the shrug.

Don't blame it on us.

Also, don't send the like.

Hmm. Okay. So we also, we threw in this question that I was kind of curious about. We said, what would bring you greater peace of mind knowing you're having great sex, even if it's less frequent than most people. So we're kind of bringing in that comparison aspect here. Knowing you're having a normal amount of sex, regardless of the quality, or knowing you're having more sex than most people, even if it's of lower quality. So we just really wanted to get at, like, if you're comparing yourself to other people, what's more important to you? The quality or the quantity? And then finally, we just gathered a little bit of demographic information. We asked people how they identify as their gender, their partner's gender. Do you currently have kids? How old are you? And we grouped that into buckets of like, you know, 30 to 39, 40 to 49. The only different one was that we had 18 to 29. So we squeezed those 18 and 19 year olds into the bucket with the 20 year olds. Those were the questions that we asked. Now we will get into the results.

Like we said at the top, we received about 12,000 responses, which just totally blew our minds. Like, we are so happy to receive all those responses and have really good data to be able to share with you. So about two thirds of those responses we collected in January of 2021, and the other third we collected in June of 2021. So as we're recording this right now, very, very recently. So the first thing we wanted to do when we, especially after we collected that second batch of data is we wanted to see if there was a difference in how people were responding. Because we collected those two responses at very different times. At least in the US where we are, even though they were just about six months apart. In January, we were really at the peak of the pandemic in the US and then in June, just now, when we were collecting that data pretty much. I think actually every single US State has reopened. Life is fairly back to normal in the U.S. so we were kind of curious, like, are we going to see some big differences with people, like maybe having less sex in the peak of the pandemic when they're stressed out, more sex now, however, we really didn't see any major differences in frequency. Like, we looked at every single one of those frequency buckets. And so, you know, here and there we might see like a 1 percentage point difference, but there was no big trend, no nothing. So we just lumped all the data together and then analyzed it all together after that, knowing that there weren't any big differences.

Okay, so how much sex is everyone really having? It is time for the answer. The top three response categories that we got. So the three most common responses, these three categories only varied by less than 1%. So there was a nearly dead even split between two to three times a month, once a week, and two to three times a week. So those three responses came. They totaled almost three quarters of all of the responses that we got.

Yeah. And they were far and away the most common response. Like, those three were just about the same percentage. And then the one, the next most one was like far, far below that. So it was like a very clear split between those three. And then all the other responses, there were like way fewer of those.

Yeah. So this is pretty fascinating to us that there was this pretty much dead even split between these three categories. We were kind of assuming that we were going to get one category that was the most common one. But it seems like. And you know, and that all these responses make up 75% of the total responses, you know, so that's a pretty wide range that people are having sex between two to three times a month, all the way up to two to three times a week.

Then we also wanted to look at, you know, differences between people who have kids and no kids, because that is always a question that people have. Or, you know, there's always people saying, oh, well, you know, it's not like it used to be before we had kids, or, you know, worrying that, well, once I have kids, we won't be able to have as much sex. So, of course we wanted to answer that question. So about 70% of the people who did respond to the survey had kids. But we really found, again, no major difference between that 70% of people who do have kids and the 30% who don't have kids. People with kids were very slightly more likely to be having sex two or more times a week, but that was only by a couple percentage points. Like, those top three categories were still the same. Um, and there were no other really major differences. You know, they're playing plus or minus one or two percentage points here or there, which is kind of what you expect when you just have different sample groups.

But, yeah, and we were pretty shocked by this because, you know, we. We definitely hear from parents all the time in our community who talk about feeling like their sex life has really struggled, feeling like their kids are little cock blockers, and all these different ways that it can feel like your kids get in the way of your sex life. So we were really shocked to find that there wasn't any meaningful difference in how often couples were having sex, regardless of if they had kids or not.

I would love to think that because we only sampled people in our. In our universe, people that follow us maybe have a.

They were helping them.

Yeah, we're helping them out. They have a. They have a better perspective on how to prioritize and how to prioritize intimacy. Maybe more tools and sex. More tools to deal with it, to communicate with it. So, yeah, you know, maybe you all listening are just doing better than everybody else. Good for you.

Well, we don't want to get too much into the comparison trap, but, yeah, I'd definitely be curious to see if we could get a really random sampling if we would see different data here. But it was. It was a big surprise to find this. So we also looked at age, too, because this is another common thing that we hear about from people. They'll say, no. Well, no, I used to have so much sex when I was younger, and now that I'm getting up there, you Know, it's. And I think we really normalize this, too. Like, we think, you know, people really lose their sex drives as they age. Nobody likes to think about older people having sex. You don't think about Grandma getting it on in her senior citizen facility.

Spoiler alert. She does.

She does get it on Grandma. Actually. Funny little side note, the demographic with the most rapidly rising rate of sexually transmitted infections is the elderly. Because the elderly didn't really have as much education about using protection and, you know, having different forms of safe sex.

So you're like, well, we're. I'm definitely not getting pregnant.

So they're not.

They're not getting pregnant, but maybe if you're not careful, you might get other things. So always use protection.

So, again, we looked at the impact of age, and we found that as age increases, couples were slightly more likely to be in the once a month or less bucket. But across all of the age groups, the three most common categories remain the same. Two to three times a month, once a week, and two to three times a week. And most interestingly, we did find that those 50 plus are just as likely as those 18 to 29 to be having sex four or more times a week. So it's not just Grandma who's getting it on. It's like. It's like my mom and dad.

Get it?

No, get it. Why did I just use my own parents?

That's a good question. Because there's a very high likelihood that they. Listen to this episode.

Hi, mom and dad.

Hi, mom and Dad.

I mean, you know what? It is very odd to talk about your parents having sex, but I hope that my parents are having great sex as frequently as they would like to. So here was another thing that, you know, at least our data kind of tore down this idea that you're having less sex as you age. There really wasn't any noticeable difference across the different categories. A little more likely to be in that once a month or less, like, ever so slightly. But it kind of is balanced out by the fact that Those people of 50 plus are having sex four or more times a week.

So if there's anything to take away from the age stuff, the kids stuff, I would say this. It is not a foregone conclusion that if you have kids, your sex life will suffer. It should not be a foregone conclusion that as you age, you just will lose your sex drive or you should just expect that you'll have less sex. Like your sex life is what you make it to be.

Yeah.

And, you know, don't don't fall into the trap of thinking, oh, well, it was always just better when I was younger.

Exactly. I think a lot of this is mindset. You know, we don't want to downplay. Like, of course, having kids creates challenges to your sex life that you didn't have before having kids. Of course, as we get older, there are just different, you know, things that come up in our lives. So we don't want to downplay any of that or just say, like, yeah, just carry on. But I think there can be a mindset aspect of, you know, if you go into it expecting, oh, I'm getting older, my sex life is going to get ruined, or, oh, I'm gonna have kids, my sex life is gonna get ruined, like, that probably will happen. But if you can go into it with the mindset of acknowledging that there will be differences and some challenges and that you can continue having an amazing sex life, then that really could make a big difference.

Now, no matter what sexual frequency people reported, the majority of people did report that they wanted to be having more sex than they currently are having.

And people also thought that their partner wanted to be having more sex than.

They'Re currently having just by a little bit. So, like, in general, there wasn't a huge discrepancy. It wasn't. It wasn't like Most, you know, 25% more partners wanted to be having more sex than people responding. It was just a little bit.

It was like 68% of people wanted to be having more sex versus 75% thought their partner wanted to be having more sex.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And then getting into the satisfaction aspect, most people were at least satisfied with their sex lives. So on that one to five scale, with one being very dissatisfied, five being very satisfied, three being neutrally satisfied, four was the most common response. So 39% of people gave their sex lives a four.

Solid satisfaction.

And then the meh emoji number three, that was the next most common common with 29%. So 39%. 29%. And this actually surprised us a bit too. I mean, if I'm being honest, I would have guessed that the majority of people would have put themselves at a three. So I'm glad. I'm very glad to see that the majority were putting themselves at a four. And I like to think that maybe that's a result of following along with us and using some of our tips and, you know, hopefully our community is a little more satisfied than the overall community.

Yeah. Now, unfortunately, we did not ask, how long have you been following us? Then we could have looked at, you.

Know, how many of our tips have you used?

Yeah, you know, like, oh, you know, there's a correlation between time following us and satisfaction and some ideas for the next survey.

That's some good marketing angle right there.

Yeah. So no, little. Little known fact, you know, I say I'm just a regular dude. I really am. In undergraduate, I did get a degree in government and psychology. The psychology portion was really focused on, like, industrial organizational psychology, which is basically hr. But I did have to take a research methods course as, like, statistics and research methods in order to get my degree. So I do know how to, you know, design a proper scientific study.

Okay. All right. There. Okay, so remember that question that I mentioned to the one where we're kind of comparing, like, bringing in the computer comparison aspect of it? So we asked people what would bring you a greater peace of mind? So 75% of people said it would bring them greater peace of mind to know that they're having great sex, even if it's less frequent. 24% said that they would feel greater peace of mind knowing that they were having a normal amount of sex, regardless of the quality. And only 1% said that they would like to be having more sex, even if it's, of course, lower quality, like more sex than everyone else. So most people would rather be prioritizing the quality of sex rather than the quantity of sex, which is exactly the message that we wanted to share with you guys today.

I think that's a pretty healthy perspective. We also found that there is a relationship between sexual frequency and satisfaction, but because this was just a survey of people, not a properly designed experiment, we have no idea of the causality. So, you know, do people have. Do people who have great sex just naturally want to have it more and that's why they're having more of it, or does having more sex lead to more enjoyment? We unfortunately don't know the answer.

Chicken or the egg kind of situation.

To answer that from a scientific perspective, you actually have to, like, design a whole experiment where you, like, have people in a control group and have people in an experimental group, and somehow you would have to, like, force people to have more sex and then. And then ask them, like, about their satisfaction, which would get weird and probably there would be some ethical problems. So, you know, unfortunately, we are kind of hamstrung here when it comes to delivering these type of survey results for you.

But my expert opinion would be that I think that when couples are having great sex, they do naturally want it more. I don't think that just forcing yourself to have more frequent sex that can actually lead to less satisfaction, to less desire for sex. If you're forcing yourself to do it just to hit a quota, just to hit some numbers. So I think that, you know, when you're focusing on that quality of sex, the quantity, I have found with thousands of couples, that quantity kind of naturally falls into place and it increases.

Absolutely.

Now what we want to get into is how to find the sexual frequency that's going to be right for your relationship. So again, we're really trying to drill in this message that there is no magic number that works for every couple, that focusing on the quality of the sex is more important. So we've got some tips for you to find what's going to be right for your relationship. So tip number one is to forget about the honeymoon.

Yeah. Just don't even go on a honeymoon. It's a waste of money.

No. Go on a honeymoon. Shut up. We had the best honeymoon ever.

I know we did. I mean, totally joking.

So what we're referring to is not necessarily your actual honeymoon, but the honeymoon stage of your relationship. Typically those first six to 12 months of a relationship or whenever you start being intimate with your partner. So a lot of couples will think back to those times really fondly, because for the vast majority of couples, you have a lot of sex at the beginning of your relationship. And so a lot of couples, you know, things taper off at a certain point. And a lot of couples feel sad about that. They feel like maybe they're not in the right relationship anymore. Relationships definitely end because that frequency, you're just not keeping up with it. So it, you know, this can be a really challenging thing for a couple to deal with is, like, what the heck happened to the honeymoon? So what we want to say is that the honeymoon stage of a relationship is a very special time. There are actual, like, neurotransmitters, neurochemicals going on in your brain. Like, a whole bunch of stuff is happening in your body.

Yeah. Love is literally a drug. People, like, there are research studies on this. Like, what is happening in your head is basically the same as, like, taking psychoactive compounds. Like, stuff goes on in your brain. I remember in college, like, professors being like, you should not be allowed to fall in love in college because, like, you. Because, like. Because, like, the. Like, the falling in love, like, the come up and then, like, the breakup and the come down. Like, you can, like, fail a class because you break up with someone. Like, with a couple weeks to go in the class and you're just like catatonic when it comes to finals. And that happens so frequently.

Yeah. So I mean, science has actually found that we can't maintain the, you know, all that stuff happening in our brain for longer than like about a year. So we just want to normalize, like it's completely normal for the frequency to taper off. We really do not think that you should define your relationship by the amount of sex you were having in the honeymoon phase. That should not be the goal for you or like the benchmark or anything like that. So instead we think that if you aim for like roughly half of your honeymoon stage frequency, so you don't have to get out a calculator, you don't have to, you know, try to figure out exactly how much sex you were having back then. But like, just kind of somewhere in the ballpark of about half, that can be a more reasonable goal. Goal to strive for.

So if you're doing it four times a day, all that means is you just need to do it twice a day. That's it.

Easy, right?

The second tip is to expand your definition of sex. Most couples, and in this case we are really talking about heterosexual couples, get caught in this trap of thinking that sex is just intercourse. Now people who are in same sex relationships or non heterosexual relationships tend to have much broader definitions of what acts actually constitute sex. Because, you know, intercourse is not necessarily always on the table. There are a lot of other options and there's a lot of different preferences depending on who you are, who you're with, what your preferences are, what their preferences are. And so oftentimes, you know, because there are so many more options on the table, that means before any sexual interaction, like you need to actually talk about, hey, what are you into? This is what I'm into. What can we do that's going to be like mutual, mutually pleasurable.

So there have been studies that have compared satisfaction levels in heterosexual couples and satisfaction levels in non heterosexual couples. And who do you think is by far and away reporting more sexual satisfaction?

Non heterosexual couples.

Oh, yes.

So there is something to be taken here. For the heterosexual couples out there. Broaden your definition of what sex is. Talk about what all those things are that you like. And don't just assume that, you know, one thing works for your partner. There's a whole variety of things and maybe, maybe the thing that works for you most doesn't work for your partner most. And so there's some negotiation around that. Or you just do two things instead of one thing.

Yeah. We really encourage couples to recognize that everything counts as sex. Intercourse does not have to be the only thing that counts as sex. Everything can be sex. And when there are more options on the table, you're going to find yourself having and craving it much more frequently. All right, tip number three is to focus on quality sex. No surprise here. So when couples are having sex at home feels satisfying for both of them, a comfortable frequency naturally emerges. So it can be really useful to take some time to think about your favorite sexual memories with your partner. So what does good sex mean to you? Does it mean having orgasms? Does it mean feeling emotionally connected? Does it mean working your way through a book of sex positions? So you want to try to identify, like, three to five qualities that are important to you. It's really trying to get clear on what is the quality part of quality sex. Because, you know, Xander and I could describe what counts as quality sex to us, and you might hear it and think, ooh, that does not sound good to me, and vice versa. So you want to figure out what does quality mean to me.

Tip number four is respect each other's needs. So you're never going to find a partner with whom you are just perfectly sexually compatible. Every couple is going to have to navigate differences in their sexual needs. And couples are happiest when they each feel that their needs are important to each other, that they're listened to and understood, regardless of whether or not those needs are actually being met.

Yeah, I think this is something that so many couples get wrong. You know, we. We get really freaked out about being sexually incompatible or having mismatched sex drives, and it gets us into this really stuck place. And I think a lot of times people feel like, oh, well, if my partner has a sexual need, then that means I'm supposed to fulfill that. You know, if my partner wants it five times a week, I'm supposed to have it five times a week. And I think it's so important for us to normalize that you do not have to meet every single one of your partner's needs. That's just unreasonable inside and outside of the bedroom. So, you know, I think rather than getting ourselves all worked up about having to fulfill all their needs and do what they want and feeling bad that we're not doing it, instead, what we can focus on is trying to understand and hear each other without putting that pressure on ourselves. So a lot of times what happens to couples is they get so freaked out about this that they just don't want to talk about sex or they don't want to acknowledge how much their partner wants it because then they'll have that pressure on them. And so that leads them to not seeing, to not validating their partner's needs, which then probably makes the partner want to like, push for their needs more. It's just you get into really complicated places really quickly.

Yeah, I think it's really easy when you, you know, you personally suspect that you are not meeting a need of your partner and you have like, you, you have this desire to like, put, bury your head in the sand. Because if, you know, okay, if this ever comes up, if I ever have to acknowledge it, then I'm going to have to admit that I'm not meeting that need and I'm going to have to do something about it. I don't want to do something about it because right now I'm obviously not meeting that need. And people spin out about this and be like, okay, well then I'm just gonna dance around this forever. I'm gonna try to make sure we never talk about it so that I never have to acknowledge it. But the reality is there, there is a way to acknowledge somebody's need and just by acknowledging it, make them feel somewhat better about the fact that, okay, this, this need, that this need is not necessarily being met by you. But let's talk about other ways that this need could possibly be met. Maybe by myself, maybe externally in some way. Like, it's a starting point because what happens when you have a lot of unmet needs? You know, the person with the unmet needs can really start to develop resentment towards the other person because it's like, hey, I have this need. It's not being met. You won't acknowledge that it's a thing, thing. And like the last thing you want to develop in relationships is a lot of resentment. So yeah, better to put that stuff on the table and acknowledge it. It's far less likely to result in resentment towards you if you can acknowledge a need that someone has even if you're not able to meet it. All right, so let's talk about just some real world examples of what this might look like. So let's say that your partner just generally has a lower level of desire than you do. So that might mean that you masturbate a bit more frequently, whether that's by yourself or with them in the room with you. Or maybe your partner is a higher level desire than you do. So that might mean opening yourself up to the possibility of being intimate, even if you're not totally in the mood in that moment.

So we'll definitely do a podcast episode in the future about managing mismatched sex drives in relationships and kind of go into this one in more detail, because we definitely don't mean you have to force yourself to have sex when you're not wanting to. I mean, the point that we were trying to make in this one is that you're not responsible for meeting all of your partner's sexual needs. But I think this idea, if we go back to this idea of putting more options on the menu, if sex could be, hey, I'll lie by your side while you masturbate, or I'll watch, you know, porn with you or read an erotic story with you or something like that, then you might find yourself being. Feeling more open to something like that rather than putting this pressure on yourself that it has to be intercourse. But we'll come back to this more and go into that in more detail in the future. And that brings us to tip number five, which is to make the effort more frequently than you feel the desire. So the reality is, most of us don't prioritize sex as much as we want to. We're busy, we're tired. We've got a lot going on in our lives. And the reality is that there are a lot of people who don't feel the desire for sex until they've already started doing. Doing something physical. We will also have to do another podcast episode about the two sex drive types, because this is one of the types, if you've ever caught yourself, like, at the end of sex, thinking, huh, this is really good. Why don't I want to do this more often? Then you're going to want to listen to that episode. The point that we're making here is that, you know, you might not just feel this spontaneous desire all the time. Sex might not just pop into your head all of the time, but we think it's worth making an effort to be intimate. And again, intimate meaning this whole buffet of options. And you know, more frequently than you're just naturally feeling the desire to. So, again, we have kind of a rough ballpark for you here. Like, you can try to engage in some sort of physical touch maybe about twice as often as you feel the interest in having sex. And we're just saying physical touch there. We're not saying intercourse, but having more physical contact more often than you have naturally feel the desire.

I'm a physical touch kind of guy, so that sounds great to me.

Oh, I know it does.

All right, so let's get into some listener questions then, so what if your partner is too tired for sex because they work 80 plus hours?

So we got all kinds of questions like this around, you know, oh, well, we have kids and we have all these responsibilities or we work different schedules and stuff like that. And we definitely do not want to downplay the challenges that people have in their lives. Like, it would be great if we could all just sit around and have tons of quality time, not have any responsibilities, just have sex all day.

We all have equally, an equal amount of time for sex.

Yeah.

You know, the government mandated, oh, 10 hours a week sex time.

Oh my God. So obviously that's not gonna happen. And again, we don't want to downplay the challenges that people go through.

I'm kind of into this whole like sex communism fantasy.

Oh my God. Now we're gonna get some angry DMs after this. Now this podcast is promoting communism.

No, sex communism, sex communism. It's a totally new form of government.

Oh my God.

It's never been tried before, people anyways.

So we want to acknowledge all of the challenges that people go through in, in having the kind of sex and the amount of sex that they want to have. And at the same time, like, there are always ways that we can be creative and try to find a little bit more space. I think it's really easy for us to just point to the difficulties that we have going on and feel like we're stuck or we don't have any options, we don't have any choices. But maybe we're overly optimistic. Maybe we're looking at the world through rose colored glasses. But we think that regardless of what you have on your plate, there's always the time for creating more intimacy and connection. And sometimes that may be a 30 minute minute, 30 second makeout session, maybe that a two minute quickie. You know, like we're not saying, oh, you have to have these multi hour long sex sessions where you gaze into each other's eyes soulfully. You know, like, if it's a quickie, it's a quickie. If it's, you know, just having some cuddles or some kisses, that's, that's great. Like we can all make the space for that.

How do we find the balance of accepting seasons of less sex versus the need to put some effort and work into this?

So this is a great question and I definitely want to acknowledge, like there are going to be seasons in life where you are just going to have less sex than you would at other points in your life. You know, you might be dealing with some sort of injury or an illness, the loss of a loved one, you know, depression or anxiety. Like there are so many things that life can throw at you where it may, you know, it really may be in your best interest to say, you know what, sex is just not a priority in this season. We're not going to be able to have a lot of it. And that is okay, I think, as long as you and your partner are communicating about that openly. So you're still acknowledging and respecting each other's needs and not trying to pretend like this isn't going on. You know, that makes a big difference. But I don't think it's this black or white. Like accept that you can't have it versus putting effort and work into it. I think that you can still find ways to engage with your sex life even if you're saying, we're not going to be having a lot of it in this season of life. So it might be that you're listening to these podcasts together, it might be that you're just having conversations about sex, it might be that you're trying to prioritize having more makeout sessions, even if, you know, maybe intercourse is off the table for a certain period of time. So there are always small ways that we can put effort in that we can feel connected to each other and to our sex life, even if it's not going to be a lot of frequency.

Yeah. I think the absolute key thing though is that there has to be a two way conversation about where sex is in the sort of in the order of priorities in that season of life, rather than there just being a sort of one sided assumption of, oh, well, we've acknowledged that this is a really busy time, so now it's fine for me to expect that we're gonna have less sex and we're not gonna ever talk about that because that's where those misunderstandings start to happen and then those resentments start to build. So do not take this as permission to say, okay, cool, we're busy, we don't have to do it, we don't have to talk about it. Like talking about it always important, like acknowledge that stuff and you know, acknowledge perhaps that, yeah, this is going to be too challenging right now. So let's, you know, let's lower the bar a bit for what we're trying to do right now and let's reassess in X number of months. Another question was, I'm a woman who wants sex more often than my male partner. How do I deal with feelings of rejection when he doesn't want to have sex with me.

This is also gonna have to be a podcast episode in and of itself, talking about when, you know, in a heterosexual relationship, when the woman wants it more than the man does. But, you know, we wanted to throw this question in here now to acknowledge, yes, it happens all the time, much more often than you think. And then when it comes to the feelings of rejection, I guess this could be a podcast episode in and of itself, too. But rejection is always going to be a part of your sex life. Like, you're never going to find a partner that wants to have sex the exact same time you do. Every single time. The exact same kind of sex. Like, you guys are going to have to turn each other down.

Yeah. Regardless of your gender, regardless of your role in your relationship. I think sometimes in heterosexual relationships, there's this idea that men initiate sex. So if someone's going to be rejected, it has to be the man. Because somehow men are better equipped to deal with rejection.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we'll definitely talk about this more. How to turn each other down gracefully, not gratefully.

I am gratefully turning you down. I'm so grateful to turn you down.

Actually, maybe that is a good way to do it, because then you just.

Start laughing at it, the grateful rejection.

Break the tension of it a little bit. So we'll talk more about how to do it gracefully and how you can navigate your own feelings that come up around being turned down. But we just want to acknowledge, like, this is going to be a part of your sex life regardless.

Why do we, as a society focus more on frequency rather than quality?

I think that's because sex is such a complex topic. It's. There's so many different dynamics and, you know, variables that feed into it. And I think, you know, we all have anxiety around how much sex are we having, that it just feels easier to focus on something simple and concrete, like a number. So if I were. If I were just to tell you, you know, you come to me for sex therapy, like, what do we do, Vanessa? And I just say, have sex three times a week. And you get to, you know, just blissfully drift out of the session and say, oh, great, okay, yeah.

And you're like, I'll only charge you for five out of 60 minutes because it only took a couple minutes to give you the answer.

You know, that. That feels so much easier to talk about it in that sense, rather than to get into all these topics of, okay, well, how do you feel about your body? And what challenges and responsibilities do you guys have in your lives? How do you initiate sex? Do you turn it down gratefully or not? Have you guys been arguing? And you're. You know, like, there's so many dynamics and. And even just, like, the aspect of quality, like, that's a challenging thing too. Again, how Xander and I define quality is totally different from how someone else defines quality. So those are harder things to compare, you know, Again, this is all so much more complicated. A number is simple. So I think that's why we tend to focus on quantity rather than quality.

Also, as a society, we hate talking about sex. And if we were to somehow focus on quality, that would mean that we would have to be talking about sex a lot more to really know, like, what is the quality of sex that I'm having in my relationship? Like, God, in order to assess that, like, I got to talk to my partner about how it is for them, and most people are not open to doing that. And so therefore, it's a lot easier to focus on frequency.

Just to recap, there truly is no magic amount of sex that every couple should be having.

Yeah, sorry. If you thought that maybe we'd change our mind at the end of the podcast and just slip in a bit little, by the way, every 48 hours. Don't do that.

Choose your time wisely.

Hopefully you didn't just scrub to this point, because the answer is not 48 hours.

Yeah, there really is no magic number. We are all way too unique for that. And it's really clear from our survey results that people are having a really wide variety of different sexual frequencies, and they're happy with a wide variety of different sexual frequencies. So what's most important is that you focus on the quality of your sex life rather than the. The quantity. So remember some of those tips that we had for you. Try to aim for cutting your honeymoon stage frequency in about half for a realistic goal. Maybe, you know, try to have some sort of physical touch about twice as often as you feel the desire to. But, you know, when. If you really make that effort to connect with each other, to focus on that quality sex, you will be doing an amazing job in your sex life. We have one little thing that we'd love for you to do with this episode. You know, we were. We've been talking a lot about comparison and how it's just really easy for us to get to place of comparing our sex life to other people. How do we match up? Are we keeping up with the Joneses? So what we would love you to do is to take a screenshot of this episode and share it to your Instagram story, and then just tell people, like, hey, this is a great conversation to listen to. This is a way that we can start, you know, all of us having a healthier conversation about sex and recognizing, you know, trying to compare our sex lives to others, trying to hit this magic number. That's not the most important thing.

So let's stop comparing.

Yeah. So post it to your Instagram story. Tag us so we can see it and say hi and congratulate you for your bravery.

Well, that's all for today's episode of Pillow Talks. Thank you so much for listening. Join us again next week when we talk about communication breakdowns.

Ooh, it's gonna be a good one, Sam.