Transcripts for Days 41-50

Day 41 – 50 - Sexual Wake Up Calls that Seem to Apply to Everyone. 

There are 5 Video Transcripts 

Video Transcript: Porn Addictions and Real Relationships

Inspired by the last talker, I'm going to have a little song about Internet porn. Now just kidding. The widespread use of internet porn is one of the fastest moving, most global experiments ever unconsciously conducted. Nearly every young guy with an Internet access becomes an eager test subject. Canadian researcher Simon Lajeunesse found that most boys seek pornography by age 10, driven by a brain that is suddenly fascinated by sex. Now users perceive internet porn as far more compelling than porn in the past. Why is that? unending novelty? In this Australian experiment is not mere nudity, but novelty that gets arousal skyrocketing. Subjects watch 22 porn displays see that spike. That's where the researcher switched to porn the guys hadn't seen before. What happened? Their erections and their brains fired up. Why all the excitement, mother nature likes to keep a male fertilizing willing females, as long as any new ones are around in that top line, the ram he's needing he needs more and more time to mate with the same old view. But if you keep switching females the bottom line. Well, you can keep she's not the same. He can get the job done in two minutes flat and keep going until he is utterly exhausted. This is known as the Coolidge effect.

 

Without the Coolidge effect, there would be no internet porn. This old mammalian program the Coolidge effect, perceives each novel female on a guy's screen as a genetic opportunity to keep a guy fertilizing the screen. His brain releases the go get it neurochemical dopamine for each novel mate or image. Eventually the ram will tire but as long as the guy can keep clicking, he can keep going and so will is dopamine. With internet porn a guy can see more hot babes in 10 minutes, then his ancestors could see in several lifetimes. The problem is he has a hunter gatherer brain. Have you used his brain rewires itself to this genetic bonanza so it carefully becomes his brain becomes associated with this porn harem. Such behaviors that are associated with this are being alone voyeurism, clicking, searching, multiple tabs, fast forwarding, constant novelty, shock and surprise. As one young guy once asked, Are we the first generation two masturbate left handed? Now real sex in contrast, is courtship, touching, being touched smells, pheromones, emotional connection, interaction with a real person. Now what happens when our guy finally gets with a real mate? Well, researchers don't know much about the effects of internet porn for several reasons. In 2009, when largeness tried to study porn impact, he couldn't find any college age males who weren't using it. So the first serious dilemma is that studies have no control groups. Now this creates a huge blind spot. Imagine if all guys started smoking at age 10. And there were no groups that didn't, we would think that lung cancer is normal for all guys. Undaunted by his lack of non users, largeness as 20 male students, is internet porn affecting you, or your attitudes towards women? Their answer? Nah, I don't think so. But they've been using it for about a decade then pretty much non stop. This is like asking a fish what it thinks about water.

 

Which brings us to a second problem. Researchers haven't asked porn users about the symptoms. Zimbardo described in the demise of guy's, arousal addiction symptoms are easily mistaken for such things as ADHD, social anxiety, depression, concentration problems, performance anxiety, OCD, and a host of others. Now, health care providers often assume that these conditions are primary, perhaps the cause of addiction but never really the result of an addiction. As a consequence, they often medicate these guys without really inquiring about if they have an internet addiction. So guys never realized that they could overcome these symptoms simply by changing their behavior. Now, the third problem is it's hard to believe that sexual activity can cause addiction because sex is healthy. But internet porn is not sex, internet porn is as different from real sex. As today's video games are from checkers. Watching a screen full of naked body parts won't automatically protect one from arousal addiction in this Dutch study. Here's the title. They found that in fact, of all activities on the internet, porn has the most potential to become addictive. Here's why. This ancient program the reward circuit, evolved to drive us towards natural rewards, such as sex, bonding and food. As a consequence, extreme versions of natural rewards have a unique ability to capture us. For example, high calorie foods or hot novel babes give us extra dopamine. Too much dopamine though, can override our natural satiation mechanisms. For example, give rats unlimited access to junk food, and almost all of them will binge to obesity. This is also why four out of five Americans are overweight and about half of those are obese, that is addicted to food. Now in contrast to natural rewards, drugs, such as cocaine or alcohol only hook about 10% of users, whether they are rats, or humans. This binge mechanism for food or sex was once an evolutionary advantage. In essence, it is getting it while the getting is good. Now you can think of wolves packing away 20 pounds of meat per kill, or it's mating season and you're the alpha male. What if mating season never ends? All those hits a dopamine can tell your brain to do two things. First, they say man you have hit the evolutionary jackpot. Second, they kick in a molecular switch called Delta FOS B. I know it's a fancy word, but dopamine kicks in delta FOS B, and that starts to accumulate in the brain's reward circuit. Now with excess chronic consumption of drugs or natural rewards. This build up a Delta FOS B starts to alter the brain and promotes a cycle of bingeing and craving. If the bingeing continues, the Delta FOS B builds up and it can lead to brain change is seen in all addicts. So the dominoes are excess content consumption, excess dopamine Delta FOS B brain changes. One of the first changes is a numb pleasure response. It kicks in and so everyday pleasures really don't satisfy a porn addict. At the same time, other physical changes in the brain make the brain hyper reacted to porn. Everything else in the porn user's life is sort of boring, but porn is super exciting. Finally, his willpower erodes as his frontal cortex changes. I can't emphasize this enough. All addictions share the same brain changes and the same molecular switch that kicks them in delta FOS B. Now, scientists have used brain scans to measure these changes in drug addicts appear these scans show a reduced pleasure response in drug addicts. These and several other changes have also been seen in gambling addicts food addicts, very recently in video game addict.

 

And now internet attics. I apologize for filling up the slide with brain studies. Just notice the dates, but I want you to know that they exist so far. All brain research points in only one direction. Constant novelty at a click can cause addiction. Now we know this because when scientists examine former internet addicts, they found that these brain changes were reversing themselves. Unfortunately, none of these studies isolate porn users, but they do include them. Here's the game changer. At last, we have a group of guys who are no longer using Internet porn. That's right, heavy users are voluntarily giving it up by the 1000s. These guys are the missing control group in the great porn experiment. They're showing experts with changing one single variable can do. I call it the resurrection of guys as opposed to the demise of guys. Now before I continue, you probably want to know why any porn loving guy in his right mind would give it up, two words, erectile dysfunction. Internet porn is killing young men sexual performance. Now Zimbardo said young guys are flaming out with women. This survey by Italian neurologist confirms what we have witnessed over the last few years. Sexual enhancement drugs often stopped working for these guys if they ever did because the problem isn't below the bell or Viagra works. Nor is a problem really psychological. It's due to physical changes in the brain those addiction related changes, their numb brains are sending weaker and weaker signals to their bananas. As Dr Floresta says, it starts with lower reactions to porn sites, then there is a general drop in libido and in the end, it becomes impossible to get an erection. There are three takeaways from this. First, Floresta is describing a classic addiction process. Gradual desensitization. Second, Internet porn is qualitatively different from playboy widespread youthful ED has never been seen before. And finally, ED is often the only symptom that gets these guys attention. The question is what less obvious symptoms are they missing? Most don't figure that out until after they quit. Here's a guy in his late 20s. I've been to psychologists and psychiatrists for the last eight years have been diagnosed with depression, severe social anxiety, severe memory impairment, and a few others have tried Effexor, Ritalin, Xanax, Paxil, dropped at a two different colleges been fired twice, use pot to calm my social anxiety. I've been approached by quite a few women I guess due to my looks and status, but they quickly flew away due to my incredible weirdness.

 

I've been a hardcore porn addict since age 14. For the last two years, I've been experimenting and finally realized that porn was an issue. I stopped it completely two months ago. It has been very difficult but so far, incredibly worth it. I've since quit my remaining medication. My anxiety is non existent. My memory and focus are sharper than they've ever been. I feel like a huge chick magnet and my ED is gone to. I seriously think I had a rebirth, a second chance at life. This is why pockets of guys are appearing all over the web, bodybuilding sites, sports sites, pickup artist sites, wherever men congregate. In essence, they're seeking a neurochemical rebirth. Here's the group on reddit.com, who call themselves faster knots. Fapping is slang for solo sex. But what they really mean is giving up porn. They've added about 2000 members since I captured this picture a month ago, this movement to unhook from porn is growing rapidly. In fact, groups are springing up all across the web and in Europe too. But there is a bizarre fly in the ointment. Guys in their early 20s aren't regaining their rectile health as quickly as older guys. How can a 50 year old, get his mojo back quicker than a 20 Something? The answer even though older guys have been using porn a whole lot longer.

 

They didn't start on today's internet porn. Now we know this is a key variable because the older guys didn't start having sexual problems until after they got high speed internet. Now today's young teen start on high speed internet when their brains are at their peak, a dopamine production and neuroplasticity. This is also when they are most vulnerable to addiction. But there's another risk. By adulthood teens strengthen heavily used circuits and pruned back unused ones. So by age 22 or so a guy sexual tastes can be like deep ruts in his brain. This can cause panic if a guy has escalated to extreme porn or porn that no longer matches his sexual orientation. Fortunately, brains are plastic so his taste can revert once he quits porn. As the guy returns to normal sensitivity, his brain looks around for the rewards it evolved to see such as friendly interaction and a course real mate. Here's one more example of what we hear every day. I feel like the next Sir Isaac Newton or Leonardo da Vinci. Since I quit a month ago, I've literally started a business, taking up piano, have been studying French every day, been programming, drawing, writing, started managing my finances, and I have more awesome ideas, and I know what to do with. My confidence is sky high. I already feel like I can talk to any girl, on the same guy who took two and a half extra years to graduate from college, because of procrastination and depression. I'll conclude with a wish. I'd like to see some Bardot's guys who are wiping out and their caregivers and the experts listen to the 1000s of men who are teaching us about arousal addiction by escaping it. Thanks for listening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Transcript: Audrey Assad - Journey Through Pornography  (Part 01)

 

When I first came out about my pornography addiction at 19, or 18, or 19, I think the only thing I knew to do was to tell friends and tell my parents and that's what I did. And it was so weirdly healing to just say it out loud to somebody and have them look me in the face and say, like, it's okay, I still love you, or, you know, or they react poorly and that's tough to deal with. But confessing it out loud is absolutely the first step toward healing and towards actually progressing into recovery. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of ministries out there that are easy to find because if you go on the internet and type in pornography with anything, it can bring up, you know, all kinds of so it's actually kind of difficult to to Google help but the best and first thing is, confess it to God and confess it to someone in real life and say the word pornography say the word masturbation say it out loud. Because once you name it, it has less power over you. I really believe that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Transcript: Audrey Assad - Journey Through Pornography  (Part 02)

 

You are not alone and you're not a freak, whether you're a girl or guy, pornography is not an indication of something being inherently wrong with you. It's an indication of something being inherently right with you, which is that you are seeking intimacy and you're seeking fulfillment. you're seeking something to fill a void. And that's a sign of how right you are, how right you were made, and how much you were made in God's image because we're created for community. So pornography is a signal, it's a signal that something is right inside that you're finding the answer in the wrong place, but you're not freaking and you are not alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Transcript: Observations about Porn From A TED presenter

 

I stopped watching porn for two reasons. Basically, the first one was that porn brought so much anger and violence into my private fantasies. And these were anger and violence that were not there originally to begin with. And I did not want that for me anymore. This was not me and I and I decided to just put an end to it. Easier said than done. Get it later. But the second reason was that I became to realize I came to realizing I think that only by watching porn, I take part in creating a demand for filmed prostitution, because that's what porn really is filmed prostitution. Provena stands for prostitute. Graffia stands for documentation and prostitution was nobody's childhood dream, okay, that it is always a result of trouble and distress. Now. I became aware of that gradually, when I was volunteering with men and women in prostitution, some of the victims of human trafficking, serving aid in brothels under the bridge in street corners. But you don't really need to do all that in order to understand how this mechanism of porn and prostitution works.

 

Because porn is a genre. It's not about erotica, or healthy sexual communication, it is all about male domination of women. Sub ordinance of women, not only the sexual practice as a way of being, as the Jin Dariel hierarchy in this world. Like if we would ask porn if we were to ask porn. How does it define something as sexual? What qualifies? What defines something is sexual. Porn would laugh in our face what defines sexual wherever men find arousing? Men find it arousing to choke a woman to have brutal sex without one touch, hug, kiss, tender caress? Well, then it is sexual. It arouses men to see a woman or a child cry. It is sexual. It arouses men to rape a woman? Well, then it is sexual. In every mainstream porn gallery on the web, we can find the rape category, side by side with the humiliation category, abuse category, crime category, and so on. And this is all as if regular porn is not already filled with these motives even in its mildest version. the mildest version of porn, what porn is showing us like an 80 maybe 90% of the time is actually sex with no hands involved. And this is not how we authentically desire. Sorry, I'll repeat that I see. Second is no hands involved okay. If you're not going to give up watching pause and next thing you do watch just just noticed that porn cameras have no interest in capturing any normal central activities such as Kevin caressing making out, touching, hugging, kissing, know, what porn cameras are into is the penetration. So normally, the competition will be a man and a woman. Hopefully just okay, so one man and one woman, his penis is inside her. 

 

Somewhere inside that there is a his penis is somewhere inside her, okay. And in order to not block the camera for doing these extreme close up on the penetration, he's standing in his hands behind his back most of the time. And the woman is in this an uncomfortable position. And she needs to handle the penis inside there without damaging the hair or makeup work done on her because that's money invested in time invested without disturbing his aggressive movement and mainly without blocking the camera. So the result is that we got two people having sex, different shapes and acrobatics or something, but they are having sex when the only body parts that actually touch each other are the penis and the part being penetrated? No hands involved. Now I took I don't know 250 300 times a year, soldier students pupils. No one has ever come up to me and say, Ron, you know that part with sex with no hand thing? That was my authentic desire. Like when I was 11 or 12. I never never wanted to kiss anybody or touch them. I was not curious about that. It was all penetrations to begin with. No one has ever said that.

 

Before porn after porn. In my private fantasies before watching porn. There was always a very strong narrative. And the narrative was of sensuality and mutuality, which means that I always imagined what I will say to her. What would she possibly answer? What options do I have to response in real life? Never works like a plan. But it was super important in my mind in terms of arousal, the build up the location, the setting, where will it be? What are the circumstances of me and her being all alone, all of a sudden? How will this bodily inflaming between us will emerge? Step by step, it was super important before porn after making a habit out of porn conquers your mind and it invades your brain and I lost my ability to imagine, which means I found myself. And I won't be too explicit, but trying to masturbate just closing my eyes trying to fantasize desperately about something human and not making it because my head was bombarded with all those images of women being violated and subordinated and forced into pretending they enjoy the robotic sperm rituals. Okay? So this is pretty much the result. And we are all vulnerable to pornography. It's not just young people. And we should be very careful, I think, with not only what we put into our bodies, but in terms of food and nutrition in what is the nutrition of our mind because everything we watch in Vegas, I'll give you a short example from non sexual areas.

 

I came the other night I came back home and my beloved one was watching some cultural junk. She was watching a karaoke show. audition is the one with the chest spinning, and we don't have a TV set back home. Okay, we don't have a TV set back home but only because it allows us to falsely present ourselves as deep and profound people. I never heard of that. Mastectomy who Angelyn and we never know we don't have a TV. We watch every cultural junk possible. Okay. Not me not a we don't contemplate about legacy stones. We download stuff. And we download all cultural junk. So I'm watching this 20 minutes karaoke show. And it was so boring and tedious. Okay, two minutes talking from blabbering about it. I lost patience after like 20 minutes and I went off to take a shower and the most interesting part was in the shower. Because what I found out there was myself in my most pathetic ever I'm going to share it with you. I want to feel it you actually accept me and let me so I have to share my most pathetic and you have to accept it now. I don't know, until I got over myself if it took me I don't know, five 7 - 10 minutes to realize that I'm standing under the water in the shower. pondering severely.

 

What would have been my song for the additions deep and profound mind you I won't be doing this Rihanna, Lady Gaga. I'm doing Mercedes Sosa Come on. I'll be doing a cover for Bob Dylan's blind Willie McTell. Ain't that deep and profound I had to realize that I'm an idiot, because I have no talent for music. More than that, I never wanted to be neither a musician or a singer songwriter. This was never a part of my inner world of wishes. Okay, but I mean, you wouldn't be in what was watching that for 20 minutes, it entered my brain for a while. So if you take this example, and we just tried to measure or estimate the impact of 20 minutes of watching no matter what, how it invades our mind, and control our wantings and desires. Let's just try to imagine or I can share with you horribly. What is the impact of 20 minutes of watching porn? once twice a week?

 

Nothing unmoderated? It's overtaking and porn is in our households whether we want it or not. And I believe that it does not agree with our well being. And because we have internet in the Western world all over the place. almost in every cellular phone now. We've got 90% of 12 year old watching porn on regular basis. And it has both a an addictive effect and a paralyzing effect. It's addictive because we develop somewhat of a dependency in porn, but the paralyzing parties because mainly for young boys and men because porn is teaching us that. As a man, you're solely valued in sex by having a large penis and an eternal erection. According to porn, being a valuable sexual partner does not relate with being sensual, passionate, attentive, generous, well coordinated, none of the above. It is all about large penis and Eternal Sunshine, which we don't possess. So boys become paralyzed and if they don't become paralyzed by watching porn. Very often they turn into imitators of what they saw, which means they become aggressors. Even when emotion is involved, like, there is so much sexual abuse going on nowadays. within the confines of what we perceive from the outside is beautiful teen age love stories, or healthy adult relationships. Because we don't really talk about sex. We just see it all over the place. We don't really talk about what goes on in the confines of a certain room but these are all sexual mutations. That happens if you talk about women. It's not only that, but young girls and women get the message not only from hardcore porn but from a porn influenced mainstream culture. Have you seen any Miley Cyrus Lady Gaga video clip commercials, that's porn with claws on it.

 

So, girls get this notion that if you want to be worthy of love, first and foremost, you have to be worthy of sexual desire. And now the definition of sexual desire almost equals be like a porn star. So I work in dozens and dozens of high schools and junior High's in every single one of these calls, I find girls, that is a certain point, agreed to be documented in an intimate situation because they wanted to please some guy that they had feelings for. And this guy misappropriated their trust. Always, same story. So he sells it on WhatsApp application on the web in the internet. And normally, nobody even addresses him in terms of moral. But it is always girls that suffer from shaming and modification. They can change school, they drop out, normally change school move to another city and still be haunted on social networks. They develop clinical depressions, severe eating disorders as if we don't have enough reasons in our culture to develop eating disorders. They become so isolated socially. So some of them like a mandatory resting peace. Some of them actually commit suicide because they find no more value in life or in themselves. So porn is not only in our house, it is a capital case. It is not a minor phenomenon in our society. It is a question of life and death. Sometimes. It is mainly a question of life and death for the people who participate in porn because porn is not an embodiment of freedom of speech, freedom of occupation, blah, blah, blah. No, it's an embodiment of sex exploitation, working side by side with human traffic, raping, pimping solicitation, for everyone porn star with a book contract, or a production company. We've got hundreds of 1000s of women and girls, who does not survive out there. Literally just don't make it. the sex industry is just how do you say chews them up and spit them back into brothels into hooking industry escorting massage parlors with happy or unhappy ending depends who you ask. And I'm not joking, this is seriously this is the whole spectrum of prostitution.

 

So many of them doesn't even make it to the age of 50. I'm talking countries that the average like life expectancy is 75 - 76 years now. They don't make it to the age of 50. For reasons mainly, drugs, STDs, sexually transmitted diseases, being murdered by a John a pimp a boyfriend. And the fourth reason is suicide once again, because if you're a prostitute on camera, off camera, during the situation that we can refer to as social death, we have all set in the dinner table with people who probably consumed prostitution that have been to a brothel once twice, at least, we never sit down to the table with a prostitute not with a declared one. So that's social death. It is not glamorous, not at all. And when I sit in the privacy of my room, and I watch porn even without paying no need to pay, it's free. Okay, I hope you know that if you still consuming, whatever I'm watching is creating a demand and whatever there is a demand there will be supply. There is a correlation. If I watch pornography of black all the women, somebody is going to go out and pimp black or the women, Asian miners somebody is already trafficking Asian miners in order to film them, okay. Israeli women, Palestinian women, West all American college girls that are strong in the last few weeks a very upcoming category. the scum of the earth are already out there trying to solicit eight in prostitute these women on camera.

 

So I stopped watching porn for my personal well being my intimate communication, my private erotic life, my you know, reclaiming control and responsibility over my mind. But by doing that actually stopped contributing to this horrible sex industry. That's a good thing to do, I believe. And I would really like to propose that notion of physically and emotionally safe sex, emotionally safe sex. It does not mean going back to be conservative or unliberated. Sexually. I'm all for sexual freedom. It just means that we need to put gender hierarchy aside sub ordinance aside and bring back in. Let's just say laughter is a critical mass for intimacy. Two souls to humans two souls alone in private. Can they please have a left together? I don't care if they know each other for a decade of an hour if two souls alone in a room does not manage to have a laugh together, what good could possibly grow those sexual and non sexual? That's emotionally safe sex. I've got so many things and we want to share with you but I feel like my time is almost up. So I just really want to ask for us to speak about these issues more. Because I strongly feel that our history of silence never does any good because silence only perpetuates more silence, while talking normally gives birth to more talking more sharing, more identification, more awareness, more change. small change, you know, a small, humble life but we'll change true one emotionally safer. Thank you for listening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Transcript: The Sex Starved Marriage

 

So I'm going to talk to you about sex. To be more precise, the sex starved marriage. And when I'm done, you'll know three things that you can do to prevent it from happening in your life. So first, I'd like to tell you a story. For the last three decades, I've been specializing in work with 911 couples, couples who are truly teetering on the brink of divorce. I resuscitate flatline relationships. I try to teach couples what they need to know to resolve their differences and fall back in love, and put their kids in bed at night together. It's not an easy job. But I didn't choose my career, my career chose me. You see, I grew up in an incredible family, two loving parents who never fought to great brothers, a large extended family with whom we spent every weekend and all of our holidays. Until one fateful day, I was 16 years old, and a senior in high school, and my mom called us all in for a family meeting. And she proceeded to tell us that she had been miserable for 23 years in her marriage, and she was getting a divorce from my father. No one saw it coming.

 

I told you, my parents never fought. I remember the feeling of blood rushing from my body thinking, how could this be happening? I'm leaving home, and my nest is falling apart. And that's precisely what happened. Divorce not only ends a marriage, it dissolves a family. And the sadness about the breakup of my family still lingers today. That's because divorce is forever. Now, my parents divorce affected me in a number of ways. First, it made me incredibly impassioned about learning everything I possibly could, about how to have a healthy, loving, lasting relationship, so I could apply it in my own life with my own family, and my own marriage. And I'm very proud to say that one of my biggest accomplishments is my nearly 40 year marriage to my husband, Jim. And if you knew him, you know what an accomplishment this really is. The other thing my parents divorce made me do is be incredibly passionate about teaching what I know to anyone who crosses my path. Now when I say that, I really mean that I'm not just talking about the couples in my practice, I do some of my best work on airplanes, or online at Whole Foods.

 

Or as a matter of fact, that's why I'm here right now. I want to warn you about the inevitable pitfalls of basic sex starve marriage. But what is that? So a sex starved marriage is one where one spouse is desperately longing for more touch, more physical closeness, more sex, more physical affection. And the other spouse is thinking, what is the big deal we did just get a life it's just sex, but to the spouse yearning for more sex and more touch, it's a huge deal. Because it really is about feeling wanted about feeling loved about feeling connected, about feeling masculine or feminine and attractive. And when this major disconnect happens, what also happens is that intimacy on all levels goes right out the door. They stop sitting next to each other on the couch. They quit laughing at each other's jokes. They don't spend time together. They stop being friends. And it places the marriage at risk of infidelity, and divorce. Now, some of the reasons that people have low desire or an insatiable appetite for sex, are very complicated and deep seated. But I'm happy to tell you that the primary cause for a sex starved marriage is also the simplest to solve. And before I explain that solution, I really want to go on record for saying that if you're sitting here, thinking, low sexual desire is a woman's issue.

 

I want you to think again, women do not have a corner on the low libido market. I'm convinced that low desire and then is one of our very best kept secrets. Now having said that, I want to also tell you about a little talked about that. And that is when it comes to sex starved marriage, the person with lower sex drive controls the sexual relationship. Now when I say that I don't mean that this person is intentionally mean spirited or unkind or manipulative, I just mean, if that person isn't interested in sex, the partner may as well go take a cold shower, because it's not going to happen. Now, I find this really curious on a couple of counts. Because when we think about how decisions are made in marriage, we generally think about mutuality. Two people decide when to get married, whether to have kids how to raise those kids, what to do about the finances, the in laws, who's going to do what around the house, but conspicuously missing from that mix? Is anything having to do with sex? What's it like the nature, the quality, the quantity, I find this incredible. I know couples who have been married for 20 - 30 years who have never spoken about sex. The other thing that's really amazing to me about this unilateral decision making is one person decides no sex and expects the partner to accept it, not complain about it. And oh, yes, you have to be monogamous. Now, this is an unworkable arrangement.

 

Let me tell you about a couple of my practice. So me, John, and Mary, they've been married for 15 years. And John's a real laid back kind of guy. And he doesn't like to complain about much. Except in the last 15 minutes of my session with him, he finally gets a courage to tell me about something that has been bothering him for a long, long time, that there really is only a two hour window of opportunity on Friday nights between 10 and 12, where Mary might be interested in sex he knows not to bother her then the other time. Like you laughing, I glanced over at Mary and Mary was chuckling because she recognized herself in that description. John wasn't laughing. He wasn't smiling. And so I said to him, John, what's this been like for you? And he said to me, I want to talk to Mary. He turned to her took a deep breath. He said, When I reach out to you in bed, and you're not there for me, the only thing I ever think about? Are you attracted to me anymore? Do you love me like I love you? Do you want to be with me.

 

And then when you go to sleep, and I'm lying next to you and staring up at the ceiling, all I can think about is this is the loneliest feeling in the world lying next to you in bed. And to Mary's credit, her eyes filled up with tears. And she reached out and grabbed John's hands. And she said, John, I have to tell you in all the years we've been married, I never, not once I've thought about what it's like to be you, I only think about Am I in the mood, am I not mood? I am so so sorry, I'll do better. John began to cry. I began to cry. For me, it was a magical moment.

 

Because it was the first time in the history of their marriage, that Mary was stretching outside her comfort zone to try to understand John's pain, his loneliness is alienation his need to connect with her. And she promised she would do better It was a beginning of a breakthrough for them. Unfortunately, for so many couples, it doesn't work that way. In fact, very often, the very thing that couples do, to deal with a sex starved marriage actually makes things worse. Let me give you an example. So he says, honey, do you want to put the kids to bed early tonight have a glass of wine and fool around? And she says, I have so much on my mind. I'm not relaxed, and I have a headache. You were the one to tell me last week that women are great multitaskers, can't you have a headache and sex at the same time? I don't think you're funny. Furthermore, what part of no don't you get? Look, I'm not trying to be funny. I'm furious. We haven't had sex in six weeks. I hate this relationship is just not working. You raise your voice and you talk to me like that. And then you expect me to want to touch you plus, do you realize for the last two or three weeks, you haven't been home at all. And when you are home, you don't talk to me. We don't do things together, you're angry and you're withdrawn. I am not going to have sex with you like that. I don't want to talk to you anymore. I'm out of here. So, what's going on here? I'll tell you what's going on. In the early stages of dealing with a sex starved marriage, the person with higher desire usually approaches his or her spouse with open heartedness and vulnerability, saying things like I miss you, I want to have sex with you.

 

But when those pleas for connection, are met with unresponsiveness, like they often are, then that vulnerability quickly turns into anger and contempt. Anger is not an aphrodisiac. Anger leads to sexual withdraw. Sexual withdrawal leads to heightened anger, heightened anger leads to sexual anorexia, and on and on, and then both people wait for the other person to change. And that's how marriages go down the drain. So what are they supposed to do? Well, here's what they're supposed to do. He needs to get a grip on his anger, regardless of whether he feels shortchanged or not, apparently, he needs to spend time with her and talk to her and be present in her life. He needs to recognize that it's those things that will turn her on. And what does she need to do? Well, despite her feelings, she needs to adapt the Nike philosophy and just do it. Why? For two reasons, the first is obvious. He'll be happy. He'll be nicer, he'll be more present. Mostly he'll be more grateful. But there's another reason has nothing to do with him. And it's all about her. Look, I wish I had $1 for each time, someone in my practice said to me, Michelle, I wasn't in the mood for a sex when my partner approached me. But once we got into it, I had a really good time and a great orgasm.

 

We enjoyed each other. And then afterwards, we had the best conversation that we've had in months. And when I described that scenario to a couple of my practice, the husband said, Yeah, except my wife, I wish she would just write on her hand. I like sex. So she remembers it for the next time. So look, there's actually some science to this, I saw this so often in my practice that I started scouring the research. And I bumped into the work of Dr. Rosemary Bassen, and she took the mystery out of my observation. So the human sexual response cycles considered to have four stages. The first is desire. And this means that you can be doing just about anything, taking a walk, studying for a test, preparing a meal, talking to a friend, and all of a sudden you have this random lusty thought and you start fantasizing about sex. Second Stage is arousal you get with your partner, you get physically aroused, and you feel that sensation inside the third stage, orgasm, do you need an explanation? Fourth stage resolution, your body goes back to its normal resting state. Well, apparently, according to Dr. Bassins research, for millions of people, stages, one desire and two arousal are actually reversed, that their bodies have to be physically stimulated and aroused. In order for their brains to register, there is desire, the desire is there, but it's not the compelling force to initiate sex.

 

So if this sounds like you, or a friend of a friend, it behooves you to be receptive to your partner's advances, even from a neutral starting place, because once you get into it, you're bound to remember, I like sex. So, here's the deal. As a human beings, we are hardwired for connection. We are learning through some groundbreaking research in social neuroscience that our need to connect with people we love is more fundamental and more basic than our need for food and shelter. And the opposite is also true that disconnection hurts I mean, get this, when scientists look into the functional MRIs of the brains of people who have just experienced a recent divorce or they're brokenhearted because of a breakup, the exact same regions of their brains light up as in the brains of people who are experiencing physical pain. And the same is not true for other negative emotions like sadness and anxiety and fear. Just for rejection, rejections unique rejection hurts. So when your partner comes over to you and says, I'm looking at this amazing sunset, and I want to share it with you, or I just read this incredible article when I want you to read it, or can we just turn off our cell phones on Friday night so we can spend some time together uninterrupted, or we haven't made love for a while, I'd love to snuggle in bed and make love to you. If we're not interested.

 

If we're not in the mood, rejection hurts. So what are we supposed to do? Well, here are those three lessons I promised you in the beginning of my talk. Number one, we all have different ways of feeling connected to one another, we need to know our way. But we have to become experts in our partner's way of feeling connected to us. Number two, if you're with someone who's yearning for more touch, and more physical closeness and more sex, don't delude yourself into thinking it's just sex. It's like scratching an itch, say sex is a powerful way of connecting and bonding the somebody you love. And number three, when you get your partner's way of connecting to you, you don't have to fully understand it. You don't have to fully agree with it. You just have to do it. And you want to know why. Two reasons, from everything I've learned about relationships, healthy relationships are based on mutual care-taking. Plus, it's an act of love. Now, look, everyone, I know that what I'm asking you to do is really, really challenging because I'm asking you to put someone else's needs above your own. But I truly believe that if more of us took to heart, the very crucial idea that we have to take better care of each other, and that we don't have to be slaves to our own emotions. Then we can make this world a more loving place, one marriage one relationship at a time. People tell me that I'm a psychotic optimist, but I tell them that's okay. It's a communicable disease. Thank you