The Diary of a CEOThe Orgasm Expert: THIS Is How Often You Should Be Having Sex & Stop Inviting Pets Into The Bedroom!
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Sex Desire Demystified: Why Great Long-Term Sex Needs Conversation, Not Chemistry
- Clinical psychologist and psychosexologist Dr. Karen Gurney explains why most people misunderstand how desire, frequency, and ‘good sex’ actually work, especially in long-term relationships and parenthood.
- She challenges cultural sexual scripts—like penis-in-vagina as ‘real sex’, the three-times-a-week myth, and the idea that desire should be spontaneous—showing how they fuel pressure, dissatisfaction, and silence.
- Instead, she introduces concepts like responsive desire, sexual currency, trivial-and-often initiation, and structured communication as practical levers for better sex and stronger relationships.
- The conversation also explores the impact of sleep, tech distraction, kids, resentment, monogamy, porn, body image, menopause, and even pets in the bedroom on people’s intimate lives.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasStop waiting to ‘feel horny’ – use responsive desire and sexual stimuli.
Most long-term partners, especially women, rarely experience spontaneous, out-of-the-blue lust with their partner, and that’s normal. Desire often emerges *after* some kind of sexual or intimate stimulus (a kiss, touch, flirtatious text, bath together), a pattern called responsive desire. If you only have sex when you first feel like it, you may wait forever; instead, create low-pressure opportunities for sexual stimuli and allow desire to build from there.
Build ‘sexual currency’ daily instead of treating sex like an on/off switch.
Sexual currency is everything that marks you out as a sexual couple *apart from actual sex*—passionate kissing, flirty texts, bum grabs, compliments, secret shared moments (like a lift kiss before a party). These micro-interactions both meet core needs (feeling desired, special, connected) and act as scaffolding into sex without pressure. Intentionally increasing sexual currency is especially powerful when time, energy, or childcare limit full sex.
Make sex ‘trivial and often’, and decouple initiation from high stakes.
When sex is rare and loaded (e.g., only on anniversaries or rare date nights), initiation becomes high-pressure and anxiety-inducing, which kills desire. A healthier pattern is frequent, low-stakes invitations into intimacy—“trivial and often”—where it’s easy both to invite and to decline. This normalizes refusal, reduces pressure, and statistically creates more genuine openings for good sex than waiting for one ‘perfect’ high-stakes moment.
Talk about sex like you talk about work or fitness—with structure and regularity.
The strongest predictor of long-term sexual and relationship satisfaction is not frequency or liking the same acts, but the ability to talk about sex. Start with low-risk topics (a podcast you heard, a movie sex scene, porn depictions), then move to what’s gone *well* sexually, and only later to what you’d like more or less of. Frame it as a joint project (“I want us to have great sex for life”) and build a recurring ‘sex goals’ check-in: what to continue, amplify, reduce.
Redesign sex around pleasure and anatomy, not porn and penetration scripts.
Penis-in-vagina intercourse is men’s favorite sexual act but women’s *least* favorite, and ~80% of women do not orgasm from penetration alone. Porn and language (e.g., ‘foreplay’, ‘losing virginity’) teach a script where PIV is the ‘main course’ and female pleasure is optional or rare. Couples who consciously question that script, diversify activities (manual/oral stimulation, toys, positions), and explicitly prioritize both partners’ pleasure reduce the ‘orgasm gap’ and boost motivation for sex.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesWe know that when people have great sex, their relationships last longer… but unfortunately as a society, we’ve kind of got it all wrong about how sex works.
— Dr. Karen Gurney
We know that for women particularly, it should be considered normal to never feel like sex out of the blue with your long-term partner.
— Dr. Karen Gurney
Sex should be trivial and often, not rare and crucial.
— Dr. Karen Gurney
There isn’t anything about humans that means we’re designed to maintain sexual interest in the same person for a long amount of time.
— Dr. Karen Gurney
I’d like people to think of someone like me a bit like a personal trainer for your sex life.
— Dr. Karen Gurney
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