The Orgasm Expert: THIS Is How Often You Should Be Having Sex & Stop Inviting Pets Into The Bedroom!
Guest (guest), Steven Bartlett (host)
In this episode of The Diary of a CEO, featuring Guest and Steven Bartlett, The Orgasm Expert: THIS Is How Often You Should Be Having Sex & Stop Inviting Pets Into The Bedroom! explores 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.
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.
Key Takeaways
Stop 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. ...
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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). ...
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Make sex ‘trivial and often’, and decouple initiation from high stakes.
When sex is rare and loaded (e. ...
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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. ...
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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. ...
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For parents, don’t chase ‘more sex’ first—fix mental load, sleep, and resentment.
Sex satisfaction is at its lowest when couples have under‑fives, largely due to sleep disruption, time scarcity, unequal division of domestic/mental load, and partners starting to feel like a ‘third child’. ...
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Monogamy isn’t ‘natural’—if you choose it, you must deliberately work at novelty and growth.
Humans are not biologically ‘designed’ for lifelong sexual interest in one person; brains habituate to predictability and crave novelty. ...
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Notable Quotes
“We 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
Questions Answered in This Episode
You argue that for many women it’s normal to never feel spontaneous desire with a long-term partner—how can a couple distinguish ‘normal’ low spontaneous desire from a deeper relational or attraction problem that really does need addressing?
Clinical psychologist and psychosexologist Dr. ...
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In heterosexual relationships where penis-in-vagina sex is her least favorite act but his favorite, what does a fair, sustainable compromise actually look like in practice over years—not just in theory?
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.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You link unequal mental load and the ‘third child’ dynamic to lower desire; if a couple only realizes this after years of resentment, what concrete steps can they take to reset that power balance without imploding the relationship?
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.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
For couples curious about opening their relationship but terrified of jealousy and losing each other, what phased, practical framework would you use in therapy to test non-monogamy with the least possible collateral damage?
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.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You suggest pets should effectively come with a ‘sex life’ warning label—beyond simply banning them from the bedroom, what environmental or routine changes do you see as most effective to protect attention and reduce non-obvious mood-killers during sex?
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Transcript Preview
Everyone wants more sex, better sex, and there is a huge amount that we can do that can guarantee great sex for the rest of your life. So, the best place to start is... Dr. Karen Gurney. She is a clinical psychologist... And psychosexologist.
That has been helping individuals and couples overcome sexual problems... For 20 years. She's the lead psychologist in an award-winning NHS sex clinic.
This might be surprising to some people, 52% of women and 42% of men are unhappy with the sex lives that they have, and that's because as a society we've got sex all wrong. For example, the way desire is represented to us is lust, passion, spontaneity, but it's not the norm. And the problem is a lot of people are waiting to feel like that, and they're waiting a really long time. What we need to do instead is be aware that our desire can be triggered using what I call sexual currency. I'll go into that. We also know that penis and vagina sex is women's least favorite sexual act, but that's how we see how sex should be, so we see less pleasure and less reward for women. But also, if you ask most people how often they should be having sex, everyone says three times a week. It's actually drastically different than that, three times a month, and that shows the way we understand sex is all wrong.
So, I have questions. Do you think you should schedule sex?
No. What you should do though is...
Fantasies, fetishes. What if your partner says, "I don't like it"?
Well, I can talk you through that if you'd like.
Parents who are struggling with sex, what should they do?
We know that people start having sex again from when their kid is about six, and that's because...
What if you're in a relationship right now and you no longer found them attractive, what do I say?
I would say...
It's absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show, um, and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show. We now have five million subscribers on YouTube, which is a number that I just can't comprehend, and it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had. We started the Diary of a CEO just over three years ago now, and in my wildest expectations, we might have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these conversations every week, um, and spend some time with us. So, thank you. And I made a deal with you, I made a deal that if you subscribe to this show that we would continue to raise the bar. And in 2024, we're gonna raise the bar like never before. I've been working for the last nine months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to this show, and I'm very excited to deliver that for you. The production's gonna change. We're gonna go even further with our guests, and we're gonna tell even more global stories. So as always, if you appreciate what we're doing here, the simple free favor I'll ask from you is to hit the subscribe button. Let's get on with the episode. Dr. Karen Gurney.
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