Most Replayed Moment: The Gottman Doctors Guide to Better Sex and Stronger Connections

Steven Bartlett (0:01)

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Julie Gottman (0:40)

Great questions that my clients ask me a lot, and there's huge variability in sexual preference. Some couples actually don't want to have sex at all. Both people don't want to have sex. They'd rather have kind of a sibling relationship, almost. If they're both content with that, then they can have a very successful relationship. Some couples really want to have sex a lot, you know, all the time. And it's a really important component of the relationship and everything in between. When you run into trouble is the following, and I've seen this so many times.

The men who, I guess I would say, are hyper masculine, they think that cuddling is too infantile, so they don't want to cuddle. And the only way they can accept physical contact, which they desperately need, is through sex, period.

Steven Bartlett (1:45)

Penetrative sex.

Julie Gottman (1:46)

Penetrative sex, that's right. And the woman has 17 children, she's trying to make dinner, she's exhausted, she may not want to have sex nearly as much as he does, so he begins to feel deprived of touch. But instead of complaining about that, he says, we're not having enough sex. And she says, I'm not getting enough affection. And there you have some conflict that has to get sorted out.

Steven Bartlett (2:19)

It's like they're speaking two different languages of intimacy. Yeah.

Julie Gottman (2:23)

Basically, in a sense, they are. They are. Though, typically, the men in these relationships really basically need touch. And can they accept cuddling as something that's just as masculine as penetrative sex? Well, if they really think about it, and if they experience it, then yeah, they can. Then things really will tend to improve.

Steven Bartlett (2:52)

The research that John is suggesting there, as you said, that life is full play. Because if the kissing on the way out the door and the touching my partner's back and the cuddle leads to a better sex life, then we should see life, public displays of affection, all that kind of thing, as an investment in what happens tonight in the bedroom.

John Gottman (3:12)

Right. I think that's really true. Every positive thing you do in a relationship is foreplay. The couples who, a lot of times, the couples who stop having sex have also shut down, high-conflict couples who stop having sex, have shut down other things, other sensual parts of their lives as well. They're not having much fun. Eighty percent of the 40,000 couples we studied said that fun had come to die in a relationship. There wasn't much play. There wasn't much adventure. It wasn't just sex. Everything shut down. All the things that were really delightful, exploring new kinds of cuisine, traveling, playing games together, playing sports together.

Steven Bartlett (4:01)

How do we stop that happening though? Because I've often wondered, people often said to me that eroticism and attraction is about novelty and spontaneousness and doing all that kind of thing. And then they've said that love is about familiarity and comfort, which these are two opposite things.

Julie Gottman (4:21)

Well, let me answer that. The person who said that it's all about spontaneity and mystery and so on has never done any research. The research shows that the familiarity, the emotional connection, really knowing your partner creates in the long run much more passion, what much better sex, actually, than maintaining mystery, but not really connecting to one another the way people need to.

John Gottman (5:01)

There's a wonderful book by Emily Nagoski called Come As You Are, that reviews this research. And it shows that, first of all, women have more prerequisites for eroticism than men do. Jeffrey Chase once said, Women need a reason for sex, men need a place, that's all. So, you know, but it's true, men don't need to feel safe to feel sexual. Women do. Women need to feel psychologically safe, and that means emotional connection. It also means there can't be a long to-do list of things that they have to get done that's been neglected. The dog's been taken out, you know, and has done his business and all of that. And then the situation feels erotic to a woman, and she's receptive.