# Is Porn Healthy or Unhealthy? A Psychosexual Therapist Tells the Truth | Silva Neves

An episode of [Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1508380100), 29 Apr 2026, 1 h 26 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/1033d1554/podcast/play/119209137/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-3-29%2F423111467-44100-2-467ab7f10579b.mp3

Exciting news - pre-order my debut book https://linktr.ee/HealthySBTH?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=9db12bc6-b7d3-4df4-bc5c-260e0303792c Most of us have an opinion on porn. Very few of us have actually looked at the evidence.We talk about gut health, hormones, sleep, and stress. But there's one part of our sexual lives that almost nobody is talking about honestly, and it might be quietly shaping our relationships more than we realise. This week on Live Well Be Well, I'm joined by Silva Neves, an accredited psychosexual and relationship therapist and author. Silva holds deeply taboo topics with total clinical clarity and zero judgment, helping us have the conversation about porn that most people are too afraid to start. Here's what we explore together: - How porn is classified as "neither healthy nor unhealthy" by research, and why that nuance changes everything. - Why there is no proven causation between porn and relationship breakdown, misogyny, or erectile dysfunction. - What compulsive porn use actually looks like, and when it signals something deeper going on emotionally. - How shared values around porn can make or break a relationship, and why most couples never have this conversation. - Why dopamine isn't the villain we think, and how habits around technology and porn really form. - What research says about fantasies, kinks and fetishes, and why most are far more normal than we realise. - How shame silently shuts down sexual communication in long-term relationships, and what to do instead. Love, Sarah Ann 💛 *** This episode is sponsored by: DIOME: Rest deeper. Stay grounded. Rested is available now and Grounded lands later this month. 👉 Get 20% off with code SARAH20 at DIOME.CO NOWATCH: The compassionate health tracker Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://nowatch.com/ *** The Great British Veg Out How to support your gut, energy, and hormones by eating more — not less. 👉 https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/p/the-great-british-veg-out Reset Your Health If your body feels off after stress, travel, or burnout — this is where to start. 👉 https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/s/reset-your-health-in-30-days 👉 Practical beats perfect. Here’s a free 5-recipe PDF I use to support energy and stress during busy weeks. https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahmacklin/p/download-your-free-5-recipes-to-relieve 👉 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week. https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/ *** If You Enjoyed This Episode, You Might Also Like:Why You Still Can’t Orgasm (The Step-By-Step Guide) | Dr. Laurie Mintz, Sex Therapisthttps://youtu.be/gr6RWK2LFJEBetter Sex EVERY TIME? Dr Rena Malik Tells You Howhttps://youtu.be/C8HJAH5plVw *** Sign up to Sarah’s Compassionate Cure newsletter: Science Simplified, Health Humanised. Join thousands in exploring actionable insights that prioritise compassion, clarity, and real-life impact. https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/ *** Highlights 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:20 Is Porn Healthy or Unhealthy? Silva's Honest Answer 00:05:13 Porn Is Not a Monolith: Understanding the Many Types 00:10:18 How Many People Actually Watch Porn? 00:14:23 Is Porn Addiction Real? The Clinical Truth 00:19:01 Porn, Cheating and the Agreements We Never Have 00:22:36 Why Couples With Shared Porn Values Tend to Thrive 00:28:21 Dopamine, Habits and Digital Attachment 00:37:00 What Age Should Young People Be Exposed to Porn? 00:39:13 The Manosphere: Fear, Misogyny and Online Extremism 00:53:06 Fantasies, Kinks and Fetishes: More Normal Than You Think 00:58:24 How Shame Kills Sex in Long-Term Relationships 01:01:00 Talking About Your Erotic Mind With a Partner 01:07:31 Asexuality as a Valid and Underrepresented Orientation 01:11:10 What Good Relationship Vows Really Look Like

## Transcript

[0:00] The media will say things like what is relationship problems,
[0:03] causes misogyny, causes erectile dysfunction.
[0:07] All of those things are just not really showing up in research.
[0:10] Can be healthy then I guess it's my next question.
[0:13] But I think the first question to ask is what is to start with?
[0:17] Award-winning psychosexual therapist Sylvan Neves breaks
[0:20] down what the research on actually says.
[0:23] The statistics kind of say about 50% of UK adults watch, but we
[0:28] believe it's an underestimate. I think about the landscape
[0:31] today and something that comes to my brain as an evolution of
[0:34] only fans. This kind of manosphere type
[0:37] that people are talking about. Is that seen as harmful to
[0:40] people? It's the people that are a
[0:42] problem. Why are there so many people
[0:44] wanting misogynistic? And then you'd be looking at the
[0:47] manosphere. You mentioned something really
[0:48] interesting about diction and you told me that it's not real
[0:52] if he might be really shocked by that.
[0:54] It's not considered an addiction because there's just not enough
[0:56] evidence it's a primary drive, just like hunger is a primary
[0:59] drive, and so we can't get addicted to primary drives.
[1:02] There was a really interesting article in the Economist last
[1:05] week that kind of took me by surprise and it said that what
[1:07] do we consider cheating? It depends on your agreement and
[1:10] the big problem with that. They don't talk about their
[1:12] values. Some people have very strong
[1:14] feelings about it, either good ones or negative feelings about
[1:18] it. So let's breakdown fantasies.
[1:19] Because they feel ashamed about it, because they think, oh, what
[1:21] does that mean about me? It's not illegal to have
[1:23] fantasies, we can just fantasise about anything, including
[1:27] having. For the last two years I have
[1:31] kept a secret from you and it's this, it's my new book Healthy
[1:35] Shouldn't Be This hard. And I think it is a problem that
[1:39] we are all feeling. And I was feeling it so much
[1:42] that I wrote a book on it. Now if you've been a guest of
[1:45] this podcast for a while, you know that I am all about
[1:47] kindness, self compassion. But when I dug into the research
[1:51] of this, my mind exploded. The connection between the mind
[1:55] and body is so integral. But we completely miss out on
[1:59] all the conversations on health, on how we speak to ourselves.
[2:02] And that is such a driving factor on how our food responds
[2:06] to what we eat, to the choices that we make.
[2:09] And we are so overwhelmed right now in the $8.5 trillion
[2:12] industry that is the Wellness industry, which is predicted to
[2:15] be by 2027. So if you need a helping hand,
[2:20] if you want a new way to live and be well and buy my new book
[2:24] Healthy shouldn't be this hard out on May the 28th.
[2:27] But you can pre-order it now. I'll pop the link below in the
[2:31] show notes. And I would love if you could
[2:33] support me on this. And I honestly think it will
[2:36] support you too. So we're going to talk about
[2:39] porn. Yes.
[2:41] I mean that might shock people straight away, but I want to go
[2:43] straight on in with the first question, which is, is porn
[2:45] healthy or unhealthy? It's neither.
[2:49] Inconclusive. That's right, yes.
[2:52] OK, tell me why. Well, because the research is
[2:55] really patchy and what we know is that for some people point
[2:59] can be a problem, but for a lot of other people it's not a
[3:02] problem. And what we really know at the
[3:04] moment is that it's neither good or bad, it's just a media.
[3:08] It's so interesting actually, because I obviously speak a lot
[3:12] about scientific studies on this show.
[3:14] We kind of dissect them a lot and I think you've just been
[3:19] very honest there by saying it's so patchy, but the media can
[3:21] skew it quite heavily towards the negative.
[3:25] Always. Which again, is a very kind of
[3:29] way to distinguish whether it's healthy or unhealthy because it
[3:31] carries a lot of negative associations in the media.
[3:35] Even for instance, the manosphere, which was on Netflix
[3:38] with Louis Theroux, you know, that kind of showed, again, a
[3:42] very negative side. Is it causing the detrimental
[3:46] health effects that we do associate porn with?
[3:48] So such as, you know, poor body image satisfaction or too much
[3:54] dopamine and they're not actually enjoying sex as
[3:57] possible because it's always on tap.
[3:58] All of these things that we hear is as bad as we think.
[4:02] No is the short answer. Wow.
[4:05] Yes, so. Can you explain why?
[4:07] Yeah, sure. Basically there is no.
[4:09] What we found is that there is no causation with pornography
[4:13] watching, so it doesn't cause anything.
[4:16] So as you say, the media will say things like porn causes
[4:20] relationship problems, porn causes misogyny, porn causes
[4:23] erectile dysfunction. All of those things are just not
[4:26] really showing up in research. What does happen is that there
[4:30] are correlations, plenty of correlations, but no causations.
[4:34] And the public and the media are really confusing causation with
[4:38] correlations. And I think it's really
[4:39] important that we don't because the story is then very different
[4:43] when we look at correlations. So, for example, somebody who
[4:47] has some pre-existing anxiety about the penis size and they're
[4:50] watching porn with only big penises, that would increase the
[4:54] anxiety of penis size, but the anxiety is already there.
[4:58] People who already have misogynistic views and they
[5:02] watch misogynistic porn will have increased misogynistic
[5:07] values, but it doesn't 'cause it it doesn't create it.
[5:10] OK, so basically it amplifies it.
[5:13] That's right. OK, so it's kind of like adding
[5:15] fuel to the fire basically. So can porn be healthy then I
[5:19] guess is my next question. Well, I think the first question
[5:22] to ask is what is porn to start with because.
[5:25] Actually, let's let's dissect it.
[5:27] Yeah, when we talk about porn, and again, the media will say
[5:30] porn, but what does it actually mean?
[5:32] There isn't one single definition of porn.
[5:35] There isn't actually an agreed definition of porn because it
[5:38] can be so many different things and it's also very culturally
[5:41] based. So what is deemed pornography
[5:44] here in London can be very different from another culture
[5:48] that has different norms around nakedness or around bodies.
[5:53] So there's that to start with. And also when we say porn, it's
[5:56] almost like we talk as though it's a monolith, but porn is
[5:59] not. There are multiple, multiple
[6:01] types of porn, multiple genres, and it's not all the same porn
[6:06] that we tend to criticize. The one that we tend to
[6:08] criticize is the online free porn that we see that has
[6:13] misogynistic tone. So how many different types of
[6:16] porn is there? Because I think about the
[6:19] landscape today and something that comes to my brain as an
[6:22] evolution of porn is only fans, right?
[6:25] And so, but for instance, Lily Allen is making a killing by
[6:28] putting her feet on there. And so that feels like a fetish,
[6:33] but I can also align with porn. So how do we distinguish
[6:37] different types of porn? And that's I guess the next
[6:39] question. There's so many different types
[6:41] of porn. We can't even say how many types
[6:43] there are because we cannot watch porn.
[6:45] And there's multiple genres as well.
[6:46] Whatever arouses you can be pornographic basically.
[6:50] So if you type in, if you go to a pornographic website and you
[6:54] type in whatever arouses you like, for example porridge, you
[6:58] would find some porn that is porridge oriented.
[7:04] It's so. Healthy for the show?
[7:09] And there is a fetish around porridge.
[7:10] It's not, you know, it's not usual, but there are some people
[7:14] who find porridge arousing is. That really a thing?
[7:18] Yeah. Wow.
[7:20] And there's a thing with like loads of other things, you know,
[7:22] some people might be food play, some people might be, you know,
[7:26] a very common one would be feet and shoes and uniforms, all of
[7:31] that. But it's just multiple, multiple
[7:34] genres. Anything can be pornographic
[7:37] really if it's something that is a turn on for you.
[7:39] So I guess that's where it becomes a bit more nuanced in
[7:44] the terms of it being healthier and unhealthy if I actually look
[7:47] at the misogynistic porn that you were kind of speaking about.
[7:50] So I guess that's things like Pornhub where you go on and
[7:53] trying to think of the other ones that are actually now
[7:55] leaving the UK due to the the regulations here of age.
[7:59] But this kind of manosphere type porn that people are are talking
[8:04] about more so than ever before since that recent documentary,
[8:08] is that seen as harmful to people?
[8:10] Is that seeing as like more detrimental type of porn that
[8:12] we're talking about here? I guess that's probably the most
[8:15] widely spoken about. That's right.
[8:17] And I think again, here the media plays a part in confusing
[8:20] people because we might want to be talking about the porn, but
[8:23] actually it's the people that are a problem, you know,
[8:26] people's attitudes that are a problem.
[8:27] Not really very much the porn, even though of course, if you're
[8:30] going to produce misogynistic porn that is not, you know, very
[8:34] ethical for sure. But pornography is an industry
[8:37] that is for profit making originally.
[8:40] It's not there for education. It's a media that is for
[8:44] arousing. You know, it's an adult media
[8:46] for the purpose of sexual arousal.
[8:48] Really, as a nutshell, that's what it is.
[8:51] And so if the porn industry is the big porn studios produce
[8:55] misogynistic porn, then we have to ask why do they do that?
[9:00] It is because they respond to demand.
[9:02] And then we have to look at the demand.
[9:03] Why are there so many people wanting misogynistic porn?
[9:07] And then you'll be looking at the monosphere.
[9:08] You'll be looking at even outside of the monosphere, how
[9:12] we raise boys and girls and all these gendered scripts that we
[9:16] is embedded in our society. You know, misogyny has been
[9:20] there way before online porn. OK, It predates online porns by
[9:25] decades and centuries. And so you got to think.
[9:29] OK. Do we point the finger at pawn?
[9:31] Because that's easy to point the finger at pawn.
[9:33] We can create laws. We can create, you know, we can
[9:35] regulate it. OK, great.
[9:37] But is that going to really take away the problem?
[9:39] I don't think so. We need to look at society and
[9:42] when we look, we need to look at the people within the manosphere
[9:45] and the people's attitude towards women and towards how
[9:49] they relate sexually and relationally with women.
[9:54] Do you think it's causing like this type of pawn?
[9:55] Do you think it's causing problems in relationships or is
[9:59] it not? Or is it helping relationships?
[10:01] I mean, it's quite an open question, but what do you think
[10:04] this type of pause specifically the most people talk about, How
[10:06] do you think that's affecting relationships?
[10:09] I think that what's the most commonly discussed is some
[10:12] things like choking, for example, so.
[10:15] People might watch. Choking videos.
[10:17] And then they might think, OK, maybe that's something that we
[10:20] may want or that's something I need to do in order to feel like
[10:23] a man in the bedroom. And then they're going to start
[10:25] doing that as well now. The problem with this is that
[10:27] choking is actually a very, very specific.
[10:31] Sexual activity that is part of the BDSM scene and part of the
[10:34] king scene, which even within the BDSM scene is considered
[10:38] risky. So it's not something that you
[10:39] do just, you know, as your first attempt.
[10:41] It's something that you've got to really learn how to do it
[10:44] properly in order to be appropriate sexually.
[10:47] And, and you know, a lot of people even within the BDSM
[10:50] scene say, you know, you just don't just do it straight away.
[10:53] You've got to really learn about this.
[10:56] And get consent. And get consent?
[10:58] Absolutely. So when it just shows up in the
[11:02] free porn and people watch it and they watch it without sex
[11:06] education, and that's another issue that we have in our
[11:09] society. Sex education is majorly
[11:11] lacking. And that really shows across all
[11:13] the research. So we don't have sex education.
[11:16] We go on porn as our first kind of introduction to, oh, what can
[11:20] we do in the bedroom? And if it's the first thing they
[11:23] see a choking scene and they're not aware that it is a BDSM
[11:27] risky practice, then they're going to think, oh, maybe then
[11:30] it's something I can do. And then they do it.
[11:32] And as you say, sometimes they don't even have the constant
[11:34] conversation because that doesn't that's not also showed
[11:38] on porn. And then things can go really
[11:40] wrong. And then when things go wrong,
[11:42] we say, well, that's because of porn, and of course it is
[11:44] because it's showing it those things, but actually the other.
[11:48] Big. Part of the picture here is that
[11:51] there is very little sex dedication and we need so much
[11:54] more. We are desperate for more sex
[11:55] education. A. 100% I mean, we had Doctor
[11:58] Laurie Mentz on here about female orgasms and that had such
[12:02] a huge interaction that video. And we, I'm, you know, we've
[12:05] done over 400 episodes on Livo Be Well, and we never spoke
[12:08] about that. And obviously this entire
[12:10] podcast is based on health and sexual health is such a big
[12:14] thing of our overall well-being. So I think maybe people might be
[12:19] listening to this, maybe feeling like inquisitive about what
[12:24] we're going to talk about. And I think the biggest way to
[12:27] maybe destigmatise this conversation is what percentage
[12:30] of people roughly do watch porn? Because I don't think anyone
[12:33] talks about it. So like, maybe we just like lay
[12:35] it out, Like what does the stats say?
[12:37] Is it a small percentage? Is it a large percentage?
[12:39] Well, the statistics kind of say about 50% of UK adults.
[12:43] Watch porn, but we believe it's an underestimate and the reason
[12:47] for this is because porn carries so much shame and stigma that
[12:50] not everyone will be honest about it.
[12:52] And even if they respond to a survey, they might not be honest
[12:55] about it. So we think that it's a lot more
[12:58] than that. It's porn is just everywhere at
[13:00] the moment. It's so easily accessible.
[13:03] It's definitely, we believe more than 50% of UK.
[13:06] Populations and that includes mostly men, but actually a lot
[13:09] of women do enjoy watching porn too, let's not forget.
[13:12] Wow. So how did you get into this
[13:13] area? Like obviously we're having this
[13:15] conversation today on porn and there's a lot that we're going
[13:17] to kind of unpack. But as a as a therapist and
[13:20] psychotherapist, how did you just become interested in this
[13:23] area? I just love talking about the
[13:25] taboos. I think that 11 great space in
[13:29] psychotherapy is to be. Able to talk about the things
[13:31] that are hard to talk about out there in society or with friends
[13:35] or just openly. And so for me, it's like one of
[13:38] the one of my. Best best thing to do as a
[13:41] psychotherapist is to be able to open those conversations really
[13:44] honestly so that people can start to process things for
[13:48] themselves and make sense for themselves.
[13:50] And sex porn is one of those topics, and the other one is
[13:54] death. Oh wow, gosh I hope they didn't
[13:56] get together if someone caught just a snippet of that sex porn
[14:02] and death. That feels like a really intense
[14:05] fetish. I I didn't say fetish.
[14:08] It does exist. There are some really well
[14:11] vampire porn, for example is quite popular.
[14:13] Vampire porn. What's, you know, like when
[14:17] vampires have sex with each other and or sometimes vampires
[14:20] have sex with, you know, alive people?
[14:22] Yeah, it's a thing. You've.
[14:24] Got vampire porn, You've got alien porn.
[14:26] I mean, you name it anything. I mean, the porridge one's still
[14:29] got me. I just so interesting.
[14:33] So I guess like listen to this so 50%, but potentially everyone
[14:37] thinks it's, it's more than that.
[14:39] And I, and I can guess that because shame and stigma is such
[14:41] a big part of I think sex in general, you know, we don't have
[14:45] very good sex education in the UK in other countries as
[14:48] incredible. I think it's Denmark, incredible
[14:51] sex education from quite a young age.
[14:53] It's also similar to the conversations around drugs,
[14:56] alcohol, like a lot in the UK, you know, it's, it's kind of
[14:59] forbidden and we're not kind of speaking openly about the risks
[15:03] and the benefits and what this really means.
[15:05] And So what happens is people kind of go off on their own more
[15:08] into the dark website of things. And I actually think like now
[15:11] with, you know, the biggest kind of porn sites leaving the UK
[15:15] because of this age verification thing and people don't want to
[15:18] put in their details. Is this now skewing us more
[15:20] towards going into the darker side of porn now and into more
[15:24] of the dark side of the web? I find that quite like where we
[15:27] are right now that it's is it going to become more unregulated
[15:30] because it's less easily accessible?
[15:32] Yes, we just don't know because it's still new, those
[15:34] regulations and so. Some people do say that people
[15:38] are going to go to the dark web and find their own their own
[15:41] stuff and it's going to be more dangerous.
[15:43] It's definitely a possibility, but I think a.
[15:45] Lot of people will be using VPNs now and so they can still access
[15:49] the porn, you know, from, you know, through VPN and that's
[15:52] becoming a big thing. So I think that people will
[15:54] still be able to accept the viewing pleasure.
[15:56] And on top of that, there is, as you were saying earlier, only
[16:00] fans and just for fans, which is also another way of accessing
[16:04] pornography. And with that, the benefit of it
[16:07] is that you can actually directly support the sex workers
[16:11] that are producing those videos and you can even have some
[16:13] direct communication with them. So you mention something really
[16:17] interesting about porn addiction and you told me that it's not
[16:20] real. If he might be really shocked by
[16:23] that because I've had a couple of people come on the Livoir
[16:26] podcast, even at the very beginning, DJ Fat Tony came on
[16:30] and kind of said, you know, here's addiction went from drug
[16:32] addiction to sex addiction. But if it's not kind of a real
[16:35] addiction, people might be quite shocked by that.
[16:37] So can you explain why porn isn't an addiction?
[16:41] Sure. And, and we have to also talk
[16:43] about what we know. Currently in research and that
[16:45] can change and because research is patchy right now.
[16:48] So at the moment porn is not considered an addiction because
[16:52] there's just not enough evidence to find it, Same as sex.
[16:56] Now sex, we pretty much know that it's not an addiction.
[16:59] I will never be categorized as an addiction.
[17:01] Most probably again, we don't know.
[17:03] It can change, but most probably because it's a, it's a primary
[17:07] drive, just like hunger is a primary drive.
[17:09] And so we can't get addicted to primary drives.
[17:13] So sex addiction now is actually been named compulsive sexual
[17:17] behaviour instead being a compulsion rather than an
[17:19] addiction. Those things are two different
[17:21] things, and with porn at the moment it's the same thing.
[17:24] We don't really have a natural endorsed term for this.
[17:28] We know that at the moment there's not enough evidence for
[17:30] it to be an addiction. Maybe that will change in the.
[17:32] Future. But there's a lot of
[17:35] disagreements in the in the scientific field about this.
[17:38] Some people say no, it's not and it will never be.
[17:40] Other people say what it could be.
[17:42] We don't know. So currently, you know, we have
[17:44] to. As a clinician, suddenly I only
[17:46] speak with what we currently know.
[17:47] I don't speak with what could be or couldn't be.
[17:50] And currently porn is not considered an addiction, but a
[17:53] lot of people do experience some problematic relationship with
[17:57] porn. And one of those things is, you
[18:00] know what we might call compulsive pornographic
[18:03] watching, but also we have to pay attention that most people
[18:08] don't watch porn alone. They watch porn and they
[18:11] masturbate as well to it. So there's an element of sexual
[18:14] pleasure, there's an element of soothing mechanism when you
[18:17] masturbate to watch porn. And porn.
[18:19] Porn can also be seen as a an aid to masturbation.
[18:24] So the people that may have some problematic relationship with
[18:28] porn is usually people who have underlying emotional or
[18:32] psychological conditions such as depression, acute anxiety.
[18:36] Because pornography and masturbating to it can be a
[18:39] really good way to mitigate depression.
[18:43] So when does it become healthy to unhealthy?
[18:46] Because I always feel like everything can always tip.
[18:48] When does that kind of scale tip here?
[18:52] It's when watching porn can start to cause some real big
[18:57] impairment in your life. So an example could be somebody
[19:00] that would be watching porn till 56 AM and then they just fall
[19:03] asleep and they just don't turn up to work because they just
[19:06] can't get up for work, for example.
[19:08] And if that happens once, OK, not a problem.
[19:10] But if happens on a regular basis, and that might become a
[19:13] problem if people start to prioritize watching porn where
[19:17] they need to be doing something else.
[19:19] For example, they should be doing childcare, but they are
[19:22] watching porn instead and the children are left unattended.
[19:25] And again, if it happens on a regular basis, then that might
[19:27] be pointing out to an issue. And sometimes it could be some
[19:31] risky way of watching porn. It's not very common, but I have
[19:35] heard people watching porn while driving.
[19:38] Well, that's not a very good idea because obviously it's
[19:40] dangerous. Yeah, please do not not.
[19:43] That should be a. Law.
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[20:41] It makes me think about relationships.
[20:45] You know, like you kind of mentioning that people might
[20:47] think, oh, this person could be single watching porn to 5:00 AM
[20:51] in the morning. But I kind of think about porn
[20:54] and relationships. Now, I, I say this because there
[20:56] was a really interesting article in the Economist last week that
[20:58] kind of took me by surprise. And it said that what, what do
[21:02] we consider cheating? And there was a picture of a guy
[21:04] looking back at a woman with his wife and just kind of observing
[21:08] another woman and maybe admiring that she was beautiful and
[21:11] saying, is this cheating? And I was like, wow, this feels
[21:15] quite kind of extreme because obviously we can obviously
[21:17] acknowledge beauty in someone else.
[21:19] It doesn't mean that we have an emotional response.
[21:21] But this kind of elicted that this could be another form of
[21:24] cheating. And then there's lots of
[21:26] different discussions around, well, what is actually cheating?
[21:29] Is it having just purely sex with someone?
[21:31] Is it sex with emotion? Then you have emotional cheating
[21:35] where there might not be any sex, but you fall in love with
[21:37] someone else and you have, you know, a deep emotional bond.
[21:40] So there's lots of different forms of how different
[21:44] relationships might encounter different types of cheating.
[21:47] And it makes me think about porn that kind of then came up in my
[21:50] head with, OK, well, when you're in a relationship, would one
[21:54] person might think that the other person is cheating on them
[21:57] if they're not telling them that they're constantly watching
[21:59] porn. So what's like your kind of take
[22:01] on that as a therapist? It makes me laugh when people
[22:04] say what is cheating, what is not cheating because it's just
[22:07] so subjective as well. So subjective.
[22:09] Basically what is considered cheating is what is outside of
[22:12] your agreement. And so it depends what your
[22:15] agreement is basically right. And so I think it's just
[22:18] important that we just don't sight of common sense when we
[22:22] start to think what is cheating, what is not cheating?
[22:24] Is looking at a person in the street cheating.
[22:27] I mean, you know, OK, it might be if it's part of your
[22:29] agreement, but what would that be part of your agreement?
[22:32] You know, there are beautiful people around and you know, it's
[22:34] we can we can look at them in a completely harmless way.
[22:38] Not everything is objectification or not
[22:40] everything is is bad. You know, we have to, we have to
[22:43] be human, you know, in all of this as well.
[22:46] But when it comes to pornography, it's the same
[22:48] thing. It depends on your agreement.
[22:50] And the big problem with that is that most people when they get
[22:53] into a relationship, you know, on the first date or the second
[22:55] date, they don't talk about their porn values.
[22:58] So and they don't talk about anything actually that's that's
[23:01] sexual. Anything.
[23:03] I mean, I had a conversation with a friend recently to, not
[23:06] to interrupt you, but you know, she's been seeing somebody for a
[23:08] while now and there she's kind of worried to bring up the
[23:10] conversation about whether they're seeing other people or
[23:13] not. You know, the fact that that's
[23:16] such a big thing, even getting into these topics feels like
[23:18] terrifying for most people right now because there's so many
[23:21] situation ships. That's the word, isn't it?
[23:23] Situation ships happening that I think now people are maybe even
[23:27] too scared to voice what their own needs are because they're
[23:30] scared that that won't enter commitment in whatever
[23:33] commitment looks like for them because commitment's so
[23:36] different for different people. That's right.
[23:38] And you can't choose a partner if you just don't know those
[23:41] kind of important things. So, you know, the typical story
[23:43] would be, you know, people date and they get into the
[23:45] relationship. Nobody talks about their porn
[23:47] values or enjoying porn or not enjoying porn because, you know,
[23:51] it's OK to love porn. It's also OK to hate porn.
[23:53] But if people don't have those conversations, they don't know.
[23:56] So they're assuming that their partner is having the same
[23:59] values that they do, and sometimes they don't.
[24:01] And then five years down the line, one of them is caught
[24:04] watching porn and then there's a big explosion.
[24:06] And then people talk about cheating and some relationships
[24:09] even, and as a result of that. But the actual real problem here
[24:13] is that the conversation was never had in the 1st place.
[24:17] And sometimes to really get people to understand it, I try
[24:20] to give a bit of a different story, which is actually the
[24:23] same thing. If you have a very, very strong
[24:26] value about something that's really important in your life,
[24:28] For example, if you're vegan, you're going to be in a first
[24:32] date looking for other vegans. That's going to be your first
[24:34] conversation or one of the first conversation to stay.
[24:36] For me, I want to be with another vegan because it's
[24:39] really important. There's no meat in the house.
[24:40] That's part of who I am, my lifestyle, my core values.
[24:44] OK, some people might be wanting to talk about the political
[24:47] views. They might want to be in a
[24:49] relationship with someone who votes the same political parties
[24:52] that they do. Otherwise it can be lots of
[24:54] conflicts. Porn is the same thing.
[24:56] Porn is a value. Some people have very strong
[24:59] feelings about it, either good ones or negative feelings about
[25:03] it. It's not a problem, OK?
[25:05] It's not a problem. The problem is that they need to
[25:08] be able to find the people in a relationship that have the same
[25:11] values, the same feelings, because the conflict starts when
[25:14] one person has a positive value about porn and another one a
[25:18] negative value about porn. And so that's the relationship
[25:21] dynamic. That's the problem, not actually
[25:23] the porn here. And so we know in research that
[25:28] couples who have similar values about porn tend to be in good
[25:32] relationships. If they watch porn together,
[25:35] they tend to be in good relationships.
[25:37] If they watch porn not in secret, they tend to be in a
[25:41] good relationship. Problems come when partners have
[25:44] different values about porn, or when one is watching it
[25:47] secretly, or when they're just not talking about this.
[25:50] That's when relationships can deteriorate because of the lack
[25:54] of community and the lack of shared values.
[25:57] Wow. So what I'm hearing then is
[25:58] whenever shame becomes a big thing in conversations, that's
[26:01] when it starts to break down. It's the shame and the stigma
[26:04] attached, I guess, to anything that you're bringing to a
[26:07] conversation. That's when it's kind of it's
[26:09] broken down really. That's right.
[26:10] And, you know, if the media keep saying porn is bad and if you
[26:14] watch porn, you're a bad person, and if you watch porn you're
[26:17] going to be part of the manosphere or whatever, then of
[26:20] course, it's not going to be opening up the conversations for
[26:22] people to say, hey, you know what?
[26:24] I really quite like watching porn.
[26:26] I watch porn, you know, for 10 minutes once a day.
[26:28] It helps me sleep at the end of the day or it helps me with my
[26:31] daily stress just to reset. And, you know, all is good.
[26:36] You know, we don't have this conversation.
[26:38] Those conversations are not normalized.
[26:40] And if somebody was going to be saying that in the first day, to
[26:43] think that openly people will be like, Oh, well, you watch porn
[26:46] 10 minutes a day, you've got to be, you know, having a problem
[26:49] here or the person will automatically be seen as not
[26:53] wholesome. But actually some people watch
[26:57] porn everyday for 10 minutes a day.
[26:59] And it's really well integrated as part of their sexual health,
[27:03] really well integrated into their lives.
[27:05] And that can actually help. Do you know what I think people
[27:07] will be fighting back on here? I always love two sides is I?
[27:11] And it came up a bit in the lorry Mints is for women and
[27:15] maybe this and this is more the manosphere type of porn, the
[27:18] misogynistic type of porn where kind of women are devalued a
[27:22] lot. And I think when men can grow up
[27:26] watching one type of porn where women are kind of not shown the
[27:31] right types of pleasure or the connection isn't there or that
[27:34] type of thing, it can allow this kind of substrate in someone's
[27:39] mind to be like, that's how I should be performing in the
[27:42] bedroom or a quick orgasm. Which was really interesting.
[27:45] When I spoke to Doctor Laurie Mint, she was like, you know,
[27:47] women are so different and there's such a different, you
[27:51] know, version of what we might see in movies or in porn.
[27:55] Like even in movies, it's very kind of like you kind of have
[27:58] sex in 3 minutes and it's amazing.
[28:00] And so she was kind of like how we depict porn is really
[28:04] important because if a man's watching that everyday and
[28:07] getting that quick dopamine hit in 10 minutes, but then goes
[28:10] into the relationship with a partner and thinks that that's
[28:12] exactly how it's meant to be. That's where I think a lot of
[28:15] people are getting the breakdown.
[28:17] And where a lot of people kind of were fighting in the comments
[28:19] under that conversation by saying, you know, well, that's
[28:23] why I think porn's gone wrong because women are kind of
[28:26] devalued in it and it's not shown the woman's pleasure as
[28:29] much. What do you say?
[28:31] Like what's your kind of thought around that with with men
[28:33] watching porn 10 minutes a day? Yeah, I think this is also part
[28:37] of the lack of sex education and the lack of porn literacy
[28:40] education as well. We need that too.
[28:42] And to, to, to really, for people to really make a
[28:45] difference between partnered sex and and solo sex, masturbating,
[28:49] watching porn, those are two different things.
[28:51] And again, to get people to try to understand that, try to find
[28:55] some analogy of, of other things that are more social that we're
[28:58] more socialized to think about. So if you think about going to a
[29:00] restaurant, if you go to a nice post restaurant, you're going to
[29:03] take your time, You're going to look at the menu, you're going
[29:05] to connect with the people you're, you're at the table
[29:08] with. You're going to taste your food
[29:11] really slowly and really appreciate the whole atmosphere
[29:14] and the whole time. And you can be in a restaurant
[29:16] for, you know, a good 2-3 hours, having a great time.
[29:19] If you're going to a fast food place for your burger is just
[29:22] going to be your burger. You might not connect with
[29:24] anyone. You might be on your phone.
[29:26] It will be a 2 minutes, 5 minutes sugar rush.
[29:29] OK, those are two different experiences and both are OK.
[29:32] There's a place for them. You know, we're not going to be
[29:34] banning burgers just because they give you a bit of a sugar
[29:38] hit once in a while. And we should be having that
[29:41] conversation as well with sex that's, you know, the partner
[29:43] Sex is really different from solo sex, completely different
[29:48] experiences. But when we don't have sex
[29:50] education, when we don't have porn literacy, people just mix
[29:53] everything up together thinking that what they watch for the 10
[29:56] minutes is going to be how they should be.
[29:58] You know, training their bodies to just react to to what they're
[30:01] watching and to how they have an orgasm.
[30:04] That is one way of doing it, but also to make sure that they can
[30:07] still understand their bodies and understand how you connect
[30:10] with another human being and have some mutual pleasure with
[30:13] each other. Completely different experience.
[30:16] I attended Ted earlier this year, and I found myself in
[30:19] conversations with the founders of no watch.
[30:21] You've probably seen me wear something on my wrist, and lots
[30:24] of you have messaged me asking me what this is.
[30:27] It looks like a classic watch, but it's actually quietly
[30:30] tracking something much more meaningful, your autonomic
[30:33] nervous system. This is the system that governs
[30:36] everything from how you respond, from excitement to anxiety, calm
[30:40] to overwhelm. Most wearables just give you a
[30:42] score, but if you're anything like me, that score can
[30:45] sometimes make you feel worse, like you're already behind
[30:48] before your day even begins. No watch works differently.
[30:52] There is no judgement and there is no dopamine chasing
[30:55] dashboard. It simply reflects what your
[30:57] body is already experiencing and also helps you notice what it
[31:00] might be missing. It gives you minute by minute
[31:03] timeline of your stress responses and your recovery.
[31:06] The recovery is the most important part and it's the part
[31:08] that no one talks about and it is often the most revealing
[31:11] marker of our long term health. In just five days, it calibrates
[31:15] your body and it builds build your personal health
[31:18] fingerprint. You can try for free now for 30
[31:20] days. And if you use the code LWBW,
[31:23] you can also get 15% off. If you want to understand your
[31:27] body not just through performance but through
[31:29] self-awareness, then this is where I'd begin.
[31:35] Is there AI? Don't know if there's any
[31:36] research here because we've done so much on the show around
[31:39] dopamine, the kind of feel good hormone and the quick hits.
[31:44] And we've done it a lot with tech about how much like we're
[31:47] in in taking in a day. And and I see it and myself, you
[31:50] know, I grab my phone. I'm trying not to in the
[31:52] morning, like when I wake up TJ Powell, he came on who's a
[31:55] neuroscientist, was like, never take your phone to the bedroom
[31:58] or the bathroom. And I was thinking, Oh yeah,
[31:59] whenever I go to the loo, I naturally just like take my
[32:02] phone, think about being at dinner at a restaurant and
[32:04] you're like, take your phone to the bathroom with you.
[32:07] It's just like an ingrained habit.
[32:08] And we don't realise like how much on tap we have to this
[32:11] dopamine demand. And I'm thinking, obviously porn
[32:15] has changed so much. You know, like when when we both
[32:18] grew up, the Internet wasn't around.
[32:21] So it was very different to get your hands on that type of quick
[32:24] rush, like very different. And obviously porn's been around
[32:27] in different variables for such a long time.
[32:30] But it wasn't always on demand. And it's similar with any type
[32:33] of technology. But now it's on like constant
[32:36] demand. Is that not having any type of
[32:39] negative effect on like our sexual experience?
[32:41] We don't know actually. So with what you're talking
[32:45] about is yes, it's not just porn, it's social media, it's.
[32:48] Everything. It's everything.
[32:49] And there's one way of looking at it is dopamine.
[32:51] But dopamine, it's neuroscientists have very
[32:54] different opinions about the role of dopamine when it comes
[32:56] to porn. People say that it just reacts
[32:59] exactly as it should because dopamine is not actually a feel
[33:02] good chemical, it's a learning chemical.
[33:04] It's a reward chemical. A reward chemical and it's
[33:06] learning, but it's learning that there is a reward.
[33:08] So then when we are, when it's associated, when the reward is
[33:11] associated with a particular thing, then we form a habit to
[33:14] say, oh, this thing is going to give some me some pleasure in 5
[33:19] minutes, 10 minutes. So at the end of the day, so you
[33:21] get the dopamine at that moment, the, the, because your brain has
[33:24] learnt that there's going to be a reward coming up and that
[33:28] happens with everything. It happens also with the phone.
[33:30] We take our phone if we have enough good experiences with the
[33:33] phone, you know, we look at Instagram and we see some funny
[33:37] videos of cats. Then suddenly when the phone
[33:40] might be associated with that or the phone is associated with
[33:43] connections with friends and families and so on.
[33:46] So the dopamine in that way actually works as it should.
[33:51] And a lot of people as well in the kind of porn addiction side,
[33:54] they say, they might say that we get addicted to dopamine, but
[33:57] also the lots of neuroscientists are saying we just don't get
[34:00] addicted to dopamine. It's just a chemical.
[34:02] It's a brain chemical that we create ourselves.
[34:04] It's not an an external chemical that is hijacking our brain.
[34:08] We make it ourselves so our brain can sustain the dopamine
[34:12] as it normally does. The thing is like when we do get
[34:16] habits of this, and that's the difference between the dopamine
[34:19] and habituation. We are habits people, OK?
[34:23] We create habits all the time. The way that we shower, the way
[34:25] that we have breakfast, the way that we live our life is through
[34:28] habits. And habits are not problematics.
[34:30] You know, habits are just what we do.
[34:32] But again, sometimes we have to really think of how have we made
[34:36] some habits with, with phones, with porn, but with social
[34:39] media, with our phones and how we can change those habits.
[34:43] So it's not about saying it's bad, but it's more about
[34:46] thinking how can I make it better for me?
[34:49] How can I integrate that into my life in a different way?
[34:52] That is not always, you know, the, the habit of grabbing the
[34:55] phone each time you wake up or whatever.
[34:57] And that is goes into the area of what we call DG attachment.
[35:02] And DG attachment is basically the attachment to technology.
[35:06] And if you think about it, we always attach to objects, OK?
[35:10] We attach to comfort blankets when we're children, we can
[35:13] attach to a teddy bear. And our phone is just the same
[35:16] thing. We attach to it.
[35:18] And it's OK again to normalize that we have an attachment to
[35:21] our technology. It's part of our lives.
[35:23] It's everyday in our lives, everyone, well, most people know
[35:27] where their phones are at any given time.
[35:29] You know, it's that kind of attachment, OK?
[35:32] And so it's precious, but it doesn't mean that we can't look
[35:36] at it and change it if it doesn't work for us.
[35:40] So if we think, OK, I'm spending way too much time on my phone
[35:43] when my partner's just here watching TV, I'm not connecting
[35:46] with my partner because I'm on my phone.
[35:48] OK, Pay attention to that. And then you can put the phone
[35:50] down and and create a different habit to say, OK, from 6:00 PM
[35:54] it's going to be, you know, connection with my partner, OK.
[35:59] And and by doing that on a regular basis that then you
[36:01] create a new habit. So the conversation is really
[36:05] about keeping paying attention to how we want our lives to be
[36:10] rather than the thinking something is a disorder,
[36:12] something is a problem, something is unhealthy and I
[36:15] have to get a cure for it. I don't think that's a very
[36:17] helpful conversation. No, but I do think it's so
[36:20] interesting and how just shuts a short space of time we've had,
[36:24] we've had so much at our fingertips because I think
[36:26] about, you know, I've got a niece and nephew who are
[36:28] teenagers now. Makes you feel really old saying
[36:31] that, but yeah, I do. And they've grown up in a world
[36:35] that is so different to a world that I grew up in.
[36:38] You know, I might have had a phone at 14, but it was like a
[36:40] Nokia 3210 where literally I'd play Snake.
[36:44] Yeah. Remember, though, yeah?
[36:45] And and text someone, but, you know, I wasn't obsessed with my
[36:49] phone because I didn't have everything at my fingertips.
[36:52] And I even remember trying to go on the Internet and dialling up,
[36:54] you know, like it took so long for the NTL broadband to kind of
[36:58] like, come on. But whereas I think like kids
[37:00] now today can access anything at any point.
[37:03] And I think especially even us as adults.
[37:06] So I would love us to all have that self-awareness of like, oh
[37:09] wait, I'm on my phone too much. But it's so easy and it's so
[37:13] easy to access anything that our self-awareness can kind of
[37:16] subside and our reward centres can go in full mode because
[37:20] obviously we want to have a reward.
[37:21] We all want to feel good, but we don't always sometimes realise
[37:25] when that's become unhealthy unless you're like an
[37:28] obsessively self aware person. But I don't think most of the
[37:32] nation are like, even if we want to be, we, I still do things
[37:34] that I know are bad for me and I feel like I'm constantly
[37:37] checking in with myself, but I'm still doing it.
[37:40] And so I think like when it comes to like porn, it's such an
[37:43] interesting area because we've gone into a landscape that we've
[37:47] never had before. And we even think now about, you
[37:51] know, I think about AI with porn, think about Gok,
[37:54] everything that came out recently about like, where does
[37:57] that boundary lie with undressing people without their
[38:01] consent? Like that can also tip into the
[38:04] porn conversation. Like how do you look at that?
[38:07] Yeah, I think when there is in in the issue of consent, it's
[38:10] really important also also to look at the DG Health
[38:13] principles. So there are some principles of
[38:16] being having healthy relationship with our technology
[38:19] and with what we watch. One of those principles is
[38:22] consent. Absolutely consent and privacy
[38:24] are really, really important. So if you are doing something
[38:27] online that is non consensual or if you're watching something
[38:30] that's non consensual, just stop straight away because that's,
[38:33] it's just not part of the DG Health principles.
[38:37] But with everything that you say, you know, the young people,
[38:39] we observe the young people. I agree with you.
[38:42] Like I'm the same. I've got the analogue brain.
[38:44] And so when I watch young people who just never have the pen, I'm
[38:47] like, what? You can't, you can't hold a pen.
[38:49] Yeah. I know.
[38:51] As a psychotherapist, I always try to see about the the blind
[38:56] spots that we have and the the landscape that we don't always
[39:00] see, because all of us can be a bit blind, have a blind spot,
[39:03] all of us, OK, young people, but we can too.
[39:05] And a lot of the research at the moment that is being done, or
[39:09] the discussion, not even the research, but the discussion
[39:11] that's being done is from people of our generation, you know, and
[39:15] we look at young people, we think it's a problem.
[39:17] But maybe for young people, it's not a problem for them.
[39:19] Maybe their brain is actually going to be different from our
[39:22] brain. We have an analogue brain.
[39:24] Maybe they'll have a different brain and is it necessarily bad
[39:28] or is it just going to be different?
[39:30] Are they going to relate differently?
[39:31] Is that OK to relate differently or is it not?
[39:34] There is now a new, it's not a new, but it's a, it's a, it's
[39:38] one of the sexual orientation identity that we call DG
[39:41] sexuality. And DG sexuality is people who
[39:44] connect the best through a screen online.
[39:47] And this is really booming at the moment.
[39:49] A lot of people identify as DG sexuals, Young people identify
[39:54] as digisexuals. Is it a problem or is it an
[39:57] emerging new thing? Because technology is with us?
[40:01] So I think sometimes we knew. We do need to just not ignore
[40:05] the problems, but definitely keep an open mind because
[40:09] otherwise we can so easily start to problematize something that
[40:12] might not be or might be for some people, or maybe a small
[40:15] group of people, but not generalize it to everyone else.
[40:19] And also this technology, you know, that's easy in our lives,
[40:22] it's still very new. And we have not been able to do
[40:26] research yet on how the young people today that grew up with
[40:30] the technology from, you know, year one with, with, with a
[40:33] phone, how they're going to be in, when they're in their 40s or
[40:37] 50s, because we still too early on.
[40:40] So we have to really see what these populations are doing at
[40:44] the moment. We're just making assumptions
[40:46] and we're making assumptions based on one way that we relate,
[40:49] one way that we know that we relate.
[40:52] But they could be other ways. And we just don't know how how
[40:54] it's going to go. So yes, sure, look at it.
[40:57] You know, it's OK sometimes to look at young people and, you
[41:01] know, sometimes think, oh, gosh, she's spending too much time on
[41:03] screen. But also to keep an open mind
[41:06] on, you know, we don't know if it's going to be a problem or
[41:08] not. I'm interrupting for one moment
[41:11] to ask one small favour. Please subscribe to the show.
[41:15] This helps it grow more than you know.
[41:17] And I'm so bad at asking this from you.
[41:20] I'm so bad at thinking about this.
[41:22] But you know, my goal was 100,000 to get to on YouTube and
[41:26] I really want to bring you more content and bigger episodes, and
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[41:32] So please do hit subscribe. Thank you.
[41:34] What age do you think it should be regarding kind of exposure to
[41:38] porn? Because I think that's like the
[41:40] big conversation, right? Because it's the unlimited
[41:42] access that they can have online.
[41:44] Yes, pornography is an adult entertainment.
[41:47] OK, so it is for adults. It is not for children.
[41:50] It is never recommended for children and should never be
[41:53] recommended for children. OK Children under the age of 18
[41:56] or whatever is the age of consent in in countries should
[41:59] not be accessing porn. It's for adults, just like
[42:02] horror Movies, OK, Horror movies there, there is no an age, an
[42:07] age thing on movies, you know, is because if you watch a horror
[42:11] movie when you're too young, you can actually get traumatized by
[42:14] the by the goal that you see. You know, horror movies can
[42:18] actually be really quite traumatic.
[42:19] Some people remember horror movies scenes when they were too
[42:23] young. They were not supposed to watch.
[42:25] So it's just across all the media.
[42:26] There are some media that are for adults and it should stay
[42:28] for adults. It's just how we regulate that,
[42:30] isn't it? When it's just at their
[42:32] fingertips and what that effect has on them when they are
[42:36] accessing it under the age of consent.
[42:38] Yes. And as you said, there's
[42:39] neither, you know, AI stuff and and we can find some sexy erotic
[42:46] pornographic material all of the place, even on social media,
[42:49] even on Instagram, even on Instagram.
[42:51] And I think part of part of that, because it's out there at
[42:54] the moment, it is not well regulated.
[42:57] We need to have this conversation with the young
[42:59] people and it really goes back to porn literacy and to sex
[43:03] dedication to make sure that the young people know what what
[43:06] they're watching, what to when to stop watching it and
[43:09] something to move away from if it's not appropriate for the
[43:13] age. Yeah.
[43:14] But hopefully in the future, there's going to be more
[43:16] regulations for the young people.
[43:18] And I, I know there are some countries that even have banned
[43:22] mobile phones for under 15, I think, or 16.
[43:25] I'm not sure if that's really good.
[43:26] I think that sometimes young people need to be able to
[43:29] connect online with their peers. But just like everyone else,
[43:33] everywhere else on online spaces, they will have
[43:35] predators. They will have some unpleasant
[43:39] things. And So what do we do with that?
[43:41] Do we teach the young people how to navigate those online spaces
[43:45] the safest they can, or do we ban it?
[43:49] It's a it's a big discussion. What did you think of The
[43:51] Manosphere, the Netflix documentary with Louis Faroux?
[43:54] I really want to know your thoughts on this.
[43:57] I think the manosphere is definitely a problem.
[43:59] And again, the manosphere is here because of the online
[44:02] stuff, right? It's people getting together
[44:04] online and creating that type of monosphere.
[44:09] I think that a lot of it is really not so much about a
[44:12] worldview or mindset, but it's actually something to do with
[44:15] making money out of it. Because people do make quite a
[44:18] lot of money out of saying some really awful things for some
[44:21] reason. And the monosphere is
[44:23] interesting in terms of porn because on one way it's it's
[44:26] very misogynistic. So it's relates to misogynistic
[44:30] porn and really unethical stuff going on there.
[44:34] But also another part of the manosphere is anti porn, anti
[44:38] masturbation. And that is with some forums
[44:41] that are specific for anti porn and anti masturbation.
[44:44] That's kind of says if you're a real man, you can resist your
[44:48] urges and if you're going to be masturbating to some naked
[44:51] women, then you're weak kind of things.
[44:54] And so there is this other side and that is also part of those
[44:57] forums, highly misogynistic too, because they will attack sex
[45:01] workers. They are anti-Semitic, they are
[45:04] homophobic, and they have now been categorized as an online
[45:07] terrorism activity. So it's actually really, really
[45:11] quite dangerous. But it is also part of the
[45:14] manosphere. Gosh, it feels like the opposite
[45:17] end of the spectrum. They're both quite extreme,
[45:19] aren't they, in their views. How do you think it's going to
[45:22] play out? You know, obviously, like only
[45:24] fans has become such a big online department now of where
[45:28] people access. But also, you know, I guess it
[45:31] kind of coming front, like, you know, coming online and having
[45:35] those stories exposed. I think.
[45:37] I mean, I was really shocked watching the Louis 3
[45:39] documentary. Shocked and not shocked.
[45:41] I guess in a way, not shocked by the fact that like, I just know
[45:43] that that's what's out there. And it made me just really sad
[45:47] that people feel that they have to perform in that way to have
[45:50] respect because it's very like disrespectful their behaviour.
[45:55] And it's so extreme. And anything in extremism in any
[45:57] way isn't healthy. You know, any kind of real
[46:01] extreme way of thoughts and views is extreme.
[46:06] And, you know, there's obviously been a lot that's come out past
[46:09] this where people say my lives have been ruined because of this
[46:12] documentary and I've been portrayed in a certain way.
[46:15] But like, are we creating a culture that is just kind of
[46:20] pushing this more, especially with the porn industry?
[46:22] The porn industry is so money making, right?
[46:24] It's only that purely for profit.
[46:27] So how do those two kind of go together?
[46:29] How? What do you think the evolution
[46:30] of that is? I don't know what the evolution
[46:32] is and, and again, it's like this is 1 type of porn.
[46:35] But it's really also important to know that there are millions
[46:39] of people who are accessing really good ethical porn.
[46:42] There is ethical porn, there is feminist porn, there is queer
[46:46] porn. There is platforms that show
[46:48] real sex with real people with constant conversations.
[46:52] So it's out there. It's accessible for men as well
[46:55] for men and women. Women love it, men love it.
[46:58] And so this is also very big part of the picture when you
[47:01] look at the monosphere, even though it is unethical,
[47:06] dangerous, really unpleasant, misogynistic and, and quite,
[47:10] quite violent, even in some cases, it's, it's also one group
[47:15] of people. I don't want to minimize it
[47:16] here, but I think it's also important to think that it's
[47:19] not, yes, they're very loud. That's the thing.
[47:21] They're very loud. Yes.
[47:23] And when we look at, I don't know if you've seen in the UK
[47:26] maybe a couple of months ago when there was this headline to
[47:29] say that we're going to send boys to misogyny, misogyny
[47:32] classes. No, I.
[47:34] Didn't OK, so there was this thing, this thing of of like
[47:36] there are some people who want to send boys to misogyny
[47:39] classes. OK, in the as an intention, I
[47:43] think it's OK to be able to talk about misogyny with boys.
[47:47] But I think that if we're going to send boys to misogyny
[47:50] classes, the implied message here is that boys are inherently
[47:54] bad unless they go to a class to learn to be good.
[47:58] And I don't like that message because this is not correct.
[48:01] What boys really need is to normalize being warm to each
[48:06] other, to normalize crying, to normalize hugging.
[48:10] They need more tenderness and rather than going to a class.
[48:14] And I think that if we can't do that with the new generations,
[48:18] and maybe there will be less monosphere, maybe there will be
[48:22] less demand for misogynistic porn, and maybe people can just
[48:26] be more kind of human and interacting in in basic human
[48:30] ways to each other. I guess I feel like a lot of
[48:32] that also came from fear from them.
[48:33] I think when somebody can be so extreme underlying, that can be
[48:36] a lot of fear, of course. Right.
[48:39] Yes, and so when you kind of look at it from that that angle,
[48:42] when I looked at kind of only fans describe, I'm referencing
[48:45] it because I think it's like the kind of biggest thing that's
[48:47] happened in the kind of porn sex evolution of our time at the
[48:50] moment. I was like, what are people
[48:52] going to only fans for? And the biggest thing that they
[48:55] found is that men are going to only found not for sex, but for
[48:59] someone simply to talk to. Yes, and it is before Only fun.
[49:03] It was sex workers, in person sex workers.
[49:05] A lot of people that go to see sex workers, they don't go for
[49:08] sex only. Sometimes they only go for a
[49:11] conversation. Sometimes they go for a cuddle
[49:14] and with Onlyfan, it's the same thing.
[49:16] Some people go because they want to have a conversation.
[49:18] They want to be able to talk about anything when there's no
[49:20] judgement where they can even express some of their erotic
[49:25] turn ONS that they might not want to do in real life.
[49:27] But sometimes it's just nice and fun to talk to someone about it.
[49:30] And so there's a big, big, you know, a lot of men will
[49:36] definitely go for that, for the connection.
[49:38] And you know, it's important to to really think about this.
[49:40] That's sex, even if it's just a 5 minute sexual experience.
[49:45] Sometimes it's to do with connection.
[49:47] It's not just men wanting to ejaculate.
[49:50] I think connection's such a big part of it, right?
[49:52] So we spoke a lot about shame and stigma about why people
[49:56] don't kind of have this conversation on as forthcoming
[49:59] with themselves, maybe with their partners, kind of so maybe
[50:04] even like clicking onto this episode, they're scared because
[50:06] it's got the word porn in it, right?
[50:08] And then go, gosh, imagine my partner so that I'm listening to
[50:10] a porn episode. Hopefully because it's slip,
[50:12] I'll be well that you know that it's a good thing.
[50:14] But the I'm going to flip now. I'm going to flip to the extreme
[50:17] end of someone that doesn't have the shame and stigma, because I
[50:20] think that is a big subset, but not everyone has that right.
[50:23] And so I'm going to name somebody now who is I think is
[50:26] the opposite that. And I'd love your thoughts on
[50:28] this person. So Bonnie Blue, she's someone
[50:32] who's made $2.1 million a month and slept with over 1000 men in
[50:36] 12 hours. And she represents that extreme
[50:39] and where, you know, for her shame is removed from that
[50:43] equation. She speaks so openly about it.
[50:44] She says that her parents are involved in the business and
[50:48] they're really proud of her and she thinks it's great.
[50:51] Like what's your clinical read on what's happening there, on
[50:55] how she speaks about it so openly and does big podcasts and
[51:00] she kind of wears it with a badge of honour that she can
[51:03] sleep with this many people in such a a finite amount of time.
[51:08] Yeah, it's interesting because I think here there's different
[51:11] things. There's the sexual practice and
[51:13] there's also making money out of it, and there there is being
[51:16] part of an industry. So if you're making so much
[51:19] money out of something that you're known for, then it's
[51:22] really hard to be honest and to actually figure out what's going
[51:26] on for that person, you know, not meeting that person.
[51:29] Myself as a therapist, I would just not know what's going on
[51:32] for them. But I think it's important to to
[51:35] separate those two things because as a sexual practice, it
[51:38] can be quite dangerous to have sex with so many men in such a
[51:42] short space of time. No, because the body sometimes
[51:45] just needs a rest. OK.
[51:47] And, and it depends how much Lube you take.
[51:50] It depends what are the, what are the agreements around it?
[51:53] You know, I hope there was some actual proper contract around
[51:55] it. So that she did not attract some
[51:57] men who were just wanting to abuse her and she believed it
[52:01] was just part of the porn scene because that can happen quite,
[52:05] quite a lot. You know, some men can just be
[52:07] attracted to someone that says, oh, great, it's an open door.
[52:09] I can come and, you know, lash out on however I want to.
[52:13] I hope there was some safety guidelines around this.
[52:15] But Even so, I think that to, to as a sexual practice, it's not a
[52:21] very safe sexual practice because it can really cause a
[52:24] lot of physical problems, a lot of physical injuries to do that.
[52:29] In terms of the business, if she's known for it, she is going
[52:33] to amplify it. She's going to make it look like
[52:36] something wholesome and something wonderful because
[52:39] that's what brings the money. But behind closed doors, it
[52:41] doesn't mean the same is true. A lot of people that will say
[52:46] some things out there just for just for the clicks or for the
[52:49] likes for, for finance is really, really quite different
[52:53] from what they feel or believe behind closed doors.
[52:56] So who knows? It's such an interesting
[53:00] landscape because I know Chris Williamson did a podcast with
[53:04] her and, and someone else in debate with her and she was on
[53:07] the manosphere very briefly. But it's, it's interesting
[53:11] because I think, you know, a lot of this conversation has maybe
[53:15] been dominated by the man's view.
[53:17] And she's someone who is kind of the woman stepping up saying,
[53:21] look at me, I'm doing all of this stuff and this is like,
[53:24] great. And I'm going to screw this
[53:25] person and that person. And I don't know, there's just
[53:28] kind of a, there's a different degree of how she speaks that is
[53:32] very opposite to the conversation that, that we're
[53:34] kind of having around porn and the ways that it maybe can be
[53:37] helpful for some people. It, it feels that she can put
[53:40] this very kind of like negative connotation that if you're not
[53:44] that way, she will, she will be that way for you.
[53:47] And it kind of puts that this like negative thing.
[53:49] And as you said, you know, I, I've listened to those
[53:52] conversations with her and she'll talk about, you know, how
[53:55] she gets turned on and how she can do that with, with 1000 men.
[53:59] But like from human anatomy, that doesn't feel normal.
[54:05] You know, it's like questioning, like, is that normal?
[54:08] Like, is that healthy? Like it doesn't feel healthy.
[54:12] It feels quite worrying. But kind of the explosion of the
[54:15] business for her is, you know, that's the kind of, that's the
[54:18] worry that I have with the messaging around it.
[54:20] I think everyone should be able to do exactly what they want to
[54:22] do. Absolutely.
[54:24] And and this is it. You know, I'm really awful women
[54:26] to be able to be out there really with a vibrant sexuality
[54:31] because female sexuality is shamed so, so much and and
[54:35] locked up. Somehow, somehow we don't
[54:36] society doesn't like having, you know, women with, you know, big
[54:41] sexualities. I think it's great that women
[54:44] can be that they can be out there and say, this is me.
[54:46] I do what I want. I'm in charge of my sexuality
[54:49] and I don't care what yes, confident and I don't care what
[54:51] society tells me. I'm going to do what I want to
[54:53] do and that is great. But as soon as you go into space
[54:56] of saying I can do those things and other people can't do it,
[54:59] therefore I'm better than others, then that's when the
[55:02] message starts to becoming problematic here because it will
[55:05] make other women feel like not good enough or maybe, oh, I
[55:07] should be able to do all these things.
[55:10] No, it's just again, you know, what she does is a very, very
[55:12] niche practice that is risky. And as you say with the anatomy,
[55:16] it's just not recommended. It's interesting.
[55:18] I've like kind of followed her, but I just feel like the scale
[55:22] of demand that that's had gives the whole context of this
[55:28] conversation such a negative spin.
[55:29] Because if that's what it, it looks like that's what men are
[55:32] seeking, you know, from the high demand and the influx and the
[55:36] variety that's had. And then I think that, you know,
[55:39] what does that tell us? Is that what men?
[55:40] Is that what men are seeking or not?
[55:43] Well, again, it's, it's good to have nuanced conversations here
[55:46] because as I was saying earlier, there is alien porn, there is
[55:48] vampire porn, there's all sorts of types of porn here.
[55:51] And, and what that shows is that people watch porn for fantasies.
[55:55] They don't always watch porn because they want to translate
[55:57] it into their real life. They just want to watch
[55:59] something kind of different. And, and that can be quite
[56:02] attractive, just like sometimes we watch sci-fi movies just
[56:06] because it's fun to get out of our own mundane life.
[56:10] And so people that can be attracted to gangbang scenes or
[56:13] to to this stuff that this person does does not mean that's
[56:16] what they want to do in real life.
[56:17] It doesn't mean that's what they want to partake in.
[56:19] It doesn't mean it's what they are mostly attracted to.
[56:22] It could just be entertainment for them, something different.
[56:25] So let's breakdown fantasies because we haven't got there
[56:27] yet. So I was having a conversation
[56:31] with a few people before this conversation that we had because
[56:35] I kind of wanted to speak to different guys and women and
[56:37] kind of say, you know, like, what's your thoughts around
[56:40] this? And in the inner circle
[56:42] conversations, like some guys were like, yeah, well, I have
[56:45] these fantasies, but I obviously don't want to do that to my
[56:47] wife, which is really interesting for me to hear.
[56:50] So they have this fantasy, but not that they didn't want to
[56:52] tell them, but they were like, I also just don't want to do that
[56:55] to my wife. So it's different, which is
[56:57] really interesting, which I thought was a good kind of thing
[56:59] to come into the conversation that it wasn't that they didn't
[57:02] want to share and they didn't feel safe, but they actually
[57:04] just didn't want to do that to someone that they loved.
[57:06] So let's like dive pics, like fetishes, kinks, fantasies, like
[57:11] because people might be confused like, oh, maybe I don't want to
[57:13] tell somebody or maybe I do, but I don't want to do it to them.
[57:16] So let's try and like uncover this because there's not that
[57:19] much conversation around this. I guess like on podcasts and in
[57:23] research and things like that. Because again, it's stigma and
[57:26] shame. That's right, yes.
[57:27] A lot of people that have some fantasies, they believe that
[57:30] they feel ashamed about it because they think, oh, what
[57:32] does that mean about me? Sometimes it means nothing.
[57:34] It's just a fantasy. And so some people might just
[57:37] wondering what it would be like to live on Mars.
[57:39] OK, it's a fantasy. We can have that fantasy.
[57:41] A lot of people have the fantasies of winning the
[57:44] lottery. And what would they do if they
[57:45] win the lottery? OK, it's a fantasies, you know,
[57:48] it's OK to have them, but it doesn't mean necessarily there
[57:52] has some something to do about your character, you know, And so
[57:55] and when when it comes to sexual content, it's the same thing.
[57:58] There are some things that we want to do in real life.
[58:00] There are some things that we've never done that we might think
[58:02] that we want to do. If we, you know, for example, we
[58:05] go if we watch porn and suddenly there's a scene that is with,
[58:10] oh, the, the woman kept the stilettos on.
[58:12] Oh, great. I found that quite arousing.
[58:14] Maybe I can try that with my wife.
[58:15] Maybe I can try that with my girlfriend if I ask, maybe not
[58:19] We'll see. I can ask and that can be
[58:21] something that can be translated, you know, into real
[58:23] life if some, if someone has a real interest for it.
[58:26] But there's a lot of other people that watch porn only just
[58:29] for fantasy and it never crosses into real life.
[58:32] A lot of the, a lot of our fantasy mind stays in fantasies,
[58:35] never wants to be in real life. Those are two different parts of
[58:38] our erotic brain. The erotic brain that wants to
[58:41] do things in real life and the one that stays in fantasies.
[58:44] And some people in fantasies can literally fantasize about
[58:47] anything. Fantasies are not wrong, they're
[58:50] just fantasies. It's not illegal to have
[58:52] fantasies. It's not too bad or wrong.
[58:54] It's the behaviour. OK, if you have some illegal
[58:56] fantasies that you translate into behaviours.
[58:58] Behaviours can be illegal and and non consensual and criminal.
[59:03] But fantasies aren't. And in fact, one of the most
[59:06] common fantasy with women is the rape fantasy.
[59:09] And that is very, very confronting to think about it.
[59:11] But it is what shows up in research as well.
[59:14] And what is that? Well, we don't know.
[59:16] But, you know, part of the theories is that having the
[59:19] fantasy about rape mean that you can control the scene.
[59:23] You can make it your own because it's in your own fantasy.
[59:25] You can create the story. And so in some ways, it's almost
[59:28] kind of like reclaiming a control that you wouldn't have
[59:31] if you were right in real life. But a lot of women think, oh,
[59:34] what's wrong with me to have this fantasy?
[59:36] You know, it's a very arousing fantasy.
[59:38] There's got to be something wrong with me.
[59:39] It might not be wrong. It might just be that it's a
[59:41] story that you're making up in your mind to either for a
[59:45] purpose and sometimes for no purpose.
[59:48] There's a lot of fantasies of people have.
[59:50] Gangbang is another fantasy. Outdoor sex is another, another
[59:53] fantasy. Outdoors sex.
[59:55] Oh, outdoors, outdoors, yes. And, and you know, some people
[59:58] do do outdoor sex sometimes, but for a lot of people, it's just a
[1:00:01] fantasy. And and you name it, you can
[1:00:03] just fantasize about anything, including having sex with an
[1:00:07] alien. Wow, the alien and vampires and
[1:00:11] porridge is like blowing my mind today.
[1:00:13] Tentacles as well. You know, tentacle pawns.
[1:00:16] What tentacle pawns? What tentacles?
[1:00:18] Like an octopus, Yeah. There's tentacle pawns and even
[1:00:21] that's that's really big because there's even like some sex toys
[1:00:24] that are of the shame of tentacles.
[1:00:27] Yeah, it's a big thing, I know. Wow, I'm learning so much.
[1:00:34] I really want to hear people's fetishes in the comments.
[1:00:38] I'm like, please can people just write down in the comments what
[1:00:41] their fetishes? I mean, that is going to be very
[1:00:43] strong if you're going to do that.
[1:00:44] But I'd love to. And this is wild tentacle pawns.
[1:00:47] OK, So what about the normal things that you'll see in clinic
[1:00:51] with people that come to speak to you around this?
[1:00:53] Like topic of fetishes, kinks, fantasies.
[1:00:57] I think a lot of the time is to normalize it because most king
[1:01:02] and fantasy and fetishes. If he is practiced constantly
[1:01:05] between adults, then there is no problem.
[1:01:08] Some people can just really practice a lot of things.
[1:01:11] It's got to be, if it's a practice that can have some
[1:01:14] risks, just to make sure that it's done within the awareness
[1:01:17] of risk. And that's part of the BDSM kink
[1:01:20] community's kind of message here.
[1:01:22] But a lot of the fantasies, a lot of the kinks that we have
[1:01:26] are really harmless and they can actually really enhance people's
[1:01:29] sex lives. It just a lot of the time people
[1:01:32] think they're wrong or bad or broken for having those kind of
[1:01:35] kink and fantasies, even if the especially if they are niche.
[1:01:41] OK, so for example, fetish of feet and foot fetish is really
[1:01:44] common. A lot of people have come across
[1:01:46] with people with foot fetish. So it's not, I mean, it can
[1:01:49] still be shameful for some people, but they tend to it it,
[1:01:53] it tends to be accepted that people would have a foot fetish,
[1:01:55] for example. But if you have a fetish for
[1:01:57] porridge, then that becomes a little bit more niche and people
[1:02:00] think, oh, I'm not going to say that because it's going to, you
[1:02:02] know, my partner might just think I'm weird.
[1:02:05] And so because of the fear of being perceived as weird, people
[1:02:09] just don't talk about those things.
[1:02:10] So most of the time in my clinic, it's just really to talk
[1:02:13] about it openly, to unpack it, to look at what is really going
[1:02:17] on for them. But most of the time with most
[1:02:20] of my clients is to help them normalize it and help them
[1:02:23] practice it. If they wish to be moved away
[1:02:26] from the fantasy into real life, practice it constantly well
[1:02:30] integrated into this the sex life and their relationship with
[1:02:34] partners who have, you know, a shared fetish and a shared
[1:02:38] fantasy. Well, it's interesting because
[1:02:40] Esther Perrell, who I love, one of my favorite people to listen
[1:02:44] to, she talks about sex with long term relationships dying
[1:02:47] because couples never share their fantasies, which I found
[1:02:51] really interesting. And so I was like, that's a
[1:02:54] that's maybe a big one to talk about.
[1:02:55] I think the common theme that's run through this conversation is
[1:02:59] shame and stigma. And so how can one another have
[1:03:04] the confidence to bring this up without one, feeling maybe
[1:03:07] humiliated by saying what they believe, maybe they've never
[1:03:11] said it out loud before, and two, maybe not worrying about
[1:03:14] that rejection with their partner.
[1:03:16] Because I think, you know, hearing Esther Perel say that
[1:03:18] was really interesting. And I remember we had that
[1:03:20] conversation when we spoke last week and you were saying a lot
[1:03:24] of the things that happens in long term relationships is the
[1:03:26] sex kind of dies because they're not turned on by one another.
[1:03:30] And then that reduces like intimacy.
[1:03:31] And then, you know, obviously from there it degrades more and
[1:03:34] more, but I can imagine as that's happening, you're way
[1:03:38] less likely to be more open and vulnerable about things in your
[1:03:41] sex life. So how do we balance that
[1:03:44] without also crossing a boundary and also not wanting to feel
[1:03:49] rejected? Like, I guess if that's what a
[1:03:51] big thing of dying couples is, it's important that we speak
[1:03:53] about it. And again, for me, I think it's
[1:03:55] really about how do we normalise it?
[1:03:57] And having a podcast like this is goes a long way with that.
[1:04:00] But to normalise talking about sex with your partner openly
[1:04:04] like we would with about taste for food or whatever, OK, we
[1:04:08] can, we are not socialized to be able.
[1:04:09] For me, I can tell you that I hate oysters.
[1:04:12] And if oysters is your favorite food, we can just accept each
[1:04:16] other and you won't shame me for hating oysters.
[1:04:19] That is your favorite food. And I'm not going to think
[1:04:21] you're weird because you love oysters, OK?
[1:04:23] And and we just need to have the exactly the same conversation
[1:04:26] about our sex life, about our fantasies, about, you know, some
[1:04:30] kicking fetishes. If you have, if we have any of
[1:04:32] that, anything that's in that erotic mind is part of that
[1:04:35] taste as well. And so, you know, how can we be
[1:04:37] normalizing to say, hey, for me, I just really want to watch
[1:04:41] people's feet. I get turned on.
[1:04:43] Oh, when I see a hairy chest, I get turned on.
[1:04:46] Oh, both men for me is a turn on.
[1:04:47] Oh, you know, whatever Lycra, you know, is a turn on.
[1:04:51] OK, we can talk about this and we can accept that people have
[1:04:54] differences and people will get turned on by different things.
[1:04:58] And so first that's, that's it, you know, to normalize it.
[1:05:00] And if we normalize it, then maybe people will feel more
[1:05:03] comfortable talking to their partners about it.
[1:05:06] And then with your partner, you don't have to have completely a
[1:05:09] matching erotic mind. It's not possible to have a
[1:05:11] complete match matching of erotic mind.
[1:05:14] There are some things that might turn you on that's not going to
[1:05:16] turn your partner, but you won't know until you actually spoke
[1:05:19] openly about it. And if you speak openly about
[1:05:22] it, then you're also likely to find quite a few matching turn
[1:05:25] ONS. And then you have to maintain
[1:05:28] them and you have to practice them, keep talking about them
[1:05:31] and practice and, and water them.
[1:05:34] You know, like to for the plants to grow.
[1:05:36] And that erotic mind is fluid as well.
[1:05:38] Sometimes we have different turn ONS at different times in life.
[1:05:41] Sometimes when our body changes, we have different ways that we
[1:05:44] want to have sex or different ways we want to be touched.
[1:05:46] So that needs to be an ongoing conversation as part of the
[1:05:50] relationship culture. And this is what I do a lot in
[1:05:53] my clinical, my consulting room as well, is to really help
[1:05:57] couples have those conversations and to maintain those
[1:06:01] conversations for life. And I do that with them because
[1:06:05] it's not affirmed in our society.
[1:06:06] If it was affirmed in our society, they wouldn't need to
[1:06:08] come and see a therapist to, to learn to talk about these things
[1:06:11] in that way. So I think we need, we need more
[1:06:14] of that more and more of those kind of conversations because
[1:06:16] that's when you have a good sex life.
[1:06:18] Those couples who don't have a sex life anymore, like Esther
[1:06:21] Pereira was saying, is because they just don't know how to even
[1:06:23] say it. They don't know to even how to
[1:06:26] to express it out loud, something that they believe
[1:06:28] maybe their partner will think it's weird.
[1:06:31] And then people stop making efforts.
[1:06:33] OK, so it's not like, you know, we can say in a relationship, we
[1:06:36] can say, hey, tonight, let's just dress up nicely, go to a
[1:06:39] lovely restaurant, a really nice posh restaurant.
[1:06:42] We can do that. But we don't do that with our
[1:06:44] sex life. We don't say, hey, let's just
[1:06:46] lose the pyjamas and just let's just wear something really sexy
[1:06:49] for each other tonight in our own bedroom and just create
[1:06:52] something sexy for a different atmosphere for the night.
[1:06:57] You know, long term couples don't think of doing that.
[1:07:00] So then they just lose the erotic energy, they lose
[1:07:04] attraction to each other, they don't know how to talk about it,
[1:07:07] and then they just end up in a sexless marriage or sexless
[1:07:10] relationships five years down the line.
[1:07:13] So I think about like relationships.
[1:07:14] We've had so many different conversations on the show about
[1:07:16] communications of relationships. And so, you know, Paul Brunson
[1:07:20] said, write down your virtues or write down your values to one
[1:07:23] another and like, share them very early on.
[1:07:26] You know, Alan Debotten said, like, ask that person why
[1:07:29] they're weird on a first date and like, pronounce yourself as
[1:07:31] an idiot. You know, we're all weird.
[1:07:33] We all have weirdness within us like and if we don't then you're
[1:07:36] not being honest. Yes, we are so.
[1:07:37] Weird. We're so weird.
[1:07:39] We're so weird. And I think sometimes we all
[1:07:41] just think that we're just the weird ones and actually all of
[1:07:44] us are weird. And, you know, he, Adam, has
[1:07:47] this amazing way of making everything that feels weird
[1:07:51] really normal. And what is what even is normal?
[1:07:55] That isn't even like a context really, because we're all on
[1:07:58] some type of weird spectrum. But we all kind of have,
[1:08:01] especially English like, you know, keeping up appearances,
[1:08:03] you know, the perfection on the outside.
[1:08:06] And so I think, you know, when people start relationships, if
[1:08:09] they're self aware and they want to really work on them, they
[1:08:12] might write down their values or virtues.
[1:08:14] They might write down what their boundaries are.
[1:08:15] They might write down what their non negotiables are.
[1:08:18] You know, people are really forthcoming with this stuff.
[1:08:21] How do people look at this in terms of our sex life?
[1:08:24] Because we've never really spoke about that on the show.
[1:08:26] We spoke about female orgasms, which was amazing and that did
[1:08:29] so well about women being able to voice more about clitoral
[1:08:33] stimulation and like women's needs and what a woman's orgasm
[1:08:37] looks like. But in terms of like the two
[1:08:40] people coming together, how should we be looking at having
[1:08:44] that conversation around our sex life and like things that we
[1:08:48] want to be speaking about and like maybe our non negotiables?
[1:08:52] Just the same as every other boundaries that that we talk
[1:08:55] about in, you know, when we first meet the boundaries of,
[1:08:58] you know, do we want monogamy? Do we want an open relationship?
[1:09:01] Do we want to live in the city? Do we want to live in the
[1:09:04] country? Do we want a pet?
[1:09:05] You know, are we going to be vegan?
[1:09:07] Are we going to vote in a particular party?
[1:09:10] Those all those things are value based boundaries and we need to
[1:09:14] have exactly the same conversation with sex and now
[1:09:16] erotic mind. We already know how we have
[1:09:20] these conversations because we're already having it in other
[1:09:22] topics. It's literally replacing the
[1:09:25] word with, you know, vegan with my like for porn or my fetish,
[1:09:31] my turn on. But I feel like people are
[1:09:34] really closed off because they feel like it's so much easier to
[1:09:37] talk about food, right, because it's so universally acceptable.
[1:09:41] But I think maybe until you connect trust with someone, then
[1:09:45] you can maybe have that. But I think if you don't trust
[1:09:48] them, it's really hard to open up maybe about that side of
[1:09:51] things. Even if you have that
[1:09:53] conversation, people can still maybe not.
[1:09:55] They might give you the answer that you want to hear because
[1:09:58] they think that's acceptable. Yes, and that is a big problem.
[1:10:01] You know, we're going back to the shame.
[1:10:03] We're going back to not really being comfortable to talk about
[1:10:06] this on the first day to early on because it's not affirmed in
[1:10:10] our society. But we can change society.
[1:10:13] You know, we have to change it ourselves because it's not going
[1:10:15] to be happening just out of nowhere.
[1:10:17] And we have to be able to. That's when social media can be
[1:10:20] good in the social media, when we have those, those individuals
[1:10:24] now, you know, women who are a lot more sexually vibrant and
[1:10:27] men who can talk more about, you know, crying and showing
[1:10:30] emotions and being vulnerable. Those things are out there as
[1:10:32] well for us to access and for us to learn from.
[1:10:35] And if we just continue and continue, it's going to be an
[1:10:39] uphill struggle, but we have to continue to normalize those
[1:10:42] conversations and to say, look, what if you tried?
[1:10:45] What if you tried on the first day to just talk also about one
[1:10:48] of your turn ONS and how over time you can make some
[1:10:51] boundaries over what you like and what you don't like.
[1:10:54] And those boundaries have to be reviewed because you know, we
[1:10:57] don't we're not always turned on with the same things forever.
[1:11:00] So you keep talking about this and how can you create that
[1:11:03] culture? How can you normalize it?
[1:11:05] Sometimes we have to take a risk.
[1:11:07] We have to risk shame, we have to risk rejection.
[1:11:12] But if we don't take a risk, then we might end U in a
[1:11:15] relationshipwith with someone who is completely different from
[1:11:19] who we want them to be in terms of our erotic mind or our erotic
[1:11:22] lives. O to not waste anyone's time.
[1:11:25] You know, I think let's just take the risk at the beginning.
[1:11:27] Let's just try. If it goes wrong, you're going
[1:11:29] to learn something from this. But if you don't say anything,
[1:11:32] or if you just pretend that you're someone that you're not,
[1:11:34] then it's just going to go wrong.
[1:11:37] It's there's more chance for some things to go wrong and.
[1:11:39] What if you were just aren't in that space?
[1:11:42] Like what if some people will listen to this and they're like,
[1:11:44] but I just don't have any of that stuff.
[1:11:46] Like, that's just not who I am. What would you say to those
[1:11:49] people? Well, I think if you have sex
[1:11:51] and if you're interested in having sex, you have something.
[1:11:54] What do you think about people that are asexual?
[1:11:56] People are asexual. The, you know, it's a sexual
[1:11:58] orientation just just like any other sexual orientation and
[1:12:01] this there's no issues with that.
[1:12:02] But again, if there are a lot of essexual people feel that
[1:12:05] there's something wrong with them because the word is sexual
[1:12:07] is not out there a lot and there's not a lot of
[1:12:10] conversations about it. So they feel there's something
[1:12:12] wrong with them and then they're going to pretend to be sexual or
[1:12:15] they're going to pretend to, they're going to try really hard
[1:12:19] to try to be sexual and that can be very bad for them.
[1:12:21] So I think with essexuality, it's the same thing to be able
[1:12:25] to talk about this early on, to find other partners who are also
[1:12:29] asexual or other partners or have or have a sexual boundary
[1:12:33] where asexuality is part of it, not a problem, but part of it.
[1:12:36] So some people might be in a relationship, in an open
[1:12:39] relationship, for example. So have the the romantic
[1:12:42] connection with with one to be the primary relationship with
[1:12:45] the person that is not asexual is able to have sex in the way
[1:12:48] that is well agreed by everyone. Or it could be just two asexual
[1:12:53] together where they just enjoy a really fantastic thriving
[1:12:57] relationship with no sex or very little sex.
[1:13:01] I feel like so much of what this kind of comes down to is the
[1:13:05] self-awareness of the person, feeling comfortable in their
[1:13:08] self to really knowing what they want.
[1:13:11] That's kind of what I'm grasping from this conversation, not on
[1:13:15] what's good and what's bad on actually finding the right
[1:13:18] person for your fit as opposed to fitting into what that person
[1:13:22] wants from you. That's right.
[1:13:24] Which is I think where like sometimes dating subculture can
[1:13:27] go wrong, right? Like especially maybe a woman
[1:13:31] being like, Oh well, this man's not ready to commit.
[1:13:33] So I'm going to hang around until he's ready and fit and
[1:13:36] shape shift into what he wants. And then maybe a man being like,
[1:13:39] well, I'm not ready for her until I'm a provider and all
[1:13:42] these things. So I'm going to shape shift into
[1:13:44] what she wants. You know, it's like both ways.
[1:13:47] And actually rather than coming and being like, I'm really self
[1:13:50] assured and I really want to meet somebody who is aligned on
[1:13:53] these things with me. That's when I think these
[1:13:56] conversations like naturally flow more because you've got a
[1:13:59] very receptive person on the other end of that conversation.
[1:14:03] Whereas I think a lot of us in in all types of relationship
[1:14:06] conversations have sat against someone who feels very
[1:14:09] restrictive in their mind process.
[1:14:12] And so automatically that makes you not want to have these type
[1:14:14] of conversations. Absolutely, that's right.
[1:14:17] And, and the in between, when you can have those flowing
[1:14:20] conversations, honest flowing conversations, then you can also
[1:14:24] ban some things and adapt some things because you don't have
[1:14:27] you. Sometimes you can change some
[1:14:29] things about yourself to meet the other person as well, to
[1:14:31] have that kind of compromise in the, in the middle, not
[1:14:33] compromise the entire sense of self, not compromise some things
[1:14:36] that are really important for you erotically, but there are
[1:14:39] still some things that can be adapted and, and compromised.
[1:14:42] My, my partner is gluten free and as a French person is really
[1:14:46] hard to be with someone who's gluten free.
[1:14:48] I know, right? You could have made that
[1:14:51] compromise OK and it's OK and it and it works.
[1:14:56] I went through a phase of being gluten free when I lived in
[1:14:59] Paris and I honestly couldn't survive.
[1:15:02] No, in Paris you can't survive. I could not survive.
[1:15:05] No, exactly. And when I got married to to my
[1:15:08] husband, my vows, you know, again, that's the thing, even in
[1:15:11] marriage, vows sometimes can be embedded in some scripts that
[1:15:14] can be unhelpful. You know the the thing of
[1:15:17] promising to somebody something forever is problematic in the
[1:15:21] 1st place because we change all the time.
[1:15:23] And so my vows in my wedding day with my husband was, I promise
[1:15:27] you, nothing other that I will change and I will keep in touch
[1:15:31] with you with the change. Wow.
[1:15:33] And those were my vows, and they were vows because they were
[1:15:36] really truthful to me. Wow, that's beautiful.
[1:15:40] And that's all I can. That's all I can promise my
[1:15:43] husband. I guess that's a big thing that
[1:15:45] I've learned. I mean, this podcast to me, I've
[1:15:47] learnt so much. I have to say, it's been like
[1:15:50] the university of life where every week I'm speaking about
[1:15:55] something with emotional, physical, spiritual, mental
[1:15:58] health. But I think the thing that I've
[1:16:00] learnt from relationships that and, and, and Alan said this
[1:16:04] really well, it's not just on whether you're matched
[1:16:08] correctly, it's on the commitment to growth and change.
[1:16:11] Like are you committed to growing and understanding and
[1:16:14] changing? Actually, that's really what you
[1:16:17] need. Because if the other person
[1:16:19] isn't, then you're going to be stuck in the ground in the mud
[1:16:22] and not being able to move if you can't pivot or change
[1:16:25] directions or health, self-awareness.
[1:16:28] And so I guess, you know, the biggest thing is not just have
[1:16:32] you met your soul mate or have you met your best friend, it's
[1:16:34] like, is that person person committed to growing with you?
[1:16:37] Absolutely. And that's the same
[1:16:39] conversations with the porn conversation.
[1:16:41] These people on the two side are really unflexible.
[1:16:44] It's just going to be hard to resolve issues or to or to stay
[1:16:48] together in anything with the sexual mind, the erotic mind,
[1:16:53] king fetishes or any turn ONS. If people are unflexible.
[1:16:57] It's just very hard to, you know, to meet in the middle.
[1:17:00] Well, I guess what happens there, and this maybe could it
[1:17:03] can be from porn or it can be from from anything within a
[1:17:06] relationship, whether it's someone wants to do something
[1:17:10] and the other one doesn't. I think if you create so much
[1:17:13] friction, then the person maybe just goes behind your back
[1:17:16] anyway. Or if you can't communicate with
[1:17:18] that person because you're going to be met with so much
[1:17:20] resistance, the person learns to not communicate with you because
[1:17:23] it becomes exhausting. That's right.
[1:17:25] And then conversations are shut down and then people just meet
[1:17:28] their needs elsewhere or in a different way.
[1:17:30] Exactly. And I think that's the one thing
[1:17:32] that I think every relationship wants to try and stop is stop
[1:17:35] not having honesty because honesty really is if you have
[1:17:38] honesty, if you don't like what the honest answer is, at least
[1:17:42] you're prepared to deal with and make your own choice from that
[1:17:45] honest conversation. I think what I found from
[1:17:49] relationships and from conversations on this show is
[1:17:51] that when you don't have honesty, you don't don't have
[1:17:54] control. So you actually then can't make
[1:17:56] the right judgement because you don't have all the information.
[1:17:59] That's right. You know, that seems to be such
[1:18:01] an important part of whether it's porn, whether it's sex,
[1:18:04] whether it's commitment, whatever way relationship you
[1:18:08] decide to have, honest is like the biggest thing.
[1:18:12] So for you, if you could redesign how we speak about sex
[1:18:17] and porn, what would you? What would you want the
[1:18:21] conversation to be like? I would like to be a
[1:18:24] conversation with so many different people with so many
[1:18:27] different views in one room and talking to each other and learn
[1:18:30] from each other rather than just people believing that their
[1:18:34] feeling is true and other people's is wrong.
[1:18:37] And this is really what I find what I noticed in our society
[1:18:40] today, that we've we've lost the art of debating and having those
[1:18:45] conversations. And I think we need to really
[1:18:47] bring that back because it's just so important, especially on
[1:18:50] topics that are where there's no one clear answer.
[1:18:52] The topic of our erotic minded topic of our turn ONS, the topic
[1:18:56] of porn, the topic of how do we conduct our relationship is so
[1:19:02] individual and so diverse. And for one thing that works
[1:19:06] really well would not work for somebody else.
[1:19:08] And all of it is part of the exploration and all of it is
[1:19:12] part of the picture. And we need to be able to talk
[1:19:15] about those things with each other, not against each other.
[1:19:19] Somebody who hates porn is totally fine.
[1:19:21] They don't have to have it in their home.
[1:19:23] They don't have to be in a part in a partnership with someone
[1:19:25] who does. But it doesn't mean that someone
[1:19:28] else watching porn is bad. OK.
[1:19:31] And I think it's important that we don't impose our own moral
[1:19:33] values onto other people because people will have different moral
[1:19:37] values. People will have have different
[1:19:39] ways of interacting with the partners, with the sex life,
[1:19:43] with the erotic mind, whether it's through a media or in
[1:19:46] person. And all of it can be good.
[1:19:49] And that can be part of the thriving experiencing of being
[1:19:53] human. It doesn't always have to be
[1:19:54] bad. I think that's like the nuance
[1:19:56] and every conversation isn't it around anything that can fill
[1:19:59] taboo. I think having it won in a safe
[1:20:02] space is like so important. And then anything I think about
[1:20:08] it from drugs, from sex, from alcohol, from, from anything
[1:20:13] that can feel that it can tip into something that could be
[1:20:16] problematic because all of those things can lead to problems, but
[1:20:20] if they're dealt with in the right way, then it it doesn't
[1:20:22] have to be. Yes, everything can be a
[1:20:24] problem, you know? Going to the gym can be a
[1:20:26] problem, Eating can be a problem, you know.
[1:20:29] Yeah, huge. Working.
[1:20:31] Working too much can be a problem.
[1:20:33] You know anything. We can just overdo pretty much
[1:20:35] anything. So we do have to always think,
[1:20:38] you know, why am I overdoing this?
[1:20:40] You know, what is going on for me.
[1:20:41] You know, it's the person that needs to be self reflective, not
[1:20:44] the, the, you know, you must do this and that, you know, as a
[1:20:49] blanket instruction. There's no instruction.
[1:20:52] We have to be introspective and to think, you know, why am I
[1:20:54] overdoing it? What is the consequence?
[1:20:56] What do I need to change to have a more balanced life for me?
[1:21:00] You know, somebody working 40 hours a week might be totally
[1:21:04] normative and totally fine and healthy for one person and it
[1:21:08] can be overdoing it for another. So we just need to just be going
[1:21:12] back to ourselves and really thinking for ourselves.
[1:21:15] So so we thank you so much for having the first conversation to
[1:21:18] live well, be well about porn. I'm very I feel like it's come
[1:21:20] also a great time because there's so many things happening
[1:21:23] right now and I hope that I'd love to hear of people's
[1:21:26] comments below like what they feel about this within
[1:21:29] themselves. Maybe this is like a a safe
[1:21:31] space for people to share their thoughts around this, and
[1:21:35] there's always going to be people for and against, but I
[1:21:38] think that's also what keeps it healthy.
[1:21:41] Yes, absolutely. We have to keep we have to keep
[1:21:43] the conversation and it's changing like we were talking
[1:21:46] about today, the landscape of of our lives with with technology
[1:21:50] is changing and we don't we don't have enough research to be
[1:21:53] able to make a real kind of opinion about it.
[1:21:55] So we just have to keep talking to each other and not demonize
[1:21:58] each other for doing something that someone class finds
[1:22:01] distasteful. Totally, and I hope that people
[1:22:04] within themselves have enough moral compass that we all deep
[1:22:08] down we have a feeling and we know we've done something that's
[1:22:10] potentially not right. And I think, you know, as long
[1:22:14] as you use that moral compass within yourself and that's kind
[1:22:16] of the an important validation. And that doesn't mean that
[1:22:19] everyone has that because I know not everybody, but our listeners
[1:22:22] that listen to the show pretty sure all have that.
[1:22:25] And I think that's kind of their gauging point on anything and
[1:22:29] any behaviour that they do, it's for them what fills within their
[1:22:33] moral rights or what's correct. And, and the tricky bit here is
[1:22:37] to differentiate between your actual moral compass that you
[1:22:40] have for yourself or is it, or are you feeling something
[1:22:43] because of shame, something that you actually enjoy doing, but
[1:22:46] shame tells you not? And sometimes it can be really
[1:22:49] tricky to find out to find this, you know, is it me, my own moral
[1:22:54] compass, or is it something that I'm feeling it's wrong because
[1:22:57] someone tells someone else is telling me it's wrong.
[1:23:00] And in the area of sex and porn, this is it is one of the tricky,
[1:23:04] the tricky bit that often I spend a lot of time with my
[1:23:06] clients really helping them, figuring out, figuring out what,
[1:23:10] what is what. And so for your listeners and
[1:23:12] for anyone else out there really wondering about these things, I
[1:23:15] would say spend more time with yourself.
[1:23:17] Spend more time with yourself. Try to just not listen to all
[1:23:20] the noises around and look at what is for you inside, what is
[1:23:24] right for you and not right for you.
[1:23:26] Giving all the options that sometimes right is watching porn
[1:23:31] as well as having an in person relationship as well as having
[1:23:34] different types of sexual experiences.
[1:23:37] And for someone else it might not be.
[1:23:39] So just really stay with you. Just like some people are fans
[1:23:42] of horror movies, other people hate them.
[1:23:45] It's also part of the same picture.
[1:23:47] And I'd say actually get a therapist.
[1:23:49] Yeah. Get someone who like he, he was
[1:23:51] a sex therapist who can understand and can help you
[1:23:54] navigate because I think sometimes trying to figure
[1:23:56] everything out on your own is also overwhelming.
[1:23:58] But I know that that is another barrier of shame.
[1:24:01] So, you know, I say like, if you can get to a therapist to try
[1:24:04] and explore this, I mean, incredible.
[1:24:06] Because you've just overcome that barrier of stigma and
[1:24:08] shame. And I guess that as you do, you
[1:24:11] help these people normalize their own thoughts, like help
[1:24:15] them understand what's going on. And I think as soon as people
[1:24:19] understand and feel seen and heard, that's like, that's huge.
[1:24:23] That's everything. So it leaves me with my final
[1:24:26] question, which is what does live well be well mean to you?
[1:24:31] I think we've talked about it already, isn't it?
[1:24:33] It's just really about having a balanced life, the best that you
[1:24:36] can with yourself, but also allowing that we are just weird
[1:24:40] as humans. OK, so it's not just about being
[1:24:44] perfect. Let's just not ever be perfect,
[1:24:46] but just embrace being weird in a way that really works for you.
[1:24:50] Yeah, I can't remember what this line was, but it was something
[1:24:52] like like the stress of perfectionism ends up like kind
[1:24:56] of leading to the imperfectionism and can kind of
[1:24:58] like that's the thing that ends up destroying you.
[1:25:00] And I think it's miserable. And it's so much about what I
[1:25:04] talk about with self compassion in my work, which is like the
[1:25:07] big thread through everything that I do.
[1:25:09] But it's weird. Like it is a very British thing
[1:25:11] of keeping up appearances. You know, the very it was a very
[1:25:15] famous TV show. And I think sometimes we just
[1:25:18] need to like shake that off. And I just love when Alan said
[1:25:21] we're all just weird and everyone connects to it because
[1:25:25] we do go home. We just think, am I the weird
[1:25:27] one? But we're all weird.
[1:25:30] And I think that's the beauty of it.
[1:25:31] And I think the more that we can express and show our individual
[1:25:34] selves, the more actually you stick out and the more you
[1:25:38] normally shine. Exactly.
[1:25:40] And when you're weird and when you embrace being weird, then
[1:25:42] you can just find your other weird people that really matches
[1:25:45] the. Weird.
[1:25:48] It's so true. Well, thank you so much for
[1:25:51] coming on. Speaking about this is so
[1:25:52] interesting. And yeah, I mean, I'm interested
[1:25:55] to see. I'm interested to see the
[1:25:57] response to this episode. But thank you.
[1:25:59] Thank you.

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