April 6, 2023
Scheduling Sex, Erectile Issues & Sexual Avoidance
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- Is scheduling sex a good idea?
- And how do you deal with a partner – who is struggling with erection issues?
- Is avoidance of sex but engagement with porn an indication of a Madonna-whore complex?
We discuss all this and more with the therapist Kat Kova.
Don’t forget to check out the Womanizer Starlet, which is on sale this week & you can save an EXTRA 15% with code DRJESS15.
Kat Kova is currently; a Ph.D. student in the Social and Personality Psychology Program at York University. She holds a Master of Science Degree in the Couple & Family Therapy Program from the University of Guelph, an Honours BA Degree in Psychology from York University and a Certificate in Sexuality Studies from York University. She is an Associate Member of BESTCO (Board of Examiners of Sex Therapy and Counselling in Ontario) and has completed the Sex Therapy Intensive Training at the University of Guelph. She is trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT), Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT), Narrative Therapy and mindfulness approaches and personalizes treatment according to your specific needs and the concerns you wish to address.
Kat is also trained in embodied experiential dreamwork practices, an effective treatment for alleviating suffering from trauma-related nightmares and PTSD symptoms.
Learn more on the Kat Kova Therapy website.
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Rough Transcript:
This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health, or other professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns.
Scheduling Sex, Erectile Issues & Sexual Avoidance
00:02
You’re listening to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast, sex and relationship advice you can use tonight.
00:17
Welcome to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast. I’m your co-host Brandon Ware here with my lovely other half, Dr. Jess. Good morning. It is 10.45 on a Monday morning for us here. Yes it is. And at 10.45 in the morning, would you like to schedule some sex? I would sure like to schedule some sex. Where are we going with this? Do you feel like we schedule sex at all? No, I don’t. Okay. So I feel like we sort of do. I know that it doesn’t go in our calendars, but I feel like we make time for it. Who are you having sex with then?
00:47
I’ll invite to the wrong Brandon. Another Brandon. It’s another realtor named Brandon. It’s really good if anyone’s in the market. At multiple things apparently. Okay. I know we don’t put it in the calendar. I know we don’t say, hey, at 3 PM on Saturday, would you like to have the sex with me? Sexy time. I do feel like we carve out time. I have an idea sometimes of when you’re going to want to have sex with me. Do you? Yeah. I’ve got to tell. I’ve got to tell. You don’t know you want it, but I know you want it.
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I don’t know what the tell it. Okay, I’m going to give one example. When I… Please do share more of Brandon’s secrets. When I’m on the road for work and I know that I’m leaving, you carve out time the night before. Yes, I do. Not just for sex, but just to be with me, to try and be home, to try and not be working, to try and not have phone calls. And it always leads to sex. It usually does. Yes, you’re right. I do do that. So there’s some scheduling of sex. And you know, we’ve got an expert who’s going to help us kind of parse whether or not we should schedule sex
01:47
There’s research on the topic. Let’s schedule in this time to start right now. Let’s do this. Before we welcome our esteemed guest, quick note, the Womanizer Starlet is 50% off at lovehoney.com or lovehoney.ca or lovehoney.uk, wherever you are in the world. Better schedule this in. Schedule it, no, it’s 50% off for the Womanizer Starlet. So if you have not tried this technology, check it out, Womanizer Starlet, and you can save a little extra, 15% extra to be exact, with code,
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Jess 15, lovehoney.com, womanizer, starlet, go check it out. Schedule, orgasm, go. All right, okay, we’re gonna chat with Kat Koven now. So I’ve known Kat quite a while. She’s a therapist in Toronto. Kat is a PhD student of the Social and Personality Psychology Program at York University, Brandon’s alma mater. Yep, yep. And she holds a master’s of science degree in couple and family therapy from the University of Guelph. She has an honors degree in psychology, also from York University,
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studies from York University. She is an associate member of BESCO, which is the Board of Examiners of Sex Therapy and Counseling here in Ontario. Well, I’m not quite in Ontario, but I’m from there. And she’s completed the sex therapy intensive training at the university. Thanks so much for being here, Kat. It’s great to see you again. It’s great to see you too. Like four years later, wow. I know, in a blink of an eye. And you know, I know so many therapists practices have filled up over the last few years and there’s burnout on all ends. How are you keeping? Yeah.
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I’m very jealous to find out that you were in a warm place. Yeah, for me, I think the lack of sunshine and the cold really kind of impact my mood and then it’s harder to show up. But I think this is like the place where you have to practice good boundary setting. And since we last met, I went back to school to do my PhD in social and personality psych.
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running a practice, very busy practice. Yeah, sure, can definitely lead to burnout, but yeah, I’ve been practicing some ways to kind of maintain my presence in all different aspects. And really excited to talk to you today about some of the research that we’ve been doing. Yeah, I’m super interested in your research, but I am curious, what are your practices to keep that balance, to be able to be present, not only with clients, but I’m sure just for yourself and the people in your life? Yeah, I think the most important thing that I’m learning
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keep reteaching myself and reminding myself is just the power of saying no. I think you have to own your no’s before you can own your yes’s when it comes to like sex and relationships. I’m trying to do a better job of that when I’m saying yes to life, love. I am having to say no to some opportunities. But I certainly couldn’t pass this up and wanted to reconnect with you and also find
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think about spontaneous and planned sex overall? Because I’ve heard you talk about your own sex life together and some of the spontaneous things that you’ve done, but I have a sense that you also value very much planning. I mean, most of the sex, I don’t want to say it’s planned in that we’re like putting it in our diary, but so much of it is, listen, I know I’m leaving tomorrow, so we’re just going to make this happen tonight. And I always know that Brandon’s going to kind of block off time and not specifically for sex, but for us for the relationship, for the connection,
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of the sex, because we’ve got to get it in while we can get it in. So, all right, I definitely want to get to your research, but first I just wanted to get your perspective as a therapist on a letter that I recently received. I shouldn’t say letter, an email that I received from a listener. So I’m going to read through it if you don’t mind and would love to hear what you think. Sure. Yeah, let’s hear it. Okay. So this person says, we’ve only been together nine months now. He’s amazing in every way, kind, loving, respectful. I’m so in love with him, but we’ve been having issues in the bedroom. He will get an erection.
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act on it, he goes soft. I also do all the initiating and I’m often presented with excuses as to why he can’t have sex. Tired, hungry, headache, etc. Yet, he’s always all over me with kisses and cuddles and when we’re fortunate enough to have sex, he only wants to do it in the bedroom and is very specific to doggy style only, which I find a bit disconnecting. We’ve been to a few therapy sessions and the sex therapist believes he may have the Madonna whore complex as he does watch and masturbate to porn frequently
06:17
I really love this man, but after looking up the complex online, I’m terrified to get into a sexless marriage. As I’m a highly sexual person in a relationship, I don’t know what to do. I feel lost because he’s not the most open person to self-development. And doing the work to get to the root of the problem would love your expert advice as this issue is causing a lot of tension between us. And I’m open to doing whatever it takes to resolve it.”
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leads to feelings of confusion and not knowing what the path forward is. It sounds like she’s really caught kind of in a paradox too, like really, really loving this person, but not being able to picture herself not having the sexual relationship that she envisions herself having or needing to have going forward. And that’s sort of, I think, at the crux of the Madonna-whore complex is that
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yourself emotionally and vulnerably and tenderly with your romantic partner but your sexual energy is completely directed elsewhere whether it’s through pornography or whether it’s at different quote-unquote types of women that you just don’t see your partner being and it could be that they’re you know actually a little bit different or it could be that you’re just sort of blocking
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therefore not being able to kind of express yourself sexually with them, which can be pretty devastating because it’s sort of a disconnect and really that person who’s on the receiving end of being, you know, kind of not objectified, like not de-objectified in a way, doesn’t really allow their sexual selves to be seen. And I think there could be lots and lots of different reasons for this.
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relationship. I know that sounds very Freudian and sort of like outdated, but oftentimes if you have a very nurturing relationship with your mother or you’ve seen her hurt, whether that be through sexual violence, physical violence, you may sort of disown these aspects within yourself that are sometimes
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bit to act on your desires or like you may want to have aggressive sex but not with that partner in particular that you love and care about so much and so you don’t want to be that person that like hurt your mom as simple and as like weird as that sounds and complex as that sounds all at the same time but i think that that sometimes is part of it what are your thoughts i’ve been i feel like i’m ranting over here no i think that’s great i mean i don’t have the same amount of the same volume
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From the small amount of information that this person has provided, I think I would want to also tune into the anxiety side, because I’m sure you have seen so many cases where people are avoidant of sex, or avoidant of partnered sex, because of anxiety. And we have to like unpack all the layers of notions of masculinity, and what it means to sexually so-called perform, the idea that you need to have an erection. And the moment you worry about having an erection, of course the body goes into the stress response and you can’t get an erection. And I’ve seen so many cases.
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and I’m sure you’ve run into the same thing, where people into their 40s, into their 50s, have basically spent their whole lives avoiding sex because they are nervous about getting an erection, which means they don’t get an erection. And if we just tuned into the anxiety part of it, the performance part of it, the shame part of it, the notions of virility and sexuality and the way those things tie together, we could address some of that anxiety. So I think what I’m missing here, like the Madonna-whore complex, I think that therapist has more information
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do, right? And so I think that’s such an important exploration that would be missed in this conversation if this person hadn’t inserted it for us. And I think that goes hand in hand with addressing the anxiety piece. And there’s so much shameless and I’ve watched people, men in particular, stay in really unhealthy, unsatisfying, unfulfilling relationships because they’re dealing with erectile dysfunction. And their biggest fear is A, that they’ll leave this person and they’ll never have sex with anyone else again because, or they’ll never have a connection with anyone
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or B, that they can’t leave this person because that person will tell the world about their erectile issues. And that might sound very extreme to people who aren’t dealing with erectile dysfunction and the associated shame, because in the end, like erectile dysfunction, I’m not trying to minimize it. It actually doesn’t have to be a big deal for a couple of reasons. It’s treatable. If you can train yourself to not have an erection, you can also train yourself to have an erection. You also don’t always need to have an erection, right? Like there’s lots of different types of pleasure and connection. So in terms of going back to like, what do you do?
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nine months, you really love this person. One thing that struck me, and this might be a perception from the person who wrote it as opposed to, you know, necessarily how the other partner feels, but the guy in the situation doesn’t really feel super open to self-development, or at least that’s the partner’s interpretation. Whereas the person writing says they’re really open to doing whatever it takes, and I do worry about that disconnect. I do worry about that compatibility issue. If one of you is willing to put in a different amount of effort than the other, and also being only nine months in,
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I would want to have a conversation. And since they have a therapist, they’re so lucky they can have a facilitated conversation around, okay, so this is a really important thing to me. What are we willing to do? And maybe sex doesn’t look exactly as this person expected it to based on their previous experience and what is socioculturally, I think, dictated to us. But there needs to be that conversation over, this is important and I’m wondering what kind of work you’re willing to do and here’s the work I’m willing to do. And I’m sure their therapist can help to facilitate that for them.
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One thing that I see quite a bit is that there is quite a bit of resistance when you’re dealing with like a Madonna horror complex in the individual, not for their partner. And I think part of it is for the exact reason that you just mentioned. It’s years and years and years of learned avoidance behavior, learned coping strategies to deal with this sort of split within the self.
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And if you’re dealing with a Madonna whore complex, you’re like, you know what? Yeah, I want that company. I want the companionship. I want this person. And I really love and admire and respect this person. I want to have a very loving relationship with them and all the cuddles. And you’re satisfied, you know, and you might find your own ways to meet your sexual needs in the way that you want to. But there’s a split. And the other person is left kind of, you know, in the balance, hanging in the balance
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And I think that needs to be addressed very, very, very gently and very slowly. And it might be about just first talking to the individual about, well, what happens if nothing changes here? What happens five years down the road if you’re not willing to take a look at this right now? Is your partner still going to be there? Are you going to experience this in another relationship yet again and worry about losing that person?
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to you that you actually keep your partner around. And so kind of doing a little bit of that motivational interviewing with them as a way towards looking at maybe how to change, how to work on this so that you can integrate things. And actually, I just, I got a very, very funny image pop into mind from Sex in the City, where Trey and Charlotte are going through this problem and he just can’t sexualize her. And, you know, he’s into this magazine called Juggs.
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with just very big, full-breasted women, and then just sticks her picture onto all of these women in the magazine as a way to kind of bridge those two worlds together. It was a very funny scene, just came to mind. And that can be really hard to bridge those worlds, because, and again, it goes back to the shame around sex, that sex is something we do kind of in shame, and it’s naughty and it’s bad, and whereas the person you love is somebody that you respect and care for,
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as you said, objectify. And when we say objectify, we don’t mean reduce to an object, but we mean sexualize, right? Because it can be very desexualizing to feel like, no, no, no, you’re someone I love. And this happens oftentimes post-kids, right? In hetero relationships, where they start to see this woman as a mother, right? And also, we also have that dynamic in relationships where there’s a parent-child dynamic and that can absolutely interfere with attraction. And so it does take a little bit of work to, I mean, it’s not as simple as saying, oh yeah, I can love and respect you and spank you.
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and I can love and respect you and call you a dirty whore, whatever it is, you know, turns the two of us on. It’s not as simple as just saying it for most people. You actually have to do some work to impact the shame and the dichotomization of really it comes down to good girls versus bad girls. And maybe even looking at some of the misogyny in that, in some of the patriarchy, some of the reasons we think that way, because we can be lots of different things at lots of different times with different people in different scenarios. Yeah, that’s very well said. Yeah, I think that’s true.
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leave it at there’s a lot more to unpack here and hoping that that couple or that person, those people really find a way to do that. Yeah, so I hope this is helpful. It’s hard when we receive these emails, we want to help and there’s only so much information we have. And then to be fair to people, I’m like, please don’t write me 40,000 word essays. Not that this person didn’t, they sent me a nice paragraph, but this is something that you hopefully can chat with your therapist about as well. And I think there’s the kind of two areas in terms of communicating with one another.
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this relationship, as you said so perfectly. And then if you figure out, is it anxiety? Is it the Madonna-whore complex? Are the two tied together? And how do we work through those issues? So talking about sex, this is your area, and I’m really excited to talk about your research because you’re conducting some really interesting research collecting data on planned versus spontaneous sex. So I’m gonna ask you point blank before we get into the research, should we consider scheduling sex?
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I will talk about this with my sex therapist and relationship therapist, Haton, first, and then I can tell you what the research shows us. And so I think this was a really interesting kind of path for me to take to actually do this research because as a sex therapist, we’re often recommending that people actually plan sex. And again, it’s kind of like what you said, it’s not necessarily scheduling it in, but it’s saying, let’s set aside time.
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two to three times a week to actually do our sex therapy homework exercises so that we don’t continue to engage in this avoidance pattern where we’re disconnected sexually, where now there’s resentment and there’s anger, but we’re actually turning towards each other and putting in the time and the work. And we have a bunch of different kinds of interventions that we use with people like Sense8 Focus and ask people to do this so that they, first of all,
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turn to each other, make time, reconnect sexually, but also create some mindfulness and intention around their sexual relationship and create some communication around their sexual relationship. So we do this, but you know, oftentimes people drop out of therapy or they don’t tell you about or we don’t follow up necessarily on how those particular experiences went. Sometimes people leave and they’re like, I’m happy, I’m satisfied.
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I didn’t like you as a therapist at all or whatever, right? You don’t know the reasons that they’re leaving and you don’t know if it worked or not. So we needed some, we need research on this to see if it actually helps people to be intentional about their sexual relationship and do a little bit of planning. And again, planning can look like lots of different things. I think I hear you often say, you know, I think foreplay starts at the last orgasm, but I think you would probably say like,
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don’t have to have an orgasm, but like at the last sexual experience. And I think that that’s sort of the idea is that you are talking about it. You are thinking about it. You’re saying, I can’t wait until to build that anticipation and that passion and that connection together. So I think that’s sort of the way that I think about planning. And I think about it as people putting in the effort to turn themselves on and
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maintain that energy in the relationship. Yeah, it’s interesting when we think about scheduling sex and spontaneous sex. Everybody says to me, I want sex to be spontaneous. And I ask them, so when was it spontaneous? And they’ll always say, well, in the beginning. In the beginning, it was spontaneous. And I’m thinking, OK, so when you went out on a date, you groomed your body or groomed your room, you set time aside, you didn’t make extra plans, you weren’t checking in with your kids, you weren’t even checking with your friends unless it was a safety thing.
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sex, you were planning time to be with this brand new person in hopes that you would have sex. There usually was no guarantee that there would be sex unless you kind of pre-negotiated that in advance. And so we don’t do those same things. When people classify early sex as spontaneous, I’m not saying there aren’t incidents that are spontaneous, of course, that’s amazing when it happens, but you were carving time out in the beginning and we kind of stopped doing that, right? We do, again, I’m not asking people to say four o’clock
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hey, are you free tonight? Right? I’m really close to a closet right now. That’s why I’m looking into a closet. So that’s why that came to me. And also there’s like this dog statue next to me. So I have very few creative outlets. I only have what I’m observing at this moment in time. But can we not just say, hey, like, are you around? Are you free? I’m setting time aside. Like I know, for example, one of the reasons we wouldn’t have sex as frequently as I think I would like to, and I don’t know if Brennan would agree, when we get into those ruts where it’s not as frequent or where it goes longer
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it’s because I’m over scheduled. It’s because every single night I’m out at an event or every single night I’m out with friends. Well, if I come in rolling in like the other night, I came rolling in at like 1.30 AM and Brandon’s fast asleep, the chances of having sex are much lower. If I go home one bottle earlier and maybe get home at 11.30, the chances are higher. So to some degree, there’s always some planning to me, but tell me what your research found. What were you looking at? What was your methodology and your findings? Yeah, just as a quick follow up
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saying, I think that’s exactly it. Like planning, it’s not just about planning the sex itself could be about planning a date that leads to sex where you’re engaging in some kind of like novel and fun activity, but it could all it could also just mean planning your life around creating opportunity for that, right, so that you’re not over scheduled, you’re not over stressed, and you have the energy and the intention to actually connect in that way. But I think our research really
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that I think exists in Western culture anyways, where people believe spontaneous sex is more satisfying. It’s just, it’s the most satisfying. It should just happen. And we wanted to see whether or not people actually endorse this belief and whether it holds up when it comes to sexual satisfaction. So what we did was we looked at two different samples. One was a sample of 303
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And then in the second study, we looked at 102 couples and we asked them, we asked them to respond to items like, you know, it helps ignite my sexual desire when sex is spontaneous or I really enjoy planned sex. Like it really helps my desire when sex is planned, when I know that I’m having sex ahead of time. So we asked them some items like this. And what we found was that the sort of ideal that exists in the Western culture
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is upheld when we ask real people, like, what do you think? And so people endorse that spontaneous sex is most satisfying at a much higher, more significantly, statistically significantly greater proportion than folks that said that planned sex is satisfying. But we did see that there was support for both and that people were engaging in both spontaneous sex and in planned sex. When we asked them about
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When we asked about the sort of relationship between endorsing that spontaneous sex is satisfying and sexual satisfaction, only in the first study did we see a connection between the two, where people who believed spontaneous sex was more satisfying actually reported more sexual satisfaction. But when we looked at their last sexual experience in the same study, there was no association between having spontaneous sex and sexual satisfaction.
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was that when people had planned sex and they thought planned sex is not very satisfying, they of course reported that they had a decrease in their sexual satisfaction for that event. But people who said that planned sex is great, they didn’t have that relationship at all. So it protected them from actually feeling disappointed when the last sexual experience was planned. When we sort of look at the two studies together as a whole, there’s a whole lot more evidence
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for this idea that it really doesn’t matter. It does not matter if sex is spontaneous or it’s planned because in the second study, we didn’t find any association between having spontaneous or planned sex and sexual satisfaction. And this was true regardless of what people’s beliefs were. That’s really interesting, like just the belief part to begin with, that if I believe something is good, I’m going to derive more positive outcomes for it. Whereas if I believe something is not good, or I also think that people use spontaneous sex to some degree as a barometer of attraction,
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as a barometer of the relationship. So if I see something as problematic, it makes sense that some perceived or potential negative outcomes are going to follow. I think from a practical perspective, so I’m gonna think about my clientele. So my clientele are all either business owners or entrepreneurs. That’s just who I work with because of the organizations I work with. And they are so busy that if they leave sex up to being spontaneous, I don’t think they’re gonna have it with their partners. It’s gonna be like, so maybe with a random person,
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spontaneous sex, but they are on the road, they are traveling, they have busy social schedules, they have kids who are in a gazillion activities. And so again, not putting it in your calendar, but just saying, you know what, I’m gonna carve time out because I need to get laid or I need to connect with my partner, I need an orgasm. I know I can turn to Brandon sometimes and be like, I need it, I need to get off, I feel more connected with you, I feel more connected with myself. And the truth is, I like you more. You’re more likeable after sex. Yeah, it’s amazing, I’m super, way more likeable after we have sex. But I think what you said was really interesting,
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around creating an opportunity to have sex. And when I think about it, there’s so many things in our lives that we plan. Like I plan eating, I plan working, I plan going to the gym, I plan seeing friends, I plan all these things, but I don’t plan this one thing. And again, it doesn’t mean, as you said, four o’clock in the closet, doggy style, but I do, like I don’t find that, you know, most people carve out and plan the sex that they want. Right. Well, anything you prioritize, I think about the most exciting things in so many people’s lives. So for example, if you’re celebrating a milestone,
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Like maybe, I don’t know, you’re getting your kid christened or there’s some sort of like a religious celebration or you’re graduating or you’re getting married or you’re having a kid. There’s all of these things that go into planning. And as you said, key word, building anticipation because anticipation is pleasure, right? When we think about dopamine, that neurochemical that we associate with pleasure and reward, it is actually higher when we’re anticipating the pleasurable experience than when we actually go through that pleasurable experience. And vacations, for example,
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and happiness from planning the vacation than from actually going on the vacation. So I wonder, because it’s so exciting. I mean, especially like, I know you’re in the cold right now. I know many listeners up in the Northeast or in the Midwest or in the cold right now. The idea of knowing that you’re able to get away, that you have that privilege just can keep you going, right? It keeps you motivated. And it feels good to even think about when you’re gonna get to that sunshine, or if you’re lucky enough to go overseas when you’re gonna get to that exciting new city.
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sex ought to be the same, but why? Why do you think we treat sex so differently than other indulgences? Like you can go, I have a friend every time we go for dinner, she’s already looked at the menu because she’s so excited for this new restaurant, but there’s no judgment like, oh, well you planned it, that’s gonna take away from the surprise of knowing what you were gonna eat. So why do we attach it to sex and not to other indulgences of pleasure? Yeah, I think that those are such great points. It’s like, I think about going to, or planning a party. Like if I don’t plan,
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part. It’s gonna be a huge flop, I think, anyways, right? Like, it’s gonna be disorganized and messy. People are gonna show up late. It’s gonna be weird. But, like, I think it’s because we sort of treat sex as this really, like, taboo sort of subject. And we don’t have a whole lot of good information about it. We don’t talk about it as openly as we talk about going on vacation. Like, hey, yeah, I’m planning on, you know, totally screwing my white brains out this
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Like, it’s not as socially appropriate, I suppose, or accepted. And so it kind of lives in the shadows and we don’t have good language around it. And so we just think it’s kind of like supposed to, it’s just supposed to happen. And I think this is kind of how it’s portrayed in the media as well. And yeah, having worked in film and television as like a model and little short stint, unsuccessful stint in acting in my day.
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really make choices around what is actually portrayed. And it’s often not based on like, hey, we wanna, you know, portray this thing as accurately as possible. It’s like, we want to finish this clip as quick as possible. We want to, you know, only show a little bit of butt and a little bit of like, no, this is making it sound like I was involved in pornography, which I wasn’t, but you know, there’s things like kind of cheating at the camera, like making it look like you’re doing something that you’re not. I can tell you as a model,
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certain poses and things like that. It’s so uncomfortable and yet it looks good on camera. So that’s what I think people are more concerned with is like what looks good? And also what tailors to the actual consumer, right? What do we want to see? So in some ways, like we actually engage in this, just like we engage in sort of like the production of these kind of fictions, right? Just like we do when it comes
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beauty ideals. People want to see young people who are vital and attractive and stuff like that, and they don’t want to see other diverse people in the media that they’re consuming. And so we end up with a very, very, very narrow idea of who gets to engage in sex and how is it supposed to happen and who is the pleasure for and all of that. And it’s just not
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Yeah, and you bring up media, I think about porn as well. Like in porn, they don’t show the foreplay. They don’t show all the stuff that happens behind the scenes. It’s just like I always say, they walk in, deliver the pizza, put the pizza down, pizza gets cold and all of a sudden they’re all banging. And I’m just thinking about that poor cold pizza over and over again, just eat the pizza first. But you’re absolutely right. And I’m curious as a sex therapist, if you think that a balance of spontaneous and planned might be a good idea, meaning make space for the spontaneity, because you said a couple
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You said that you have to schedule not just sex, but your life. I think I heard that you need to schedule kind of your mindset, getting yourself in the mood. And you need to plan, so not schedule, sorry, you need to plan your life, plan your mindset, and plan your relationship so that you have the potential for at least somewhat spontaneous sex, if you value spontaneous sex. Yeah, I think so. I think the two complement each other. And I think that, you know, if you’re in a little bit of a rut, and you’re wanting to kind of get back on track,
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place. I think is a good way to do that. Just saying like, hey, you know what, I really miss you and I miss this part of you and like, let’s like, let’s just have an amazing time this Saturday, whatever, like this week, let’s put some time aside for this. And I can see your stress and I want to, you know, just make you feel really, really good. Like it can be sexy, right? It can be part of the foreplay. And I think when folks are more
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more connected regularly, they’re just more in tune with each other. They can read each other a little bit better. They’re connected in not only a sexual way, but an emotional, intellectual, spiritual sense, right? They bond together and partners together and make them feel as though we’re in tune with one another. And so maybe that opens the path for more spontaneous encounters too. Right? So I do think that they’re, they’re complimentary. And I think the, the key is
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Absolutely. All right. So if you can leave us with one piece of insight based on your most recent research, and I’m sure your recent research is just leading to future research, because I’m sure there’s lots more to explore, but one piece of insight or something people can try today, whether it be cognitive or behavioral or relational or sexual, what would you suggest? Oh, that’s a really good question. Oh, it’s so hard to boil it down to just one thing. But I think based on our conversation, based on thinking about the research,
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that part around creating the right mindset for yourself, I think is key. And this is like, this goes for singles too, right? We looked at people in relationships, but this so goes for singles where it’s like, you just make space to enter into your own erotic energy instead of waiting for it to come. Because for many people it doesn’t, and with our lifestyle,
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treat to really connect with your sexual side, your erotic side. I love that. And it really is a treat that we need to like go get for ourselves. So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your research. I look forward to seeing it in print soon because I think it’s upcoming. Where can people learn more about you, your research and your practice? Yeah. So our latest paper was actually published in the Journal of Sex Research and people can find out more about that by visiting the Share Lab. So that’s the sexual
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Health and Relationships Laboratory at York University, or they can visit my website, www.catcovatherapy.com, or on Instagram, all of those different socials. And yeah, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. We’ll make sure we share all your links in the show notes as well, folks. And thank you so much for listening. Quick reminder to go get that 50% off womanizer starlet,
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Dr. Jess 15 to save a few extra dollars. You’re listening to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast. Improve your sex life, improve your life.
