Psychologist tells Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast why couples stop having sex – saying familiarity kills vital ‘sexual currency’ – such as flirty texts, passionate kisses and naked lie-ins
A leading sex therapist has shed light on why couples often gradually stop having sex, saying the “sexual currency” that keeps passion alive at the start of a romance fades as familiarity increases.
Appears in Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett’s The diary of a CEO podcastDr. Karen Gurney, a clinical psychologist and psychosexologist, told the entrepreneur that she sees couples struggling to keep the flames of passion alive all the time who say the same thing.
The mental health professional, whose new book is called How Not to Let Kids Ruin Your Sex Life, explained that couples regularly tell her:I didn’t really feel like it, but we had sex and it was great, and afterwards I said, “Why don’t we do it more often?”
Dr. Gurney told the podcast that it’s often a matter of the more you have, the more you want, saying, “That’s a responsive desire, it comes from sexual activity.”
Clinical psychologist Dr Karen Gurney was a guest on The Diary of a CEO, hosted by Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett, with the pair discussing how sex lives often falter in long-term relationships
When discussing the concept of sexual currency, she said that sometimes it’s the small gestures that diminish over time, but collectively they are crucial to keeping a relationship alive.
She told Bartlett: “The problem with long-term relationships is that we see a decline in what I call sexual currency.
‘We’re going to see sex a bit like an on/off switch. We have sex, but the rest of the time we are not together sexually.
The Dragon’s Den star and Dr. Gurney discussed topics from her new book, How to Don’t Let Kids Ruin Your Sex Life
‘We don’t kiss passionately unless it’s part of sex. We don’t send the flirty messages we did in the beginning, we don’t spend time lounging naked in bed on a Sunday morning and being naked together in a way that might spark desire.”
To avoid sounding the death knell for a happy sex life in a relationship, she says it’s all about keeping those smaller gestures going.
‘Low sexual levels and high familiarity – seeing the same person every day – mean our brains just don’t encode them in the same way as sexual stimuli.’
She also had advice for new parents, saying that caring for a newborn can leave one partner with sex on their mind, while the other may feel like it’s the last thing he or she wants to do.
Often the smaller gestures — like flirty texts or simply lying naked together — fall by the wayside for couples who aren’t in the first flush of romance, says Dr. Gurney
New parents who share the care of a newborn are likely to have a better sex life
‘A crying child affects what happens in your sex life and your desires. We often see that the more you get up (at night), the less happy you are with your sex life.’
Dr. Gurney explained that not getting a good night’s sleep affects the way your body responds to sexual responses in terms of “the chemicals in the body that help us be prepared to build arousal, but also the cognitive distraction of waking up to something decent’. disturbing (a crying baby)’.
Parents should share the workload, she suggests, because “if one of you gets a good night’s sleep and feels horny all the time and another gets up three times and sex is the last thing on his mind, it’s probably the best he can do.” do’ what you can do is try to share it’.