Transcription
Let's talk about sex, Jimmy. Let's talk about you. That is coming in hot. That is, that is, uh, that is salt and pepper. Push it, baby. Today we're talking sex. It's none of your business. The importance of, okay, sorry. The importance of sex in a relationship. Uh, in doing this show, you know, my algorithm is really tuned to a lot of relationship and, uh, dating, sex, divorce, everything. Everything that's in the gym sex universe.
Your algorithm. Oh my, it's the worst. I used to be like comedians and sports, and now I got to deal with this [ __ ] all the time. I know. I know. Uh, but sorry, not sorry.
We're going to kick off with this, uh, this clip here of of this woman who looks like she's maybe preaching or giving some sort of speech about kind of how men and women view sex differently. And I think it opens up a big discussion about the importance of it in marriage.
"Men don't want sex, ladies. They just don't. They don't want sex. They need sex. Some of the men were like, 'Girl, what you talking about? I want it.' No, you don't want it. You need it. It's an absolute necessity for men. The problem is he doesn't want to have to beg for it. He doesn't want to always feel responsible to initiate sex and intimacy. And here's how a man deals with rejection. The first time you reject him, it's like, 'Okay, no problem.' The second time you reject him, he stops trying. The third time you reject him, he's no longer interested. And he literally disconnects. He turns distant. He turns cold. He'll climb into bed. He'll watch a little bit of TV at night, turn his back to you, and go to sleep."
In your experience, uh, is there sort of a disconnect in like do women understand what it means to men? And do men understand how it, it's different for women? Um, 'cause I think there's that's a big problem.
I think men and women have a hard time understanding each other. And I think that that lack of understanding leads to a lot of miscommunication and misinterpretation in relationship. I talk about this a lot in my book in a lot of different sections on a lot of different topics, including when it comes to sex. Um, we, we don't hear what the other person doesn't say. Okay, that's one of the reasons I've been so unbelievably critical of this very recent trend on social media about why do we have to do the emotional labor of telling our partners how we feel? Um, because I just feel like that's so unbelievably counterproductive to say that it's a weakness to, to want to know or ask your partner about what's going on with them. I, I, I think men's bodies and women's bodies are different. I, I, I don't think that's shouldn't be controversial to say, um, because it is something both sides say to their convenience. Like if it suits their argument, they'll acknowledge men's bodies and women's bodies are different. But if it doesn't, then they're like, "Well, we can be just the same as." But we, we can't. We have different bodies. And that's not, by the way, it's not a swipe on, on, on trans people. I, I think a trans woman and a woman who was assigned, you know, female at birth have different lived experience. I, I have a number of women, trans women friends, a number of women friends. To say I have trans women friends is not to say that trans women aren't women. Of, you can, that's not what I'm saying. What you're saying is that this person has a very different lived experience. Someone who's transitioned gender has a completely different experience. They, they, they were born into a different body than the body that they were assigned to. So I, like, I get it, but these are different experiences. So men and women of every ilk have different experience of their bodies. And I think that that, I am learning, I continue to learn that women's bodies are very much impacted by hormones in ways that men's may not be, or, or the impact of our hormones, like testosterone, is more consistent throughout the month or throughout the day than it, than a woman's body might be. You know, I, I, I got such a laugh many months ago when a bunch of women in the comments talked about like ovulation and, oh yeah, when a woman's ovulating, how she's like so hypersexual. Again, not all women, some women, many women, enough women that a bunch of them in the comments were like, "Oh, she was ovulating. That's why she was like that." And then there's a period of time where it's like, "Oh yeah, now I'm not the slightest bit interested." So I, I do think some communication would be very helpful in the situation that this preacher was describing, which is, you know, if, if a man, I will say as a man, it is, there is a unique pain in having your romantic advance rejected. Okay. Whether it's someone who you're shooting your shot, like you're asking them out and they say no. That is a unique pain to, to have the, because it takes a certain amount of courage to say like, "Oh, maybe we would get together sometime." Uh, and have that person say, "Oh, yeah, no, I'm sorry. I don't like you that way or I wouldn't be interested in you." And, you know, that's hard. Like, it, it's a hard, hard thing to have happen. It happened to me when I was a young man quite a bit. Um, and I have to say like it, it, I remember that pain. I remember the embarrassment that came with it. And there's a way to do it that it's not quite as painful. Like, you know, "Oh, look, you're, you're so wonderful, you're so lovely, you're so like." By the way, the way that I think any decent human being would do to another person who's put themselves out there in that fashion. So I, I do think we all owe each other the common courtesy of trying to have a person who's approached you appropriately to reject them appropriately if that's what's necessary. So that's number one. Number two is if you are in a relationship with someone and this woman was talking about husbands and wives, you know, if you're married to someone and they have the courage to express a sexual desire or need to you for you. Okay? Not saying, "Hey, I'm proposing a threesome." Saying, "Hey, you're my spouse. I find you attractive. I'd like to be with you in this moment." Is it not the way you should parse it probably? But if you said, you know, in, in some, in substance or in behavior like, "Oh, you know, maybe it's a little time for a little romance." To be rejected. It's hard. It's painful. You're expressing a need. Anytime you express a need, I know as a man, when I express a need, it's hard for me to express a need. I like to do most things myself. But there are some things I can't do myself. And so, you know, and by the way, some of the things people do for each other in relationship, they could do themselves, but sex is not one of them. So, when you've decided, okay, this person is going to be my, if you're in a monogamous relationship, this person is going to be my sexual outlet and I'm going to be their sexual outlet. To express need to your partner, "Hey, I would like this. This is something I need right now. This is something I would enjoy right now." And to have your partner reject it, it's painful. But there's a way to do it that it's not so painful. If you say, you know, "I'm just not feeling it right now. Like, I'm just, that's where I am in my cycle right now." Or, "Listen, I'm super stressed from work today." Or like, "Oh my god, I'm so exhausted." And then maybe if you want to be really kind, throw them a bone. Throw them a, you know, "But you know what? Maybe this weekend, you know, when the kids are going to be with my folks, maybe we'll have a little romantic time then." Or, "Oh, listen, tomorrow, like, I'm so wiped out today, but maybe tomorrow morning if we're both in the mood, you know, we both wake up a little bit early." Like, why not let your partner know that this isn't about them? That this is about you and where you're at. Or if it is about them, like, "Hey, you haven't talked to me all day and now you're showing up and you want some sex." Why not say to your partner like, "Hey, look, you know what? I, I, I normally love being physically connected to you, but like you came home, you didn't say five words to me, and now you want to have sex. Like, you, you, you didn't like touch me once all day. Like, why wouldn't you?" And by the way, that's a teachable moment for your partner. Your partner might be like, "Listen, I'm sorry. I just had like such a stressful day and I came home in a terrible mood and even right now like I just feel like maybe like sex would like help me get some of that aggression and stress out a little bit." Like, we would understand each other better if we just talked to each other about what's going on instead of thinking about everything as a power dynamic of, "Well, I don't owe you this." "Well, I don't owe you that." "Well, I don't owe you that." "I don't." Okay, we don't owe each other anything. 8 billion people on the planet. We don't owe each other a goddamn thing. Like we don't have to do any of this. It's like we created societies, we created families, we created all these rules. They are all artificial constructs. We created them for a purpose and that purpose was to try to figure out a way for all of us to peacefully coexist and to thrive in smaller and larger groups. But a very popular permutation of that is monogamy and monogamous relationships. So if you have decided this is a person, then you do owe each other some things. You do owe each other some things. Or delegate. Just say, "Yeah, I'm, I'm not interested in you sexually, but you can go outside and get that sexuality some other way, whether it's porn, whether it's whatever."
So, one of the things that I, I do think that a lot of men are in my office who have made mistakes when it comes to sex. So, they have had affairs. They have, um, just allowed their relationship to turn into something where sex was no longer part of the equation between the two people. And I have a lot of women in my office in the exact same position or on the opposite side of that same equation. Very rarely did these people mean to screw their relationships up. And very rarely is it a perfect villain and a perfect victim. It's, it's usually just two people that like they took a wrong turn. And neither of them had the courage to like stop and go, "Hey, listen. We, we took a wrong turn somewhere. Um, can we figure this out?" I do agree with this person that, you know, the first time something happens, maybe there's some hurt feelings. The second time, third time, people start to shut down.
And, and when you shut down, that's really where it gets dangerous because that's where people start making much bigger decisions and choices in ways that I, I think are going to be really antagonistic to the relationship. And, you know, look, if you signed on for each other and to be each other's everything and to be each other's primary partner when it comes to anything sexual, I think you owe each other at least a discussion and an attempt in good faith to meet each other's needs.
So, you mentioned, uh, these couples who kind of find themselves stuck. This was a post from, uh, the subreddit marriage that went up this week. Uh, I think that any chance of having sex again with my wife of nearly 20 years has ended. My birthday was earlier this month and she was out of town. I knew she'd be tired when she came home, uh, but would be going out in the town the following weekend. She had a day off from work before leaving town. So, I tried to initiate. She said, "You couldn't have tried that 30 minutes ago. 90% of the time I try to initiate, she's too tired, and I can no longer put myself under the pressure and anxiety to perform to a standard I'm not capable of. I have no intention of ending my marriage. This seems like pretty petty and childish to throw away, uh, 20 years over this, but I think I'm done with this aspect of our relationship." Now, here's he says, "I'm not cheating on her and she's not cheating on me." Um, so I guess that means we're done having sex.
So, a couple things here. When you find yourself in this spot, what do you do? And if you, if you, in your experience, if you see a, a loveless, sexless marriage.
Yeah. I think you get [ __ ] divorced. Yeah. That's what I think. Yeah. Like I don't, this, I have no intention of ending my marriage. We're just not going to ever have sex again. Like, okay. What, what is that? But it almost isn't, isn't that like?
I mean, if you're super religious, then you believe that your marriage is a covenant that's between, you know, you and an omnipotent creator deity, then sex doesn't have very much to do with it, I guess, but.
Yeah. I did skip a line here. He says, "Religiously speaking, I refuse to masturbate or look at porn." So this is a pretty extreme.
A crazy person. Or, yeah. This is a person who's basically saying that, you know, I refuse to masturbate or look at porn, which, by the way, like, again, like, so you're telling me you haven't had sex in that long and you haven't, and you haven't looked at porn? Explo? Yeah. Like, I, I have to tell you, like, that is not.
But if you were like, "I've gone a week without sex or porn or masturbating," like, that's like, do you even shower? Because at that point, like, you're just scrubbing that area and it would just happen. You know, I can't. That's insane. What I think is crazy is that this idea, this is pretty extreme, but I think there are plenty of sexless marriages out there, that that is normal or accepted is I have a question for you.
How much do you hate yourself that you think this is how little you deserve?
Yeah. I mean, that, like, how much do you hate yourself that you think this is how little you deserve?
It's pretty bare minimum. Like, you, you deserve. Again, I think we are in a culture where we all think we deserve more than we do. Like we're ungrateful. Like we are ungrateful. On the subway ride to the studio today, I was sitting on the seven, and there was a, a guy, a little bit probably younger than me, and he had his, I assume was his son with him, and his son was severely developmentally disabled and was, you know, reacting to the stimulation that was going on, and it was just obvious, not verbal, but reacting verbally. Um, and, and I just thought to myself, like, man, like, I am so grateful that, like, a, my children are like perfectly healthy and well, you know, and, b, that, like, there are people in the world that, like, like this person obviously loves his child so much, and, and, you know, like he's so, was like, kind of patiently, you know, guiding him around, and I thought to myself, like, what a beautiful person that is, like, to just, like, you love your child so much, the same way I love my child. But, like, the fact that, like, at the hardest moment of parenting, that I didn't just stop and go, like, you know what, I'm so lucky. Like, I'm so lucky that I'm not dealing with what that guy's dealing with. Like, the thought that, like, someday when I'm gone, my kids will be totally fine. They'll be totally fine, self-supporting individuals who can go out and have careers, and I won't have to worry about, like, are they being taken care of? Is someone going to take care of them? Because this is clearly a person that's going to need care, you know, and, and thank God there are, you know, institutions and individuals out there that will be there to help, right? But, like, there are so many things that we could be dealing with that we're not dealing with. Instead, we're like bickering about, like, "I didn't have carried emotional labor." Like, shut the [ __ ] up. Like, do you, like, like, so much is happening in the world that is serious. Like, there are serious problems that require serious people to solve these problems. And we're all just so caught up in this myopic vision of things. And yet, by the way, on the converse of that, we have people looking at the situation going like, "Well, I haven't had sex in this long, and I guess I just don't deserve to have sex. I'll just die now."
Like, YOU HAVE ONE LIFE you've been given, and this is what you're going to do with it out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. Like you're not going to say to your spouse like, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm not done."
Yeah. I'm not done with that chapter of my life. Maybe when I'm 90, I will be, but I'm not right now. Like this is, like, like there, there we are. We're at such extremes right now as a culture. Like there's a part of us that needs to just shut the up about this minutia and think about the big things that are happening. And then there's a part of us that just needs to stop and go, well, wait a minute. We also, like, we have one life. We have an opportunity here to do something beautiful with it and to, to be good to ourselves and to each other. And, like, if your partner, your partner is not having sex either, if you're not having sex, at least in theory. So, so really, do you think this is what they wanted? Couldn't you just say to them, "Hey, are you happy? Are you happy? Like, I want to know because I, I, I think it's strange that we used to have sex and now we're not having sex and we're married." Such as it's the glue. Like sex is the glue. It's the thing that turns a roommate into a spouse. Like, it's the glue. And again, it's not the only important thing, but it is an important thing. Otherwise, why would there be so many prescriptions about not being allowed to do it with other people when you're married? Like, it would just be if it was something like bowling, you can go do it with anybody you want to. Like, go ahead, join a league. Like, you know, they.
Oh, sex league. Good idea. Let's write this down.
Bowling. Bowling. Sex. You bowling. YOU OUT. WE'LL CALL IT BOWLING. You don't have to change your shoes and you don't have to change your shoes and the balls are lighter. It's great. Oh, god, this is gonna be our million-dollar idea. You know what I mean? If we don't hit a hundred thousand subscribers.
Can I tell you I've had a bowling business idea my whole life?
Uh, and it's. Wait, is that a sentence you didn't? It's. It's so I've had a bowling business idea for like I've been sitting on this thing so the zeitgeist could catch up with it. I want to hear it. I think it should be its own segment, but go ahead. When, when once I, once we get rich enough off this that I can just blow frivolous money. It's a outdoor open air bowling alley in the Caribbean on the beach. The pins are painted like Corona bottles. The bowling balls are coconuts or limes, and there's a roof, but it's open air. So you, you got the saltwater and you're, and the moonlight, and you're bowling with a Caribbean theme. And then also will turn into a big, then it'll also be a fast shark.
How much will you invest?
I'm going to offer you $100,000 for a 50% interest in this.
Oh, does she like it? I, what could go wrong?
Yeah. What could go, what do I like it? No, I don't. I love it. I love it. I mean, what I'll tell you is you had me at the Corona bottles outdoor bowling in the open air, but then you go like, just made a sharp right. You're like, and then it turns into a fast. Like I was like, wait a minute, that's not where I thought, you know, these Caribbean bowling was going, but.
I mean, that's incredible.
I mean, I would love to do that. You know, forget about the black light. You know.
I genuinely think you need to see a therapist. I really do. I just think you need, I just think there's.
The bowling alley is is the breaking point. I just, you know, it's been building for a while, but I feel like that crystallized it for me, like that I was, 'cause here's what I'm saying. I, I just have this image of you in bed, you know, just like thinking about this, and somehow it just all of a sudden, then all and then they're all having sex, and you're like, "How did, when did that part happen?"
That's. Well, no, that's this. That just. No, I actually don't think that's a bad idea. If you take out the fest part of it, you look at it seriously. I actually think it's not a bad idea. Like if you were like, if you were like the, uh, director of activities for like a high-end resort, you would come up with some cool [ __ ]. That's a great idea. Outdoor bowling. Like, yeah, it's fun. Be a good time. Make it into a drinking game.
We'll go 50/50, man. Let's do it.
Yeah. All right. Listen, you know what? We could, we could do this. I'm in.
All right. To, to, to wrap things up on, on a somewhat serious matter, though. Why is it, do you think, that cheating is regarded as such a sin and, and, you know, scarlet letter type behavior, but withholding sex or just making someone exist in a sexless marriage, while not celebrated, is somewhat frowned upon? You know, those don't feel equal to me when it feels like one kind of causes the other, and they should be on equal footing.
Yeah. Yeah. So I would say a couple of things. I mean, one, I think biologically in every species, including humans and non-human animals as well, the fact that the sexual act leads to or can lead to pregnancy. Is a incredibly important piece. I mean, if you look, uh, at the non-human animal kingdom, you see a lot of examples of behaviors where you have infanticide, patricide, matricide, usually a function of you want your offspring and you only want to care for your offspring and you want your offspring to be cared for and fed. You know, if you do look at, um, cultures prior to, or cultures that don't have like a economy of like currency, where being like, where there was no scarcity of food, you actually still see that that the most effective male hunters usually had the widest mate selection, which doesn't actually make sense if there's no scarcity of food. But they're, they're attribute this largely to the fact that there was in fact some sense among females of, yeah, but if there suddenly was a scarcity, this person would have the most ability to still protect our offspring and feed our offspring and make sure that we had weren't affected by resource scarcity. I was just listening to a conversation Chris Williamson had with, I think, um, Bombgardner, uh, who is a, a cultural anthropologist who was talking about exactly this kind of a topic. So I think that's one piece of it. The other, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't say that this is all tied to religion. You know, religion really, if you read like Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, or you look at sort of how the proliferation of religion and the puritanical approach to sex and monogamy, and, you know, that, that all obviously is very much tied to stuff, and we're still dealing with the remnants of that. I mean, we are at the core, you know, primitive creatures, like mammals in medieval institutions with god-like technology in our hands. Like, that's going to be a [ __ ] recipe for confusion and disaster when you say it that way.
Wow. Yeah. But that's what it is, you know? And, and, and we really, like the institutions themselves, the concepts of monogamy, the concept, they, they have not been tested against the current technological climate. Like they were not designed for that, you know? Like you have a car. Your car, if, when it got wet from rain, disintegrated. That's a badly designed car. In a very heavy rainstorm or tornado, if it gets some moisture in it, it's still a badly designed car, but it's a little more understandable. If you go, "My car lost structural integrity 2 miles under the ocean." Yeah, that's how it works. It's not a submarine. It's a car. That's not a bug. That's the way a car is. It's not designed for that depth. So, I, I think it's the same kind of thing. Like, I don't know that these sort of puritanical concepts or even, you know, the, I mean, there's a school of thought that would say that like human consciousness was an error, you know, that it was not something meant to be. We, we were an aspect of nature that believes itself to be separate from nature, right? By virtue of our consciousness. You know, Michael Pollan's, uh, new book, um, which is on the nature of consciousness itself, which was a really cool pivot for him to take, having had his prior book being about non-ordinary states of consciousness and psychedelics. Um, his new book, which I, I just finished, is is phenomenal. And it's really very much about this idea of what is consciousness. And I think that that, you know, the ideas we have about how to regard our biological drives are very much a function of the unique consciousness that is human consciousness. And we've interposed a ton of rules on top of it and structures on top of it. And, you know, I, I think that we're starting to push the limits of those things and, and, uh, that's how things get tested as to where they crack.
This is part one of, uh, many parts, I believe, about monogamy and sex and marriage. So we'll be covering this topic a lot more. Um, but, but good start, Jim. I think this is. Listen, there's, there's a lot to be said, and there's a lot of really intelligent people out there speaking about this stuff from a lot of different perspectives. Religious perspectives, cultural anthropology perspectives, human, you know, evolutionary biology perspectives. I think we can also learn a lot from looking at non-human animals in this regard. There's a lot out there about nature. Like, we, we are animals. Like, we are animals at the end of the day. We have a tendency to like to think we are separate from that, but we are not. We like to think we're not creatures of our biology, but we are. So I think that there are some aspects of that that we need to look.