#63. Sex Disclosures in Romantic Relationships - Katie Knowles

How much do we really talk about sex in our relationships — and when should we? In this episode, Sahir and Olivia sit down with relationships researcher Katie Knowles to unpack the psychology of sex disclosure, why most people in relationships hover around a "3.5 out of 5," and how attachment styles can shape what we share (and what we don’t). We go on to discuss some surprisingly relatable results from Katie's current research and where the future of intimacy and relationships is headed.

Katie Knowles recently published a research paper reviewing all the present literature around sexual self disclosures. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388959085_Meta-Analyzing_People's_Self-Disclosure_of_Sexual_Information_to_Romantic_Partners

Transcript

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Welcome to the Smooth Brain Society.

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I am Sahir.

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Today we have doctoral researcher Katie Knowles from Victoria University of

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Wellington on to talk about self-disclosure of sexual information in romantic relationships.

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So welcome to the show, Katie.

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Thanks.

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I'm excited to be here.

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Yeah, we're basically going to be talking about two of your recent publications.

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And so I'm super excited to learn about the work which you've been doing with Dr.

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Matt Hammond,

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who was actually the third guest on this show.

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And then we haven't spoken about romantic relationships since until Aaron Hissi

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decided to come on last week and talk about how it's like to date a psychopath.

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So it'll be...

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So it'd be nice to, you know, talk about regular romantic relationships.

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And for those who do not know, who are new to the show, we always have a co-host on.

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This week, co-host is Olivia Knopp.

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She is also a doctoral researcher at Victoria University of Wellington.

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I'll let her introduce a little bit more about yourself, but welcome, Olivia.

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Thank you.

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It's also really exciting to be here.

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Yeah,

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as you said,

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I'm Olivia Knopp,

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also a current doctoral student,

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hopefully not a student in about six months or so.

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And I'm researching on or end about people who care about their reputation.

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Interesting.

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I look forward to having you on to talk about it in a few months' time.

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Yeah, exactly.

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All right.

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But awesome.

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Katie, the podcast is about you.

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We're here to learn about what work you're doing.

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So first, maybe a little bit of background.

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What introduced, what, sorry, first a little bit of background.

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What interested you in sort of studying sexual self-disclosures?

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Could you just kind of explain sort of how you ended up in this field?

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Yeah, for sure.

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So I think initially when I was going into my master's degree,

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I kind of knew I wanted to do something about

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sex and sexual wellbeing, just because I think sex is quite an interesting topic.

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That might be a biased take, but I think a lot of people find it fascinating.

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And then I sort of specifically got into this idea around self-disclosure when I

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was just having regular conversations with friends,

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honestly,

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and we were talking sort of about sexual dysfunctions and

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when people actually disclose that to people that they're dating.

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Like we were sort of having a conversation about, do you tell people on the first date?

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Like, is that something you're meant to do before the relationship progresses?

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Is it something that comes later?

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Like, when does that happen?

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And I was like, that's actually a really fun question.

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So I tried to look it up and found that no one's,

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no one's answered the question and no one was looking at it.

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So that was sort of where, where I started.

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And because there wasn't anything really about it,

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I started a bit more broadly first by looking at other types of sexual self

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disclosures to really get an idea of what,

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what sexual self disclosure looked like.

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Yeah.

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Cool.

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No, it's a very interesting point.

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And like, I feel it's something,

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I don't know what, like, when do you say it is a conversation to have, right?

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Uh,

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I feel if you told someone on the very first date that something's wrong,

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that's the only date you'd have.

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Does it depend you think on what people are disclosing?

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Yeah, for sure.

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I imagine it probably would.

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And it would depend on the kind of person and the kind of relationship like, um,

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this isn't something that I've researched.

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This isn't a question that I actually have an answer to yet.

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This is all just me kind of theorizing,

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but I do imagine that there are some things you could disclose that people would be like,

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well,

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that's not really that big of a deal.

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You know, like we can move past it, work around it, or it actually just isn't important.

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And there are probably other things that people do view as kind of deal breakers.

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And if you told them on the first date, they'll go, okay,

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I'm glad you told me this early because that's it.

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We're not going to progress past this point.

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Oh, no.

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So I guess when you started looking out there, you said you started looking broadly first.

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So what does that mean?

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What kind of sexual disclosures?

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How does that process work?

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So when you're looking out there, were you looking at what research was out there?

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Or is your question now just a bit broad?

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So this was where my meta-analysis came from was it was actually because my end

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goal was to look at disclosure of sexual dysfunction.

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First,

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I kind of wanted to get a clearer picture of what other kinds of sexual disclosure were,

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what they looked like,

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what the process kind of was.

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And when I was doing that reading,

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I noticed pretty quickly that there was a lot of inconsistency in the way it was

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being

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researched and what the findings were showing,

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like there was a lot of mixed evidence for some things and there really just wasn't

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a clear answer about,

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you know,

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what sexual self-disclosure was,

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what it looked like,

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how people did it,

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why,

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when they did it.

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So that sort of informed me doing a meta-analysis that was sort of

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the rationale there.

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So that looked at five different types of sexual self-disclosure.

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So these were just the five that I could kind of identify in the literature while I was reading.

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So that includes disclosure of sexual preferences,

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so the things that you like and dislike sexually.

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disclosure of sexual attitudes and values,

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so sort of I guess your views on does sex matter in a relationship,

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how important it is,

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like should you be doing it before marriage,

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sexual difficulties,

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so any problems you have with sex in your relationship and also kind of sexual

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dysfunctions that you have more personally,

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solo sexual behavior,

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so things like watching pornography,

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masturbation,

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the kind of things that you

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would often do by yourself.

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And what's the last one?

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I always, every time, there's five and I will always forget at least one of them.

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History, sexual history, that's the last one.

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So that's just, you know, any past experience you have with sex.

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Initially STIs were also included as a potential sexual self-disclosure,

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so sexually transmitted infections.

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But as I was doing the research,

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I kind of noticed that was seen more as a health disclosure as opposed to a sexual disclosure,

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like it was viewed quite differently and talked about quite differently.

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And it had a lot more, I guess, moral, ethical, even legal kind of narratives around it.

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So it just didn't quite fit with the rest of what was being done.

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So we ended up with, yeah, those five domains of sexual self-disclosure.

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Could you walk us through a little bit more about kind of the differences in

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disclosure about each of those?

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Yes.

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So that was actually one of the big aims of my meta-analysis was so in doing it,

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I had two kind of research questions.

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The first one was I wanted to know how much actually are people disclosing these

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different kinds of information?

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And also does it depend on the type of information?

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So that was my first research question.

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The second research question was sort of more about the correlates,

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so what was related to these different kinds of disclosure.

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But you're asking about that first question, so we'll talk about that.

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I,

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going into the research,

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did assume that there would be differences between these different kinds of disclosure.

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I don't know if you're hearing about these different kinds.

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Is there something that sort of sticks out to you as

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seeming like it would be harder to disclose of those five domains?

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I would imagine the difficulties would be the most difficult because some of them,

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like the history,

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you may not need to share that.

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I know some people do, but you could kind of get away with not disclosing everything.

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But difficulties is kind of maybe a little harder to hide.

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because difficulties can also sort of I feel that also can sort of link into the

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public health STI thing which you were saying it's not the same but it does come

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could come under the health sort of category so that might might have like

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different ramifications as well right so it might be harder to talk about yeah so

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that was essentially my thinking going into it was I think that probably sexual

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difficulties will be

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harder to disclose.

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I didn't have any formal hypotheses just because there wasn't enough in the

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literature to really make any,

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so it was quite exploratory.

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But actually what we found was that it doesn't matter what the sexual information

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being disclosed is,

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people tended to disclose around the same amount regardless of the topic.

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So on a one to five scale,

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people were disclosing around a 3.5,

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so that's slightly above that midpoint,

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so it's

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not nothing, not everything.

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It's probably what we call a moderate amount.

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And yet that was exactly the same basically for each different domain.

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So people were pretty much disclosing the same amount about their preferences as

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they were about their difficulties,

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as they were about their history,

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and so on.

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Which was, I think, quite an interesting finding to me because, yeah.

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Yeah, that's very interesting.

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It's like you don't want to come across too weird,

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so you're going to say the moderate thing anyway.

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But yeah, across the various domains, that's, yeah, I'm surprised by that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that was surprising to me too, because I really was expecting there to be some difference.

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But I guess it is still interesting to know that people generally view these

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different kind of sexual self-disclosures as,

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I guess,

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the same level of

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importance or easiness perhaps to disclose.

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So the theoretical sort of basis of the study was this idea about like tensions,

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I guess,

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in disclosure versus non-disclosure.

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So this kind of dialectical tension between your desire to disclose because you

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want to get certain benefits

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but also the urge to keep things private and keep things to yourself as a way of

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protecting yourself.

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So thinking of those benefits,

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there's generally research finds that sexual self-disclosure is quite good for you.

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It has emotional benefits for you individually.

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as well as relationship benefits.

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So relationship satisfaction,

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sexual satisfaction,

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all those kinds of things seem to be pretty clear outcomes of sexual self-disclosure.

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So there's that aspect of wanting to disclose to get these benefits,

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while also the kind of facts that

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discussing sexual things is still considered slightly taboo.

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It's probably less taboo than it used to be.

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I guess this generation is slightly more open about talking about these things,

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but there still is kind of a discomfort around it and especially around talking

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about your own sexuality.

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So sharing sexual information about yourself,

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because I think everyone kind of thinks they're a bit of a freak sexually,

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like there's

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a pretty constrained idea of what is sexually normal.

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And I'd say probably most people have something that doesn't quite fit neatly in that box.

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So the idea of telling people, oh, there's something weird sexually about me,

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can come across as a little bit scary.

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So that's where that sort of tension comes in,

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which I think is probably why we found that people are willing to disclose to some level,

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to maybe the extent that they see that benefiting from it,

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but they do decide to hold some things back just because there might be,

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you know,

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a place where there's a bit too much,

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you know,

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or at least people are viewing it as a little bit too much to share.

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Do you have any sense on what those things might be?

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Like what are the areas or the topics that people are least inclined to share?

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I don't even know if that's a question you can answer if people don't want to share them, but.

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I have no idea.

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Yeah.

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So this is one of the things that was a little bit frustrating about

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the research in general and my own study and the meta-analysis is that we don't

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actually know what a 3.5 really is.

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So what the difference between disclosing a three and what disclosing a four looks

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like for people.

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In general, I guess there are different sort of facets of a self-disclosure.

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So there's just the explicitly stating something,

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you know,

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like I have this sexual problem,

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but then there's also

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the quality of the disclosure.

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So have you explained it in a way that sort of comes across clearly and feels good

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for you and your partner?

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There's, I guess, the background of that disclosure.

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So where you think that sexual problem stems from,

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what you think is causing it,

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what you think the solutions might be,

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all those other things that can be part of a disclosure that we don't really know

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what it is that people are actually saying.

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So we know they're saying something about it,

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but we don't know,

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you know,

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do you mean you've just said to them,

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hey,

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I have the sexual problem?

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Or do you mean you've told them a bit about how you feel about the problem?

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So I think that's a really interesting question that it would be cool to figure out

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at some point is what a 3.5 actually means,

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yeah.

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Yeah,

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I have another question with regards to what time in the relationship are they sort

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of giving these sexual disclosures?

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Because I know at the very start,

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I joke that on the first date,

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but in your research,

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sort of,

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what was the literature saying?

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Were these discussions with people in stable relationships?

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Yes, so on and so forth.

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This was the most unexpected finding,

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I think,

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in the meta-analysis and then in my follow-up survey,

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was that relationship length was,

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I think,

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the only variable that wasn't related with sexual self-disclosure.

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So that was obviously quite surprising because, I mean, all of the theory and

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All of,

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I guess,

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intuition suggests that the longer you're with someone,

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the more you would disclose to that person.

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Feels kind of logical,

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you know,

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you're getting more intimate,

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you're building trust,

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you're getting closer,

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so you should feel safer and more comfortable to share things with people.

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But actually what the research is showing is that there is no association between

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how long you've been with your partner and how much you've sexually self-disclosed

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to them.

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So that was one thing that really did surprise me.

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I think kind of my inkling about why that might be is that most of the research

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happens six-ish months at least after people have started dating.

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So they sort of...

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have that exclusion criteria of we only want to talk to people who've been in

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relationships for at least six months,

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which means that you don't get to see that disclosure that's happening in the early stages.

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And there's not much but a little bit of research that says people might be

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disclosing more at those earlier stages.

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So the fact that we're not

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or haven't conducted research on those early stages might partially explain why

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we're not seeing any kind of association there,

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is that it actually could just all happen before we hit the six month mark.

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I mean, it's like Sahir said, is this a first date kind of thing?

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Is it a deal breaker?

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It would be fascinating to look at if people who are disclosing in those first few

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dates and then it's a deal breaker for that other person kind of what that looks like.

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Yeah.

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And I guess that's the other interesting thing about like only looking at people

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six months into relationships is that that's automatically going to exclude the

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people that

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broke up as soon as they told, told this person they were saying about it.

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Yeah.

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How would you even do that?

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Cause I feel research wise considering ethics and consent are a big thing in research.

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This is not,

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it's not a TV show,

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like love at first sight or something where you could do things like that.

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Um,

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how,

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how would,

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what are sort of ways in your mind do you think where you could sort of glean a

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little bit into those early stages?

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The only thing I can really think of would be some sort of,

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I guess,

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monthly,

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possibly diary study.

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So taking people who are single and have some sort of sexual information that they

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want to disclose.

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because I'm particularly interested in sexual dysfunction,

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it would probably be that,

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you know,

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people who experience sexual dysfunctions.

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And then sort of each time,

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I guess they start seeing someone or go on a date,

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checking in at those points of,

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you know,

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how much disclosure sort of happened there,

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what the kind of responsiveness might have been,

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and then seeing how,

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and I guess if,

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the relationships progress from there.

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Yeah,

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I think if that was something I could do,

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that would be...

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Hopefully that would tap into that idea of when it's actually happening.

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No, that...

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Nice.

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But so if we found out that I know all these are sort of like counterintuitive,

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which is pretty cool that sort of regardless of domain of type of sexual disclosure,

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you're sort of you're willing to disclose about the same amount.

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But like, what does this sort of mean or like what?

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Yeah, what's the sort of relevance of this?

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Because it feels like intuitively it doesn't feel right.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So that is a really good question.

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I think there's obviously not enough research about this,

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but I do feel like it could be,

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could kind of indicate that there's something more going on with the individual as

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opposed to it being about what that information actually is that's being disclosed.

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So sort of more about the way a person views

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sex and sexual communication and sort of how you talk about things in a relationship.

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So instead of it being about,

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you know,

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I'm someone who discloses things about my sexual preferences,

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it could just be I'm someone who discloses things about sex.

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Or even more than that, it could just be I'm someone who

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discloses things in romantic relationships.

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So there was a kind of a recent article that started looking at this and they found

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these kind of distinct styles,

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I guess,

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of sexual self-disclosure.

(00:21:26):
So I cannot remember what the styles were, but

(00:21:31):
it sort of showed that there might be some people who do just tend to disclose a

(00:21:37):
lot more,

(00:21:38):
and there are people who tend to disclose in some specific situations,

(00:21:44):
but not others.

(00:21:47):
But I think,

(00:21:49):
yeah,

(00:21:50):
so it's interesting that it could be something to do with the person or the context,

(00:21:55):
but possibly not so much to do with what the information actually is.

(00:22:03):
Do you think that there's a difference,

(00:22:05):
though,

(00:22:05):
between the people who disclose and don't disclose and participate in research

(00:22:12):
about sex and disclosure?

(00:22:16):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:22:17):
I think this is always going to be one of the biggest issues in sex research and

(00:22:22):
also in disclosure research.

(00:22:25):
So for one thing, when you are

(00:22:27):
asking participants questions about sex,

(00:22:29):
the people that you get responding to those kind of studies are people that are

(00:22:34):
more comfortable talking about sex,

(00:22:36):
obviously.

(00:22:37):
Yeah, generally people with more positive attitudes towards sex as well.

(00:22:44):
And then the other thing is if you're asking people about how much they've disclosed,

(00:22:49):
what we would never be getting is

(00:22:53):
informational responses from people who wouldn't disclose to anyone, including a researcher.

(00:22:58):
So that's like a big demographic that I just have no idea how we would possibly tap

(00:23:04):
into that,

(00:23:05):
is those people who just would not disclose in any situation.

(00:23:10):
So that's definitely something that's missing.

(00:23:12):
And I imagine there's something much different about them than the people who are

(00:23:16):
willing to come and talk to researchers about this.

(00:23:21):
Yeah, it will also be interesting, like what number of the population that actually is, right?

(00:23:27):
Because then what you're saying is the people who are more willing to disclose

(00:23:31):
information still only,

(00:23:34):
I say only,

(00:23:35):
but still disclose at about a 3.5,

(00:23:37):
like they don't disclose everything,

(00:23:38):
but they disclose what they would consider as like more than average.

(00:23:44):
But if you don't have this entire end of the population,

(00:23:47):
And if they're a massive amount,

(00:23:49):
their massive majority,

(00:23:50):
that 3.5 all of a sudden starts looking like a 4.5.

(00:23:52):
Yeah.

(00:23:54):
Yeah.

(00:23:56):
It's so interesting to kind of think about,

(00:24:00):
I guess it's probably the same with when you're researching anything is if we could

(00:24:03):
actually capture everyone's experience of this instead of just the people who respond,

(00:24:09):
what would this actually look like if we really captured those zeros or one out of fives?

(00:24:17):
and then also captured those five out of fives.

(00:24:20):
If we could see more of that range,

(00:24:22):
it would be fascinating,

(00:24:24):
but probably I can't imagine there's any way to do that anytime soon,

(00:24:30):
at least.

(00:24:31):
if you could if you could ask people anything and not worry about not getting a

(00:24:38):
response or hearing from the people or not hearing from the people who maybe don't

(00:24:43):
want to discuss this yeah if you could just ask anything and get an answer what

(00:24:48):
what would you ask or what would you be most curious to research oh that is a good

(00:24:57):
question um i do think it would

(00:25:02):
It would probably be what that one to five kind of actually means to people.

(00:25:09):
I would really want to know, like, you've said you're disclosing a three out of five.

(00:25:15):
What have you actually disclosed and what have you held back?

(00:25:19):
You know, if you've disclosed one, you've said you disclosed nothing.

(00:25:24):
What is it that you've not told specifically?

(00:25:27):
Like, is there really nothing?

(00:25:29):
And then the same at the opposite end, you know, if you're saying you've disclosed

(00:25:32):
five, you've disclosed everything.

(00:25:35):
Is there really nothing that you think you could have disclosed more about this?

(00:25:41):
I guess really getting more into people's kind of conceptualizations about what

(00:25:47):
disclosing nothing and what disclosing everything actually means.

(00:25:51):
Yeah, that would be fun to figure out.

(00:25:55):
Yeah, that would be super interesting.

(00:25:58):
I guess, to be fair, maybe our phones already know the answer.

(00:26:05):
Between Google's internet search history and our phones, they probably know everything already.

(00:26:12):
Yeah, they're listening to us, they do.

(00:26:15):
Okay, we spoke about the meta-analysis and we spoke about other people's

(00:26:21):
other people's research and what you sort of like narrowed it down to from that but

(00:26:25):
now let's talk about your current research so the other paper which we wanted to

(00:26:30):
talk about and yours so let's go on could you give us like yeah I mean we've been

(00:26:36):
speaking about the background but a little bit more into what this particular study

(00:26:39):
was and what you were doing so this is one that we're working on publishing

(00:26:45):
currently so we're currently writing this one up this was

(00:26:50):
sort of the follow-up study to the meta-analysis because one thing that we

(00:26:55):
identified really clearly in the meta-analysis is that there actually just isn't

(00:26:58):
research about people's disclosure of sexual dysfunction specifically.

(00:27:03):
Any of the research that has been done is mostly,

(00:27:06):
you know,

(00:27:07):
qualitative or it's looking at the outcomes of this disclosure.

(00:27:11):
So the fact that it's generally quite good for relationships.

(00:27:16):
So we wanted to ask essentially the same questions that we asked in

(00:27:20):
the meta-analysis is how often and how much are people actually disclosing about

(00:27:26):
this to their partners and then also what is associated with this disclosure.

(00:27:33):
So we took some of the most common

(00:27:37):
variables from the meta-analysis,

(00:27:39):
so the things that were really strongly related to other forms of sexual

(00:27:44):
self-disclosure to see if they would also apply to the disclosure of sexual dysfunction,

(00:27:48):
so things like relationship satisfaction,

(00:27:51):
sexual satisfaction,

(00:27:52):
relationship length.

(00:27:53):
We did include that just because I guess we were interested in the fact that it

(00:27:58):
didn't show up as anything and we wanted to see if it would be the same in

(00:28:03):
a new sample.

(00:28:05):
Um, and also we included things about threats.

(00:28:10):
So people's perceptions of how threatening telling their partner, um, would be.

(00:28:15):
So that sort of ask questions like telling my partner about the sexual dysfunction

(00:28:22):
would make me feel embarrassed or ashamed,

(00:28:24):
or it would make my partner feel embarrassed or ashamed,

(00:28:26):
or it might cause us to fight or argue in our relationship,

(00:28:30):
things like that.

(00:28:31):
So it was a survey of just people with sexual dysfunctions in romantic relationships.

(00:28:38):
And we didn't limit this to a particular kind of sexual dysfunction or a particular

(00:28:46):
kind of person or relationship.

(00:28:47):
It was quite broad.

(00:28:50):
And we just asked them, how much have you disclosed this to your partner?

(00:28:54):
Again, that one to five scale, and then got them to respond to our other measures to see.

(00:29:01):
if there were any, any associations there.

(00:29:07):
Oh,

(00:29:08):
so,

(00:29:08):
uh,

(00:29:08):
just because you said relationship length,

(00:29:10):
did you also have to use that six month cutoff or did you try to like get it earlier?

(00:29:14):
We didn't, we didn't specify, um, a six month cutoff.

(00:29:19):
The majority of responses we got though were from reasonably longer term relationships.

(00:29:24):
I think there were a couple in there that were,

(00:29:27):
around the three to four month mark, but still the vast majority were over six months.

(00:29:33):
Yeah.

(00:29:33):
Yeah.

(00:29:34):
And so were you asking both partners in the relationship or it was just like a

(00:29:40):
survey out to people kind of thing?

(00:29:42):
Yeah, it was not dyadic.

(00:29:45):
So we just took one member of the relationship,

(00:29:50):
which obviously does add a bunch of limitations about

(00:29:54):
the way you're perceiving the disclosure and sort of lacks that depth of

(00:29:58):
reciprocity and partner response.

(00:30:01):
But, you know, that's something to address in future.

(00:30:05):
So, no, it was just the one member of the partnership.

(00:30:10):
Yep.

(00:30:14):
Sorry.

(00:30:16):
What were the main takeaways or findings or what was the most interesting part of that for you?

(00:30:23):
It was pretty similar to the meta-analysis.

(00:30:26):
Honestly, the findings were really, really consistent with what we'd found previously.

(00:30:32):
So we found that the level of disclosure was again around a 3.5.

(00:30:36):
So it seems like that's just another thing that people are disclosing around the

(00:30:41):
same amount as other sexual information,

(00:30:43):
which was quite cool.

(00:30:46):
And the things that were related were quite similar.

(00:30:49):
They were what you would expect, you know, relationship satisfaction,

(00:30:52):
sexual satisfaction, attachment, those threats were also related.

(00:31:00):
So the more threatening you found having this conversation,

(00:31:02):
particularly the more threatening you found it to your partner,

(00:31:07):
the less likely you were to disclose.

(00:31:11):
The biggest or the strongest predictor when we put it into

(00:31:16):
a regression model was attachment avoidance.

(00:31:20):
So once we added that to the model with everything else,

(00:31:23):
it was actually the only thing that was significant.

(00:31:26):
Nothing else was once you added attachment avoidance, which was quite an interesting finding.

(00:31:31):
I think that avoidance seems to be

(00:31:35):
such a key factor informing whether or not you're disclosing to the point that it's

(00:31:42):
really outshadowing anything else that seems to be going on.

(00:31:49):
So sorry,

(00:31:49):
just for someone who doesn't know,

(00:31:51):
what is attachment avoidance and are there other attachment styles?

(00:31:57):
Good question.

(00:31:58):
So attachment is sort of your way of

(00:32:03):
working in a relationship.

(00:32:04):
It's one of the oldest relationship theories, the most well-established ones.

(00:32:10):
And it sort of says that people have two different dimensions of attachment.

(00:32:17):
So the way that they feel towards themselves and towards other people,

(00:32:22):
and that's anxious and avoidant.

(00:32:25):
So the more anxious you are in a relationship, the more you kind of fear

(00:32:33):
abandonment from other people.

(00:32:35):
The more you sort of worry that people won't think you're good enough, that they'll leave you.

(00:32:42):
You really crave that intimacy and closeness with other people.

(00:32:46):
On the other hand, attachment avoidance is kind of the opposite of that.

(00:32:50):
You really crave more independence.

(00:32:52):
You don't like to get too close to people.

(00:32:54):
You don't like to rely on them.

(00:32:56):
too much.

(00:32:57):
You have more of like a kind of desire to maintain distance from people.

(00:33:07):
So the general sort of theorizing about disclosure and attachment styles or types

(00:33:17):
of attachment is that avoidances

(00:33:21):
very much if you're, if you've got high attachment avoidance, you don't like to disclose.

(00:33:26):
You don't like closeness.

(00:33:27):
You don't like talking about your problems or your feelings.

(00:33:29):
So you obviously disclose a lot less.

(00:33:32):
And this one seems to,

(00:33:34):
um,

(00:33:34):
apply quite similarly to sexual self-disclosure and disclosure of sexual

(00:33:38):
dysfunctions is that if you,

(00:33:41):
if you don't like to talk about things,

(00:33:43):
you're not going to talk about them,

(00:33:44):
which isn't particularly surprising.

(00:33:48):
Attachment anxiety has

(00:33:50):
slightly different kind of theorized relationships with disclosure.

(00:33:56):
It's quite an interesting one because there's sort of arguments for both ends.

(00:34:01):
So for some people,

(00:34:03):
it seems like when you have this heightened attachment anxiety,

(00:34:07):
this heightened desire to be close to people,

(00:34:10):
you actually tend to disclose more because you're trying to,

(00:34:14):
I guess,

(00:34:15):
forge a sense of intimacy.

(00:34:19):
And so it can mean that people do disclose a lot more,

(00:34:22):
particularly at those early stages to really sort of rush into that closeness with

(00:34:26):
a partner.

(00:34:28):
But then also,

(00:34:29):
there's that aspect where they fear abandonment,

(00:34:34):
they don't want to,

(00:34:35):
you know,

(00:34:35):
do anything that's going to make their partner not like them,

(00:34:38):
or is going to make them seem like there's something wrong with them.

(00:34:42):
So

(00:34:43):
what we actually found in both studies was that attachment anxiety was negatively

(00:34:48):
correlated with sexual self disclosure.

(00:34:50):
So we didn't see that thing where they seem to be disclosing to create intimacy,

(00:34:55):
we actually saw that they're choosing not to disclose,

(00:34:59):
possibly because I guess sexual information might have more of those

(00:35:06):
I guess, threats to do with the self.

(00:35:10):
So like I was saying at the start,

(00:35:12):
I think a lot of people think that there's something a little bit wrong with them sexually.

(00:35:16):
And especially if you have a sexual dysfunction,

(00:35:19):
you're literally being told there is something dysfunctional about you sexually.

(00:35:23):
You might want to hold back from telling that to a potential partner because you're

(00:35:29):
scared that they will go,

(00:35:30):
oh,

(00:35:30):
there's something wrong with you.

(00:35:32):
I'm going to leave.

(00:35:36):
Yeah, that's super interesting.

(00:35:38):
It makes,

(00:35:38):
I guess it kind of makes a lot of sense,

(00:35:40):
the two things which you were saying,

(00:35:42):
especially,

(00:35:43):
yeah,

(00:35:43):
for the attachment anxiety that

(00:35:46):
can sort of manufacture it and you're more you probably could disclose a lot more

(00:35:50):
but then that initial threat of disclosing could mean that somebody would yeah go

(00:35:57):
away so uh yeah so therefore you wouldn't disclose so that so then does that mean

(00:36:02):
that it's just people who have like sort of that secure attachment style are more

(00:36:06):
likely to disclose than the other two based on your analysis oh that's cool um

(00:36:14):
And you said that these attachment styles seem to have a more significant effect

(00:36:21):
than all the other variables you were looking at when it came to disclosures in

(00:36:25):
your study.

(00:36:26):
Attachment avoidance specifically was the thing that really strongly was predicting

(00:36:32):
self-disclosure in the survey of sexual dysfunction.

(00:36:38):
And I think that it does make a lot of sense to me because

(00:36:42):
You know,

(00:36:43):
there's already that kind of desire to not disclose information generally,

(00:36:49):
just because that's not something people who are higher in attachment avoidance

(00:36:52):
want to do.

(00:36:54):
But also there's this aspect of not wanting to talk about your problems,

(00:36:58):
not wanting to rely on other people to help you cope with problems.

(00:37:02):
And if you're viewing sexual dysfunction as a problem,

(00:37:05):
that's something that you would,

(00:37:07):
I guess,

(00:37:09):
avoid telling people.

(00:37:17):
I know this is a slight sidestep,

(00:37:18):
but in your sort of surveys,

(00:37:22):
did you actually ask people what their sexual dysfunction was in terms of just

(00:37:27):
having an idea of are there particular ones which people are more willing to

(00:37:31):
disclose versus others?

(00:37:33):
So we did ask, we asked them which symptoms of sexual dysfunction they had.

(00:37:41):
There weren't enough participants for us to do any kind of

(00:37:45):
analysis where we looked at the difference just because we were like,

(00:37:50):
we just need to get enough participants that we can run the model we want to run.

(00:37:54):
And if we tried to get enough of each different dysfunction,

(00:37:58):
it was going to be painful statistically.

(00:38:02):
So that is something that it would be really cool to look at because,

(00:38:07):
I mean,

(00:38:07):
I have intuitions that there are some that are probably harder to

(00:38:11):
disclosed than others and some that are probably harder to hide physically than others.

(00:38:17):
Do you have kind of an intuition about that?

(00:38:21):
I guess you've asked the question, so you probably have some thoughts.

(00:38:24):
Well,

(00:38:24):
I was trying to think,

(00:38:25):
so I do not know all the sort of sexual dysfunctions out there,

(00:38:29):
which kind of is what sort of prompted the question being like,

(00:38:32):
are there,

(00:38:33):
because if there's certain things which probably can be fixed with medication,

(00:38:38):
then you're probably more likely to disclose it than others.

(00:38:45):
Also,

(00:38:45):
I guess in my head,

(00:38:48):
thinking if some are based on certain defects,

(00:38:52):
then probably you have no choice but to disclose them.

(00:38:57):
So yeah, those were going into my head, but I didn't kind of know.

(00:39:01):
I don't have in my head,

(00:39:02):
I have no clue of like how many sort of things come under sexual dysfunction.

(00:39:09):
I probably should have clarified that when I was explaining the study.

(00:39:13):
That was oversight on my part.

(00:39:17):
I think I forget that I know these things and normal people just don't have all the

(00:39:23):
symptoms of sexual dysfunction memorized.

(00:39:25):
So now you have your chance to clear the record straight.

(00:39:28):
Go on.

(00:39:30):
So I'm using the kind of the diagnostic statistic manual

(00:39:36):
definitions of sexual dysfunction.

(00:39:38):
There are different ways of conceptualizing it, but this was sort of the easiest, I think.

(00:39:44):
And it sort of splits it into four different kinds of dysfunctions that you might have.

(00:39:48):
So desire or arousal kind of disorders.

(00:39:54):
So that's feeling particularly

(00:39:57):
low desire.

(00:39:58):
There isn't one for feeling extreme desire that used to be considered a dysfunction,

(00:40:02):
but now like,

(00:40:04):
you know,

(00:40:04):
sex addiction,

(00:40:05):
I guess it would have been called.

(00:40:06):
That's not in the DSM anymore,

(00:40:09):
but there is like that distressingly low sexual arousal and desire.

(00:40:17):
So this,

(00:40:18):
the arousal part includes difficulty with obtaining or maintaining an erection or lubrication.

(00:40:26):
anything to do with getting physically aroused.

(00:40:29):
The next one is things to do with orgasm, so orgasmic disorders.

(00:40:37):
So things like premature ejaculation would be one,

(00:40:42):
delayed ejaculation,

(00:40:43):
so those two ends of the spectrum,

(00:40:45):
and then female orgasmic disorder as well.

(00:40:48):
So just that, again, delay or absence in being able to orgasm.

(00:40:54):
And then the last one is sexual pain disorders.

(00:40:59):
So things like vaginismus where you have this tensing or tightening of the muscles

(00:41:06):
that sort of make penetration really difficult or impossible because it hurts too much.

(00:41:13):
I know you said you didn't have enough respondents to actually be able to analyze this,

(00:41:20):
but did you get a sense of just what types were more common or less common in your data?

(00:41:27):
Yeah.

(00:41:28):
First of all,

(00:41:29):
most of the people who responded were women,

(00:41:34):
so that obviously biased the kind of sexual dysfunctions that people were having.

(00:41:40):
The most common two were orgasmic disorders in women,

(00:41:47):
so that delay or absence of orgasm,

(00:41:51):
and the desire and arousal ones,

(00:41:54):
which I think

(00:41:57):
those two sort of make sense as being quite common difficulties.

(00:42:01):
Um, yeah.

(00:42:05):
I was about to say you hear that men is not your fault.

(00:42:12):
Which is interesting because there's so much more research on sexual dysfunction in men.

(00:42:17):
Um,

(00:42:17):
if you look up sexual dysfunction,

(00:42:19):
you're going to be getting stuff about erectile dysfunction.

(00:42:22):
That is what people were studying.

(00:42:25):
yeah well because studying men is just like the thing right um in any in any in any

(00:42:32):
field in any subject you take uh what's it in exercise science everything is

(00:42:37):
studied on like 30 20 to 30 year old athletes and then it's just taken over being

(00:42:42):
like yeah this will work um and i guess and i guess the same for heart attacks i

(00:42:48):
remember talking to someone about autism research yeah dr kellen hartley the other

(00:42:52):
day he was talking about how

(00:42:55):
the diagnosis was four is to one in boys to girls,

(00:42:58):
but that's because we're very poor at detecting autism in girls.

(00:43:01):
But yeah, it's because... It's all done on men.

(00:43:04):
Men are the default.

(00:43:05):
Yeah, exactly.

(00:43:08):
Don't hit the game.

(00:43:11):
Sorry, don't hit the player.

(00:43:12):
It's the same with heart attacks, isn't it?

(00:43:14):
Like, so many heart attacks of women go undiagnosed because the symptoms look totally different.

(00:43:21):
All the animal studies are...

(00:43:24):
During my PhD, we did it on both males and females.

(00:43:27):
But generally speaking, even all animal studies are usually done in male rats and mice.

(00:43:33):
It's easier.

(00:43:35):
I don't remember where I heard this,

(00:43:37):
but it's just because women are so much more complicated hormonally.

(00:43:42):
There's just so much more going on.

(00:43:43):
And so rather than going, ooh, a complex problem, let's figure it out.

(00:43:47):
They're like, eh, men are easy.

(00:43:51):
It's much easier to publish.

(00:43:52):
Do you know how hard it is?

(00:43:54):
Otherwise,

(00:43:54):
because,

(00:43:56):
yeah,

(00:43:56):
because for someone who does did animal studies for ages,

(00:44:00):
like the ovulation cycle in a rat is four days.

(00:44:07):
So if you're trying to,

(00:44:08):
like,

(00:44:08):
capture that and trying to study anything,

(00:44:12):
it's very,

(00:44:12):
very,

(00:44:13):
very,

(00:44:13):
very,

(00:44:13):
very hard.

(00:44:14):
And then you have the next step and next step and next step going from preclinical

(00:44:18):
research to clinical research.

(00:44:20):
Yeah, it's just easier to just like do it on boys, men.

(00:44:25):
What about,

(00:44:26):
you know,

(00:44:27):
post...

(00:44:27):
I don't know about rats,

(00:44:28):
but women,

(00:44:29):
post-menopausal women,

(00:44:30):
hormones seem pretty consistent.

(00:44:33):
Yeah, true.

(00:44:34):
Do all rats experience menopause?

(00:44:39):
Maybe, I'm sure they do.

(00:44:40):
I actually don't know.

(00:44:43):
Yeah, all of my research has been with adolescent rats at the other end of the spectrum.

(00:44:48):
But...

(00:44:49):
That's a good question.

(00:44:51):
Katie,

(00:44:51):
was any of your research on sort of post-menopausal women or all your sort of

(00:45:00):
respondents young?

(00:45:04):
It wasn't something that we specifically looked at.

(00:45:09):
I think the age range was pretty normal for sex research is usually people who are

(00:45:17):
in their 20s or 30s were the ones who were most likely to respond.

(00:45:22):
We did say participants had to be above the age of 18,

(00:45:25):
but there was no like maximum age you had to be.

(00:45:31):
So I imagine we had

(00:45:34):
post-menopausal people responding, but not something that we looked at.

(00:45:40):
But that would be probably something quite interesting to see.

(00:45:44):
And I guess like Olivia was saying,

(00:45:46):
it might make it easier to control for some of those hormonal changes going on.

(00:45:52):
Did you look at age in your sample?

(00:45:55):
Because I imagine that,

(00:45:57):
as you said at the beginning,

(00:45:58):
people are starting to become a little more comfortable

(00:46:02):
just talking about sex and disclosing sex related things about themselves.

(00:46:07):
And I wonder if there's just an age difference,

(00:46:09):
you know,

(00:46:10):
younger people are just a little more comfortable than older generations.

(00:46:16):
I did do just the basic correlation for that.

(00:46:21):
I'm pretty sure it wasn't significant.

(00:46:25):
I can double check though.

(00:46:29):
Live science.

(00:46:31):
Yeah.

(00:46:35):
Well, I guess the other one on the same thing would be culture as well, right?

(00:46:39):
Because I guess different cultures,

(00:46:41):
if you have that sort of data recorded,

(00:46:45):
that would also be interesting because I feel certain cultures,

(00:46:47):
maybe more Western culture,

(00:46:48):
would be more open to disclosing such information as opposed to,

(00:46:53):
yeah,

(00:46:54):
others or even education,

(00:46:56):
even if not culture,

(00:46:57):
the education level might also be another one.

(00:47:01):
Yeah.

(00:47:01):
And that's another thing that it's just such a huge gap in the current literature

(00:47:05):
is that in the meta analysis,

(00:47:08):
like almost every sample came from Canada or the USA,

(00:47:12):
like those are where the research is being done.

(00:47:14):
So we really aren't getting a very good picture of how much this does depend on

(00:47:21):
things like culture,

(00:47:22):
because obviously the way people talk about sex is very different depending where

(00:47:28):
in the world you are.

(00:47:30):
Um,

(00:47:31):
So that is something that definitely needs to be looked at further.

(00:47:39):
Yeah.

(00:47:42):
For age though, I have just checked and was not significant.

(00:47:47):
Interesting.

(00:47:49):
But you said that most of your participants were skewed young.

(00:47:56):
Mean age was 30.

(00:47:58):
Standard deviation of around 10.

(00:48:00):
So reasonable spread.

(00:48:02):
Yeah, 20 to 40.

(00:48:03):
You're getting two generations in there at least.

(00:48:06):
Yeah.

(00:48:07):
Okay.

(00:48:08):
Okay.

(00:48:11):
The other thing,

(00:48:12):
I don't know,

(00:48:12):
maybe both of you can answer it as you work closely in a relationships lab.

(00:48:18):
With terms of sexual disclosures,

(00:48:20):
we're saying younger generations are more open towards,

(00:48:23):
at least Western younger generations are more open towards disclosing.

(00:48:26):
But are there actual statistics about,

(00:48:28):
because I know I've just read these in newspapers,

(00:48:30):
I don't have any,

(00:48:31):
or I say newspapers on tabloids,

(00:48:33):
that people now are having less sex than before.

(00:48:37):
So are disclosures increasing but actual sexual activity decreasing?

(00:48:45):
I actually haven't seen anything about disclosure based on age.

(00:48:49):
Like from what I can remember from including the studies in the meta-analysis,

(00:48:55):
it didn't seem to be something that was,

(00:48:57):
you know,

(00:48:57):
consistently different.

(00:49:01):
But yeah, that is actually interesting that you're right, sex does seem to be

(00:49:07):
decreasing for a variety of different reasons.

(00:49:11):
You know, people are living with their parents for longer.

(00:49:15):
People are,

(00:49:16):
you know,

(00:49:17):
engaging in more online kind of relationships as opposed to real life ones.

(00:49:26):
So yeah,

(00:49:26):
it is interesting that I guess the way it seems or the sense that people seem to be

(00:49:30):
getting is that we are talking about sex more,

(00:49:34):
but we're doing it less.

(00:49:38):
Which is fascinating.

(00:49:41):
That is.

(00:49:42):
I was just thinking we don't even need to worry about evidence you can see.

(00:49:48):
Like nowadays, most parents have two kids.

(00:49:50):
Back in the day, you had 12.

(00:49:51):
I have a friend who has 14 siblings.

(00:49:58):
Oh my goodness.

(00:50:00):
Yeah, my grandma has 11.

(00:50:05):
Grandparents didn't have much of a hobby.

(00:50:09):
Then they have TikTok.

(00:50:11):
See, that's the thing.

(00:50:13):
Exactly where this is going.

(00:50:14):
What you're saying is that TikTok is the reason our generation or younger

(00:50:18):
generation are having lost sex.

(00:50:20):
Could be.

(00:50:21):
Worth checking.

(00:50:22):
The thing is, there's just not enough research out there about it.

(00:50:26):
So that's one of the biggest takeaways we have from this episode,

(00:50:29):
that more research needs to be done in this area.

(00:50:33):
Yeah,

(00:50:34):
it really,

(00:50:34):
I'm getting the impression that if you're interested in doing research and you're

(00:50:39):
struggling to find that area,

(00:50:43):
come do sex research.

(00:50:44):
Yeah.

(00:50:45):
There's a lot of room for research and yeah.

(00:50:49):
Yeah.

(00:50:52):
No, awesome.

(00:50:53):
Because we've gotten to about like...

(00:50:57):
nearing the hour mark.

(00:50:59):
Katie,

(00:50:59):
are there any sort of things which we haven't spoken about,

(00:51:02):
both your papers and your PhD that you'd like to cover?

(00:51:06):
Good question.

(00:51:14):
See if I had anything else I wanted to mention.

(00:51:24):
No, not really.

(00:51:25):
I think...

(00:51:28):
I think we've talked through a lot of it.

(00:51:31):
We've covered things.

(00:51:33):
We've covered some ground.

(00:51:34):
Yeah.

(00:51:35):
We've had a good conversation, I think.

(00:51:38):
Okay.

(00:51:38):
But I have one question though.

(00:51:40):
So we've spoken about your meta-analysis.

(00:51:42):
We've spoken about your current study, which you're just about to publish.

(00:51:45):
What are the sort of the next steps?

(00:51:48):
What are the immediate next steps which you are doing?

(00:51:50):
We've spoken also about in the ether,

(00:51:52):
other studies which should be done,

(00:51:53):
but what are the next steps which you are doing?

(00:51:56):
Yeah, so I'm working on kind of three things at the moment for my PhD.

(00:52:02):
The first study we've just done data collection for,

(00:52:06):
it's my first time doing fully qualitative research.

(00:52:11):
But what we've done is we've used, have you ever heard of the story completion method?

(00:52:17):
No, no clue.

(00:52:18):
Yeah, it's reasonably new and I guess a less used method in qualitative research.

(00:52:26):
But essentially what you do is you give participants the opening of a story.

(00:52:31):
So you say this character and this character are doing blah,

(00:52:33):
blah,

(00:52:34):
blah,

(00:52:34):
and you ask them to finish the story.

(00:52:37):
And it's meant to be a really good way of kind of

(00:52:42):
getting,

(00:52:44):
I guess,

(00:52:45):
learning the discourse people have about social scripts,

(00:52:48):
kind of seeing what they think of things without asking them to talk about their

(00:52:55):
own personal experience.

(00:52:56):
So it's quite good for topics that some people might find a little bit sensitive or

(00:53:00):
may not want to share their own experience about.

(00:53:04):
So we've used that method for the study to understand what people think these

(00:53:10):
conversations where disclosure occurs actually look like.

(00:53:14):
So we've gone,

(00:53:15):
you know,

(00:53:15):
character A has a sexual dysfunction and they've decided to tell character B what

(00:53:22):
does this conversation look like?

(00:53:23):
How does character B respond?

(00:53:25):
Um, and we've asked them to write stories about that.

(00:53:28):
So,

(00:53:30):
so far what it looks like is that there is this really kind of ingrained social

(00:53:35):
script about what it means for sex to be successful.

(00:53:39):
Um,

(00:53:40):
and the fact that if you can't meet these expectations,

(00:53:46):
so you can't have penetrative sex,

(00:53:49):
you can't orgasm during sex,

(00:53:52):
you are doing something wrong.

(00:53:53):
You're broken or inadequate in some way.

(00:53:55):
That's really the language that people seem to be using about this.

(00:54:00):
And I do think the fact that we use the label sexual dysfunction doesn't

(00:54:05):
necessarily help that too much.

(00:54:07):
It really in the name implies

(00:54:09):
something's wrong, something is broken.

(00:54:13):
But there's,

(00:54:15):
yeah,

(00:54:15):
lots of kind of interesting narratives coming through about who people blame for

(00:54:20):
the sexual dysfunction or for the problem that they're viewing.

(00:54:23):
So whether they are seeing it as,

(00:54:27):
you know,

(00:54:27):
something within themselves that they really don't want their partner to feel bad about,

(00:54:33):
they don't want their partner to think that it's anything to do with them being,

(00:54:36):
you know,

(00:54:36):
sexually unskilled or,

(00:54:39):
you know, sexually incompetent in any way.

(00:54:41):
But then you also have some people who are kind of framing it as the partner could

(00:54:45):
be doing more to help fix this,

(00:54:48):
like they could be trying different things,

(00:54:50):
they could be being more gentle or doing whatever it is that this other person needs.

(00:54:58):
So that's, I guess, one of the things that I'm looking at, at the moment.

(00:55:05):
Also,

(00:55:07):
Just applied for ethics for a weekly diary study with a couple of the master's

(00:55:13):
students in the lab,

(00:55:15):
which hopefully should be quite interesting.

(00:55:17):
We're asking people if they've had anything to disclose about sex,

(00:55:22):
not specifically sexual dysfunction,

(00:55:24):
just sex generally over the past week.

(00:55:28):
And we're going to see how often that's happening, how much people are disclosing.

(00:55:34):
And this is a dyadic.

(00:55:36):
diary study,

(00:55:36):
so we're also going to see if the partner is,

(00:55:38):
I guess,

(00:55:40):
perceiving the same disclosure conversations as even having happened and what the

(00:55:46):
sort of responsiveness to that is.

(00:55:50):
And then the last thing I'm working on is a reasons for disclosure scale.

(00:55:55):
So in my survey,

(00:55:57):
I did have a qualitative question about what is the main reason you decided to

(00:56:02):
disclose or not disclose your sexual dysfunction.

(00:56:05):
And so I'm kind of using that,

(00:56:08):
the responses to that and the theory that we already have about other kinds of

(00:56:12):
sexual self-disclosure to build

(00:56:15):
a scale that is quite specific to reasons why someone may or may not choose to

(00:56:20):
disclose a sexual dysfunction.

(00:56:25):
That's actually quite a lot.

(00:56:27):
And it's all very, very interesting.

(00:56:30):
I'm particularly interested in the diary study.

(00:56:33):
I think that would be pretty cool.

(00:56:36):
Yeah, I'm quite excited about that one.

(00:56:38):
I think that should be really fun.

(00:56:42):
The story one doesn't necessarily surprise me.

(00:56:45):
The way you said people have sort of like a societal structure of how they frame their story.

(00:56:54):
I guess that makes a lot of sense.

(00:56:58):
Yeah.

(00:57:00):
And I think it is just about the way people talk about sex is so constrained to a

(00:57:07):
very specific script.

(00:57:10):
Like the way sex happens is so set out and it's very heteronormative, very cis-normative.

(00:57:18):
it just goes one way.

(00:57:19):
And that's what people know.

(00:57:21):
They know that in sex,

(00:57:22):
you know,

(00:57:23):
you start by kissing and then you move on to foreplay and then you move on to

(00:57:26):
penetrative sex and then the girl comes and then the boy does,

(00:57:30):
and then it ends.

(00:57:31):
And that's the end.

(00:57:32):
That's the script.

(00:57:34):
And when something happens that doesn't fit into that,

(00:57:38):
so maybe you experience some sort of sexual dysfunction,

(00:57:41):
that means you can't have penetration.

(00:57:44):
That means you've,

(00:57:45):
you've failed to follow the script.

(00:57:47):
There's something wrong with you.

(00:57:49):
What do we do now?

(00:57:51):
Like it's not what's supposed to happen.

(00:57:55):
So yeah, it is quite interesting.

(00:57:56):
And I guess that that makes sense again,

(00:57:59):
when you think about the tension people have between wanting to disclose and

(00:58:03):
wanting to not disclose is because these scripts are so ingrained,

(00:58:08):
wanting to not disclose something that so clearly violates these scripts does make sense.

(00:58:14):
because it's a violation of the social norms.

(00:58:18):
Yeah.

(00:58:20):
All right.

(00:58:21):
Then how would, how would you change the script?

(00:58:27):
Like how,

(00:58:27):
how do you think we should sort of talk about sex then if this is the script,

(00:58:32):
which,

(00:58:33):
and this is the way it's ingrained in people?

(00:58:37):
Um, I think that the first thing

(00:58:41):
I guess the most important thing that I can think of to change the way we talk

(00:58:44):
about sex is to remove the idea of there being any kind of set goal.

(00:58:52):
Like the fact that the goal is that both people have an orgasm.

(00:58:57):
Like that is what the goal is.

(00:58:58):
I think if we just get rid of that to begin with and just focus more on,

(00:59:05):
I guess,

(00:59:05):
individualistic goals,

(00:59:07):
things that work for the person.

(00:59:09):
So,

(00:59:10):
For some people, that might mean sex.

(00:59:12):
The goal of that is just to be close to your partner, to have intimacy.

(00:59:16):
For other people, it might be to experience pleasure.

(00:59:19):
And if that does end up being an orgasm, cool, but it doesn't have to be.

(00:59:25):
So I study sexual communication.

(00:59:29):
I think that the best thing people can do is communicate with their sexual partner

(00:59:33):
about what they think

(00:59:34):
their personal goals should be when having sex.

(00:59:39):
And I think there shouldn't be a default goal that people have in their heads.

(00:59:46):
And the conversation shouldn't be, hey, by the way, the normal goal isn't my goal.

(00:59:52):
You shouldn't have to sort of tell people that you want to do something different.

(00:59:56):
It should just be that the default is you have a conversation and you create your own goal.

(01:00:04):
Very well said.

(01:00:05):
Thanks.

(01:00:06):
Alright, Olivia, any final questions from you?

(01:00:14):
I don't think so.

(01:00:16):
Do you have any final questions you want to be asked, Katie?

(01:00:21):
No.

(01:00:22):
No, that was good.

(01:00:24):
Alright, if we're done on that, then there's one final thing.

(01:00:28):
Of course, once your papers are out, I will link them in the

(01:00:33):
uh,

(01:00:33):
in the show notes and things,

(01:00:34):
but one final question we ask all our guests is if you had one piece of advice for

(01:00:40):
our listeners,

(01:00:41):
what would it be?

(01:00:44):
Um, it doesn't need to be sex related if you don't want it to be.

(01:00:48):
One piece of general advice.

(01:00:54):
Oh, um,

(01:01:12):
You gave advice to the lab the other week?

(01:01:15):
Make your bed in the morning?

(01:01:18):
Yeah.

(01:01:19):
Yeah, that can be my advice, is make your bed in the morning.

(01:01:23):
It makes you feel nice, I think, to come home at the end of the day to a made bed.

(01:01:28):
Also,

(01:01:28):
when people walk past your bedroom,

(01:01:29):
they go,

(01:01:30):
wow,

(01:01:30):
your room's so tidy if you've got a made bed,

(01:01:32):
so that feels nice.

(01:01:36):
It's good for...

(01:01:38):
I don't know what it was like for you guys growing up,

(01:01:40):
but for me,

(01:01:42):
growing up in Indian household,

(01:01:44):
parents would be like,

(01:01:45):
go clean the other rooms,

(01:01:47):
go clean up the bedrooms and things when guests are coming over.

(01:01:49):
And I'm like, as if guests are going to run into my bedroom and check what's happening.

(01:01:56):
But yeah, I guess if the door is open, people walk by.

(01:01:59):
You never know.

(01:02:00):
Got to be prepared for anything.

(01:02:01):
You do never know.

(01:02:04):
All right.

(01:02:05):
Now, awesome.

(01:02:05):
Thank you, guys.

(01:02:06):
Thanks, Olivia, for co-hosting.

(01:02:09):
Thanks for having me.

(01:02:10):
Thank you so much, Katie, for coming on.

(01:02:13):
And most importantly, thank you, everybody who listened.

(01:02:16):
Thanks, everybody who watches on YouTube.

(01:02:18):
Thank you all.

(01:02:20):
And until the next episode, take care.

(01:02:23):
Bye.