This episode contains explicit content, so listener discretion advised.

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Hi, it's Emily Nagaski here.

Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.

Thank you so much for having me as your guest host this week.

It has been great to share some ways to tap into our authentic sexual selves with you all.

Today is all about relationships, which are pretty complicated.

The good ones are hard to find, but they're even harder to maintain.

I actually found this topic so interesting that I have devoted a lot of my research to it.

So today I'm going to break down the research on what makes our relationship work

and how we can thrive with our partners.

Everything I thought I knew about sex and a long-term relationship turned out to be contradicted by the science.

It is not about how often a couple has sex.

It is not about how often they do it or where they do it, or keeping things spicy.

It is not about reigniting the spark.

It's about pleasure. It's about whether or not they like the sex they are having.

It is about the nature of their relationship, the nature of their relationship with sex itself,

and the nature of their access to their authentic sexual selves.

We are taught that in the beginning it is a hot and heavy, flush, easy-to-access sexual desire.

When we add on things like commitments to paying a mortgage or to taking care of a dog or maybe even having children

and sex goes away because of that, then you get to middle-in-old age,

and for people with uterus's menopause, and the standard narrative is you go,

...