Myth #61: Is Marriage Easy? Hard?

Picture this: You just said "I do" and you're staring at the love of your life. Now what? We'll walk you through it in this episode of Sex Ed Debunked. To celebrate our sound engineer, Ezra's, wedding, we've compiled a heap of insights, research, and personal anecdotes on what it takes to build and maintain a successful marriage. We're talking about everything from being your partner's best friend to the power of routine communication, and the importance of understanding and responding to each other's feelings. 

Have you ever wondered how some couples keep the spark alive? How do they navigate through the challenges and come out stronger on the other side? We're unmasking the secrets to making your relationship not just survive, but thrive. In this episode, we're breaking down the art of positive communication, the essence of overcoming the "honeymoon phase," and the tact of choosing your battles wisely. We'll also discuss the impact of negative comments and projection, and reveal ways to sprinkle positive feedback into your everyday conversations. 

But there's more. We venture further into the love labyrinth, guiding you on how to cultivate a relationship pulsating with appreciation and gratitude. Discover why it's crucial to express gratitude to your partner regularly, why hobbies outside your relationship are essential for self-expansion, and the magic of shared adventures. We wrap things up with the role of open communication in understanding your partner's needs and the magic ingredients for maintaining a romantic and sexual connection in your relationship. So grab your headphones and tune in for an enlightening journey into the world of successful relationships.

Follow us on social @sexeddebunked or send us a message at sexeddebunked@gmail.com

Transcript

Christine: 0:03

Hi, this is Sex Ed Debunked, a cross-generational podcast hosted by mother-daughter duo, christine and.

Shannon: 0:09

Shannon Curley. Every episode we tackle a new myth about sex, sexuality and pleasure, and use research and expert insights to debunk stereotypes and misinformation from the bedroom and beyond In 2022,. We won the American Association of Sexuality Educators, counselors and Therapists Award for Best Podcast and also managed to not totally freak out our family and friends along the way.

Christine: 0:29

We believe in healthy, sex-positive, pleasure-focused sex education, backed by real research and real experience.

Shannon: 0:34

Follow us on Instagram, facebook or Twitter at Sex Ed Debunked or email us at SexEdDeBunked at gmailcom to share your sex miseducation tales and the myths you'd like to hear us debunk. Thanks for listening.

Shannon: 0:46

Hi, this is Sex. Ed Debunked a cross-generational podcast about sexual health, sex positivity and well wishes to our amazing sound engineer, ezra, who's getting married this month.

Christine: 0:56

Woo-hoo, getting married in Nola, no less, that's right. Well, we were originally planning on doing this week's episode about infidelity, and we will have that episode coming out in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. But in honor of Ezra's upcoming nuptials, we thought we'd jump into the research about what makes a successful marriage.

Shannon: 1:17

Yes, rather than focus on what makes a failed marriage, we thought it might be nicer to talk about what makes a successful marriage. Isn't that nice of us? And while not all marriages are the same, there is definitely some tried and true advice from the internet and beyond that does set you up for marital success.

Christine: 1:34

That's true, and the reason it's far and wide is that it works, and I can tell you as someone who's been married for 37 plus years. It's good to take advice where you can get it and always keep working on your marriage.

Shannon: 1:47

And I can tell you, as someone who's witnessed that marriage for 30 years, that marriage isn't always easy, but it doesn't always have to be hard either and it can be really fun and a good marriage is something really beautiful to witness.

Christine: 1:58

Aw, thanks, shan. Yeah, so, ezra, in honor of your wedding, let's jump into the research on how to build a marriage that lasts.

Shannon: 2:08

And, unsurprisingly, of course, I did a nice little dive into the interwebs. But I did a mix of research across Reddit, the Gottman Institute, other actual reputable psychological sources and put together a list of what seems to be the internet's agreed upon advice. So we will jump into that list. But then, mom, you can jump in with your research as we go along. Does that sound good? Of course, cool. So first up and I think we all have heard this before but treat your partner like they are your friend. You often hear that your partner should be your best friend, but what does that really mean? To treat your partner like a good friend? It's not just like let's hang out and go to the movies, but it's also being nice to each other. This was actually one of the top on Reddit. They call it upvoting, but it was one of the most upvoted comments in the marriage section was be nice, just be nice to each other, and I think that's important. It's like, yeah, you should like your partner, not just love them.

Christine: 3:07

Well, and when you and Chris threw us our 30th anniversary party, that was exactly what I said. After all these years, I still like Dad, my husband and the research actually bears this out that I think the advice that everybody hears is communication.

Christine: 3:26

But the research bears out that it's also this routine communication, not just the communication over the big stuff, but the quiet day-to-day communication that keeps you connected and keeps that bond going. So there's actually I found a 2023 study that just came out that said routine communication was highly related to the day-to-day relationship satisfaction. So it's not necessarily great job, it might just be so. How was your day-to-day honey?

Shannon: 4:03

And that was actually one of the. It's funny because that was one of the things. That was it the research for the Gottman Institute, which we've talked about Gottman before, but Gottman's one of the more well-known relational therapists, relational institutes. You can be Gottman Institute certified in couples counseling. But it said, expressing interest is huge and saying how was your day is such a minor thing. But if that's your friend, you want to know how their day was. And it's funny because the routine communication that wasn't mentioned in that research but that you're saying that this research mentions that I actually have a daily notification on my phone to ask my partner how their day was, because I don't want to forget to ask that, Not because I'm not already interested, but because establishing that communication and showing that constant interest is an important part of maintaining a healthy relationship.

Christine: 4:50

Well, and I think what happens when you have been in a longer-term relationship the flow of the day gets in the way and then all of a sudden you can get into that situation where you're not noticing that person. So routine communication says to your partner I'm noticing you and I still care what your everyday looks like.

Shannon: 5:09

Absolutely, and I actually lead really well to the second sort of mutually agreed upon between the therapists and the internet nerds Top 10 things you need for a successful marriage is being responsive to your partner's needs and feelings, which really kind of just boils down to listening.

Christine: 5:28

Yeah, the research in this is really interesting. The listening actually is a bigger component than the talking. I think some of us in relationships tend to be the one to want to give advice or, in certain circumstances, maybe solve a problem, but it's actually just taking the time to listen so that a person might just want an event. Your partner might not want a solution. Your partner might not want to hear your side of the story. Your partner just might want to have someone to give them a hug and listen, and that's that. And that shows that in that context, the quality of the communication matters more than the quantity.

Shannon: 6:15

And that's that. Responsiveness is understanding that your partner's needs and feelings can change and shift and what they might need from you in the moment might be different. And sometimes it's as easy as asking when they start venting to you okay, are you venting to me because you just need someone to vent to you, or do you want me to try to provide a solution?

Christine: 6:34

And I think, if you're learning communication styles and we know as well, been with his lady for a while However, communication styles do change throughout your life course and your needs change throughout your life course, and part of communication is having that radical honesty of saying this is what I need right now and being able to trust your partner to give you what you need in that moment.

Shannon: 6:59

Absolutely Three be physically affectionate. You just mentioned it when we were talking about needs and feelings, but sometimes someone just needs a hug. Yes, Mm-hmm.

Christine: 7:11

And I found another study just published in 2023 that is talking about affectionate touch, kind of like the routine communication of along the same lines is like this routine touching among partners. So not, and despite the fact that this is sex ed debunked, not sexual touching, but touching that acknowledges that your partner is there. And the research shows that the number of affectionate touch is actually very strong, related not just to sharing activities in the present but your intention to share positive activities events in the future. So this affectionate touch has a dual purpose in the moment and how you evaluate your relationship going forward.

Shannon: 8:03

Well, that's interesting because another one of the articles that I read was talking about those quote unquote bids for connection is what that's referred to as it's like when you want to be held or you want to be touched in a physical way, and interestingly they did this survey of newlyweds and their first like two years of marriage and the responsiveness to bids for connection in successful marriages was 86% of the time, but for the unsuccessful couples, the couples that got divorced after years of marriage, only 33% of the time were those bids for connection responded to.

Christine: 8:43

Yeah. So affectionate touch has a number of different layers. One is responsiveness and the other is just kind of simply just quietly touching your partner, like if your partner's doing the dishes, just walking up and touching their shoulder and maybe grabbing a dish towel. Back to that, our conversations about chore play right. But one of the studies was interesting. It was dealing with couples therapy and couples that were struggling with their relationship satisfaction and the intervention was simply asking them and requiring them to touch each other more.

Shannon: 9:21

And to your point, simple things right, like when you're driving in the car together, hold their hand while you're driving.

Christine: 9:27

Unless you're driving, stick shift and then be you know, but then Go over and touch my hair while I'm driving, you know.

Shannon: 9:34

Yeah, there's ways to display affection and yeah, I just think that's it's a really important one and that's again one of the things that the Gottman Institute really focuses on is the six second kiss once a day. They say you should try to engage in a six second kiss. That's just like fully engaged and not distracted, and just really focusing on that moment and then and there's similar subject studies on the length of the hug as well.

Shannon: 9:58

Yeah, and there's. I mean, of course there's different research and different numbers and whatever, but there's, like you know, seven hugs a day is the appropriate number of hugs to feel like you are filled by your physical touch. And whether you believe it's seven or five, or 10 or 20, the point is, if you can establish those physical connections, it will improve your intimacy and it will improve your connection to your partner.

Christine: 10:18

Well, and in this research study that I was mentioning, shannon, what they found was that after this two week intervention, where the couples who were struggling just learned how to touch each other more in a non-sexual way, at the end of that two week period they actually had more positive evaluations of not just their relationship but their partner too.

Shannon: 10:41

Mm-hmm yeah, it's interesting Moving into, I think, something that we've certainly brought up before on the podcast. But handling conflict and conflict's so interesting because I remember one of the biggest conversation points when I was getting my masters in communications was why we all associate conflict with negativity. You know, conflict has a negative connotation. People assume that conflict is bad, it means that you're arguing, it means that you're fighting. But the truth is that there is such thing as positive conflict and that just boils down to how you communicate around conflict.

Shannon: 11:15

So, unsurprisingly, in a successful marriage you need to know how to handle conflict in a gentle and a positive way. And Reddit, in its occasional profundity, said, of course, pick your battles, let things go. But then so many people upvoted drop your ego. If you are going to, you're going to deal with conflict. There is never going to be a relationship in this world, romantic or otherwise, where you do not occasionally experience conflict. And if you can drop your ego and you can see yourself as a teammate trying to work through a conflict with your partner, then you can handle that in a gentle and positive way.

Christine: 11:52

Well and actually relationships, research and people who study counseling and clinical relationship work will tell you that the absence of conflict is really a problem, because that usually means that there's a lack of communication and probably some bubbling resentment over the lack of the communication. And, as we like to I love to quote Brene Brown choose the uncomfortable conversation over resentment, and it's about learning how to have a conversation around your conflict rather than tapping it down, tapping it down, tapping it down and then letting it explode, Because usually the argument over leaving the empty milk carton in the refrigerator is not about the empty milk carton in the refrigerator at all.

Shannon: 12:43

Well, and to your point, if you are not having a difficult conversation or you're avoiding talking about something because you know I don't want to ruin things, they're perfect, or I just didn't want to upset them, think about what that really means. Because if you don't want to quote, unquote ruin things or you don't want to upset them, is that a safe space for communication? And if it's not, figure out a way to build that safe space and maybe that's gentle? You know, and that's one of the words that came up in this one of the articles was gentleness is figure out how to have a soft, open and how to be gentle with your communication about conflict, because, of course, we all have our own relational histories and our own, you know, of course.

Shannon: 13:22

Yeah reasons why, exactly? Reasons why it's difficult to communicate about certain things. And personally, I've had this problem too, where I have, you know, fought to preserve the honeymoon stage for so long and then realized that the reason why I had to fight for the honeymoon stage was because we weren't on a honeymoon. There were things that were wrong and I was preserving it and even in my most recent relationship, that I am very confident and very happy and I had to overcome that personal hurdle of like, hey, wait, why am I not talking about this? And it wasn't because my partner isn't trustworthy or isn't supportive and hasn't created a safe space. It's because I was so used to creating a fabricated honeymoon phase that I fell into that habit. But for a successful marriage and a successful partnership, you have to overcome the discomfort and have the difficult conversation, because it's what's going to pave the way for positive conflict.

Christine: 14:10

Well, and I also, you know. The other point is to choose your battles. You know you don't want to have a battle over everything, but you still have to have battles occasionally because you're two different people living two different lives and you know you're going to have disagreements and you're going to have things that are not perfectly aligned.

Shannon: 14:27

Well, pick your battles so that you don't go to war Exactly the ultimate war, right, womp, womp, womp. But another one of the you know again, reddit's great for very like commonplace summaries of how things can be managed. But one of the comments was learn how to count to 10. Yeah, if you're about to blow up, learn how to count to 10, because in those 10 very long seconds you give yourself the platitude to decide not to have that argument if it's not worth it. You know count to 10. Okay, is this worth having a conflict over? Am I really upset about this thing that I'm about to blow up over? Is it really the milk carton that I'm upset about, or should I take a deep breath and return to this conversation later, when I'm not mad about the milk carton, but I want to talk about what it is I'm actually upset about Well, and there's a real important thing right there, shannon is.

Christine: 15:14

Sometimes, you know, difficult conversations need their space, and it's similar that you know. Reddit says count to 10. And when I took stress management as part of my masters, it was the stop method STOP, take a breath, observe and then proceed. And that is applicable to not just your stress but also to how to interact with a partner. And to go back to Gottman's research, gottman did some research observing partners in relationships and how they interacted, and it was an observational study, which means they were counting the ways and the phrases that the partners used to each other and how they spoke to each other. And what Gottman found in the longitudinal research when he revisited those couples years down the road is that the couples that used the more negative comments were more likely to no longer be together. So, while positive comments are great, refraining from stuff that's negative is even more important, because I think we've talked about and I talk about this in the context of evolutionary psychology our brains are trained to remember the negative Right. So and negative has more impact.

Shannon: 16:36

Well, and I think there's two things to unpack a little bit there. One is that when you're with your romantic partner, when you're with an intimate partner, it's easier to say the negative things because the filter that you would otherwise put on with other people you don't necessarily have with your intimate partner. So you're more likely to complain and you're more likely to have negative things and you're more likely to project on them frankly. But two, it's not just intimate relationships. To your point, the brain is predisposed to process negativity and hold on to it. And in fact, again in my communications research, we talk about mean world syndrome all the time, which is the news is always talking about negative things, and so we have this idea that the world is so, so negative. And of course there is negativity in the world, but we don't hear about the positive and we retain the negative Right. And so, within and without of your relationships, inside and outside of those relationships, that's how our brain works.

Christine: 17:28

Well, and you think about conversation, shannon. Someone will say you know 10 good things about you and one minor criticism, and the thing that we tend to remember is the criticism.

Shannon: 17:39

Well, that's why they always say when you're delivering feedback, you should do the compliment sandwich right. This was really great. We could work on this, but I loved that Because even when you do that, it doesn't matter how many pieces of bread you put on that they're going to remember the felling.

Christine: 17:52

Well, you know the compliment sandwich is a good idea for, you know, any communication and intimate relationships too. You know, to make sure that you know leading into your next thing and expressing your appreciation for your partner. You know, appreciate the effort your partner has been made. Said, say you know I don't know this might be appropriate to me not leaving messes around the house. You know, say you appreciate the effort, but maybe a little bit more needs to be done.

Shannon: 18:24

Right, yeah, and again, like you know, the previous point was avoid negativity, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to also express positivity. Of course, of appreciation. Right, and that was another one. You know, a express appreciation for your partner came up across all of the research, all of the articles, all of Reddit, you know, and it is, it's not, it's not hard, you know, say thank you, you did the dishes, thank you you poured my coffee this morning, thank you.

Christine: 18:49

Well, and that's another thing that I think, shannon, you know, when you talk about a new relationship, everyone's quite attentive to the new partner. But once you get established and, yes, married, marriage, marriage gets you to that point where you know, sometimes you forget the appreciation and sometimes you forget the gratitude and going back to looking with great interest at the person that you married and seeing and being grateful for the fact that you're going to get to live your life with this person and share some fantastic adventures with them. And you know to reiterate that gratitude and that gratefulness on the day to day will have a huge impact on your relationship satisfaction going forward.

Shannon: 19:34

Well, you've been married for 37 years. How do you remind yourself to show appreciation? Because I think it's really common to fall into this is the way it is. This is my person and you kind of get comfortable with the fact that they're, you know, there and they've always been there and they're not going anywhere. So how do you maintain that attitude?

Christine: 19:52

Well, fortunately fortunately or unfortunately for me, one of the things that Esther Perrell would say about you know, an appreciation for your partner is distance. And since I've been spending a lot of my time in Connecticut over the last few years, I have proximate distance and so when you leave a person and come back to them, you see them in a new light. But for those people who don't leave their partner and come back to them on a regular basis, like I do, you can still create that distance in your mind. And when you take a step back and even just walk to the doorway of a room and look at your partner from across the room and look at them with new eyes and realize like wow, look at the. Look at the lilt of their smile, look at the glint in their eye, look at the the you know the expressiveness when I watch them typing or when I watch them interacting at work. And it's that distance that gives you that moment to say, hey, you're pretty amazing and I'm really grateful that you're in my life.

Shannon: 20:56

Yeah, I love that. It's funny. My girlfriend just moved in with me and I find myself already doing that where I'm like like hey, over here doing her job, but I'm like what a cool person.

Christine: 21:07

Yeah, yeah, you know, and that's a great practice. You know, for any relationship, whether it's a new relationship, a new marriage or over a course of several years. And you know it's funny. You know you mentioned, you know, me and daddy have been married a long time, but we have a lot of friends who have been married a long time and they would say the same thing. You know keep appreciating the wonderful things that your partner is in your life and you know the fact that you get to live an adventure with them.

Shannon: 21:35

Yeah, two pieces of Reddit feedback that I think resonate with that. One is remember that you are both people and you are each other's person, but you're also both your own complex, individual, unique person and similarly, you know it's good to have your own thing. You don't necessarily have to go get your PhD and live in a different state, but you know, having your own hobbies, having your own thing.

Shannon: 21:59

It's good to you know whether it's playing sports or it's going to an art club or you're in a book club or whatever it is. If you each have your own sort of independent thing, it always makes sure that there's a fresh, you know, topic of conversation.

Christine: 22:12

Well, and in social psychology they will talk about that as self expansion, the ability to grow in the relationship and also grow outside of the relationship. I think too many relationships don't do well because they are expected. They marry their partner and they expect everything to be exactly the same. You know five, 10, 20 years later and that is it's just. It's not going to work. You want to change as people and you want to grow in your relationship, and those things are really, really important to making it last over the long term.

Shannon: 22:47

Well, and I think that brings us back to you know one, the conversation of being teammates and being partners like support each other through those explorations, support each other through those hobbies. It also brings us back to the conversation we had along like many episodes ago, about compersion and the importance of supporting things that make your partner happy, even if they're not necessarily your thing, because that is what allows them to continue that self exploration, and if they're continuing to explore themselves, they're also opening themselves up to new ways of interacting with you and being your partner and being your person. Yeah, that's so. It's mutually beneficial.

Christine: 23:23

However, interestingly, the research also shows that making time for fun and laughter and shared positive activities is equally important to a long and satisfying relationship.

Shannon: 23:36

Well, sure, yeah, that is that makes sense. But again, because that's your best friend, right? You should want to spend time together and you should want to do fun, happy things. But again, Reddit advice keep going on dates, keep planning adventures together. You know, like, just because you're married doesn't mean that you have to settle into the mundane and you should find joy in the mundane as well. But that doesn't mean that you put aside the things like planning adventures and going to concerts and honestly, that's something you and dad do really well is you, do you? Obviously both are very busy people, living your own busy professional lives, but you plan fun. You go on trips, you go to parties, you go out to the bar to watch the Patriots play. It would be very easy to sit at home on your couch with your feet up and just kind of take a deep breath at the end of the day, which you do sometimes. But you also make sure that you're doing fun things.

Christine: 24:30

Well, and I think that's an aspect when people ask about what makes a marriage work, they'll say keep having fun together. Well, fun takes planning when you're attracted to busy people with busy lives and planning is part of the fun. I mean, for me we always had that joke, shannon, growing up right, that I was the keeper of the responsibility and daddy was the keeper of the fun. And it's kind of still that way in a lot of ways, and it's worked, because that way the responsible things get taken care of, but so does the fun stuff.

Shannon: 25:03

As long as you know what you're both bring into the table right. Set realistic expectations and actually that is though that is one of the things that was on the list is set realistic expectations. You were. There are small ways that you will be able to influence and impact your partner, but you are not going to change your partner at their core. If they are intrinsically type B and you are intrinsically type A, you're just going to have to kind of figure out how to make that work.

Christine: 25:31

Does that sound familiar?

Shannon: 25:32

I'm married to a type of Z, but but you know there is a distinction between influence and impact, and someone being open to feedback and being willing to change parts of themselves. But you are not going to change your person to their core, so you need to learn how to love them for who they are.

Christine: 25:49

Exactly, Exactly, and and that learning and that emotional connection. The research shows that when you build that emotional capital you and your partner actually there's greater levels of forgiveness, which means it's a protective factor because you know life happens, stuff's going to get rough, there's going to be things you need to deal with, but if you have, as what what Gottman refers to as the Gottman bank, full of emotional capital, you have a greater capacity for forgiveness and a greater resilience for the tough times that are going to happen in any long term relationship.

Shannon: 26:26

And then another one that kind of just makes sense, but solve your solvable problems. It's like there are things that you can kind of get out of the way, and some of that is is pre-relationships, so you'd hope you had it sorted by the time you married as or?

Shannon: 26:40

we're sure you already talked about it, but it is important and it's funny because this is something that comes up on like every dating show, right? It's like these dating shows that are like married at first sight, love is blind. Whatever it is, the ultimatum it's always. The thing that ruins the relationship is that they get married on the spot and then they're like oh, by the way, do you have a 401k? And they're like Nope. They're like Cool, do you want to have kids? Nope, yeah, that's the one that I've been really good to talk about yeah.

Shannon: 27:09

Or like oh, by the way, I go to church four times a week. You're cool with that, right? Nope, I'm an atheist. Like. These are the things that are solvable problems If you address them right away, and by solvable I do mean don't get married, but have those conversations early. And, more importantly than that and this goes into the don't change thing, like you can't change someone thing but if you have that conversation and the answer you get is not the answer you want, don't get there Now, Jan, this is supposed to be a positive thing.

Christine: 27:40

Ezra has already made the decision.

Shannon: 27:42

Right.

Shannon: 27:42

But my point is I have and this is probably something that comes up in every type of relationship, but it is something I have absolutely heard a lot in the queer community is especially around having kids, and it's like you're not going to convince someone that they want to have kids if they don't want to have kids, and that's a really big one.

Shannon: 27:59

But you're also not going to convince someone who you know spends their money as soon as they get it that they should have a 401k and you're not going to convince someone that is devoutly religious that they shouldn't be. You know there are fundamental things and again, I know this isn't Ezra and Tess Well wishes to you both. But it is really important to mention in the context of getting married is that there are immovable objects that you have to be realistic about and be honest about. So, as much as relationships are about communication and they're about compromise and they're about meeting each other halfway, also, be honest with yourselves about what it is that you're going to get out of your relationship and know what you can and cannot change.

Christine: 28:38

Yeah, and you know what, shannon, there are the same. Similar issues will come up in the context of a marriage, in the sense of sometimes problems can be solved pretty easily and just take them head on and solve them. You know, like, like you know, there are couples these days and I know it's kind of trendy who have made a decision, if one person snores and the other person doesn't, to just like OK, we'll have separate bedrooms, and you know what? That's OK if it solves your problem, right?

Shannon: 29:11

I mean, one of the pieces of Reddit advice was get two separate blankets for the bed, so you stop arguing over stealing the blanket at night. But even like you know, we have a toothbrush holder in our house that is not big enough to hold the toothbrush container. Well, let's just get a bigger one instead of like getting frustrated every time you put it in the toothbrush thing, like, how about just get a bigger holder? And those are.

Christine: 29:33

Those are easy ones.

Shannon: 29:34

Yeah, yeah. It's like OK, you don't like whole milk and I like skim milk, whatever, we'll just get a whole milk. I don't care, like there's just there again and that's the most minor battle to not fight. But it's true, solve yourself up with problems.

Christine: 29:47

That's good advice. Ok, what do we have next?

Shannon: 29:50

I don't know what do we have. Oh well, you know what we have next. The most important of all, welcome to Sex at Debunk, the show where we tell you to have sex. There you go. You got to have sex if you're going to have a good marriage, or at least you have to practice intimacy and connection. And truly the research does show, and also the anecdotal evidence shows and Reddit shows and every article shows that you got to maintain that romantic sexual connection and chemistry if you want to have a successful marriage.

Christine: 30:21

And let's parse that out a little bit, shannon because, we're not talking about.

Christine: 30:25

We're not talking about looking outside and and and counting and marking down how many how many days a week or how many days a month. What we're talking about is achieving a level of sexual satisfaction, and the research shows sexual satisfaction, when it's measured subjectively by the partners in the relationship and they have the same levels of sexual satisfaction, it is highly, highly correlated with relationship satisfaction. Not all the time, sometimes it you know. There are other things obviously that weigh into relationship satisfaction, but there are a couple of things under sexual satisfaction to keep in mind.

Christine: 31:06

One is a topic that we talked about when we talked about Emily Nagoski's book Come as you Are who, by the way, is coming out with a new book in January called Come Together, which I can't wait Right now. But she has a concept and she uses a concept called sexual communal strain, and that is understanding that if your sexual motive is for pleasure, you are going to end up more satisfied than if your sexual motive is to reach an end goal. It also is an understanding that sometimes one person is more in the mood than other, and sometimes you give your partner what you need, what they need, and that's okay Because that's part of the communal strength between a relationship.

Shannon: 31:49

Yeah, and I mean again, that goes back to good communication. It goes back to being honest. One of the you know posts on Reddit said the only secret you should keep in your relationship is a present.

Christine: 32:01

It's like although let's talk about it One of the other, our friends who have also been married over 30 years. When we asked them the other day, you know what's the secret? The answer for the guy actually was radical honesty. And you know, sexual communication communication about what you like and want and desire can sometimes be an uncomfortable conversation, but the honesty about what you want and need in your body is really, really important to achieve that. Sexual communication, sexual satisfaction. So radical honesty in all things.

Christine: 32:39

And the sexual communication doesn't have to be, you know, in the middle of when you're engaging in sexual activity. In fact, the research shows that it probably shouldn't be 10 to 10. You know, in terms of you know if you're going to be critical, but on the other hand, there's beautiful nonverbal communication that can be really positive. That can be simply moving your partner's hand into one place or another, simply saying you know, I love what you did two minutes ago, can you do it again? And once again focusing on the positive and focusing on the aspects of your partner and that of your activity with your partner that you appreciate and that you love. And Sexy, sexy time is good relationship time.

Shannon: 33:28

It is I mean, this is your person that you want to be with forever and you want to experience all the good things with, and sex is one of the best things. If you do it, you know the right way, right, as we said a few weeks ago, which is communication-based, pleasure-focused, open, honest connection.

Christine: 33:46

And fun and fun, fun. Have your sexy time, be playful time and realize it could be a time to laugh and a time to smile and a time to cuddle and all of those things are part of a really good, sexy, healthy marital relationship Exactly.

Shannon: 34:07

So today's myth was less of a myth. It was more of a list that we hope our friend and our colleague Ezra will keep in mind as he embarks on this next chapter of his life. But not that we're concerned. We're fully confident, ezra, that you will continue to be kind, be honest, be open, communicate and appreciate who you are. Yeah, yeah, truly. We absolutely wish the best to Ezra and Tess and we can't wait to see what their beautiful life turns into and, most importantly, how their beautiful dog, frida, fares. And all of this.

Christine: 34:39

We want pictures. Yeah, so, ezra and Tess, the minute and the day of your marriage will be, and your wedding day will be, a day that you're filled with lots of emotions. Take those emotions and bring them with you every day and remember to take a step back and see the wonderful human that you married.

Shannon: 35:01

So, for better or for worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health that's another myth. Put to bed A marital bed yeah, the marital bed, exactly, exactly. So Ezra's going to roll his eyes listening to that one. Thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We hope that you got some useful insights out of that. We will be back next week with another study session and stay tuned. We will be bringing on new guests in the coming weeks and we will, in fact, be doing that episode about infidelity. We'll also be talking about parody culture, sexual communication and more in the upcoming weeks.

Christine: 35:38

Take care everyone. Thanks for listening. Bye now. Thanks for tuning in for this week's episode of Sex Ed Debunked During the course of our podcast. We have limited time together, which means that, unfortunately, many identities, groups and movements may not be represented each week. The field of sexuality and gender orientations, identities and behaviors are changing and growing rapidly, and we remain committed to being as inclusive as possible.

Shannon: 36:09

Please remember that all of us, including us, are learning in this area and may occasionally slip up. We ask that we all continue to be kind to one another so that we can create a truly inclusive and accepting environment. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us at Sex Ed Debunked on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Christine: 36:29

Sex Ed Debunked is produced by Trailblaze Media in Providence, rhode Island. Our sound producer is Ezra Winters, with production assistance from Shea Weintraub.