Episode 368: What We Get Wrong About Relationships
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You're listening to the Sex and Psychology Podcast, the sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Leigh Miller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book, Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. I'll be honest with you, a lot of the things that you've probably learned about what healthy relationships look like is complete bullshit.

For example, you've probably heard things like, you'll just know when you find the one, and that love conquers all. However, it's not so simple. So in today's show, we're going to dive into what you really need to know about cultivating happy and healthy relationships.

Some of the topics we're going to explore include how to know whether a given relationship is right for you, the key factors that predict relationship satisfaction, how to avoid moving too fast when you're in the honeymoon phase, how to set realistic expectations for your sex life, and more. We're also going to discuss practical tips for prioritizing our relationships in the midst of our very busy modern lives, as well as why learning how to regulate your emotions is the single best thing you can do for your relationship health.

I am joined once again by Claire Perlman, a queer Jewish sex therapist and educator living and working in the Bay Area. Her work with clients, workshops, podcasts, and social media focuses on making sex education more accessible and normalizing sexual pleasure and play in people's lives. You can find her at Sex Clarified on all platforms and at sexclarified.com.

This is going to be another fascinating episode with lots of practical tips and information. Stick around, and we're going to jump in right after the break. If you love the science of sex as much as I do, consider becoming a friend of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. The Kinsey Institute is the world's premier research organization on sex and relationships, and you can help them continue the legacy of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose pioneering research changed everything we think we know about sex.

Visit KinseyInstitute.org to make an impact. Your donations can help support ongoing research projects on critical topics. You can also show your support by following Kinsey Institute on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thank you for supporting sex science.

Okay, Claire, let's talk about things people get wrong about love and relationships. So you recently published an article calling out a lot of the BS that we get told about these things from our culture and society. And I thought it was a great list. So I'd like to dive into it with you. So the first thing on your list is you'll just know when you find the one. So why is this idea a bunch of bullshit?

Thank you so much. I'm so glad you liked the list. That point makes me laugh because I was obsessed with this idea in my own dating life that I was going to just know when I found, quote, the one. And as someone who deals with anxiety in general and especially relational anxiety because they are so important to me, it is so difficult to, quote, just know or just

even just know what just knowing feels like. So I think that this sets us all up for a very challenging dating experience if we are looking for this ephemeral relationship

unclear idea of what just knowing is. And I think that more often than not, what just knowing is, is someone deciding that this person is going to work out for them or that they are going to engage in attempting to date them and seeing if it works out.

And that's what just knowing is. They just know that they have decided. And so I think that especially for people who struggle with anxiety, who struggle with dating or relational anxiety, just knowing is not actually on the table. And that attempting to look for that feeling is going to make all of this hurt so much more.

Yeah, I think you're so right that when we think about or approach relationships in this way, that it makes it even more high stakes, right? And piles on even more anxiety into what is already a very fraught situation for most people. So I don't think it's a very healthy way to think about relationships either because...

I think clinging to this idea too much can also lead you to miss out on opportunities where a relationship could have grown into something really special with someone, right? Because if you believe that you're just going to know and you're going to know right away whether or not this person is right for you, then you're probably not going to give them a chance, right, to see if that relationship could work.

And what we see oftentimes with people who've been together in long-term relationships is that they didn't actually know in the very beginning, or they didn't even necessarily have attraction to one another in the beginning. And it's something that grew over time. So yeah, that's not necessarily the best way of thinking about relationships. Yeah, I find it very not helpful. And I would like to liberate us all from that idea that we are looking to just know, right?

Okay, so next up is the idea that the honeymoon period determines whether a relationship is good or not.

And this is such an important one to talk about because I know so many people who have made monumental life changes while they were in the honeymoon phase and everything, you know, seemed to be going great with their partner. And, you know, I know people who within just a few months of knowing each other moved in together, they got married or they even decided to have kids because it just seemed like everything was perfect.

But in so many of those cases, the relationship just didn't work out. So tell us a bit about the honeymoon phase. How long does it last and why is it a bad time to try to determine whether a relationship will last long term? Yeah, the honeymoon phase can last anywhere from three months to 24 months.

And it is literally your brain on drugs. The parts of your brain that are firing are so similar to the parts of your brain when you are on drugs. And that just means that you feel so good. And who doesn't want to feel that good? Being in the honeymoon period is great. There is nothing wrong with it. But the point I made in this article is that it is...

very difficult to determine long-term sustainability of a relationship from your brain feeling that good. Because yes, your brain feels that good. The relationship feels that good in that moment, but those are not the determining factors that will help you build a sustainable long-term relationship.

Yeah. And, you know, something happens when we're in this phase and we're feeling so good is that we have these blinders that go up where we don't notice all of the red flags that might be a sign that, hey, maybe this isn't the right relationship for me long term.

We kind of ignore potential warning flags. And oftentimes other people on the outside will see them. And sometimes I'll try and bring them to your attention. And you will be like, you don't know what you're talking about. People are very resistant to getting outside perspective when they're in that honeymoon phase because they don't want to believe that this relationship that they think is so perfect might have some problems or red flags in it. So it can actually be kind of hard to give people

a reality check, right? You kind of need to recognize like when you're in a honeymoon phase that it's going to be fleeting. It's not going to last forever. It's not a great time to make a lot of rash and impulsive decisions. And you just got to kind of slow your roll a little bit before deciding to, you know, really escalate the relationship.

Yeah, and enjoy it. I mean, the honeymoon phase is so great. I personally love it. But it also, it just is not a good determinant of how well the relationship is going to work out for you.

Absolutely. So next on the list is the idea that in a good relationship, the sex will always be great. But that's a pretty unrealistic expectation, right? We're bound to have variable experiences and that's okay. So tell us a little bit about why it's not realistic to expect a perfect sex life where every sexual experience with your partner is going to be amazing and mind-blowing.

Yeah. I think this is really important when you are dealing with the first two points of thinking that you'll just know and also that the honeymoon period's a great time to make big decisions. Because when you are in that beginning part, the sex probably is going to be incredible. You know, I see a lot of couples in my office who come in and they say, oh yeah, the first year or the first two years, the sex was amazing. And then it kind of petered off like what happened? And I think that's a really important point.

And that's because we were in the honeymoon period and the honeymoon period can create a really easy, fun, sexual dynamic between two people. And that's great, but that also is not how long-term sexual relationships work. Our brain starts to set

settle into this relationship and we start to get other pieces coming back into our stratosphere. And when we are met with other challenges in life, oftentimes our sex lives are affected by that. And that's totally normal and okay. And even if everything is totally...

hunky-dory, normal day-to-day and your sex life is still shifting, that's also normal because sex is not a static thing. It's a dynamic process between multiple people and you would expect...

to shift. Just like if you made the same dinner every single night, that's generally really good. Some nights it's going to taste kind of whatever, or some nights you're going to think you wanted it, but really you wanted something else. And some nights you accidentally put too much salt in it. And that is just how your long-term sex life is going to be as well. And so if we had a little more flexibility around it, I think it would really benefit all of us. And the

I also really want to encourage people to remember that even if you've had some challenging sexual experiences or just kind of whatever sexual experiences with your long-term partner or the person you've just started dating and you think is the one and it's very exciting, that's very, very normal because the more often you have sex, the more likely you will one day run into a kind of mediocre time and that's okay or a bad time and that's also okay.

Yeah. You know, this reminds me of a conversation I had recently on the show with sex therapist Barry McCarthy. And he talked about how if you want to set a realistic expectation for sex in your relationship, that you should follow what he calls the 85% rule, which is basically that, you know, 85% of the time, the sex is going to be good or great. But 15% of the time, it's not going to be so good or great. We're going to have this variability in our sexual experiences that we're going to have to

Sometimes sex will just be meh. Sometimes it'll be just not good. And that's okay, right? Sometimes it just doesn't go according to plan. Sometimes things detract from a sexual experience. Maybe you got really distracted and

because you had something going on at work that day, could be any number of reasons, right? There could be loud noises outside that interfere or detract from the sexual experience. So we shouldn't expect perfection. We should expect variability. Most of the time, sex is probably gonna be just fine and that's okay, right? That it's not always gonna be perfect.

Right, exactly. Something else you talk about in the article that we often hear about is that relationships are supposed to be hard. And I think this is a really important one. I mean, I've heard lots of people say relationships are supposed to be hard. But on the other hand, I've also heard a lot of people say the opposite, that a good relationship is supposed to be easy. And these are kind of confusing messages. So tell us what you think. Is a good relationship supposed to be hard or easy?

Yeah, I think you bring up such a good point. I have heard both of those things so many times and it can be such a confusing place to be when you are trying to be in some kind of long-term relationship or just dating and figuring out who you want to spend more time with. Relationships...

are both hard and easy as we progress through them. And they are not one or the other all of the time. What they will do is require effort. So relationships are challenging. They can be challenging. They can be less challenging. But relationships

I would encourage people not to put them in a binary of they have to be easy or they have to be hard because neither of those things is actually sustainable and it's not realistic. And if we thought about any other practice that we do in our lives, like playing music, for example, if you play an instrument,

It is not easy all the time or hard all the time. It does, though, require effort and practice and intentionality and showing up day after day and being there with it no matter what is going to come out of it. We are less picky generally around our musical practices or whatever hobby we're into because we're not putting as much value on what comes out of that around what it means for our life or what it means about who we are as people.

And I think that that's important to remember what meaning we're making out of how hard or easy we've determined our relationship to be. And that relationships will go in phases. Sometimes they will be easier. Sometimes they will be more challenging. But whatever they are, they require effort just like any other thing in our life. And the other thing I really want to emphasize is that if your relationship feels hard or

all of the time, that is something you want to pay attention to because that is not sustainable for you. Yeah, I think you're so right with all of this is that, you know, we shouldn't look at relationships through this very strictly binary lens, right? Because if you believe that a good relationship should be easy, well, the problem with that line of thinking is that once you start to encounter some challenges, people tend to jump ship and they're like, well, that wasn't the right relationship.

And it can lead people to break up faster and to not really give their relationship a chance. And so I don't think it's helpful to believe or expect the relationships should be easy. But by the same token, I don't think you should necessarily expect that they're supposed to be hard, right? Because that can lead some people to stay in very unhealthy dynamics because they think that that's just sort of what is to be expected when you're in a relationship. And so as always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. You know, relationships are both hard and easy and

And the reality is that you're going to encounter some challenges and you've got to work to get through them together and put some effort into it. Yep. Yep. Fully agree.

Alright, Claire, so let's talk a little bit about love. So with Valentine's Day just around the corner, a lot of people are going to have love on the brain. And there are so many things that you hear about love over and over and over again, including the ideas that love conquers all and all you need is love. And these sayings give the impression that a relationship can overcome any challenge as long as there's love.

But sometimes love alone isn't enough, which I believe is something you've seen in your own work as a sex and relationship therapist. So tell us, why isn't love enough? And why isn't love a great predictor of relationship satisfaction? Yeah, this one's going to sting, that love does not conquer all. And that is something that I think would be very helpful for all of us to integrate into our lives.

However, it's not the thing that we have been told our entire lives. We grew up on Disney and rom-coms, and those all told us that if we were just in love, the relationship would work.

And I see so many couples every single day who are so deeply in love, but whose relationships are not working and the people in them are suffering. And love does not equal the absence of suffering. And it also doesn't equal long-term sustainability. And the reason behind that is because we are amazing creatures and we can fall in love with many, many different kinds of people.

And much of the time, that love is not necessarily based in shared values or a similar approach to lifestyles. And what is really sustainable in a relationship, what helps a long-term relationship be sustainable is...

are shared values and a shared approach to your lifestyle. And that means things like if you agree on both having kids, if you agree that working out most days is an important piece of your lifestyle, if you agree that a big value for you is raising your kids a certain kind of religion or practicing a certain kind of religion or traveling all of the time or

All of those things are shared values, shared lifestyle things, and also a shared value that's really important that will help your relationship last and feel good is a shared value around how a good relationship feels and what effort you put into it to make it feel good.

Because what happens when two people have very different values around how to show up in relationships is people suffer. And you can be so deeply in love. And I am not negating that love. That love is very, very real. And it's very, very painful when it's

not feeling like a sustainable relationship when you are that deeply in love. But I really encourage people to assess for shared values and shared lifestyle when you are dating, early on in dating,

Because you have the capacity to fall in love with many people. And people might be listening to this thinking, no, Claire, I only fall in love with one person, whatever, blah, blah. I really believe in our whole capacity of falling in love with many people. And maybe...

You haven't had the opportunity to do that or you haven't felt the connection with people. But I think that love can be a choice and that you choose to spend more time with people who you then fall in love with. And so I encourage people to choose to spend time with people who have shared values and lifestyles with them.

Yeah, I think you're so right that love isn't enough and that you can be in a relationship with somebody who you love and love very deeply, but it's not the right relationship. Love alone is not enough. You need more than that. And I think this part about, you know, shared values and lifestyle is a really key one and something that, you know, going back to our earlier conversation about the honeymoon phase often gets overlooked, right? Because

Sometimes when you're with somebody and you've got that passion and excitement, and maybe they're very different from you in terms of their lifestyle and values, those differences in the beginning can actually seem kind of enticing and tantalizing in some way, and they can add a little spice to it.

And maybe that's exciting for a short period of time, but over the long haul, those differences in values can creep into the picture and become a really big issue eventually. So yeah, it's another thing to think about and look out for in the early stages of a relationship. Yeah. And it's so hard, especially if the sex is really good. That can be such a hard place to determine if you have shared values and lifestyle. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, in your article about this, you talk about how when people are misaligned when it comes to their values or lifestyle, that it can create other problems in the relationship. For example, it can lead to sexual problems. So can you tell us a little bit more about this where people might think, oh, sex is the problem, but nope, it's actually like a difference in shared values? Yes. Yeah. So,

This, it can be really, really heartbreaking. People come in and they're like, we're having a sex problem. We're not having sex or we're having too little sex or whatever is happening. And when we get into it, it's that there is all this resentment built up because one person really wants to go on backpacking trips and the other person wants to stay home and be a cinephile. And

And that is really, really difficult for them to compromise on. And so they each feel overlooked and undesired. And so then it creeps into their sex life and they're not having sex. And so it's less about the actual desire for sex because they both express a big desire for sex and getting their sex life back on track the way they wanted it to be, especially when it was how it was in the beginning. But yeah,

That is not a sex case. That is a difference in values case. And that can sometimes be even more heartbreaking for people because then it feels more dire or it feels like, oh, it's not just about our sex life. It's about something larger.

But I think it's actually a really liberating space to be in because then you can figure out how you can compromise on some of those things, how you can meet in the middle, or you can

Have the very painful, but eventually very empowering experience of separating and then finding someone who does align more with you and who is excited about the things that you're excited about and who then also feels more desire for you and who you feel more desire for. And then your sex life improves.

Yeah, it's such an important point, you know, that sex problems aren't always about sex, right? And bad sex or a lack of sex in a relationship can sometimes be a symptom of something else and potentially a much bigger issue in the relationship like resentment.

And I know it can be very distressing for people to find that out when they go into couples or relationship therapy. They were probably hoping for a quick fix for something they could do to get their sex life back on track, maybe add some novelty and try something new. And then they discover, oh, no, we have a fundamental difference in values and we actually like really got to work

on the relationship. So yeah, it's something where sometimes it is possible to bridge the gap between differences in values, but sometimes you're just so different that it's just not really possible to make the situation work. And the job of a sex and relationship therapist is not to save a relationship at all costs, right? It's to do what's best for the individuals involved. And sometimes the best decision for people is actually to separate or break up.

Yeah, and I think that's a surprising part for people to learn about sex and relationship therapy, that my goal is not to just keep them together. Yeah, because sometimes that doesn't result in a happy outcome for anybody. Right. I want two people to leave feeling satisfied, feeling better about their lives. And that is not always that they stay together. Yeah.

Now, another key factor you talk about in terms of maintaining a satisfying relationship is prioritizing your relationship. And there are a heck of a lot of people who feel like they just don't have time for their partner. They're so busy with work, with kids, with everything else that comes along with being an adult that they just can't really seem to find time to invest in their relationship.

But we need to find ways to do it. So can you tell us a little bit about how we can learn to prioritize our relationships, even in the midst of our very busy lives? So what can we do to make our relationships more of a priority?

Yeah, I think this is a huge one that we all struggle with, especially successful adults that are doing all the things and the way that our culture is set up to try and maximize everything that we do. And one of my favorite tips for couples that feel like they don't have any time is make time for ice cream. What I mean by that is you don't have to go plan a week-long vacation and

and go to a tropical place and be in bikinis and take beautiful photos and have sex every day. What you can do is something more accessible that is smaller and takes like 10 minutes. Go and get ice cream with your partner. And if you don't like ice cream, choose something else. But choose a small- If you're lactose intolerant, choose something else. Yeah. Go get sorbet. I believe in you. But

Go do something very small, time-limited, that is enjoyable, that feels good, that doesn't have to do with sitting around and processing your relationship.

and also isn't an entire week-long travel to a tropical island. Make time for ice cream. And then as you continue to make time for that, do it once a week, right? I want you to consistently make time for ice cream. And when you feel like you've been able to do that, then you can grow a little bit more. And what I also want people to remember is that if you are not prioritizing your relationship, it will come back and haunt you. And...

What I see is even in my own life with my peers, my friends, myself, if we're not prioritizing our relationships, no matter how busy we feel, if we are not actually putting our phones down, looking at each other, just having dinner together and not looking at our phones and just asking each other, you know, real compassionate, curious questions about how our day was, that can be enough to prioritize a relationship and continue a connection and feel good about each other.

But if we're not doing that, our relationship will suffer. It's the same as if you are not prioritizing your health. If you're not prioritizing your physical health, your emotional health, we all know what happens if we stay in bed and watch TV for a week straight, like literally not get up, right? We will suffer. And that's because we are not prioritizing movement or eating healthy or all those things.

But that's a much more concrete outcome and it's a much clearer, more quicker outcome than the slow disintegration of the connection in your relationship. And I know, especially if you're listening to this and if you're in a relationship, that that relationship is important to you. And so why not pour time into the things that are important to you and help your partner feel desired and like you are curious and care about them and feel

I can almost guarantee that that will also improve your sex life. Yeah. You know, and I think where some people get tripped up when it comes to this idea of prioritizing their relationship is that it feels like they have to make some big grand gesture. Like they have to plan a date night and oh my gosh, it's going to be all this work to try and put this together. And then we have to do, you know, this whole evening, but I've got so many other things that I need to do for work the next day. And it just, it seems like too much.

And it doesn't have to be that way, right? So prioritizing a relationship doesn't have to involve these big grand gestures. They can be, as you described, these little small moments of connection, as little as a few minutes. It's here and there can go a long way toward helping you to sustain that connection or try and get that connection back with your partner.

Yeah. One of my other favorite ways in like reprioritizing relationships is making sure that you kiss each other before you leave the house in the morning or before you go into two separate rooms to work from home. And as the Gottmans love to remind us, the five second kiss is really, really effective. And so when you're kissing each other goodbye in the morning, have a five second kiss. See how that shifts things every single day. And that, that literally takes five seconds. Yeah.

Yeah, and those five seconds are not going to be the difference between you getting to work late or on time, right? So it's just a very brief, small thing you can do that can be good for your relationship.

So we're running short on time, but I have one other topic I wanted to briefly explore with you, which is the subject of another article that you wrote. And in it, you say the best thing that you can do for your relationship isn't necessarily learning to communicate better or learning how to give your partner better orgasms. It's learning how to regulate your emotions. So why do you say that? And do you have any tips on how we can learn to better regulate our emotions?

Yeah, I could talk about this for hours. I think that one of the biggest points of conflict in relationships happen when we react instead of respond. And that is when we are not taking that pause to really think about how we want to respond to our partners that

will be a helpful and constructive thing instead of just lashing out. And lashing out might also look like shutting down or giving someone the silent treatment. And I think if we are able to learn to regulate our emotions, to help ourselves calm down when we are feeling really overwhelmed or really activated, or like we're heading into fight or flight,

that can be the single best thing we can do for the health of our relationship. And some of my favorite ways to support emotional regulation are doing things that I actually learned when I was working as a kids therapist. And I do these things as an adult and I teach them to all of my clients, but doing 5-4-3-2-1, an emotional regulation technique, doing one of my favorite ones, which is

choosing one color and then naming all of the things in the room that are that color. My favorite part about that is that if you're not feeling calmer after the first color, you just choose another color and you can just keep going. And these are the things that help ground you that are both body and mind related that can help bring you back to the present moment and help you respond instead of react.

Yeah, I love all of that. Thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Claire. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work?

Yeah. Thank you so, so much for having me. It was really lovely. You can find me at sex clarified spelled normally with a D at the end on all platforms. My website is also sex clarified.com. I have a sub stack, which is where all of these articles live. And if I sound like a type of therapist that you want to work with, I would love to work with you. If you are based in California, that's where my license is. And you can find all that info on my website.

Great. And I'll be sure to include links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you again so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you. Thank you for listening. To keep up with new episodes of this podcast, visit my website, sexandpsychology at sexandpsychology.com or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. If you listen on Apple podcasts, please consider becoming a sex and psychology premium subscriber to enjoy ad-free listening for just $3.99 a month.

You can also follow me on social media for daily sex research updates. I'm on Blue Sky and X at Justin Laymiller and Instagram at Justin J. Laymiller. Also, be sure to check out my book, Tell Me What You Want. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.