Episode 376: The Biggest Change People Want In Their Sex Lives
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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. If you could change one thing about your sex life, what would it be? Feel free to pause for a second and come back.

It turns out that, perhaps unsurprisingly, most people have at least one thing they'd like to change about their intimate life. And it's often about having a different amount of sex, a different type of sex, or simply trying something new. In today's show, we're going to dive into current sex and relationship trends based on insights from Aria's new study of couples and intimacy trends, which included data from more than 100,000 respondents.

We're going to discuss the key changes people want to make to their sex lives today, the new things people want to try in bed, why interest in kink and BDSM seems to be on the rise, as well as why people today are having less sex than they were in the past. We're also going to explore how we can leverage technology to help improve intimacy and enhance eroticism. I am joined once again by Nicholas Vallotta, a PhD student at the University of Washington who researches intimate relationships and sex.

He is also the head of research at the couple's wellness platform, Aria. You can find him online at mindonlove.com. This is going to be another fascinating episode. Before we get to it, here is today's Level Up Your Love Life segment presented by Masterclass. Masterclass is the only streaming platform where you can learn and grow with over 200 of the world's best.

Masterclass recently launched the Art of Sex Appeal class. Featuring Shan Boodram as the instructor, this class aims to teach you how to tap into your natural sex appeal, attract the person you're looking for, cultivate meaningful connections, reignite the spark in your relationship, and help you feel empowered to walk in this world more confidently. It's an amazing course that I definitely encourage you to check out.

To that end, our Level Up Your Love Life segments are designed to give you practical tips and information on cultivating happy, healthy, and lasting love. Today, we're diving into the topic of flirting, which is a super important one for building connections and starting out on the right foot. All right, let's dive in. So one of the things that Shan talks about in this class is your opening line when you meet somebody new.

A lot of people gravitate towards some type of cheesy or crude pickup line, but it turns out that this isn't the most effective way of capturing someone's interest. And this is actually backed up by science and data. For example, there are several studies that have been done over the years where they had people evaluate different types of opening lines, and what the research shows is that men and women alike tend to prefer a more direct approach compared to cute, crude, or flippant pickup lines.

Your most reliable bet is to start with an innocuous opener or a compliment.

So for instance, a simple, do you come here often? Or how's your day going? Is a great place to start. Alternatively, you can say things like, you have really nice eyes or compliment them on something unique that they're wearing. You don't need to overly complicate this. When you start getting in your head and overanalyzing what you're going to say, that's when we often start saying the wrong things. So keep it simple and steer clear of flippant lines like, hey baby, I'm easy, are you?

Now, when you put your opening line out there, it's really important to pay attention to how the other person responds, both verbally and non-verbally. So, for example, are they making eye contact with you? Are they leaning in? What's their body language like? And are they asking questions about you in return? If you're not getting a sense of mutual interest, and they seem to be distant, that might be your sign to move on.

But if they seem interested, follow up with an invitation question, something that invites them to talk about themselves or to share an opinion on something, like how they like to spend their free time, the last trip they took, or whether they've seen that movie that everyone seems to be talking about right now. Science shows that people actually usually love to talk about themselves. Self-disclosure feels good, and it activates the reward pathway in the brain while also helping us to build intimacy with others.

Lastly, we move to the next step, which was actually one of my favorite parts of the class. Shan talks about conversation tips we can learn from strippers, people who, if they want to be really good at their jobs, actually have to be really well-versed at conversation. And so she introduces us to the idea of NTB, which stands for Never Be Typical. This is where you're going to talk a little bit about yourself and what makes you interesting or unique. Or you're going to ask a question that's a little bit outside the box.

And this is something else that's also backed up by the research. It's related to something in social psychology called the peak technique, which is where you make an unusual request that really captures someone else's attention. Most people only talk about the typical stuff, like what you do for work, which can be easily forgettable. So if you have a story you can tell about yourself that is different or fun, or if you can ask a question that nobody else typically asks, you have a chance to really capture their attention and stand out from the crowd.

All right, that wraps up today's Level Up Your Love Life segment presented by Masterclass. A huge thank you to our friends over at Masterclass for sponsoring this segment and helping us all to learn and grow. We have much more ahead on today's show, so stick around and we're going to jump in right after this short 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, Nicholas, let's talk about sex and relationship trends.

You have data from a survey of more than 100,000 respondents. And one of the questions you asked people was, if you could change one thing about your sex life, what would it be? So what were the most common responses to that question? And did they surprise you?

No, for one of them. And yes, for the other. Trick question. So about one third of respondents said that they wanted more frequent sex, which is no surprise. We have seen that a lot of people are having far less sex today than they have in previous decades, especially when we look at younger people.

And we also know that sexual frequency often correlates with sexual satisfaction. So, you know, good sex begets good sex. Rule of thumb, you probably want to be having more sex. But what you really mean is you want to be having more pleasurable sex in your life. The other thing

finding that was a little bit surprising to me was a third of people saying that they didn't necessarily want more sex or a different kind of sex, but rather in order to change their sex lives, they wanted more romance and sensuality in their life with things like date nights. And

I was excited by that finding, if even surprised, because there is this bi-directional relationship between intimacy and sexuality. Even people who really compartmentalize the two still experience this link between them. And

at times you need to rely on intimacy to shore up sexuality and vice versa. So I really understood that finding.

I just didn't realize so many other people did too. Yeah. And, you know, those trends make a lot of sense to me because, you know, as you mentioned, we're living in a time when people are having less sex than they used to. And so there might be people who are wanting to do it more, but don't quite know how to get more sex in their life. But also, you know, we're living in a time where,

we're more connected than ever, but it also seems harder to connect than ever, right? Because we're constantly distracted by our phones and our technology. And I think that that's part of the reason why a lot of people want more romance and intimacy and connection in their lives is that the connections that they're having through a lot of this technology that we're using every day and where we're increasingly spending so much of our time just can make it harder within our relationships to feel really connected to our partners.

So it sounds like most people would like to make some change to their sex life. And what I think is interesting about questions like this is that sometimes the things that we want to change, that we think are going to improve our sex life, won't actually have the desired effect if we were actually able to make that change.

So for example, there's a study that came out a few years ago where they had two groups of participants and they told one of them to double the amount of sex that they were having. And the other group, they didn't give them any instructions to change how much sex they were having. So they were looking at couples and changing their sexual frequency to see if this would change or enhance their sexual satisfaction. And on average, people were having sex once a week at the start of the study. So the doublers were basically told you should do it twice a week.

And what was interesting about the study was that they actually found that it was very difficult for the doublers to actually have sex twice a week, right? It was harder than people thought it would be to increase sexual frequency. And by the end of the study,

the people who had tried to increase the amount of sex they were having were actually less sexually satisfied. And I think it's in part because they started to feel like sex was something they had to do and it became a chore and it wasn't something that they were doing because they truly wanted it. And I just mentioned that as an example of how, you know, there's this idea that having more sex will necessarily make us happier. But if you're just having sex for the sake of doing it and not because you have the intrinsic motivation for it, that's not actually going to make you any happier.

So I think part of what's going on here is that a lot of people's sexual dissatisfaction comes from the fact that they're making social comparisons about their sex lives. So for example, they're looking around and it seems like everybody else is having more sex than they are. And so they feel like they aren't measuring up. And when we start getting in that mindset of thinking that our sex lives or relationships are supposed to look a certain way, that can end up hurting our intimate lives.

So how much of this desire for a change in our sex lives do you think is about needs we have that aren't being met versus we're engaging in social comparisons that are leading us to feel like we aren't measuring up in some way? That is a fascinating question. Love it. I am going to say that there are lived needs that are motivating much of the conversation around sex

needing more sex or needing a different type of sex, et cetera, because we are creatures who just, we have that reptilian brain that over time gets less and less stimulated by the same stimulus. And when you're in the context of, let's say a long-term relationship, but it could apply if you're having the same kinds of sex with different people,

you are most likely going to experience a wane in how turned on or excited you are by the prospect of having that same sex. There is, as I'm sure you know, the Coolidge effect that has been talked about by a lot of researchers recently. And we know that by introducing novelty, you are more likely to be sexually excited.

And I don't think that people expressing a desire to have more sex or change sex are lost on that fact. They just don't know how to change sex. I think it's the friction between knowing that there's a problem and addressing that problem.

Yeah, and I totally agree with you on that. And I think, you know, it's a mixed bag where certainly there are many cases where people have unmet needs sexually in their relationship and feel totally stuck in terms of, I don't know how to address this. But there are also cases where I think people sometimes see problems where problems don't exist because maybe they're having sex more than the average person or average couple is having sex.

but they still feel like they're not doing it enough because they have that one friend who says that they're having sex every day and they feel like they're inadequate in some way. And so, yeah, it's always a little bit of both in terms of, you know, what are our actual needs and are they being met? And also with the social comparisons that we're making.

So let's talk about some other sex trends. Now, one of them that we see in your research and that we've documented in a number of other studies is that sexlessness is on the rise. And as I've discussed before on the show, I've seen in my own research that a growing number of adults are choosing to be celibate.

So they're just taking a temporary break from sex and relationships. But there's also been an increase in people who are involuntarily celibate, meaning they'd like to have sex, but they can't find a partner. Or maybe they're in a sexless marriage or relationship, so they're partnered with somebody who's just no longer interested in sex.

But even people who aren't celibate and who are sexually active are still having less sex than generations past. So what do you think is behind this? Why are we having less sex than we used to? And why is sexlessness on the rise? I could point in multiple directions, but I'll stick to maybe two of them. The first being the increased access to technology, I do think has an effect on our sex lives, where...

Before, in order to get sexually explicit material, you would have to venture out into the shadier part of your neighborhood and go to a store to rent out a tape or go to a theater that was showing adult films. Even in the early days of the internet, you still needed to dial up and go on...

your desktop computer that may have been shared with other people. And it would take so long for your porn to load. It would take so long. And you were so worried that somebody was going to find out that you were watching porn on the family computer. I don't know. Sorry if that was just me. But the transition to a mobile generation where we literally have instantaneous porn on our phones, whether on something like Twitter, where

many people just create accounts that are endless scroll factories of porn, or you're going to an actual porn site, or you're engaging with a person on OnlyFans or some sort of Fansly account. You have so much access to sexual stimuli that the idea that you have to go out of your way to get off has become...

a lot less salient for people. They are a lot more amenable to chilling at home tonight and masturbating. I think there's also the fact that in a relationship, if you are salient,

stimulated by all of these technologies that create these sort of like dopaminergic pathways where you're always kind of getting these drips of dopamine in your system through technology.

you're less likely to also want anything that requires effort because dopamine has become so effortless in your system that you could literally chill on your couch and not get up for five hours and constantly be triggering these neural pathways. So I do think technology is one place that I look at and say, okay,

we aren't creating remarkable boundaries around our use of technology that would prevent them from inhibiting sex in our relationships. The other side that I would look at is

The change in how we think about the value of sex, I've noticed, especially amongst younger people, this change in believing that sex is this super normal thing that everybody should really be desiring and have high sexual drives in their relationships and sort of that social comparison factor you were talking about earlier. Yeah.

I noticed that younger people, maybe, I don't know, but less susceptible to it. I hear all the time of people just self-identifying at younger ages as asexual when I would just, I would never hear that when I was actually growing up. But now I listen to, you know, preteens talk about being asexual and

I also just listen to people say sex is less important as a meaningful connection. And also by extension, friendship and sort of other forms of intimacy are my priority in life rather than romance or erotic sparks. So I think those two things together in my mind are

are really feeding a rise in sexlessness, particularly because we see the highest rates among the generations most affected by those two things. Yeah, and I agree. This is a very complex phenomenon. And certainly there's some role for technology to play in all of this and also changes in norms around sex and how it's viewed. And also, I think there's been a shift in terms of

for young people, is sex still a way that you achieve social status, right? And I think that there's been some changes in how that's perceived as well. But there are lots of other factors at play here, and we could have a whole separate discussion about them. But, you know, I think another big part of the explanation here is that

we have some big changes in our mental health that have happened, right? And if you look at young adults today, Gen Z, they are the most stressed and anxious generation by far, right? And they're also using antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds and things at high rates. And anxiety, depression, and these medical treatments for them can have a big impact on

sexual desire and sexual arousal and all those other sorts of things. And so mental health, I think, is part of the explanation too. And again, there could be so many other factors at play. I know whenever we talk about the rise in sexlessness, people want to have like one simple, easy explanation. And lots of times we'll hear it's just technology or it's just porn. And I just like to say that's part of it, but there's so much more going on as well.

Thank you for adding that. That's a really important point, especially the mental health aspect. And I really am interested to see what we can do to intervene on some of these sort of generational effects on sex in a way that doesn't negate the fact that maybe

sex is simply less important to certain people. And I don't want to frame it in a way where if you're having less sex, that something is wrong, right? Maybe we were wrong. Maybe older generations were wrong in that equation, right? I tend to think no one's wrong. It's just what feels pleasurable and right for the individual. And a lot of individuals are saying, I don't need as much sex as mom and dad did.

Yeah. And, you know, this is something I talk about in my definition of sex positivity in my textbook, The Psychology of Human Sexuality, which is respecting the fact that people make different sexual decisions in their lives. And that can include decisions to have breakups.

frequent sex and decisions to not have any sex at all. And, you know, these are both valid things, right? And so I think oftentimes we want to be very prescriptive about what your sex life should look like or how much you should be masturbating and all these other sorts of things. But there's no one size fits all answer for any of them. You know that thing you're always saying that you want to learn? Like for me, it's cooking. I love to cook and I'm actually pretty good at it, but I want to be great at it.

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Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/sexandpsychology. That's 15% off at masterclass.com/sexandpsychology. Masterclass.com/sexandpsychology. Now, another sex trend from the research is that interest in kink seems to be growing. And you found that 35% of respondents said that they want to explore kink. So what were the most common forms of kink that people said they wanted to try?

Yeah, bondage, no surprise there comes in number one, the amount of times even if people don't say that they want bondage upon signing up for Aria, but then message the concierge on how they can integrate bondage into whatever play styles they did select.

If I had a nickel, honestly, the next highest was pleasure and pain. Also really interesting there because I think that there is absolutely more of a barrier to entry for somebody to answer that. Anytime you see pain, it's a no-go for a lot of people. But it seems that our interests and proclivities in sex are, in fact, sort of

getting more and more, I don't want to say extreme, but expansive and experimental.

The other one that may be interesting is anal. A classic, and a lot of people are still looking to figure out how they can work more anal into their sex life with their partner. And I do see gender effects on that as well with cis heterosexual men reporting that they want anal more than cis heterosexual women reporting that they want anal.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. There's a whole debate around whether anal sex or anal stimulation counts as kink, right? Some people consider it to be a form of kink versus others. Like, that's Tuesday, you know, it's just something you do. And

I think there are some sexual orientation differences in this. Like, I think if you looked at the gay community, the gay male community specifically, they're probably unlikely to classify anal as a kink versus for heterosexual folks, they might be more likely to consider it a form of kink, maybe because it isn't as likely to be part of their sexual repertoire. So it's a whole thing whenever we talk about kink is that the definition of kink is one of these things that means different things to different people.

Absolutely. No, you had me giggling because I also had the same thought of just sort of being like, oh, we haven't tried anal yet. But then you have to kind of like take yourself outside of your own community and remember that for a lot of people, anal remains taboo or subversive or at least something different than the norm. A lot of people are expressing interest in it. If you sort of take that expansive view of kink,

28%, so even higher than people requesting bondage, 28% of people are asking to experiment with sensory play. And I think that is perhaps one of the most interesting findings in our research that one,

People know what sensory play is? That shocked me. I think mic drop mouth open when I saw my regression plop out that number. And so sensory play, meaning any sort of like pleasurable sexual erotic play style that relies on either taking away or enhancing one or more of your senses. And yeah,

The fact people know it, but also that they are so excited to just rely on the basic constituents of sense and

in order to increase eroticism and think that that's really exciting as a frontier for them, it does show me that people are expanding their understanding of what "sex" is or what eroticism looks like for them. Because, I mean, I don't have the data to justify this, but I'm going to throw some money down that if we had taken this poll 10 years ago, sensory play would not be top of list.

Probably not. And you know, it kind of feeds into my next question, which is, you know, I'm curious as a sex researcher for your take on why there seems to be this growing appeal of kink, you know, and as I've talked about on the show before, there's been a real mainstreaming of kink and BDSM in recent years in both the popular media and in porn. And so I'm sure that has something to do with it. But what do you think? Why are so many people seemingly more interested in kink now than ever before?

I am partial to the economics of a lot of the like porn sites. And I've seen that the people willing to pay for subscriptions to a lot of these porn sites have more interest in specific kinks or proclivities. And so those porn sites are incentivized to create more kink based content and

to have a better subscriber base. And I think that coupled with the streamlining of exposure to porn, where you can talk to like, you know, people who are under 10 and they've already seen porn pop up on their phone and

creates a lot of people who are just subjected to different ideas of what sex can look like. And we know that when you're sexually aroused, your mechanisms for disgust go down as well. So I can also understand that somebody who is already maybe even just looking for like

good old traditional like porn that has no kink in it. And they're already turned on. And then they're using a porn site and something pops up that maybe has a little bit of bondage or spanking or dirty talk in it. And there are mechanisms that would normally say, I don't want that are reduced. And so they're more likely to be interested in it, explore it,

And of course, as you say, media in general has sort of made kink in certain forms more imaginable to people in their own relationships, even romanticized for their relationships. And finally, I think that

Much like we talk about sort of marginalized identities, a lot of people in the kink community have for a long time been stigmatized. And now I see a lot of people in the kink community both advocating for their community, but also saying,

invited into spaces that maybe, you know, years before they had been the people who didn't get the invites to those conferences or to those academic settings. And so I think that on both a cultural and scientific level, kink has just become this thing that everyone knows that

we need to pay not only respect to, but also respect

some dollars to clearly and whether that comes in the form of researching it like we're doing or you have done or whether that comes in the form of subscriptions to a porn site that provides you with kinky material kink sells and it's popular so I'm not surprised at all honestly given those factors that kink has become more and more popular

Yeah. Now, whether folks are kinky or not, a lot of them seem to be interested in trying and exploring new things in the bedroom. So what are some other things beyond kink that people today seem to be particularly keen to explore in their sex lives?

Yeah. So another thing that people consistently report wanting to try is oral sex. And when I ran the numbers, because that was something where I'm like, really? You're signing up for a service to get you out of your box and then you choose oral sex. And I was wondering, I'm like, well, am I biased in how I'm looking at this where I think it's men asking for oral sex from women in heterosexual relationships?

but rather it was a lot of women who were in heterosexual relationships asking for oral. And that's when the switch flipped for me. And I understood that this was perhaps a part of the empowerment and reframing of women's pleasure in sex, where we are now addressing these challenges

types of play that are supposed to be mutual in the best of circumstances. At least somebody should in their life be able to find a man to go down on her. But unfortunately,

We have seen that that is still stigmatized by a lot of media and in certain groups of people. So I was somewhat surprised by oral sex, but as soon as I ran the gender numbers, I had more of an understanding of where that may be coming from and fully support and endorse that.

The other play style that may be a little bit interesting is pleasure mapping, similar to sensory play, understanding your erogenous zones. And then I will say dirty talk came in at about 13% of people. So I think, again, not even kink, but kink adjacent. This idea of like,

What do I say when I'm having sex? You know, like how many times I have had this conversation with people in real life where they're like, where can I find prompts? Like what feels natural when you're actually having sex and

To say, or even when you're turned on, how to communicate that with your partner in an alluring way other than like, hey, babe, I'm turned on or I'm horny. Do you want to have sex? Or like, oh, yeah, that feels good. And so it's been really cool to...

find ways to help people, even just on these like basic constituents to eroticism, because you know that once they learned how to do some like basic dirty talk with their partner, they were able to apply that across the board. And then finally, the last one that I'll mention is intimacy building. And per sort of the things we talked about earlier, I think that there is

a reframing of how we think about what will make sex better for us or what we want to explore with our partner. And our company, Aria, it's not just about trying something new sexually. It's also about deepening intimacy. And fascinatingly, also heartening to me is the fact that 75% of people who tried something new with their partner, um,

reported feeling closer to their partner. Again, showing that bidirectionality between intimacy building and eroticism.

Yeah, that makes sense. I have one last question for you because we're running short on time. And it's about a talk that you gave recently at the Sexual Health Alliance's annual conference. And it was about how technology can enhance intimacy and eroticism. And I just wanted to bring this up because I know we talked about technology a little bit earlier in the show is something that can interfere with and disrupt intimacy and eroticism. So tell us about the flip side of that. What are some ways that technology can improve our intimate lives?

Yeah, we've already seen examples that have been adopted like texting with a partner, FaceTiming with a partner. New ways of existing in a relationship have been enhanced in ways that, you know, we now can't even imagine a world where we don't have that sort of technological help in our relationships.

In terms of our company, Aria looks at technology as a way to get rid of the friction of trying something new, exploring something new, understanding your partner by giving you a platform that is really meant to create in real life experience. So rather than trying to entrap your attention where you're constantly scrolling online,

on our app. Instead, really, we're trying to give you the guidance that you need to go live that in real life with your partner and give you access to not only entertaining videos and articles about different play styles, but you have access to a concierge. So any questions you have, you have access to

prompts and games that you can share with your partner that plop out information that's relevant for both of you to go and play together. And on my end of things, you know, I develop algorithms for curation for what people are looking for in their relationship, how best to treat and find appropriate things that they'll enjoy together. And

what better use of technology than to find out what will turn you on and feed that to your relationship? So I do look at AI when thoughtfully applied or technology in general when thoughtfully applied as something that can be a massive boost to our intimate connection. Again, thoughtfully applied.

Yes. Thoughtfully applied is the key word. Well, thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Nicholas. 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? Absolutely. So my social handle is on Instagram at mind underscore on underscore love because mind on love was already taken, but on TikTok, it's no underscore. It's just at mind on love.

And then website, same title. And I work for the company Aria, which you can absolutely check out at aria.fyi. 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. Oh, thank you for having me, Justin.

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.