Illustration / Nathalie Lees, The New York Times
Vanessa Marin has dedicated her career to discussing the most private details of other people’s sex lives. But, for a long time, she found it hard to talk about her own.
In a new book, Sex Talks: The Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life, the sex therapist, 38, admits that she faked orgasms for 10 years because she couldn’t bring herself to tell partners what she liked. Things improved when she met her husband, Xander Marin, now 37, but once the initial excitement wore off, the pair found themselves in front of an expensive couples counsellor, struggling to articulate why their sex life sometimes felt disappointing.
Today, the Marins have parlayed their radical honesty and relatability into a business centred around sexual education, with a popular podcast, a suite of online courses and more than 300,000 followers on Instagram. Vanessa Marin paints herself as someone who has often felt awkward and unsure in the bedroom, despite her professional credentials. Xander Marin, who is not a therapist, says he offers a non-expert perspective on what it takes to get more comfortable talking about sex.
“So many of us feel alone when we’re struggling with sex,” Vanessa Marin explained. “Like, I must be broken; I must be the only person going through this; everyone else has a great sex life. So it feels important to me to lead with vulnerability.”
The book, which the Marins co-wrote, is based on a simple — and, they acknowledge, well-trodden — conceit: many sex problems stem from poor communication. Yet people seldom get specific and structured advice about how to have those conversations, the Marins believe. The book’s five sex talks are centred around acknowledgment (“sex is a thing, and we have it”), connection, desire, pleasure and exploration.
“I’ve never had a relationship in which I talked about sex as openly, honestly or frequently as I now do with Xander. I’ve also never had a relationship in which the sex was as deeply intimate and wildly satisfying as it is now,” Marin writes. “I don’t think those two things are coincidences.”
Here’s what Vanessa Marin had to say about why it can feel so daunting to talk about sex with our partners and about how to get started.
You write that most of us don’t talk about sex often, if at all, with the person who regularly sees us naked. How do you suggest people start those conversations?
A big mistake people make is either they never talk about sex, or the only time they do acknowledge it is when there is a problem, so you sit down to have one of those “we need to talk” conversations. What we tell people is to incorporate talking about sex into their lives on a more regular basis. We recommend you start with giving compliments.
Try giving a compliment about your partner’s physical attractiveness, or the attraction that you feel for them throughout the day. It could be something really tame like: “You look nice today” or “Your eyes are really beautiful.” You can also offer some sort of compliment about the connection you feel. If you’re giving them a hug hello or goodbye, you say, “It feels so good to be in your arms.”
Compliments are an easy way to start talking about sex more openly. There are no goals to those conversations. You’re not trying to accomplish anything. You’re not making any requests or raising any complaints. There’s a little flirtation in it.
You do write a lot about the importance of flirting and trying to create a sense of anticipation around sex. Why is that so important, and what if that kind of flirtation just isn’t part of a couple’s relationship anymore?
Many of us have this expectation that we should feel desire spontaneously out of nowhere, in the exact same moment our partner does. But that’s just not how it works in real life. We write about an idea called the “sex drive simmer”, which is about finding ways to maintain some of the sense of tension and anticipation that you may have had early on in your relationship throughout the day.
One thing a couple can do is exchange flirty text messages, and that doesn’t mean that you’re constantly texting back and forth. It could be something simple like, “Looking forward to seeing you later.” Another thing that we love telling couples to do is to make a playlist of songs that get them in the mood. Just playing that in the background can also be a great way to keep that tension alive.
Part of the book focuses on building a foundation of sexual self-awareness, so people get to know what they enjoy and can eventually share that with a partner. What’s a good first step?
I think anyone can think about the question: what does good sex mean to me? Try to be as detailed as you can about it and to come up with as many answers as you can.
You can kind of trace the arc of a sexual experience so: what is it that you like to feel leading up to sex? (Like, I like it when we’ve had some quality time together already that day.) It can get into how you like sex to be initiated. It could get into what kind of environment you like sex to happen in, and what energy you like to feel during sex. Is it passionate? Is it intimate? Is it safe? Silly? What do you like after?
It’s very easy for us to focus on the problems with our sex life and our frustrations with it and not flip that around to ask: well, what is it that I actually want?
You write a lot about awkwardness. For instance, you tell people who worry it will feel strange to start having sex again after a dry spell that it probably will. And you write that awkwardness is the price of admission for good sex. Why?
When you see sex portrayed on TV or in the movies, everything flows, everything looks beautiful and perfect. But sex is a very awkward thing. Maybe you try a new position and it doesn’t feel very good, or you can’t figure it out. We really love just turning that on its head and saying it’s not something to be afraid of or embarrassed about, it’s something to embrace. If you anticipate awkwardness, that brings that pressure way down.
There’s no way to grow up without some amount of sexual shame. We all have embarrassment that comes up around sex. We have areas of our sex life that we don’t want to talk about. We’re all in the same boat together in that sense. But it can make such a big difference in your life individually, and in your relationship, if you can tackle that head on.
Written by: Catherine Pearson
Illustration by: Nathalie Lees
©2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES
From heart health to cancer to beauty: 13 stories with expert advice on getting older.