We brought a sex educator on to talk about the gap between what men and women want in bed, and the most useful thing she said had nothing to do with sex.
Heads up before you read this one at the office. We talked about sex on the show this week, like grown adults, and this edition does too.
Will’s first question to Dr. Celeste Holbrook was about women. Her first answer was about men. She said men get socialized, right alongside women, to become eunuchs to their own emotions. Angry is allowed. Fired up about the game is allowed. Tenderness, softness, vulnerability, pleasure, all the stuff that makes you a human and not a machine, gets trained out early, mostly by other men.
So here’s where she took it. If every emotional doorway in a man’s life gets nailed shut except one, sex becomes the only room in the house where he’s allowed to feel anything at all. And then we act surprised that it feels like a need.
That reframe is the whole episode. Stay with me.
The one doorway
Celeste has spent about 14 years working with couples, most of them straight, and her claim is that the “men just need it more” story is, in her words, 100% total BS. Nobody has died from an unused erection. What men actually have is a nervous system that needs to regulate and exactly one socially approved way to do it.
She believes you when you say you feel terrible after a stretch with no intimacy. She just doesn’t think it’s the sex. It’s that sex became your only reliable path to feeling calm, close, and human, so of course losing it feels like starving. Give a man other doorways and the pressure comes off the one.
This is the entire reason Will and I do what we do. I spent a long time as a guy with one emotional setting for public use, and the cost of that shows up everywhere, in your marriage, your friendships, your body. Celeste put language to something I’ve felt for years without a clean way to say it. When sex is the only place you’re allowed to be soft, you’ve handed one part of your life a job that was never supposed to belong to it alone.
Look for what you want to feel
Every couple lands with a desire gap. Celeste says there are zero couples on earth who want it the same way at the same time, so sex is always a negotiation, no matter what your buddy at the retreat claims.
Speaking of that buddy. I sat in a group once where a guy announced he’d been married 11 years and was having sex twice a day. My first honest reaction was jealousy. My second, a beat later, was to wonder what the quality of that actually was, because we always preach quality over quantity everywhere else in life and then forget it here. Celeste’s clients include couples having a ton of sex who are fixing nothing, and couples having what she calls ABC sex, anniversary, birthday, Christmas, who are deeply connected. The number is not the scoreboard.
Her move is to stop chasing what you want to do and get clear on what you want to feel. Desired. Safe. Wild. Wanted. Build around the feeling, and the logistics sort themselves out. And kill the spontaneity myth while you’re at it. We plan everything else good in our lives, so plan this too, then let arousal show up on the runway you cleared. Because desire requires distance. You can’t crave what’s always available and always under fluorescent lights of obligation.
There’s a hard physical truth under all of it, too. You can’t get aroused while you’re being chased by a lion, and your body reads a stack of unpaid bills and a house that won’t sell as a lion. I’ve lived that one this year. When my stress is high, my arousal is on the floor, and no amount of trying fixes a nervous system that thinks it’s in danger.
Rejection, and the thing men have nowhere to put
Here’s the loop Celeste sees over and over. He asks, she’s not there tonight, he takes it as a verdict on his worth, so he stops asking, gets resentful, and she starts feeling like her body is an obligation she owes to keep him happy. Two people who love each other, stuck.
Her fix starts with why a no to sex lands as a no to you as a human. If you offered me enchiladas and I said I’m not hungry, she points out, you wouldn’t feel rejected as a person. You’d figure I wasn’t hungry. The work for a man is getting sex off the pedestal enough that a “not tonight” is a scheduling note, not a wound. The work in the conversation is doing what she calls firm but kind, because honesty without tact is just cruelty.
And under all of it is the quiet, brutal fact she named. A lot of men have exactly one person on earth they’re allowed to be vulnerable with, their partner, so every unprocessed thing gets loaded onto her, and onto sex. Celeste refuses to hate men for it. Her line was, we’re tough on systems and tender with people. The system built these men and then left them alone with the bill. She once went a year without sex while grieving her brother, and her husband put zero pressure on her the whole time, because they both understood it was never really about the sex...
What to do about it
Name what you want to feel, not what you want to do. Before the next conversation with your partner, finish this sentence: around intimacy, I want to feel more ____. Desired, safe, playful, wanted. Then build toward the feeling. Reply and tell me your word, I read every one.
Put it on the calendar and stop apologizing for it. Pick a window this week, clear the runway, and see if arousal shows up. If it doesn’t, pivot to a different day or a different kind of closeness. Planned is how adults protect what matters.
Build a doorway that isn’t sex. One other place to feel and discharge what you’re carrying, a friend you actually talk to, a practice, a workout that isn’t punishment. The less sex has to carry, the freer it gets. Paid subscribers, Resource 3 goes deep on this.
Trade the verdict for a negotiation. Next time you hear a no, try hearing “not this way, not right now” instead of “not you.” And if you’re the one saying no, do it firm but kind, with a real pivot, not a nebulous shrug that leaves the other person guessing.
Reply with the myth about sex you’re ready to kill. Celeste’s was spontaneity. Maybe yours is “more is better,” or “she should just want it,” or “real men don’t schedule it.” Hit reply and tell me the one you’re done with. I’m building a follow-up from your answers.
This week on Men Talking Mindfulness
Dr. Celeste Holbrook has a PhD in health education and has spent well over a decade helping couples build sex lives they actually talk about. She’s the author of Missionary Position, a slightly irreverent guide to sex after purity culture, and she works with individuals and couples over telehealth from Charlotte. Will and I both took this one, on the desire gap, the emotion men aren’t allowed to feel, and why sex is a negotiation for every couple alive.
Watch on YouTube | Listen here
One more thing before the paywall…
Awareness to Action has been open for a couple of months now. Go to FocusNowTraining.com/A2A-course. It’s about building exactly the kind of self-awareness and regulation this episode keeps circling, the stuff that makes you a better partner without ever being about your partner. On the fence? Reply with “A2A” and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s for you.
And maybe you think you’re super sharp and your ability to self-regulate is on point. Why not find out? Take this free assessment and discover how you rank.
Until next time,
Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider
Focus Now Training and Men Talking Mindfulness
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