TKP Insights: Sex and Relationships
The Knowledge Project curates insights on relationships and sex from Dr. Sue Johnson, Esther Perel, Emily Nagoski, Suzanne Iasenza, and Kat Cole. They discuss choosing a mate, essential conversations, types of sex, desire vs. arousal, and communication, including a monthly check-in protocol.
Deep Dive Analysis
8 Topic Outline
Choosing a Mate: The Role of Attachment History
Essential Conversations for New Couples
Understanding Security in a Relationship
Different Kinds of Sex and the Measure of Pleasure
Sexual Desire, Arousal, and Long-Term Relationships
Broadening the Definition of Sex and Eroticism
Initiation of Sex: Social vs. Biological Factors
Monthly Relationship Check-ins for Communication
7 Key Concepts
Secure Attachment
A foundational model for relationships learned in childhood, where individuals experience safe connection and reliable responsiveness from a parent. This creates a 'visceral map' for healthy relationships, making them better at being vulnerable and seeking out responsive partners.
Bids for Connection
Small, often non-verbal, attempts to connect with another person, like making eye contact or a casual comment. Responding positively to these bids indicates a willingness to engage in a relationship, while ignoring them signals disinterest.
Closeness and Separateness
A fundamental tension in relationships concerning the balance between shared life and individual freedom. Couples need to negotiate boundaries regarding personal space, activities, finances, parenting, and relationships with extended family and friends.
Security in a Relationship
The ability to feel rooted and safe with a partner, like a child on a parent's lap, and then to confidently move into one's own world to play without worrying that the partner will be gone or upset upon return. It signifies experiencing freedom and connection simultaneously.
Spontaneous Desire
Sexual desire that emerges suddenly and unexpectedly, often described as a 'lightning bolt' of wanting sex. It appears seemingly out of the blue without specific external stimuli.
Responsive Desire
Sexual desire that emerges in response to pleasure or sexual activity, rather than preceding it. This form of desire is more typical in long-term relationships, where engaging in intimacy can lead to the feeling of wanting more.
Sexual Menu
A concept encouraging couples to broaden their definition of sex beyond genital penetration and orgasm to include a wider range of physical and emotional intimacy. It suggests exploring diverse forms of eroticism, much like choosing from a varied food menu.
9 Questions Answered
While sexual attraction plays a role, our childhood attachment history significantly influences mate choice. Those with secure attachment have a 'visceral map' for healthy relationships, knowing what safety and vulnerability feel like, making them better at seeking out responsive partners.
New couples should discuss their values, expectations, and vision for life, including where to live, family plans, professional lives, and the balance between closeness and separateness regarding individual vs. shared money, travel, parenting, and boundaries with extended family and friends.
People grow apart not necessarily due to differences in opinion, but because of how they experience those differences. This can manifest as chronic conflict (constant blame and defense) or disengagement and indifference (lack of bids for connection and shared life).
Sex can be broadly categorized as 'making love' (soulful, emotional, bonding, attachment-focused), 'fucking' (noisy, energetic, athletic), or 'having sex' (lazy, bare minimum physical connection). The primary function of sex for humans is as a social behavior, fostering bonding.
In long-term relationships, desire often shifts from spontaneous (emerging out of the blue) to responsive (emerging in response to pleasure or sexual activity). Couples who sustain a strong sexual connection prioritize sex and have a strong friendship.
Arousal can happen through physical touch, mental fantasies, or relational factors like feeling connected, kindness, or intellectual stimulation. It's not always based on sexual chemistry or physical looks.
Arousal can change, but for some, it deepens with age as they fall more in love with their partner, appreciating their shared lived life. Older couples often redefine sex more broadly, relying on fantasy and diverse forms of intimacy when physical parts may not work the same way.
Couples can deconstruct sex beyond the common narrative of genital involvement, penetration, and orgasm. They can explore a 'sexual menu' that includes various forms of touching, kissing, and hugging, focusing on pleasure, connection, and satisfaction, even if it's not always reciprocal or orgasm-focused.
While cisgendered men may have more testosterone, which can contribute to desire, initiation is largely socially constructed rather than biologically determined. Gender scripts often depict men as initiators, but many individuals, regardless of gender, enjoy both initiating and being pursued, and couples can benefit from being more fluid in these roles.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Implement Monthly Relationship Check-ins
Establish a regular (e.g., monthly) check-in with your partner using deep questions to discuss the best/worst parts of the last 30 days, what you can do differently, worries, gratitude, and goals, ensuring you challenge each other to go beyond superficial answers.
2. Discuss Core Relationship Values
Early in a relationship, have explicit conversations about fundamental values, expectations, and visions for life, such as living arrangements, family, professional lives, and traditional roles, to avoid unspoken assumptions that can lead to conflict later.
3. Cultivate Relationship Security
Strive for a relationship where you can both feel rooted and safe (the ‘harbor’) and also free to explore independently without worrying that your partner will be anxious or absent upon your return.
4. Prioritize Sex with Friendship
To sustain a strong sexual connection over decades, build a strong friendship with trust as its foundation, and intentionally choose to set aside time for sex, recognizing its importance for the quality of your relationship.
5. Tune into Relational Dynamics
Shift from a task-oriented or predictive approach to relationships and instead tune into the emotional level and the ‘relational drama’ unfolding, much like feeling the movement in a dance rather than just executing steps.
6. Recognize Bids for Connection
Pay close attention to subtle verbal and non-verbal cues (e.g., eye contact, turning towards someone, smiling, responding) that indicate another person is open to connecting, and conversely, cues that signal closure.
7. Broaden Your Definition of Sex
Expand your understanding of sex beyond just genital contact, penetration, and orgasm to include a ‘sexual menu’ of touching, kissing, hugging, and other forms of eroticism, especially as bodies and abilities change over time.
8. Understand Responsive Desire
Recognize that in long-term relationships, sexual desire often evolves from ‘spontaneous’ (emerging out of the blue) to ‘responsive’ (emerging in response to pleasure or touch), and both are normal and healthy ways to experience desire.
9. Redefine Arousal Triggers
Acknowledge that arousal can stem from diverse sources beyond just physical touch or looks, including fantasy, intellectual conversations, shared passions, or relational acts of kindness and connection (e.g., doing chores).
10. Actively Repair Relationship Damage
In a healthy relationship, when conflicts or disappointments inevitably arise, recognize what has happened and actively work to repair the connection through emotional responsiveness.
11. Challenge Gendered Sexual Scripts
Question traditional gender roles in sexual initiation and other aspects of sex; openly discuss preferences with your partner, as both men and women may secretly desire more fluidity in these roles.
12. Prioritize Sleep for Sex
Recognize that sleep deprivation can negatively impact sexual frequency and quality; aim for an extra hour of sleep, as it has been shown to increase the chances of having sex the next night.
13. Leverage Secure Attachment History
If you experienced secure attachment in childhood, recognize that you possess a ‘visceral map’ for healthy relationships, which gives you an advantage in identifying and fostering good connections.
14. Avoid Chronic Conflict or Disengagement
Be aware that constant fighting (blame and defense) or extreme disengagement (indifference, lack of connection) are the primary ways couples ‘grow apart,’ and actively work against these patterns.
15. Be Intentional as a Partner
Consciously prioritize your role as a partner at home with the same intentionality and desire for improvement that you apply to your professional life, acknowledging your part in past relationship challenges.
16. Embrace Non-Reciprocal Sex
Allow for fluidity in sexual encounters where one partner might pleasure the other without both necessarily achieving arousal or orgasm, reducing pressure and fostering emotional connection as a form of satisfaction.
17. Pleasure is the Measure
Define sexual well-being not by frequency, specific acts, or number of orgasms, but by whether you genuinely like and enjoy the sex you are having with your partner.
5 Key Quotes
Love is a gift that keeps on giving, when you know what it looks like then you know you're better at putting your hand on it in the world.
Dr. Sue Johnson
Forget all the steps in your head, just feel the movement in my body, feel the momentum, listen to the music and the beat, feel it, let the dance do you.
Argentine Tango Instructor (quoted by Dr. Sue Johnson)
Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being.
Emily Nagoski
To be secure in a relationship is to have both of those things: is to be able to come back to the harbor, to anchor yourself, to feel rooted, and then to get up to leave and to go and play without having to worry.
Esther Perel
I don't remember ever prioritizing my role as partner at home in an intentional way and and my husband said that my now husband said the same thing and and we both quickly came to the conclusion that we want to be different this time and we want to be as good if not better at home as we are in business.
Kat Cole
1 Protocols
Monthly Relationship Check-in
Kat Cole- Ask: 'What's been the best part of the last 30 days?' (related to the relationship, or work/other if it affects the relationship).
- Ask: 'What's been the worst part of the last 30 days?'
- Ask: 'What is one thing I can do differently to be a better partner for you?' (This can be framed as 'something I should stop,' 'something I could start,' or 'something you really want to make sure I continue.')
- Ask: 'What has worried you the most related to our relationship in the last 30 days?'
- Ask: 'What have you been the most grateful for?'
- Ask: 'What are you most proud of?'
- Typically ask a question about goals related to the family.