Episode #6
In this episode, Tim & Doug touch on the topic men too often are afraid to talk about.. their own sexual relationships with their partners. We were raised to see this as a very private part of our lives and not something that was to be discussed openly. The male ego can also stop us from admitting to a poor sexual relationship, but many people suffer from a sexless relationship that has lost its energy and spark.
By understanding the energy that revolves around an exciting new relationship, you can work to recreate the energy with a wife or long-term partner. In this episode join Tim & Doug as they share real-life examples and practical, actionable techniques for improving a sexless relationship.
What you will learn from this episode:
- Discover the stages that can lead or has already lead to a sexless relationship
- The importance of being open and honest about sex and eliminate the fear of sexual discussion
- How our sexual desires change over time
- The 3 levels of progression in a sexual relationship
- The 2 key things that really connect people in a relationship
- How to have truly connected sex
- 3 actionable steps for getting out of or avoiding a sexless relationship
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Episode Transcript
Tim Matthews 0:00
The result of going through those eight questions is that you become very clear on what your needs are in the relationship. What it looks like to the relationships thrive in. So you both in and out of the bedroom.
Doug Holt 0:17
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your co-host, Doug Holt, with the man himself, Tim “The Powerful Man” Matthews.
Tim, how’s it going?
Tim Matthews 0:27
Very well!
Doug Holt 0:27
Tim, what I wanted to talk about today was something that came up in a conversation that I’ve had, and you and I have seen this with a lot of men, incredibly high performing men. It seems to happen as well, or at least they’re willing to take down the mask right and talk about it. But being in a committed relationship, but it’s a sexless relationship. Now it doesn’t start that way. So the kind of the way this typically works and those listening to us, maybe this lands for you, but they’re in a relationship. They love their partner, married or not; they love the person they’re with. But they haven’t had sex in a long time.
And by a long time, let’s just say they’re having sex less than once every two weeks. I’ll call that a sexless relationship. But some people might be once every six months, and it’s not unlikely for a lot of men, exceptionally high performing men in business, to be in these relationships where maybe they’re having sex with their partner, once every three months, once every six months. So the question that came up to us was, I’m in a sexless relationship, what do I do? So how would you, how would you respond to that?
Tim Matthews 1:38
Yeah, great question. I respond by saying, I have sex every day. I wear the mask and pretend I’m human, I’ve been there. What do we recommend that the guys do? There are a few angles; it isn’t the first one. I’m going to mention the angles, and then let’s discuss them. I think you’ll agree with me on this. The first angle isn’t always the relationship is it because you can be in a relationship with somebody, and feel really attracted to them and really connected to them and have it all there, but just not have the energy to act on it, because you’re too exhausted to burn out a business. One of one angle is to look at your business and look at your energy from that.
The second angle is you, the individual, you could have the business nail down, the relationship nails down, but for whatever reason, can be lacking passion for life, which ultimately then filters into obviously lacking passion in other areas. The third element that we’ll get into discussions and look at would then be the relationship because maybe you thrive in business, you’ve got things positioned and running in a way whereby you’ve got freedom in your life you’re on fire there. And also you’ve got a lot of passion for life, and you’re happy and fulfilled, but the partner you’re with there’s just some disconnect in the relationship and in my opinion, that’s going to be one of those three things that you get to look at and dissect and lead into.
Doug Holt 3:08
That’s fascinating and intense. And do you think that most of the men take the time to look at this? Or do you think they run away out of fear?
Tim Matthews 3:17
If I’m totally honest without judging, I think many men, I’m thinking about the men we worked with, one of two things have typically happened, and often these men are in marriages. And do you know what my initial response to it was that it leads to one of two things, they either cheat or just ignore it? Financial fact, a lot of the guys we tend to work with don’t tend to go and have affairs. They actually tend to go outside of the marriage, but what they will do is they’ll just kind of run from it, and they’ll just ignore it. And they’ll just hide from it. And often turn to pawn, or they’ll start to look at other women and fantasize about other women. And usually, for many men, it then comes out in some other form, some arguments are some disconnect in the relationship occurs. And even then, this often isn’t spoken about. And the worst-case sometimes couples even end up getting divorced, when he may know that to get to that point if you as the man first and foremost, was willing to be vulnerable and surrender to the fact that: you know what? This is a sexless relationship.
And what can I do to change this?
Because it can be a little bit of a hit on the male ego concept actually to realize and accept that, “Fuck I’m not having any sex.”
And getting real with yourself about that can be quite a painful thing for some men. Not all men, just some men, and even those who are painful don’t make them wrong or bad or weak. It’s just where there are.
Doug Holt 5:07
So true and in full transparency, which you and I share back and forth a lot is I’ve been in this position as a married man. I clearly identified the stages that you kind of go through and what it looked like for my wife, and I was very passionate, lovers, living together, working together, and you kind of, after a while, you stop doing those things. You swear you’re never going to, but you stop doing those things that you did when you first got together, right? That’s a common thread that I’ve seen around not only myself, from my standpoint, but also the men that we work with and talk to. You turn in from this partner this passionate love for roommates, right?
And you just kind of pass each other and then it’s kind of like: Ah, my roommate didn’t do the dishes. These little things start to add up, and you guys sit on the couch and watch TV, and you start sedating yourself through porn, TV and get complacent. And then you go from roommates just like friends. The next stage is, you go back to the kind of roommates that aren’t friends. And that kind of you don’t even want to have sex with your wife or your partner at that point, and they don’t want to with you, because you’ve lost that. That passion, the dating aspect, and where there’s an aspect of the chase and being chased. And those go both ways. And men tend to take the role of being the pursuer, right?
But if a lot of men want to be pursued, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it seems to be formulaic right that this stage is starting to happen. And within these stages, what I see with high performing men, is they tend to turn that energy and angst that they have that kind of disassociation with their partner, they turn it towards business. They focus that energy and spend more and more time in their business because it’s something that they can move the needle in and get some significance because, as you said.
I can testify to this, that when we entered this stage in our marriage, where it became this, you know, basically just roommates for a little while, and I didn’t want to have sex with my wife, frankly, what happened for me is I did feel lesser them. And I was able to take that energy of that lesser than and took it towards sports, being a very competitive athlete into sports, then also into business and being business as a sport to channel that energy before I realized that I was in this cycle and figured out a way out. So it was eye-opening for me to go through the whole process as well.
Tim Matthews 7:42
One of the things that came up for me was speaking and going again, thinking about my own experience. And those stages of going from lovers to roommates to friends to things that don’t like each other. One of the things that sometimes gets overlooked is if you’re seeing your partner through that lens, then it’s more often than not that you also see yourself through a different lens to
Doug Holt 8:12
Yeah
Tim Matthews 8:12
Because when you’re single, what do you work out, you want to look good, you want to look sharp, and you want to be a good catch, don’t you? So you’ve seen yourself through that lens. So when you get with your partner, you’re seeing her through that lens too. But then obviously, things happen, maybe complacency is and habits creep in. And you start to, first of all, see yourself differently without even kind of realizing it sometimes, and then ultimately, obviously, seeing her differently too, because it’s very difficult for you to look at somebody and see them differently to how you typically would look in yourself and see yourself. They will channel that energy into the business and just hide out there because it’s easy and then what we’ll do. I have been in the past. I work harder and work longer hours, and you don’t make excuses about the fact stone either.
“Oh, well, you know, I’m just too tired to have sex. There’s just not enough room in the day to have sex.”
Or you kind of find ways and reasons for why it’s acceptable because you’re over there, you’re busy making money, and she’s just busy, and you’ve just been busy. But the reality is that there’s something deeper there. For me to know what we’ve kind of cover if we think about those three areas that I mentioned at the beginning, though, I started to talk about business a little bit there, haven’t we? But if I was to shift it a little bit and shift this conversation a little bit. One of the things that have been true for me is that my needs and my sexual desires have changed during the time that I haven’t been with my partner. And I just want to have the same old boring sex I just done, and that’s not that a lover or whatever.
But what is it that excites you about the fact of when you first sleep with your wife or someone new? Why do people have affairs? Sometimes it’s not the only reason, but sometimes it’s the thrill of the chase. It’s the excitement, and it’s the passion, it’s the newness, it’s that energy, isn’t it? So then it becomes a case of: How can you increase the energy with your wife and your partner? Is it that you start to have some time apart. You start just to dare one another again and kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent here, along with what we’re about to say, but I can’t remember which celebrity or business person or whoever I can remember who it was, but I remember reading an interview from this person is very happily married for however many decades and casually had his own house, that a house in which the married couple lived. But they also had a separate house that either of them could retreat to. So I’m going to stay some days on the road and whatever.
But that created the space, didn’t it? Creates the space, and maybe it can use that to kind of feel like he’s still dating one another. There’s still some freshness and some newness to the relationship. But for me, one of the big things is to be able to discuss where my sexual desires change and can do that, and then find a way to have my needs be met. Because in all honesty Doug, if I was to end the relationship with Amelia, thinking that sex was the issue and then go into a new relationship with another woman, I probably encounter the same thing after a certain time frame. Because I’d be relying on that just being the new connection’s surface level, the new energy to be the thing that would get me through the short term. However, I ultimately come up against the same upper limit many months in or years in. So yeah, it’s such a key part, in my opinion, and to be honest, is something that I’m still learning, always learning how to navigate. Is that how to express those new desires and then have them be met.
Doug Holt 12:30
Yeah, I agree with you. And, again, this is one of those things where you and I could go off for hours. But you know, one of the things you talked about was how our sexual desires change. And I think this is a tangent but an important one to cover. Because there are three types of sex that we have as couples, right? We have what’s called friction sex, and this is what experts have boiled it down to, so there are not my terms. But you know, as always, learning from other people.
Friction sex is contact sex, right? It feels good; you relieve stress, relieve tension, and we all have that builds up, and you just feel that good release. Within that stage of friction, sex, the first stage, you always need variety. But you always need to change things up. We need sex toys, we need other partners, we need all kinds of fantasies, right? Because they need the release. The second stage that people fall into after friction sex is validation sex, right? And this is where couples have been there for a while, and I need to validate by if I don’t have sex, I need to validate that I’m good enough, right? Connecting with my partner to seek validation, right? That’s the next sex or sex driven by anxiety is another common one with business people.
Because it always comes with a demand for a relationship like this is what I need to fulfill during the sex act. I need to feel connected to you; I need to feel that you love me, validated, that I’m a good enough man, etc. Now, the third stage is the stage we’re all wanting to get to. Trust me, the friction sex is what we think we want to be, but it’s the third, and there’s a place for all of these a little bit. But the third is connected to sex. It’s that feeling of openness, tenderness, kind of erotic feeling where you really what we’re connecting to is our desire, rather than just our partners. It’s that kind of sex you have with your eyes wide open the lights can still be on, and that’s okay. We don’t have to do this in the bedroom without the curtains drawn and everything else, but you’re opening, connecting, and communicating consciously.
Still, verbally or non verbally, you’re communicating what’s going on for you with your partner. It’s just a very safe space to be risky. And what I mean by that is, you’re peeling back the layers, and you’re showing who you are, right? You’re showing your vulnerabilities and through vulnerabilities and stories, right? That’s how we connect. We think that we connect in different ways, but it’s the vulnerability we share that allows us to go to that deeper level. And that connected sex, you know that connected sex is that what I’ve talked to when I seek out people in my life that have been the long term marriages that have been kind of role models for my wife and me, and that’s something we actively actually seek out are these role models that they’re down the path further. This is where they stay. This is their sweet spot where they share things, and not outside the bedroom, but they also share in the bedroom. And by being open and vulnerable, it’s always changing.
So you get that freshness, get that newness, without what we think of the friction sex, where you have to bring in toys and everything else. Now you can bring them in with connected sex. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there are three levels of progression in the relationship in a sexual relationship. And frequently, what happens to married couples is you get complacent. Either one person or both people and I know talking to women as I’ve gone through all this relationship coaching and things like that. They offer complaints that the man becomes complacent.
“I got her. Cool.”, “Now I’m gonna get fat.”, “I got her now; they’re not going to work out anymore to your point” because you think: “Hey, I got the person. Now I no longer have to do those things that I did when we were just dating when it was easy for her to leave. Now she’s here, I’ve caught her.” And you start going back to validation sex or friction sex where you’re just doing it, right? You’re just having sex to get off. Essentially, masturbation with a partner is the way that I would describe it. And getting through those three levels is important to say: “Hey, where am I now in my relationship? Where am I honestly now? Am I having friction, sex?”, “I’m thinking, Okay, we got to try these 30 different positions before I have an orgasm, or am I having validation sex?”, and let’s be real, a lot of us go through that validation thing where if we’re honest if we’re in a sexless relationship, we want to have sex just to be validated that this relationship is the connection.
And then the third again: Is that truly connected sex and how do you get there? So, Tim, I think that’s something that’s so often overlooked because for some reason in our society, in Western culture, we just assume sex is something everybody knows like, this is something that you should just you just know how to do, and people don’t talk about it. And it’s an odd thing to me that we assume that everybody’s born an expert in the subject area. And for some reason, this pure tannic culture almost, it’s just not something that is talked about openly and honestly, and people hide behind it.
Hey, guys, I didn’t interrupt this show because I want to talk to you about a case study we put together; it’s only 11 minutes. We show you how almost 300 men have taken control of their lives have already for extra business revenue and are having more connected intimate sex with their partner. Using The Activation Method, and they’re doing all of this without burning down their relationships, and without suffering and sacrificing their health, we want you to have this too. So go over to https://www.thepowerfulman.com/bonus/, the number 11, one, one, and get this right now. It’s only 11 minutes, and I’m going to show you exactly how these men have done it. Alright, let’s get back to the episode.
Tim Matthews 18:28
Where I was brought up in the UK, especially, is very easy, and it’s very suppressed, and if you look at it now, Amelia and I were sitting on the sofa watching this dating show. And it was so bizarre because it showed lots of different men and women and their journey in today’s dating world with the dating apps. And obviously, you’re just such a disposable mentality around people and sex and relationships. We just swipe, but I like you swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And we’re discussing what it would be like to be single right now? Because I was in a relationship for six or seven years, I came out of that. I was engaged in getting married then, and called it all off came after that.
And then, within 12 months, Amelia and I went on dating apps a little bit in that time, but I’d immersed myself in work, and I wanted to be on my own. I went on dating apps at like 10 p.m. when I got into bed. So to kill 50 minutes to just switch off, to be honest. And that was really before they were picking pairs and the thought of being single now and what it would be like, and the mentality of sex and dating and relationships is quite scary and interesting at the same time. And I think inevitably, and it boils over into how we then show up in our relationship, or it can buy love into how we show up in our relationship and what we expect from our partner and sex, especially with how women have portrayed the media as well.
Whether it’s social media, whether it’s Instagram, all these different things where all you’re doing is seeing women, the airbrushed are this or that it kind of what your reality of what you just from anyway, what was my reality of what I then ought to expect. And it can be quite easy, in my opinion, to then take that level of expectation into the relationship and filter your sex life through that lens too. Especially when you don’t know, and the awareness from what you just spoke about the type or types of sex combined then with as man how he taught him to suppress our emotion and hide it and not speak our voice, and we kind of then form all these judgments and make these decisions without really gathering much information on speaking our voice, or we can get anyway.
Doug Holt 21:40
So true. So taking this full circle, back to the original guys we’re talking about, we’ve had conversations and me, gosh, six years ago, maybe at this point, something along those lines. So to a man who is listening to this or you know, a woman who because we do get that, we get women that reached out to us because they want their husband to go through The Powerful Man or their partner to go through The Powerful Man program. But to somebody listening to this, it’s in a sexless relationship. What would you say? And I’ll share my opinion, but what would you say are kind of the first three so action steps that they could be taking to move forward?
Tim Matthews 22:25
So I’m going to use what we teach as a The Activation Method because I think it’s so true. So the first one would be to understand what your needs are. We often asked the guys to go in The Activation Method, which needs to be met. And it’s kind of like a blank stare often on their face. But again, it doesn’t make them wrong or anything; it’s just where they eat, and that blank stare comes from not knowing what their needs are. So how do you then become aware of what your needs are? Well, the eight compass questions, I think, are a great place to start. And that’s where you and your partner both answer a question. And I’m not going to go through them all right now.
But the result of going through those eight questions is that you become very clear on what your needs are in the relationship, what it looks like the relationships we thrive in for you both in and out of the bedroom because ultimately, it’s only going to thrive in the bedroom. It’s also thriving outside of the bedroom. And the second thing I would then say is the evening breakdown. So how that works are four questions that you would go through at the end of the day, ideally, over dinner. And those four questions create a space whereby you can ask and bring up any ways in which you may have annoyed one another in the day. You then check in on each other’s wins for the day, your goals, and asking a question that every day was like this, would we be living our life to the fullest? Isn’t the exact wording, but basically, the outcome of it allows each person to be seen, heard, and appreciated and clears the air, which again goes to that solid connection. The third one is always speaking everything you think and feel, which I know you might think: What?
I don’t want to speak everything that I think and feel. Still, it’s key to be able to communicate authentically to the woman that’s in your life, so that you can, again, not be holding anything back but also be able to create a space whereby there’s no resentment, there’s no guilt, there’s no shame because all of these things will just block up the relationship and disconnect you in here. And of course, you get to communicate in a way whereby you’ve not been a victim. You’re not blaming anyone, and you’re not pointing the finger. Quite the opposite, taking ownership of what you feel and how things are going on. Otherwise, if you don’t do that, things will build up there will boil over, and arguments will ensue. And that’s why you tend to move from the whole well, and you tend to start to become roommates and then roommates that don’t even enjoy living together.
Doug Holt 25:14
I love that. I think there’s a great action step that can go right away, and we’ve seen them work with countless men. One of my wife and I’s favorites is the nightly check in the right or check out depending on what you want to say. But that connection time at the end of the evening, just to discuss and open-ended questions even, like how was your day, like what happened? We’ve talked about this again, but I see it as a common thread that all too often as we grow as people, as men, or as humans in general, we forget that our partners are also growing and are also changing and evolving. And their thoughts, dreams, fears, and desires are changing, and unless we asked them, frequently we just don’t know, we assume that the person we started dating, six years ago, three years ago, six months ago is the same. It’s just not true, at least, you hope it’s not true, right? You hope that as you’re growing, that anybody that’s listening to this show is on a path of growth, right?
And somewhere in their journey, that their partner also is growing. And if they’re not, then that’s a sad thing, but you don’t know unless you ask and have those conversations. And I think that’s so true. And In The Activation Method, going through that with the men, we see a huge change, not only their business, right? But in the relationships and so many people who talk about this, how your business and your money and your finance is closely tied into your intimacy and the level of intimacy you share with somebody else. And I see that time and time again, and I’m not sure if you have Tim, but I’ve certainly seen it where men uplevel the level of intimacy they have with their partners. This could be with women, which could be with another man, which could be with anything, right? But that level of intimacy that they’re having with a partner coincides with their success in so many different areas. Do you see that as well?
Tim Matthews 27:10
Yeah, for sure. Certainly, it’s just an absolute catalyst, isn’t it? Because when you’re able to be intimate by default, you’ve been vulnerable, when you’re able to be vulnerable, by default, there is no mask. When you’re able to take off the mask, what happens in business is you go after or create your biggest and best ideas. You’re a much calmer leader, communicate in a much more grounded manner to your team. And there are so many ways in which I could go on and talk about this, but it’s so true.
Doug Holt 27:53
Absolutely. So it’s often an area that causes the most pain for us, yet we tend to hide from it, right? We don’t look at it; we look towards business; we can look towards our health, right? We can get on a scale and look at the weight and adjust it. But for some reason, and the reason being is because it scares us the most. After all, it’s the most precious, and we hide from relationships. And we don’t talk about it, right? It’s not cool to talk about: “Hey, am I having problems in my marriage or with my partner?” No, we’d rather talk about: “Hey, it’s okay to talk about problems in your business. It’s okay to talk about weight.”, “It’s okay for men to talk about all these other things.” But when it comes to their intimate relationships, for some reason, in our society, it’s not okay to discuss it or talk about it. So, therefore, as men, we’re stifled, and we have to hide, and that is something that just needs to change. So Tim, and wrapping up here because we’re coming to time, and we’ll have many conversations about this. And I encourage the men to jump into The Activation Method group and discuss some of these things that are coming up. We’ll bring them to the table as well, but coming to an end, you’ve given us takeaways to start right away through The Activation Method things that are being talked about currently. If the guys listening to this right here, right now, what’s the one thing they need to do?
Tim Matthews 29:14
Come clean
Doug Holt 29:16
Boom, simple and powerful, a man well done.
Tim Matthews 29:18
That’s true, isn’t it? Now come clean about the way around, what’s going on, and how you are showing up because unless you do that for as long as you want to choose to lie and deny and avoid a room from, you’ll continue to lie and avoid and run from so just come clean. It doesn’t make you good or wrong, or bad, or weak, whatever. Where you’re at is where you’re at. Come clean.
Doug Holt 29:42
There it is. Come clean, guys. It is the scariest thing for many of us to come clean. To take off the mask and expose who we are as men. But as I described that often and Tim, I know you too. To me, the definition of a real man is stepping into that fear. Most of the powerful men we know fact, all the powerful men we know, have conquered that fear and step into it regularly. Now you step back into it. So, gentlemen, as you’re out there listening to this, and Tim and I were just having this discourse and sharing this conversation with you. You’re involved in this, as you’re listening to this, there’s three of us here: come clean, be honest with yourself, be raw and honest with yourself first, and then find a tribe of men who are growing as well. Right? And we encourage you to go obviously, the reason The Powerful Man was started was to create this conversation this place where men like you could go to have conversations that matter. Take off the mask without judgment, and grow together and step into your power, step into that life that you deserve that you know they’re waiting for you. It’s your calling to claim it. That’s all you have to do. So Tim, as always, great talking to you, and I’m sure you and I will throw some jobs left and right at each other jokingly at the end of this but thank you again for so much information and sharing all that you have here. And we’ll talk again in the next episode.
Tim Matthews 31:20
Awesome. Bring it on.
