Sex and pleasure

Carly OsmanSo, hi w Ruth, welcome.

RuthHi there, I'm so excited to be on.

Carly OsmanI'm so excited to have this conversation, probably because it stems from such a personal interest of mine. and I've been with my partner 20 years, and one of the things that we've committed to is improving our intimacy, and with that comes absolutely everything with it. So I'm really, really keen to dive into your experience today, particularly around the male experience. So before we dive in, I'd love to get a bit of an overview about who you are and and tell me a bit more about your background.

RuthOkay, well, I'm Ruth Ramsey. I'm an adult sex educator and sex coach. So I have the best job in the world, I think, which is helping people have more and better sex.

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthI'm a coach, not a therapist. Let's make that clear from the start. So I'm working with people who feel ready and able to take positive steps forward. If someone has unresolved trauma in the past, that means they either can't even imagine or can't take positive steps forward, then they need a therapist. But there's so many people who don't need a therapist, but are not having anywhere near the pleasure that they could be having in sex and that need some help. Because, I mean, what help is there out there? Bad generic magazine articles, porn, mainstream film. There just isn't the help. But that's where coaching comes in.

Carly OsmanWonderful. And I would love to kind of set talk a little bit but more about your background and your career that gave, i suppose, led you to this point. So you focus on the man. A lot of coaches talk to the female experience and centre in the female, but you've decided to go in at a different route. Why is that?

RuthWell, I will say that focusing as heavily as I am now on heterosexual men in relationships is a relatively new pivot for me. So if we rewind to when I started coaching, and i'll go i will go back a bit further than that in a moment. But when I started, I said, I'd love to coach men. But everyone knows women talk more easily about sex. I'm a woman. I guess my coaching clients will be women. But I'm at a point now, six years later, where, yes, I am now focusing on the men. What those six years have taught me is that actually men speak more easily about sex. And men seem more able to commit the money and time to coaching. So women who reach out to me, it might be that at the end of a discovery call, they're saying, you are the expert that I need. I fully, fully believe and trust that you can help me. It's so important that I address this area of my life. But then I'll find that doubts come in around spending the time, spending the money. Oh, but my kids need this. My business needs this. My elderly parents need this. And it seems to be very challenging for women to prioritize themselves enough. Whereas it seems men are more able to say, i have this problem. I trust you're an expert who can help me. And I'm going to commit the money and time to it. So it would be a whole different podcast about why is it that we have this difference. But I've realised that the way to help women, as well as helping couples overall, and helping men is actually to to work with the men. But going back to before that, and to why I'm uniquely qualified to work with these men, I was a top London strip-cluse artist for over a decade. So this was in my mid-20s. It had been my lifelong fantasy to be a stripper, but instead I'd followed my other passion, which was writing. I wanted to write for the big women's magazines about sex and women's issues. So Marie Claire, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, back in the 90s had such, such power. And I did a journalism degree and I was on a path towards that. I was working at a big fashion business website when I saw an advert for London School of Striptease. And I thought, oh, I've had this fantasy since I was quite a young girl of being a stripper. And let's just go and explore this. That then led to me falling in love with it, packing in the journalism career as such, but using my media skills and communications experience and becoming a very, very busy striptease artist, model, but also events organiser, writer about sex, activist for sexual rights, running around all over London and a bit internationally as well, having an incredible time for over a decade. But what I was doing day in, day out at that time, as well as dancing, was talking to men. Talking very, very, or being talked to incredibly, honestly, openly. You know, their hopes, fears. So often I would hear, I've never told anybody this. And there seemed to be this feeling that a stripper wouldn't judge them for their fantasies, for their desires, for their insecurities. And what I've found now with this focus more towards men, which has happened quite naturally because I started looking back at, okay, who have my clients been over the past 12 to 18 months, et cetera, et cetera, and realizing, wow, it it's men. Where it's couples, it's men who have reached out to me. and I have these over 10,000 hours of talking to men about sex and let's, let's lean into this. I've never kept my background a secret. and so often women have said to me, because you were a stripper, I know you won't, you won't judge me. You won't slut shame me. but I'm finding that even more, Now, focusing on men, that background is so powerful. So I had a client literally in a coaching session earlier this month who's had couples coaching, couples therapy and sex therapy in the past. As part of taking him on as a client, I've made absolutely sure that he's in a position for coaching, which he is. And partway through the first session, he said, I'm going to tell you something that I've never told anyone. i could never even tell my sex therapist. And what he then confided in me, he felt able to share because of my background as a stripper. So that's something which seems to unlock a degree of of trust, a feeling of trust and safety and no fear of judgment from these men.

Carly OsmanDo you think then judgment is that core cornerstone that we are in 2026, but yet so many of us can't actually openly talk about sex or pleasure to even the people we love most in our lives? Do you think that's that's the problem?

RuthI think, yes, fundamentally fear of judgment. I'm going to be to something or not enough something. Or I'm weird, I'm strange, there's something wrong with me, the problem's all with me. And if we talk about it, it will become clear that the problem is all with me.

Carly OsmanAnd do you think that then manifests as like shame? you I sat down with my husband last week and we watched your How to Please a Woman in Bed episode and it was absolutely fantastic. And you said something in there that I went, oh my gosh, that's me. And it was when you're in an intimate relationship, you're thinking about, do I smell? How do I look? Does he think I'm this? Does he think I'm not? Do you think it's all based on... I suppose that script that we've got in our head that everyone else is doing it better or is different or is more perfect, that we're just internalizing that.

RuthYeah, I think it's a struggle for any of us to live up to what we've been conditioned to think is normal sex. So what we see in Hollywood films, what we see on TV, let alone what we see in mainstream porn. So I think there's more and more of a realisation that porn is not real sex. Something that I've been saying for years and now I've heard other people saying as well, maybe I borrowed it from somewhere originally, was that trying to learn sex from watching porn is like trying to learn to drive from watching The Fast and the Furious. You know, it's it's just not real. But even so, I speak to men and women who consider that real. And something I like to ask clients who watch porn, I'll say, what what are you actually watching? What are you seeing? And they'll say people having sex or even people giving each other pleasure. And I'll say, no, in mainstream porn, you're watching 20 minutes of choreographed, edited performance that took six hours of actual action, but then 10 hours to edit. So the average 20 minute mainstream porn film, six hours in front of the camera, 10 hours in the editing suite. So this took a team of professionals 16 hours. And we're watching it thinking that's how we should be in bed. So I think the fact that we're not like that in bed, or maybe we're putting on a performance so that we are, but we're not actually experiencing pleasure. Maybe we're we're faking orgasms, et cetera, et cetera. And we're thinking, well, what's wrong with me? So yeah, that then creates shame for everyone involved. And as you just said, it's that shame that's then at the core of all of the insecurities

Carly OsmanYou talk about this really narrow script for heterosexual men. Where does that script come from? And and actually, what do you mean by that?

RuthWell, what I mean by that is that heterosexual men in Western society are assumed to be always up for sex. Yeah, always horny, very visually driven, all turned on by porn, very action focused, not interested in foreplay, you know, anything other than penetrative sex, absolutely obsessed with their own penises above any other body part that they're attracted to aesthetically a certain type of female look, you know, all of, all of these assumptions that we make. And we think this is just how men are. And I think that comes from, from film and TV, from porn, I was working with a female client and asked her about her partner.

Carly OsmanThank

RuthAnd I said, you know, tell tell me about your husband. And she said, oh, he's a typical Western male, pretty basic, you know, and then just moved the conversation back to herself. And she she genuinely felt that was all there was to say about him and I would understand what she meant. And of course, I did understand what she meant. But I was aware that potentially his sexual self could be a lot broader than that. And sure enough, it was when we brought him into the coaching as well. And they started questioning what sex meant to him. Was he fulfilled? What interest might he have? that that things got much, much better for them. So that's what I mean by that narrow script. And men, I find, are trying to fit themselves into that script, even if actually they don't they're not very visually driven. They don't like porn. Maybe there's other areas of the body that they would like to have touched and you know have some some focus on. Again, a client that I worked with once said that he realized that actually having his neck touched and having his ears touched was more of a turn on than having his penis touched. And he'd never admitted that to his long-term partner because he felt ashamed. What's wrong with me as a man? I don't want her to go straight for my penis, you know? So, i mean, when I'm working with men, or couples, and when we've got to a point of accepting, you can step outside of that script. You can be a very sensual person. You can be very turned on by audio rather than than visual things. You can be exquisitely focused on what you might have thought of as foreplay and not so interested in penetrative intercourse. You know, you can we're all unique sexual beings. When I get to that point of working with people, If I were to be able to show you all of their client notes, which obviously I couldn't, but let's imagine I could show you and listen to the podcast all of the client notes, you wouldn't be able to tell what gender that client was if I took away the the obvious references. And that's something which increasingly has blown my mind the longer I've been a coach How unique we all are. And so it applies to to women as well. We can step outside of this box of, oh, well, you must be feminine and must like foreplay, etc, etc. Yeah, we're all absolutely unique.

Carly OsmanThis fascinates me because we have put everyone into, again, put everyone into boxes. Man, you must like this. Women, you like must like this. But actually, what I'm hearing is everyone has their own likes, but actually the cost of not exploring it has a cost on our pleasure because I'm so embarrassed that I might feel like this, which is judged outside the realms of nort normalness. I'm going to do normalness in inverted commas. But even saying that makes puts me on the line and and makes people think, well, there might be something wrong with me. you Is that the the reaction that you get from a lot of people? You've spoken about it before, but people say, you're the first time I felt comfortable enough to admit how I'm feeling. Is it often and about that sensuality and what they want to explore?

RuthYeah, very often about what they're curious about, what they fantasize about. There's so much shame and worry around fantasies when actually I think sexual fantasy is one of the wonderful things about being a a human being. You know, we're gifted with this imagination which can conjure up, depending on our brain, can conjure up sounds, images, and sensation, even, you know, smells, scents, tastes.

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthAnd again, to differing degrees, with we have this cute natural curiosity about sex. Combine those. And most people have sexual fantasies. And most people, whatever their gender, are fantasizing about roughly the same kinds of things. But we think, oh, there's something sordid and deviant and wrong about me because I'm fantasizing about multi-partner sex. because I'm fantasizing about power play, etc. And I couldn't possibly tell another living soul. But they tell me in the safety of the coaching space. And when I say to them, well, actually over 90% men and women report multi-partner sex fantasies, at least sometimes. And chances are your particular your partner who you're lying in bed next to. Or maybe during sex, you're you're turning to this fantasy to help spike your arousal. They might be doing exactly the same thing. And it's normal. I think the the phrase that I'm saying most often in in early client sessions is you're normal. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing to be ashamed of.

Carly OsmanYeah, I think that's so, so fascinating. I want to talk a little bit more about the dynamics of the right person. so You, when we've spoken before, you've spoken about just because you are compatible with someone in many aspects, it doesn't necessarily mean you're compatible with them sexually. And we often don't do enough work to really uncover and have those conversations early on. What can we do to be better around that?

RuthI think it would be fantastic if we could have those conversations earlier on. So, for example, on on dating websites, very, very few of them.

Carly OsmanThank

RuthI mean, I can only think one of them. them explicitly that include sexual interests and preferences etc explicitly as part of that matchmaking process whereas I think it should be a fundamental part of it conversations about what does sex actually mean to us how important is it I think would be valuable up front and talking about what's happened in previous relationships to libido, so if with someone who who is mad for it for three months and then suddenly not so interested, I think it would be great to share that with a partner. But all of this, I mean, as I'm saying this, listeners might be imagining some very serious, heavy conversation, but it doesn't have to be like that. I think it's part of getting to know another person. You know, why would we leave this whole massive area of life just as a mystery? Well, let's never talk about this. Let's rely on the early lusts, the brain chemicals. You know, we're we're on drugs in the first six months of a relationship in the terms of what our brains are churning out.

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthAnd then that naturally falls away. There's nothing wrong with that. But then when we haven't built up any ability to talk about sex... then we're not talking about, well, things have changed and what does that mean? And that's when each partner can start kind of developing their own narrative about the shared sex life and their own assumptions, making meaning of certain things that have been happening or not happening or were said or not said. And very often, if I'm coaching a couple who've been together 10, 15, 20 years. And I begin couples coaching journeys with a solo session for each member that remains confidential to them because it's always stuff that they want to get off their chest that they didn't feel they could stay in front of the other. And often those solo sessions is as if they're talking about an entirely different relationship or marriage and sexual history. I'm like, wow, how can these people who share a bed every night have totally different narratives in their head of what, even what sex means to the other person. And it begins in those early, early times, sometimes literally something that happened in the first six months was misunderstood and has impacted their sex life since then.

Carly OsmanThank

RuthAnd if we could just talk in those early days, we wouldn't be having those misunderstandings. And then I wouldn't be working with these people who have lost out on so much pleasure. So a case of, oh, but I would have loved to have been on top during sex, but the first two times we did it, this happened, so I thought you didn't like it. And the other one's going, but but no, I thought you didn't like it because that happened. And they're looking at each other like, wow, we've been missing out on on this sexual position that we both would have loved for our whole relationship because of a misunderstanding and because we never talked about it it' It's wild.

Carly OsmanIt is wild. And how much of this also do you think is underpinned by, i would' i want to say, our lack of sexual education? So we go to school, we're taught sex is a reproductive act. That is it. There's no absolutely no pleasure talked about. Then, as you alluded to earlier, we watch porn and porn is porn is performative. We watch TV and it's this massive crescendo. it's It's not like real life. How much do you think that has really fucked up our narrative around actually how do we ask for what we want? How do we communicate pleasure to one another? how do we How do we just talk about it when we don't have the language?

RuthI think, yeah, that's at the root of it all, the total lack of any kind of pleasure-based sex education. You know, we we enter young adulthood, we start having sexual experiences entirely unequipped.

Carly OsmanYeah.

RuthYou know, we don't even know the basics of how arousal works, of how bodies work. As you've said, we we don't talk about it. We're never shown any representations of people talking about it. And in in what other partners act would we expect to be able to have a wonderful time with another person without any education, without any language around it? at all. And then we don't talk to our friends because we're ashamed and we're we're kind of existing in our own little bubbles of shame and worry and fear for some people throughout their entire sexual lives. But yes, it all comes down to that total lack of sex education beyond reproductive biology.

Carly OsmanI'd like to get into a bit more of the science behind sex. And one of the things that I had, well, I had a number of, oh my gosh, moments when I watched everything that you've built and kind of dove into that. And it it was around the sexual response cycle and arousal taking a lot longer than we think. so particularly women who take, what was it, 13, 16 minutes? Do you want to do a much better job of it?

RuthYes.

Carly OsmanKind of explaining what it is and like, why don't I know about this when I really should?

RuthYes. So but the the study that you're talking about, the 13 minutes thing, was the big game changer for me personally in my sex life. So this is before I became a sex coach. and it was a study into how long it takes a reliably orgasmic woman in a long-term relationship to orgasm and the way they did this study it was an international study I can share a link for you to put in the show notes they gave reliably orgasmic women in long-term relationships stopwatches and they said begin the stopwatch at the point during sexual activity with your partner that you know that if things continue as they are now you will orgasm so it's not the first sort of hand on the knee on the sofa and shall we you know how about an early night or whatever it's at the point in in actually in during sex when you think I'm on the path yeah and the average time on those stopwatches was 13 and a half minutes in partner sex and and I personally was someone who would make an orgasm after six or seven minutes, think thinking he's doing the right thing. It must be something wrong with me. You know, I'm turned on. He's doing the right thing, but I'm not getting there. And then, of course, once you start worrying, that's even more likely you're not going to get there. I wasn't equipped to talk about sex. I thought this is my failing. I'm so embarrassed. And so typically I would fake it. This is like in my 20s. But learning that statistic that actually it takes a lot longer on average in partnered sex was what changed things for me. And it's something that has changed things for so many of my clients. There's nothing wrong with me that I don't orgasm after three minutes like I see in in film. Now, obviously, everybody's different. The time on those stopwatches was much, much shorter for masturbation. I've literally just heard the day before we're recording this that there's a similar study that has been done with bisexual women looking at partnered sex with men and partnered sex with women. and So I'm excited to learn more about that study. But yeah, basically, it can take a lot longer than you have been led to believe. And that's of the right kind of stimulation for you with a partner who cares

RuthAbout your pleasure and and knows what you're doing. So that's one of the statistics that I love sharing. And then the other aspect of arousal science that I wish everybody knew was that arousal isn't spontaneous for everybody in the way that we're made to think it is. And this, I think, is the number one thing that I wish people that I wish everyone knew, but particularly heterosexual couples. It's actually considered clinically normal for a woman in a long-term relationship to never spontaneously fancy sex.

RuthAnd yet that's what we're shown in film and TV. That's what we're made to think is normal. That out of the blue or with the slightest little provocation suddenly we'll be horny. That spontaneous desire. But that's not how it works for most people. It might be how it works for us in the first couple of months of relationship. It's typically how it works for younger men. But as we age and as we spend longer in one relationship, and we have what's called responsive desire. So if you don't often have sex with your partner, but when you do, you go, that was fantastic. Why don't we do that more often? But then it just never occurs to you again to do it. That is responsive desire. We need to create an appealing, safe setting. an erotically sexually appealing scenario before we start to then actually desire sex. So I'll speak to couples who say, we find each other attractive, we love each other, we have a great time together, but we just never have sex. And I'm like, well, are you waiting to spontaneously feel it like it at the same moment when you've also not created any time in your diary for it? You've filled your diary up with all sorts, all the other stuff in life. When is the time and space? And also, so you're not you're not going to spontaneously fancy it. But I think because we're we've shown that that's how sexual desire works, film, TV, porn, etc., we may be brought up to feel there's something wrong, there's something contrived if we have to work at it. And certainly, putting it in the diary, scheduling, no, that's the least sexy thing ever. But actually creating that time, and it's not scheduling sex. I want to be very clear about this. It's not saying... on Thursday next week we will have penetrative intercourse. Absolutely not. It's scheduling the time for intimate connection, for putting phones on silent, for finishing work on time, whatever it takes to have some protected intimate time together. And then doing what you know works to help connect the two of you. Even if you're not feeling like sex, But putting that that effort in. So for my husband and I, we'll have a heart in the diary. On a Monday, we get our diaries out. We say, okay, we plan our weeks. We say, when when will we put a heart in the diary this week? Maybe two hearts in the diary. And it's that leap of faith that when it comes around at 7pm on a Thursday, thinking, well, actually, I've had a really stressful day.

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthI'm tired. Didn't sleep well last night. I'd rather just sit on the sofa and watch Netflix, actually, in this moment. But it's knowing, no, if we and put our phones on silence. We have a shower together. We tidy the bedroom. We put on the particular lighting we only put on during intimate connection time and the particular music. We have sex DJs, DJ sets that we only listen to for sex. And, you know, and then you have a shower together and gradually you're relaxing and you're connecting and you go into the bedroom and the fuchsia light is on and that particular DJ sets on. And you're thinking, actually, maybe You know, i'm I'm starting to feel a bit more interested now. And then fast forward another five or ten minutes, and the last thing that's on my mind is what I thought I wanted to sit and watch on Netflix. Yeah. And for couples I work with, long-term couples, that's what they need to be doing.

Carly OsmanYeah. Yeah.

RuthBut there's so much resistance. Oh, put it in the diary. Make an effort. Doesn't that mean there's something wrong? But no.

Carly OsmanI love all of this and I was one of those people who thought, well, I'm not going to schedule it. Gosh, that takes out all the fun of it. But then you said something else and I went, oh my gosh, that's it as well, which was the concept of breaks. so breaks and arousal is why we have, we go on holiday and have lots of sex because we're not thinking about the dirty laundry and the thousand things I've got on my to-do list. And actually, if I'm not making time for sex and actually I've got a lot of breaks in my life, Well, of course it's never going to happen because I'm never going to think about it. And I'm going to be in this situation when you look back and you go, oh no, we've not had, we've not been intimate for months now. We've got, and I think we're not just talking about the reality of life and actually we need to take back control.

RuthAbsolutely. Yes. Take back control. I think we're all, we're trained to be very passive in our sex lives. Wait for this lightning bolt of passion to strike from above at some random moment. And we don't treat other things in our life like that. You know, if if you say if you want to run more or I have a TEDx talk, Revamp Your Sex Life in Six Minutes, where I compare it to tennis saying if we if we want more and better tennis, you know, you just don't wait to spontaneously feel like playing tennis.

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthAnd oh, does it so happen that there's a gap in your diary right there and then and your partner's free? You know, we're we are. We plan it. We devote time and attention to it. And we see that as a good thing. I care about this thing. I want it in my life. So I'm going to put it in the diary. I'm going to learn about it I'm going to talk about it with my partner. But yeah, with sex, we're just very passive. But yeah, with brakes and accelerators, this is actually an exercise that listeners can do. If they say grab a piece of paper, divide it into a left-hand column and a right-hand column. And at the top of one column put brakes, as in V-R-A-K-E-S, brakes, and the other one accelerators. Another way to think of it is turn-offs and turn-ons. And in the brakes column, you're thinking of all of the things that stop you feeling desire. Now, some of them are common to most people, like stress. Some of them are more individual. A massive one for me is tiredness.

RuthSo I have what I call my Cinderella switch. It's like the party is over when that happens. And then you have your accelerators. And this can be things in your own life. It can be things that your partner does or doesn't do. It can be as simple as, I mean, my partner, he's he's got a lot of facial hair, beards and this that. And the difference if he's groomed and trimmed his beard and shaved his cheeks and this and that. To me, that's an accelerator when I see him looking like that. But if I'm tired and I'm stressed, for me, a messy bedroom doesn't throw me off, but so fun for some people it's massive. but if my brakes are in place, the accelerators aren't going to work. So back to the exercise, list your brakes, list your accelerators, then circle the biggest two or three brakes turn off, the biggest two or three accelerators turn on.

Carly OsmanYeah.

RuthAnd then think, okay, in my unique life, with the demands on my time, my lifestyle, et cetera, et cetera, How can I take the pressure off those brakes? And how can I gently ease the pressure on those accelerators so I can move forward in terms of desire? Sit down with your partner, if you have a partner, and compare those. And you'll probably go, oh wow, I never knew that was so important to you.

Carly OsmanYeah.

RuthThat's something I can easily do. Or why didn't you tell me it would make such a difference if you did X, Y, Z's? And then, yeah, you've got your your action steps to making it easier to feel desire.

Carly OsmanAgain, this comes back to communication and actually having conversations that we just avoid. And the other thing that I had this big aha moment was body hang ups. So they have I'm going to be totally honest with you and say my body hang ups have controlled my entire narrative probably for the last 20 years of my life. But again, I've never told my husband. I met him when I was 20. I'm now 41. That's 21 years that I've never until last week when we sat there and we watched the program together. And I went, oh, I feel that. i I think about that. i when you're doing that to me, i suddenly go in my head and he's like, you didn't, you've never told me that at all. And we had this really frank conversation again. can you talk to the listeners a little bit more about what I'm talking with the hangups and actually why they are prevalent in so many of our lives?

RuthSo I assume you're talking about hang-ups around our vulvas as women.

Carly OsmanYeah. Yeah.

RuthYeah. So again, this is so common. I'll have a new client in front of me, female client wants to experience more pleasure in sex, et cetera, et cetera. And when I say, have you ever looked at your vulva, as in the external genitals, have you ever looked at your vulva in a mirror? People go, oh, no, no, why would I do that? Or, well, I looked once and I've never looked again. It was horrible.

RuthAnd how can we expect to relax and feel pleasure in an area of the body that we consider so horrifying or disgusting that we can't even look at it? Imagine... if a man had been brought up to believe his penis was so unsightly and horrible and smelly and ugly that he couldn't even look at it, how would how would we imagine who could then relax and experience pleasure through that? And as people with vulvas, we need to realise the same. I think Any woman can look back and remember times in her life when, you know, the first time she heard some hideous, aggressive euphemism for vulva, and I'm not even going to say any out loud, the first time she saw feminine hygiene products on the chemist's shelves or something like that, the first time a horrible comment was made, teasing at school or something, you know, we're we're brought up to think that our vulvas are ugly and horrible. Typically, we haven't seen anybody else's or certainly not in real life. And so what we've seen in mainstream porn, if we've seen porn, hairless, smooth, pink, almost non-existent labia, we think that's what vulvas should look like. And then we do have a look at our own. mean, I remember coaching a client who told me the only visual she'd ever had of what a vulva should look like was the line drawing on a tampon information insert.

Carly OsmanWow.

RuthShe thought she shouldn't even have vulva.

Carly OsmanWow.

RuthBut That she had these hideous growths. She terrified there was something wrong with her. up until the point she saw porn, actually. So I do need to say, some porn, particularly ethically produced, real-life couples' porn, can be a good source of body confidence and education. Sometimes women will say to me, I actually developed confidence in my vulgar when I started watching porn. But for so many women, all they've seen is pink, smooth, hairless, almost non-existent labia. They look at theirs and think there's something wrong. And they think, how on earth? Could anyone enjoy being near that? And so, yes, their husbands or partners are maybe performing oral sex on them or using their hands on them. And all she's thinking, it oh, I can't believe they're down there. It must be terrible. bet they can't be waiting for it to stop. How do I look? How do I smell? Oh, I'd better make make this up to them by what I'm going to do to them next. And meanwhile, their partner has no idea that all of this is going on in their heads. Sometimes men will reach out to me. i feel quite emotional saying this actually. They'll reach out to me and say, because of an Instagram post of yours or because of one of your workshops, I saw i told my wife that her vulva's beautiful. And I've never told her that. And I had always thought it. Why have I never told her? And she cried.

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthAnd it was this amazing, deeply connecting moment. it So if you're a woman listening to this, if you have a vulva, I encourage you to get them more familiar with what's normal. There's some incredible Instagram accounts. Pi is in the window, pies in the window all one word is one that I share with clients it a woman who makes bulvers out of pastry puts them on top of pies and she works with photographs that people send her instagram's forever banning her stuff because it looks so realistic but it's a way of seeing diversity of bulver without looking at photographs, which can feel very confronting and unfamiliar and scary. There's various vulva artworks accounts our artwork accounts out there, and that's where I recommend starting. And then very, very quickly, you will realise that all vulva are unique. You know, for me, I had the ultimate education as a striptease artist. My first shift on the job, I saw more vulvas than I had in my entire life. until that moment. And I actually think it's the most unique part of the human body, actually.

RuthTo me And yeah, once we can realize they're all different, they're all wonderful in their own unique ways and become more confident, the more we can experience pleasure. The last thing I'll say, which is so important on this, is that in studies that they do of women who self-report great sexual pleasure, and they look at other others not being very eloquent. or Let me start that bit again. Something that's really important to know is that when they interview women who self-report fantastic sex lives, great sexual pleasure, there is a direct correlation. with how women feel about their own genitals and that pleasure. The women who are saying, I love sex, have fantastic sex, are the same ones who are comfortable looking at their vulvas. So it's that, and it's I believe it's a skill you can cultivate.

Carly OsmanBut I also think you're doing such an important job in telling men that these are our hang-ups, these are our problems.

Carly OsmanThis is in my head right now. So I would never have openly ever said that to my husband when but when he heard you speak and he suddenly went, do you think like that? is that what's going through your your stories? I was like, yeah, is. And actually him then turning around to me and saying, I love your vulva, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. was just like, oh, Thanks, love. But it was just this, it was this, it broke down this wall. Because now, it's because he's not a mind reader. No one's a mind reader. But we're we're having the same conversation from the same starting point now.

RuthWonderful.

Carly OsmanSo, yeah. So, thank you for that. and

RuthGood, my pleasure.

Carly OsmanMy last question for you is what are the small realistic changes that couples can make that will have, do you think the most immediate impact on their sex life?

RuthIf you are a couple who want more frequent sex, to schedule that intimate time so again you're not agreeing ahead of time to direct physical sexual contact you're saying we're going to create the environment where it's most likely that we'll then feel desire and make that the most important thing in your diary Then in addition to that, to check in with each other on those times, what what do you need tonight? What do you actually, what are you in the mood for?

Carly OsmanThank you.

RuthWhat do you fancy today? Because so often couples who are having regular sex will tell me that they fall into a kind of autopilot where once it's clear that sex is going to happen, they do the same things in the same order every time. And instead, if we check in, you know, what what do you need? And one of us might say, well, you know what? i've i well I want to be wild and and dominant. You know, maybe maybe I'm on a high because I had some great work success. I've got all this energy that I want to play with. Or maybe it's a case of i'm I'm tired. These emotional things have been happening, but I i do. I know I will feel better. if we connect sexually, but I want something slow and just lots of skin contact and intense. and Or it might be, I'm tired, but I really fancy an orgasm. Let's get the toys out. you know And it's tuning into what do we actually need. It means we have more varied sex and means we have more satisfying sex. Now imagine you are scheduling intimate intimate times and when those times happen and you have sex, it's more satisfying and more varied. What then starts happening is you start wanting it more. And when you start wanting it more, there is a higher chance that a degree of spontaneity will come back in. If sex is worth the time and effort, then we're more likely to think, oh,

RuthThat might be something nice. So for anybody who says we're not having regular sex, we want regular sex, but scheduling, no way. We want spontaneous sex. The way back to a degree of spontaneity is actually through the route of scheduling, of checking in. What are we actually in the mood for? What do you need? And therefore having more frequent and higher quality sex, which then makes us want sex more.

Carly OsmanI love that. And where can people find you, Ruth?

RuthI am at Ruth Ramsey. com. Ramsey is R-A-M-S-A-Y. the website, I'm midway through a more explicit pivot towards heterosexual men in relationships. but I do, I do coach everyone. You know, there's, there's no one i would turn away. I am specialized in heterosexual sexuality. partly just because there are so many incredible coaches and therapists if someone needs therapy who are focused in and other other types of sexualities, other types of relationships. In the same way, i will cover kink, I will cover ethical non-monogamy, but there are people who are specialised in those areas. But anybody is welcome to reach out to me. Have a free 20-minute discovery call. And it might be then that coaching with me might be the right next step. But it might well be that there's someone else who I can recommend or refer you to or a different approach that I recommend you take. So, yeah, head to RuthBrandtay. com. But if you're not a heterosexual man in relationship, don't feel that you can't reach out to me.

Carly OsmanYeah well thank you so much Ruth

RuthBeen an absolute pleasure. And thank you for but sharing some of your story as well, because people are very shy, even when they've worked with me or watched my workshops and had great results. Still naturally shy to talk openly about it. But if we can all talk more openly, we'll realize that we're all more similar than we'd realized. And yes, more pleasure for all.