Keeping the Spark Alive – Long-Term & Aging (a/k/a How to Maintain Great Sex) | Dr. Nicole McNichols Part 3
Episode
31 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Career Growth, Productivity, Health & Wellness
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Individual passion as relationship fuel: Pursuing personal interests outside the relationship — a new career, class, or social group — directly increases attraction between partners. Research shows that when one partner returns energized by something new, the other experiences renewed attraction. Sharing those experiences together is the critical step that converts individual excitement into relational desire.
- ✓Desire gap by gender: Contrary to common assumptions, women lose sexual desire faster than men in long-term relationships, and novelty matters more to them over time. Couples who recognize this pattern can address it proactively rather than misattributing declining desire to partner dissatisfaction, which is a common and damaging misreading of what is actually a documented physiological and psychological pattern.
- ✓Sex as measurable health intervention: Harvard researcher Daniel Gilbert's pager study found sex ranks highest among all daily activities for reported happiness and present-moment focus. Regular sex also correlates with better sleep, stronger immunity, cardiovascular improvement, reduced stress, protection against degenerative brain disease, and longer lifespan in men — benefits Nicole Mc argues are systematically undervalued compared to supplements like CBD.
- ✓Menopause and HRT: Declining estrogen and progesterone cause vaginal wall thinning and reduced lubrication, making sex painful — a condition most doctors underaddress. Nicole Mc recommends consulting a menopause specialist rather than a general practitioner, as most received training when HRT was considered risky. Emerging data also supports testosterone supplementation for women to address brain fog and reduced libido.
- ✓Communication framework for sexual conversations: Initiate sexual conversations while clothed and low-stress, framing requests through vulnerability rather than directives. Instead of instructing a partner, ask curiosity-based questions such as how to tell if they are enjoying themselves. Naming the awkwardness explicitly before the conversation reduces defensiveness and opens dialogue more reliably than waiting for a natural moment to arise.
What It Covers
Nicole Mc, professor and author of *You Could Be Having Better Sex*, covers strategies for sustaining sexual satisfaction in long-term relationships, addressing novelty, communication, aging, menopause, sex toys, and the measurable health benefits of regular sex across a 31-minute conversation with James Altucher.
Key Questions Answered
- •Individual passion as relationship fuel: Pursuing personal interests outside the relationship — a new career, class, or social group — directly increases attraction between partners. Research shows that when one partner returns energized by something new, the other experiences renewed attraction. Sharing those experiences together is the critical step that converts individual excitement into relational desire.
- •Desire gap by gender: Contrary to common assumptions, women lose sexual desire faster than men in long-term relationships, and novelty matters more to them over time. Couples who recognize this pattern can address it proactively rather than misattributing declining desire to partner dissatisfaction, which is a common and damaging misreading of what is actually a documented physiological and psychological pattern.
- •Sex as measurable health intervention: Harvard researcher Daniel Gilbert's pager study found sex ranks highest among all daily activities for reported happiness and present-moment focus. Regular sex also correlates with better sleep, stronger immunity, cardiovascular improvement, reduced stress, protection against degenerative brain disease, and longer lifespan in men — benefits Nicole Mc argues are systematically undervalued compared to supplements like CBD.
- •Menopause and HRT: Declining estrogen and progesterone cause vaginal wall thinning and reduced lubrication, making sex painful — a condition most doctors underaddress. Nicole Mc recommends consulting a menopause specialist rather than a general practitioner, as most received training when HRT was considered risky. Emerging data also supports testosterone supplementation for women to address brain fog and reduced libido.
- •Communication framework for sexual conversations: Initiate sexual conversations while clothed and low-stress, framing requests through vulnerability rather than directives. Instead of instructing a partner, ask curiosity-based questions such as how to tell if they are enjoying themselves. Naming the awkwardness explicitly before the conversation reduces defensiveness and opens dialogue more reliably than waiting for a natural moment to arise.
Notable Moment
Nicole Mc draws a direct parallel between sex and meditation: both involve redirecting attention away from intrusive thoughts back to present-moment sensation. The key difference is that sex amplifies the stress-reduction effect through physical pleasure, making it a more potent mindfulness practice than meditation alone.
Episode Transcript
This episode is brought to you by booking.com. Planning a girls' trip always sounds fun until you remember your booking for multiple people with very specific opinions. My sisters and I have nonnegotiables, blackout curtains so we can actually sleep, good natural light for all those photos, and ideally something close to a beach. And just go ahead and trust me, we're not very flexible about these things. That's why booking.com is our go to. Booking.com offers a wide array of hotels and vacation rentals across The US, so you can find exactly what you're booking for. Even if the people that you're booking for are extremely picky like us, you can filter for the things that actually matter instead of settling for something that's just fine. Whether you're booking for yourself, your partner, or a high maintenance group chat, booking.com makes it easy to get it right. If a stay can check all of our boxes, it can check anyone's. Find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com, booking. Yeah. Book today on the site or in the app. Why have we asked our contractor we found on angi.com to be our kid's legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids. We only met a month ago. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at angie.com. Today on the James Altiger Show. It's not about our partner. We're just kind of bored with our own life. You know, it's really easy when we lose that feeling of attraction to look at our partner and wanna blame them, but sometimes it's that we don't have anything that really is ours that lights us up anymore. Pleasure, generally, is something that is really essential to our well-being. It's not a treat. It's not something you've gotta, quote unquote, get lucky to have. It's not something superfluous. It's actually a really vital part of your well-being. And, yeah, approaching it with a sense of playfulness and humor. And, you know, amazing sex is going to have awkward moments. That's okay. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show. Previously on The James Altucher Show. No one craves bad sex. Right? No one craves even the same sex every single time. One thing I will say though that's interesting is women actually have been found to lose desire more quickly over the course of a long term relationship than men do, and novelty is more important for them over time. And so we assume that it's men who get bored quickly and they need you know, they're gonna go need the new partner, the new thing. Actually, women are more likely to report those feelings of boredom. So this, of course, leads to the the big question for many couples, which is, okay, Two, five, seven years …
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“Nicole Mc, professor and author of *You Could Be Having Better Sex*, covers strategies for sustaining sexual satisfaction in long-term relationships”
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