Male sexuality is just as complex and rich as female sexuality.
I was recently invited to talk about what I wish women knew and understood about male sexuality on Tanya Hale’s podcast, she’s given me permission to share that with you here on my podcast.
So on this episode, we debunk a lot myths we have around understanding male sexuality and paint a more optimistic and uplifting view of what male sexuality is and the blessing it can be to a marriage.
We explore how men express love through sex, why emotional connection and sexual desire are so intertwined for them, and how reframing men’s sexuality can help us show up more equally in intimate relationships
(Don’t miss out on part 2 where we talk about how sometimes validation drives sexual desire, obligation sex, penis vulnerability, and what it means to create a truly equal and safe sexual space in marriage. )
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Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
Episode 247
Dan: [00:00:00] men are not just a hairy version of a woman with more muscles. And I think a lot of women try to. You know, fix the man and fix their husband or whatever to be just a, a version of themselves, just with a little more hair and muscles. Mm-hmm. And that’s not a helpful approach because the differences go way, way deep /
There’s a popular meme circulating on the internet, and maybe you’ve seen it. They compare men and women, women. It’s like a 7 47 dashboard with tons of switches and knobs and dials. [00:01:00] And then for men, it’s just one switch, implying that men are easy, women are complicated. However, that can be further from the truth.
Men and especially male sexuality is just as complex and rich as female sexuality. I was recently invited to Tanya Hale’s. Podcast as a guest and to talk about what I wish women knew and understood about male sexuality, and I had a lot of things to share and she’s given me permission to share that with you here on my podcast.
So today I hope to debunk a lot of myths and other problems that we have around understanding male sexuality and paint a more optimistic and uplifting view of what male sexuality is and the blessing it can be to a marriage to really understand the benefits and value of male sexuality.
Along the way, we’re gonna talk about biological and physiological differences between men and women and how it impacts sexuality. We’ll talk [00:02:00] about concordance and sexual arousal and what the research says about that. We’ll talk about penises also, and the psychology behind that and how it affects marriages and sexuality.
So this is a two part episode. I split it up to make it easier to listen to, so make sure you listen to both parts. Ready? Here we go.
All right. So here we are with Dan Purcell today. Dan, thank you so much for joining the conversation.
Yeah, I’m happy to be here. This is gonna be a great conversation, isn’t it?
This is gonna be a good one. I,
Tanya: from the, from our prep work that we’ve done, I’m really excited about it.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Tanya: Um, just to give people a, a quick heads up, tell us about your podcast and, what it’s about and what you do with your work.
Dan: Sounds good. Uh, my podcast is called Get Your Marriage On, and I talk to couples who are in midlife that really want to improve sex and intimacy in their marriage, and that’s something I am super passionate about.
I. And, I’d love to think I’m [00:03:00] helping with a poverty problem, but not about economic poverty. I’m talking about bedroom poverty and about really good education and resources and ideas to help couples really build on each other’s strengths and to create a truly deep, intimate relationship and how sexuality, doesn’t hinder that, but it’s a way to build something very deep and meaningful for married couples.
Tanya: Yeah, I love that. I know that when I was going through my sexual revolution of sorts, that Uhhuh, that your podcast and your app were two resources that I used a lot to really help reframe my brain around sexuality and around what was going on. So, I’m super glad to have you here and I was, I’ve, I mentioned this to you before, but I was a little bit nervous ’cause I didn’t want just a man coming on mansplaining to women about Yeah.
How you can be a better sexual partner for Yeah. Your husband, because I, I don’t think that that’s what we want, but I, I do think that that the important part [00:04:00] of the discussion that I’m super excited to have with you today is helping us as women really understand. What are there things about men’s sexuality that we just probably don’t understand for a variety of reasons and, How can understanding those things help us to create more of that equal safe place for each of us to show up? Sexually. I, I know I talk a lot in my podcast about, listen, we have to create this safe space for each other emotionally, but I think it’s important that we also create this safe space for each other sexually and generally, that gets 98% put on the man.
Like it is your job to create a safe space here. But I think as women, there are a lot of things that we can understand that help us show up as equals in, in the sexual space, where we can also create a safe space for the men that we love. I.
Dan: Yeah. I love that. I love that. There’s a couple I’ve coached [00:05:00] where They called him a trisexual. That’s a joke. ’cause he would try anything. He wants to try it all. Married to a woman who doesn’t want to try everything.
Uhhuh
Dan: and it, metaphorically speaking, it’s like he had built this three story, shopping mall or amusement park and he’s trying to drag his wife into.
Doing all the things, shopping at all the stores to try all the rides sexually, and she felt dragged into it and it wasn’t until they both kind of like metaphorically demolished them all, demolished everything, and from the ground up worked together and building something they both wanted, then that’s when their sexual relationship really took off because it’s not about him and his ideas running the relationship or her ideas running the relationship.
It’s about this like. A way, way to collaborate together and build on his sexual strengths and her sexual strengths. But they had to come to a certain point in understanding in order to really do that. Yeah. So hopefully as a [00:06:00] result of this episode, people listen to, at least for the women listening, there’s a lot more, it’s not about mansplaining, but a little more appreciation and maybe a new perspective on how to do that in your relationship.
How do we both build a sexual relationship we both want to be a part of that’s gonna be good for us?
Tanya: Yeah, and I, I haven’t done a lot on sexuality on my podcast ’cause I’m more of a relationship kind of coach. But I love this idea of us being whole people and sexuality is part of our wholeness.
Mm-hmm. And only when we are whole can we show up whole. Right. Like, I know that sounds redundant, but, but it’s part of who we are and part of who we were created to be. and also. This capacity in a, in a marriage to show up as equal partners sexually as well. I think it’s super important, but as you and I have talked in, in doing the prep work for this, there were a lot of things I was like, oh, wow.
Like, I think that’s, [00:07:00] that’s some, some good stuff. So let’s start off by talking about. What are some of the biological and psychological differences that, and emotional differences that men have that it would be helpful for us as women to know, like what do men want women to know about how they’re different than us?
Dan: Great. First is, uh, men are not just a hairy version of a woman with more muscles. And I think a lot of women try to. You know, fix the man and fix their husband or whatever to be like just a, a version of themselves, just with a little more hair and muscles. Mm-hmm. And that’s not a helpful approach because the differences go way, way deep as a, when you’re a little baby developing your mother’s womb at around week seven or week eight.
And your, the fetus’s development sexual expression and differences begin to emerge. not only are genitals beginning to form in, what turns [00:08:00] into male genitals and female genitals, but the effect of testosterone on the fetuses brain changes the way the brain is created and wired. So generally speaking, men have a brain where there is more.
Intrahemispheric Connections, meaning the connections are more like front to back in the brain where women have a brain that’s more interhemispheric, meaning it goes left to right across the right and left hemispheres of the brain. I. So they’ll do tests with men and women, and they’ll give both of them like a geospatial test where they have to manipulate like a 3D object in their mind and then answer questions about certain things.
men generally consistently score much higher on geospatial type of challenges, whereas you give both sexes more of a verbal related challenge, and consistently women score much higher on verbal kinds of things. Even if you look at it as [00:09:00] an evolutionary science perspective, these strengths help our society thrive.
Mm-hmm. If the man is gonna be out there hunting, he needs to know his way around places. If the woman is gonna be nurturing and raising children, those verbal skills and understanding relationships and being really good at that, or really gonna help her with her advantage too. So it’s men and women, just even in their brains, are gonna be wired very differently.
So that’s one thing we need to understand.
Tanya: Okay, so how does that impact how men and women show up?
Dan: So sexual sexually? Yes. Yes. It impacts it tremendously in many ways. And one of the most fascinating studies is this idea of concordance or non concordance. So what they’ve done is they’d bring men into a lab and they’d hook up their body, their genitals, to a.
A device that can measure physiological sexual arousal. And in the hand they give them a clicker. And on the computer screen they show a [00:10:00] variety of images. It might be a mountain scene, it might be, a nude woman, it might be a dog, it might be monkeys. Just all different varieties. And the job is he needs to click the button when he thinks he’s aroused.
Meanwhile, while the machine is measuring physiologically. If he’s actually aroused. So what they’re measuring is two things. Does the brain is in his mind, does he think he’s aroused? And does the body agree 90% of the time For men, those are in alignment.
Mm-hmm. He
Dan: sees something, he clicks the button. Yes.
That’s arousing and his body registered. Yes. That’s arousing.
Tanya: So the machines were saying, yes, we can tell you’re aroused. And his brain was saying, yes, I can tell I’m aroused.
Dan: Exactly. By the way, his behavior, by clicking it. Yep. Yeah. It’s like, yep, I agree with that. Then they bring women into the lab and do the exact same thing.
And the differences are fascinating because for women, um, it was 50% of the time they were in [00:11:00] concordance. Meaning there are gonna be images on the screen where the body registers, yes, that’s arousing, but she didn’t click the button or there was something on the screen where she said, yes, that is arousing.
She clicks a button, but the body didn’t agree. And so the conclusion is, oh, and what’s more fascinating is depending on where she is in your ovulatory cycle, for women who are in ovulation, there’s gonna be a little bit less concordance. There’s gonna be less, they’re gonna be pickier of over what they think is going to be sexually arousing.
Tanya: Oh, wow.
Dan: So, uh, all this is to show, generally speaking, between the two sexes, women respond just as much as men do to sexual stimuli, but they’re gonna be pickier and more discerning.
Mm-hmm. And this
Dan: makes sense for a man and a woman to have sex. A woman is far more vulnerable than men are.
Yeah.
Dan: For the man’s involvement, it’s what, six minutes [00:12:00] on average. Studies show how long it takes a man to, to get the job done sexually. Right. Where for a woman, those six minutes can turn into nine months of pregnancy, plus 18 years of child rearing.
Tanya: Yeah,
Dan: and besides women, generally speaking, are smaller compared to men.
I. When they have sex, generally they’re on, on the bottom man’s on top. Like they’re more vulnerable.
Yeah. In every way. So if you’re gonna
Dan: be, if you’re a woman and you’re gonna be vulnerable, don’t you think biologically you’re gonna be programmed or God’s gonna program it in a way where you’re gonna be a little bit pickier about who you open your body up to and who you’re gonna let into you, into your heart.
So for that reason, it is not that men are not discerning, they absolutely are. And they’re not just going to. Be horny machines that will go have sex with any and all people. That’s not how men are. They’re relational. But women can benefit a lot from understanding that men aren’t like them. there’s more [00:13:00] concordance with what they find sexually arousing, and their body finds arousing.
They’re gonna be more, easily turned on. simpler things can get them going. And it’s not as complicated for men to get from a lower state of arousal to a higher state of arousal compared to women. Mm-hmm. Because of biological differences.
Tanya: Okay. I think that’s fascinating stuff. So let’s go back to this phrase that you just said, that, that men are relational, because I can tell you, I could give you listen, listen list of women who are like, listen, he doesn’t even care.
He just wants to have sex. He doesn’t care who or when or where. And you are saying that that’s not necessarily true, so, so tell me about that. No, it’s very relational. Tell me, tell me where you think that breakdown goes
Dan: or comes from. Yeah. One thing I think women need to understand is, again, because the way their brains are wired, they score a lot higher on verbal.
Types of challenges mm-hmm. Compared to men. Mm-hmm. Men aren’t as verbal as women are, and that’s not to say they don’t care as much it’s [00:14:00] just that men relate to the world in more physical terms, than women do. And that’s just the way we’re wired. So for a man, they care just as much, but they, it, it may not come across as verbal, so a way for them to express love, tenderness, care, concern.
Feelings of desire is usually through physical means sexually. Mm-hmm. So it’s just, it is communication. It’s a very powerful form of communication. It’s just not a verbal form of communication. So this
Tanya: goes back to where you said that men are more spacial and women are more verbal, right? Like
Dan: Yes.
Physical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So there was a couple I’ve worked with and she hated it. Hated it. Every morning husband would reach over and grab her breast and she’s like, ah, come on. Really now. Like, no way. No thank you. And she was really offended by that until she later [00:15:00] realized this is his way of saying, I think you’re beautiful.
I want you in my life. And once she can really understand that, that’s really what was being communicated or that’s what he was trying to communicate in that not that he thinks she’s a piece of meat, wants to mm-hmm. Have an, wants to ejaculate. That’s not it. When she was like, actually he really, this is his way of saying.
I love you and I want you, and it may not just be as verbal as she is. That’s when their marriage really started to change. That’s like an example of one of the many shifts that happened in their relationship, but mm-hmm. Understanding men kind of relate that way. So
Tanya: they were, they relate more in the action and the doing rather than in the verbalizing.
Dan: Yes.
Tanya: Of that. Right. Right. So for him, he, he saw reaching over and touching her as a way of saying, gosh, I just love you. I love to be with you. I love this space together. And she saw it as, just a, a animalistic behavior. Right, right. Rather than a relational [00:16:00] Tender moment.
Dan: Yes, exactly.
Tanya: Okay.
Dan: And this isn’t to say men have a lot to learn from women on how to be more verbal and how to connect more on that emotional level.
Men have a lot to learn there. but a man’s desire to be physical with his wife isn’t just for physical reasons. It’s not just ’cause they wanna release, it’s usually because it’s something a lot deeper. It’s about desiring to be emotionally connected and they experience that more through their physicality than just through verbal connection.
Tanya: Yeah, I think that’s a super important piece for women to understand is that all of the physical is not just physical. Yes, it is a bid. It’s a bid for emotional connection.
Dan: Yes. And sex is very emotional for men. it’s kind of cliche to say this, but how women connect emotionally before they can open up sexually.
Mm-hmm. And men can connect sexually before they open up emotionally. It is cliche [00:17:00] to say that there is a little bit of truth to it though, because of the way biologically men are wired. Probably socialized, but men find enormous amount of emotional connection through sexual connection. Mm-hmm. After sex, the joke is men fall asleep.
But, what’s really going on is there’s a very deep, strong emotional bonding, emotional connection, feeling seen, feeling desired. Feeling wanted and also this strong feeling, wanting to protect. I want to protect my women. I want to nurture her. I want to provide for her and be her man. those feelings are very, very strong and good, healthy sexual connections that a lot of men experience.
Mm-hmm.
Tanya: And I think it’s unfortunately that a lot of women interpret those behaviors as not being loving. I look at my previous marriage and, and I absolutely fit into that camp of having my own [00:18:00] interpretation of those being all just completely selfish and rather than seeing them as a bid for connection, emotional connection.
Dan: Yeah. I remember years ago, my wife and I had a disagreement. I forgot what it was, but you know, after the disagreement you’re kind of like feeling a little bit, distanced from your spouse. Mm-hmm. And I really wanted to have sex with my wife at that moment. And she’s like, what? We just had a disagreement.
I do not wanna be close to you. But that desire was so strong because I wanted to close the gap between us so strong and I. It felt like the most intuitive way I knew how and how to close the gap between us.
Mm.
Dan: And we did. we had sex. And it healed in my, from my perspective, it healed that gap between us at that time.
And I felt closer to her after, and it’s like, okay, whew. Things are good. Between us, things are gonna be fine. And there’s a little bit of this assurance that we have, especially for men in sex.
Mm-hmm.
Dan: Our sexual selves [00:19:00] are like three year olds. We don’t have a big vocabulary. We just know what we want. We know what we don’t want.
It’s kind of selfish in a way. We never outgrow it. But when that sexual self is cared to and attended to in men, we can be like a great 3-year-old who’s compliant and so willing to forgive and open-hearted and, Easy to be a, you know, like a good three old, like, they’ll listen to their parent, they can be darling in those times too.
Mm-hmm.
Tanya: So, so what do men need in those times, you know, to, to feel like they’re being seen and heard and accepted for who they are?
Dan: Ooh, that’s a great complicated question. I think what men need in those times is. I gotta be careful how I answer this. I hate the word needs when we talk about sex, because Yeah.
For so long we talk about sex is a need that men have.
Mm-hmm. [00:20:00]
Dan: And if a man doesn’t get that need filled in the way he wants at the time he wants and the way he wants, then ADA to the marriage, he’s gonna go someplace else to get it.
Yeah. Great clarification. And
Dan: I don’t, I think that’s a horrible way to approach things.
Mm-hmm.
Dan: It’s not a need in, like we’d say, needs like water, shelter, food, sleep. it’s not in that category at all because you’re not gonna die. You have sex. You may feel like it at sometimes, but you’re not gonna die, rather, it’s not a need to survive, but it’s a need to thrive.
Thrive and survive are very different.
Mm-hmm.
Dan: If you want to thrive as a couple, both people in the marriage need to learn how to lean in to each other, to, lean in towards each other, to build a sexual relationship they can both be happy about and both want to participate in. It’s kind of like a good yin [00:21:00] and yang.
If you look at that old Chinese symbol mm-hmm. You have the white on top and the black on the bottom, but in the white there’s a little speck of black. And in the black there’s a little speck of white. We’re not all one or the other. And it’s this idea that we kind of lean into each other and into each other’s strengths and look at a man’s sexual desires as a strength he’s offering to the marriage rather than a liability to the marriage.
Mm-hmm. And, If I can talk on that a little bit.
Tanya: Yeah, please.
Dan: A lot of women might look at a man and say, you get turned on so easy, you can orgasm so easily. It’s just not fair because compared to the two, generally speaking, women don’t orgasm as fast as men do, and they, they need a lot more warmup compared to men do.
I think if only I was more like a man. I was turned on societally or found desire, obviously societally, in every
Tanya: movie I’ve ever seen, it’s, it’s not sexuality from a women’s perspective. Exactly. It’s [00:22:00] sexuality from a man’s perspective.
Dan: A man’s perspective. Right. Wouldn’t it be so different if it was from a woman’s perspective and it’s like.
He came in six minutes. What’s wrong with him? Yeah. That is so fast. Yeah. I love that he’s missing out all the, the juicy goodness. And it’s like, and, and after he orgasms, that’s it. He’s done 30 seconds of bliss and that’s, he’s 10 seconds of bliss and it’s over. Like there’s something really wrong with him.
Like Yeah. Instead
Tanya: of woman, that’s a complete shift in what we see societal. Right. It would be very different.
Dan: Right. That would be very, very different. Mm-hmm. And anyway, uh, I just think that’s humorous. A lot of men feel like their sexual desire, their high sexual desire, is actually a liability to their relationship.
Mm-hmm. I know so many men who have told me they, they’ve even prayed to God and pleaded with God to take their sexual desire away from them. If they think, if only I wasn’t so interested in sex, if only I didn’t have such strong sexual desires, then we have so much more peace in our marriage, so they really [00:23:00] think their sexual desire is a liability, and that’s a shame because they don’t see that there’s actually inherent strength in having a strong sexual desire.
These are all good qualities. It’s the same quality that gives a man the courage to run into a burning building to save a child. It’s the one that will, like, I’ll go to war to protect, our beliefs, our freedoms, our family, and our liberty. Mm-hmm. It’s the, it’s the same, root. desires in all of that.
And if we start to diminish that or think, or shame that we have a sex drive or a high sex drive, it, it also diminishes this beautiful, strong part of masculinity at the same time. Mm-hmm. So we need to learn how to honor it better and respect it and look at the strengths it provides.
Tanya: Yeah. And I don’t think we’ve been taught that as women very well.
How to honor and protect and see men’s sexuality as something as beautiful. We see it as an, as an an sometimes. I mean, if I think if you’re not in a healthy sexual space. Right, right, [00:24:00] right. We see it as an annoyance. We see it as a, as a hindrance, as a liability. Mm-hmm. Rather than really seeing men’s sexuality as something that is beautiful.
And as we learn to step into our sexuality as well. We can meet in this equal space.
Dan: Right? Right. But, but
Tanya: I think as women, we just haven’t been trained to see that. And I, I love that you’re helping us, reframe that in our brains.
Dan: Thank you.
All right. That concludes part one in part two. Coming up, we continue this conversation. We talk about how sometimes validation drives sexual desire. We talked about obligation sex. Penis vulnerability and what it means to create a truly equal and safe sexual space in marriage.
Alright, catch you in part two.
