Episode 2: Miscarriages, motherhood, and sex in long-term relationships

I’m admittedly probably a weird person, and I also admittedly have had a lot of different conversations in bars over the years with both genders. It’s weird because -- and obviously this varies by person -- normally when you’re a teenage boy, as I was about two decades ago, young boys talk about sex all the time. I’m sure young girls do too but I wasn’t privy to those conversations at that time, being a fat, awkward adolescent. But as dudes get older, potentially out of a focus on work or respect for their partner, they tend to discuss sex less, and women tend to discuss it a little bit more -- which is cool, but broadly I feel like no one is having really transparent discussions on the topic, and that’s problematic.

I met Mollie Bentley, who is the guest on this episode, via Twitter. We became friends quickly and we would periodically talk about sex and relationships. She’s been with her husband about 27 years and they have two kids. There’s a big sitcom-driven concept that sex is dead inside long-term relationships, and especially after kids. I know people for whom that’s true. I know people for whom that’s exactly the opposite. Mollie and I talk a lot about that near the middle to the back part of this episode.

You’ll also get thoughts into miscarriages, the role of social media in our world, sex as a habit, the weird work and personal lines that we draw around ourselves, and the big difference between how we grow up and how we’re expected to move through adulthood. The audio on this episode is pretty strong but around the ¾ mark of it, my dog was pacing around and fidgeting, so I had to take him out … you might hear some elevator pings as a result. My bad.