Author Trina Read on Five Keys to A Happy & Lasting Marriage
An Interview With Nancy Landrum
Good sex over a lifetime is cultivated with daily, good relationship habits that, when bundled together, create much-needed emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is the glue that holds a couple together through thick and thin.
Marriage is a lifelong journey that requires dedication, understanding, and continuous growth from both partners. To delve deeper into what makes a marriage truly happy and enduring, we are seeking to feature authors who have explored this topic through their writing. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sexologist, Dr. Trina Read.
Canadian Sexologist Dr. Trina Read is the author of The Sex Course and its companion workbook, Sex Boot Camp. Her funny, sharp, and observant writing style pulls the curtain back on the way sex really is: complicated and messy but also something that brings us closer. She is a proud mom of two teen boys, a best-selling author, a go-to media expert, a magazine columnist, a spokeswoman, and an award-winning international speaker.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Many of our most powerful lessons come from personal experience. What experiences inspired you to write a book of relationship advice?
I’ve spent a twenty-five-year career figuring out how a woman’s sexuality can thrive in a long term relationship after the honeymoon stage is over. In 2008, I wrote a best-selling book with a strong premise, but there were big gaps, and it missed the mark. It was a how-to book, and that style of self-help didn’t resonate with a typical woman. (It took me many years to understand it’s men who prefer the sex how-to format.)
Then, in 2019, I learned about sexual mindset and developed a game-changing five-step program.
Instead of writing another how-to sex book, I decided to turn the five-step program into a fiction. The Sex Course was embraced by readers because it’s an easy and fun way to learn sex education — three days after launch, the Sex Course went to number one in its Amazon category.
For women who prefer nonfiction, there is the Sex Boot Camp workbook, which is available as an audiobook. Sex Boot Camp untangles how women can turn their sexual experiences around in a way that works with their busy lifestyles.
In your opinion, what are the core principles that underpin a thriving marriage? Can you share a couple of examples from your book that illustrate these principles in action?
Sex isn’t perfect, but the sex life you create needs to be perfect for you. Your life will move along imperfectly, and somehow, your sexuality needs to fit in with whatever is happening.
When something big and disruptive happens — like a blowout fight, an illness, or a death — it will not be big enough to end the partnership, but sex will be impacted.
• When sex goes sideways, congratulate yourself for being aware.
• When triggered, write it down, clear it out, and release it.
• Go out of your way to be kind to yourself, your partner, and your relationship.
• Prioritizing your emotional intimacy is the gateway through this difficult time.
• Be proud that each time you work through an issue, it will create a deeper level of intimacy, trust, and connectedness.
Go into a difficult situation with the intentional mindset that your sexuality can make it through this season of life. That way, you will look for ways to nurture your emotional connection and seamlessly move back into a thriving marriage.
How do you address the topic of conflict resolution in your writing? What strategies do you believe are most effective for couples to navigate disagreements and maintain harmony?
To best navigate a disagreement, it’s important to understand the root of the problem.
Our partner works with the information they are given. If a woman doesn’t give any input on what she wants, her partner believes what they do makes her happy. The root problem is that most women don’t know what brings them pleasure. The longer this goes on, the bigger the communication gap and the deeper her resentment grows.
Being able to communicate sexual needs, set boundaries, and negotiate seems to be an impasse for most women. The majority of women actively avoid walking into a complicated mess, especially when it involves sex. Avoiding conflict is why most women stay stuck and feel “miserable inside” for the rest of their lives and become apathetic about sex, saying things like, “I wouldn’t care if I ever had sex again.”
A positive, sexual mindset is the way through this. The only way through this is for a woman to believe she and her sexuality are worth it. Building her sexual self-esteem isn’t difficult, but it will take time and a belief in herself that she can do this.
Marriage often involves significant changes and challenges over time. How do you suggest couples can grow and adapt together through different life stages while maintaining a strong bond?
Great sex isn’t doing what works for everyone else, it’s doing what works best for you and your partner. Couples who are flexible and actively avoid getting stuck in an orgasm-as-the-goal sex rut will thrive.
A lifetime of sexual fulfillment is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. Sex is not static; rather, it’s ever-evolving over your lifetime. The sex you want dating, married, divorced, before kids, after kids, in perimenopause, postmenopause, and everything in between will be different.
Opening your sexual experience to something more than orgasm-focused sex will make this journey a lot more interesting for you and your partner. And it ensures you don’t get stuck in a sex rut.
Women learning about her unique pleasure spectrum and asking for what she wants (or doesn’t want) will take time. And that’s okay — as long as you’re moving forward with a positive mindset.
Based on your research and writing, what practical advice would you offer to couples looking to strengthen their marriage? Are there specific habits or routines you recommend that can foster deeper connection and mutual support?
Good sex over a lifetime is cultivated with daily, good relationship habits that, when bundled together, create much-needed emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is the glue that holds a couple together through thick and thin.
It doesn’t have to take a lot of effort, but emotional and sexual intimacy cannot survive if they’re ignored. It’s like putting a houseplant in a shadowy corner and forgetting to water it. Eventually, it will die from neglect.
Small, daily habits, like intentional touch, take a minute (sometimes seconds) but that brief interaction sets you up for the rest of the day(s). That way, when significant changes happen in your life, they won’t sideline your sex. In fact, sex will have room to grow and thrive despite whatever is going on.
What are 5 Primary Points that you wish every couple knew and practiced? Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Men and women want different things from sex, but most couples only have orgasm-focused sex — making sex predictable, boring, and one-sided. It makes sense that many women grow bored and frustrated with a sexual framework that sets her up for failure. And she loses interest.
Women love sex. It’s cliché and entirely inaccurate to say women have less sexual desire than men. Women have active and robust sexual desires and libidos, but their desires are less linear, with more variable patterns of desire, arousal, and fulfillment.
However, her robust desire can be severely compromised by the sex she chooses to have. Research shows persistent, low sexual desire in women is heavily associated with orgasm-as-the-goal-focused sex.
2 . A positive sexual mindset is the magic bullet.
Having good sex over a lifetime can only happen with a positive mindset. That’s not to say you believe sex will always be fabulous — because it won’t be. Your busy and complicated life will chug along imperfectly and be filled with things that push your sexuality to the sidelines: like kids, a new job, a divorce, perimenopause, or a major illness.
A positive mindset shifts your perspective and enables you to see what’s going right with your sex life instead of seeking out and focusing on what’s going wrong.
It’s paying attention with intention and purpose. Sex becomes something that gives you meaning and energy instead of being something you actively avoid.
3 . Help your delayed response by using your responsive desire
Research shows the longer a woman is in a relationship, the less she experiences spontaneous sexual desire. This means that when sex is initiated, she isn’t “spontaneously” turned on. Add to this, at the start of a relationship, she can rely on her libido to wake up her sexual desire. After a year or so (the honeymoon phase), her libido becomes sporadic, fragile, and quickly put off balance by life’s daily stresses and demands.
Without spontaneous desire or libido helping her when sex is initiated, there’s a misalignment between her mind and body that creates a delayed response. That is, you don’t want sex when it’s initiated, and, in fact, it will take time to warm up to the idea. Think of a time when you didn’t want to have sex but did, and halfway through, your desire kicked in, and you were totally into it. That is your delayed sexual response finally catching up.
Instead of crossing your fingers, hoping your sexual response clicks into place, you need to take charge and use your responsive desire. Responsive desire is putting your body into the motions of having sex. It works similarly to muscle memory, where intimate touch, physical closeness, and sexual contact can spark your sexual desire.
However, responsive desire is only half of the equation. Your body is ready, and now you need to get your mindset in the right place to enjoy sex fully. (See #4)
4 . Move over Sex Speed Bumps and into your body’s pleasure
Let’s pretend sex was initiated. You agree to have sex because now you know that most women have a delayed sexual response and need to utilize her responsive desire to wake up her sexual desire and arousal. So there you are, putting your body into the motions of sex when — BAM — a rogue thought pops into your head: “Why didn’t my partner take the trash out this morning?” Or, “Why did my partner start a fight over the toothpaste cap?”
Instead of feeling the good feels all over your body, this negative thought starts looping in your head, often joined by its negative thought friends.
Sex speed bumps are negative thoughts and emotions that slow down, interfere, and often prevent your body from becoming sexually aroused. To complicate this further, when a couple is in a sex rut, women often conflate the initiation of sex with their sex speed bumps.
Meaning: Sex speed bumps can make the initiation of sex a negative trigger. For the record, this is not the sex’s fault. Sex is a neutral state. Do not fall into the trap of associating sex being initiated with your sex speed bumps — they are two separate entities.
When you catch your mind going into a Sex Speed Bump, use a pattern interrupter and say to yourself, “I want to enjoy this.”
5 . Women need to ask for the pleasure she wants and be receive the pleasure she asked for.
The one thing holding the majority of women back from experiencing the sex life she wants and deserves is … asking for what she wants.
When a woman doesn’t bring what she wants into the experience, the sex becomes lopsided and limited. It contracts and then narrows a couple’s sexual experience over time. Meaning the couple stops bringing new, playful ideas into their sex.
Orgasm is only one facet of her much larger pleasure spectrum. When your body is no longer forced to do something it may not want (orgasm-focused sex), and the pressure to perform and orgasm is gone, it leaves space where she can bring in the things that make her feel sexual and sensual.
Because most women spend a lifetime being the gatekeeper of sex, she hasn’t learned how to receive pleasure. Maybe it’s assumed that receiving pleasure is a no-brainer; that once you’re swept away in your desire, of course, anyone can lean back and receive pleasure. But that’s simply not true.
Receiving pleasure doesn’t come naturally or spontaneously. It’s a learned skill that needs to be practiced and mastered.
How do you reach couples with this message?
I’m an educator, speaking to women through my books, at events, on my podcast and online. When women open up her sexual experience, it benefits the couple. (Happy wife, happy sex life!)
Are you working on any exciting new projects now?
September 4, women can listen to the weekly Sensational Sex Podcast where sex coach, Amy Rowan and I frankly discuss why sex goes sideways in long term relationships. We then give practical, easy ways for women to thrive in her sexual experience.
September women can join the Sex’cess Community and sign up for the Sex Boot Camp course.
Is there any particular book or concept that helped you overcome a turning point in a marriage?
For men: The media over-hypes and skews the sexual experience to make us believe it needs to be a mind-blowing, amazing experience, each and every time. But sex is messy and complicated, and it’s a false expectation to believe it will continually be a mind-blowing experience.
For women: We think of sex as something that happens to our bodies when, in fact, good sex starts in the mind. Truly mind-blowing sex happens at the authentic and vulnerable level.
Vulnerability is where your toe-curling sex lives. Being authentically vulnerable with your partner is one of the scariest places we can go. And yet, if you believe you’re going to be with your partner for many years, part of your sexual journey is to trust they will be a soft place to land.
Being authentic and vulnerable in a marriage is definitely a turning point in their relationship.
Other than your book, how are you using your success to bring goodness to the world?
I grew up with a single mom in the 1970s who could only get a secretarial job. As such, she and her three children lived under the poverty line. In a lot of ways, not much has changed for single women and single moms, working hard to earn a living but still far below the poverty line.
I’ve been an advocate of women supporting women’s growth and prosperity since. Ten percent of my gross earnings is donated to WINS (Women in Need Society) which supports women and their families in Calgary.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
One woman asking for the sex she wants is an anomaly; millions of women asking for what they want becomes a societal norm. Women’s sexual satisfaction is rooted in the social power of many women, believing she is worth her pleasure. Together, we help and empower each other to explore and express our sexuality and equality.
Women worldwide struggle to feel sexually equal and deserving of a satisfying sex life. Most women have accepted the status quo and have little to no hope of ever deserving to have her body loved and her desires completely fulfilled — on her terms. Many women believe it’s just too much to fight for alone.
The only way the sexual status quo can change is when brave step up and tell their sexual truth. By sharing your story, you inspire others to open up to their sexual truth.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quotes”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your lives?
“The adage in sex therapy is that when sexuality goes well, it is a positive, integral but not a major component — adding 15 to 20 percent to the couple’s vitality and satisfaction. However, when sexuality is dysfunctional or nonexistent, it assumes an inordinately powerful role, 50 to 70 percent, robbing.” Barry and Emily McCarthy, Rekindle Desire
It’s so easy to take our relationships for granted and overlook when sexuality is going well. We only notice when we are out of sync and at sexual odds with our partner, and usually, by then, the couple is in a sex-rut.
It’s important to pay attention and be grateful when you are connected and in sync with your partner, and your sexual experience adds to the quality of your partnership.
Paying attention creates positive memories. When life inevitably throws you a curveball and sex gets sidelined, it’s so much easier to come back together.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)
Growing up, I had zero sex education. As a teen, I stumbled across a woman, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, on my radio who brazenly talked about sex. That was how I and millions of other people learned about sex in the 1980s.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer is 95 years old, regularly posts on X (Twitter), and is still a force to be reckoned with. It would mean so much to say thank you for paving a very difficult path for other sex educators, to tell her that we are able to stand on her (tiny but mighty) shoulders and unapologetically speak about adult sex education.
Because of Dr. Westheimer’s tenacity, focus, and determination, the world’s sexual experience got a little better. And now our kids have the benefit of a more open, honest discussion about their sexuality.
How can our readers follow your work online?
Socials: @DrTrinaRead
Podcast: http://SensationalSxPodcast.com
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
About the Interviewer: At 79 years young, Nancy guides couples to transformative relationship skills, specializing in strategies for stepfamilies to succeed. Nancy brings her MA in Spiritual Psychology, personal experience and research proven strategies to guide couples to healthy communication skills and relationship happiness. Nancy has contributed to multiple media outlets including Huffington Post, Psych Central, and Woman’s Day magazine, to name a few. Nancy coaches in person, on Zoom, in her online courses at www.MillionaireMarriageClub.com , on “Relationship Rehab” TV and Talk and has authored eight books, including “How to Stay Married & Love It!” and “Stepping TwoGether: Building a Strong Stepfamily”. Nancy’s goal is to lower the divorce rate globally.
