Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, the place to be for honest and real talk about relationships and sex. Whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to help you have the relationship of your dreams and the best sex of your life.

Kevin Anthony 0:26
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 409, and it is titled “How to Have the Best Sex of Your Life Even After Retiring. So the idea for this episode came from something that I hear often, which is, well, you know, that’s just part of aging. Well, you know, when you get older, that’s just what happens, and you just don’t really have sex anymore. And you know, she doesn’t want it anymore, or he can’t get it up anymore, or that’s just the way it is. We just have to be okay with the fact that, you know, when we get older, sex just isn’t, you know a part of our lives or isn’t a good part of our lives anymore. And I personally think that is complete BS. You know, I know some of you might be saying, “Well, sure, you’re still young enough yet, but I will give you examples of people significantly older than I am, who are still having great sex in their 70s, even in their 80s.

Kevin Anthony 1:36
So we will talk about that today. I’m going to be talking about, you know, well, one, we’re busting that myth. So I’m going to talk a little bit about that. I’m going to talk about why, though the myth actually is true for some people. What are the things that they did or didn’t do that got them into that situation where the sex isn’t happening or isn’t good? And then we’re going to talk about what successful couples do. How have they managed to keep this going all these years? What things do they do? What do they know? Maybe that you don’t know. So I’ve got quite a few things to cover as far as what you can do to stay healthy and sexually active throughout your entire life, so that’s what we’re going to cover in today’s show.

Kevin Anthony 2:26
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Kevin Anthony 4:19
So, all right, one other thing I want to share with you before we dive into this topic. I haven’t promoted this in quite some time. Y’all know that I have T-shirts, right? The more orgasms, less wars T-shirts. Here’s the pink for the women. Here’s the navy blue for the men. But I also made a new one recently. It was a design I had already, and I used this graphic in one of the shows or YouTube videos or something. And a listener was like, “Hey, I’d buy a T-shirt if it had that on it. So here we have what I call my relationship synergy T-shirt. This is the men’s version. Here, right, which has a version that I created of the traditional Chinese yin yang, but with male and female symbols in it to show the synergy that should be present in the relationship between a man and a woman. Oh, here’s the female version, just a little smaller. There are other colors available as well. You can find those on my website. Go to kevinanthonycoaching.com/products, and you will find that. The links for all that stuff, as always, are in the description.

Kevin Anthony 5:37
Okay, so let’s get started with this myth, this myth that sex only gets worse as you age. I want to bust that right now. I’m going to give you some examples of people I personally know who had amazing, abundant sex lives well into their 80s. One example I have is somebody I cannot share his name with you, but he’s somebody that I knew in my community for many years, and he and his partner would show up at all of the sex parties. They had multiple lovers. They were living from a fullness of sexuality, like the most full sex life I’ve really seen anybody lead, from what I could tell, and I have not seen him in a while. I know he’s still alive and doing well, but I mean, he was showing up to sex parties in his 80s, in his 80s, and like really participating. We’re not talking like hanging out, just observing, you know, just being in the space, like fully participating. And you know, while he was doing fairly well with health, he did have his health challenges, but he didn’t let those get in the way.

Kevin Anthony 7:06
Another example, you know, Celine and I, we used to be in the old neighborhood that we used to live in. We used to walk every morning. That was the first thing that we did. We’d get up in the morning, go for a walk, then hit the gym, then do the rest of our morning routine, and so we got to know our neighbors really well because we would see them all out there walking in the morning, especially the retired ones, the neighbors who had dogs, and the neighbors who were retired. Those were the ones who’d be out walking in the morning, and then there was us. We were neither, but we became friendly with one of our neighbors who lived not necessarily close by, but in the same sort of area, and we would see him every morning running up this hill with his dog, and we became friendly. And of course, he loved Celine, and we would talk all the time, and he would tell us the funniest stories. I mean, he was at the time. I want to say he was, I don’t know, 83 or 85 somewhere around there, and he was still licensed to fly a plane and still flew regularly, and was still having sex.

Kevin Anthony 8:21
Had a girlfriend. We actually went to dinner with him once and met his girlfriend. And you know, he would tell us the funniest stories about, like, flying her someplace and then having sex under the plane. I mean, in his 80s. So that was another example. I know, I know, probably a dozen people right now that are personal friends of mine, who are in their mid 70s, who are all still very sexually active, and still loving it. And one of the things they tell me, and this is the thing, I think we’ve really lost this in our society, but you know, we don’t give enough credit to the elders and what they have experienced in their life, and so we tend to just kind of throw old people away and just say, ah, they’re old, whatever. What do they know? And I think that’s really sad because they know a lot, they have a lot of experience, and there’s a lot we can learn from them. And so I talk to these people all the time. Many of them are part of, you know, the local sex positive community, and you know they share their experiences.

Kevin Anthony 9:39
And one of the things that they often share with me is that they believe that sex is better now in their 70s than it was when they were younger, and I know that’s hard for a lot of people to believe. Like, how is that even possible? I’m just telling you what they report to me. I can tell you. I’m in my 50s now, and I can say that sex is better now than ever before, and I hear that repeatedly from people. So I know it’s possible, and that’s kind of what I wanted to share with you in this first segment of the show. If I’m going to sit here and tell you that this is a myth that sex doesn’t have to get worse. It doesn’t have to stop. That you can have great sex, and that that sex could actually be better as you get older. I feel I kind of need to back that up, especially since I’m not that old myself. I know people are going to say, “Ah, what do you know? You know, that’s not my experience. I don’t know anybody who’s who’s who’s like that.

Kevin Anthony 10:44
Well, I just gave you a bunch of examples of people I personally know, not stories I read on the internet, but actual people who are living their best sex life well into their 70s and 80s. So I hope that at least gives you an idea. Maybe it just sparks this idea in you that, hmm, maybe things could be different than they are in this moment. But of course, that does beg the question: Why is that not the reality for everybody? And then. The second question is for the people who it is a reality. How did they get there? How are they doing it? Is this just some fluke thing that you know some people just get lucky? It’s like some sort of genetic roll of the dice that you know somebody can still get an erection on demand when they’re 85 years old; the answer to that is no. There are very specific things that you can do, and if you’re not doing them, you can always start. It’s not a lost cause.

Kevin Anthony 11:56
So, yeah, I just wanted people to know that you can indeed have great sex well into your later years. Now, I’m dropping a truth bomb on that one for two reasons. Number one, it is true. Number two, I had somebody comment recently, and they were like, “What happened to the sound effects you used to use? I love those. Can you please bring those back? So I brought back some sound effects for you. I hope you appreciate it. I’ll see if I have any other opportunities to use them throughout the show. But I just wanted to bring those back for the viewer who specifically requested them. Okay, so let’s get into why the myth, as I call it, is a myth because it’s not a foregone conclusion. You can alter that outcome, but why is it true for some people? Why is that what some people experience? Where you know they get into their 40s-ish, and already you know the sex is barely happening. It’s not that good. They’re experiencing sexual dysfunction, and they’re seeing that decline. They’re thinking this is what happens when you age. Why is that true for some people? Okay, I got a few reasons for that.

Kevin Anthony 13:21
When it comes to not really having much sex, which is a big complaint of couples who’ve been together for longer, well, she always has a headache. She’s never in the mood. He can’t get it up, or you know, whatever the way that they phrase it is, that is something you hear often from people. So the number one reason I have here on the list, and these are not necessarily in order, by the way, so it’s not like this is the number one reason. But the first one on the list is that they didn’t nurture the relationship over the years. So this is a big one. You know, a lot of the reasons why sex sort of disappears in the relationship don’t actually have anything to do with aging or you know physicality. A lot of it is that you lose attraction to your partner, and I don’t even mean physical attraction, right?

Kevin Anthony 14:17
I mean emotional attraction, connection to the person, because you didn’t nurture the relationship for years. You took it for granted. You didn’t stay connected, and you know. I mean, who wants to have sex with someone they don’t feel connected to? Now, some of you are thinking, “Well, I don’t really feel connected. I just need to get laid. Okay, well, whoever’s thinking that is probably a very young person. But people who are in committed, long-term relationships, they need to feel connected to the person that they’re going to have sex. And if you haven’t nurtured the relationship all those years, you likely don’t feel very connected to them, which often leads to the next one on the list, which is that there’s built-up resentment. Well, it’s hard to feel attracted to somebody and want to be physically intimate with them when you have a ton of years, years of just built-up resentment. Why is that resentment there? Why has resentment built up over all these years?

Kevin Anthony 15:36
Well, probably because, and this is another one on the list, you didn’t talk about all this stuff, so the number one issue is that stuff is going to come up in relationships. It just is. I mean, you have two people who are two individuals who will never see everything 100% eye to eye. The question is, how do you deal with it? And a lot of times, people don’t deal with it well. They don’t voice it when they’re frustrated or angry. They bury it down inside. They don’t say what they really mean, what they really need, what they really want. Sometimes they just want to keep the peace, so they won’t say anything. They’re afraid of the person’s reaction, and every time they do that, a little bit of resentment gets added to the pile of resentment that’s already forming over there, and that pile grows and grows and grows and grows. And then you look at your partner, and instead of seeing somebody that you’re attracted to and somebody that you want to connect with on a deep level, both emotionally and physically. You just feel disgust because all that resentment is sitting there in the way. I mentioned not having conversations, but on this list specifically, what I have is that they don’t have conversations about sex.

Kevin Anthony 17:06
This is a big one. I see a lot of people who are really challenged when it comes to having a conversation around sex, and that’s a huge part of the work that I do: I want people to be able to have easy and emotionally mature conversations around sex. One of the best pieces of feedback I get from people is that it’s so easy for you to talk about sex, and I feel like it gives me permission to talk about it too. Yes, yes, you have permission to talk about it. It’s important to talk about it. In fact, it is necessary. It is imperative that you have these kinds of conversations with your partner. So, if you’re not talking about it, as things change when you get older, right? If you’re not talking about it, how are you ever going to resolve the inevitable things that come up? How are you going to solve the challenges and the problems that will be there, right? You can’t get in that position anymore. You’re not lubricating anymore. You can’t get it up anymore. You can’t last longer anymore. Like, there are things that you’re going to have to deal with, and if you can’t talk about them as two mature adults, then you’re never going to be able to solve those problems. In which case, you’re just going to suffer for years with no sex. So it’s really important that you have those conversations. Another one is that they don’t take care of their health. That’s another one we’re going to talk about a lot later on.

Kevin Anthony 18:47
This idea of you know how you know sex is a physical act just as much as it’s a mental act, and you’ve got to take care of your body if you want to continue to have sex long term throughout your life, so I see a lot of people that didn’t take care of their health, and then they end up with all kinds of challenges when it comes to trying to be sexually active, which then leads me to the next one on the list, which is they’re embarrassed to seek help for their sexual dysfunction, so you know they haven’t taken care of their health. Now they’ve got a sexual challenge, and I will say this: that you know, even if you have been taking care of your health, sometimes these things just happen anyway. Sometimes there are some genetic predispositions that can come in. There are, you know, injuries that can happen. There are things that can happen that, even if you did really take good care of yourself, can get in the way.

Kevin Anthony 19:54
So the question is, when they do, what are you going to do about it? Right, and so people who often. End up in this place of no sex, bad sex as they get older. Part of it is because they started having a challenge for whatever reason, and they were too embarrassed to seek help for it. You know, and I’ve seen this. You know, I’ve I’ve interviewed multiple doctors, you know, on this show over the years, and a lot of them will tell you that their patients don’t don’t tell them these things, and some of them, you know, I just interviewed a doctor recently talking about shame, and he actually came up with a really clever way to ask his patients about it that made it easier for them to share about it, and he did that because he realized a lot of people just wouldn’t tell him, they wouldn’t share this kind of stuff with him. So yeah, you see it a lot. A lot of people are really embarrassed. I mean, think about it. If you’re a guy and you’re, you know, 50 years old and you are having erectile dysfunction, you know it’s embarrassing to show up to your doctor and say, “Doc, I can’t get a boner. Right?

Kevin Anthony 21:08
Part of that is because a lot of men feel that, you know, their ability to get an erection and to have sex is kind of what makes them a man, so they feel less of a man when they’re suffering with that. And then, of course, they don’t want to admit to another man. Oops, their doctor’s likely a man. They don’t want to admit to another man, and they certainly don’t want to admit to a woman if their doctor is a woman, they’re somehow less of a man. I talked about that in a recent show. I had a doctor on who has created a new protocol, which we’ll talk about more later, called Regenmax, to help men who are suffering from ED. And this was a big part of the conversation that we had, where he talked about you know how men feel when they experience this, and he shared a powerful story because what got him into doing the research and creating the protocol that he created was that he was experiencing it himself, and he went through this range of emotions, all the stuff about not feeling like a man, not feeling good enough, not being able to satisfy his what, all that kind of stuff.

Kevin Anthony 22:21
So it’s a real thing when it comes to being embarrassed to seek help for their sexual dysfunction. And I will say, men are not the only ones who are afraid to talk about this. I’ve seen many women who are afraid to talk about it too, and they very similarly just will say, well, you know, now that I’m, you know, post menopause, like, you know, it just sex is painful. That’s just the way it is. Or I just don’t lubricate anymore. I just, you know, don’t have any libido or drive anymore. And they just accept that that’s normal when it doesn’t have to be normal. So both men and women can often be embarrassed to seek help for their sexual dysfunction. So think about this: Why is the myth true for some people?

Kevin Anthony 23:14
Well, it’s true because there’s a combination of all of these things happening. You know, if you look at the average couple that’s been together for 20 years, likely they haven’t really nurtured the relationship. They have a bunch of built-up resentment. They haven’t really taken care of themselves. They don’t talk about sex, and they’re afraid to tell their doctor about, you know, the challenges that they are going through when it comes to sex. You put all of those together, right, and now you have the exact scenario that you hear people say. Well, that’s just how it is, you know. You get older, and you know you don’t have sex anymore, and when you do, it’s not really good, or blah blah blah, whatever.

Kevin Anthony 23:59
Okay, just because. Because that’s the way it currently is for you doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way. And if you’re younger and you’re listening to this, because I, you know, I hope that not just older people will listen to this episode. I hope younger people will listen to it too, because the reality is, is that if you want to stay healthy and keep having sex throughout your whole life, it starts when you’re younger. Like, if you do all of the things I’m about to talk about throughout your entire life, you will never have this issue. You won’t be trying to fix a broken problem or a broken relationship or a broken sex life down the road because it’ll never be broken to begin with. So yeah, I hope younger people are listening to this.

Kevin Anthony 24:51
And if you’re older and you’re going, man, that’s been us for the last 10 years or 20 years, it doesn’t mean all is lost. You can. Turn things around, and that is what we’re going to talk about next. What have couples who are still having sex, still having successful relationships and sexuality, what do they do differently? Now, obviously, you know, you can just say, okay, well, the opposite of all the stuff you just told us not to do. Yes, to some extent, but there’s more than just that, and I want to go into a little bit more detail about each one of those because, you know, it’s one thing to say, well, just nurture your relationship, but what does that mean, right? We’ll talk about that. It’s another thing to say, take care of your health. But what does that mean in regard to sexuality? So we’re going to talk about a few of those a little bit deeper.

Kevin Anthony 25:48
But first, we need to pause for a message from my sponsor, which is me. If your relationship feels disconnected, if your sex life has lost its spark, or if you just know something needs to change, then relationship and intimacy coaching can help. I have created transformational coaching programs for men, women, and couples, all designed to help you create deeper intimacy, better communication, and the kind of passionate relationship you actually want, whether you’re struggling with intimacy, confidence, desire, emotional connection, or recurring relationship challenges. You don’t have to figure it out alone. The best place to start is with a free strategy call, where we’ll talk through your challenges, get clarity on what’s really going on, and create a personalized plan moving forward. Go to kevinanthanycoaching.com today to book your free strategy call with me. That’s kevinanthanycoaching.com, where you can book your strategy call. I used to do individual ads depending on what the topic of the show was. Like I would do one for my women’s coaching, one for my men’s coaching, and one for my couples coaching, and that’s great. And I’ve been lately just doing this ad to let everybody know that I do all three of those things. So you know, if your partner is not interested in doing the work, but you know something needs to shift, you can come work with me yourself. We can definitely shift things. If your partner is willing, we can work together as a couple. So there’s so much that we can do. I think that you know one of the most important things in our lives is our, you know, most intimate of connections and relationships, and so if it’s not functioning well, then the rest of your life likely isn’t either, because this is bleeding out into it.

Kevin Anthony 27:52
So I just think it’s so, so important that we learn how to master relationships, that we learn how to master intimacy, that we learn how to master connecting sexually with our partners, and it’s not stuff that we were taught. It really isn’t. So, if you’re struggling in any of those areas, make it a priority. I know a lot of people are saying the economy’s tough right now, and I get that. But you know, what is your relationship worth to you? You literally cannot put a price on that. So whatever it takes, if you’re struggling, it is absolutely worth getting help and guidance. And I am here to help you with that. KevinAthonyCoaching.com.

Kevin Anthony 28:36
Just select men, women, or couples. Follow that page to the link where you can book the free strategy call. All right, so I gave you some examples to bust the myth that sex has to get you know worse or non-existent as you get older. I gave you a bunch of reasons why that does sometimes happen for people. Let’s talk now about what you can do to be successful. Right. So if you’re younger, do these things now. You won’t end up in that situation. If you’re older, just recognize where you may have dropped the ball and pick it back up again, and start doing these things. You will see shifts in your relationship and sex life. All right, first one on the list: stay connected and continue to nurture the relationship. All right, so that’s the opposite of one of the ones I talked about earlier. But what does that mean?

Kevin Anthony 29:42
Well, the first one is that you’ve got to make the relationship a priority. You know, people will do that early on in their relationship, especially during the honeymoon period, and then other things get in the way. Careers get in the way, having kids gets in the way, all kinds of things. Of course, resentment. And other stuff, but what happens over the years is you just don’t stay deeply connected. You end up being more kind of like roommates, co-parents, whatever it is. I had a guest on the show a while back. His name was Lee Balcom, and he wrote something, a book called The Pause Button Marriage, and that’s exactly what we talked about in that show: is how couples just kind of put the pause button on and say, “Yeah, well, we’ll reconnect later on, you know, once the kids are raised, or the career is established, or the money is made, or the house is bought, or the whatever, whatever, whatever. And that is a very dangerous thing to do. So, if you want to continue to have great sex throughout your relationship, even until your older years, you’ve got to make the relationship a priority, and not just the relationship, but you also have to make sex a priority. If you want to have sex, then sex has to be an important priority on the list.

Kevin Anthony 31:02
So. those two things are really important. You have to make the relationship a priority. You have to make sex a priority. And of course, as you know, I often talk about having a date night. And while I do say that one of the rules of date night is you, well, there are two rules. One, you do something together. The other, you know, where you’re focusing attention on each other, and the other is at some point you should get naked during that. Doesn’t it’s not an expectation of sex, but I’ll tell you, if you follow those two rules, most of the time you’ll end up having sex of some sort. So doing those things is important, and that’s part of nurturing this connection between the two of you; that’s how you make this relationship distinct from other people that you know about and care about, right? And that’s the thing: people don’t really think about the fact that their intimate relationship is different from any other relationship they have, and therefore it requires some different strategies to keep it alive and healthy. Part of staying connected is having good communication, right? So they’re able to talk about, you know, issues in the relationship, which we’ll talk about in a minute, a little bit more. They’re able to talk about sex and what their needs are and what things may have changed. So that’s an important part.

Kevin Anthony 32:22
They appreciate each other. This is part of nurturing that connection to continue to appreciate each other, which, of course, takes me to the constant state of arousal. If you’re a longtime listener, you’ve heard me talk about this so so many times, but it’s something that Celine and I came up with. We kind of coined the term “constant state of arousal, and what we were doing was, we were looking at our own relationship, and we were saying, “How is it that over the years we’ve been together, we still, you know, look at each other like we want to devour each other? Like, how is it that we’re still always turned on and wanting sex with each other? Because statistically speaking, even though we were still relatively young, you know, the statistics say that we should already be past all of that, and we should be like everybody else in this.

Kevin Anthony 33:20
Yeah, sex every once in a while for a short period of time is not that good. Who cares all that much? But we weren’t there, and so we started looking at how we do this. And what we realized is there were a bunch of behaviors that we were doing regularly that kept us always sort of turned on, and that’s what I call the constant state of arousal. I’ve taught it many, many times here on the show. It’s things like appreciating each other. It’s things like hugging each other, kissing each other, greeting each other at the door when we come home. Things like grabbing each other’s butts. You know, being playful sexually, but without actual sex per se. So, you know, I have this idea that I teach about. You know, I call them random acts of sex. I had another guest on the show a while back who was calling them like sex bites or something like that. It’s just like, you know, touching each other’s genitals a little bit without an agenda. It doesn’t have to go to orgasm. It doesn’t have to go to sex. Could be a little bit of oral here or there. Just like little things like that that you’re doing regularly that keep that spark, that desire, that yeah, that that you know horniness going all the time. Do I make you horny?

Kevin Anthony 34:40
There you go. I just found another way to throw a sound effect in there. Long-time listeners of the show will know I used to do a lot of Austin Powers little sound bites because they always just made me laugh. I always found it funny, you know. So yeah, do I make you? Yes, you should be making each other horny throughout your relationship. That should never stop. So, those are ways in which you can stay connected. That you can continue to nurture that relationship. And if you do that, and you do it well, you’ll notice that you will both be a lot more turned on, and you’ll both want to have sex throughout the years. It won’t change if you keep doing that. Sometimes people have this idea that I’m going to have sex with the same person for the rest of my life. How boring! Doesn’t have to be. It really doesn’t have to be, you know. If you feel deeply connected to and in love with your partner, that level of attraction will still be there. Doesn’t matter if it’s the first time or if it’s the 5,000th time that you know you’ve had sex. You’ll still be attracted.

Kevin Anthony 36:04
So that’s the first one, which is staying connected and continuing to nurture the relationship. Next on the list is that they handle issues and disagreements right away. So we talked about before, like you know, the pile of resentment that builds up, and how that gets in the way. So successful couples don’t allow that pile of resentment to build. So they handle issues and disagreements when they arise, and they will. But they’ve also learned to handle them in emotionally mature ways, so this is an interesting one. I was working with a couple last year. We didn’t do any sessions this year, although I did have contact with them several times as they called me in desperation. But I worked with them last year a bit, and they had a lot of disagreements.

Kevin Anthony 37:05
And so one of the big things we were working on was how to handle those disagreements in a way that didn’t create more damage in the relationship, because we couldn’t even get to solving some of the deeper issues until we could calm down the arguments, the disagreements, and the damage they were doing, because every time they would get into an argument, they would just literally create more damage, more damage. That pile would just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and we couldn’t ever even start to get the pile to go down when there was just new stuff being heaped on top of it every time. And so, we really worked quite a bit on how to handle these issues when they come up in a way where you’re not triggering the fuck out of each other left and right and adding more and more junk on top of that pile. That was a tough one for this particular couple. I did give them some really good skills.

Kevin Anthony 38:01
Unfortunately, I found they weren’t utilizing the tools that I was giving them, which made it really challenging. Hence, they still later on were in a bad place when they reached out in desperation this year. You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make them drink. I gave them a lot of tools, but unfortunately, because they really weren’t able to deal with some of their deeper issues, when something would come up, they would be in such a trauma response that they weren’t even capable of using the tools that I gave them. And then, of course, at that point, I was like, “Okay, we really need to deal with this trauma that’s underlying, but unfortunately, both parties in the relationship were not in agreement on that, and one party in particular denied that there was any trauma whatsoever that was happening or being triggered. So, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help them any further because they weren’t willing to help themselves. But anyway, I tell that story just to say that you know this is a key part to you know having a successful sex life is you don’t let that pile of stuff grow over the years.

Kevin Anthony 39:17
You learn how to deal with disagreements and situations in an emotionally mature way, which, of course, includes really excellent communication, and that is a very important part of any successful relationship. You have to be able to communicate well. That means good communication skills. That means creating an atmosphere and an environment where you can bring anything to your partner and talk about it, and it means that you can talk about it in an open, loving, and compassionate way. Even if it maybe gets a little bit heated here and there, you’re able to manage that. You’re able to calm it back down again, and you’re able to work through it. Absolutely key to. Not allowing the pile of resentment to grow so big that it really negatively affects your connection, your relationship, and your sex life.

Kevin Anthony 40:12
Okay, next on the list, they take care of their health. So we’re talking about successful couples. What do successful couples do to be able to continue to have sex throughout their whole life? They take care of their health, at least to some extent. Now, I’m not saying you got to be bodybuilders or you got to be triathletes or you know anything on the extreme side, but you do have to take care of your health because you know, even though we often say our mind is our biggest sex organ, and there’s a huge, you know, mental emotional component to sex, which is largely what we were talking about and working on when we were talking about, you know, dealing with issues right right away. But there’s also a big physical component, and if your physical body isn’t working, if your physical body is creating pain, discomfort, just not functioning, right, then you’re not really going to be able to maintain this throughout life.

Kevin Anthony 41:16
So the successful couples have found ways to deal with that. So if I think about some of the people that I was telling you about earlier at the beginning of the show, who I personally know, who you know, are still physically active in their 70s and 80s, if I think about each one of those people and I think about what it is they do from a health perspective, there are some patterns that do show up. They all stay active in some way, shape, or form. Now, many of them don’t go to the gym, but they go out and walk. Some of them still ride bikes. One of them, in particular, works a physical job, you know. He’s in his mid 70s right now, and he’s still doing like a physical labor kind of job. So he’s out there moving his body, working outdoors in sunlight and fresh air, and moving his body all the time. I also notice that they tend to stay mentally active, so they’re not sitting around in front of their TV all day long. They are, you know, either maybe running a business or another one that I can think of travels. He’s retired now, of course, as many people in that age group are, and he travels all over the world, going to different cultures, experiencing different cultures, things like that. So they’re staying physically active. Most of them eat reasonably well, you know, maybe not perfect, and because they are staying active, keeping their minds active, their physical body active, eating reasonably well, it also means that they’ve been able to stay off medications largely.

Kevin Anthony 43:17
Now, some of them are still on some for specific things, but they’re not on, like, man. When I was younger, and this literally goes back more than 25 years ago, I worked as an EMT, and as part of my training for that, I had to do some time, basically like an intern in the emergency room at the hospital. And you know when you very first start out, you’re not actually in, you know, the back room dealing with patients. So then when they first started you out, you were up at the front desk, and you were basically doing triage. You were asking what the concerns were. You were asking questions. One of the things we used to ask all the times, what medications are you on? And my word, people would show up with a bag full of medications.

Kevin Anthony 44:10
And I remember, like, I would have to sit there and look at every single bottle and write every single one down on the list. And I remember thinking, this is insane. You know, obviously, some medications. You know, sometimes you need them, and sometimes they’re a good thing. And we try to do our best to minimize them, and only beyond things that we absolutely need. So one of the things that I noticed is that, you know, the people who are staying fit and healthy and active and having active sex lives tend not to be on very many of them. So you know you want to see you want to try to avoid that if you can. So. Basically, you know, and again, I’m not saying that you have to be super physically active and watch everything you eat and, you know, be really strict about it. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that if you are. I would applaud that, but I’m just saying you have to at least take decent care of your body. It is really sad that in today’s day and age, we are seeing skyrocketing numbers of erectile dysfunction in people below 50, 40s, 30s, even 20s. There is no reason why anybody in their 20s or 30s should be experiencing erectile dysfunction. There just isn’t. I mean, obviously, okay, there could be one or two, like, weird, crazy, you know, physical conditions or something.

Kevin Anthony 45:51
But generally speaking, there’s no reason for that. And yet, we’re seeing massive amounts of it, and a lot of it has to do with our lifestyle today. Everything from the way we treat our bodies to the amount of stress that we are under or feeling, right? So it’s just critically important that you take care of yourself. And I notice that the ones that do, the ones that take better care of themselves, tend to be able to have better sex lives for a lot longer period of time. So that is one that is critically important. And I’ve talked at length on this show. I’ve gone into exercise routines. I’ve gone into supplements that you should take. I’ve gone into practices like breathing practices and meditation practices. I’ve done a lot of that, and in fact, I mentioned earlier that I interviewed a guy. His name was actually Jeff Nuzziard, and he’s a doctor who created this Regenmax program for addressing ED. And there’s a big component of that is all of this stuff about how to be healthy.

Kevin Anthony 46:59
It’s not just like go take this pill or get this shot, and all will be good. It’s like, yeah, we’re going to do those types of interventions, those types of treatments to help heal what’s broken, but we’re also going to bring into it nutrition, exercise, and all that kind of stuff, so that you can sustain this in the long run, right? So it’s just critically important, and it used to be in the early days. I was one of, I thought at least anyway, one of the few people telling everybody that, hey, if you want to have great sex, you’ve got to have a healthy body, right? And now there are a lot of people talking about it because I think people finally really do understand that connection. So physical health. All right, a couple more here. They’re able to talk about sex. This is another big one. We kind of talked about this earlier. You know, if you’re not able to talk about sex, especially as you get older, then you’re going to run into problems. Why?

Kevin Anthony 47:58
Because bodies change, right? You know, as a female, as you go through perimenopause, your hormones are shifting. Then you go through menopause, and hormones shift. You know, you can have challenges with lubrication. You can have challenges with painful sex. Women talk about, you know, the phenomenon of disappearing labia, and then you know they have concerns about how they look, about how they smell, about how they taste, like all this stuff gets in the way, right? And then they’re not able to talk about it, so they just kind of shut down and say, “I’m not interested in sex. You see this with men too. You’ll see men who are experiencing erectile dysfunction who will literally avoid sex because they’re so afraid they’re not going to be able to get it up.

Kevin Anthony 48:37
Whereas if you’re able to have conversations with your partner about this and say, “Hey, here’s what I’ve been noticing, as I get older, I’ve been struggling with this. What can we do together to potentially solve this problem? And I just want you to know that it’s not about you. It’s not because I’m not attracted to you. It’s because I’m experiencing a physical problem, and I want you to understand that, and maybe we can work together to come up with a solution to it. You’ve got to be able to talk about sex if you want to have sex, you know, good sex and regular sex throughout your entire relationship in life. You have to be able to talk about it. It is just that important. It really is. Next, they take action when they notice that they are having sexual function issues. Kind of talked about this a bit already, but I just want to reiterate it again. When you see these things happening, when you see these changes occurring in your body, don’t just accept it as well. That’s just the way it is. There are things that you can do. You can start exercising. You can start eating right. You can cut out alcohol and drugs. You can manage your stress levels. You can go see your doctor. You can find out what possibilities there are to address things.

Kevin Anthony 50:00
There are, you know there are things out there like hormone replacement therapy, which has brought people’s sex drive back online, solved their pain problems, their lubrication problems, their erectile problems. It is something that helps a lot, and it’s been around long enough. There’s a lot of data and studies on it right now to show its long-term effectiveness and safety. So you know, I’m not a big proponent. Like, I won’t say everybody needs to go out and get on hormone replacement therapy. I think you should do the best you can with, you know, your own body, so that you can avoid having to go on that. But if you need it, it’s there. If you’re 75 years old and it’s just not working anymore, it’s there for you, right? It’s a possibility. I already talked about Regenmax. That’s a whole protocol. Go listen to that episode. I think it’s called the latest science on ED treatments or something along those lines. There’s a whole protocol with a bunch of different components to it to help you get your sexual function back. The point is, don’t just sit there and accept that. That’s it. It’s done. It’s never going to work again. There are things that you can do that really do work and really do help. I’m a big proponent of the natural ways: getting healthy, exercising, doing strength training, doing cardio, eating right, sleeping enough, managing stress levels, drinking healthy, you know, water.

Kevin Anthony 51:39
All of that stuff that you can do to maximize your natural hormone production and balance, and sometimes you need a little help too. And just know that there are options out there to help you. But those options won’t work if you don’t actually take action. If you don’t go out and ask your doctor, if you don’t seek out experts in the field like Dr. Newsyard, or I also had several times on the show Dr. Brandeis, his book is right back here. You know, a top urologist who’s working with a lot of these modern technologies. So there are resources out there for you.

Kevin Anthony 52:23
Okay, next successful couples shift their expectations about sex. So, how long it has to be, where it has to go, what it has to look like. You know, if you’re 80, maybe it’s not really realistic to think that you know you’re going to be thrusting and pumping for an hour and a half in 10 different positions with, you know, your her legs behind her head, like she was 20 when she was a gymnast or whatever. Like, obviously I’m going to extremes here to demonstrate the point, but the point is, if you want to keep having sex, you’re gonna have to shift your expectations about what sex looks like, and know that some sex, some connection physically between the two of you is better than none. Just because it can’t maybe be like it was when you were younger doesn’t mean it’s no longer worth having some type of, you know, connection sexually.

Kevin Anthony 53:24
Anything is better than nothing. Just shift your expectations about what it has to be and how it has to look. Hey, you know what? Maybe there’s that position we used to do all the time. That’s just not going to work anymore because your hips, your back, your knees, whatever it is. Okay, fine. Do something else. There are plenty of other positions that you can do. You can use props. You can use different pillows and different things. Like you can make it happen, one way or another. So you’re just going to have to shift your expectations about that and focus more on the fact that you’re connecting physically with each other than on how you’re connecting physically with each other.

Kevin Anthony 54:13
And of course, that leads me to successful couples modify sex as needed. They change positions. They use props, pillows. They you know they they get the famous one right as the the liberator pillow right and there’s that funny scene I’ve talked about this movie so many times and I mentioned a couple times recently because I just watched it again recently but it was meet the Fockers it was the second one so there’s Meet the Parents and then after that, it was meet the Fockers, and there’s that whole scene where the main character’s mother is a sex therapist, and she’s teaching all these old people how to use their liberator, you know, cushions. Like, yes, yes, okay, it’s a silly movie, it’s funny, but yes, that’s exactly what you need to do. Just need to modify. You need to change things, right? The same way you would change your workout based on the fact that you maybe can’t do the same things you used to do. Maybe you add toys to it, right? Maybe that is something that you never did before, never needed before, but maybe now that’s really helpful, all right?

Kevin Anthony 55:19
So you might want to just add those, and I mentioned, of course, you know, shifting the positions, like where and how you do it. Maybe we always used to do it in the bed in this way. Maybe that doesn’t work. Okay, maybe now we try it in a chair or you know, standing up or whatever it is. Like you figure out ways to make it work and keep that connection going. So there you go. Those are ways in which successful couples continue to be successful, connecting with each other, staying connected, and maintaining a successful sexual relationship. They stay connected. They nurture the relationship. They handle issues and disagreements right away in a healthy way. They take care of their health, and they keep their bodies functioning as well as they can. They’re able to talk about sex and the changes that are happening. They take action when they notice there are problems. They shift their expectations about how sex has to be or how it has to look, and they make the modifications that are necessary.

Kevin Anthony 56:25
If you can do those things, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t continue to have a rich and fulfilling sex life until there is no more life left in you, right? And I will tell you that it is absolutely my goal. And as long as I keep doing this show and this work, I will continue to keep you informed and up to speed about how that’s going for me. But I’ve looked at some of these people that I mentioned earlier as absolute inspiration. I look at them, and I go, Yes, I want to be just like them. I want to fly my plane to an island, land it, take my beautiful woman, and make love to her under the plane when I’m 85 years old. Like, I want to still be able to do that. So it is possible. These are the keys to doing it. It just takes the desire and the will to keep up the stuff day to day. It’s it’s the just the little things day to day that you keep doing to take care of yourself, to nurture your relationship, to keep the sex going throughout life.

Kevin Anthony 57:48
Yeah, baby. Exactly. Yeah, baby. Because who doesn’t want that? And if you don’t, if you’re in that place of why would I want to do that? Like I have no drive or desire. It’s probably because you haven’t been doing these things, and your physical body is suffering, and your hormones are out of whack, and that’s why you’re missing desire. So maybe keep an open mind that if you were to try some of these things, that desire might return, and it might bring an aspect back to your life that you didn’t even realize you were missing. So that’s a possibility, also. All right, there you go, man. When I wrote this show, I thought this was going to be like, man, I’m going to be like a 30-minute show today. But somehow, it’s an hour long. I hope, I hope that you found it interesting. I hope it inspired you. I hope that maybe it gave you some new ideas on how to change your approach and how you’ve been doing things, so yeah, I hope you found it valuable. That is always a goal with the episodes that I do. That you find it valuable, that maybe shifts your thinking and helps you have the relationship of your dreams and the best sex of your life. All right, everybody, that’s all the time I have for this episode, and I’ll see you next week.

Kevin Anthony 59:11
I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe, leave me a review, and share it with your friends. And for more free exclusive content, join me in the Passion Vault at https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. That’s https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. Thanks for listening, and remember, as Celine used to say, you’re amazing!