Anxiety and Intimacy
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How does anxiety affect intimacy and sexual relationships?
Does the fear of being physically close and potentially naked with someone make you break out in a cold sweat? Sex and relationships can often be the perfect pressure cooker for anxiety. I've stressed out so hard in a new relationship that I managed to give myself shingles. For those of you who don't know, that's like round two adult chicken pox or body herpes. Which made a rebound situation very difficult. Sex relationships and anxiety seems to go hand in hand, but it's a spectrum. For some of us it's an occasional sleepless night and for others it might mean a diagnosed anxiety disorder. But how can you tell the difference between nervous love butterflies and a full-blown panic attack?
The hookup
with Hanna Reilly. Love and
on
Triple J.
Warning! Sex and adult themes!
To help us sort through some of our sexual hangups, we're joined by my new personal sexual hero. You might know comedian Luke McGregor from his six part ABC Doko series, Lukewarm Sex. Luke has tackled his anxieties around intimacy and sex head on with some pretty full-on exercises. Luke, welcome to the hookup. Hello. Yes, hello baby. Now for those who m who don't already know you, what's been your history so far with sex and relationships?
Uh I am thirty three and up until filming a documentary about sex I had sex uh twice in my life. Um and not not just two not two partners, I mean I'd only had the actual act of intercourse uh twice and um it was twenty five and at twenty eight and yeah, so I just had a um it was just very scary. I couldn't um I couldn't get an erection. in the bedroom, I g I got too nervous and uh yeah, I just d thought it wouldn't be part of my life basically. Um I just decided that was just not something that would you know, I didn't miss it 'cause I didn't I never really had it, so I I just um uh played a lot of video games and just assumed that wouldn't be uh wouldn't be part of my life.
Well, um I'm fairly certain that you're not the only one out there that's had that kind of experience. Now, do you remember the r moment you decided you wanted to do a show about learning to be better at sex?
Yeah, I started to do it in my stand up. I just started to ask couples in the audience, like, how do you get better at this thing that is everyone's just supposed to know how to do? Um Especially 'cause I I didn't think I was very good at it and I felt like I'd I don't know, like I'd missed a class or something and that everyone else had already taken it.
It's funny that you mentioned missing a class because I don't think anyone really gets that class.
No, no, and I th I think the problem is that everyone else thinks that everyone else has. Uh none of us have.
And everyone just ends up watching porn and learning probably the wrong things anyway.
Yeah, yeah. It's um i it and it was funny w I was listening to what you were saying about um Uh people's anxiety and new relationships around sex and like to say that e even the first time you have sex with someone when you know, now I I I was the same and now I realise how silly it is that we um put so much pressure on each other the first time we have sex because that's that if anything should be the least amount of pressure because uh yeah we don't we don't even know if we've got a someone might have a sporting injury that prevents a certain position. So it should be the least amount of pressure.
It is strange that the opposite happens where we should have zero expectations because we n really know nothing about them in that arena, yet we they're sky high.
It's it'd be like um giving someone a a b a bike who's never ridden a bike before and saying, All right, now do a backflip on it. Like it's crazy.
Exactly. Like
you've
now I've never ridden
a
bike before, okay. Give me a second. Some of the exercises you put yourself through in the show were genuinely terrifying and we absolutely applaud you. You're a true hero. Here's what happened when you spent some time hanging out with a bunch of nudists.
I'm
uh Very nervous right now. Um I actually feel like I'm in a Cry a a little.
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