Anna Sale, the host of this podcast, talks about how not having sex ever before, or not having sex right now, can feel isolating. She says she heard from a ton of listeners when she posed this question: Why aren’t you having sex? It’s a hard thing to talk about, which is why this podcast works perfectly because it feels slightly anonymous and protective. Which I like. This is an intimate subject. I don’t know if I’d want to see a video of people talking about this topic. I don’t know if it’s enough to read what they have to say in an article. But in a podcast, you can hear their pain and their frustration.

First we hear from “Sara” who says that she and her girlfriend, Claire, feel like many of their heterosexual friends are having wayyyy more sex than they are. Their relationship started out hot and heavy like most relationships do, and it petered out at some point. They talked about what happens for both of them when they’re not having sex—it upsets Sara, but it doesn’t upset Claire as much. She says when it upsets her, it makes her blow up at her girlfriend. Which starts a cycle: Claire then doesn’t want to have sex because she’s mad over Sara’s blow up. Anna Sale is brilliant in really talking about their tensions and about how the relationship works between them. In a way, it feels like a therapy session, which makes it really interesting.

Sale speaks to other people, like “Cameron” who has chronic back problems who isn’t having sex. She speaks to “Ellen” who says that she’s not having sex because she contracted herpes. There’s a great honest moment here where Ellen hopes the man she’s interested in right now also has herpes, because that would just make it easier. There’s another man, “Mike,” who has two women in his life—his wife and his girlfriend--and he’s still not having sex. There’s a lot of honest moments where people are so vulnerable, they let all of their insecurities out. They laugh at some of their shortcomings. It’s an incredibly honest look at something we don’t ever talk about.