What if everything you were taught about sex was designed to disconnect you from your own body? In this episode of The Intimacy Inquiry, Andrew Phipps sits down with Maria Merloni, psychotherapist, sex and relationship coach, and sacred spot massage practitioner, for one of the most honest and wide-ranging conversations the show has produced.

Maria's story begins in a Catholic household where sex was never mentioned but nudity was ordinary. She became a nude model at university, then an exotic dancer, then a clinical social worker, and eventually a therapist specialising in sex, relationships, and somatic healing. Now 60, she says she is having the best sex of her life, a statement she backs up with both personal experience and clinical insight.

The conversation moves across a remarkable amount of ground. Maria explains what men at  ...