What we can learn from the relationship high-jinks on Rivals

Irish Examiner - FeelGood November 2024: The uninhibited romp-com prompts a sex educator to reflect on the importance of openness and consent in mutually satisfying relationships

Curious perms, killer shoulder pads, and not a condom in sight — the hit TV series Rivals gives us a whistle-stop tour of the trends best left behind. 

The colourful ’80s affairs (of the business and pleasure variety) take us through a litany of fleeting crushes and pornographic passions.

The Disney+ series doesn’t exactly have the greatest role models for mutual consent, communication, pleasure and vulnerability needed for satisfying sexual relationships. 

But are these just a load of pop-psychology buzzwords, or are there real-world sex hacks to be learned from the Rivals cast?

For starters, most characters have no inhibitions about communicating their sexual desires. And while this directness makes for entertaining viewing, it’s also a learning point.

Playing it coy is not a traditionally winning strategy when in a new sexual relationship — we have to do a bit of show and tell if we want our partner to get it right. 

Showing someone that we’re interested in them, telling them what we really want, and hoping for the best outcome — can be scary. The cringe factor might be high, but at least embarrassment never killed anybody. 

It also gets a bit easier each time we risk hearing the dreaded ‘I’m flattered’ or ‘not tonight’.

Embracing the idea of rejection can be a helpful exercise in humility.

Nobody knows humble pie like our lonely Rivals lead Maud O’Hara, who is suffering an attention drought from her work-obsessed husband, Declan. 

The glamorous matriarch has become increasingly reckless in her bid for affection — as far as dramatic antics go, she’d give a panto queen a run for her money.

Early scenes show Maud seducing Declan on his return from the office after a day of openly flirting with handsome Rupert Campbell-Black. “You used to give me attention — now you go to work,” she tells her jealous husband.

Her misguided attempt at communicating her needs is briefly effective. Just for the night, Declan gives her his full attention. “How would you have liked him to touch you?” he asks her as they lie in bed, finally satisfying his wife as she moans for Ireland.

While Maud’s marriage survives her pursuit of a lover in the short term, the band-aid soon comes off without their commitment or capacity to heal deeper wounds in the relationship.

Miscommunication

With hush-hush hotel bookings to beat the band, most of our Rivals cast seek sexual gratification outside of their marriages. 

Miscommunication is the norm. This is also the case in real life, as most of us were never taught how to understand or communicate our needs in a healthy way.

While long-term relationships can offer stability, it is a mistake to presume that we know everything about our partner and, indeed, about ourselves from one decade to the next. 

Curiosity about how our interests and desires are evolving is crucial to maintaining honest, satisfying sexual relationships. 

But we often avoid opening Pandora’s Box of new demands for fear that our partner cannot — or will not — meet them.

Lizzie and Freddie are the most cautious, crush-worthy pairing of the Rivals bunch. Lizzie is a self-deprecating, dark-humoured writer, and Freddie is a brash, self-made businessman. 

As their ambitious partners focus on climbing the social ladder, Freddie and Lizzie bump into each other throughout the series, gently building a connection with curiosity, care and craic.

Their sexual attraction simmers alongside mutual respect and admiration. 

Following a delicate Jenga of near-kiss experiences, we get a heart-melting, gorgeously awkward scene featuring the pair in the finale — a reminder that good sex is filled with unplanned pauses and moments of self-consciousness. 

Lying under a tree, seeing the best in each other and giddy with excitement — they pull away their clothes and enjoy each others’ beautifully normal-looking bodies as the sun goes down.

Satisfying sex is easiest found with someone whose company you enjoy.

Rivals gives us a perfect example of autopilot sex with production assistant Daysee and Hollywood star Johnny Friedlander, for whom sex has become a box-ticking exercise. 

With star-struck Daysee on her back, politely smiling at Johnny, who she met minutes earlier, the sobriety advocate celeb leans over to swig from his bottle of booze while blindly having sex with her. 

As an afterthought, he offers the bottle to Daysee, which she indignantly declines: “I’m working!” she says, without missing a beat in word or thrust.

Daysee is delightfully smug after her brief celebrity encounter despite Johnny’s total lack of interest or capacity for prioritising her pleasure. She is blissful ignorance personified — expectations are on the floor.

Expressing our desires

Researchers have found over 200 reasons that people have sex, with pleasure and feeling good coming out on top. 

Daysee and Johnny’s encounter was not exactly the picture of passion or pleasure, and we can hazard a guess that their communication wasn’t amazing either.

Many things can hold us back from enjoying sex. For example, we cannot voice or fulfil our deepest desires unless we first know and appreciate our bodies and turn-ons. 

Expressing our desires could also be easier if we had a positive understanding of consent. 

True bodily autonomy is a living, breathing sense of vitality in which eroticism thrives.

Knowing and owning our body is where the magic happens. We should celebrate the powerful, positive outcomes of embodied consent just as much as we (rightly) discuss its importance in harm prevention. 

Being and feeling safe is essential to letting go and getting deep enjoyment from our sexual experiences, and I fear we forget that consent is not just a set of rules but a powerful pleasure partner.

If Daysee and Johnny understood consent as an exciting, empowering tool, it might have moved them to pause mindfully during sex instead of ‘pushing through’. 

Shifting how you view consent can encourage you to tell your sexual partner, ‘I’d actually like it if you could touch it like this instead,’ or to feel confident asking, ‘Does this feel good for you? How would you like it?’ without taking offence to their response.

Consent is not the clunky tick-box contract it’s made out to be - it’s our erotic superpower.

As entertaining as they are, our friends on Rivals are missing a few tricks when it comes to healthy communication, including consent, sexual health status, and contraception. 

But given that it’s a fantastical soap opera with chaotic behaviour, bad haircuts and ticking time bomb secrets, I can’t wait for season two.