Lily Allen has spoken candidly about her sex life with her husband, David Harbour.
The 39-year-old singer made some confessions about her relationship during an episode of her and Miquita Oliver’s BBC podcast, Miss Me?, which aired on June 17. During the conversation, Allen was asked if she ever “kink-shamed” somebody, which she said she hadn’t done.
However, after reflecting on her previous sexual experiences, she then questioned if she had playfully scrutinized her husband for his interests.
“I wonder if I kink-shame my husband,” she explained. “Because he quite often asks for things, and I’m like: ‘No babe, it’s not happening.’”
After Oliver told her friend that she was kink-shaming Harbour, the “Smile” singer clarified how she’s turned down some of her husband’s requests when it comes to their sex life.
“I’m not like: ‘You piece of s***, how dare you ask me to do that!’” she added. “I’m just like: ‘Hmm, headache. Little headache, got a bit of a headache, maybe not tonight.’”
While discussing kinks, Allen expressed her hope that her husband wasn’t listening to the episode, noting that he would ask “where” that “sexy” side of her is. As Oliver claimed that Harbour would love the “kinky b****,” referring to Allen, she then asked the singer why her feelings about kinks may have changed over the years.
In response, Allen, who has been vocal about her previous struggles with alcohol, revealed that she was often drunk when having sex in the past.
“I think the alcohol had a lot to do with the kink in me,” the singer, who’s now five years sober, said. “Before I got together with David, I don’t think I’d ever had sex not drunk.”
During the podcast, she still noted that she doesn’t want to shame anyone, before sharing how she’s open with her husband about her sexual experiences.
“I’m quite into normalizing everything that people are ashamed about in themselves,” she explained. “I was talking to David about this last night; during the breakdown of my last marriage, I was very, very promiscuous and experimental… And I had sex with female sex workers.”
Allen went on to recall why she wrote about those sexual experiences in her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, explaining that she felt like she “lived in a state of perpetual fear” during that time.
“I’ve always felt like I was about to be gotchaed by the tabloids. So I knew that this thing existed, and that I’ve been behaving this way, and I thought that was going to be revealed,” she said. “And I thought I was going to take a little bit of the power back and reveal it myself in my book.”
The “Smile” singer noted that along with trying to ”reclaim a little bit of the power where that conversation was concerned,” another reason why she wrote about her sexual experiences was because she believed a lot of people have experienced “the same thing.”
“I think that when they hear someone like me talk about their own experiences in a non-shameful, sort of matter-of-fact way, then it makes people feel better about themselves,” she continued. “So I’m always wanting to do that.”
She further detailed why being open-minded and non-judgemental is important to her, especially as a musician.
“To me, that’s what art is, that’s what creativity is, helping people come to terms with their own behavior,” she added. “And behavior that society sometimes looks down on, but we’re all just human, right?”
This isn’t the first time Allen has spoken openly about her marriage. During an interview with The Sunday Times last month, she revealed that she and Harbour control what apps they can each have on their phones. According to Allen, this is because she uses a phone meant for children that requires a parent to be linked to it.
“I now have a kids’ phone called Pinwheel. It has no browsing capability and no social media, but you can still have Uber and Spotify,” she told the outlet. “My husband is the caregiver on it, so he controls what I’m allowed to have as an app on my phone. I’m the controller of his as well.”
She then joked about how she and her husband act like each other’s parents. “Because they’re made for kids, he’s [listed as] my parent and I’m his parent.‘ What’s your child’s name? David, aged 50,’” she said.
The couple first met on the exclusive dating app Raya back in 2020, and they married in Las Vegas one year later. Allen was previously married to Sam Cooper, who is the father of her two daughters, Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 11. The former couple separated in 2016 and then finalized their divorce in 2018.
