Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

by Emily Nagoski

You are healthy when you need lots of sun, and you’re healthy when you enjoy some shade. That’s the true story. We are all the same. We are all different. We are all normal.

Unlike the penis, the clitoris’s only job is sensation. The penis has four jobs: sensation, penetration, ejaculation, and urination.

The name for the whole package of female external genitalia is “vulva.” “Vagina” refers to the internal reproductive canal that leads up to the uterus. People often use “vagina” to refer to the vulva, but now you know better. And if you are standing up naked in front of a mirror and you see the classic triangle? That’s your mons (“mound”), or mons pubis.

• The genitals you see in soft-core porn images may have been digitally altered to appear more “tucked in”; don’t let that fool you into believing that all vulvas look that way.

According to the dual control model, arousal is really two processes: activating the accelerator and deactivating the brakes. So your level of sexual arousal at any given moment is the product of how much stimulation the accelerator is getting and how little stimulation the brakes are getting.

“So how do I stop hitting brake?” The million-dollar question. The short answer is: Reduce your stress, be affectionate toward your body, and let go of the false ideas about how sex is “supposed” to work, to create space in your life for how sex actually works.

Your brain can enjoy something without eagerness for more. It can expect that a kind of stimulation will lead to sex, and expecting may activate desire—movement toward—but it may also activate dread—movement away—depending on the context. Your brain can even be eager for something without particularly enjoying it,

• low stress • high affection • explicitly erotic

When you’re stressed out, your brain interprets just about everything as a potential threat. When you’re turned on, your brain could interpret just about anything as sexually appealing. Because: context!

For most people, the best context for sex is low stress + highly affectionate + explicitly erotic. Think through your contexts with the worksheets that follow.

Think of a positive sexual experience from your past. Describe it here, with as many relevant details as you can recall:

Category Mental and Physical Wellbeing - Physical Health - Body Image - Mood - Anxiety - Distractability - Worry aboiut sexual functioning - other Partner Characteristics - Physical appearance - physical health -smell - mental state - other Relationship Characteristics - trust -power dynamic - emotional connection - feelng desired - frequency of sex Setting - private/public/home - distance sex (phone, chat, etc) - see partner do positive (fam, work, chores) Other circumstances - work stress - fam tress - occasion Things I do - self guided fantasy - partner guided fantasy (talking dirty) - body party touched/not - oral sex to or from - intercourse, etc. Other

Think of a not-so-great sexual experience from your past—not necessarily a terrible one, just a not-so-great one. Describe it here, with as many relevant details as you can recall: Now consider what aspects of that experience made it not-so-great: Category Description

Category Mental and Physical Wellbeing - Physical Health - Body Image - Mood - Anxiety - Distractability - Worry aboiut sexual functioning - other Partner Characteristics - Physical appearance - physical health -smell - mental state - other Relationship Characteristics - trust -power dynamic - emotional connection - feelng desired - frequency of sex Setting - private/public/home - distance sex (phone, chat, etc) - see partner do positive (fam, work, chores) Other circumstances - work stress - fam tress - occasion Things I do - self guided fantasy - partner guided fantasy (talking dirty) - body party touched/not - oral sex to or from - intercourse, etc. Other

Read through all your sexy and not-so-sexy contexts. What do you notice as reliable contexts for great sex and reliable contexts for not-so-great sex?

Category Mental and Physical Wellbeing - Physical Health - Body Image - Mood - Anxiety - Distractability - Worry aboiut sexual functioning - other Partner Characteristics - Physical appearance - physical health -smell - mental state - other Relationship Characteristics - trust -power dynamic - emotional connection - feelng desired - frequency of sex Setting - private/public/home - distance sex (phone, chat, etc) - see partner do positive (fam, work, chores) Other circumstances - work stress - fam tress - occasion Things I do - self guided fantasy - partner guided fantasy (talking dirty) - body party touched/not - oral sex to or from - intercourse, etc. Other

Things to do How much impact? How easy? How soon can you do it?

Things to do How much impact How easy How soon Category Mental and Physical Wellbeing - Physical Health - Body Image - Mood - Anxiety - Distractability - Worry aboiut sexual functioning - other Partner Characteristics - Physical appearance - physical health -smell - mental state - other Relationship Characteristics - trust -power dynamic - emotional connection - feelng desired - frequency of sex Setting - private/public/home - distance sex (phone, chat, etc) - see partner do positive (fam, work, chores) Other circumstances - work stress - fam tress - occasion Things I do - self guided fantasy - partner guided fantasy (talking dirty) - body party touched/not - oral sex to or from - intercourse, etc. Other

These should be ACTIONS rather than abstractions or ideas or attitudes. Ask yourself, “If we decide to create this change, what goes on our to-do list?”

Things to do How much impact How easy How soon Category Mental and Physical Wellbeing - Physical Health - Body Image - Mood - Anxiety - Distractability - Worry aboiut sexual functioning - other Partner Characteristics - Physical appearance - physical health -smell - mental state - other Relationship Characteristics - trust -power dynamic - emotional connection - feelng desired - frequency of sex Setting - private/public/home - distance sex (phone, chat, etc) - see partner do positive (fam, work, chores) Other circumstances - work stress - fam tress - occasion Things I do - self guided fantasy - partner guided fantasy (talking dirty) - body party touched/not - oral sex to or from - intercourse, etc. Other

Finally, select just one change that you will actually implement. Choose a start date together that feels like good timing. Ideally this will be within the next month. Make your plan. AND DO IT!

What's the thing

What I’ve included in this chapter and the next are the contextual factors that research has shown are consistently associated with changes in women’s sexual wellbeing. Improve your context, and your sexual pleasure will expand all on its own.

Your stressors are the things that activate the stress response—bills, family, work, fretting about your sex life, all of that. Your stress is the system of changes activated in your brain and body in response to those stressors.

Chronic stress also disrupts or suppresses the menstrual cycle, decreases fertility and lactation, and increases miscarriage, as well as reducing genital response and increasing both distractibility and pain with sex.

And we know that the brain prioritizes based on survival needs: breathing, escaping from predators, maintaining the right temperature, staying hydrated and nourished, and remaining with your social group are all first-order-of-business priorities—and of course these priorities sort themselves based on context. If you’re starving, you’ll be more willing to steal bread from your neighbor, even if it risks your membership in a social group. If you can’t breathe, then it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve eaten, you will not feel hungry. And if you’re generally overwhelmed by twenty-first-century life, practically everything else takes priority over sex; as far as your brain is concerned everything is a charging lion. And if you’re being chased by a lion, is that a good time to have sex?

Think about what your body recognizes as the behaviors that save you from lions. When you’re being chased by a lion, what do you do? You run. So when you’re stressed out by your job (or by your sex life), what do you do? You run . . . or walk, or get on the elliptical machine or go out dancing or even just dance around your bedroom. Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle and recalibrating your central nervous system into a calm state. When people say, “Exercise is good for stress,” that is for realsie real.7 Here are some other things that science says can genuinely help us not only “feel better” but actually facilitate the completion of the stress response cycle: sleep; affection (more on that in the next section); any form of meditation, including mindfulness, yoga, tai chi, body scans, etc. (more on that in chapter 9); and allowing yourself a good old cry or primal scream—though you have to be careful with this one. Sometimes people just wallow in their stress when they cry, rather than allowing the tears to wash away the stress. If you’ve ever locked yourself in your room and sobbed for ten minutes, and then at the end heaved a great big sigh and felt tremendously relieved, you’ve felt how it can move you from “I am at risk” to “I am safe.” Art, used in the same way, can help. When mental health professionals suggest journaling or other expressive self-care, they don’t mean that the construction of sentences or ...

1. Start with two minutes. For two minutes a day, direct your attention to your breath: the way the air comes into your body and your chest and belly expand, and the way the breath leaves your body and your chest and belly deflate. 2. The first thing that will happen is your mind will wander to something else. That’s normal. That’s healthy. That’s actually the point. Notice that your mind wandered, let those extraneous thoughts go—you can return to them as soon as the two minutes are up—and allow your attention to return to your breath. 3. Noticing that your mind wandered and then returning your attention to your breath is the real work of mindfulness. It’s not so much about paying attention to your breath as it is about noticing what you’re paying attention to without judgment, and making a choice about whether you want to pay attention to it. What you’re “mindful” of is both your breath and your attention to your breath. By practicing this skill of noticing what you’re paying attention to, you are teaching yourself to be in control of your brain, so that your brain is not in control of you. This regular two-minute practice will gradually result in periodic moments throughout the day when you notice what you’re paying attention to and then decide if that’s what you want to pay attention to right now, or if you want to pay attention to something else. What you pay attention to matters less than how you pay attention.

Since writing the Scientific Guide, I’ve come to think of staying over your emotional center of gravity as the “sleepy hedgehog” model of emotion management. If you find a sleepy hedgehog in the chair you were about to sit in, you should • give it a name • sit peacefully with it in your lap • figure out what it needs • tell your partner about the need, so you can collaborate to help the hedgehog Getting mad at the hedgehog or being afraid of it won’t help you or the hedgehog, and you certainly can’t just shove it into your partner’s lap, shouting, “SLEEPY HEDGEHOG! ” and expect them to deal with all its spiky quills. It’s your hedgehog. The calmer you are when you handle it, the less likely you are to get hurt yourself, or to hurt someone else.

coping with stress My three top stressors: 1. 2. 3. How I can tell I’m stressed: Physical Signs of Stress (e.g., digestive upset, jaw tension, etc.) Emotional Signs of Stress (e.g., tearful, easily frustrated, etc.) Cognitive Signs of Stress (e.g., distracted, unfocused, etc.) When I’m feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or exhausted, here’s what helps: Choose one (for now) of the things you just identified and think about what it would take to increase your access to it. Suppose you decided you wanted to use this stress management strategy more. What are some challenges you might face? What are some things you might do to minimize those barriers, if you decided to try using this stress management strategy more? On a scale of 0–10, how IMPORTANT is it to you to increase your access to this stress management strategy? _______ What makes it that important, rather than a little less important? What could potentially happen that would make it MORE important? On a scale of 0–10, how CONFIDENT do you feel that, if you decided to increase your access to this stress management strategy, you could? What makes you that confident, rather than a little less confident? What could potentially happen that would make you feel MORE confident? Given all of that, what’s one thing you will do TODAY that can move you just one step closer to being able to use this stress management strategy more?

First I read from Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique by T. H. van de Velde, from 1926. He wrote that “normal sexual intercourse” is that intercourse which takes place between two sexually mature individuals of opposite sexes; which excludes cruelty and the use of artificial means for producing voluptuous sensations; which aims directly or indirectly at the consummation of sexual satisfaction, and which, having achieved a certain degree of stimulation, concludes with the ejaculation—or emission—of the semen into the vagina, at the nearly simultaneous culmination of sensation—or orgasm—of both partners.1 Then I read from The Hite Report, published in 1976, from the chapter titled “Redefining Sex”: Sex is intimate physical contact for pleasure, to share pleasure with another person (or just alone). You can have sex to orgasm, or not to orgasm, genital sex, or just physical intimacy—whatever seems right to you. There is never any reason to think the “goal” must be intercourse, and to try to make what you feel fit into that context. There is no standard of sexual performance “out there,” against which you must measure yourself; you aren’t ruled by “hormones” or “biology.” You are free to explore and discover your own sexuality, to learn or unlearn anything you want, and to make physical relations with other people, of either sex, anything you like.

Sex is intimate physical contact for pleasure, to share pleasure with another person (or just alone). You can have sex to orgasm, or not to orgasm, genital sex, or just physical intimacy—whatever seems right to you. There is never any reason to think the “goal” must be intercourse, and to try to make what you feel fit into that context. There is no standard of sexual performance “out there,” against which you must measure yourself; you aren’t ruled by “hormones” or “biology.” You are free to explore and discover your own sexuality, to learn or unlearn anything you want, and to make physical relations with other people, of either sex, anything you like.

The Media Message: “You Are Inadequate.” Spanking, food play, ménages à trois . . . you’ve done all these things, right? Well, you’ve at least had clitoral orgasms, vaginal orgasms, uterine orgasms, energy orgasms, extended orgasms, and multiple orgasms? And you’ve mastered at least thirty-five different positions for intercourse? If you don’t try all these things, you’re frigid. If you’ve had too few partners, don’t watch porn, and don’t have a collection of vibrators in your bedside table, you’re a prude. Also: You’re too fat and too thin; your breasts are too big and too small. Your body is wrong. If you’re not trying to change it, you’re lazy. If you’re satisfied with yourself as you are, you’re settling. And if you dare to actively like yourself, you’re a conceited bitch. In short, you are doing it wrong. Do it differently. No, that’s wrong too, try something else. Forever.

you are beautiful

Which brings me to Health at Every Size. HAES is, as the name implies, an approach to living inside your body based on health rather than weight. Linda Bacon literally wrote the book on HAES—Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth about Your Weight—based on her decades of research on nutrition, exercise, and health. There are four major tenets, according to “The HAES Manifesto”: (1) accept your size, (2) trust yourself, (3) adopt healthy lifestyle habits including joyful physical activity and nutritious foods, and (4) embrace size diversity.14

Moral Foundations Theory. Jonathan Haidt and his team have found that there are six “moral foundations” in the human brain, each of which is a solution to a particular evolutionary problem our species has faced.

For sex educators, the rule is, “Don’t yuck anybody’s yum.” And since we can’t know what everybody else’s yums are, we don’t yuck anything.

begin to recognize where your learned disgust response is interfering with your own sexual pleasure, and decide whether it’s something you’d rather let go of.

Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, researcher and educator Kristin Neff

The relationship between the brain and genitals follows the same principle. The male genital system has strong, quite specific opinions about what counts as sexually relevant, while the female genital system is good at recognizing a broad category of things that generally qualify as sexually relevant. If our two women on vacation came across that diner with a brawl outside, the genitals would still say, “This is a restaurant,” even as the brain dragged her away, shouting, “Let’s get out of here! Call the cops!” In other words, women’s genitals learn to associate certain stimuli with certain physiological responses that have nothing to do with pleasure or even interest. The pressure on my college friend’s vulva—the bar between her legs while she was tied up—triggered an automatic genital response without triggering arousal. “This is a restaurant,” said her genitals, but her brain wasn’t interested.

Emily Nagoski’s book about women’s sexual wellbeing,

Then I described the sexual response mechanism as a set of on and off switches, with each associated with a particular kind of input—genital sensations, relationship satisfaction, stress, attachment, etc.—that throws a switch on or off. Men’s and women’s sexual response mechanisms have the same set of dials and switches, but they tend to be tuned to different levels of sensitivity, so that just a little bit of genital stimulation throws an on switch for men, while just a little bit of stress throws an off switch for women. Laurie’s life, I explained, was throwing all the off switches. He said, “You’re saying I’ve got this strong input from my body, but her strongest input is from her . . . life?” “Yes!” “So to hack the system, what I need to be paying attention to is the stuff that’s hitting the brakes, because once those are off, the accelerator will take over. Is that what you’re saying?” “Yes. You’ve got it. I think she wrote a list of stuff that hit her brakes—” “She did,” he said. “I’ve seen it. I didn’t know what to do with it, but now . . .” He stared at me for a moment, then shook his head and said, “This really changes everything. What this says is that the sexiest thing I can do isn’t some crazy erotic thing. The sexiest thing I can do is take away as many of the brakes as I can, which is . . . I mean, I can do that. Just . . . why did no one tell me this before?”

The one thing silicone lube isn’t good for is use with some silicone toys. It may break down the surface of the toy, so put condoms on them, or else use water-based lube.

Here’s how sexual desire really works. First, arousal begins when you activate the accelerator and take pressure off the brake—turn on the ons and turn off the offs. (And of course, because you’ve read chapter 6, you know that arousal is what happens between your ears, not what happens between your legs.) And then desire comes along when arousal meets a great context.

So that’s what they decided to do. Henry turned everything into low-key, no-pressure, zero-expectation foreplay, the way her walking around after a shower was a kind of low-level foreplay for him. Cuddling and touching. Slow kisses. Flowers. Affectionate attention. Like when they were first falling in love—a constant, steady stream of reminders that, “This guy is amazing!” Henry loves Camilla’s enthusiastic desire, and all it takes to get her there is enough stimulation, built up gradually. This is not a story we see very much in pop culture because it’s not about tension and ambivalence. But it turns out this is how it works for a lot of women.

It’s easy to prove that sex is not a drive: As animal behaviorist Frank Beach put it in 1956, “No one has ever suffered tissue damage for lack of sex.”

I know everyone has told you that sex is a drive. I know that even the newest sex research sometimes holds fast to the idea of spontaneous desire as a drive.13 And to make it even more confusing, sometimes sex researchers who know better say, “sex drive,” in the same way atheists say, “Thank God.” The language is so embedded in the culture that even people whose entire knowledge system is contrary to the fact still use the words. But sex isn’t a drive. Please tell everyone you know.

There are all kinds of novelty and ambiguity to investigate in the world, and the monitor has only a limited amount of attention, so she has to prioritize what domains of life to pay attention to, and these domains rank themselves in order of life importance.18 Sexual arousal draws the monitor’s focus toward sex, prioritizes sex, only when there aren’t other, more important things for her to concentrate on, such as survival. And again, stress is a survival response—escape the lion!—so it deprioritizes sex for most people. Effectively managing the context—turning off the offs—minimizes the things that can draw the little monitor’s attention away from sex.

If you’ll allow a food metaphor, Perel’s style is about hunger as the secret sauce that makes a meal delicious. Gottman’s is about arriving home from work and cooking dinner with your partner, having a glass of wine while you cook, feeding each other all the strawberries you meant to keep for dessert, then sitting down together and savoring every mouthful. In the Perel style, you come to your partner with your fire already stoked. In the Gottman style, you stoke each other’s fire.

Strategy 1: Stuff That Raises Your Heart Rate. Early in a relationship, go for heart-pumping intensity, like Romeo and Juliet doing push-ups while they recite their lines. Ride roller coasters, go on long, fast hikes together through the wilderness, watch scary movies, go to giant concerts or political rallies. If you’re a nerd like me, talk about science for hours on end. Do whatever excites you, whatever literally gets your heart beating faster. You’ll experience general arousal, and your brain will notice your level of excitement, notice the person you’re with, and decide, “Hey, I guess this person is really exciting!”

Strategy 2: Meaningful Challenges. To reinforce commitment and deepen connection, go for novelty and shared, meaningful challenge.29 Play out a lifelong sexual fantasy that you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t found the courage to explore. Turn on the lights—not to put on a show but to open your eyes and look at each other’s faces. Connect. Dive into trust in a big, risky way. Give yourselves, as a couple, something important to work toward. This is a research-based way to “advance the plot” in a relationship that is already at the “happily ever after” phase.

turning off the offs

1. Make a Plan. Be concrete and specific, not abstract and vague. What precisely will you do that will help turn off the brakes? What past experiences do you have that tells you your strategy could work? When exactly will you connect sexually with yourself or your partner? Where will you be? What will you have done immediately before, and what will you do immediately after? What will you wear (or not wear)? Put simply: What sex is worth having, and what will you do to create it in your life? Concrete. Specific. Detailed. 2. Anticipate Barriers. A lot of people skip this step, and that’s a mistake. It’s easy to feel that simply having a plan should be enough. I don’t know if it should be, but I know that it almost never is, because as soon as you bump into an unanticipated barrier, your whole plan could collapse in on itself. You might think, “Well, it’s important to me, so I’ll find a way. I’ll just wing it if I hit an obstacle.” Great! I’m glad it’s important. In fact, don’t try it if it’s not important! And, at the same time, if just “finding a way” were enough, then you wouldn’t need to create change in the first place, you’d already have found your way. Anticipate barriers and make contingency plans.30 3. Connect It to Your Identity. Don’t just run, be a runner. Don’t just have sex, be a deliciously erotic woman who is curious and playful about sex. If you run because you have to or you feel like you’re supposed to, rather than because it’s part of who you are, you won...

Feeling stressed, depressed, anxious, self-critical, untrusting in your relationship, or simply exhausted and overwhelmed are all real and meaningful barriers to sex.

turning off the offs This worksheet is designed to help you create a practical plan for turning off the offs. The research suggests it’s most effective when you repeat the four steps each day, but you can try doing it weekly, and even going through the exercise once would be great. Step 1: Review your Sexy and Not-So-Sexy Contexts worksheets from chapter 3, where you identified the contexts that hit your brakes and activate your accelerator. Write a summary here: Brakes Accelerator Step 2: All these brakes-hitting and accelerating-hitting contexts are your potential targets for change. Choose one that you could change if you decided to try turning off the offs. List five things you and/or your partner could take to implement this strategy. Hint: The more concrete and specific you are, the more useful this will be. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Step 3: Anticipate barriers. What obstacles might you encounter? Where and when—specifically—will this obstacle occur? What could you do to prevent these obstacles? What—specifically—will you do to get back to the goal if you face these obstacles? Step 4: Think about what it would feel like to be a warm and erotic woman who is curious and playful about sex. What is it like? What else is true? Some questions to consider: • What strategies would you use to create more time for sex? • What would give you more energy for sex? • What aspects of your relationship would enhance sex? • What challenges in your relationship would you li...

Becoming Orgasmic by Julia Heiman and Joseph LoPiccolo.