Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

by Emily Nagoski

According to their “dual control model,” the sexual response mechanism in our brains consists of a pair of universal components—a sexual accelerator and sexual brakes—and those components respond to broad categories of sexual stimuli—including genital sensations, visual stimulation, and emotional context. And the sensitivity of each component varies from person to person. The result is that sexual arousal, desire, and orgasm are nearly universal experiences, but when and how we experience them depends largely on the sensitivities of our “brakes” and “accelerator” and on the kinds of stimulation they’re given.

What we’ll learn is that context—your external circumstances and your present mental state—is as crucial to your sexual wellbeing as your body and brain.

The cultural understanding of clitoris is “the little nub at the top of the vulva.” But the biological understanding of clitoris is more like “far-ranging mostly internal anatomical structure with a head emerging at the top of the vulva.”

In a sense, the hymen can be relevant to women’s health: Some women are beaten or even killed for not having a hymen. Some women are told they “couldn’t have been raped” because their hymen is intact. For them, the hymen has real impact on their physical wellbeing, not because of their anatomy but because of what their culture believes about that anatomy.

If you don’t find the smell or sensation of genital wetness to be completely beautiful and entrancing, that’s unsurprising given how we teach people to feel about their genitals. But how you feel about your genitals and their secretions is learned, and loving your body just as it is will give you more intense pleasure and desire and bigger, better orgasms. More on that in chapter 5.

Ask your partner, if you have one, to have a close look. Turn on the light, take off your clothes, get on your back, and let them look. Ask them to tell you what they see, how they feel about what they see, what memories they have of your vulva. Let your partner know what you’ve felt worried about, and ask them to help you see what they see. Listen to what they say—listen with your heart, not with your fear.

some of us get stuck with some pretty toxic crap in our gardens, and we’re left with the task of uprooting all the junk and replacing it with something healthier, something we choose for ourselves.

Your sexual brain has an “accelerator” that responds to sexual stimulation, but it also has “brakes,” which respond to all the very good reasons not to be turned on right now.

your accelerator and your brakes are as basic, as integral to your sexual functioning, as your clitoris and your desire.

Sexual Excitation System (SE). The accelerator of your sexual response. It receives information about sex-related stimuli in the environment—things you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine—and sends signals from the brain to the genitals to tell them, “Turn on!” SE is constantly scanning your context (including your own thoughts and feelings) for things that are sex-related. It is always at work, far below the level of consciousness. You aren’t aware that it’s there until you find yourself turned on and pursuing sexual pleasure.

Sexual Inhibition System (SI). Your sexual brakes. “Inhibition” here doesn’t mean “shyness” but rather neurological “off” signals. Research has found that there are actually two brakes, reflecting the different functions of an inhibitory system. One brake works in much the same way as the accelerator. It notices all the potential threats in the environment—everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine—and sends signals saying, “Turn off!” It’s like the foot brake in a car, responding to stimuli in the moment. Just as the accelerator scans the environment for turn-ons, this brake scans for anything your brain interprets as a good reason not to be aroused right now—risk

Where the foot brake is associated with “fear of performance consequences,” the hand brake is associated with “fear of performance failure,” like worry about not having an orgasm.

If you have sensitive brakes, you’re very responsive to all the reasons not to be aroused, and if you have a relatively insensitive accelerator, it takes a lot of concentration and deliberate attention to tune in to sex.

Sensitive brakes, regardless of the accelerator, is the strongest predictor of sexual problems of all kinds.

You’re pretty sensitive to all the reasons not to be sexually aroused. You need a setting of trust and relaxation in order to be aroused, and it’s best if you don’t feel rushed or pressured in any way. You might be easily distracted from sex. High SI, regardless of SE, is the most strongly correlated factor with sexual problems, so if this is you, pay close attention to the “sexy contexts” worksheets in the chapters that follow. About a quarter of the women I’ve asked fall into this range.

She loves being with her partner, she loves playing and exploring. But sometimes she’s just as happy cooking with him as having sex.

Your own brakes and accelerator, and their relationship to your mood or anxiety, are unique and individual. The goal of understanding your brakes and accelerator is not to understand “what men are like” versus “what women are like,” but to understand what you are like. Unique, with great potential for awesomeness.

Just as there are no innate words, there appear to be almost no innate sexual stimuli. What turns us on (or off) is learned from culture, in much the same way children learn vocabulary and accents from culture.

both the accelerator and the brakes learn what to respond to based on experience.

What is innate is the mechanism by which this learning takes place: ratty accelerator and brakes and the ability to learn through experience and association. But rats need experience to teach their brakes and accelerator what’s a threat and what’s sex-related.

Things had to be “just right” for her to get aroused, and she needed total trust in her partner. And she worried about sex while she was having it. She called this “noisy brain.”

“I can get so close, and then it’s like there’s all this noise in my head.” She has a great relationship, she and her partner have loving and playful sex on a pretty regular basis, but her arousal bottlenecks inside her and then orgasm just isn’t there for her, and then she gets frustrated, and basically sex is turning into more of a hassle than a pleasure.

You know that almost nothing your accelerator and brakes respond to is innate; your brain learned to associate particular stimuli with excitation or inhibition. Through a process of “tuning” your context—both your brain and your environment—you can maximize your sexual potential.

“So how do I stop hitting the brakes?” 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 has a sexual “accelerator” that responds to “sex-related” stimulation—anything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine that your brain has learned to associate with sexual arousal.

Your brain also has sexual “brakes” that respond to “potential threats”—anything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine that your brain interprets as a good reason not to be turned on right now. These can be anything from STIs and unwanted pregnancy to relationship issues or social reputation.

Love/Emotional Bonding Cues, such as feeling a sense of love, security, commitment, emotional closeness, protection, and support in your relationship, and feeling a kind of “special attention” from your partner.

Explicit/Erotic Cues, such as watching a sexy movie, reading an erotic story, watching or hearing other people having sex, anticipating having sex, knowing your partner desires you, or noticing your own or your partner’s sexual response.

Visual/Proximity Cues, such as seeing an attractive, well-dressed potential partner, with a well-toned body and lots of confidence, intelligence, and class.

Romantic/Implicit Cues include intimate behaviors such as dancing closely, sharing a hot tub or massages or other intimate touch (like touching the face or hair), watching a sunset, laughing or whispering together, or smelling pleasant.

Feelings About One’s Body. “It’s much easier for me to feel aroused when I’m feeling really comfortable with myself… it’s not as easy to feel aroused when I’m not feeling good about myself and my body.”

Concerns About Reputation. “Being single and you know, wanting to be sexual with another person and thinking ‘okay, am I going to be too much?’ or ‘am I going to be not enough?’ or ‘what are they going to think of me because I’m doing these things?’…”

Putting on the Brakes. “I think it’s like you might have some inclinations and then you’re like, ‘wait a minute, you can’t do that,’ you’re in a relationship or that guy’s a loser… and all of a sudden you just [think] ‘okay, fine, forge...

Unwanted Pregnancy/Contraception. “Unwanted pregnancy is a big turn off and if you’re with a partner who seems unconcerned about that...

Feeling Desired Versus Feeling Used by Partner. “I like it when [men] caress not only, like, your body parts that get sexually aroused but just, like, your arms… it feels like he’s e...

Feeling “Accepted” by Partner. “Even with my second husband, and we were together 16 years, he was not accepting of my sexual responses… I make a lot of noise or [with] my favorite way to orgasm, he felt left out… ...

Style of Approach/Initiation and Timing. “His ‘game’… you know, how the man approached you, how did he get me to talk to him longer than like, five mi...

Negative Mood. “If you’re very upset with your intended sexual partner, if you’re very upset with him about something, there’s no w...

Having an attractive partner who respects them and accepts them as they are

Feeling trusting and affectionate in their relationship

Being confident and healthy—both emotionally...

Feeling desired by their partner, being approached in a way that ma...

Explicit erotic cues, like erotica or porn, or hearing or seeing ot...

A woman who feels confident in herself, and who is in a great relationship with a partner she loves, trusts, and feels attracted to, still may not want sex if she has the flu, worked seventy hours that week, or prefers that both she and her partner be freshly showered before sex and they’ve just come in from doing yard work together.

It’s the same sensation, but because the context is different, your perception of that sensation is different.

equilibrioception (sense of balance): Anyone who’s gotten off a ship after a week-long cruise knows that our brains adapt to movement—you spend two days wondering why the ground is moving under your feet.

Nociception (sense of pain): People who’ve experienced serious pain develop a higher tolerance for future pain.9

chronoception (sense of time): Time does indeed seem to fly when you’re having fun—or rather, when y...

Watching your partner do chores is another. If you feel overall supported and connected in your relationship, then seeing your partner doing the laundry may act as a cue for erotic thoughts. But if you’ve been feeling resentful because you’ve been doing a disproportionate amount of the chores lately, then seeing your partner do laundry may feel satisfying—“It’s about time!”—without feeling sexy.

Learning to recognize the contexts that increase your brain’s perception of the world as a sexy place, and having skills to maximize the sexy contexts, is key to increasing your sexual satisfaction.