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

by Emily Nagoski

“It was like being way out in the center of the ocean, when I usually just surf on the shore. Bigger and slower… and scarier, too, in some ways. I was all the way open. I had to let go of all control. I had thought I was an erotic powerhouse because I could have a lot of orgasms and because I wanted sex often. But it turns out my greatest erotic power only emerged when I stopped pushing toward orgasm and just allowed pleasure to be still inside me.”

Not every woman wants to experience this kind of radical vulnerability with her sexuality. Not every woman trusts her partner enough to allow herself to let go so thoroughly. Not every woman has a life that allows the time—an hour, generally, for most people—and relaxation necessary to get there.

every woman deserves the opportunity to try it.

A vibrator won’t necessarily persuade all the birds to fly in the same direction. It provides high-intensity stimulation for the parts of your brain that respond to sex-related stimuli; it can turn on the ons like nobody’s business, but it doesn’t turn off the offs.

Pleasure is an emergent property of the interaction of multiple systems—it’s a process, not a state, an interaction, not a specific area of the brain or the body.

Science can’t tell you how to feel about your orgasms. Science can tell you only that how you feel about your orgasms changes your orgasms. Science can tell you that feeling shame, judgment, frustration, and fear about orgasm will diminish your orgasmic experience, while acceptance, welcoming, confidence, and joy will expand your orgasmic experience. Science can tell you that your brain is like a collective of desires, and the more the collective collaborates, the more of you can move toward ecstasy.

You were born entitled to all the pleasure your body can feel. You were born entitled to pleasure in whatever way your body receives it, in whatever contexts afford it, and in whatever quantities you want it. Your pleasure belongs to you, to share or keep as you choose, to explore or not as you choose, to embrace or avoid as you choose.

The brain states that are dragging parts of your flock away from orgasm—stress, worry, spectatoring, chronically wondering if your kid is going to knock on the door, or even just literal cold feet or other physical discomfort—need to be taken seriously and have their needs met. They need to be respected and treated

Be kind and gentle with each of the offs, listen to what they need in order to feel satisfied, and then satisfy them.

Consider the things in your environment and also your own thoughts and feelings. What context do you need i...

Most of the offs women experience have nothing to do with sex, and many of them have straightf...

Give yourself a solid twenty to sixty minutes to allow the stress of the day to wind down with whatever rituals or practices help. Baths, walks, exercise, cooking, meditation, yoga, a glass of wine, whatever works.

Tired? Take a nap, or even just rest for twenty minutes. Squicked out by grit on the sheets? Change them! Cold feet? Put on socks! Sometimes it really is this simple.

Other offs are more complex and require longer-term solutions, such as those I addressed earlier: self-critical thoughts or other body image challenges, lack of trust in your relationship, trauma history, sexual disgust. It took decades of planting and cultivation to create the garden you currently have. It won’t change overnight. Give yourself permission to make progress gradually, and celebrate all the incremental steps between where you are now and where you’d like to be.

the most important turn-off-the-offs practice of all: self-kindness. Too often women get stuck in their sexual growth because they can’t get past their belief that something “shouldn’t” hit their brakes.

Pop quiz: Does a belief that you’re Doing Something Wrong with sex hit the accelerator… or the brakes? Yeah.

take it seriously. Listen to it. Be gentle with

Even if you wish something like having the lights on didn’t hit your brakes, the fact is it might, and that’s okay. It’s also okay to wish it didn’t. But believing it “shouldn’t” only hits the brakes more. Recognizing that frees you up to do something about it—something like having sex with unlit candles in the...

sex is not context dependent—sex can happen more or less anywhere. Pleasure is context dependent. Create a context where you can experience pleasure, and sexual ecstasy will follow, given time, ...

Each member of the flock has its own needs and motivations. Turn off all the offs,...