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Emily Nagoski

Emily Nagoski Ph.D.

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life Paperback – March 3, 2015

by Emily Nagoski Ph.D. (Author)

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Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life
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An essential exploration of why and how women’s sexuality works—based on groundbreaking research and brain science—that will radically transform your sex life into one filled with confidence and joy.

Researchers have spent the last decade trying to develop a “pink pill” for women to function like Viagra does for men. So where is it? Well, for reasons this book makes crystal clear, that pill will never be the answer—but as a result of the research that’s gone into it, scientists in the last few years have learned more about how women’s sexuality works than we ever thought possible, and Come as You Are explains it all.

The first lesson in this essential, transformative book by Dr. Emily Nagoski is that every woman has her own unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and that women vary more than men in our anatomy, our sexual response mechanisms, and the way our bodies respond to the sexual world. So we never need to judge ourselves based on others’ experiences. Because women vary, and that’s normal.

Second lesson: sex happens in a context. And all the complications of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, and orgasm.

Cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines tells us that the most important factor for women in creating and sustaining a fulfilling sex life, is not what you do in bed or how you do it, but how you feel about it. Which means that stress, mood, trust, and body image are not peripheral factors in a woman’s sexual wellbeing; they are central to it. Once you understand these factors, and how to influence them, you can create for yourself better sex and more profound pleasure than you ever thought possible.

And Emily Nagoski can prove it.

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English
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Simon & Schuster
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March 3, 2015
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6 x 1 x 9 inches
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1476762090
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978-1476762098
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is the best book I have ever read about sexual desire and why some couples just stop having sex, and what they can do about it. Come As You Are is an absolutely necessary guide for all couples who want to understand the ups and downs in their own sex life. It is a must read!”
—John Gottman, Ph.D., author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“Emily Nagoski has written one of the most important books about sex any woman (or anybody else) could ever pick up, full of insights that are both fascinating and deeply useful. Synthesizing new research and theory about sexuality with old-school sex-positive information of the sort you didn’t learn in sex ed (unless, perhaps, you are a Unitarian, or Scandinavian, or lucky enough to be in Dr. Nagoski’s class), I guarantee Come As You Are will open minds and change lives.”
— Carol Queen, Ph.D., Founding director, Center for Sex & Culture

“Emily Nagoski is worth her weight in TED Talks, and Come as You Are is a master-class in the science of sex.”
— Ian Kerner, sex therapist and bestselling author of She Comes First

“It’s the science of sex, decoded and demystified. Want to be educated on the latest findings about female genitalia? Of course you do. Empowering and sex-positive at best, this informative read makes for an enticing bedfellow.”
—Refinery29

“Lots of books — and articles and experts — claim to have the keys to transform your sex life. This one actually has it. It isn’t as fast as taking a pill, but it will last a whole lot longer. You will find no hot new bedroom moves — it’s that deeper-level soul stuff. You know, the stuff that actually works.”
—Salon.com

“Wonderful new language to help us articulate to women (and their lovers) what is going on.”
—Huffington Post

“Like a punch to the gut. When I read the passage that made me realize—after all these years—that I was not actually broken, I began to cry. . . . I wished [Nagoski] was someone who was actively in my life, someone I could reach out to for grounding every time I momentarily forgot the lessons in her book.”
—Book Riot

“Nagoski’s book deserves plaudits for the rare achievement of merging pop science and the sexual self-help genre in prose that’s not insufferably twee. . . . [Come As You Are] offers up hard facts on the science of arousal and desire in a friendly and accessible way.”
—The Guardian (UK)

About the Author

Emily Nagoski is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, and the coauthor of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She has an MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior, both from Indiana University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Come as You Are

introduction

YES, YOU ARE NORMAL

To be a sex educator is to be asked questions. I’ve stood in college dining halls with a plate of food in my hands answering questions about orgasm. I’ve been stopped in hotel lobbies at professional conferences to answer questions about vibrators. I’ve sat on a park bench, checking social media on my phone, only to find questions from a stranger about her asymmetrical genitals. I’ve gotten emails from students, from friends, from their friends, from total strangers about sexual desire, sexual arousal, sexual pleasure, sexual pain, orgasm, fetishes, fantasies, bodily fluids, and more.

Questions like . . .

• Once my partner initiates, I’m into it, but it seems like it never even occurs to me to be the one to start things. Why is that?

• My boyfriend was like, “You’re not ready, you’re still dry.” But I was so ready. So why wasn’t I wet?

• I saw this thing about women who can’t enjoy sex because they worry about their bodies the whole time. That’s me. How do I stop doing that?

• I read something about women who stop wanting sex after a while in a relationship, even if they still love their partner. That’s me. How do I start wanting sex with my partner again?

• I think maybe I peed when I had an orgasm . . . ?

• I think maybe I’ve never had an orgasm . . . ?

Under all these questions, there’s really just one question:

Am I normal?

(The answer is nearly always: Yes.)

This book is a collection of answers. They’re answers that I’ve seen change women’s lives, answers informed by the most current science and by the personal stories of women whose growing understanding of sex has transformed their relationships with their own bodies. These women are my heroines, and I hope that by telling their stories, I’ll empower you to follow your own path, to reach for and achieve your own profound and unique sexual potential.

the true story of sex

After all the books that have been written about sex, all the blogs and TV shows and radio Q&As, how can it be that we all still have so many questions?

Well. The frustrating reality is we’ve been lied to—not deliberately, it’s no one’s fault, but still. We were told the wrong story.

For a long, long time in Western science and medicine, women’s sexuality was viewed as Men’s Sexuality Lite—basically the same but not quite as good.

For instance, it was just sort of assumed that since men have orgasms during penis-in-vagina sex (intercourse), women should have orgasms with intercourse too, and if they don’t, it’s because they’re broken.

In reality, about 30 percent of women orgasm reliably with intercourse. The other 70 percent sometimes, rarely, or never orgasm with intercourse, and they’re all healthy and normal. A woman might orgasm lots of other ways—manual sex, oral sex, vibrators, breast stimulation, toe sucking, pretty much any way you can imagine—and still not orgasm during intercourse. That’s normal.

It was just assumed, too, that because a man’s genitals typically behave the way his mind is behaving—if his penis is erect, he’s feeling turned on—a woman’s genitals should also match her emotional experience.

And again, some women’s do, many don’t. A woman can be perfectly normal and healthy and experience “arousal nonconcordance,” where the behavior of her genitals (being wet or dry) may not match her mental experience (feeling turned on or not).

And it was also assumed that because men experience spontaneous, out-of-the-blue desire for sex, women should also want sex spontaneously.

Again it turns out that’s true sometimes, but not necessarily. A woman can be perfectly normal and healthy and never experience spontaneous sexual desire. Instead, she may experience “responsive” desire, in which her desire emerges only in a highly erotic context.

In reality, women and men are different.

But wait. Women and men both experience orgasm, desire, and arousal, and men, too, can experience responsive desire, arousal nonconcordance, and lack of orgasm with penetration. Women and men both can fall in love, fantasize, masturbate, feel puzzled about sex, and experience ecstatic pleasure. They both can ooze fluids, travel forbidden paths of sexual imagination, encounter the unexpected and startling ways that sex shows up in every domain of life—and confront the unexpected and startling ways that sex sometimes declines, politely or otherwise, to show up.

So . . . are women and men really that different?

The problem here is that we’ve been taught to think about sex in terms of behavior, rather than in terms of the biological, psychological, and social processes underlying the behavior. We think about our physiological behavior—blood flow and genital secretions and heart rate. We think about our social behavior—what we do in bed, whom we do it with, and how often. A lot of books about sex focus on those things; they tell you how many times per week the average couple has sex or they offer instructions on how to have an orgasm, and they can be helpful.

But if you really want to understand human sexuality, behavior alone won’t get you there. Trying to understand sex by looking at behavior is like trying to understand love by looking at a couple’s wedding portrait . . . and their divorce papers. Being able to describe what happened—two people got married and then got divorced—doesn’t get us very far. What we want to know is why and how it came to be. Did our couple fall out of love after they got married, and that’s why they divorced? Or were they never in love but were forced to marry, and finally became free when they divorced? Without better evidence, we’re mostly guessing.

Until very recently, that’s how it’s been for sex—mostly guessing. But we’re at a pivotal moment in sex science because, after decades of research describing what happens in human sexual response, we’re finally figuring out the why and how—the process underlying the behavior.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, researchers Erick Janssen and John Bancroft at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction developed a model of human sexual response that provides an organizing principle for understanding the true story of sex. 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 kind of stimulation they’re given.

This is the mechanism underlying the behavior—the why and the how. And it’s the rule that governs the story I’ll be telling in this book: We’re all made of the same parts, but in each of us, those parts are organized in a unique way that changes over our life span.

No organization is better or worse than any other, and no phase in our life span is better or worse than any other; they’re just different. An apple tree can be healthy no matter what variety of apple it is—though one variety may need constant direct sunlight and another might enjoy some shade. And an apple tree can be healthy when it’s a seed, when it’s a seedling, as it’s growing, and as it fades at the end of the season, as well as when, in late summer, it is laden with fruit. But it has different needs at each of those phases in its life.

You, too, are healthy and normal at the start of your sexual development, as you grow, and as you bear the fruits of living with confidence and joy inside your body. 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.

the organization of this book

The book is divided into four parts: (1) The (Not-So-Basic) Basics; (2) Sex in Context; (3) Sex in Action; and (4) Ecstasy for Everybody. The three chapters in the first part describe the basic hardware you were born with—a body, a brain, and a world. In chapter 1, I talk about genitals—their parts, the meaning we impose on those parts, and the science that proves definitively that yes, your genitals are perfectly healthy and beautiful just as they are. Chapter 2 details the sexual response mechanism in the brain—the dual control model of inhibition and excitation, or brakes and accelerator. Then in chapter 3, I introduce the ways that your sexual brakes and accelerator interact with the many other systems in your brain and environment, to shape whether a particular sensation or person turns you on, right now, in this moment.

In the second part of the book, “Sex in Context,” we think about how all the basic hardware functions within the context of your actual life—your emotions, your relationship, your feelings about your body, and your attitudes toward sex. Chapter 4 focuses on two primary emotional systems, love and stress, and the surprising and contradictory ways they can influence your sexual responsiveness. Then chapter 5 describes the cultural forces that shape and constrain sexual functioning, and how you can maximize the good things about this process and overcome the destructive things. 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. Master the content in these chapters and your sexual life will transform—along with, quite possibly, the rest of your life.

The third part of the book, “Sex in Action,” is about sexual response itself, and I bust two long-standing and dangerous myths. Chapter 6 lays out the evidence that sexual arousal may or may not have anything to do with what’s happening in your genitals. This is where we learn why arousal nonconcordance, which I mentioned earlier, is normal and healthy. And after you read chapter 7, you will never again hear someone say “sex drive” without thinking to yourself, Ah, but sex is not a drive. In this chapter I explain how “responsive desire” works. If you (or your partner) have ever experienced a change in your interest in sex—increase or decrease—this is an important chapter for you.

And the fourth part of the book, “Ecstasy for Everybody,” explains how to make sex entirely yours, which is how you create peak sexual ecstasy in your life. Chapter 8 is about orgasms—what they are, what they’re not, how to have them, and how to make them like the ones you read about, the ones that turn the stars into rainbows. And finally, in Chapter 9, I describe the single most important thing you can do to improve your sex life. But I’ll give it away right now: It turns out what matters most is not the parts you are made of or how they are organized, but how you feel about those parts. When you embrace your sexuality precisely as it is right now, that’s the context that creates the greatest potential for ecstatic pleasure.

Several chapters include worksheets or other interactive activities and exercises. A lot of these are fun—like in chapter 3, I ask you to think about times when you’ve had great sex and identify what aspects of the context helped to make that sex great. All of them turn the science into something practical that can genuinely transform your sex life.

Throughout the book, you’ll follow the stories of four women—Olivia, Merritt, Camilla, and Laurie. These women don’t exist as individuals; they’re composites, integrating the real stories of the many women I’ve taught, talked with, emailed, and supported in my two decades as a sex educator. You can imagine each woman as a collage of snapshots—the face from one photograph, the arms from another, the feet from a third . . . each part represents someone real, and the collection hangs together meaningfully, but I’ve invented the relationships that the parts have to each other.

I’ve chosen to construct these composites rather than tell the stories of specific women for two reasons. First, people tell me their stories in confidence, and I want to protect their identities, so I’ve changed details in order to keep their story their story. And second, I believe I can describe the widest possible variety of women’s sexual experiences by focusing not on specific stories of one individual woman but on the larger narratives that contain the common themes I’ve seen in all these hundreds of women’s lives.

And finally, at the end of each chapter you’ll find a “tl;dr” list—“too long; didn’t read,” the blunt Internet abbreviation that means, “Just get to the point.” Each tl;dr list briefly summarizes the four most important messages in the chapter. If you find yourself thinking, “My friend Alice should totally read this chapter!” or “I really wish my partner knew this,” you might start by showing them the tl;dr list.I Or, if you’re like me and get too excited about these ideas to keep them to yourself, you can follow your partner around the house, reading the tl;dr list out loud and saying, “See, honey, arousal nonconcordance is a thing!” or “It turns out I have responsive desire!” or “You give me great context, sweetie!”

a couple of caveats

First, most of the time when I say “women” in this book, I mean people who were born in female bodies, were raised as girls, and now have the social role and psychological identity of “woman.” There are plenty of women who don’t fit one or more of those characteristics, but there’s too little research on trans* and genderqueer sexual functioning for me to say with certainty whether what’s true about cisgender women’s sexual wellbeing is also true for trans* folks. I think it probably is, and as more research emerges over the coming decade we’ll find out, but in the meantime I want to acknowledge that this is basically a book about cisgender women.

And if you don’t know what any of that means, don’t worry about it.

Second, I am passionate about the role of science in promoting women’s sexual wellbeing, and I have worked hard in this book to encapsulate the research in the service of teaching women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies. But I’ve been very intentional about the empirical details I’ve included or excluded. I asked myself, “Does this fact help women have better sex lives, or is it just a totally fascinating and important empirical puzzle?”

And I cut the puzzles.

I kept only the science that has the most immediate relevance in women’s everyday lives. So what you’ll find in these pages isn’t the whole story of women’s sexuality—I’m not sure the whole story would actually fit in one book. Instead, I’ve included the parts of the story that I’ve found most powerful in my work as a sex educator, promoting women’s sexual wellbeing, autonomy, and pleasure.

The purpose of this book is to offer a new, science-based way of thinking about women’s sexual wellbeing. Like all new ways of thinking, it opens up a lot of questions and challenges much preexisting knowledge. If you want to dive deeper, you’ll find references in the notes, along with details about my process for boiling down a complex and multifaceted body of research into something practical.

if you feel broken, or know someone who does

One more thing before we get into chapter 1. Remember how I said we’ve all been lied to, but it’s no one’s fault? I want to take a moment to recognize the damage done by that lie.

So many women come to my blog or to my class or to my public talks convinced that they are sexually broken. They feel dysfunctional. Abnormal. And on top of that, they feel anxious, frustrated, and hopeless about the lack of information and support they’ve received from medical professionals, therapists, partners, family, and friends.

“Just relax,” they’ve been told. “Have a glass of wine.”

Or, “Women just don’t want sex that much. Get over it.”

Or, “Sometimes sex hurts—can’t you just ignore it?”

I understand the frustration these women experience, and the despair—and in the second half of the book I talk about the neurological process that traps people in frustration and despair, shutting them off from hope and joy, and I describe science-based ways to get out of the trap.

Here’s what I need you to know right now: The information in this book will show you that whatever you’re experiencing in your sexuality—whether it’s challenges with arousal, desire, orgasm, pain, no sexual sensations—is the result of your sexual response mechanism functioning appropriately . . . in an inappropriate world. You are normal; it is the world around you that’s broken.

That’s actually the bad news.

The good news is that when you understand how your sexual response mechanism works, you can begin to take control of your environment and your brain in order to maximize your sexual potential, even in a broken world. And when you change your environment and your brain, you can change—and heal—your sexual functioning.

This book contains information that I have seen transform women’s sexual wellbeing. I’ve seen it transform men’s understanding of their women partners. I’ve seen same-sex couples look at each other and say, “Oh. So that’s what was going on.” Students, friends, blog readers, and even fellow sex educators have read a blog post or heard me give a talk and said, “Why didn’t anyone tell me this before? It explains everything!”

I know for sure that what I’ve written in this book can help you. It may not be enough to heal all the wounds inflicted on your sexuality by a culture in which it sometimes feels nearly impossible for a woman to “do” sexuality right, but it will provide powerful tools in support of your healing.

How do I know?

Evidence, of course!

At the end of one semester, I asked my 187 students to write down one really important thing they learned in my class. Here’s a small sample of what they wrote:

I am normal!

I AM NORMAL

I learned that everything is NORMAL, making it possible to go through the rest of my life with confidence and joy.

I learned that I am normal! And I learned that some people have spontaneous desire and others have responsive desire and this fact helped me really understand my personal life.

Women vary! And just because I do not experience my sexuality in the same way as many other women, that does not make me abnormal.

Women’s sexual desire, arousal, response, etc., is incredibly varied.

The one thing I can count on regarding sexuality is that people vary, a lot.

That everyone is different and everything is normal; no two alike.

No two alike!

And many more. More than half of them wrote some version of “I am normal.”

I sat in my office and read those responses with tears in my eyes. There was something urgently important to my students about feeling “normal,” and somehow my class had cleared a path to that feeling.

The science of women’s sexual wellbeing is young, and there is much still to be learned. But this young science has already discovered truths about women’s sexuality that have transformed my students’ relationships with their bodies—and it has certainly transformed mine. I wrote this book to share the science, stories, and sex-positive insights that prove to us that, despite our culture’s vested interest in making us feel broken, dysfunctional, unlovely, and unlovable, we are in fact fully capable of confident, joyful sex.

• • •

The promise of Come as You Are is this: No matter where you are in your sexual journey right now, whether you have an awesome sex life and want to expand the awesomeness, or you’re struggling and want to find solutions, you will learn something that will improve your sex life and transform the way you understand what it means to be a sexual being. And you’ll discover that, even if you don’t yet feel that way, you are already sexually whole and healthy.

The science says so.

I can prove it.

I. I’ll use “they” as a singular pronoun, rather than “he or she” throughout the book. It’s simpler, as well as more inclusive of folks outside the gender binary.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (March 3, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1476762090
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476762098
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #18,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #36 in General Sexual Health
- #67 in Sex & Sexuality
- #105 in General Women's Health

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Emily Nagoski
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Emily Nagoski has a Ph.D. in Health Behavior with a minor in Human Sexuality from Indiana University, and a MS in Counseling, also from IU, including a clinical internship at the Kinsey Institute Sexual Health Clinic. She has been a sex educator for twenty-five years. She lives in western Massachusetts with a strange cat, two dogs, and a cartoonist.
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New science based way of thinking about women’s sexual wellbeing

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*You are normal*
We all have the same parts, just organized differently. As long as you are not experiencing pain, you and your genitals are healthy and beautify as they are. How you feel about your sexuality is more important than your sexuality itself.

*Myths about women’s sexuality because they are viewed as men lite*
- Orgasm should reliable occur during vaginal penetration > only true for 30% of women, 16% of women have not had an orgasm by 28
- Arousal (happens in your brain) and genital behavior (wet/hard) always line up > only 10% of women
- You should get aroused spontaneously > only 15% of women

*Dual control model*
Level of arousal = accelerator - brakes
Accelerator - context that is sexually relevant, turns on genital response
Brake - turns off sexual relevance. Threats can be external context or internal mental state.
People have a spectrum of low vs. high acceleration and low vs. high brakes. There is no correlation with hormone levels or genital size/shape with sexual desire or response
Boys learn erections = sexy. Less obvious for girls because of mismatch between genital response and arousal.

How to reduce brake:
reduce stress
be affectionate toward body
let go how what’s “supposed” to happen
> Exercise: Reflect on what triggers your brakes and make concrete plans to turn them off, anticipating obstacles and making contingency plans

How to increase accelerator:
love/emotional bonding cues - feeling loved, secure, with a committed partner, getting special attention
Explicit/erotic cues - reading a dirty book, hearing someone having sex, anticipating sex, feeling desired, noticing arousal from your partner
Visual/proximity cues - seeing an attractive party well dressed, seeing a partner confident/classy
Romantic/implicit cues - feeling close, dancing, massage

*The importance of context*
We can only understand women’s sexual wellbeing only if we take context into account - and most of that context has nothing to do with sex itself
Context - circumstances of present moment (who with, where, novel or familiar, risky or safe) and brain state (relaxed or stressed, trusting or not, loving or not)
Women are more sensitive to context than men
Perception of sensation is context dependent. If you activate the approach and avoid parts of a rat brain in a neutral context, you’ll get the expected behavior. But a safe context will always generate approach behavior and same with always avoiding in a stressful context.
Best context - low stress, high affection, explicitly erotic
Stress is physiological and neurological process to help you deal with threats/stressors. Love is the process that pulls you toward your tribe. Just as you don’t care about hunger if you don’t have oxygen, it can be hard to card about sex if you’re stressed.
When stress is intense, you fight (conquer the stress feeling irritation, anger, annoyance, frustration, rage), escape (avoid the source of stress feeling worry, anxiety, fear, terror) or freeze (emotional numbness, shutdown, depression, despair)
For all forms of stress, need to complete the cycle - identify, take action, feel safe/whole/home. Exercise, sleep, affection, meditation, cry/scream common solutions.
> Exercise: If worrying about orgasm or frequency of sex is causing stress, take a break and don’t have sex for pre-determined amount of time. Consciously don’t try to orgasm.

*Conflicting messages*
Moral message - “You are damaged goods”. idolize virginity, you’re a slut if you’ve had too many sexual experiences
Medical message - “Something’s wrong with your body”. You should always have simultaneous orgasm with your partner during penetration or you have a medical issue. Men and women have the same sex response but women are less horny and take longer to orgasm.
Media message - “You are inadequate”. You should have already tried spanking, manage a toir, had multiple orgasms, tried every type of vibrator. Your body is wrong and you need to change it. Only a conceited bitch likes themselves.
When a baby girl is born, everyone talks about how beautiful she is. Until puberty when all signs point to body self-criticism. There is cultural permission to criticize ourselves (I feel fat today) but not to praise ourselves (I feel beautiful today). These pervasive self-critical thoughts negatively correlated with every part of sexual well-being. Women believe it is good to torture ourselves to stay motivated, but this re-injury delays healing.
> Exercise: Try on the identity as a “woman who loves sex”. If you don’t have enough time for sex, reframe as “As a woman who loves sex…”

*Healthy at all sizes*
You are healthy and beautiful at any size. Self-compassion is unconditional, non-evaluative love and caring for yourself, which is not the same as self-esteem or perceived value of success in comparison to others or self indulgence numbing the pain. Body preference in 17th center favored soft/round/plump women since they were rich enough to afford food and a sedentary lifestyle. Mid 19th century Industrial revolution changed norms because men wanted to show rich enough to marry women too weak to work.
1. Self-kindness (treat self gently and caring, tender during hard times), opposite of self-judgement (intolerant/impatient to any aspect of personality you don’t like)
2. Common humanity with suffering connecting us (we all feel inadequate at times), opposite of isolation (I feel alone)
3. Mindfulness (nonjudgemental about present moment), opposite of over-identification (obsessing on failures and suffering, holding pain without letting go)
> Exercise: look at self naked and list everything you like, Try to let go of self-critical thoughts. Avoid media that makes you feel bad about your body.

*Non-concordance*
Non-concordance = Genital response doesn’t necessarily match person’s experience of arousal
Genital response means the detection of sexual relevancy (expecting). But arousal is being turned on (enjoying).
Men are highly correlated with 50% overlap. Women just 10%.
Erectile disfunction pills increase blood flow to genitals during sexual stimulation, Since men there is a connection between response and arousal, it works.

*Orgasm*
Orgasm = Sudden, involuntary release of sexual tension.
Like tickling, how good it feels depends on the context. Possible to orgasm during rape without meaning pleasure or consent.
80-90% of women who masturbate do so with little or no penetration, including vibrators
Of college female, 11% reliably orgasm first time with new partner, 67% within 6 months, 16% no orgasm by age 28, remaining 6% never
Imagine attention as flock of birds. If your feet are cold or you’re anxious, some birds fly off towards that so you have less momentum to have an orgasm. Stronger attachment to partner, stress relief, curiosity creates strong magnetic pull to keep flock together
Vibrator activates sex relevant stimuli so maxes out the accelerator, but doesn’t do anything to brakes
Women have no “point of no return” like men for orgasm
> Exercise: Change the goal - pleasure not orgasm, clitoral stimulation not penetration, sex-positive context for responsive desire not spontaneous, feel tough emotions and stress non judging

*Sex is not a drive*
Drive is an unpleased internal state with the goal of getting to baseline. Like a biological thermostat, if you don’t respond to hunger or thirst you die.
Sex is an incentive motivation system, won’t die without it.

Spontaneous desire = feeling aroused suddenly
75% of men but just 15% of women. Many women have responsive desire. Expect > enjoy > eager loop.
In order for responsive desire to work, need the right context and accelerator to be stronger than brake.

Sex knowledge is like a map. Terrain is the reality.
Run into issues when map doesn’t fit terrain. Trust the terrain. Everyone’s map and terrain are different.

*Sex Biology*

Evolutionary byproducts:
Female orgasm - no relation to reproductive success such as sucking sperm into uterus. Byproduct of male orgasm needed for ejaculation.
Male nipples - It takes less energy to suppress them for men than just to keep them for both.
Hymen - Vary between women including some not having it. There is no such thing as a “broken seal”. If damaged, it will heal. The most likely cause of bleeding during intercourse is lack of lubrication.
Female ejaculation - same as male nipples

Vulva - package of external female genitalia. Vagina is the internal reproductive canal that leads to the uterus.
High variety in “normal” vulva
Variability in size and shape of sex shapes just like variability in height. It is not good or bad to be one way, just is
Men and women both get hard and wet.

Male and female fetus are the same at 6 weeks after fertilization when a wash of masculizing hormones that determines the genital configuration.

*Garden metaphor*
We start life with a plot of rich, fertile, unique soil. Family and culture plant and tend until you’re old enough to do it yourself. Affects everything: language, attitude, knowledge, love safety, body images, sex. Most of us get a balance of healthy thriving plants and toxic crap we have to grow out of.
Don’t yuck someone’s yum - Think of sex as a salad bar. Take what you like and ignore the rest, don’t judge or worry much about what others do.

*Attachment*
Attachment process - children form secure attachment 50% of the time when they have reliable caregivers. The other 50% form anxious (clinging, jealous) or avoidant (avoiding) attachment. Particularly for those with insecure attachment, sex can act as a form of relief in unstable relationships because it stabilizes something unstable. This is why many’s women’s best sex is after unstable or even abusive relationships.

*Pregnancy*
Takes 6-12 months for typical couple to get pregnant, 15% don’t conceive in first year
On the pill, 1/3 women decrease in sexual interest, 1/5 interest, 1/2 no effect. Each pill different hormones so trying new one can change result.

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Ben

Taught me everthing I know about arousal and womens sexuality (Because everything else ever is just plain WRONG)!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 2, 2015

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You will learn the actual truth about womens' sexuality from this one book. If you think you understand womens' sexuality and you haven't read this book then sorry, you're wrong. (Actually you'll learn a lot about male sexuality too.) The scientifically supported 'truths' presented in this book are radically different to anything I've experienced through any medium previously. Forget all the legitimate well intentioned classics you've read and definitely forget everything you've read in a womens magazine or heard on daytime TV!. Their wrong. I know because I'm well read and I've a bookshelf full of well intentioned, impotent tomes to prove it.
My only criticism of this book is the unfortunate undertone throughout and a couple of specific assertions from the author that men are solely responsible for the disfunction and mis-understanding of womens sexuality. Women need to own this situation just as much if not more than men (After all they have the pussy, so they make the rules) It would have been great not to marginalise men in the text, which despite my cognisance of feeling, interfered with my ability to read coherently at times because I was feeling pissed off. So I'd have to stop to process those feelings before I could move on. Instead this incredible, ground breaking work should be lovingly and compassionately delivered and targeted to everyone! Especially men, as I think their understanding and acceptance of the 'new knowledge' will be essential to their active participation in the healing process for partnered women. Obviously single men will benefit immensely and immediately upon commencing a sexual relationship with a woman too.
Despite the thinly veiled contempt for males sprinkled in acouple of areas in the book, this is a seminal piece of work and I will now order several more copies for all the women (and their men) in my family, particularly though, my 15yo old daughter. This will set her up right. It will assist her with personal happiness through knowing herself properly. Emily has presented a correct interpretation of the subject, that will facilitate young women to navigate critically and with a measure of steadfast confidence through the spam and peppering of rubbish messages that unfortunately screw dso many young ones up. It must be said that there is value in this text in so many ways! Whilst it appears to fundamentally address sexual disfunction in women, one of the foundation points in the text is about how 'feeling sexual' is an apex desire/emotion for women. In order to cultivate an environment where sexual feelings/desire can occur, underlying issues must be dealt with. And Emily does. Have a daughter with eating disorder? Partner has body image issues? Emily marvellously dismantles, dissects and explains to the reader how all these things are caused and how to break them down and how they interfere with the sexuality She also covers a multitude of other less insidious but no less interfering issues that cause sexual disfunction. Reading this will fundamentally reset/recalibrate the readers expectations about what is 'normal' and what we should be desiring for ourselves in terms of healthy, real and relevant expectations. I'm a man and I'll admit that some sections of this book brought me to actual tears. As I read and learnt and realised that my assumptions about my wife were so wrong and as I considered my treatment of her (IE fighting about sex, accusations, all that) I realised that I have not been gentle with her heart and that realisation nearly killed me (really upset me). I have not acted lovingly and kind to my dear wife (and best friend) at times, (regarding sex), because I refused to accept that if anybody's experience of arousal and sex wasn't exactly like mine then there was something wrong with them. 'She's not a sexual person', ' She's vanilla' etc etc If you've ever found yourself thinking these things or god forbid actually labelling your partner like this then you absolutely must do yourself and your partner a justice and READ THIS BOOK! Yes, it's confronting, but it's also going to open new pathways to intimacy, strengthen existing ones, cultivate safety, trust and bonding for couples and understanding, self acceptance, healthier self talk and realistic expectations for singles and well everyone!
BuY this book! We need to make this into a worlds best seller. It's application globally to re-orienting so many values and switching people off to bad messages (think media/advertising etc) could be a catalyst for a return to marriages that endure, harmony between spouses and the re-invigoration and appreciation of the family unit and wider caring societal values.
Lastly I'd love to see Emily re-write this amazing book with the following considerations:
1) Take out the underlying blaming of the male species. We are just as much victims of the corporate greed, culture and advertising etc that sponsored the current situation.
2) I couldn't help but wonder throughout the book if a lot of it wasn't equally applicable to men. Whilst I'm sure some of it was (I kept personally identifying with things) Is all of it though? If so, then why not make this amazing book about human sexuality. This would also serve to facilitate it being read by a lot more men. Which is very important.
3) As the 'spontaneously aroused' (SA) member of my marriage I have learnt and modified my expectations and behaviour regarding how I relate sexually to my 'responsively aroused' (RA) wife. However whilst this new way of relating to and assisting her with her accelerator and breaks is necessary, I guess I'm now experiencing some cognitive dissidence because despite understanding it all, I still have a stubborn, unreasonable yearning desire that cannot be placated with any amount of understanding (or deep breaths, cold showers or late night runs for that matter). So I am still suffering in a way because now the sexlife I am having 'is not natural to me'.
Sometimes It feels like it's just all too hard. All this thinking, planning and effort to maybe facilitate something that comes so easily and naturally to yourself. Then sometimes you 'slip mentally' and you get into a really bad place where you've been managing your partners breaks and accelerator all day(s) and then when they are non responsive to your solicitations and just want to go to sleep, that's when you become resentful, because you've subconciously entered into a one sided pact, thinking that they now owe you something.. Yeah, bad I know. But wait it gets worse. That's when in your frustration, anger and despair, your little monitor suggests and convinces you to give up on your partner and sex altogether.
I guess in consideration of the above there are three further issues that really need to be dealt with:
1) This book (by virtue of recommended courses of action) basically legitimises and encourages the removal of spontaneous sex for the SA person.. Ouch! This doesn't seem quiet right to me. Surely there's another way? I know that technically it's "my problem" if I'm aroused and my partner isn't. But remove the spontaneity for the SA person and you have created virtually the same situation of an 'un-attractive sexual prospect' except it's now in reverse, affecting the SA person instead of the RA person. SA people deserve their partners energy and to be seduced and to receive some pampering and path clearing as well. They also should not have to initiate every single time. When the SA has to initiate every time the message cultivated by the little monitor is basically: "My partner doesn't care enough about me to know me. If they did they'd know I need to have sex" For some of us Spontaneity within a sexual encounter is a significant attraction to or reason for enjoying sex. Sex is allowed to be easy and carefree and spontaneous sometimes.
I feel that after reading this book I understand my RA partner much better and how I can assist with her arousal response but it's also left me feeling like it's going to be a long life of work or dis-appointment for me, neither of which are particularly appealing.
Despite the techniques detailed for identifying and developing arousal sponsoring situations etc it would be great if there was also a section of the book devoted to direct action techniques to be undertaken by the RA person to re-condition themselves to be more SA. Ie Pavlovian programming, meditations on sensuality. Homework?
2) The SA aroused person must ultimately accept that they are going to be doing most of the leading, facilitating, seduction and initiation. How does one stay motivated to complete the significant workload required to manage the others breaks and accelerator without losing the 'joy of sex' for themselves and without 'feeling emotionally (and physically) exhausted, particularly if there is a limited or no return on their investment?.
3) What 'tools' can the Spontaneously aroused use to deal with the inevitable episodes of feeling isolated, rejected, misunderstood, 'not cared for' and plain old frustrated complicit in a relationship with a responsive arouser?

Finally, Emily asserts that there will never be a 'little pink pill' which will act on women the way Viagra etc acts for men. She makes a very good explanation of this and is correct within the limits of her argument. However I would advocate that if the scientists could develop a pill for men which made their semen taste like chocolate, then we might finally have a solution..... ;)

47 people found this helpful

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Iddand

If you're a cis-woman read this. If you're a man with a cis-woman in your sex life, read this.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 8, 2023

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My review so I'm allowed to "man'splain" all I want. Ever wonder why you're so confused and confounded by your sexuality as a woman? A lot of the answers are in this book. I guarantee at some point you will read a truth or fact that will have you in tears as you finally know the reasons why you are the way you are. You're not broken. You're an individual with things unique to you and things common to others. You'll find those things addressed here.

Guys, reading this book may not change things between you and women if you don’t care to chop the wood and carry the water from what you will learn, but at least you'll know some reasons why women can be sexually perplexing in your lives.

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Singis Tinge

Recommended reading for any couples (even without issues) looking to understand each-other and themselves

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 14, 2017

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Very informative book that makes you think and reflect on not just your own sexuality but the sexuality of society as a whole.

I picked this up (after reading some reviews) with the intention of trying to give my SO (who has some body image and anxiety issues) a little bit of a confidence boost. I began reading the first chapter to make sure this was a legitimate book and not some unfounded claptrap (like a lot of self help books). Suddenly I was half way through the book and thoroughly engaged. This book is obviously aimed at women but as a man I feel this could actually teach you a lot about your female partner. A theme that crops up in the book is the pressure a woman can feel to perform for a partner who craves their "love" which creates the adverse effect of reducing the woman's desire for intimacy because they feel pressured to do so. This is fine for the woman realising this by reading it in this book but without the partner learning it, it would still be a one sided realisation so I recommend reading this together as a couple. I wish there was a book in the same vein aimed for the male partner or even a book that encompasses both sides in a relationship.

The book so far has been a thoroughly interesting read backing up the science with evidence provided by past researchers in the field and dropping their names so you can look them up yourself if you want further reading. The science is explained plainly and with some extremely easy to understand metaphors. The rat and the lemon section for example was like a realisation of something you kind of always knew but when spelled out to you that human brains are not as complex as you might have assumed it seems so obvious once it is explained plainly how we tick. Each chapter even has a TLDR section at the end to recap and summarise the previous "lesson" or "message" the chapter is teaching you.

If I can summarise the messages I am getting from this book it is that no matter what problems you feel you have in your love life or with your body (and so many people seem to have such a variety of issues which this book gives examples of) it is that you don't have a problem at all and you are not broken you are completely normal and there are scientific explanations to explain why you are experiencing what you perceive to be problems.

If you want to unravel the ball of string in your mind that is your own perception of your or your partners (or societies) sexuality so you can see both ends of the string (and everything in between) I recommend this book. If you are a couple with a healthy sex life or a couple experiencing a perceived rough patch I would recommend this to both parties as it could improve anyone's understanding of their and others sexual self.

My reason for four stars rather than five is the same reason given as others was that at some points you feel like you are about to get an answer to one of your specific perceived issues (the reason you bought the book) and then the author will say "more on this in chapter 5" which can be frustrating but it definitely keeps you reading and learning more than just the specific issue you were looking for an answer for. This does make you learn a lot more than why you probably bought the book so it is beneficial to you, but if you wanted a quick answer to "why am I like X" it might frustrate you, but carry on reading and you will learn a lot more than you thought you would.

177 people found this helpful

Book fan

Missing the most important things

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 23, 2022

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A long book, that really just says that women should not be judged. This is completely true on one level.
On another level, no. As they say, a prison is not full of criminals, it is full of people who have committed crimes. Don't denigrate someone's worth but do criticise their actions.

A man who is 100 pounds overweight, drinks too much, smokes too much, should be criticised (constructively) by his partner. Does the same apply to a woman, not so much.

The book is about sex, generally this involves 2 people. In over 400 pages, men are mentioned on about 10 pages. There are some case studies, where men fleetingly appear, although the main case involves a lesbian couple.

How about a chapter on what women want, a chapter on what men want, a chapter on communication, a chapter on compromise.

A world with no men in, where women can do what they want without being judged, i guess is the feminist dream. But lets live in the real world. Women and men have to share this planet, a book on how we can get on better would be more useful. Not the feminist fantasy this book portrays.

18 people found this helpful

SophiaD_C

This book may change your life!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 24, 2018

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Honestly this book is amazing everyone should read it! After 3 chapters I immediately ordered a copy for my friend and since then I have two further women reading it. We have bursts of excited chatter whenever we pass in the corridor about what we've learnt. These are woman of all different ages from 25 to 60 and relationship status from single or married to divorced and we have all got something from it. Mainly that we are normal, everyone is normal.
If you are feeling worried about your sexual self is some way I encourage you to read this book, hell if you aren't worried read this book. It is easy to read and totally fascinating and may just change your life. It changed mine!

42 people found this helpful

Patrycja

Book every woman SHOULD read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 22, 2021

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This is absolutely one of the best positions I’ve ever read about women’s bodies and sexuality. I now recommend it to every friend. It is really informative, science-based but written in a easily understandable language with many amazing metaphors, facts, letters. Mentioning topics considered a taboo, the ones that are causing the most confusion and also making every reader feel comfortable and good in their own body. Basically the main thought of this book is that everything is normal and ok, whatever we are experiencing in our sexual life- it is absolutely fine. Especially for women who live in today’s porn culture with male sexuality set as default and women often feel ‘broken’ if they don’t act the same way- if u ever questioned yourself in any way- you have to read this!

8 people found this helpful

Daria Stachera

Very eye-opening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 7, 2019

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I have struggled with self-awareness and self-love for a long time. I'm not going to say this book cured me but its leading me in the right direction.
It's very thorough and goes into detail with real life examples and answers to questions I could find the answers to else where (internet etc).
Theres scientific background and research in this book which makes it alot more credible.
In general, the book makes me feel normal in regards to all the sexual issues I have experienced, it allows me to embrace my womanhood and free the sex goddess that I am.

15 people found this helpful

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Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life Paperback – March 3, 2015

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introduction

YES, YOU ARE NORMAL

the true story of sex

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if you feel broken, or know someone who does

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