The key ideas

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

Emily Nagoski, 2015

Why does a touch that felt lovely yesterday get on your nerves today? Emily Nagoski gathered the research on how desire and arousal work and showed that, when it comes to sex, the brain has not just an accelerator but a brake as well. You will learn what hits the brake, why your body and your feelings can say different things, and why desire does not have to show up on its own.

Who it is for

For adults who have ever wondered whether they are normal in bed. And for anyone who wants to understand a partner's desire instead of guessing at it.

Women are not a broken version of men. They are women.

The question people ask in a whisper

For years Emily Nagoski taught classes on health and sexuality at Smith College. People came to her with every kind of question about sex, and behind most of them was the same one: am I normal? One woman wants sex too often, another too rarely. One gets turned on by the "wrong" things, another doesn't get turned on at all. Behind every story was the fear of being broken.

Nagoski is a researcher. She worked at a center called the Kinsey Institute, one of the leading places in the world for the study of sexuality. In 2015 she gathered into one book what science had learned about women's desire over the past few decades. Four women walk through the book, among them Camilla and Laurie. They are not real people. Each is a composite, drawn from the stories of many women the author worked with.

The main idea of the book is simple: everyone's sexuality is their own, and everyone is normal. Trouble in bed usually doesn't come from something being wrong with you. It comes from living in a context that doesn't suit desire, or from believing something untrue about how things are supposed to be.

In twenty-five minutes you will learn how desire's accelerator and brake work, why context decides almost everything, and why desire doesn't have to come first. The book is written about women, but much of it will help any adult who has a body and someone close to them.

Same parts, organized differently

Nagoski opens the book with anatomy, and for good reason. In the first weeks of life, every embryo is built the same way, no matter what it will be at birth. Then different organs grow out of the same tissues. This is called homology: the organs share an origin. The head of the penis and the clitoris grew from the same tissue. So did the scrotum and the outer labia.

That gives the book its central image. Everyone has the same parts, just organized in different ways. And no two are alike. Labia can be long or short, symmetrical or not, and come in different colors. All of these are normal variations, not defects. If the body itself shows that people share one blueprint but are put together differently, it makes no sense to expect desire to work the same way for everyone.

Why does this matter beyond anatomy? Because everything else works the same way. Desire, arousal and pleasure are built from the same mechanisms in everyone, but tuned differently. So comparing yourself to someone else's body, or someone else's desire, gets you nowhere.

Nagoski shows how much shame rests on not knowing your own body. It's hard to feel good about something you have never looked at and can't even name.

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About the author

Emily Nagoski is an American researcher and sex educator. She earned her PhD at Indiana University, worked at the Kinsey Institute, and directed the wellness education program at Smith College.

All books by this author: Emily Nagoski

Terms from the book

  • Nucleus accumbens
  • Chivers
  • Attachment
  • clitoris
  • Berridge
  • Self-compassion
  • Stress response
  • Smith College: A private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, USA. Nagoski directed its wellness education program.
  • Camilla: One of the book's four main characters. Not a real person, but a composite drawn from the stories of many women the author worked with.
  • Laurie: Another of the book's four main characters, also a composite: a mother whose job, kids and exhaustion snuff out her interest in sex.
  • Homology: A shared origin of organs. Male and female genitals develop in the embryo from the very same tissues.
  • Dual control model: A scientific model of sexual response: the brain runs an excitation system and an inhibition system. Nagoski calls them the accelerator and the brake.
  • Kinsey Institute: A research institute on sexuality at Indiana University in the USA, founded in 1947 by the biologist Alfred Kinsey.
  • Bancroft: John Bancroft, a British sex researcher, former director of the Kinsey Institute and one of the authors of the dual control model.
  • Janssen: Erick Janssen, a sex researcher at the Kinsey Institute who proposed the dual control model together with Bancroft.
  • Nonconcordance: A mismatch between how the genitals respond and what a person feels and says about their own arousal.
  • Bonobo: Pygmy chimpanzees, great apes from Central Africa. They are known for using sex for many things, including making up after a conflict.
  • Spontaneous desire: Desire that seems to appear out of nowhere, before any touch, from a thought or an image.
  • Responsive desire: Desire that appears in response to touch and closeness, not before them. A term Nagoski made widely known.
  • Meta-emotions: Feelings about your feelings: for example, shame about wanting something, or worry about not wanting it.

All terms

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