The science-backed guide to having better sex

I'm Emily Nagoski. I'm a sex educator, and I'm the author of Come As You Are

the surprising new science that will transform your sex life. I'm like, it actually does

Chapter one, sex education. I became a sex educator for the nerdiest possible reason. When I got to undergrad

I knew I was going to be going to grad school for something. I had no idea what, but I knew I needed volunteer work on my resume to look like a good grad

school candidate. And a guy on my floor was pre-med, and he said, hey, come be a peer health educator with me

And I thought, I like health. So I applied, and I got accepted, and I started being trained to go into residence halls to

talk to my fellow undergraduates about condoms, contraception, and consent. While I was getting a degree in psychology with minors in cognitive science and philosophy

which I still love the brain stuff. You can tell in my work

I use it all the time. But the work I was doing as a sex educator made me like who I am as a person

in a way the academic stuff just never could. I could see the impact it was having

People's faces changing as they saw someone talking about condoms and sexual communication as if it were just, you know

talking about nutrition or stress management or sleep. That, look, this just can be a normal part of our lives

And watching the impact that it could have on people's lives is what made me choose that path

When I say that I teach people to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies

what I mean by that confidence for me is knowing what is true about your body, your sexuality

your life history, your relationship, your culture, your family of origin. Knowing what's true, even when it's not what you were taught is supposed to be true

and even when it's not what you wish were true. And joy is the hard part because joy is loving what's true

Loving what's true about your body, about your sexuality, about your family of origin, about your relationship, about your culture

Even when it's not what you were taught is supposed to be true. Even when it's not what you wish were true

When people can begin to understand what's actually true about your sexuality

because virtually everything we're taught about sexuality for the first two decades of our lives is wrong

So we have to unlearn all that stuff and relearn what's actually true

and then come to decide that what's true is something worth being

When people can embrace their own sexuality precisely as it is, it actually opens up space in their minds and hearts

to allow other people to have what's true about their sexuality. So I genuinely believe that a key part of world peace is sex education

I was teaching a class called Women's Sexuality at Smith College. I had 187 students, and it's a 100-level class, but I crammed in as much science as I could

into that class. And at the end of this really long, intense semester, the last question on the final exam

was just, tell me one important thing you learned in the class. and I thought they were going to say things like, oh, arousal non-concordance or attachment theory

And instead, more than half of my 187 students wrote as the final answer on their final exam

I learned I'm normal. I'm normal. I'm not broken. Just because I'm different from other women

doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me. I can trust my body because I'm normal

And anyone who's graded final exams will know that it's not usually like this. I sat in my

office and graded with tears in my eyes, feeling like something really important had happened for

my students. And I wanted to do it again. And I wanted to do it on a much larger scale. And that's

the day I decided to write Come As You Are. A mere five and a half years later, there it was

Chapter two, Understanding Desire. A lot of us were raised in what I started calling the desire imperative, that you have an obligation to experience spontaneous sparky desire for your partner and to sustain spontaneous sparky desire for your partner all the time

And so there's a lot of advice about how to keep the spark alive. And what I want to say is screw the spark

I maybe shouldn't say screw the spark. Forget the spark. What I want is smoldering embers for anyone in a long-term relationship

so that it is banked and ready to stoke, and partners have a shared vocabulary for understanding how to stoke the fire

to bring it to life for the times when you are ready to engage sexually

instead of doing all the other things that we could be doing with our lives

The number one reason couples seek sex therapy is for desire differential. One person wants to have sex more than the other person does. In heterosexual couples, despite stereotypes, it's actually just as likely to be the man as the woman who has low desire. Just to do away with that stereotype right now

And the reason people struggle so much with desire is because we have been lied to fundamentally about what desire is and how it works in terms of our sexuality

So how most of us think about sexual desire is as a spontaneous desire, where you're just like walking down the street

You have a stray, sexy thought. You see a stray, sexy person. And you have spontaneous desire

Erica Moen, who's the cartoonist who illustrated Come As You Are, draws it as a lightning bolt to the genitals

Kaboom! You just want the sex. And so you take your kaboom home to your partner and you're like, hello, partner, I have the kaboom

Would you like the sex? And that absolutely is one of the normal healthy ways to experience sexual desire, spontaneous desire

But there's also responsive desire, where instead of it just appearing like a lightning bolt, maybe you have a date night

You have like a sexy times night, and instead of being kaboom, you're throwing the last of the toys in the toy box

You're doing the last of the dishes. You trudge up the stairs. You take off your clothes

You put your body in the bed. You let your skin touch your partner's skin, and your body goes, oh, right

I really like this. I really like this person. That is responsive desire

It emerges in response to pleasure, whereas spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure

Just that information alone can resolve people's sexual desire problems because they realize they don't have a desire problem

They just have responsive desire. And if they set up the right context where they can put their body in their bed with their partner

and their partner touches their skin and it feels good, you are already doing it right

There's a sex therapist in New Jersey named Christine Hyde who uses this wonderful party metaphor

She says to the couples in her office, suppose your best friend invites you to a party

You say yes, because it is your best friend and a party. But then the date of the party starts to approach

And you like we have to find childcare There going to be traffic am I really gonna want to put my party clothes on at the end of a long week But you know what You said you would go

So you get the childcare, you deal with the traffic, you put on your party clothes, and

you show up to the party. And what happens? A lot of the time, you have fun at the party

If you are having fun at the party, you are doing it right. And my thing is, there's no amount of spontaneous longing to go to a party that will make the party you show up to worth going to

And if you're not having fun at the parties that are available to you, no wonder you don't want to go to the party

So there's sort of two situations. There's another sex therapist. She's a sex therapist and researcher, Peggy Kleinplatz, in Canada

who, in addition to doing group partner sex therapy, she also does solo partner sex therapy

So suppose a couple comes in to see her, and one partner says

I'm sorry this hurts my partner, but if we never had sex again, I would be fine. Peggy, as a sex therapist, her response is, so tell me more about this sex you don't want

Because it turns out, a lot of the time, the sex people describe is, as Peggy puts it

dismal and disappointing. And Peggy, as a sex therapist, will say, you know, I rather like sex

but if that's the sex I were having, I wouldn't want it either. And the question that her research

asks is, what kind of sex is worth wanting? If I were going to go all the way to the extreme

I would go so far as to say that there's no such thing as a disorder of desire. There's only a

disorder of pleasure, a lack of pleasure, a lack of access to pleasure. So that's one type of couple

that comes in with a question about sexual desire. The other type of couple comes in and says

yes, I really like the sex we have when we have it, and I want to want it, but I am just, I just

can't. I'm exhausted. I feel like the sexy place in my mind is a million miles away

And for these couples, it's not about figuring out where the pleasure is. It's finding a pathway

to the pleasure. One of the pieces of science that I love the most for this is Yach Panksepp

the father of affective neuroscience, developed what he calls the primary process emotions

lust is one of them seeking curiosity exploration oh what's that that's a second one and often the

seeking space the curious exploring part of our minds will have a doorway directly into the lust

space in our minds there's a play space place is a fundamental essential mammalian instinct it is

the fundamental social instinct. Play is bonding. When you're in play, that space in our minds

when you can get to whether it's word play or rough and tumble play, when you're in that space

it often has a doorway directly into the lust space. Care is a complicated one. Some experiences

of care, like caring for someone and feeling cared for, that's an experience that for a lot

of people is directly connected to the lust space. So if you can get there, that's when you feel

really good. But then there are the more aversive spaces. There's the fear space. If you're anxious

stressed out, overwhelmed, and you're in the fear space, that is as far away from your lust space

as you can get in your brain, just about. If you're in the rage or anger space, that's really

far away. People ask me this question, Emily, how am I supposed to want sex when I am so frustrated

with my partner because they're not listening to me about all these other things in our relationship

How am I supposed to want sex with that person? You are not supposed to want sex in that situation

That's not a situation where it is easy to get from the mental space you are in, in terms of

the primary process emotions, all the way to anything in the vicinity of the sexy space in

your brain. So the key is to get out of these aversive spaces and closer to the spaces that

are adjacent to lust, which means that when you're a couple who enjoys the sex you have

when you can get there, the solution has nothing to do with the sex and everything to do with

learning how to navigate through your emotions. How do you get out of the anxiety fear space in

your brain and into a play space. How do you get out of the anger rage space in your brain and into

a care space? Understanding each other's brains and what states you're in and how to help each

other get into and out of different spaces is the key because you already know how to pleasure

You have sex that you like. The key now is just how do I get there? So you map it out

The history of the science of sex therapy really has three major phases

The first is grounded in the work of Masters and Johnson, whose fundamental four-phase model of sexual response was what sex therapy was based on

Which aspect of those four phases was someone struggling with? Were they struggling with the orgasm phase

Were they struggling with the arousal phase? It was usually those two plateau

How were they struggling with the resolution phase? And interventions, sensate focus therapy specifically

were designed to address the phases of the arousal process. But when you listen to those phases, you've got arousal, plateau, orgasm, refractory period

You know what's missing in that? Desire. Because of the way Masters and Johnson were doing their research

people were just coming in knowing that they were going to get paid to masturbate to orgasm for

science. They didn't have to want it. They didn't have to experience desire the way in a relationship

you'd really hope that everybody involved in that sexual experience would want it

not just because they were doing it for science, though I'm in favor of people doing sex for

science. When Helen Singer Kaplan came along in the 1970s, she noticed, she looked at the clinical

notes of all the therapists in her practice and found that the cases where they were not

being successful were the cases where there was a desire problem and noticed that desire

was nowhere in the model they were using to treat sexuality. So she created the desire arousal orgasm model, the triphasic model, and it was a revolutionary

to add desire. So now we can develop interventions targeting specifically when and how much people want sex

And then, just as it was starting to feel really complicated in the late 90s

Rosemary Basson, for example, in Canada was developing the model of responsive desire

and we were needing a more neurobiological understanding of how this process worked

And Eric Janssen and John Bancroft at the Kinsey Institute had the wacky idea that sex works in the brain just like all the other things in our brain which is that it a pairing of excitatory impulses and inhibitory impulses

And so they started doing some survey research, and it turns out, yes, there is a sexual excitation

system and a sexual inhibition system. So the sexual excitation system is colloquially

it's the accelerator or the gas pedal. And it notices all the sex-related information in the

environment. That's everything that you see, everything that you hear, smell, touch, taste

and crucially, all the sensations in your body and everything that you think, believe, or imagine

that your brain codes as related to sex. And it sends the turn-on signal that many of us are

familiar with. Functions unconsciously at a low level all the time. Here we are talking about sex

so there's just a little bit of sex-related stimuli, so there's just a little bit of turn-on

signal being sent, but fortunately at the same time, your breaks, the inhibitory impulses

are noticing all the good reasons not to be turned on right now. Everything that you see, hear, smell

touch, taste, and everything in your body sensations and everything you think, believe, or imagine

that your brain codes as a potential threat, and it sends an off signal. So the process of

becoming aroused is a dual process of turning on the ons and turning off the offs. And it turns out

even though a lot of the sex advice that happens in the mainstream, when people are struggling with

any aspect of sexual response, pleasure, desire, arousal, orgasm, if people are struggling

Mainstream advice is usually about adding stimulation to the gas pedal, porn and role play and vibrators and handcuffs

And if you like those things, great, go for it. But it turns out when people are struggling, it's not usually because there's inadequate stimulation to the accelerator

It's because there is too much stimulation to the brakes. So developing interventions that focus on getting rid of all the things that are activating the brakes

which is a lot of them have nothing to do with the sex itself, but have to do with stress, body image, trauma, and relationship issues

Well, sex is far more a brain process than a genital process

We can experience sex anywhere in our bodies. If someone has a spinal cord injury so that they don't have any sensation in their genitals

they can still have orgasms by training their body to respond to other kinds of stimulation

because orgasm is a brain response. Arousal is a brain response. The biggest sex organ in your body is your skin

But the most important sex organ in your body is your brain

Chapter 3. What gets in the way of great sex? When people are struggling, it is much more likely to be too much stimulation to the brakes

that's causing the trouble rather than not enough stimulation to the accelerator

What are some common things that activate people's accelerators? The sight of their partner, the smell of their partner, reading a sexy book or watching a sexy

scene. Feeling a sexy sensation when you are already in a frame of mind where your brain is

ready to interpret that sensation as pleasurable. There's only one sense left. And the taste of your

partner's skin potentially. Things that can hit the brakes. I mean, it can be so many things

Stress. Actually, for 10 to 20% of people, stress can actually increase their interest in sex

It's like their body wants to use sex as one way to reduce their stress level, but for other people, stress may not impact sexual response or it can absolutely slam the brakes on

So stress is an important factor. body image is an important factor. If you're there with your partner and instead of noticing

the pleasurable sensations happening in your body or noticing the sexy things happening with your

partner, your brain is instead like worrying about like the shape of your thigh and what's

happening with your neck and your facial expression. And is your partner accepting all the things that

are happening? Are all those thoughts activating the accelerator? No, they are not. Those thoughts

are all hitting the brakes. So body image stuff is a major factor. Sexual trauma is a major

contributor. One third of cisgender women, one in six cisgender men, and over half of transgender

people have experienced intimate partner violence, power-based personal violence, sexual violence. And if you've had sex used against you as a weapon, what that has taught your dual control

model in your brain is that things that are sex-related are also a potential threat. So as

you become aroused, you also have the brakes turned on. And look, if you try to drive a car somewhere

with your foot on the gas pedal and on the brake at the same time, you might get where you want to

go. It's going to take a lot more gas, it's going to be slower and more frustrating, and you could

potentially do damage to something. So the process of healing from trauma and reclaiming your

sexuality, which, let me emphasize, people do every day. There are great evidence-based

interventions for rewiring your brain so that your brain no longer pairs the arousal process

with, this is a potential threat. When you can decouple arousal from, uh-oh, your brain is freed

up to do all the things that the accelerator can do, and your body becomes entirely yours again

When you come to a sexual encounter in a long-term relationship, and there's a lot of gunk built up in your brain about frustrations

little conflicts, the person was late to pick up the kids or didn't take out the trash when they were supposed to

that chatter in your brain about the frustration, about things that are not happening right now but happened in the past

that stuff is all hitting the brakes. And there's a pretty simple solution, which is to resolve the conflict so that your brain is freed up

It makes sense to struggle with interest in sex with a partner when you are feeling frustrated with them

when you are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by caretaking of children, or when the demands of living modern life

Nobody has sex particularly often. We are busy. why would we ever stop all the other things we could be doing the kids we might need to raise

the jobs we might need to go to the other friends we might want to hang out with the other family

we might want to pay attention to or god forbid we just want to watch some tv and go to sleep right

why would we stop all those other things and just do this frankly pretty wacky silly thing we humans

do of like touching our bodies together and putting our mouths on each other's genitals and

putting our tongues in each other mouths Why It makes sense that you would not want to do that when you are frustrated with a person for other reasons And it does make sense that you might want to do that because it can be really pleasurable

When I ask people what is it that you want when you want sex, the first thing they say is connection

The main reason people make the choice to have a long-term sexual relationship, for example

is so that they can have that moment of connection. So overcome the relationship conflict, which builds an opportunity to build even more connection between the two partners

Between partners. It doesn't have to be two. There is a little Cosmo quiz type survey in Come As You Are

You can actually get it as a free download, too, where you can take a sort of sexual temperament questionnaire to assess the sensitivity of your accelerator and your brakes

Because people do vary in that. And you can imagine if a person has a really sensitive accelerator and a very not sensitive break, what sort of sexual response are they going to have

Very easy to arouse and maybe difficult to prevent themselves from doing things when they expect unwanted consequences

This is actually the profile of someone who's at increased risk for sexual compulsivity, for example

And someone who has a low sensitivity sexual accelerator and a high sensitivity brakes, those are people who are at most at risk for sexual dysfunction in the first place

And actually, the research on folks who identify as asexual has shown that they are more likely on these surveys to report having a low sensitivity accelerator

So it is not that they have a whole lot of inhibition preventing them from being interested in sex

It's that it takes an awful lot of sex-related stimuli for them to generate any degree of interest in sex

But I will also say that most of us are heaped up in the middle

We are average in the sensitivity of our accelerator and the sensitivity of our brakes

So it can be helpful to take the survey maybe with partners to compare and contrast

But once you know that, the next step is to start making a little list

What are the things that I know activate my accelerator? What are the things that I already know are going to hit my brakes

This is just a starting point. It can be helpful to think of specific experiences you've had where things went really well

And you write down the things that activated your accelerator in that time that things went really well

And what sorts of things were not there that might otherwise have been hitting the brakes

And then you think about kind of like a not so great experience, not a terrible experience

We all know what's hitting the brakes in a terrible experience. but in a sort of like, well, that was some sex I had, like pizza

What is it that was hitting the brakes in those situations that prevented it from being great

And what was working? What was activating the accelerator? And this is a great starting point for having a conversation with partners

about what you know works for you in terms of creating a context

that allows your accelerator to do its job and frees up your brakes to get right out of the way

The most common reaction people have when they learn about the dual control model

especially in conjunction with responsive desire is, why did no one tell me this before

It's a kind of freedom to know that you're already normal. You are not broken. Nothing is wrong

You just need to work to create a context that allows your particular brain to be ready to

respond. And then there's also this frustration and sadness about all the years they have spent

trying to force their sexuality to be something else, something that there was no reason for them

to have to force it to be that other thing. And then they feel like they knew it their whole lives

because once you know it, you're like, of course this is how it works. And then they tell everyone

they know, and I feel like my job is done. Why focus on sex at all? Like, why do we do this

Why is it important? Why does it matter? The first answer I want to give is that it doesn't have to

There are some people for whom sex is never a particularly important part of their lives

There are people for whom in certain seasons or phases of their life, sex drops away

The first year of adding a child to your family springs to mind as a time when sex is not going to be close to the top of your priority list

is just going to go away while everyone in the family relearns who they are in this system

and re-understands what their body means for them and for their relationships

And when I ask people, what is it that you want when you want sex

Their first answer is connection. They want that interpersonal feeling. The second answer is pleasure

It feels good. The third answer is a variable that I have started calling freedom

People describe wanting to feel released from all their other life concerns

everything else, where they can't think about those things. Their body is just immersed in pleasure and this connection with this other person

where you simultaneously feel deeply in your body and deeply connected to the other body

that you are connecting with. And that freedom experience, they experience it as feeling

like you have dissolved into the universe. And why would we want to have an expansive experience

of feeling dissolved into the universe? Because that's what being a human is

is wanting to have an expansive experience of dissolving into the universe

And when you can do it with someone else, what else do we do where we feel like we've dissolved into the universe with somebody else

The simple beginner advice for how to begin incorporating the dual control model

into your own sexual well-being is to make these lists of things that activate the accelerators

and things that hit the brakes. But the reality of how our brains work is that it's much more complicated

because there can be certain kinds of stimulation that in one context feel amazing

and in other contexts make you want to punch somebody in the face

My usual example is tickling. If you are already in a fun, flirty, playful, aroused, trusting, loving frame of mind

and you're certain someone tickles you, it's not everyone's favorite, but you can imagine a world where that feels playful and good and can even lead to other things

But if you're in the middle of a fight with that exact same certain special someone and they tickle you, it is going to be very irritating

What? It's the same sensation. It's the same certain special someone. But the emotional context, by which I mean the actual activation in your brain, is different

That's the internal context is different. And so your brain interprets the sensation as exactly the opposite

It perceives it as being not pleasurable because the context is wrong or pleasurable because the context is right

Spanking goes the same way. There are a lot of circumstances where you absolutely would not want your partner to spank you

But if you're already aroused and have full consent and feel very trusting and your partner slaps you on the butt

that could feel really good, even though in a different context, It could feel painful and irritating

So that's the power of context. I mean, if you want to look it up on Google Scholar, which I highly recommend, what we're

looking at is the affective keyboard of the nucleus accumbens shell. So the affective keyboard means that we shift along the surface of the nucleus accumbens

shell so that when you are in a relaxed, playful, positive, pro-social state of mind, 90% of

the nucleus accumbens shell becomes devoted to approach motivation, responding to almost any

stimulation as something to move toward with curiosity. Oh, what's that? And when you are in

a stressed, non-social, avoidance state of mind, what the hell is that? 90% of the nucleus

accumbens shell becomes devoted to avoidance threat motivation. It will respond to almost

anything as something to avoid as a potential threat, even a stimulus that in a different

context, it might have responded to as something to approach with curiosity. The dual control model

sort of makes it sound like touch me here, don't touch me that way. It could be as simple as that

but that's not how pleasure works. The perception of a sensation in our bodies as pleasurable or not

depends on the context in which we experience it. And the context means the external circumstances

and our internal state. External circumstances, the bedroom door is locked. We know we're not

going to be interrupted. We're wearing the sexy underwear that makes us feel sexy. Our partner

made the bed with fresh sheets and we feel very cared for and they know how much the grid on the

sheets irritated us and they just took care of that for us. That's the external circumstances

The internal state is whether you are stressed, depressed, anxious, lonely, experiencing repressed rage, we've all got it

Or if you're feeling pro-social, playful, curious, exploratory, do you feel ashamed of your own sexuality

That's an internal state that is going to keep the brakes on and is going to make it really difficult for your brain to access pleasure

Or do you feel really curious about your sexuality? That's an internal state that will allow the brakes to release so the accelerator can do what it does

Yes, there's research on this, on differences between men and women. I mostly don't want people to think about their sexuality in terms of what the research says about them as a category of people

not least because the research is almost exclusively on cisgender people. So when I say here's what's true about men and women, I'm really saying here's what's true in the research about the people who participate in the research, and that's almost exclusively cisgender men and cisgender women

And yes, the research shows that among the cisgender people who participate in the research, women are more likely to have more sensitivity to context, while men are more sensitive to their own body sensations, their own arousal sensations

but there is enormous variability. Just because something is true for a group at the population

level does not mean it's true for every individual within that population. So if I say women are more

sensitive to context than men are, that does not mean that every woman is more sensitive to context

than every man. It means there's these tales where people are very different and this huge area of

overlap. So men and women are much more the same than they are different. Mostly the ways that we

are different are because we have been trained to be different. And until we raise an entire

generation of people without prescribing gender norms to them, we can't know how much of the

differences that we observe are because of anything innate in our bodies and how much of it is because

what we've trained people over the first two decades of their lives to believe is true about

their sexuality. If you want to understand yourself, there are worksheets that you can do

There are lots of other books that you can read. Talk to a therapist. Unfortunately, if you want to

explore these ideas with a partner, you are going to have to talk to your partner about sex. And

there are a lot of people who feel like having sex with their partner is a whole lot easier than

talking about sex with that same partner. Why? Because we are so worried about hurting our

partner's feelings. And because a lot of us are so sensitive to any level of criticism. Really

what it comes down to is tips for how to talk to your partner about sex. And rule number one

is praise and positive things. What are all the good things that are happening? And yeah

you're going to have to set aside whatever frustrations you might be having for now

but you have to build a positive trusting, you have to create a context for talking about sex

that feels safe. And like, if I say something that is not about me being 100% perfectly satisfied

that's not a criticism. There is nothing wrong. I'm just talking about my experience

and how we're going to make this work for us. One of the positive frames that you can use

is that you and I belong together in a sexual way, and I am interested in exploring the ways

that we can deepen our erotic connection. I want to know what works for you

I want to be able to tell you what works for me in a way that's going to feel good to you and not critical

If it's just you, read books, talk to friends, go to therapy, dig deep and explore

one of my favorite questions is to think about how you learned to feel the way you feel about

your genitals. So for example, I was not raised in a particularly sex negative household, just sort

of like a regular American sex negative household. And when I was about 11, my mom was driving me

home from the library. I think I had read the word vagina in a romance novel. And on the drive home

from the library, I asked my mom, what's a vagina? I do not remember the words she said, but I do

remember this like flash of emotion that happened inside her, this like shock and embarrassment and

confusion. So when we got home, I looked up vagina in the medical encyclopedia that we have at home

and that's how I learned what a vagina was. But my mom's reaction taught me how to feel

about a vagina. And I am totally sure that she did not intend to communicate shock and embarrassment

and confusion. She just, in that moment, had that emotional reaction. So that when I was 18 and being

trained as a sex educator, one of my first homework assignments as my training was to go home, get a

hand mirror, and look at my own genitals. And for some reason, as I went to look at my own genitals

I had this sense that I was going to confront an enemy. Why? Where did that come? I was never

explicitly told there was anything wrong with my genitals. But I looked because it was my homework assignment and I burst into tears because my genitals are just a normal part of my body like the soles of my feet or the backs of my elbows or the other body parts that I

don't look at that often. It's just integrated into all of the rest of me. It's not an enemy at all

And I had this sense of loving kindness and wanting forgiveness for all the enemy messages

I had been sending it for all those years without ever even knowing it. And knowing that story

being able to trace how I learned to feel about my body and how I transitioned, shifted my way of

thinking about my body, helps me to remember that I can actually change any attitude that I have

about my body, mostly by turning toward my body and my own internal experience with kindness and

compassion, those sorts of histories for ourselves can help us to rewrite the stories we were told

about who we're supposed to be as sexual people. The mindset to bring to the process of coming to

understand who you are as a sexual person and how you came to be this person is to turn toward your

own internal experience with kindness and compassion. So I have learned that people remember things

better, and they also believe you more when what you say rhymes. So here we go. If I could have

people remember only one thing, it would be pleasure is the measure. Pleasure is the measure

of sexual well-being. It is not how often you have sex or who you have it with or where you do it or

in what positions or even how many orgasms you have. It's just whether or not you like the sex

you are having. And if everybody involved is glad to be there, free to leave with no unwanted

consequences and likes the sex they are having, you're already doing it right. And all the other

pieces, all the other things that you could be worried about, like desire and orgasm, those things

will fall into place when you put pleasure at the center of your definition of sexual well-being

Are you enjoying the sex that is available to you? If not, no wonder you don't want it

And if you are, all we need to do is make sure you know the pathways from any state of mind you might be in

into the place where the pleasure lives by creating a context that makes it easy for your brain to access pleasure

Couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term are not couples who constantly can't wait to put their tongues in each other's mouths

They're the couples who know how to co-create a context that allows both of their brains to have access to pleasure

Chapter 4, The Orgasm So the first thing we should talk about is what an orgasm actually is

Then we should talk about how they actually happen, followed, of course, by why they sometimes don't

And then at the end, I'll give you some tips to have the biggest, most expansive orgasm you've had in your life

Nobody ever has to have this kind of orgasm. It's like running a marathon. It's a whole hobby that takes up a lot of time

Nobody needs to do it for their own well-being. You are fine just running a couple of miles

But if you want to use your free time to have, you know, brain-melting orgasms, I can tell you how to do that

I think people believe that orgasm is a genital function. It is not. Ejaculation is a spinal reflex, but orgasm is something that happens in the brain

When researchers measure orgasm, how they do it is they set up all kinds of machines around a person's genitals

and they put the person in a brain scanner, and they ask the person what their experience is

So we have three different ways of measuring orgasm. The most typical scenario is that a person has measurable contractions of the pubococcygeal muscle

which is that sling of muscle from your pelvic bone to your coccyx

It's also called the pelvic floor muscle. These rhythmic contractions are one marker of when orgasm is happening in the genitals

And sometimes when people exhibit those in the lab, they also report having an orgasm

Sometimes people exhibited those and they report that they did not have an orgasm

Sometimes people don't exhibit those rhythmic contractions and they report having an orgasm

When there is a mismatch between what's happening with the pelvic floor muscle and what a person reports

which one is correct? The person's report, that is right, people know

if they're the kind of people who are volunteering for a sex study, then know what orgasm is. So

orgasm happens in the brain and there is a reliable neurological marker for when orgasm

happens. And it depends how you measure it, which kind of machine you put someone in. If you measure

it one way, at orgasm, the prefrontal cortex goes dark. All of the inhibitory impulses just vanish

Orgasm is the disappearance of the brakes and the total presence of the accelerator

In a different kind of machine, the brain lights up everywhere. So depending on how you're measuring it in the brain, it's a whole brain response orgasm

You have to have a brain to have an orgasm. You don't need genitals

People have an idea about what orgasms are, mostly from the ways they've seen them represented in the media

Sex is a social behavior, so we learn a lot about it by watching

Unfortunately, virtually all of the orgasms that are available to us in the mainstream media and in porn are fake

And not what orgasm actually looks, sounds, or feels like. There are some exceptions

The classic example, of course, is when Harry met Sally, Meg Ryan

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! And then she just eats her sandwich. That's the classic. And that's absolutely like the porn kind

of orgasm. I'm sorry if I'm bothering people in other studios. Oh my God. This is my job

I have a PhD. Actually, what orgasm looks and sounds and feels like varies tremendously from

person to person. I went to a feminist porn conference in Toronto several years ago

And they were talking about how to represent real orgasms because real orgasms don't look like what orgasms are supposed to look like

And a porn star they were working with, the notes for her were, we want you to have a real orgasm from the kind of stimulation that gives you orgasms

And she was like, well, it's not penile vaginal intercourse. It's oral sex

And it takes a long time. And it's not a big show

And they were like, we are looking for what's real. And so oral sex from her partner took like 45 minutes and it looked like this

That what it can be in real life Even for a person whose job is ah ah ah So we learn about orgasm unfortunately from sources that benefit from showing us things that look and sound really interesting on screen

as opposed to things based on how they feel inside our bodies

and capturing how orgasm feels, I think to do it really well

you really have to rely on surrealism, like a drift into a non-representational image

That's sort of as far as I can go with that, about like, how do we learn what orgasm

We learn it from media and we learn it from porn. And then we think we are doing it wrong

if that's not what our orgasm is like. And we're not, we're doing it right

We're just not doing it the way we were told. And if other people have a problem with the way our orgasms actually are, those are not the people you have sex with

I can't use the sort of consensus definition that science uses because it describes it as a peak of pleasure

typically characterized by rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor muscle. And we know from the research that there are orgasms that don't have pelvic floor muscle contractions

We know that there are pelvic floor muscle contractions that don't have orgasms. And we also know that it's not a peak of pleasure because orgasm, like every other sensation, depends on the context in which we perceive it

How we experience an orgasm, is pleasurable or not, depends on the context in which we're experiencing it

So when you have a great sex-positive context, if your partner is around, you have a really loving, trusting, supportive, playful, sex-positive, shame-free connection, orgasm can feel really good

So when they understand that what orgasm actually is is not a peak of pleasure and it's not about the rhythmic contractions, it is just

Here's the definition I use. It is the spontaneous involuntary release of tension generated, neuromuscular tension

generated in response to sex-related stimuli. Notice I don't talk about how it feels

It might feel like you are melting into the universe. It might feel worse than death

I don't talk about the body parts involved. People can have orgasms from having their toes sucked

People can have orgasms from having their earlobes sucked. People can have orgasms through breath and imagination

So I also don't talk about types of orgasms because I'd have to talk about toe orgasms

and earlobe orgasms and imagination orgasms. And an orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm

They're happening in your brain. It's not about what body part is stimulated in order to make it happen

My definition actually goes back to Mashes and Johnson and Alfred Kinsey's original definitions

of orgasm where it's about the physiology, psychophysiology, and not about the body parts

and not about the sensation. Orgasm is not. I mean, these are the parts of the consensus

definition that I can't use. It is not a peak of pleasure. Whether or not orgasm feels good

is just like everything else about how we perceive sensation. It depends on the context in which

we're experiencing it. It can be a peak of pleasure. It can also be, you know, again

leftover pizza, that was an orgasm, or feeling like your body has betrayed you. And anything

in the whole spectrum of what an orgasm can feel like. It is not a genital response. Sometimes

genitals are involved, but genitals are not where the orgasm happens. It happens up here

A person whose genitals don't send a sensation signal up to the brain can still have orgasms

even though their genitals are not part of the process. And it is not hierarchical

I wish we would just stop teaching Freud to undergraduates. Freud belongs exclusively in the history of psychology

because Freud had some good ideas. I'm not saying he didn't. But this idea that clitoral orgasms are immature

and vaginal orgasms are mature, and all that means is orgasm generated in response to clitoral stimulation

versus orgasm generated in response to vaginal stimulation. He called vaginal stimulation more mature

because it's the kind of sex that is the baby-making kind of sex

He just invented this idea that one was better than the other. The only measure of an orgasm is whether or not you wanted and liked it

If you wanted and liked it, then it doesn't matter what kind of stimulation got you there

Was it chest or breast stimulation? Was it genital stimulation? Was it having your partner lick the back of your knee

Whatever works for you is what works for you. And there's no better or worse

And you know what? Even physiologically, we can't necessarily differentiate. If we're going to talk about the it's a girl package of genitals

it turns out now that only about a quarter or maybe a third of cisgender women

are reliably orgasmic from vaginal penetration alone. It's called unassisted intercourse in the researchers

which is one of those terms that just makes me laugh. Only about a third, at most, of cisgender women are reliably orgasmic

from vaginal stimulation alone. The remaining two-thirds to three-quarters are sometimes rarely or never orgasmic

from unassisted intercourse. And the reason for that is that the vagina is pretty far away from the clitoris

And we don't think it's strange that most people with penises, in the research it's almost exclusively cisgender men

are reliably orgasmic from penile stimulation. And we don't worry that they're immature

because they don't have prostate stimulation orgasms, which ultimately is the og

The penis and the clitoris are biological homologues, so doesn't it make sense

If stimulation of the penis is going to be reliable for those folks, then it makes sense for stimulation of the clitoris to be reliable for those folks, obviously

But even with vaginal penetration, because the clitoris is not just like the little nub at the top of the vulva

there's a thing called the silly meter as a sex educator. How much of a fool are you willing to make of yourself to communicate something clearly

Here's how far I go. If you imagine that my face is a vulva, my mouth is a vagina, my nose is the urethra

and my widow's peak is the head of the clitoris. But deep in like where my sinuses is

there's all the internal structure of the clitoris because the head of the penis is not all there is of a penis

and the head of the clitoris is not all there is of the clitoris. There's all this other tissue deep in the body

And in the same way, a penis swells with arousal as blood flow increases to the genitals

the clitoris swells internally, taking up more space and shifting its relationship to the vagina

so that for some people, when they have their vagina penetrated, they're actually getting stimulation of those internal structures of the clitoris

So it could be that if you're having an orgasm during vaginal stimulation

it actually clitoral stimulation that causing the orgasm but it the internal structures of the clitoris So we can even necessarily differentiate between which organ in your body is causing the orgasm to happen

So can we please stop talking about types of orgasms? And that's a request that I put out

not just to journalists and to everyday people, but to the researchers who need to stop studying

types of orgasm. Please study pathways, all the different ways people can access orgasm

But the more we try to break it down into the types, the more we create a context where people feel like they ought to be having all these different kinds of orgasms or else they're doing it wrong

We're creating a performance demand when we categorize them, even if we don't intend to

That is the inevitable impact it has. There's only one. There's a brain orgasm

So imagine you read, you know, a magazine at the checkout counter

and it's got a story about, here are the five different kinds of orgasms science says you could be having

When you see that it's the five you could be having, it's very difficult not to read that as should be having

or else you're not really meeting your sexual potential. And if you're not having those kinds of orgasms, you start criticizing yourself

Not having the right kind of orgasm. I shouldn't have an orgasm from this kind of stimulation

I should have an orgasm from this kind of stimulation. Are those thoughts, are they activating the accelerator

Not at all. Those self-critical thoughts are just hitting the brakes, making it more difficult for us to access orgasm

and to enjoy the orgasms if we manage to have them. The ironic intervention when you're struggling with orgasm

is take orgasm entirely off the table for a long time, months at a time

and just explore your erotic landscape. Experience high levels of arousal and lower levels of arousal

and feel what it feels like to approach orgasm knowing that you are not going to have one

You're not allowed to have an orgasm. So take orgasm off the table. The goal is pleasure

And when you start getting close to orgasm, oftentimes when people struggle with orgasm

as they get close, their brain starts to go into that spinning mode of like, am I about to have an orgasm? What if I'm about to have an orgasm

What if I'm not about to have an orgasm? Why haven't I even had an orgasm? Am I having an orgasm right now? And all that chatter is just making it more difficult because you have this

goal that you're trying to attain and you're monitoring whether or not you're attaining it

So if you take orgasm off the table, the only goal is pleasure. If you are enjoying the sensations

you're experiencing, you have already done it. You have already achieved your goal. And if you

practice arousal and pleasure for 15 minutes, that's 15 minutes of arousal and pleasure and

learning more about what these sensations feel like in your body. If you do it for half an hour

that is half an hour of arousal and pleasure and learning what these sensations feel like

without an orgasm of experiencing arousal and pleasure and what they feel like in your body

And that's ultimately how you learn to keep the brakes off so that you get all the way to orgasm

One of the common experiences for people who struggle with orgasm is this thing that sex therapists call spectatoring, where instead of enjoying the sensations that are happening in your body, you're sort of watching your body and worrying about it and thinking about, is your face okay

Should you be bending your spine in that direction? What about the cottage cheese on the back of your thighs

and all of that worry about your body is just keeping the brakes on and making it more difficult

for you to enjoy the sex you are having. Charles Carver is a researcher in Florida who

with his colleagues, developed this mechanism called criterion velocity and the discrepancy

reducing increasing feedback loop, which people instantly fall asleep as soon as I say that

So instead of saying criterion velocity and the discrepancy increasing reducing feedback loop

I just call it the little monitor. And it's as if there is a little monitor, not the lizard

but like a little watcher in your brain that knows what your goal is. It keeps track of how much

effort you put in toward that goal. And it notices how much progress you're making toward that goal

And it has a strong opinion about the ratio of effort to progress. So when you're, let's say

you're just like driving to the mall. So you've got this goal. You're like, I know how long it's

supposed to take. And so you get in the car and you start to drive. And you know what? You're

getting all green lights and it's really light traffic. And it's only been 10 minutes and you

are most of the way there. How does that feel? Like the whole world is organized around you

It's so rewarding and joyful. Yes. But suddenly there's a car in front of you and it stops too

early for a light that you would not have stopped for. And once you get one light, you know, you're

going to get all the lights. And then there's all this heavy traffic and it's been 20 minutes and

you're still not there, you start to feel frustrated. Your criterion velocity is not being

mecked. You're progressing too slowly towards your goal relative to the amount of effort that you are

putting into it. And you are therefore motivated to work harder, but still you're not getting to

the place that you want to go and you get increasingly frustrated. And ultimately you get enraged. And

then one day, for a totally random example, you're sitting on I-95 parked south of Philadelphia at

three o'clock in the morning for an hour because a tractor trailer blocked every lane of traffic

and you go from screaming like this, I was just get out of my way, to sobbing. I just want to go

home. I just want to go home. This silly example is about what happens when your little monitor

switches its assessment of your goal from being attainable to being unattainable. It pushes you

off an emotional cliff from frustrated rage down into a pit of despair. So imagine if that's what

happens when you're trying to get to an orgasm and you can't get to an orgasm and you think you're

doing all the things you're supposed to do to get to orgasm and you're still not getting to orgasm

Is that frustration going to make it easier? The reason we take away the goal entirely

is to help the monitor relax. Are you achieving your goal? If your goal is pleasure

and your little monitor is like, pleasure, check, then you're always satisfied

and you feel like the world is organized around you and your needs and your monitor is released

from the necessity of judging you and trying to motivate you to work harder

Working harder to have an orgasm is rarely the thing that's going to get people

where they want to go. And if people struggle too long and they feel like there's something wrong with them and they're broken

they absolutely find themselves in a pit of despair. And the number one tip when you are in that dark, difficult place of feeling like you are broken

because there's something wrong with your orgasms, connection with other people. Talk to people who will help you understand what's going on with your sexuality

If you have a partner who's fluent in these conversations, talk to that partner

If you have a friend who everybody's got like the friend who knows the things about sex, talk to that friend

Become that friend. Talk to a therapist. The most important response when you get to the pit of despair is connection with someone else

In the Pixar movie Inside Out, Joy is in an actual pit where things are forgotten

And she has this realization. that sadness, who is another character, joy and sadness have been trying to figure out their relationship

and sadness realizes as she remembers what has happened in the past with sadness

they came to help because of sadness. The purpose of despair, grief, sadness

It is the bat signal emotion. It is the beacon calling for connection

even though a lot of us are taught to hide our sadness away from other people

In reality, the most helpful, productive thing we can do is to share our sadness with someone else

when things get really difficult, when we're really struggling. And we can really struggle around an issue like orgasm, which seems so simple

but we're taught that our identities are tied to our ability to have orgasms

And if you're feeling in a dark place around orgasm, connection is the most important antidote to the darkness

The only measure of an orgasm is whether or not you wanted and liked it

If you practice experiencing pleasure without making it goal-oriented or trying to achieve orgasm

but rather just to experience all the pleasurable sensations your body is capable of

You win every time. And when you have those positive experiences rather than experiences that you judge yourself

because you failed or fell short of some goal somebody set, you are living cooperatively and joyfully in your body

which is actually going to gradually expand your access to pleasure. The more you practice pleasure, the more you deepen and expand your access to pleasure

Chapter 5. Redefining Sex

When we think about sex, people use words like sexual interest, sexual motivation, libido, sex drive

If you're me, you use sexual incentive motivation system. Lots of different words trying to describe the same thing

For the first half of the 20th century, scientists more or less treated sex as a drive

So a drive is a very specific kind of motivational system where an organism experiences an uncomfortable internal experience that pushes them out into the world to go solve a problem

So thirst is a drive. It pushes you out into the world to go solve the problem of a fluid imbalance

Consume more water, right? And the consequence, if you don't do that, ultimately, is you could die

Hunger is a drive. Thermoregulation is a drive. Sleep, even, is a drive

You can literally die of sleep deprivation. It takes a long time, and your brain will cheat and struggle to steal sleep

But you can ultimately die of sleep deprivation. Sex, it turns out, is not one of those

Instead, it is an incentive motivation system where instead of being pushed into the world

by an uncomfortable internal experience, you are pulled into the world by an attractive

something or other out into the world. Ooh, ooh, what's that? Curiosity, exploration is also an incentive motivation system

It is just as innate and just as natural as a drive system

It's just not an uncomfortable internal experience that pushes you to go solve a problem or else you could die

It is very simple to prove this. Frank Beach, who was an ethologist in the middle of the 20th century, 1956

went to a conference in Nebraska and said, No one has ever suffered tissue damage for lack of sex

The way I put it is nobody ever died because they couldn't get laid. If you want to prove to me that sex is a drive, show me the tissue damage

that an organism experiences because they do not have orgasms or because they do not have coupled

sex? Like what do we even mean by have sex? The thing you need or else you're going to die is sex

Does that mean you need a partner? Does it mean you need the release? Now at this point there is

almost always, if I'm teaching like a group of students, someone will be like, excuse me, ma'am

miss, Emily, I'm pretty sure I have experienced an uncomfortable internal experience when I could

not get the sex I wanted. And that is correct, you have. The sensation you're experiencing

is frustration. That little monitor that has goals and keeps track of how much effort you're

putting into it and how much progress you're making gets really frustrated that there is

something you would like a lot and gets really frustrated. And that's an uncomfortable internal

experience. And if you stay in a high state of arousal for a long time, that can eventually

feel uncomfortable, but there is no damage, there is no illness, there's no disease

and certainly there is no death as a consequence of either of those experiences. People don't die

of frustration. So it's pretty easy to prove, yet it took 40 years for science to transition into

broadly understanding sex as an intensive motivation system instead of a drive

We live in a world where some people are granted cultural permission to be entitled to sex

Like, they need it. It's a basic biological need for some people and not for others

And to say, no, it's not a need, unfortunately, historically, one of the ways this argument that no, it's not a need has been used is to say

and therefore no sex except in the context of marriage. And that is not the message that I want to send

The message I want to send is, it's not a basic biological need

which means you are not entitled to it. No one has any obligation to make sure you have enough of it

It is the oldest, most established piece of science in all of Come As You Are

and yet it's the only idea that has ever caused anyone on Twitter to call me a stupid ****

People have feelings about this because they feel like I'm taking something away from them

when in fact I am giving them the freedom to be able to experience sexual desire and know that

nothing bad is going to happen in response to that desire Their body is 100 safe I like to use the ogy of hunger If someone steals a loaf of bread because they starving a lot of us can kind of understand that and feel like really what we need is a world where

no one needs to steal in order not to starve so that they don't die

But if someone steals a loaf of bread because they're just really curious

about this other person's bread and they feel like they're allowed to steal somebody else's bread because they're so curious and interested in this bread

that's not the same, right? We're not just going to grant somebody permission to take something that doesn't belong to them just because they're very interested

So seeking exploration, adventurousness, wanting to try new things, novelty seeking, those are all incentive motivations

Where we're looking for, ooh, ooh, we're attracted to, ooh, that new thing, ooh, I want to try that

We can go ahead and say sex drive. I understand that that is much easier to say than sexual incentive motivation system

But we need to recognize that sex is not a thing without which you will die

and therefore when people try to take it without somebody else's permission

that is entirely unacceptable because they're not meeting a biological need, they're just expressing curiosity

The closest thing to a scientific argument for the idea that it might be a drive is

okay, if it's not about individual survival, it is about genetic survival

What about a drive to move my genes into the next generation

That is not how biological psychologists define the term drive. Drive is about individual survival

Sex is unique as an incentive motivation system because it's the only one that does

very occasionally result in the transmission of our genes into the next generation

But almost all of the sex that humans have, even before medical birth control

Almost all of the sex we have is non-reproductive. It is primarily a social behavior that we use to bond

Play is another incentive motivation system. Our motivation to have sex is almost exclusively social

The way we get motivated to have sex is that something sexually relevant happens in our environment

and our gas pedal notices that and is like, turn on signal

And you notice a sensation in your body maybe in response to that turn on signal

And that sensation is itself a turn on signal. And that goes up to your brain and you get even more turn on signal

And it, hmm, hmm, what's that? I want to move toward that

In the right context, you're like, I would like to explore further this sensation. It's motivating because it feels good in the right context

because it feels good if the context is right. Why do we have sex

Because it feels good. I feel like I need to mention, it is the case that a surprisingly large proportion

of the mass murders that happen are committed by people who declare

that their motivation is that they are not getting access to the sex

that they want and need. and their little monitor has gotten really frustrated

and that frustration has escalated past the rage point into the pit of despair

So while it is true that no one has ever died because they couldn't get laid, because we cling to this myth

that sex is a biological need to which people are entitled, it is the case that people have died

because we continue to believe this idea And not only can we save lives if we just understand that sex is a pleasure-based motivation

not a life and safety-based motivation, we can free ourselves into the joy and ecstasy that's

available to our bodies when we're not feeling frustrated and angry about a sense of failure

to get something that we feel like we're supposed to be able to get

If it's not about getting, but about connecting and sharing and feeling the sense of freedom that comes with letting go of the shoulds and embracing what is true as something that is worth being

Truly, truly, I believe it's part of how we get to world peace

You're going to save lives. I mean literally, like literally. And then we have people making arguments that there needs to be a distribution of sex to men who can't get laid

that women owe sex to men in order to save people's lives, to prevent these dangerous men from killing people

Women should be giving them the sex. And this was presented in a New York Times op-ed as if it were a radical idea

instead of just misogynist patriarchy like we've had for the past several thousand years

That is not a new and radical idea. That is same old, same old. The new and radical idea is pleasure is what matters

Connection is what matters. Authentic humanity is what matters. And we don't get those things through an entitlement and a false belief

that something we just really want is something we are entitled to and require for our safety

So the term neurodivergence refers to, it's in contrast to neurotypical, and it can refer to any sort of difference in the way your brain is wired

Some people include mood disorders or anxiety disorders in neurodivergent. ADHD and ADD, attentional differences, are part of neurodivergence, and autism spectrum disorders are part of neurodivergence

The language, just so people are clear, is neurodivergence is the phenomenon

A person is neurodivergent or neurotypical. People may be neurodivergent, but also alistic, which means they are not autistic

A question I have been getting more and more lately is how neurodivergence can impact people's

sexual functioning, specifically people on the autism spectrum. Autism is diagnosed based on three criteria

One is sensory differences which tends to be either hyposensitive or hypersensitive And when it comes to body sensations for a person on the spectrum it one of the standard narratives is that people on the spectrum prefer deep touch and pressure

instead of light touch or what we might consider stroking. And this maps on to the mechanoreceptors

actually in our skin. There's a different set of receptors that perceive light touch sensations

and people on the spectrum may perceive that sensation as really irritating and annoying

whereas they experience deep touch and pressure sensations as being more comfortable

So sensory sensitivities is one of the variables. Another difference is in social interactions

Having a very different way of reading social interactions, wanting things to be structured and have the rules be explicit

One of the questions I've been asked a few times is if there's a relationship between autism and interest in BDSM

And in a way, it makes sense just knowing about sensory differences

Maybe that's a person who's going to enjoy really intense, deep sensations like whipping, rope play, being tied up in bondage into different positions might feel really soothing and erotic and comfortable because of the difference in how you perceive sensations

but also because the rules of BDSM are much more likely to be explicit

to have a conversation about, like, here are the behaviors we're going to engage in

Here are the hard limits of things we are definitely not going to engage in. That's a pretty good match for how many autistic people prefer to have their social interactions structured

Make it explicit. Tell me what to expect. And let me know what my role is here

The third difference that's part of the diagnosis of autism is repetitive behaviors, having things work the same way, having patterns, having motor patterns, things that you do over and over again

So this is the stimming part where you see some people with autism hop or flap or use their bodies to express themselves in ways that are not the same as for neurotypical, as for allistic people

And it could be that wanting to have these more rigid, repetitive, ritualized ways of approaching sex is going to feel like a better fit for a person on the spectrum

And when you've met one autistic person, you have met one autistic person

Everyone is really different. So how their sensory differences and their social differences and their longing for routine or patterns is going to be very different from individual to individual

A characteristic experience of people on the spectrum is that they may have sensory overload

where there is just too much stimulation in the central nervous system, and they either melt down or shut down

Melting down is where you lose control of your mood, and you might rock and cry or shake

And a shutdown is where you blank out. You need to sit in the dark and be totally still

Sex is an intensely sensory experience, right? As people become more and more attuned to what their acceptable level of sensations are

they may begin to notice when they get to an overload place. And there's actually two approaches

The most typical suggestion is to reduce sensation, is to take all sensation away

to stop doing whatever it is you're doing, which interrupts the sexual experience

And sometimes that absolutely is the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing to do is simply to spread the sensation out so it's not all focused in a particular body part

One of the recommendations that I have seen in other places and have given to people, get a weighted blanket and lay it across your chest and arms and shoulders to have like an intense pressure sensation in a different part of your body from where you're being stimulated to spread the sensation out so that it doesn't feel overwhelming

in the same way that if it has rained on a tennis court and you want to dry off the tennis court

faster, do you gather all the water up into one place or do you brush, do you broom all the water

off the surface? You spread it out so that it will evaporate faster. So one of the ways to cope with

overload, if a sensation just feels like too much, that's too much, I can't do that, instead of

stopping, you spread the sensation out. So it's like rain will evaporate faster in the sun when

it's spread out. Because of the social differences with autism, you're trying to learn the rules. How

do I do it right? And if how you learn to do it right is by watching porn, then you're going to

engage in the behaviors that you see people engaging in in porn. And unfortunately, porn is

really poor sex education. Trying to learn to have sex by watching porn is like trying to

learn to drive by watching NASCAR. Those are professionals on a closed course with a pit crew

But if you're autistic and you're just trying to learn the rules of how to do this thing

then you do what you saw and you're doing it based on what the behaviors were rather than

noticing what the sensation feels like, what feels good in my body. And part of the unmasking

is recognizing that what feels good in my body might be different from things that I've seen

and there might be different limits on what kind of sensations my body tolerates

Confidence is knowing what's true and joy is loving what is true about you

This is the research we need to help folks on the spectrum

be able to identify what their preferred sensations are and what their limits are

and be able to love those as being just as valid and valuable as a neurotypical person's experience

Right now, the state of the research is dismal. One paper I read recently compared autistic people to healthy controls

And what do you notice about that language? Are autistic people unhealthy

No, they are not. Thank you very much. Not diseased. Please and thank you. So, the research has an extremely long way to go

We have a theoretical framework for exploring an extremely small number of studies, not

all of which are conducted in a way that the autistic people who are participating would feel good about And for me when you studying a vulnerable population which autistic people are

the research needs to be conducted and written up in a way that feels right for that population

so that there's not a way for it to be misinterpreted and exploited by people

who are inclined to other or stigmatize people on the spectrum. I have only questions, lots of them. I want to understand if there is a true correlation so that

people on the spectrum are disproportionately represented in the kink community, what is it

about that? What's going on with that relationship? And we don't even know yet if there is an

over-representation of autistic people in the kink community. It does seem like there's an

overreputation of people on the spectrum in the ace or asexual community. We don't know why that is

either, and I really want to know. Are there strategies, evidence-based interventions we can

use to help partners where one is neurodivergent and the other is neurotypical, help them to

communicate effectively across that difference about what they need and want sexually? Are there

differences in how we should be doing sex education for different experiences of neurodivergence

Different ways I should be teaching neurotypical people versus the way that I would teach a group of autistic people

I don't know any of those answers. And I need all of them yesterday. So here's an exercise that helps you to expand your orgasms

Anyone with any set of genitals of any gender identity can practice this

You can do it alone or with a partner. This takes about an hour, generally

And it takes a lot of practice. you got to choose how you spend your time. You could do this or you could just like watch Netflix

It is not necessary in order to be a sexually well person by any means. It is the equivalent

of running a marathon. Nobody needs to do it, but if you need a hobby, I recommend this one

Versions of this are part of tantric meditations where they use kundalini breathing in order to

access different spiritual states. But ultimately, it's about the physiology of how orgasm tension

generates and dissipates. And when you can get to a place where as much tension is coming in

as is going out at the same time, it's like every cell in your body is resonating at the same rhythm

like you're a bell that's ringing. You're going to notice some things about this practice that

will probably remind you of mindfulness or other forms of meditation, especially breath meditation

I'm going to ask you to pay attention to the sensations that are happening in your body

And that comes really easily to some people. And for others, it is quite difficult. They get

distracted. And that's fine. Like a mindfulness practice, if you notice other distracting thoughts

come along, maybe it's a thought about body self-criticism. Maybe it's a thought about the

past. Just hello, distracting thought. I'm going to put you on a shelf right now, and I'm going to

turn my attention back to the sensations that are happening all over my body. Every orgasm is

different from every other orgasm, but there are some strategies that work for a lot of people

to move in the direction of having quite an enormous orgasm. You imagine arousal from like

zero, not at all aroused, to 10 currently having an orgasm. You stimulate yourself in whatever way

works for you up to about a five. And then you allow that arousal to dissipate. You let yourself

get back down to a one. So a one just feels like just barely any attention drifting toward orgasm

And then you stimulate yourself back up to a six, right? This is still a middle level of arousal

You're not very aroused. You're nowhere near orgasm. And then you allow your arousal to drift

back down to two. And then you stimulate yourself back up to a seven. And if you are at the beginning

of this process, you're going to be learning what seven feels like versus a three, which you're going

to let your arousal drift back down to a three. And then you're going to go up to an eight. And at eight, you're real aroused. You might see the orgasm train come into the station

It's not there yet, but you can hear it. There's a whistle. And then you allow your arousal to drift

back down to a four or a five. And then you go up to an eight and a half. Go back down to a six

and up to a nine. Now, when you get to a nine, the erasim train is pulling into the station

and the doors are opening and you would like to get on, but you're going to put active effort into

allowing your arousal to dissipate. Remember, it's neurophysiological tension. So you're just

going to allow the tension. You're literally going to breathe and soften all the muscles of your body

because as you get to that eight, eight and a half, nine level of arousal, you're going to begin to

experience carpopetal spasms, carpal, like carpal tunnel syndrome. Your hands are going to clutch

and your feet are going to point your ankles. And that's involuntary. And you're going to make a

voluntary choice to soften all of your muscles and let your arousal go back down to a seven

which is a high level of arousal, but it's not an eight or a nine. And you go back up to a nine

and a half. Now at a nine and a half, you've got one foot on the train and it might feel like it's

pulling out of the station. And you know what, if the train pulls out of the station while you're on the orgasm train, oh dear, you had an orgasm. That's not failure, right? But if you can, you keep

your foot off the orgasm train and you go back down to an eight, nine and three quarters, and an

eight and a half, and a 9.85, where you are really close, like you can feel the orgasm right there

and you're going to soften all the muscles in your body from your core out to the periphery

And at this point, you are oscillating right at the peak of where orgasm is

And if you can maintain a balance of tension generation and tension relaxation

you can stay in that state and sustain it indefinitely. Want to support the channel

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