Come As You Are: Audio Preface Part 1

In this opening episode of the audio preface to the revised edition of Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski explores one of the most common and misunderstood questions in long-term relationships: what happens when you don’t want the sex that’s available to you?

Drawing on new research, personal stories, and years of conversations with readers, Emily reframes the conversation around desire — shifting the focus away from spontaneous libido and toward a more meaningful question: is the sex you’re having actually worth wanting?

This episode is a compassionate and eye-opening exploration of responsive desire, pleasure, emotional intimacy, and what truly creates fulfilling sexual connection over time.

Transcript

Greetings, Feminist Survival Project listeners. Emily here, Not Amelia because she gets understandably a little skeeved out when she hears me talking about sex. This is a very special addition to the Feminist Survival Project feed. In March, I have an updated and revised edition of my first book, Come As You Are, Being published and I have created this three-episode series as a preface to the changes that I've made in the new edition. I'm really proud of it, And I hope you enjoy it. I've heard that in a long-term relationship, You shouldn't wait until you're horny. You should just do it. But the thought of that makes my skin crawl. What should I do? Hey there, Friends. I'm Emily Nagoski, Sex educator and award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller, Come As You Are, The surprising new science that will transform your sex life. It was published originally in 2015, And in March of 2021, Come As You Are, Or Kaya, As I call it, Will be re-released, Updated, And revised with lots of new science and information to make it even better. Not to brag, But Kaya was already a really good book. It helps people. Therapists recommend it to their clients. Medical providers recommend it to their patients. So why revise a book that has lots of people already telling me that it has changed their lives? And a few people told me that it literally saved their marriages. Or very occasionally, People have told me that it literally saved their lives. These are important things and ways that I know the book is reaching people. Well, Part of my motivation was that the science has grown and expanded. My specialty as a sex educator is that I bring the science, And I wanted to incorporate the new science into the book. But the most important push to update the book came from readers themselves. At the same time that some people were telling me that the book was changing their lives and saving their marriages, I was getting asked questions that pushed me, Challenged me to work harder, Think more clearly, Get deeper into the science, And into our emotional relationship with the ideas in the science. So in this three-part audio preface to The New Come As You Are, We'll hear three of those most important questions readers asked me since 2015 and how I adapted the book to give the best answer I could. If you already love Kaya and you wonder if it's worth getting the new edition, I hope this preface helps you decide. If you've never read Kaya and you never plan to, Welcome! I hope these three episodes teach you something that makes your sex life better. And if you've never read Kaya but you think you might, I hope you know that these three episodes could be accompanied by dozens more just like them, Answering questions that are answered in the original Kaya and in the new one. So let's get to this first extremely important question. It's possible that this question is the most important in terms of providing information that will make people's sex lives better, Especially if they're in a long-term sexual relationship. I've heard that in a long-term relationship you shouldn't wait until you're horny. You should just do it. But the thought of that makes my skin crawl. What should I do? Let me emphasize, Though this question has been dramatized here for your listening pleasure, These are real questions asked by real people in conversations that I really had. And behind this question there were so many struggles, So much conflict and hurt. I knew that what I offered in the original Kaya couldn't help this couple in the way that I wanted to help them. See, They're asking a question about desire. How do we keep wanting sex with someone after many, Many years and potentially much, Much drama? What I say about desire in Come As You Are is that most of us are raised believing that desire is spontaneous. It just appears out of the blue. You think a sexy thought or you see a sexy person, You're just walking down the street minding your own business and kaboom! Erika Moen, The cartoonist who illustrated Come As You Are, Draws spontaneous desires, A lightning bolt to the genitals, Kaboom! You just want some sex. Oh, Can I get me some sex, You think to yourself. And so you go home to your partner with the kaboom! And you say, Hello partner, How about the sexy times? I got the kaboom! That is spontaneous desire and that is one of the normal healthy ways to experience desire. It just appears out of the blue. Spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure, Is how I put it now. And that is one of the normal healthy ways to experience desire. But there's another one where spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure. Responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure. So for example, You're just like sitting there flipping through the pages of a magazine, Not really thinking about anything in particular. You're certain special someone comes over whom you're feeling very loving and trusting and affectionate with. And they start like saying very sweet things. And that activates some degree of, Oh, That's nice. Pleasure. And a little bit more stimulation, Maybe they like touch you in a very nice, No pressure, Delightful kind of way. And your brain receives that stimulation goes, Oh, And then like a little more stimulation happens. And you eventually your brain goes, How about we sexy times? How about that? That's responsive desire. Another way that it can often show up in a person's relationship is in the form of like a date night where maybe you're not so much in the mood. But you know what, It's Saturday at three o'clock, You me in the red underwear, Let's do this thing that we said we're gonna do. Right? And so you show up, 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. And responsive desire is a normal, Healthy way to experience desire. Now, Even though responsive desire is a 100% normal, Healthy way of experiencing sexual desire. Most of us, Like I said, Are raised believing that spontaneous desire is kind of how it's supposed to work. And so in the first version of come as you are, A lot of the real estate of chapter seven, The desire chapter is taken up by helping people find strategies to increase access to spontaneous desire. I was assuming that for almost all readers, Responsive desire is going to be intact, Because responsive desire is intact for almost all readers, It's quite rare that someone would lack both responsive and spontaneous desires. And when that's the case, Either there is some serious relationship issues, Some serious trauma history, Or maybe the person is asexual, And they just do not have any experience of sexual desire at all. And all of those things have different kinds of solutions. And what most readers are looking for is how can I increase spontaneous desire, But that does not help the person who asks what if I put my body in the bed and show up on date night, You me in the red underwear Saturday at three o'clock, And I don't go, Oh, I really like this. What if my body goes squick, I don't want to be near this person. One of the things I learned pretty much immediately after come as you are came out is this beautiful analogy used by the sex therapist, Christine Hyde in New Jersey, She says to her clients, That sex is like being invited to a party by your best friend, You say yes to the invitation, Because it's a party, And it's your best friend. But as the date of the party approaches, Maybe you start thinking, There's going to be all this traffic, We have to find childcare, Am I really gonna want to put on my party clothes at the end of a long week. But you know, You said you would go, So you put on your party clothes, And you show up to the party. And what happens then, Most of the time, You have fun at the party, Right? And if you are having fun at the party, You are doing it right. Even if as you were getting ready, A little part of you was like, I don't know, Is this the right thing to do? And it ended up being absolutely the right thing to do. My little addition to this is there's no amount of like really hankering to go to a party that will necessarily make that party worth going to. If you don't like any of the people there, If it's not serving the kind of food you like, Or you're allergic to the kind of food that's there, You don't it's not playing your kind of music. Other people there are really shy about dancing when you really love to dance and want to get out there. If it's not the kind of party you enjoy going to. Now let's apply this reasoning to the question that came up. What happens if the idea of putting my body in the bed and just showing up to the party makes my skin crawl? This is obviously a situation where it's not a lack of desire. That's the problem. It's a lack of pleasure. This person does not like the sex that is available when they put their body in the bed with their partner. There is something happening in the relationship, In their bodies, That means this is not the kind of party they want to be attending. They don't even feel safe at this kind of party. So by 2016, I had started to frame it differently. I, Okay, So first of all, Something I learned is that when what you say rhymes, People believe you more. They remember it better and they believe you more. So I made it rhyme. Ready? Pleasure is the measure. Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. It's not what you do or how often you do it or where or with whom or in what position or how many times a day. Not even how many orgasms you have. What matters is whether or not you like the sex you are having. When you put pleasure at the center of your definition of sexual well-being, All the other pieces of sexual well-being cascade into place. If you like the sex, Then you'll be motivated to show up, To go to the party, To create parties that you like going to. So this was all well and good and helped the people I was talking to. From a rhetorical perspective, I had a clearer way to talk about these things. It wasn't about creating more spontaneous desire. It was creating more pleasure so that you would want to show up and create responsive desire. But then, Oh, It was the research of Peggy Kleinplatz's team in Ottawa that offered an empirical framework for talking about pleasure as a total replacement for talking about desire. Peggy and her colleagues interviewed dozens of people who self-identified as having extraordinary sex lives. And then they spent a long time analyzing these interviews, Looking for patterns and themes. What does extraordinary sex look like in actual real life? How does a person create that sex? How do you get to be a person who has extraordinary sex? And is there anything we can learn from these extraordinary lovers that can help couples who are in distress, Like the couple who asked this question? Could it help someone who is disgusted by the idea, Turns out? Yes. When you look at the research on these extraordinary lovers, Peggy and her colleagues found eight characteristics of what they called optimal sexual experiences. And chapter seven is now full of the extraordinary lovers. I draw specifically from Kleinplatz and Maynard's book based on this research. The title is the best title of any sex book in the history of ever, And it beats out maybe even Come As You Are. Their book is called Magnificent Sex. And the title of my desire chapter is now Spontaneous, Responsive, And Magnificent. This is the big change to Come As You Are. I cut all the stuff about building access to spontaneous desire because who cares about desire? Desire is beside the point, Which is bananas, Right? Because desire problems are the most common reason couples seek sex therapy, And desire might be the thing I get asked about more than almost anything else. And yet, The deeper we dig into the research, The more we learn that desire is not the point. Pleasure is the point. Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. Magnificent desire comes from what Peggy Kleinplatz describes as sex worth wanting. Ah! And the extraordinary lovers put a great deal of time and effort. It matters to them that they learn what kind of sex is worth wanting in their life and in the lives of their partners. People of every sexual orientation, Every gender identity, Every kink, Vanilla, Monogamous, Polyamorous. It matters to them that they find whatever it is that creates sex worth wanting. It is a priority for them. Magnificent desire is not just show up and put your body in the bed, Let your skin touch your partner's skin, And your body goes, Oh, Right, That's really great. Magnificent desire. I'm just, I get excited about this. I'm going to go ahead and read a chunk out of the new book that I feel like captures what the whole new chapter is about. People who have magnificent sex don't just show up and put their bodies in the bed, E. G. Good sex. They deliberately cultivate a context that's just safe enough to dare the leaps of faith they take into the wild places in their souls. That's magnificent sex. And out of the blue desire has almost nothing to do with it. When people who have magnificent sex want sex, They don't just want the sex we see performed in mainstream media or porn. They want to know themselves and their partners more fully. They want to be seen and known more fully, Felt more deeply, Held more closely. This is what I call magnificent desire. And yeah, It's a super bonus extra. If what you're experiencing in your life is responsive desire, Where you schedule the sex and you show up and the sex you have is pleasurable and enjoyable and everybody enjoys going to the party that you're creating, You're doing it right. You're doing great. It's you're like a person who like, You know, Jogs regularly for their health and for their well-being. Magnificent desire is more akin to training for a marathon, A marathon that you may never run, But you're just in training for it. Just like digging deeper into your own experience. What can the magnificent lovers teach us that will help someone who asks the question, What happens if when I put my body in the bed, I do not like the experience? The answer for folks, If this happens, If it's maybe there's relationship stuff going on, Maybe there's a big old trauma history and maybe the person is asexual, The magnificent lovers offer us one key way to understand what the next step can be. What kind of sex, As Peggy Kleinplatz puts it, Is worth wanting. Peggy and her colleagues also write that what we have often treated as low desire may be more accurately understood as the natural consequence of dismal and disappointing sex. If you don't like the sex, Of course you don't want the sex. Well, Once I start talking about it, Right? When you hear it, You're like, Oh right, Obviously, Of course. And yet, How often have you worried about whether or not your desire was at a normal level? Compare that with how many times you've worried whether or not your sexual pleasure was at a normal level. Do you like the sex you're having enough to want the sex that you're having? What kind of sex is worth wanting and what would you be willing to do to create that sex in your life? How much time would you spend? Look, Sex is, It has a couple of things in common with sleep. One of the things it has in common is that while you're doing it, You can't be doing much of anything else. It's really sort of like a unitask kind of activity. So to have sex requires that you cordon off space and time in your life that could be used for like, Maybe you got kids to raise, Maybe you got a job to go to, You got friends and family to spend time with, Maybe, God forbid, You just want to watch some TV and then go to sleep, Right? So having sex requires that you stop doing all those other things and just do this wacky, Silly, Glorious thing that we humans do of rubbing our body parts and fluids against someone else's or some other one else's skin and fluids. Why would we do that? It has to matter enough. It has to be worth having. It has to be worth wanting and it is normal. I'm gonna say a sentence out loud and when I say it, You're gonna be like, Emily, It took you 25 years and a PhD to figure this out, But it's also going to be transformative in your life if you're not already thinking about it this way. It turns out it is normal not to want sex you do not enjoy. I know, Right? So chapter seven is transformed. It is no longer about here's how strategies to create access to spontaneous desire if you're interested in building on responsive desire. It says, I know desire matters to you. I know we live in a world that has taught you that the extent to which you are dissatisfied with the amount of sex you are currently having, That is to say, The amount that you desire sex is a measure of your well-being, But it is not how much you enjoy the sex you are having is the only way to assess your own sexual well-being and you're the only one who knows what kind of sex is worth wanting for you and what kind of sex is available to you given your life. There are times in life when it is not reasonable to expect extraordinary, Intense, Much less frequent sexual experiences. If you've got a new human living in your home, If one of you gave birth to that human, If you are financially hugely unstable, If you're in the middle of an enormous shift emotionally in your relationship, That's not necessarily going to be a time when sex is a priority for you and that is normal and good. The key is that you and whoever you're engaging with sexually can have a conversation about what kind of sex you both enjoy having that is worth closing the door on all the other things you could be doing and just turning toward each other in a spirit of eroticism. Which brings me to a story about myself. I don't talk about myself very often for reasons and I've only told this story a couple of times. Okay, So I actually told it one time at the very smallest of TEDx talks that I've given. It was a little room in a library. It seated maybe 50 people and then Ted posted the talk on their main page and now it's got millions of views. So I've kind of told this story millions of times, But let me tell it to you now in a fresh, Unscripted way. There is an irony to writing a book about the science of sexuality. Even though you're spending all day long writing and thinking about sexuality, You're so stressed out that you don't have any interest in actually having any sex. So for months, No sex for me. And then I went on the road and traveled talking to anyone who would listen about the science of women's sexual well-being. And again, So stressed out, I would follow my own advice. When I got home, We'd have these dates, You and me in the red underwear, It's 30 o'clock Saturday afternoon, Put your body in the bed, Let your skin touch your partner's skin, And I would just burst into tears and fall asleep. And my partner is so patient, With no pressure, Completely understanding the nature of responsive desire, He granted me all the space that I needed. But as the space grew, Some feelings came in to fill up that space. It was not empty. We both felt isolated. We felt sad. We felt maybe a little rejected and hurt. I was worried that there might be something more substantial wrong with me. All of these feelings accumulated in the space between us until finally, When we had the opportunity, We turned toward that space. We turned toward each other and looked across this vast vista of all these difficult feelings that existed between us. And we had to do the work of finding our way back to each other. And no, It was not so simple as just putting our bodies in the bed, Letting our skin touch our partner's skin and going, Oh, Right, I really like this person. I really like this. We had to take each of those difficult feelings that had arisen all the times that we felt hurt and rejected and process it and forgive the person who caused it and apologize if we were the person who caused it. And we had to use this process of reengaging with each other as a kind of foreplay, Working our way gradually toward sex worth wanting. Our barriers were not about problems that existed in the quality of the sex. It was barriers in the quality of our connection, Which had been built up because of external problems standing between us and desire. I am the luckiest of the lucky ones to have a partner who is willing to do this sort of work with me. When people want sex advice, They usually expect, You know, Sex toys and lingerie and handcuffs and role play and watching porn and all that stuff. And that's great if you like it, Do it. And it turns out when people are struggling, Particularly over the long term with sexual connection, What it takes to repair the damage and build a bridge to the kind of sex lives that you long to have, It requires much less erotic kind of work and much deeper, Intimate work, A willingness to say, This is the kind of sex that is worth wanting. And here are the things that stand between me and my ability to get to that sex with you. That kind of communication takes so much kindness, It takes so much patience and a willingness to be wrong and to allow the little hurts that inevitably pop up because we are so tender around these issues. It takes being able to notice those hurts as they happen and heal them right away. So they're just little paper cuts instead of becoming deep, Festering wounds. This is not the story we are usually told about how sexual pleasure works, About how sexual desire works. We imagine it as spontaneous, Rabid, Can't wait to put my tongue in the other person's mouth kind of feeling like we're all living in Bridgerton. The thing is, We are all living in Bridgerton, But there's a whole lot of conversation and planning that goes into creating the intense Bridgerton moments. Anybody who hasn't watched Bridgerton, It's this Netflix series. It's based on a series of romance novels and there's a lot of super wicked hot sex in it. And I recommend it. It's very entertaining, But it is an example of the kind of sex we are taught to expect that isn't actually what great sex looks like. If you want to find out what great sex looks like in real life, You can read Magnificent Sex. You can read chapter seven of The Newcomers You Are. You can read any of Peggy Kleinplatz's research. We'll put a link to some things in the show notes. And I want to live in a world where all of us have access to whatever kind of sex is worth wanting for each one of us. And that does it for this first episode of the audio preface to the new edition of Come As You Are. Thank you so much for listening. If you're a therapist or a provider who uses Come As You Are with clients or patients, I recommend transitioning to using the new edition in particular because of this question and the big changes to chapter seven. It's available for preorder wherever books are sold. And as always, I recommend supporting your local bookseller whenever you can. I'm starting a newsletter type thing soon. If you'd like to read more sex related Q&A's once a month or maybe every three weeks or something, There's a subscription link in the show notes. If you have any questions about sex yourself, You can email Kayapod at gmail. Com. C-A-Y-A-P-O-D, Kayapod at gmail. Com. And I might answer in the newsletter. In the meantime, Thanks again for listening. The Feminist Survival Project 2020 is a part of the Frolic podcast network. Find more podcasts you'll love at frolic. Media slash podcasts.