Emily Nagoski | Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections

Emily nagoski is the author of The New York Times bestseller come as you are a self-help manual lauded by the guardian for its ability to offer up offer up hard facts on the science of arousal and desire in a friendly and accessible way with her sister Amelia nagoski she is also the co-author of burnout the secret to unlocking the stress cycle she earned an MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior from Indiana University where she has conducted clinical and research training at the renowned Kinsey Institute she now teaches sex education and stress education to women across the country in come together nagoski employs a scientific rigor compassion and humor to create a pragmatic and specific guide for maintaining a fulfilling sex life while in a long-term relationship please welcome our guest to the Free Library of Philadelphia hi it is delightful to be here and yes Steph has Co she is actually the second of my co-presenters to get co uh many of you may be familiar with the work of jacqulyn Friedman who was going to be joining me in Boston and she also has Co y'all It's Not Over um speaking of which I know canes caus people to be like ah what's wrong um do not worry I have excellent medical care I have long covid um hence the sitting down hence you no it sucks it's real I hate it uh and that is also the why I have to leave and go to bed immediately because I have to get on a plane tomorrow and I want to be a person in Atlanta just like I'm a person right now so thank you very much for letting me do that um because Steph could not be with us I write about her in the book so uh before I tell you the I should tell you the origin of the story the origin story of the book before I start here we go once upon a time I wrote this book come as you are and the process of well I I feel like it has like helped a lot of people but the process of writing that book was so stressful that I lost all interest in actually having any sex with my actual partner for like months at a time zip right uh and so I uh finished writing the book and things got a little better and then I went on book tour and things got a lot worse I would try to follow my own advice from Come As You Are responsive desire right it's not about you know like how hot and horny you are it's about you show up you put your body in the bed you let your skin touch your partner's skin and your body is supposed to go oh right I really like this I really like this person we should definitely do this again what would happen instead is I would put my body on the bed I'd let my skin touch my partner's skin and I would cry and fall asleep and I thought I need more advice than I have given in my own book so I did what any of you would do I went to Google Scholar and I looked at the peer-reviewed research on couples who sustained a strong sexual connection over the long term and what I found there was 100% missing from the mainstream cultural media conversation about how couples sustain a strong sexual Connection in the long term cuz the conversation sort of in the public was either the people who are on the side of intimacy is the enemy of the erotic uh in order to keep the spark alive you need emotional distance with desire you need a bridge to cross and on the other side there are the people who say intimacy is the foundation of the erotic you keep the spark Alive by turning to H each other with kindness and compassion and curiosity and uh both of those things are wrong because when you look at the science the people who actually sustain strong sexual connections the people who self-identify as having extraordinary sex the people who pursue pleasure even though their culture absolutely is not one that gives them permission to experience pleasure they don't talk about the spark they don't talk about desire at all the conversation we're having about whether it's intimacy or closeness to keep the spark of alive is entirely beside the point because the spark is beside the point it turns out the key there are three characteristics of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection none of them are how much people spontaneously hot and horny can't wait to put your tongue in your mouth desire none of them it is one they are really good friends who admire and trust each other hope it's not controversial they your sex life is better when you really like the people that you're having sex with two they prioritize sex they decide that it matters for their relationship that they stop doing all the other things they could be doing and y'all we're busy right we might have a job to go to we might have kids to raise we might have a degree to earn have a puppy to house train we've got other friends we want to spend time with we've got other family to pay attention to sometimes God forbid we just want to watch Netflix and then go to sleep so why would we cordon off space time and energy just to do this let's face it sort of silly thing we humans do of rolling around with each other and putting each other's feet in our mouths and letting people lick our genital like why why what does it do the couples who sustain a strong sexual connection feel that this sexual connection contributes something important to the rest of their relationship and so they're motivated to prioritize it to create time space and energy for it which necessitates deprioritizing other things and that's the hard part does this mean that these are couples who sex never falls off their priority list absolutely not there are a lot of Life circumstances where just it it's not as if when a new little human comes into your life when you're like right when you've got a book deadline there are a lot of circumstances where it's just like this is not the time the couples who sustain a strong sexual connection are not the ones who never lose sight of of each other they're the ones who find their way back third characteristic of couples who say okay I'm a teacher spaced repetition what's the first characteristic of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term they're friends they admire and trust each other two PRI they prioritize sex it matters for them and so they deprioritize other things in order in order to create time and space for shared pleasure three and I'm going to admit this is the hard one they recognize that they have been following somebody else's rules somebody else's opinion about who they're supposed to be as a sexual person and what their relationship is supposed to be like as a sexual relationship and they decide they're not going to do that anymore they're going to make deliberate intentional choices about which rules they want to follow for themselves based on who they authentically are who their partner authentically is instead of all the scripts we've been fed about who our partner is supposed to be and who we authentically are in a sexual relationship it is not easy both Purity culture and patriarchy have had decades to get into your brain and it's going to take decades fully to dismantle it in your brain but you don't don't have to finish in order to experience the benefits of it even when you just do a little bit you gain access to a kind of pleasure that's not available to you when you're following somebody else's rules having the kind of sex you're told you're supposed to have so those are the three characteristics couples who sustain a strong sexual connection notice desire isn't anywhere on there it's about pleasure it's about liking the sex enough to want to create time in space to roll around like puppies in a puddle of sliquid oh should I should I get my reading glasses I'm in Old now yeah I'm going to get my reading glasses I should tell a story while I'm doing this per pause is the thing that is happening that is associated with the change in my vision and uh there are no hormonal changes that are particularly associated with change in sexual response but there are hormonal changes that are associated with changes in the actual genital tissue if someone in your relationship has ovaries menopause will happen eventually whether it happens just because of the passage of time or because of medical intervention um and the change in hormones in particular can cause thinning of the mucosa of the vagina and uh inner labia um and smoothing of the vaginal rug and uh talk to a gynecologist because let me tell you vaginal estradi people snapping for estradi this is the part that has Steph in it since she cannot be with us many self-help books ask you from decluttering Guides to professional success manuals ask you to Envision your ideal Life as a way to establish a goal and a why for the changes you're going to make I can't do that here because your image of an ideal sex life has almost certainly been shaped by a bunch of mean-spirited cultural lies your ideal may involve having a body or a partner who looks or acts a certain way it may include some behaviors and not others without reference to which behaviors bring you pleasure it may include all all kinds of Rights and Wrongs how many of those are things that you actively chose rather than something that was handed to you as an ideal writer and sex educator stefo Terry wrote about her experience of learning about responsive desire and discovering the freedom that comes with knowing and loving what's true in her book dirty word dirty word how a sex writer Rec claimed her sexuality she said to her partner just because I don't want to have sex as often as you it does doesn't mean that there's something wrong with me it's completely normal for me not to be in the mood all the time that was before the covid-19 pandemic when I talked to Steph in 2022 she told me that her Revelation stuck with her for a while she and her partner had both gotten a more concrete sense of what activated each other's accelerators and what hit each other's brakes and things got better as they collaborated but then with the increased stress and exhaustion and depression of the pandemic her guilt reemerged she started putting pressure on herself even though her husband did not pressure her that's the thing about the weeds in our psychological Garden they can grow back if you don't keep on pulling them and sometimes we get so busy with other things we forget to keep weeding she finally talked to her husband about it and it turned out he was genuinely okay okay with not having sex the pandemic was affecting him too and it was such a relief to know that they were both normal and his loss of Interest didn't mean anything except that pandemics can make sex seem less important and less worth having they they go on to fix things later on so normalize I remember back at the beginning of the pandemic there were all these people who were predicting like a pandemic baby boom and I was like all don't know how sexual response Works cuz like 10 to 20% of people find stress increases their sexual interest but the rest of us when we're stressed out we are less like I need to change glasses again so I have told you the origin story of the book let me uh conclude that story uh you may be wondering wait Emily didn't writing come together do the same thing to your sex life yes it did totally destroyed my sex life writing of the book but and also par menopause and also long covid all of these things are things that hit my breakes things that interfere with my brain's access to pleasure but I can honestly say that when I got done writing this book I had this 100,000 word home of how to repair the connection that had been damaged by the process of writing this book and things are better with my partner of 13 years than they have literally ever been including right at the beginning of our relationship so I feel so like passionate enthusiastic about this book because it has all even if nobody like I want lots of people to read it and be helped by it but honestly if no one else reads it it has already become a tool that I will be able to use for for the rest of my marriage and uh that alone has made it worth writing can we start with some questions Robin the the delightful Robin has uh collected questions for me thank you engage late in life it will be uh second marriages for both of us we have already noted declining sexual drives cisgender heterosexual couple thank you for specifying practical advice to set us up for Success uh I recognize you may have you may cover this in the talk in fact this question is tell me what your book is about and it's it's excellent to be asking this question early in a relationship so income as you are use this metaphor of the Garden right On the day you're born you're given this little plot of rich and fertile soil and your family of origin and your culture of origin begin to to plant seeds ideas about bodies and sex and safety and love and connection and gender and the erotic and uh by the time you get to adulthood you've got this Garden that is your sexuality um some of us get really lucky and there's just very beautiful things all we have to do is cultivate and harvest others of us get stuck with some really toxic [ __ ] in our Gardens and it's not fair because we didn't choose any of that stuff but it is is a growth opportunity cuz we can go row by row through that garden and make choices about what we want to keep and what we want to throw in the compost heap to rot so when you get into a long-term relationship early on early in any sexual connection a lot of it you spend visiting each other's Gardens and it's like let me show you around my place you show me around your place eventually you begin to cultivate a shared Garden you bring over some of your favorite things from your garden and they bring over some of their favorite things from their garden and you really hope they don't strangle each other when it's still early in a relationship you're early in the process of making choices you can be really deliberate in choosing whether or not to bring that boy somebody somewhere along the way before you were old enough or wise enough to say yes or no somebody planted the message they didn't ask like would it be okay if I uh planted this idea about the ways that your body is fundamentally flawed and unlovable and if you don't continue to work on it like a project then you don't deserve a connection or safety or love would that be okay with you no they just planted it there so you have this opportunity to choose whether or not you want to import that from your garden into the shared Garden that you are building with this person in your life if you have already accidentally imported that into the shared Garden it's a growth opportunity to cultivate the garden that you together are choosing for yourselves instead of following somebody else's rules about who you're supposed to be um I will say since the person specifies cisgender heterosexual the book is as inclusive as I could make it uh and thus it is the least dependent on the science of any book I've ever written because the science has not gotten better in the ways I need it to fast enough so there's a lot of interviews in this book uh but there is one chapter where I assume the reader is cisgender and in a heterosexual type relationship uh it's the second to last chapter because the research is so consistent that couples who are not in that kind of relationship are more satisfied sexually and relationally they have longer lasting more orgasmic more pleasurable sex than people I'm really worried about the Straits so The Straits get their own chapter and I will point this question asker to that chapter because it just is the case that the gender roles that we are following give us these very toxic scripts about who we're supposed to be the sexual partners and who our partners are supposed to be as sexual partners to us and it can get real dark real fast so learning to dismantle that stuff from your brain helps a lot um the the the piece of it that's like what is your book about I I'll just I'll see if I can find the part the thing that we have been doing wrong is that we have the the number one reason why people seek sex therapy is uh for a desire differential one person wants sex more than the other one and uh here's the thing it's not about desire at all desire is not the thing a lot of books about sex and long-term relationships are about keeping the spark alive and they are wrongheaded it's so 20th century with their rigid gender scripts and cringingly oversimplified ideas about sex and evolution I call this mess of wrongheadedness the desire imperative the desire imperative says at the start it's a bulleted list at the start of your sexual and or romantic relationship you should feel a spark a spontaneous giddy craving for sexual intimacy with our potential partner that might even feel obs obessive the Sparky to the Sparky desire we're supposed to feel at the beginning of a relationship is the correct best healthy normal kind of desire and if we don't have it then we don't have anything worth having three if we have to put preparation or planning into our sex lives we don't want it enough four if our partner doesn't just spontaneously want us out of the blue without effort or Preparation on a regular basis basis they don't want us enough the desire imperative puts desire at the center of our definition of sexual well-being it says there is only one right way to experience desire and without that nothing else matters and so people worry about desire if desire changes or seems to be missing people worry there's something very wrong but here's the irony of the desire imperative does all that worry about the spark activate your accelerator make it easier to want and like sex on the contrary worry mainly hits the breakes and puts sex further Out Of Reach but there is an alternative Center pleasure desire is not what matters not passion not keeping the spark alive pleasure is what matters Center pleasure because great sex over the long term is not about how much you want sex it's about how much you like the sex you're having Center pleasure is the St this is the thing you're going to come back to over and over you're G to keep worrying about desire you're going to keep thinking about whether or not people want sex in a relationship the same amount you're some people came here being like one of us want sex more than the other and we're trying to figure out what to do about that here's what you do the first conversation you want to have is what is it that you want when you want sex when I started asking this question in workshops people's like flippant first answer is orgasm and the thing is most people like 95% of people over the age of 30 can have an orgasm on their own and if you are among the people who don't have orgasms and you would like to have orgasms there are absolutely books just about that workshops just about that go for it if you're interested but if you have orgasms on your own then when you want sex with a partner it's not orgasm is it when people think a little deeper there are four main few I've asked a few thousand people this question at this point um the number one answer is connection what you want when you want sex is connection with another person the second thing is shared pleasure I don't just want to rub my skin against my partner and feel how nice that feels I want my partner to notice how nice it feels to rub my skin against their body and I want to notice how nice they feel like it is that shared pleasure is a specific thing people are looking for when they want sex are there any other things we do in our lives where we can feel connected and share pleasure yes Lots so sometimes we can meet some of those needs through something that isn't sex if a person is in a place where sex is not really available to them like you know when you got a book Dead line the third thing most commonly people report wanting when they think what do I want when I want sex is uh being wanted feeling wanted and like no wonder how many of us grow up being taught that the this is not an actual question feel free don't raise your hands but we're raised to believe that these parts of ourselves are dirty dangerous and disgusting so to have these parts of ourselves not not merely accepted but longed for and wanted and embraced and licked of course that's one of the things we want when we want sex for those parts of ourselves to be fully anticipated and the fourth most common thing people want when they want sex as far as they tell me is a thing I call Freedom where people have the ability to set aside all their other worry their identities and roles and responsibilities and stressors and close the door on their whole lives and just pay attention in this moment to the pleasurable things that are happening in the Here and Now what people what want when they want sex is escape from everything else in their life so that they can enjoy this connection and this pleasure in this moment with this person when I was talking to uh Ian Kerner last night he told me that he often has young couple who married for really pragmatic reasons they were excellent friends they had shared goals and values uh if you're looking for a relationship book there's one about to come out next week by Sara Naser Zada called love by Design where she advocates for this sort of practical approach to choosing a partner and constructing a relationship together um and they go to Ian Kerner a sex therapist because like the sex isn't really there and they want to figure out how to like get the sex part in place cuz they're like great friends but the sex uh and my advice he was like tomorrow I'm going to tell clients [ __ ] spark y'all because often these couples will turn to something like polyamory which like we can talk about polyamory forever um but they turn to that because they do not have Sparky Desire with their partner and so they think the solution is to go get Sparky desire with someone else sort of Outsourcing spark but and like polyamory can be amazing polyam I have seen it be profound life-altering beautiful expansive love and also I have seen it be a terrible [ __ ] show because and mostly it turns out badly when you try polyamory because you're trying to repair a difficulty in your relationship it's like I know people I literally know people who had children to like solve problems in their relationship and like you may feel really great about this new human in your life but now you're imposing your [ __ ] on this human so polyamory is not a solution to your relationship difficulties instead the solution is to [ __ ] spark y'all what do you enjoy what kind of sex do you like having together and those are not necessarily easy questions to ask especially so it is a true story that I was in a bar in the UK with a couple of very old friends who now had two small children under five and they were like so just just hypothetically like when you talk about these things how do couples sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term Emily and I like as you put your body in the bed you let your skin touch your partner's skin and your body wakes up and goes oh right I like this and one of the partners I swear leans back from the table like this look of disgust on her face and I was like okay so there's your problem as they say on MythBusters the problem is not that you do not want the sex the problem is that you do not like the sex that is available to you in this relationship and that's a whole other conversation what kind of sex is even worth having um uh so suppose we have a couple this is all answering one question jeez I'm going to tell this story though suppose we have a couple where they go to Sex Therapy they're fortunate enough to have the delightful Peggy Klein plots up in Ottawa as their sex therapist and partner a says I'm am sorry this hurts my partner's feelings but I'd be happy if we never had sex again I have enjoyed sex I have been sexually attracted to you in the past and I'm just I'm done with sex uh and um Peggy being Peggy says well tell me about the sex you don't want and uh do you suppose the sex they describe is delightful and EXP expansive and ecstatic and joyful and laughing and fun it is in her words often dismal and disappointing and she will say well you know I rather like sex but if that's the sex I were having I wouldn't want it either one of the ways she puts it so delightfully is uh sometimes low desire is evidence of good judgment the gentler way to put it is that it is not dysfunctional you are not broken you do not have a disorder if you don't want sex you do not like which when you say it out loud like that it's like well yeah duh of course obviously and the main reason couples seek sex therapy is desire problems most of those couples don't have a desire problem they have a pleasure problem they don't like the sex that's available in their relationship does that make sense so the couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term here's what they do they collaborate with each other because they're really good friends to create a context that makes it easy for their brains to experience pleasure they collaborate to create a context that makes it easier for their brains to experience pleasure so what this might look like um this is not me this is I'm I'm going to carry the mic around cuz I'm disabled but I'm like I can just still tell this story without falling on my ass literal story so couple sets up a date partner a is in the bed waiting for partner B partner B comes in naked carrying the laundry basket this is the last load of laundry and I'm going to put it away I'm going to hang up all your t-shirts just the way you like it even though it makes no sense to hang up T-shirts but that's how you like it and it is funny it's funny on purpose it is playful and also partner a is getting their actual needs met in that moment they have help in doing the stuff that has to get done to maintain a household laundry and dishes never end we all need help with the stuff that never ends if you share a household with somebody having that person be helping with that stuff be like both of you do it and like you notice each other doing it and you're like those are dishes I didn't have to do it helps that's part of how you create a context that makes it easier for your partner's brain to access pleasure another part of it is that you do not impose on them culturally constru ConEd aspirational ideals of who they're supposed to be as a sexual person you don't expect them to have spontaneous desire you recognize that responsive desire is very normal and you welcome the fact that it takes about an hour for their brain to transition out of their like they get home from work and they're stressed out and they like it's date night tonight and they're like but they take it seriously when people say scheduling sex is unromantic or no fun I get that and also there is nothing in my life that happens if it's not on a calendar and for my partner to feel that sexual connection with me is so important that he's going to cordon off space and time on his calendar just to be naked with me instead of doing any of the many millions of other things he could be doing like that's a partner who wants me enough it's a different way of thinking about scheduling it doesn't all have to be scheduled and scheduling is not for everyone for sure but scheduling can be for more people than you know than you expect okay uh I'm gonna answer a second question do you have advice for people newly exploring different kinds of sex also what kind of podcast do I enjoy listening to to you guys I I am no one's target audience I mostly listen to decluttering podcasts oh and people all generally ask uh the shoes are from irregular choice this design is called pollen Pals um botanists will be aware that pollen is basically flower sperm so advice for uh exploring different kinds of sex uh read lots of books uh I'm going to um if the new kind of sex involves BDSM there are lots of wonderful books about it there's actually in the footnotes there in the in the endnotes in the endnotes there is a list of books that uh the BDSM Community recommends as like starter guides also participate in communities of people if it's a new kind of sex where there's a community around it uh be around other people people who have experience and practice watch a wide variety of feminist porn if you possibly can and if you can be here it's likely you can pay for your porn free porn is unlikely to be ethical in terms of like Labor uh and other reasons so uh get a lot of media inspiration read romance novels for inspiration if you go to places I wish y'all had a ripped bodice ripped bodice is a brick and mortar romance store that has uh stores in Brooklyn and in La um but they curate lists of great romance novels that help you to avoid the not so great stuff that does exist in Romance so read a lot of stuff both uh sexually explicit and instructional talk to people in the community are you a person who is already able to the answer the question do you like that that's a real so here's the thing I was Tau growing up that pleasure is easy and obvious and that when a partner is you know doing a thing I I don't know what this is but they're doing this and they say because they're they're good partner they go do you like that and you're like there's only one right answer right because if you say no I don't like that there's this fear that you're going to hurt your partner's feelings but also you kind of don't know if you like it like it's not painful but even if it is painful like maybe it's supposed to be painful pain unwanted pain is the one and only thing well apart from non- here's my definition of normal sex normal sex is when everyone involved is glad to be there and free to leave with no unwanted consequences that includes no unwanted emotional consequences no oh but you said you would no but if you loved me you would no come on really no unwanted consequences and no unwanted pain free to be there glad to be there free to leave no unwanted consequences and no one wanted pain if you're experiencing pain uh the most likely reason is uh lack of arousal and or lubrication those are not the same thing the only advice like prescriptive advice that I think everyone should follow that I'm willing to give is explore Lube see if you can find something that's a good fit for you in your body and your relationship relationships that's the only advice I give so when you're exploring new things are you able to notice what feels good in your body because the pleasure Center pleasure pleasure is the measure of your sexual well-being it's not how often you do it it's not it is not how often you do it it's not what behaviors you engage in it's not with whom or where or what positions or even how many orgasms you have it's whether or not you like the sex you are having so being able to know whether or not you're experiencing pleasure is your guide for trying out new behaviors being really curious to try new things is great and when you're trying new things you're stress level is going to be elevated which is going to block uh pleasure signals to your brain so you have to go really slow when you're trying new things to give your brain time to know whether or not you like it I have a friend who's like a Gourmet Chef person and she says three bites you need three bites to know whether or not you like a new food the first one is just like your every other food you've ever eaten telling you whether or not this food is that food it's not the second bite is to find the ways that it is not that food and the third bite is to find out what this food actually is three bites your brain needs time to adjust to new stimulation and Sensations so when you are trying new things go really slow and if these are partnered experiences explicitly negotiate ahead of time things that are absolutely off the table and things that you're thinking ahead of time like are going to be a maybe you're interested and once you get there you're not sure how you're going to feel um there's a wonderful Ace sex educator uh named Aubrey Lancaster who talks about sex for an ace person who is not uh disgusted by sex as like going to Disneyland like if your partner loves Disneyland and you don't you know what sometimes you will go to Disneyland because you love how much your partner loves Disneyland land and you can you can totally get into it for a little while and then like you need to go back to the hotel and take a nap and you can't predict ahead of time at what point you're going to need to be like that's enough Disneyland for me I'm going to go take a nap knowing ahead of time there's going to be a point when I'm going to call like we're done and like nobody's going to be mad nobody's going to take it personally it's just you're trying a new thing and who knows how it's going to work out might turn out to be your favorite thing ever but the pleasure is the thing that will guide you and pleasure in the context of novelty is not always easy and obvious I hope that helps oh how do you pick them huh how do I have a conversation with my husband about sex if he is uncomfortable talking about sex uh read the heterosexuality chapter I just made it oh my gosh I made this huge assumption that the person who is married to a husband is a woman and I shouldn't have done that um so read the chapter before that about the gender Mirage because there's always gender [ __ ] underlying people's discomfort in talking about sexuality there's also other sex imperatives read the chapter before that one on the sex imperatives to like explore more deeply where the discomfort is coming from if that makes sense so where the discomfort comes from there's really two things things like okay suppose in your household you want to reduce the amount of red meat that you're consuming because it's expensive it's you want to save the world by eating less red meat so you say to your partner hey I'm really interested in uh maybe we should uh maybe only eat red meat like once a week or so what do you think about that should we try that right that's that's how you have the conversation that's how you have the conversation about sex also the reason people don't have just that conversation hey you know I've been thinking uh I really enjoy oral sex and that's something I'd like us to do a little more of could that be something we try on our Saturday afternoon date when we have already arranged for the child care that was such a pain in the ass to get let's try oral sex then the reason people don't have that conversation there's really two barriers one they're really worried about hurting their partner's feelings um accidentally because if you want to have this conversation it's because you want to move closer to the person it's an invitation it is warmth you want the connection and it is so easy for so many of us especially if a person has been gender socialized into the it's a boy Manual of rules and regulations about how to you live in your body you have been trained that you are infallible and omniscient and a provider and strong right and so for someone to come to you and say here's something I'm interested in changing it's so easy for that to feel like a criticism and like a pushing away when it is is actually an invitation to come closer so we're worried about hurting our partner's feelings and the other thing we're worried about is the Judgment we are worried that if we say a thing we're interested in doing our partner will respond with shock and horror and never be able to look at us the same way again so I really recommend uh Lori Mintz the sex therapist I just heard her recently call it the meta conversation the conversation about the conversation I would love to have because our sexual connection really matters to me right we prioritize it um I am really interested in seeing seeing how far we can go seeing how great our sexual connection can be and I know that neither of us is like fully confident and comfortable talking about these things so can we talk about some of the things we're afraid might happen if we do talk about it and what are some I was going to say an Environ what's an environment of holding we can create and whenever I say that phrase I like roll my an environment of holding but look when you break your leg you put a cast on it to create an environment of holding so that the bone can heal cleanly right you need an environment of holding around a relationship conversation so that you can allow whatever is broken to heal cleanly sometimes that environment of holding means a therapist it me means having a professional there oh my God Nancy not is here hi Nancy sorry so I began my career as a sex educator in 1995 and uh the lady who trained me is sitting in that chair over there I'm so glad you're [Applause] here I have no idea what I was talking about ening an environment of holding an environment of holding as soon as I started having jobs after I left College I went to the University of Delaware uh it it ruin I was ruined by Nancy nut Chase who is such a good boss that I was like this is going to be great it took decades before I had a boss as good as she was it was ruined it was terrible it was wonderful in life transforming and is the reason that I am here today so the environment of holding sometimes it means getting a professional and again when I was talking to Ian last night he made sure to say that it doesn't mean that you're signing up for like years of therapy it can be a couple or three sessions just to get a little support in learning how to communicate about each communicate with each other about this topic that you really don't have a lot of practice talking about you just need like somebody who's better at it than you to help teach you how to do it who's got a lot of experience to help like here here's how you do it that's how you that's how you talk about it oh my gosh how how is it already I love my partner but his touch and kisses only pump my breakes I've tried coaching but he's a slow learner what suggestions do you have so this is a I do not like the sex we are having and there's so many feelings on both sides of this experience and if you are with someone whose touch and kisses hit your break I am so interested in what it is that is creating that dynamic because it's probably not just your partner like the idea that like there is a certain specific magical way to touch me and if you just touch me in this way then like my lights will turn on no your brain is a context your context is made of two parts it's got the external circumstances your partner is part of that the relationship itself is part of that the state of the world is part of that your job and kids and life is all part of the external circumstances and then there's your internal state which is like your mood stress depression anxiety loneliness repressed rage we've all got it uh and I'll point you to chapters three and four which are about the emotional floor plan so this was the solution for me if you are the couple like uh I just described where one partner is like I'd be happy if we never had sex again because we don't like the sex we're having Peggy says so what kind of sex is worth wanting and you explore together how to create a context where you can access pleasure if I think this situation though it sounds like that actually calls for the thing that was the answer for me like I knew that like if I could just get there wherever there was it would be great it would be fine if I wouldn't cry and fall asleep I would have a lot of fun but I couldn't get to the place I needed to get to and so I turned obviously to the father of affective Neuroscience Yak pep in his seven primary process emotions and then I developed a a metaphor to help make it accessible and approachable for people actually to use in their everyday lives so what I recognized was that uh when I the cry have fallen asleep I was in what Yak Pang up calls the fear State uh which it will not surprise you that rage and fear are two of the primary process emotions for all mamalian brains uh because of the fight ORF flight response that's stress and anyone who's read burnout knows that connection is one of the really efficient ways to let your body complete the stress cycle so that it can relax and be at ease so I was putting my body in the bed and touching my partner's skin and my brain was going oh I'm safe now I can relax and I'm going to cry to like release all of this fear State that's been in my body oh I was in the fear space interesting and then where am I when to get out of fear well my body was so exhausted and physically wrecked that I needed sleep and then generally a bath and then generally a snack and then when I was physically well enough my brain could go to one of what I call the pleasure favorable spaces they are play which turns out to be the most important one for me and for a lot of people play is the mamalian motivational system of friendship play is any Behavior you engage in just for the fun of it and there's nothing at stake I wish all the sex in mainstream media where play sex where nothing is at stake but the thing is it's like a TV show and like things have to be at stake in order for you to keep watching and sex that advances the plot means sex that like has something at stake in reality most of the sex we have there should be nothing at stake you got nothing to lose right now like there's no doing it right or wrong your partner in the same way so you know when you have is anybody a dog person you know the playbow this is an invitation to play what it says is everything that happens after this I mean no harm if I do anything a little bit wrong you let me know and I will back off because we're here to play so if my dog like he's learning and he nips me a little too hard and I go he knows and he backs off because I have communicated effectively to him that that thing that he's doing during play didn't work for me that's that's play there's nothing at stake vacation sex is often happening in the play State because you can set aside you just you're literally in a different geographical place from the rest of your identities and obligations and stress ores and you can just transition into play State and because we're using a floor plan metaphor see the play room is right next door to the lust room and it's very easy to transition from play into the lust space seeking is another one of the pleasure favorable spaces uh it's curiosity exploration adventure and learning um so for me talking about affective Neuroscience is basically a water slide from there into the l space but I married a graphic designer who writes a comic strip he makes jokes so I would talk about affective Neuroscience not knowing I was basically trying to initiate sex and he would crack jokes about it not knowing that he was trying to initiate sex and I would feel like he's like dismissing this thing that I really care about and so what I worked on with my therapist was realizing that like oh I can go to the play space with him and not only did it mean that we could be in a place where it was easy for both of us to get into the lust space it also made me a much nicer person because I didn't take myself so freaking seriously it is to be a sex educator and have these difficulties like you just like beat the crap out of your so this is my cat of Ninetails my father was raised Catholic this is what I took away from that sorry learning to take myself this is the five minute warning how how Okay so with this I'm answering this question of like these touches don't feel good to me I am interested in what mental space this person is in when they're being touched by their partner um and what is the history of that space because it is not just the external circumstances that are happening uh this person I'm going to recommend uh Sex Therapy individual to start with to figure out what space you are in when you're receiving that touch because it is something about not just like there is no Magic Touch a person can do that's going to feel great if there's a thing in your brain that's preventing that Sensation from feeling good insert the so tickling y'all have heard me talk about tickling it's not everybody's favorite it's some people's favorite but if you're you're already in like a really great like sexy turned on aroused trusting playful state of mind and your certain special someone tickles you that can feel great and if you are in the middle of an argument about money or as a friend of mine put it if you are wrist deep in baby poop and your partner tries to tickle you that will not feel awesome why it's the same sensation it's the same person but your brain interprets it totally differently because the context is different your mental state is different so in this question what I'm hearing is my brain is not in a state where it can receive pleasure when I'm experiencing these things so I think it is not just about like coaching the partner it's also about this person getting really deeply connected with their own internal experiences and uh working collaborating together to co-create a context that makes pleasure easier to access do you think I could like possibly I can't no they're all complicated and long ANS so uh the last thing I will say this is the first time I've ever missed a book deadline um and uh it was totally fine that I missed it um two weeks before I finished the book A friend of mine died of cancer she was about my age she got married just a couple of months after I did I got married to my husband a couple months later she got married to her wife and last year she died [ __ ] cancer and I was right at the end of writing this book about sex and long-term relationships and this friend of mine who'd been married a little less Long than me had met her till death do we part and it changed the book fundamentally because I realized in this visceral way that of course I knew but and many people learn this much earlier in life than I do but we are not guaranteed abundant time with the people that we care about we are guaranteed change and truly it is the way way we navigate change together that characterizes the quality of our relationship so if we can turn toward each other's changes each other's difficult feelings each other's needs and wants and fears with kindness and compassion and if you can possibly manage it a sense of play that is the context that will allow you no matter the structure of your relationship no matter the genders of the people involved kindness compassion confidence and joy and if you can possibly get there a sense of play and Adventure that is how you create a context that allows your brains to experience the kind of pleasure that turns the universe into rainbows and I think that's worth it thank you all again you left your houses on a February night and I'm incredibly grateful and uh I'm going to answer these in [Applause] newsletters

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Length: 55min 3sec (3303 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024