Starting an interview by asking a complete stranger how her sex life is going is strange to say the least.
But Emily Nagosky fits it in pretty well.
"Don't worry!
In this case it is 100% appropriate to ask,” she answers in an exchange of messages.
“And I can say that lately I'm doing very well.
Following my own advice, things are better than ever.”
When they were worse, Nagosky wrote a book explaining it.
She called it
Come together
(a play on words that refers to a song by The Beatles and could be translated as “Come together”, a verb with a double meaning that can refer to orgasm).
This exposure of intimacy could be a problem for anyone, but more so for someone like Nagosky, considered for years a kind of sexual guru, or as she defines herself, “a sex nerd.”
She already had her first book,
Come as you are,
another musical play on words, in this case the reference is to a Nirvana song, and the translation would be something like “Come being yourself.”
And a podcast, a
newsletter
, a TED talk with three and a half million views... But while she was creating all this content and breaking down taboos about female sexuality, Nagosky was silently dealing with a crisis with her boyfriend of 13 years.
“Ironically, the process of thinking, reading, and writing about sex every day stressed me out so much that I had no interest in having sex,” he explains in his book.
At first, Nagosky did what anyone would do: discuss it with her therapist and her friends.
But then she did something else.
“I approached my own sexual difficulties in a slightly nerdy way: I went straight to the peer-reviewed research,” she recalls.
What she found there contradicted all widespread narratives about “keeping the spark alive,” an expression she loathes for perpetuating an outdated idea of what sex should be.
“Desire barely makes it into the top ten characteristics of good sex.
When people worry about the spark, it is a distraction from what really matters, which is pleasure,” she assures.
It's not about how excited you are spontaneously and improvised, she explains in her book, but about actively seeking time and intimacy;
to get into bed with your partner and let your body respond.
“Spontaneous desire arises in anticipation of pleasure.
Responsive desire arises in response to pleasure.
And both experiences of desire are normal,” says the sexologist.
For many couples, time and energy are limited, so “the best way to make sex happen might be to plan it, schedule it on the calendar.”
More information
“Everyone has more sex than me” and other myths that therapists try to debunk
Emily Nagosky does not do scientific research, but she is good at looking for it and explaining it, eliminating the excessively high and bringing the studies down to earth.
She popularized the idea that libido is like a car with an accelerator that detects erotic stimuli and a brake that is pressed to the floor with everything that distracts us from sex.
When women have problems with arousal and pleasure, she explained in
Come as you are
, it's not necessarily because they're not stepping on the accelerator.
Usually, it's because something (stress, work, patriarchy, upbringing...) makes them put on the brakes.
The idea is simple but powerful, and many women saw themselves reflected in it.
Another metaphor that caught on (and that he returns to in his new book) was the one in which he presented sexuality as a garden.
When we are children, its soil is especially fertile.
Soon, family, society, and cultural context begin to plant ideas about bodies, gender, sex, pleasure, and love that emerge like invasive species.
“Seeds of myths about the ideal sexual person blown by the wind and ropes of vines about beauty standards, spreading like poison ivy under the fence and over the garden wall,” she explains in
Come together
.
There are lucky people without trauma who can limit themselves to pruning, harvesting and bringing in a new plant from time to time.
But most people will have to weed and weed for the rest of their lives.
“Your sexuality is not a problem that you have to solve or a disorder that has to be treated.
Your sexuality is a garden that you can cultivate,” asserts the author.
But we are all better gardeners in solitude than entering a shared park, where we have to water and prune our own and other people's plants.
Cover of the book 'Come together'
Come Together
runs to 300 pages, but in the first few lines, Nagosky makes a handy
spoiler
and moves on.
There are three typical characteristics of couples with a strong sexual connection.
The first, they are friends, they trust and admire each other.
In addition, they prioritize sex and put it before commitments and routines.
And lastly, instead of accepting other people's opinions about how they are supposed to have sex, they "prioritize what is genuinely true for them and what works in their unique relationship."
No two gardens are the same and what sprouts strongly in one may not take root in another, or may even become a weed.
Despite defending this idea with militant fervor, Nagosky recognizes that, in practice, sex is a social behavior.
We start from an instinct, but we also learn by observing and listening to others.
Pornography, like it or not, is part of this learning.
The problem with this, he explains, is that approaching sex through porn is like watching Formula One and thinking that with that you already know how to drive.
“They are professionals on a closed circuit with a pit crew, trying to achieve something totally unrelated to what we do in the real world,” she reflects.
“If people have access to pornography and don't have access to sex education or conversations about sex, it's very easy for them to believe that real-life sex is like pornography.”
And it is not like that.
That is why he assures that books like his are necessary.
To improve the public conversation we have about sex (which he considers “basically shit”).
And use science to better understand what happens to us.
“Although we should not try to understand our lives from any individual study,” he clarifies.
That's why, beyond porn, beyond science and what works for each person, Nagosky defends something so simple that it seems revolutionary: talking about sex with friends.
“Oh yes, please talk to each other about your sex life and tell each other the things you're learning!” she exclaims.
“Telling personal stories helps others see their own sex lives more clearly.”
She says this after having written a 300-page book analyzing why she stopped having sex with her boyfriend, so she may be right.
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