Emily Nagoski has a new podcast, Come As You Are! If you’ve read her books, you know what this is about. We dive right into questions of consent and enthusiasm, the way the ace/aro community has developed conversations about sexuality within the field of sex education, and how the pandemic has affected sexuality. So much of her show and this conversation center on how to address sexual satisfaction in your own life.
We also talk about her next book, which is about how couples sustain sexual attraction over the long term.
Music: purple-planet.com
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Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 548 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest this week is Emily Nagoski! Emily has been a guest on the show before, but she now has a new podcast called Come As You Are, and if you’ve read her books you know what this is about. So we are going to dive right into a whole conversation about sex, consent, enthusiasm, and how to address sexual satisfaction in your life. We also talk about her next book, which is about how couples sustain sexual attraction over the long term. This is a very wide-reaching conversation about many aspects of sexuality, and I hope you enjoy it.
I have a compliment this week, and this makes me so happy! Now, I looked up, according to the internet, how to pronounce your name, and I hope that I have found the right videos because I want to pronounce this name correctly. So –
Adesuwa: A conversation with you is like a perfect vacation. It is smooth, relaxing, inspiring, and worth every minute, and this is why your friends love talking to you. Thank you for being part of the podcast Patreon, Adesuwa; it’s really lovely to have you.
And if you would like to join, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Members of the Patreon get bonus episodes; a very lovely, warm, welcoming, and very fun Discord; and you support the show and keep me going every week.
Hello, everyone in the Patreon community. You are all fabulous!
And you know what? It’s time to get started with this episode. Emily and I talk about so many things, this is a nice, long episode, so I hope you enjoy it. On with the podcast.
[music]
Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.: I am Emily Nagoski. I am a sex educator. I have written some books; one of them is Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life –
Sarah: Woohoo!
Dr. Nagoski: – and another one of them is Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, which I wrote with my identical twin sister Amelia, who is a choral conductor. Other things I do include currently seasoning a new cast, no, a new carbon steel pan.
Sarah: Ooooh! Whatcha gonna cook in the carbon steel pan?
Dr. Nagoski: Well, it is Thanksgiving season, so I will probably be making stuffing in it.
Sarah: [Gasps] That sounds excellent.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: So congratulations on the Come As You Are, the podcast! Yay!
Dr. Nagoski: Thank you so much!
Sarah: I know this has been a long time in the making. What will listeners find on your show? And how excited are you to delve deeply into the world of orgasm science in a podcast?
Dr. Nagoski: I am beside myself with excitement? Like, it’s really, really thrilling. It has taken more than a year to make these eight episodes of podcast.
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: And, but I think we have found a format that really is going to communicate these ideas that I feel like are so important, so potentially transformative of people’s whole lives in a way that feels incredibly approachable and entertaining, and you’re folding your laundry or you’re commuting to work, and you’re learning the science of how your brain processes sexuality-related information, or how orgasms work, or what to do if, like, you used to really be into masturbating and for the past, I don’t know, couple of years for some reason, like, it really hasn’t even crossed your mind to masturbate. Where did that go?
Sarah: Wow, it’s almost like stress and sexuality are connected!
Dr. Nagoski: You might think so. So the seventh episode, it might be my favorite?
Sarah: Tell me, tell me, tell me.
Dr. Nagoski: My producer Mo is, I mean, she’s this spectacular, lovely lesbian who is willing to talk about her own sex life in public, which not a lot of people are.
Sarah: Very true.
Dr. Nagoski: She and her partner were invited to an orgy!
Sarah: Oh, hello!
Dr. Nagoski: Mo is all in. Partner is ambivalent.
Sarah: Oh dear!
Dr. Nagoski: So we had a conversation. If you’ve been taught that enthusiastic consent is the only kind of consent and you’re ambivalent about something, that means you don’t have a way in to trying something that you’re not certain about.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: But that’s also like a difficult, complicated space to talk about because so many of us, especially if we’re born into bodies that made everybody go, It’s a girl! then they raised us to feel morally obligated to meet other people’s needs and expectations –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – regardless of our own needs and expectations?
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: If you feel ambivalent, you may revert to, I will just do whatever makes other people happy?
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: And end up crossing your own boundaries. So we had –
Sarah: And that’s never a good feeling.
Dr. Nagoski: No! So we had the real conversation, the conversation I have always wanted to have about consent in the context of interest and ambivalence.
Sarah: Oh wow! Because that goes against some very popular advice from another podcast that I can think of, which is that you should always be eager to do what your partner wants to do.
Dr. Nagoski: Um, right!
Sarah: Yeah! And that’s, that’s pri- –
Dr. Nagoski: So –
Sarah: That, that is putting the center, that is centering consent on the more enthusiastic party.
Dr. Nagoski: Yes!
Sarah: Which is not a balanced way of considering things. And –
Dr. Nagoski: And –
Sarah: – ambivalence can come from any number of sources, too, right?
Dr. Nagoski: Oh my gosh, yes! Like, if your ambivalence is coming from a bunch of cultural baggage that got laid on you in your childhood –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – you’re like, I actually would really love to, but I feel so ashamed of the fact that I want to do this thing.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It can be really helpful to have a partner who’s like, Come join me.
Sarah: Yes, absolutely!
Dr. Nagoski: Come try this with me. But if your ambivalence is like, I’m interested in trying something new, and I truly, like, it’s so unfamiliar, and there’s a chance that it might be not for me.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: How do I know I’ve got, like, a solid exit strategy? What if something unexpected happens? Truly, like –
Sarah: What do I do?
Dr. Nagoski: – what do I do if something unexpected happens? How will I communicate with my partner? Will I even know in the moment for sure that something not okay is happening?
Sarah: Yeah! Or will you unpack it later and then just have to deal with shame and –
Dr. Nagoski: Right!
Sarah: – self-recrimination? And then there’s also the fact that an, a solid number of people don’t experience real solid sexual attraction unless they’re already emotionally or mentally engaged –
Dr. Nagoski: Right.
Sarah: – in a relationship with that person, that the sexual attraction comes later –
Dr. Nagoski: Right.
Sarah: – as opposed to, Well, hello! You are hot!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: That –
Dr. Nagoski: One of the things we talk about is how the ace community, in all their heterogeneity, have really been leaders in the conversation about deep-ing the, deepening the way we understand consent, ‘cause if you’re asexual, you’re sexually attracted to nobody –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – but you might be sex-favorable. Aubri Lancaster is an ace sex educator who describes sex as like going to Disneyland? Some people love it! Some people never want to go Disneyland. And some people are like, I will go with you to Disneyland occasionally because I love that it makes you happy?
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: And it’s, it’s fine for me.
Sarah: And this is –
Dr. Nagoski: And then I need like a big break –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – from Disneyland. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes! Having taken my children to Disney, yes.
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] Like, you know that feeling!
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So for some people, that’s what sex is like, and is that enthusiastic consent? Are they, is an ace person able to give consent if they’re basically never, like, all the way big yes?
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: The idea of always being ready to say yes to your partner seems great? If, truly, the partners are both fully and completely equal, and neither one is prone to going along and doing things just to make their partner happy, and neither partner is prone to just assume that other people will go along with what they want because that’s what they’re entitled to.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: I have just described no relationship on Earth.
Sarah: No! Absolutely not. And that, that acquiescence or that going along switches. If it’s, if it’s a partnership between two people, it’ll switch.
Dr. Nagoski: Oh yeah! Over a long-term relationship and in different situations –
Sarah: Absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: – like, it might be sexuality you have a, one way. For like, you know, what we’re going to have for dinner, it might be another way. For how we’re going to raise the kids, it might be another way.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And – I want to talk about the patriarchy; can I talk about the patriarchy?
Sarah: Why in the world would I ever say no to talking about the patriarchy? It’s like –
Dr. Nagoski: ‘Cause –
Sarah: – you’ve never met me.
Dr. Nagoski: – it does get, like, it gets dark sometimes!
Sarah: It does!
Dr. Nagoski: I want to – and there’s, like, so much good stuff that can happen! But, so, in the episode Alex, Mo’s partner, is nonbinary, but was raised not just as a girl but as a Lady in the South.
Sarah: Oh, that’s, that’s not just baggage; like, that’s a whole matched set –
Dr. Nagoski: It’s, it’s –
Sarah: of brocade luggage with bad wheels.
Dr. Nagoski: Absolutely, yeah.
Sarah: That’s like when you see a cartoon of a, of, like in 101 Dalmatians, and everyone’s very stylized, and a porter has a luggage cart, and they’re all stacked in order –
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: – from largest to smallest, and there’s like eight cases – yeah, that’s –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – the baggage you’ve got there.
Dr. Nagoski: So –
Sarah: Yikes!
Dr. Nagoski: So Alex has spent a lot of time unpacking! [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah! Yeah, you’ve got to unpack that baggage; there’s a lot of it. Oh my gosh!
Dr. Nagoski: And! It is normal that even a person who has done a whole lot of unpacking of the baggage that they were saddled with –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – when they find themselves in a new context, it might be that they’re back to square one, ‘cause their brain is like, Don’t know how to cope; let me go back to the rules that were established in my brain when I was five.
Sarah: Yeah, because those are well, well worn neural pathways that –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – even if you know they don’t serve you in the moment, they’re still there!
Dr. Nagoski: And if you’re going to any kind of regular party where people are not going to be having sex, a person who’s been raised to be a Lady may accept a drink she doesn’t want just to make sure the other person doesn’t feel rejected by them saying no to a drink, because there’s like, if I offer you a drink, I’m not really just offering you a drink, right? Like, I’m offering a connection; I’m offering, like, a social moment for us; and if you say no to the drink, you’re turning down that, like, connection.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: You might even be making me feel bad! And to put that dynamic into a sexual context of, like, I’m offering you a kiss –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – and you – it’s not just a kiss, right?
Sarah: Nope.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s a connection.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: If you say no to that, you might be hurting my feelings; you might be turning down an opportunity to get know me better in any other way –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – and, like, dark things happen from there.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: In Burnout we call it human giver syndrome –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – the moral obligation to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others.
Sarah: And never messy.
Dr. Nagoski: Never!
Sarah: Never messy; never, never annoying; never unpleasant; never doing –
Dr. Nagoski: Or have, have, like, a need or an uncomfortable feeling of your own. How dare you impose that on other people?!
Sarah: Yeah, how dare you express that out loud with your face? You should not do that.
Dr. Nagoski: How, how dare you interpret my request to offer you a drink as just a drink that you are fully entitled to say no to because you don’t want it?
Sarah: Yeah, exactly. This – your preferences are not relevant.
Dr. Nagoski: They don’t count for anything –
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: – and if you dare to express a preference that is contradictory to what everybody else is saying –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – you literally deserve to be punished.
Sarah: Yes, ‘cause you are deviating from the rules.
Dr. Nagoski: Yes. How dare you? Get back in line.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: But I have been thinking more and more about what the masculine role is here? So on the day a person is born, the people might look at their body and just go, It’s a boy! And then they raise that person not as a human giver but as what I’ve started calling human winners.
Sarah: Oh, that’s a good term!
Dr. Nagoski: Who have a moral obligation to be strong and infallible.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: You have access to three emotions if you get raised as a human winner: anger –
Sarah: Anger.
Dr. Nagoski: – winning, and horny.
Sarah: And horny. Yes, and only in very specific constructs can open sadness be expressed. Maybe it’s when your dad dies, maybe it’s when your mom dies, maybe it’s when your team loses, but that’s it.
Dr. Nagoski: Yes! Yes.
Sarah: There are, there are very specific venues –
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – in which that emotion can be expressed. And it’s really wild – there are some wonderful subreddits that are all about, like, examining masculinity. One is called the bropill subreddit; it’s bropill, but everyone is like, We are all bros. We are all going to look after each other, but that means you need to be an honest human with emotions, and we’re going to help you do that, and it’s so –
Dr. Nagoski: Ahhh!
Sarah: – so lovely! Another good one is daddit, which is Reddit dads, which is Welcome to ev- – both, the thing I love about both subreddits is that they are welcome to any gender expression, but, you know, there are a lot of full-time caregiver fathers? And there’s, that, they’re still funneled into those very narrow definitions.
Dr. Nagoski: Right. And in a sexual context –
Sarah: Yikes!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah, part of the masculinity script, if all you’re allowed is anger, winning, and horny, but what you’re feeling is lonely –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – and when you offer sex to someone, you’re not just offering sex, you’re in fact asking for a connection because you are lonely, when someone says no to sex, they’re not just turning down the sex, they’re turning down you.
Sarah: And your vulnerability that you have –
Dr. Nagoski: That you have put out there –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – under the guise of like, I’m just horny, but actually is this, like, I’m lonely; I long for connection with you; and then, on top of that masculinity script, the value of a masculine person obviously can be measured by the extent to which you can successfully have sex with other people.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely!
Dr. Nagoski: And so when someone turns down the sex, they’re not just turning down your whole personhood, they are invalidating your whole identity.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So kind of no wonder incels.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: Kind of no wonder people perpetrate violence. And it’s not because they can’t get laid.
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s because they’re desperately, wildly lonely and do not have access to expressing loneliness –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – or sadness. We’ve talked about Inside Out before, right?
Sarah: Yes. Yes, and how in, in the grown, in the grown, the, the father, his primary character is the Anger character.
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] Yeah! Right! And in Riley’s head Joy is the main character, which is great, and she doesn’t know what Sadness is for? And so tries to, like, literally keep Sadness in a circle, but, like, at the pinnacle moment of the story she realizes people come to help because of Sadness.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So if you can’t express the sadness, the grief, the loneliness, you actually reinforce the sadness, the grief, the loneliness. You become more and more isolated, and what the science tells us is that loneliness is a really dangerous place because it reinforces itself, and the lonelier you are, the more likely your brain is to interpret social approach from someone else as a threat.
Sarah: Oh, interesting!
Dr. Nagoski: Right?
Sarah: Because loneliness –
Dr. Nagoski: Loneliness is dangerous.
Sarah: – becomes an isolation that you need to defend.
Dr. Nagoski: You need to, you need to put – it’s like social connection turns into a threat, and your brain decides that if someone approaches you, that’s a danger signal; you need to, like, continue with the distance that you have.
Sarah: Wow.
Dr. Nagoski: Brains are weird. This is all –
Sarah: Brains are wild.
Dr. Nagoski: – this is – [laughs] – where you go when you talk about gender and consent and the complexities of ambivalence, which is real! Like, people experience this all the time.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely! People are often ambivalent about sex and then come with that extra additional recrimination of, But I should want this. I should be feeling this, and I am not, so something is wrong –
Dr. Nagoski: Can I tell you –
Sarah: – with me.
Dr. Nagoski: – a question I have been asked many times since the pandemic but never before the pandemic?
Sarah: Do tell.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s, How am I supposed to want and/or like sex when [fill in the blank] horrible? When I’m so fed up with my partner? When I have all this trauma? When people have shown me over and over that they’re not trustworthy? And the answer to how are you supposed to want and/or like sex in those circumstances is you aren’t! Those are circumstances that hit that sexual brake.
Sarah: Absolutely!
Dr. Nagoski: So the, the, if you are interested in wanting and liking sex, the first thing to do is heal the trauma. Heal the relationship if it’s healable. Construct loving, supportive relationships with other people.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Not try to want and like sex in the middle of a hellscape.
Sarah: Yeah. It, it – yeah. And I imagine that, that the pandemic has really done a number on how people feel about themselves sexually.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Do you remember at the beginning of the pandemic, there were a bunch of predictions about how there was going to be a pandemic baby boom?
Sarah: [Laughs wildly] I remember reading that and thinking, No!
Dr. Nagoski: Y’all don’t understand how sex works! [Laughs]
Sarah: No! We aren’t, it’s not like a snow storm where we know that in like twenty-four to forty-eight hours the plows will be here and we’ll go back outside. It’s not like –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – we’re, you know, humping like bunnies to keep warm in a snow drift. Like, nonononono.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. This is uncertain and long-lasting, entirely novel? Now, it is the case that for ten to twenty percent of people, if they’re stressed out, that actually increases their interest in sex? Like, one of the ways that they manage that uncomfortable feeling is by, is through sex. Cool.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: But that ten to twenty percent is not going to get us to a, a pandemic baby boom.
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: In fact, of course, of course birth rates have gone down. And that’s not actually because people are having less sex, ‘cause there’s not a very good correlation between frequency of sex and how much people get pregnant.
Sarah: Mm, no. Mm-mm.
Dr. Nagoski: Like, even before birth control, there was not a good correlation between frequency of sex and how much people get pregnant, because the only sex that turns into pregnant is a very specific moment when an egg happens to be viable –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – and sperm finds it that also is viable. Like –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – that has nothing to do with – like, you don’t ovulate more if you have more sex.
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: So there’s no…
Sarah: You’re not a cat. [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Right. If you’re having some sex, that puts you in a place where potentially, if sperm is involved, then pregnancy might happen, so I have all kinds of critiques about the ways people thought that the pandemic was going to influence people’s sexuality.
But mostly it caused us to feel trapped and isolated?
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: And unsure and stressed out. People who are caregivers of children, especially small children, were stuck in that role?
Sarah: Yep, and had no outlet for any other form of expression of identity during their day. Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: Right! And the transition from one social role or identity into another is expensive. It’s actually called context-switching cost.
Sarah: Oh, that’s interesting!
Dr. Nagoski: So –
Sarah: It has an energy cost!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah, energy and time! It takes literal physical time. This comes from computer programming and got applied in business and obviously is related to the way human beings switch from one identity to another in the roles that they have in their life.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: So when someone is in like a parenting mode or in work mode all day and they want to transition into like Hey Sexy Lady kind of mode, there is time and energy that goes into letting go of this role so that you can transition into this role.
Sarah: Right. And for a lot of people who had children at home, the opportunity to potentially have sex was extremely limited –
Dr. Nagoski: Oh yeah.
Sarah: – because everybody was in the house, and if you had a sudden opportunity where everyone was either absent or occupied, you have to switch on the sexytimes very quickly because this is really the only opportunity, so whether you’re really thinking sexytimes or not, this is the only sexytimes opportunity you have, sooo.
Dr. Nagoski: Is that going to be the best sex you ever had?
Sarah: No! Not at all.
Dr. Nagoski: It is not.
Sarah: No, it is not.
Dr. Nagoski: And that’s fine! Like, not all the sex you have has to be the best sex you ever had?
Sarah: Nope!
Dr. Nagoski: My next book, the other thing I’m – like, I should be talking about this less than I’m talking about it, ‘cause it’s more than a year away still, but the next book is about –
Sarah: Okay, I’m sorry, you said the next book, and you know I’m going to ask. Tell me all about the next book!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. It’s about how couples sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term, multiple decades.
Sarah: Oooh! I am intrigued!
Dr. Nagoski: It’s, I think it’s pretty good.
Sarah: Judging by the last two books and the 2020 survival project, I have –
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs]
Sarah: – some confidence in A+ content here.
Dr. Nagoski: So it turns out the couple who sustain strong sexual connections over multiple decades have a few things in common, and it’s almost never the things you expect.
Sarah: Really!
Dr. Nagoski: They are: they’re really good friends with trust and admiration. Like, they admire their partner.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Which my literary agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, had babies in 2020! Babies! [Laughs] Twins!
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah!
Sarah: Oh boy.
Dr. Nagoski: Might have been in 2021 that she had the babies, but she has these two tiny, tiny humans in her house, and they both work, and they have these two tiny humans in the house, and they live in New York City, and she has been reading drafts of the book, obviously, and she read the section on admiration, like, it’s really important that you admire your partner, and that became really valuable for her as a touch point when she was getting that feeling of like, Wah! How come he can’t – I don’t know the details; I’m going to invent a detail – why does he never, why does he leave the recycling in the sink? Why?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Why did you leave the recycling in the sink? Put it in the, put it in the recycling bin! It’s right there!
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: You can see it!
Sarah: Yep. It’s two whole feet away! Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Like, I’m always like, I am so sleep deprived, and you keep expecting me to be the one who does whatever other task. Right, those, like, frustrations that build up and are so easy to, like, just latch onto really hard. To be able to take a pause and be like, okay, this is a person I chose to partner with for as far into the future as we can imagine.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: There must have been a reason for that!
Sarah: [Laughs] There was something!
Dr. Nagoski: What do I admire about him? Oh right: when I watch him parent our children, I fall ten times more in love. When I see him doing his job, like, he’s so smart and he’s so good with people and, like, I admire him, and he notices every time I’m feeling X, and he knows exactly what to do to help me. Right, when you can remember what it is you admire about your partner, when you feel, like, lucky that they chose you back –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – that’s a strong predictor of people who are going to be able to sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term, not just because they can turn toward each other, ‘cause couples who sustain over the long term don’t stay connected forever. They don’t have just like loads of spontaneous desire and every day for fifty years they can’t wait to put their tongue in each other’s mouths. It’s that, like normal, there’s going to be times when the sexual connection sort of ebbs away –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and the couples who sustain are the ones who can find their way back to each other. And a really helpful way to find your way back to each other is to be pulled magnetically by your admiration –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – for each other. So admiration.
Sarah: Admiration.
Dr. Nagoski: Talk about characteristics of couples who sustain a strong – trust, admiration, there’s friendship at the foundation.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Like, you just like each other!
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: You enjoy spending time together.
Two: they prioritize sex. They decide that it matters for their relationship that they stay in connection with each other. And all of chapter one is why would anyone do that?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Seriously! Like it’s this very, let’s face it, quite silly thing we humans do of, like, putting our mouths on each other’s bodies and letting our skins all touch and, like, rolling around and, like, it’s, it’s, it’s silly! Why would we stop doing all the other things – maybe we’ve got kids to raise, maybe we got a job to go to, maybe we have other friends and family to spend time with? Maybe, God forbid, we just want to watch a TV show and go to sleep, right?
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: We have so many other ways we could be spending our time. The couples who sustain a strong sexual connection are the ones who decide that it matters for some reason that they stop doing all those other things and just turn toward each other’s erotic selves for some amount of time. They’re like, it matters. They deliberately create a context that allows them to have access to that –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – with some kind of ever. It doesn’t have to be frequent; it just has to be important.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: It has to matter on some level.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: And when I ask people, What is it that you want when you want sex, what is it that you like when you like sex? The number one answer – and I say it’s not orgasm; you can have an orgasm by yourself? – the number one answer is connection.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: The most common thing people say is that they, the thing they want and like when they want and like sex is the connection with the other person. Number two – hurray! – is pleasure.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: And that’s, and that’s most of it. Like, we want to play together, experience pleasure in a shared safe space that is safe enough. So the second characteristic is they prioritize sex: it matters for them.
Number three – and this is the one that I didn’t find in the research, but I interviewed dozens of people who were widely different from each other. The third characteristic of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection is that they are actively continuing to uproot the gender binary from their psyche.
Sarah: Oh, I like that very much. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.
Dr. Nagoski: ‘Cause all that stuff we were talking about –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – the, like, human giver syndrome, human winner syndrome, they trap us in scripts. I mean, like, such detailed scripts about, like, order of operations of sex, like which body parts touch where when, in what order, who’s allowed to do what? The more people are actively trying to liberate themselves from the scripts they were handed –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – the more likely they are to sustain a strong sexual connection over multiple decades, not least because the things about our bodies that characterize us as being our gender –
Sarah: Mm-hmm?
Dr. Nagoski: – change as we age.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: So some of the people who do the best job of sustaining a strong sexual connection for the long term are people who live with chronic pain, chronic illness, people with disabilities, because they have already had to go through the process of liberating themselves from the idea that their body is supposed to be this one thing and actually, like, this is the body I have –
Sarah: Yeah. There’s –
Dr. Nagoski: – and –
Sarah: – I, I can’t take my brain out and put it in a different body; this is the –
Dr. Nagoski: – it’s, it’s either pleasure with this or no pleasure, so –
Sarah: This is, this is the house that I’ve got, yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – I choose pleasure with this. Exactly.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Other people who do a really good job with this are LGBTQIA2+ folks, who similarly have already had to have a confrontation with the reality that their sexuality does not conform with the script that they were given.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And so, but they’re not, they’re not done just because they came out, right?
Sarah: No. No.
Dr. Nagoski: There’s a continual process, and even people who are in LGBTQIA2+ relationships are continually noticing how the patriarchy manifests in their relationship and having to be like, Oh!
Sarah: Ah!
Dr. Nagoski: Another example of, of –
Sarah: Again!
Dr. Nagoski: – of how this shows up: Mo, who’s gay, we were talking about lesbian bed death, and she – so one of the things I never do is answer questions like, How often does the average couple have sex? Because yes, science has a number like that.
Sarah: Of course it does!
Dr. Nagoski: If you want to look it up you can, but it is impossible for me – like, imagine any number I might say – it is impossible to hear that number and not judge yourself against it as like either, Whew! I’m doing all right! Or like, Whoa, shoot! I’m a terrible person because I’m not living up to the standard or whatever.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: And all those people who participated in the research, what do they have to do with your sex life?
Sarah: Right. They’re not involved at all.
Dr. Nagoski: Right! Yeah!
Sarah: So what is lesbian bed death, other than a metal band –
Dr. Nagoski: Oh, right!
Sarah: – that’s currently on tour?
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] That’s a great name for a band! That’s a good question that I should have clarified before. So –
Sarah: That’s all right; that’s why I’m here.
Dr. Nagoski: – it originates from the mid ‘80s, when it meant something different from what it means now. What it means now is this sort of stereotyped idea that it’s inevitable in a long-term relationship with two women that sex will just disappear.
Sarah: Oh, interesting! Okay.
Dr. Nagoski: Lesbian bed death.
Sarah: Interesting.
Dr. Nagoski: Is there research on this? Yes! Is it a thing? No.
Sarah: Wow.
Dr. Nagoski: Unless the way you assess a sex life as sex goes away is by using patriarchal, cisgender, heteronormative standards, which is to say measuring by frequency.
Sarah: Ohhh, interesting.
Dr. Nagoski: When you actually look at the sexual behaviors of people in equally long-term relationships – this one is a lesbian couple, this one is a heterosexual couple – the lesbians have more orgasms. They’re more likely to have oral sex; they’re more likely to kiss; they’re more likely to say I love you; their sex lasts longer. It’s less frequent.
Sarah: Ohhh!
Dr. Nagoski: Would you describe that as bed death?
Sarah: No!
Dr. Nagoski: If you’re like…
Sarah: That’s the difference between fast food and a nine-course meal.
Dr. Nagoski: Right! Yeah. They’re not starving. They’re – so Mo made this mistake of looking up what the number is and, like, feeling really bad about not –
Sarah: Ohhh!
Dr. Nagoski: – being the thing, which is why I was like, okay, let me tell you about – [laughs] – this whole thing of that, of the possibility that you could assess a relationship, a sexual connection by frequency of sex –
Sarah: Oh wow.
Dr. Nagoski: – is inherently a cisheteronormative, patriarchal standard. There is –
Sarah: That has no bearing on the intricacies and nuance of reality.
Dr. Nagoski: If people are having sex every day and one of them doesn’t like any of it –
Sarah: Then it’s not good!
Dr. Nagoski: Right?
Sarah: Yeah! Doesn’t –
Dr. Nagoski: That’s –
Sarah: Oh boy.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s not a measure –
Sarah: But, I mean, there is –
Dr. Nagoski: – of sexual wellbeing.
Sarah: – there is nothing a cisheteronormative culture likes to do more than assign numerical, quantitative value to different people’s –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, if you can’t score it and measure it, then what even is the point?
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. My husband always, he always jokes about leaving his Apple Watch on.
Sarah: [Laughs] It’s not steps, but how high did my heart rate go?
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah, and I’m like, no, man. [Laughs]
Sarah: No. We don’t –
Dr. Nagoski: We’re not going to do that.
Sarah: – we do not need a fitness qualification stat on the sex times.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s a funny joke, but no. I think there was an internet story about somebody who actually did that, and it got made a news story because he got data on what happened to his heart rate and – geeze.
Sarah: I mean, I’ve seen people on Dateline having, having orgasms inside an MRI.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah!
Sarah: Like, there’s actual sex research; we don’t need –
Dr. Nagoski: That is actual sex research, right.
Sarah: We don’t need to involve Apple in this; it’s okay. [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Like, it, no information that you can get from your Apple Watch is going to give you any kind of insight into what’s actually going on with your sex life.
Sarah: Yes, because it’s not just like – it, it’s like when my watch tries to tell me the quality of my sleep?
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Like, You were in deep sleep. Or I was just lying really still, but wide awake, and my brain was roaring with anxiety brain gerbils, but I just wasn’t moving, so you thought I was deeply asleep.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: It’s not act- –
Dr. Nagoski: It happened to me this week!
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: I was at the dentist getting fillings!
Sarah: No!
Dr. Nagoski: And my Watch thought I was asleep.
Sarah: No, I was not asleep, and it was not resting time. I mean, maybe they gave you that good gas that makes you take a nap, but that’s not, usually not what hap- –
Dr. Nagoski: They didn’t!
Sarah: Aw! Unfortunate!
Dr. Nagoski: Nope. I was, like, fully, fully awake for an hour and a half worth of dental work.
Sarah: Unfortunate!
Dr. Nagoski: And yeah. So yeah, the data that you get that’s quantitative like that does not tell you anything in particular about, like, the quality of your sex life. And it’s the same thing when you try to assess your sexuality based on numerical standards like what other people say is how often they have sex.
Sarah: Well, I mean, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts that rest on debunking and reframing data, and the number one thing is never rely on self-reporting. People are lying liar liar-pants when it comes to self-reporting –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – that has any kind of nuance of, of, of – not nobility – of some sort of aspirational goal. Like –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – self-reporting is utterly not helpful.
Dr. Nagoski: It doesn’t tend to have a great relationship with what actually happened.
Sarah: Oh yeah! With re-, with, with actual, factual reality.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways that they try to assess this, but the thing is, none of them matter?
Sarah: Nope. Doesn’t matter.
Dr. Nagoski: None, none of the different methodological changes, because none of those people are you. None of them are participating sexually with you.
Sarah: Yeah. That’s absolutely true.
Dr. Nagoski: And also, like, it’s going to change! Like, how you feel today is not how you’re going to feel tomorrow! Is not how you’re going to feel ten years from now.
Sarah: Ooh. So you were writing and researching this book while also working on the Come As You Are podcast.
Dr. Nagoski: Yes. That might be part of why it took more than a year.
Sarah: Yeah. And also it, I imagine there’s some significant overlap in the developments of research since the Come As You Are book and the podcast and then the research that you’re doing about couples and long-term sexual satisfaction. Lot of overlap there; what were some of the –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – new things that you, that you learned?
Dr. Nagoski: Ah! So, mm, so I’m learning so many things? The science is, it’s so fascinating! One of my favorite episodes is the last episode. I do think the consent episode, where we talk about ambivalence at an orgy is probably my favorite, but the last episode is from someone named Arthur who is in his eighties and wants to know why his wife is not interested in sex.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: Talk about sex in a potentially really – now, I don’t know. Maybe Arthur, like, just met and married his wife life five years ago. Or maybe they’ve been together for sixty years. We don’t know. But when people, when it’s a combination of the reality of aging bodies –
Sarah: Yes! That is a thing that happens to them, isn’t it?
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah, and –
Sarah: Yeah. Ooh.
Dr. Nagoski: – cultural gender roles generationally –
Sarah: Which also change and come with different baggage as you age.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And the difference between wanting and liking sex. So one of the ideas that just is becoming more and more true in my head: what if, Sarah Wendell, what if –
Sarah: What if?
Dr. Nagoski: – there’s no such thing as a sexual desire disorder?
Sarah: Oh! Oh my!
Dr. Nagoski: What if there’s no such thing as low libido? What if there’s no such thing, no such diagnosis or problem as sexual desire disorder? What if desire is never the problem?
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: So Peggy Kleinplatz, who I’ve probably talked to you about before –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – is a sex researcher and therapist in Canada.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: She runs the optimal sexual experiences lab. She has interviewed dozens of people who self-identify as having extraordinary sex lives, which –
Sarah: Damn it, Canada! Why you got to be so cool?
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] Canada is – yeah.
Sarah: What the hell, Canada?
Dr. Nagoski: And Peggy in particular is completely amazing. So if a couple comes to her –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – and one partner is like, You know what, I’d be just as happy if we never had sex again. I’m sorry that that hurts my partner’s feelings, but that’s just how it is for me.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: Peggy’s question is, So tell me about the sex you do not want. Because usually what people then describe is, as Peggy puts it, dismal and disappointing.
Sarah: Ohhh, the devil you say!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah!
Sarah: So the sex that you do not want is the sex that you don’t enjoy.
Dr. Nagoski: Sex that you don’t even like! And Peggy, being the brilliant, wonderful human she is, will say, Well, I rather like sex, but if that’s the sex I were having, I wouldn’t want it either.
Sarah: No, I would not want that either.
Dr. Nagoski: And so the question is, What kind of sex is worth wanting?
Sarah: Right? And what are the –
Dr. Nagoski: This is –
Sarah: – things that you want?
Dr. Nagoski: These are the things that I told you, some friends of mine – this is another story that I tell a lot – we were in a pub in England and –
Sarah: As you do, yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – they were like, So how do you, like, deal with a loss of desire or a lack of desire? They had two young kids. So I told them the thing I always say: You put your body in the bed; you let your skin touch your partner’s skin. You don’t have to have spontaneous desire, but you get into that situation and your body goes, Oh right! I really like this! I really like this person!
So I’m saying all this; it’s a cishet couple, and as I’m saying it, the wife is going, Ahhh! She’s literally leaning away from the table.
Sarah: Oh no!
Dr. Nagoski: And I was like, Okay, so there’s your problem. You do not have a desire problem. You have a pleasure problem. The problem is not that you don’t want the sex; the problem is you do not like the sex that is available to you. What if there’s no such thing as a desire disorder?
Sarah: Wow.
Dr. Nagoski: What if it’s just a lack of pleasure? But! But! Oh! Oh! Here’s my favorite new science! This is actually science I, like, began to put into Come As You Are, and Come As You Are is a hundred thousand words long already. Like, it just isn’t going to fit?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So, like, I got to dive deep –
Sarah: No, no pun intended: it’s just not going to fit. Yeah, okay.
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs]
Sarah: Sorry! [Laughs] Couldn’t leave that one there.
Dr. Nagoski: I mean, you could have!
Sarah: I mean, I could have, but I wasn’t going to.
Dr. Nagoski: I’m glad you made the choice you did.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: So there are people where, like, there’s a lack of pleasure –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – and figuring out what kind of sex is worth wanting, sex that’s worth having, right, that’s essential. You will repair a desire disorder by making pleasure happen. And that can be complex, I’m not saying it’s not, but let’s not say there’s a problem with the person’s desire –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – if they don’t – well, the way Peggy puts it is, Sometimes lack of desire is evidence of good judgment.
Sarah: Whoa!
Dr. Nagoski: Right?
Sarah: Oh my!
Dr. Nagoski: This is why I love Peggy Kleinplatz.
Sarah: Yeah, I can see why!
Dr. Nagoski: But then there are other couples, and honestly, this is my own personal experience: writing Come As You Are was pretty stressful. I was reading, thinking, and writing about sex all day every day, and I was so stressed about writing, thinking, and talking about sex all day that I was not interested in actually having any sex? So for months my own interest in sex: gone.
Sarah: [Whistles]
Dr. Nagoski: And then I went on tour.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: And I was so – like, I would take my own advice: like, I would get back from a thing, put my body in the bed with my certain special someone, let my skin touch my partner’s skin, and I would just cry and fall asleep because I was so exhausted and overwhelmed.
Sarah: Awww!
Dr. Nagoski: Right? So it is not that I didn’t like the sex; it’s that I couldn’t, I was stuck somewhere in my brain.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: So Jaak Panksepp, maybe best known as the rat tickler? You may have seen, like, TV show episodes of, like, some, like, bearded dude literally tickling a rat, and you, they’re recording the sound of the rat giggling –
Sarah: Ohhh.
Dr. Nagoski: – and coming back for more to be tickled? He’s an aff-, he’s the father of affective neuroscience, and he posits some primary process emotions. So if you, I’m mapping these out as like a floor plan in your brain of all the different emotional spaces you can be in, and lust is one of them. Lust is one room in the house –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – of your emotional floor plan.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: Now, there are some other rooms in your floor plan that have a door directly into lust. One of those is play, probably. So play is a natural mammalian emotional state; it is entirely social. Play is anything we do just because we like it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It is the cement of friendship.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Play, for a lot of people, has a doorway right into lust. Seeking, exploration is another room that for a lot of people – this is, like, my primary way in. Like, intellectual debate can be like just, I mean it’s not even a door, it’s a Slip ‘N Slide into lust for me.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: For other people it’s traveling together, adventure –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – like trying new things. Going to an art museum and discussing what you see there is like, just like goes right into lust. For some people it’s the care space. Now, care is complicated.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: Because it’s not just how much you love your partner. Care as, like, the emotional space in your brain, I think of it as being like the open plan sort of like living room/kitchen/dining room? Because there’s the kitchen of care, which is the taking care of: the childcare, the making sure everyone’s needs are met –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – that stuff. Which is not a sexy place. That’s not a place for most people that has direct access to your lust space.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: Chances are you’ve got to from the kitchen of taking care of through another space.
Sarah: Yes. Towards lust.
Dr. Nagoski: Maybe you’ve got to get from the taking care of into play and play. So you’re not trying to get to the room where it happens; you’re trying to get to the room next door to the room where it happens.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: So if you plot out which spaces, which emotional states transition easily, which you can do by thinking about like, When has it been easy? Under what circumstances is it easy? What’s happening? When it’s easy for me to get into the lust space –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – is it playing with somebody? Is it that intellectual seeking? Is it adventure? Is it the caring for, the living room of care, which is the, like, Netflix and chill kind of space –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: – where you just are, like, loving on each other so much, you’re so there for each other, you feel so mutually supportive and affectionate and admiring and trusting. When care is going really well in a peer relationship, sometimes that has like a direct pathway into the lust space.
Sarah: Absolutely!
Dr. Nagoski: And then there’s the aversive states, like fear and anger and panic grief, which is actually the alarm bell that your care system sets off when your care needs are not being met.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: So it’s loneliness, isolation, despair. It is feeling like a person isn’t there for you?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s feeling like you don’t deserve connection. Shame is like the thing that will boot you right out of the care space and into panic grief.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: So I’m obviously describing this very quickly, but one of the most important new pieces of science for me that’s going into the new book is this idea of the emotional floor plan. I was stuck in fear.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: ‘Cause I was so stressed and panicked about, like, Am I doing a good enough job? This is a brand-new thing I’ve never done before; it’s really important to me –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – and, like, I couldn’t get out! I mean, I was doing all my stress management stuff, literally wrote a book about it later –
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: – and was, like, I know how to do the thing, but it was just too much –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – for me to be able to process enough to get out of the fear space so that I could get into seeking or play so that I could get to lust.
Sarah: Wow.
Dr. Nagoski: Does that make sense?
Sarah: Absolutely makes sense.
Dr. Nagoski: Hurray!
Sarah: So that is, that is really fascinating? But also giving people the contextual understanding based in home also helps people, I think, recognize their bodies as their homes.
Dr. Nagoski: Yes.
Sarah: If you can conceive of your body as a thing that you take care of that also helps take care of you, if you can recognize how it’s speaking to you?
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: That, you contextualizing your emotional landscape as a home also helps you locate yourself –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – in your physical home.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. What I like in particular – so I like a lot of things about it, but I like that, that, like, this is your ground; it doesn’t matter where you are; those are all innate places –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – that exist in your brain. There’s no good or bad ones; there’s uncomfortable and comfortable places, certainly –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – but they’re not good or bad; they’re not better or worse; they’re just the place that your life has put you in your emotional brain.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And this is a mammalian brain format, so your cat behind you, like in her little booty there?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Has the same set: has play –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – has seeking, has care, has lust! Has all those –
Sarah: And as of right now, has a clean butthole.
Dr. Nagoski: That’s delightful.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: And so, so cleaning is part of, like, one of the bonus spaces; I call, I call them the bonus, in addition to the primary process emotions, there’s also what I call the utility room?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Which is the body care. Like, sometimes you’re literally physically just too tired.
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Too unwell –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – to be able to get out of anywhere, and you just need to be asleep, right?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Or you’re just like cleaning your butt has to happen before anything else is going to get done.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: We’ve all been there!
Sarah: It’s true! I mean, my cat is there right now.
Dr. Nagoski: Exactly. And no judgment –
Sarah: No!
Dr. Nagoski: – no shade.
Sarah: Nope!
Dr. Nagoski: And the other bonus space? I call it the scenic viewpoint.
Sarah: Ooh!
Dr. Nagoski: So if you imagine, if, you know, this is your floor plan, this is your home, you go outside, you climb a tree into a tree house, and you can see down into your floor plan, so that when you’re in the fear space you go to your scenic viewpoint and you can watch yourself be in fear.
Sarah: Ah, and remind, and remove yourself from the immediacy of…
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. So that no matter how urgent it is in your body, the part of you that can go to the scenic viewpoint recognizes that there’s a difference between what’s happening in your body and what your external circumstances are.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Are you truly unsafe? This, it’s just mindfulness; it’s just a metaphor for mindfulness, and every therapeutic modality has its own language for taking a step out of your internal experience.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about mindfulness as watching your own internal experience like a shy animal –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – bathing in the sun? You can’t approach too closely –
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: – or it’ll run away!
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And I consider pleasure to be a shy animal like that, where if you try to approach too closely, it will bolt.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: Pain is not a shy animal, right?
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: Pain is an obnoxious customer? [Laughs]
Sarah: Pain is a trash panda. Pain is raccoons, and you just threw out, like, lots of good leftovers.
Dr. Nagoski: Right, and even if, you know, they eat everything in the trashcan, they stay! They’re not done! They’re going to hang out.
Sarah: There might be more? Right!
Dr. Nagoski: That is pain!
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It is a very different phenomenon. But pleasure is this, like, shy, quiet creature that needs you to, like, build a relationship with it gradually.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Because pain is a survival mechanism.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: And pleasure depends on safety.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So pleasure depends on your ability to get to the scenic viewpoint, to notice your internal experience from one step back.
Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: Does that make sense?
Sarah: Absolutely. Absolutely it does.
Dr. Nagoski: And it becomes extra important when you get to, like, solving problems or when you get to trying to take your sex life from being like, we have a good, strong sex life! Into, like, sex magic and the ecstatic.
Sarah: Yeah. Which is a big step!
Dr. Nagoski: And scary as hell.
Sarah: Very scary.
Dr. Nagoski: Most of the time.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: And, and really worth it –
Sarah: It is.
Dr. Nagoski: – for people who are ready, and that’s what the last part of the new book is about.
Sarah: Oooh!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: All right, so I have two more questions –
Dr. Nagoski: Okay.
Sarah: – and one of them is a bit of a turn, but as a sex educator I thought that you would be uniquely qualified to answer this question. I’m going to put a link in the chat. It’s a link to an image. These are the mascots for the Paris Olympics 2024, and I would like to know if you think those are clitorises, ‘cause I’m pretty sure they are. They’re supposed to be hats.
Dr. Nagoski: They don’t look like hats to me.
Sarah: They look like clitorises, right? That’s a – and I love them that they’re both the same and that the Paralympic one has a running blade on, and they got cute little trainers? Those are, those are clitori. Clitori? Clitoris, clitor-, clitorine?
Dr. Nagoski: Clitorises, as far as I know. It could be clitori.
Sarah: Clitoriseseses? Those are clitorises, right?
Dr. Nagoski: They look – my first thought was nipples.
Sarah: Right. They got –
Dr. Nagoski: But my first thought was not at all hats. I mean, that was like –
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: – they’re red; those are body parts.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Those are nipples. And then I was like, they have the legs; they kind of look like a Muppet dinosaur, which is what the illustrations of all the internal structure of the clitoris, they do, they do have a little bit of that. Can I complain about the fact that they both have blue eyes and I just find that racist?
Sarah: Little bit.
Dr. Nagoski: Just, it’s like an unthinking decision someone made.
Sarah: Yeah. And it was like, Oh, red, white, and blue! Red, white, and blue, but even the little –
Dr. Nagoski: Cool!
Sarah: – even the little hood at the top, I was like –
Dr. Nagoski: Yep!
Sarah: – somebody was having a real fun time, and like, nonononono!
Dr. Nagoski: I will say it doesn’t not look like a clitoris.
Sarah: C’est chapeau! Sont chapeaux! No, those are clits, y’all.
So it’s French clit Olympics in 2024. Your book will be out in time for French clit Olympics.
Dr. Nagoski: Yes!
Sarah: All the marketing you could possibly need right here.
Dr. Nagoski: Amazing!
Sarah: Amazing, right? It’s a clit.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: That’s a clit. I thought so. I, I needed, I needed to ask an actual qualified person for their opinion on this matter, ‘cause –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – I, I had some questions. Thank you for verifying that.
Dr. Nagoski: You bet!
Sarah: Now, I always ask this: what books are you reading that you might want to tell people about, if you have had time to read books, because you have been a, a skosh busy.
Dr. Nagoski: But I, I have to read a lot of books. Inevitably, it’s sitting right here on my desk ‘cause I was just recommending it yesterday also? Magnificent Sex is Peggy Kleinplatz and Dana Ménard’s book about their research –
Sarah: Ooh!
Dr. Nagoski: – on people who experience optimal sexual experiences?
Sarah: Ooh!
Dr. Nagoski: It is pretty science-y, but amazing.
Sarah: It’s a good title, too. Like, it is –
Dr. Nagoski: It’s the best title.
Sarah: – you don’t know what that book is about – yes, you do. Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. There is another book that I read as research for the book; I’m just going to make sure I get the subtitle. Here it is. The title is Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. This is by Saidiya Hartman, and it’s about the first decades of the 20th century, the lives of Black women and femmes in urban America.
Sarah: Oh wow! That’s very cool.
Dr. Nagoski: Filling in a historical gap, because their lives are not documented, because they were not worthy of documentation by the people who wrote the documents.
Sarah: Nope.
Dr. Nagoski: And so she does this imaginative history, filling in the blanks between a court document and a prison release document. Like, what, imagining what the life was, the ways that Black women and femmes attempted to create beautiful lives as if they were free –
Sarah: Wow.
Dr. Nagoski: – in a world that wanted to live in, wanted them to live in six foot by nine foot lives.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s gorgeous and breathtaking. It’s like a heavy, big, chewy read, not something you just read like that, but it was so good!
[Laughter]
Dr. Nagoski: Oh, and a book that just came out this October? Tricia Hersey’s book, the Nap Bishop’s book –
Sarah: [Gasps]
Dr. Nagoski: – finally was released?
Sarah: Yes!
Dr. Nagoski: Rest Is Resistance? It’s so good! It’s another book where you just, like, it’s a, it’s a taste book. Like, you read several pages and you journal about it. Like, I had a whole revelatory, like, personal experience when she was describing the ways that taking a ballet class as a grad student was part of her research as someone getting a Master of Theology.
Sarah: Wow!
Dr. Nagoski: A Master of Divinity.
Sarah: Wow.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Uh, it’s ohhh!
Sarah: That’s so good.
Dr. Nagoski: Transformative.
And of course Courtney Milan is fricking killing it! When the Devil Comes Courting? I read it every year now.
Sarah: Oh, that’s the nicest thing!
Dr. Nagoski: I cry through the last eighty pages every time.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: In-, in-, including through the 19th century sexting.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Like, I ju-, like, it is so good! And, and The Duke Who Didn’t is equally good, but it’s the comedy version –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – instead. So yeah, I just – [sighs] – I love those books so much!
Sarah: Aw!
Well, thank you so much. Where can people find you if you wish to be found?
Dr. Nagoski: So Instagram is the social media place I am most likely to be. I just did a live there, a spontaneous sex Q&A. @enagoski is who I am on Instagram. I’m @emilynagoski on Twitter, but…
Sarah: Who even knows by the time I edit this if Twitter will even be a thing?
Dr. Nagoski: If Twit- – [laughs]. It will, it will still be there, but meh. My website, emilynagoski.com, it’s even to sign up for my newsletter, which is mostly, like, sex Q&A, very, pretty infrequent. It’s lots of fun. And the podcast is available wherever podcasts –
Sarah: Are casting.
Dr. Nagoski: – are found? Are – yes!
Sarah: Fabulous!
Dr. Nagoski: And the title is Come As You Are. Turns out there are a lot of podcasts called Come As You Are?
Sarah: Huh!
Dr. Nagoski: So it’s the one with Emily Nagoski from Pushkin.
Sarah: Got it! I will link appropriately.
Dr. Nagoski: And, like, seriously, so the work I do, like, is my mission in life. I am here on Earth to teach people to live with confidence and joy in their bodies?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: And I feel like the podcast is my first, like, mass media thing? Trying to, like, put these big ideas into many people’s brains, and I, like I got really, like, I really want people to listen to it and like it and if they like it share it with their friends.
Sarah: Awesome!
Dr. Nagoski: I think it’ll help people.
Sarah: That’s lovely! Thank you!
Dr. Nagoski: Thank you!
Sarah: Thank you for doing this. This has been such a delight!
Dr. Nagoski: It’s my favorite thing to talk about, so.
Sarah: Well, when your, when your book comes out, will you come back and talk more?
Dr. Nagoski: Oh heck yeah! It’s going to, literally more than a year. It’s not, not even done written yet.
Sarah: I plan to still be here.
Dr. Nagoski: Okay! That would be great!
Sarah: Thank you so much, Emily. I really, really appreciate it.
Dr. Nagoski: Thank you for what you do.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: Brings me joy very often.
Sarah: Thank you!
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you, Emily Nagoski, for hanging out with me!
I will absolutely link to the podcast Come As You Are, but you can find it wherever you get your tasty podcasts, including this one. I will also have links to every book we talked about, no worries, and links to where you can find Emily Nagoski and her work and find out about her books and about her upcoming book.
I always end each episode with a terrible joke, and this week is no exception. This joke is from Rae; thank you, Rae! We have a jokes channel in the Discord, and I read this one and, like, snort-laughed so hard, so I’m so excited to have this joke to share with you. Thank you, Rae!
What do you get when you cross an angry sheep with an angry cow?
Give up? What do you get when you cross an angry sheep with an angry cow?
Two animals in a baaaad mooood.
[Laughs] The only, the only thing funnier than knowing that you have to say this joke out loud for it to be really funny is to see what that looks like in the waveform as I’m editing. Baaaad mooood! Thank you so much, Rae!
And thank you so much for listening. It is always a pleasure to keep you company. We wish you the very best of reading, and have a great weekend!
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.
Baaaad mooood! [Laughs]
[end of music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
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Thank you, Sarah and Dr. Nagoski, for an informative session!
Fascinating episode – but as someone who had a pandemic baby and had so followed the trends for that – there actually WAS a small baby boom from the pandemic in the US. 2020 birth rates dropped, but that would be mostly conceived pre-pandemic and the drop was caused from travel bans limiting foreign women from coming into and giving birth in the US. 2021 into 2022 had an increase in birth rates, more than making up from the lower number of foreigners giving birth in the US. Professional women and first time moms were actually more likely to conceive during peak work from home pandemic times. Kinda interesting when you look at how it breaks down even further (race for example, it wasn’t a baby boom for Black families) to see what groups were more likely to have a baby and which were less likely during the pandemic.