We talk about the genesis for this book, which is in part that writing a book is stressful and hard, and while writing Come As You Are, Emily noticed that her own interest in sex was missing. By diving headlong into all the research, she realized that people who sustain lasting sexual connections have a few major things in common, which is what this book is all about.
CW/TW: we mention this in the conversation, but it’s important to note that at 23:36 we talk about intimate partner violence, and at 1:00:45 we talk about intentional weight loss. We are also talking about intimacy, sex, and sexual practices.
Music: Purple-planet.com
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You can find out more about Emily Nagoski at her website, EmilyNagoski.com.
We also mentioned Dr. Shamika Thorpe‘s work, which you can find at DrShemeka.com.
And I mentioned this Tweet from author Racheline Maltese:
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Transcript
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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome – hang on; I actually downloaded a drumroll for this – [drumroll, cymbal] – welcome to episode number 600 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. Woohoo! Thank you for being here. I’m Sarah Wendell –
[music]
Sarah: – and my guest today is Emily Nagoski. Emily Nagoski’s one of my most frequent guests, which is good because she’s a lot of fun to talk to, and she’s back to talk about her new book, Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. We talk about the genesis for this book, which is in part that writing a book is stressful and hard, and while writing Come as You Are, Emily noticed that her own interest in sex was missing, so she dove headfirst into all the research and realized that people who sustain lasting sexual connections have a few major things in common, which is what this book is all about.
Now, I need to make sure that you know, and I will say right before the interview starts, what the very specific timestamps are here, but we are going to be talking about, obviously, intimacy, and we’re going to have frank discussions of sex and sexual practices, but we also talk about threats of violence, intimate partner violence, discussion of intentional weight loss, anti-fat bias, and long COVID. I will give you the timestamps right before the interview starts as to where we talk about intimate partner violence and where we talk about intentional weight loss in case that’s something that you need to skip over. I want to make it as easy as possible for you to look after yourself.
A very big hello and thank-you to our Patreon community. I want to say hello to Katie, who joined us recently, and I want to say hello to Anna S., who I have a compliment for:
Anna, your friends think that you are the human personification of warm socks and a blanket fresh from the dryer, the finest desserts, and the best hugs – especially that last one.
If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge, thank you. You’re keeping me going, you’re making sure that every episode, including this one, has a transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter – hey, garlicknitter! [Hey! 600! Woohoo! – gk] – and you’re making every episode accessible to everyone. If you would like to join the Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at a dollar a month, and you get bonus episodes, a truly wonderful Discord community, and a lot of other fun stuff. It would be lovely to have you.
And I also want to take a month to say thank you to you who is listening right now and to everyone who has listened. Six hundred episodes is a lot of episodes, and I had no idea what podcasting would become when we first posted our first episodes back in December of 2008 – I had to go look it up. It has been more than ten years, and I have learned a lot about interviewing, about listening, about asking questions, and then the technical stuff like editing and what are the correct terms to google when the audio software is being weird? So thank you for being here, for being part of the podcast community. Thank you for listening to the show and telling people about it, for reviewing the show on whatever podcast platform you’re using, and for tuning in. I am truly honored to keep you company each week, and I am extremely proud to reach six hundred episodes. Thank you.
Support for this episode comes from Hello Fresh, who wants you to have free breakfast for life, which sounds good! At Hello Fresh you get farm fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. You can skip trips to the grocery store and count on Hello Fresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable, and that’s why it’s America’s number one meal kit. Now, I’ve been cooking for myself for a long time, and now that I have children that are taller than me, it has been time to pass along the kitchen knowledge to them. Hello Fresh has been a great tool for both my ability to relax and not cook one evening and their growing culinary skills. The step-by-step instructions allow my kids to take over dinner prep with confidence and curiosity. They have a really good time, and the meals are really interesting and delicious, too. There are over forty-five dinner options to choose from weekly and even more market add-on items that will suit any lifestyle. We tried the Monterey jack chicken with roasted potatoes and green beans, which were perfect, and we loved how fast it was ready, too. We also tried the pork tacos with cabbage slaw and the Thai chili burgers with home fries, and both of my tall children are still talking about how good they were, especially the tacos. (Okay, now I’m hungry, darn it.) But I have good news: there is a special offer going on right now. Hello Fresh is giving all subscribers free breakfast for life! That means you’ll enjoy a totally free breakfast item with every single Hello Fresh delivery. Now that’s worth waking up early for. Go to hellofresh.com/SMARTTRASHYFREE and use code SMARTTRASHYFREE for free breakfast for life. Do you know how much I love this coupon code? One breakfast item per box while subscription is active; that’s free breakfast for life at hellofresh.com/SMARTTRASHYFREE with code SMARTTRASHYFREE. Hello Fresh: America’s number one meal kit.
As I mentioned, I have some CONTENT WARNING TIMESTAMPS. These are mentioned in the conversation, but for your own piece of mind, at 23:36 we talk about intimate partner violence, and at 1:00:45 we talk about intentional weight loss and long COVID.
On with the podcast.
[music]
Dr. Emily Nagoski: I am Emily Nagoski; I am a sex educator and the author of Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, which is about the science of women’s sexual wellbeing; Burnout, co-authored with my twin sister, which is about stress management in the context of the patriarchy; and my new book coming out very soon is Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections.
Sarah: Happy new book! Now, when, I think you might be – my husband and I were debating this when we were walking the dog this morning – I think you might be my most frequent guest? The person who’s – with the exception of Amanda, who co-hosts with me a lot – I think you might be the guest who’s appeared the most. You’re like a, like a five-time –
Dr. Nagoski: Really!
Sarah: – SNL host? Yeah! I know that when we last spoke, about a year ago, you were talking about this book. I, I think it’s so cool to come back and revisit –
Dr. Nagoski: ‘Cause I cannot shut up about this book!
Sarah: No, it’s more like you did it! It’s done, and other people get to read it now! What will people find inside a book called Come Together? It’s a Beatles biography, isn’t it?
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] Yeah. The thing I do is I name my books after book titles; that’s apparently what I do.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: So the origin story here is that writing Come as You Are, my first book, was pretty, writing a book is hard, as you know. It was, in fact, so stressful that, even though I was writing a book about sex, the stress of it made my interest in actually having any sex completely vanish. Like, zero.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: For months at a time. And, and then I went on book tour, and I talked to anyone who would listen about the science of women’s sexual wellbeing. It was so exciting talking about sex all the time, and I would get home from the travel and I would try to follow my own advice. I’d, you know, schedule sex, and I’d put my body in the bed, let my skin touch my partner’s skin, and what’s supposed to happen next is my body’s supposed to wake up and go, Oh, I like this! I like this person! This is such a good idea! And instead I was so stressed and exhausted I would fall asleep and then cry.
Sarah: Oh, that’s –
Dr. Nagoski: Sometimes in the other direction.
Sarah: That’s, that’s, that’s not optimal! That’s not where you wanted to go there.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. So clearly my own book had not answered the questions that I had about sex in a long-term relationship, so I did what anyone would do: I went to the peer-reviewed research –
Sarah: Of course.
Dr. Nagoski: – on how couples sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term. And what I found there, first of all, totally different from everything, everything in the mainstream cultural narrative about what sex in long-term relationships looks like. Second, shockingly doable. Shockingly simple and straightforward if people were willing to consider the possibility that talking about sex with the person you have sex with is not a sign that something is wrong, but in fact a sign that something is right.
Sarah: Oh, for sure! You have to be able to have intimate conversations in order to have intimate moments and vice versa, right?
Dr. Nagoski: You say that –
Sarah: Yes, but it’s not easy –
Dr. Nagoski: – but there are –
Sarah: – to do.
Dr. Nagoski: – a lot of people who are absolutely sure that having to talk about it means there’s a problem. If things are fine, then you shouldn’t need to talk about it. It turns out, in the research, that people who have great sex lives? Talk about sex all the time.
Sarah: Oh! That I absolutely believe.
Dr. Nagoski: Right? Yeah!
Sarah: But this mandate to not talk about it unless there’s a problem, that has a whiff of patriarchy.
Dr. Nagoski: [sarcasm font] Oh, does it? Does it have a whiff of patriarchy? [end sarcasm font]
Sarah: A little, a little, I, I catch a little scent of oppressive patriarchal expectations? [Sniffs]
Dr. Nagoski: It’s, it’s a little bit of cis-hetero-patriarchal, rapidly exploitative, late capitalist, also white supremacist –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – purity culture! Yes.
Sarah: Oh, that too! God! What a cake. I really thought that you –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – were going to say, You know, I’m a sex educator and I looked at my life and said, What the hell? And I looked for the peer-review research, and there wasn’t any. Like, I really expected there to be none research here, and I’m really glad to know there was!
Dr. Nagoski: There is.
Sarah: A little.
Dr. Nagoski: Some.
Sarah: Some.
Together: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So there’s, there’s problems with the research in this field.
Sarah: What?!
Dr. Nagoski: One is that – I know, I know! – more so than, I mean, like, I addressed problems in the research in, like, every book, because I love science! Science, to me, is like democracy –
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: – it is the worst way of understanding the world, except maybe for all the other ones?
Sarah: Fair.
Dr. Nagoski: Science is so powerful, and it has really profound limits, and the main limit of science is that it is done by people. Even sex scientists are not required to examine and dismantle their pre-existing assumptions about who’s supposed to have sex and what sex is supposed to look like before they start doing the research, and so there’s, there’s a lot of white supremacy. There’s a lot of fat phobia. There’s a lot –
Sarah: Oh –
Dr. Nagoski: – of ableism in the research. Open relationships and monogamous relationships are studied separately –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – as if the biology of human attachment and love is different depending on the type of relationship you’re in. Spoiler: it’s not!
Sarah: No!
Dr. Nagoski: So I had to, there was, there was a lot of bad stuff that I had to sort through to find the really good stuff, but there is some really amazing, amazing research. Can I talk about, I know we’re, we’re going to talk about, like, the actual leg, but how to! People are like, But how do I sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term, Emily? Can I first talk about two researchers whose work I have really depended on?
Sarah: Like you even have to ask that question? Just –
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs]
Sarah: – please tell me all about it, because this is the thing that I’m not good at: I am not good at taking a wide variety of data and synthesizing it into a, a – like, that’s not a thing my brain can do. I get over-, too overwhelmed. I cannot do that, so the fact that you can is already fascinating.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s my brain’s favorite thing!
Sarah: Okay, please tell me everything.
Dr. Nagoski: So the first author has actually written a book that people can read. It’s called Magnificent Sex.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: This is a book that I’ve been recommending ever since it was published by Peggy Kleinplatz and A. Dana Ménard – M-É-N-A-R-D – Dana Ménard, Magnificent Sex. Gorgeous title, right?
Sarah: Lessons –
Dr. Nagoski: So –
Sarah: – from Extraordinary Lovers? Hell yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers. It’s on the academic side, but it’s, this work is so good. So what Peggy and her team did was interview dozens of people who self-identify as having extraordinary sex, as having optimal sexual experiences. So the first thing I want to ask you is, What do you suppose is the typical age at which a person has their first extraordinary or optimal sexual experience?
Sarah: Are we breaking this down –
Dr. Nagoski: Typical first age.
Sarah: Are we, are we just talking about all people? Are we talking about people who identify as men and people who identify as women? ‘Cause I imagine those –
Dr. Nagoski: All people –
Sarah: All people.
Dr. Nagoski: – ‘cause people – it’s not different by gender.
Sarah: Okay. All people, magnificent sex, I’m going to say somewhere in their forties.
Dr. Nagoski: Fifty-five.
Sarah: Damn! I’m not even there yet? Hell yeah! [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Well, what that means is that, like, about half of people it’s sometime before that, and about half people it’s sometime after that. On the one hand, like, wow, they went all those years having sex that was not optimal, but also, like, they got there. They did not let anything stop them.
Sarah: Yes. That is very good point. That’s a very glass-half-empty/glass-half-full way of looking at this.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. And also, for anybody who thinks that it’s too late, not too late.
Sarah: Not too late.
Dr. Nagoski: Not even, not even a little bit.
Sarah: Nope.
Dr. Nagoski: So Peggy ident-, Peggy and her team interviewed dozens of people of all different ages, different genders, different sexual orientations, different kinky versus vanilla, open versus monogamous, all relationship structures; this is some of the most inclusive research. One of the reasons it’s so good is that it’s inclusive of people of different neurotypes; just a really diverse population of people who self-identify as having extraordinary sex.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: And first, she has a list of eight characteristics of what extraordinary sex is. You might be surprised to learn that a characteristic that is not on the list of what extraordinary sex is like – like, it didn’t make the top ten characteristics? – is desire.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: Is being horny. Not on the list.
Sarah: Wow!
Dr. Nagoski: It’s, it’s on the list, but you know how they do, like, extended New York Times bestseller lists where there’s the ten, and then the extended list is fifteen?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Desire’s on the extended list.
Sarah: Ohhh my!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. So that’s our first clue that everything we imagine about sex in long-term relationships is not actually how great sex in long-term relationships works.
Sarah: Oh, that’s fascinating.
Dr. Nagoski: So they say things like vulnerability and authenticity and creativity and play and connection, right? Like, those are things where you’re like, Ohhh! And pleasure, obviously. And, and you kind of want to know, how did they get there? And I will talk about that, because it is one of the three characteristics of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term. So Peggy’s research on optimal sexual experience is spectacular, and there’s a book about it, which I love.
The second researcher has not yet, to my knowledge, written a book that people can just buy, so you’ve got to go to the peer-reviewed research. Her name is Shemeka Thorpe, and she studies the sexual pleasure of Black women in the South. And she uses this metaphor of Pleasure Mountain. Mount Pleasure. Of, like, the steps that her research participants take in order to create a context that lets them access pleasure, despite living in a world that has absolutely tried to convince them that pleasure does not belong to them.
Sarah: Oh wow.
Dr. Nagoski: T-H-O-R-P-E, Thorpe with an E.
Sarah: I will link to this in the show notes.
Dr. Nagoski: She’s great to follow on Instagram too.
Sarah: Oh wow. Okay, so I will link to this in the show notes, but her website is drshemeka.com, S-H-E-M-E-K-A, and there is a reading list of Black sexuality, feminism, and pleasure. Oh wow, this is amazing. Well, thank you!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: Holy cow!
Dr. Nagoski: So these are two research labs that transformed my work, that were central because of the quality and inclusiveness of the populations that were studied. It wasn’t just like white, cisgender heterosexuals.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Which is most of what you find.
Sarah: Well, I mean, it is a very over-reported cohort.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. And college students, right?
Sarah: Oh, well, yes, but you know. That really is the, the image of teenagers and, and of college students, that they just, they just think with their, think with, think with their libidos all of the time. And it is incredible to see a researcher looking at other populations that don’t really even get connected to the concept of pleasure. I mean –
Dr. Nagoski: Exactly!
Sarah: – we already have weird –
Dr. Nagoski: These are not the people –
Sarah: Nope.
Dr. Nagoski: – whom you assume – like, we, we sort of have this idea, and we, we have a script in our head of what, like, normal sex or good sex or even perfect sex looks like, and that includes an image of, like, what people are doing, who those people are, what their bodies look like, what their bodies are capable of –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – their age, their shape –
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: – their genders.
Sarah: Yep. Now, in our last conversation, back when we were talking about the very beginning stages of writing this book, you talk about identifying the sex that you do not want to help identify the sex that you do want. And that’s, like, all of chapter one. And one thing I, I love so much is the pro-, watching someone go through the process of reframing a thing that we know is, is an issue, that we know is something to talk about, but completely renovating how we talk about it.
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So starting with the idea of, Well, I’m not enjoying the sex that I’m having, so the problem must be me; I must not like sex; I must not enjoy it; to moving that conversation to, I don’t like the sex that I’m having, and I might like some other sex, but I don’t know –
Dr. Nagoski: Right.
Sarah: – what that is. That’s a massive reframing job, and you tackle that in chapter one.
Dr. Nagoski: I, I think it is the foundation of the whole thing, and it’s not just changing from sex I do not want; it is transitioning away – so I ask people to consider the question, What is it that I want –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – when I want sex?
Sarah: Of course.
Dr. Nagoski: Right, and also, What is it that I don’t want when I don’t want sex? What you want when you want sex with a partner – hint: it’s not orgasm? You can probably do that on your own? And if you can’t do that on your own there’s whole books about that. So, so what is it that you want when you want sex with a partner? And when you don’t want sex, what is it that you don’t want? It’s not orgasm. What is it? When people have that as a conversational starting point, it, it gets very feelings very fast –
Sarah: Oh yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – when people have an idea of, like, I want con-, and, like, I, I have asked thousands of people this question, and they talk about, they want connection. They want to feel desired and desirable. They want to share pleasure. Like, pleasure, you don’t just want the pleasure of, like, rubbing your body parts on someone else’s body parts; you want the pleasure of sharing the sensation of your body parts on their body parts and their pleasure in the sensation of their body parts on your body parts. That is a specific and special delightful thing is the sharing of pleasure.
And people want this experience that I have started calling freedom? Of, like, being able to close the door on all the other stressful stuff in our lives and just be able disappear into the sensations of the pleasurable things that our bodies can do.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: That’s, that’s just some of the things that people really want. People want their identity validated; they want to feel accepted and acceptable; that these parts of themselves that they were taught their whole lives are dirty, dangerous, and disgusting are, in fact, desirable and wantable and lovable.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Not just acceptable, but, like –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – wow. So people want a lot of things, and when people have conversations about what they want, that is a much more productive conversation than, like, Why aren’t we having sex?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And, but for me, the transition that you get to – and so I’ll tell you it’s from Peggy’s research that this originally started in my mind. She would have a couple come in, and partner A says, I’m sorry this makes my partner upset, but honestly, I’d be happy if we never had sex again. And –
Sarah: Ouch!
Dr. Nagoski: – Peggy says, Okay. So tell me about this sex you do not want!
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Like, what an important question that is! And they do not go on to describe, like, ecstatic, pleasurable, joyful, connected, authentic, emotional, vulnerable, playful anything. It is, in Peggy’s words, dismal and disappointing.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: And her response is, Well, you know, I rather like sex, but if that’s the sex I were having, I wouldn’t want it either!
Sarah: Oooh, boy.
Dr. Nagoski: This is, this is the, the wild revelation that is completely obvious when you say it out loud.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It is not dysfunctional, it is not a problem if you do not want sex you do not like.
Sarah: Yeah! That makes total sense.
Dr. Nagoski: Right?
Sarah: And yet, think of all of the narratives in, in other realms that counter the idea: well, if someone serves you a food you don’t like, you have to eat it anyway or it’s rude. If someone gives you something you don’t like, you have to act like you do and say thank you and then, like, act and make sure that you perform using whatever this thing is that you don’t actually want.
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: You have to sublimate your wants for the comfort of someone else, and that’s not just sex; it’s food and gifts and expectations and parenting and, like, it’s all of these diff- – and family relationships – it’s all of these different –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – subtle messages where, well, if the foundational one about sex is not going to be any different.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. And yet!
Sarah: And yet!
Dr. Nagoski: Can, can we make it different?
Sarah: I hope so!
Dr. Nagoski: Like, I can’t change the whole world, but going to a friend’s house and eating the food they make, even though you don’t find it delicious, is, doesn’t have the same impact on your body as going home with your spouse of two decades and having sex again where they get to put a part of their body maybe inside a part of your body? Or –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And you, you’re, you’re just doing it and being polite.
Sarah: Yeah. That’s a completely different set of experiences on both sides of that –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – yeah. Absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: So while I recognize that, like, it’s not easy, and we have all been taught to be so polite –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – and to just grease the wheels of social interactions and make sure that people just get along? What if – this is the crazy idea – what if we all only ever had sex we like? And – it gets crazier; it gets wacky –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – it’s bananas!
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: What if, what if we didn’t feel bad about not having the sex we don’t like?
Sarah: Oh-ho!
Dr. Nagoski: What if that were just okay?
Sarah: What if it’s okay to just prioritize our own pleasure, physically and emotionally? What?! That’s –
Dr. Nagoski: Yes!
Sarah: – madness!
Dr. Nagoski: And you can even do it in, like, a long-term relationship!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: ‘Cause you can have a conversation with your partner about what, what you like and what you don’t like and what they like and what they don’t like and –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – what you want and what they want.
Sarah: And not being able to do that and feeling the possibility – CONTENT WARNING for violence – feeling the possibility of violent retribution for bringing it up –
Dr. Nagoski: Yes!
Sarah: – is a very real concern for so many people, because it’s, like, like you were just saying, it is such an elemental, foundational, human experience, intimacy and vulnerability, knowing that addressing a problem with sex means the potential of violence means that you’re not ever going to do it.
Dr. Nagoski: The question I’m asked most often is some version of Am I normal? This thing, is this normal in my life? I have this fantasy; is that normal?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: I have this desire; is that normal? I had this experience; is that normal? And maybe right after that is How do I talk to my partner about?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: How do I ask my partner about?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And, like, the, the straightforward answer is, like, You say the words like you just said it to me. I want to talk to you about whatever it is.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: So the real question isn’t it How do I talk to my partner about? It’s What is it that I dread will happen if I talk about it? Because even if it’s a person who you have sex with, we still somehow have this fear that they are going to judge us and respond negatively, or, or, equally, we are worried that they’re going to receive that conversation as criticism or judgment of them, and we are all so, so fragile –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – so delicate – [laughs] – around our sexuality, because we’ve been taught that our worth as human beings can be measured by our success as sexual people, and of course success is something that has been defined by somebody else, somebody has told us their opinion of what success looks like, and we think that we’re supposed to try to match somebody else’s opinion of what success looks like –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – and by even talking about it, we are already failing at that somebody else’s definition.
Sarah: Yeah. There’s a lot of baggage in the bedroom.
Dr. Nagoski: Oh man.
Sarah: So much!
Dr. Nagoski: But! The hopeful part is characteristics of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term.
Sarah: Yes!
Dr. Nagoski: Characteristic number one –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – they are friends –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – who pr-, they are, they trust and admire each other.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: You say that! When I was writing the admiration section of the book, it was quite controversial. ‘Cause I wrote something about how, like, so admiration is like when I hear the garage door open and I know that my partner is coming home, I feel a little flutter of joy inside me that this person I am so lucky to have as my partner is here.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: And early readers were like, That’s, that’s too aspirational. That’s not realistic. And I was like, That’s literally just a thing that happened to me today that I wrote down, Oh my gosh, I’m really, really worried about people. And so as I was writing it, Terrence Real’s book, normal marital, this idea of normal marital hatred?
Sarah: Yeess!
Dr. Nagoski: Got written about everywhere, and I was like, Oh!
Sarah: That!
Dr. Nagoski: People are letting this thing of just, like, their irritation and annoyance with the things that were, like, cute early on in a relationship escalate into, like, this person, like, the, the garage door opening and their partner coming home is not about, like, the, the things they’re so grateful for, the things they really admire about their partner, but, like, the irritations they have about, like, their partner leaving, like, food containers in the sink instead of putting them in the recycling!
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Like, why didn’t you just – like, the, all that stuff, and like, this, they were late, this, they’re, the garage door’s opening, but they’re late again!
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So working on the admiration piece makes it easier to have sex that you like. It makes it easier to talk about sex in a way that is free of shame –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – and guilt and blame!
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: So I’m not going to say that it is necessarily easy to sustain a consistent level of admiration –
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: – but when you feel that admiration missing in your relationship, that’s a target to work on before you try to, to work on the sex stuff.
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Characteristic number one.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: Characteristic number two: they prioritize sex.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: They, they decide that it matters for their relationship, and let’s just be clear: it does not matter for everyone. It does not matter for all relationships. It does not matter all the time within any given relationship. There are phases and seasons when sex drops off the priority list. (Ahem, the first four years of having a new human in your house.)
Sarah: Guuuh!
Dr. Nagoski: Like, like, it just, it just doesn’t have to be on the priority list. But the couples who sustain strong sexual connections are the ones who decide that it matters, that it does something valuable for their relationship that they stop doing all the other things they could be – like, you got kids to raise maybe? You’ve got a job to go to, school to finish, puppy to house train?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: You, like, you’ve got, you’ve got other friends to pay attention to. Why would we pause all that other stuff and just, like, put our bodies in the bed and suck each others’ toes and lick each others’ genitals? Like, why would, why would we do that? People make a choice. They decide that it really matters for their relationship and for themselves that this is part of their connection with this person that they’re choosing to spend a lot of years with.
Sarah: And they’re going to make the choice to deliberately try to shut all of that other stuff out, which is really hard, to turn off –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah!
Sarah: – all of those other obligations to focus on themselves and the pleasure that they experience with their partners.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. And because it’s a priority, they are choosing it –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – not out of a sense of, like, obligation –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – that they have to? Obligation is one of the most consistent things people say that they do not want or like –
Sarah: Which is –
Dr. Nagoski: – when they do not want or like sex.
Sarah: – tricky, because scheduling sex can often feel like making it obligatory, and that’s –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – that can be a very tricky balance for certain people’s perception of their time schedule and priority list.
Dr. Nagoski: Are you familiar with the term pathological demand avoidance?
Sarah: I am, yes. Pathological demand avoidance?
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: Yes! Yes, I am!
Dr. Nagoski: A characteristic of neurodivergent people in particular?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Especially maybe folks with ADHD? I’m married to one? It’s where, like, the fact of feeling like you’re supposed to or like it’s on your calendar or like it’s something you should be doing inherently makes you not want to do it and resent it and less likely to do it.
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: So people do tremendously vary, and even without that, if, you know are a person who schedules sex but, like, lately you’ve been in a place of conflict with your partner or work has just been incredibly overwhelming, and that event in your calendar is just looking like another fucking responsibility –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – something else you have to do for somebody else…
Sarah: Something else that I have to expend. Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Yeah. Then don’t schedule sex, because it’s not going to work for you.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: I am, I’m an advocate most, for a lot of people, the people scheduling works for are the people whose brains are slow to transition from one state to another –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and, like, you’ve got multiple children. You’ve probably noticed that this is a temperamental trait where people vary in how easily they transition from one task to another.
Sarah: Yes. Absolutely true.
Dr. Nagoski: Like, some people need a, they need to know when it’s going to happen in advance; they need a plan for the transition; and they need, it costs time and mental energy. Like, it’s actually expensive. In computer programming, they call it context switching cost.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s why multitasking doesn’t actually work.
Sarah: It does not.
Dr. Nagoski: Because you’re doing one thing and then it’s, you don’t just, like, do another thing; there’s a kchunk that happens in your brain of transitioning to the other thing, which expends a bunch of energy and attention, and then, kchunk, you go back to the other thing –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and then kchunk, and that is making you less able to invest your time and energy in the actually tasks –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – because you’re spending so much on the transition.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Transitioning into a sexy state of mind is a context switch.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And for some people the cost of that switch, the amount of time and energy that it takes is higher than it is for other people. Those are the folks who benefit from scheduling it. Knowing when it’s going to be, making sure they have a plan for what helps them transition out of whatever state of mind they’re going to be in before it starts –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – into whatever it is. For me, it’s baths. I’ll be honest; like, I know people make fun of the idea of baths as self-care, but there is something about a tub of, like, tits-deep hot water that just, like, helps me transition out of anywhere into the place I want to go emotionally.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: For my sister, who’s a professional musician married to a professional musician, it is hearing her partner practice piano.
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: That’s never going to be it for me ‘cause I’m not a musician, and neither is my husband.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: Everybody has a different thing that helps them transition. So the people who are slower to transition are the people who will most benefit from having a plan. I talked to someone yesterday who read about this, and talked to her partner. She was like, You know, it’s the end of the day; the kids are finally in bed; I get in bed with the iPad, and I’ve already started watching The Golden Bachelor, and my partner comes in and was like, Hey, hey, do you wanna? I’m like, it’s not that I don’t want to say yes? It’s that I’m already doing this.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Like, I have already started on another task, and, eh, I just think about the effort it would take to draw my brain away from this thing I’m already attending to and shift into this other state of mind.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So they had a conversation about this as, like, It’s not that I want to say no; it’s that, aiii, it takes effort. And he said, Well, what about if I just ask when would be a good time? Instead of hey, do you want to? And she – it’s such a better question.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Nagoski: These are simple communication changes that people can make.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Just adapting to the reality of having a human brain.
Sarah: Yeah! And also recognizing that the choice to engage in sexual intimacy is an expenditure of an energy?
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: But not only is it the choice to change focus an expenditure of energy, but sometimes coming up with the energy for intimacy is a real challenge at the end of the day. And it’s –
Dr. Nagoski: Oh yeah!
Sarah: – and the energy required to watch The Golden Bachelor versus the energy to have a pleasurable sexual experience, those are two def-, diff-, different modes of energy right there.
Dr. Nagoski: Oh yeah! So, so we talked about the couple where one partner doesn’t want to have sex ever again, thank you, fine with that. And it’s –
Sarah: Yeah, because the sex that they are having is not great for their, for them.
Dr. Nagoski: Of course they don’t want it! They don’t like it! And so Peggy’s question then is, So what kind of sex is worth wanting?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So that’s one kind of couple who can struggle with low sexual desire, low sexual frequency, and then there’s couples like me when I was writing Come as You Are, where, like, I know the sex would be so great if only I could get there.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: Right? Like, but I, but I can’t, ‘cause I just, I have lost the ability to can. I can’t! That’s what I needed a solution to. Why, when I put my body in the bed and I let my skin touch my partner’s skin, does my body not light up? Why does, do I cry instead? With fatigue and overwhelm. And it’s, I was just stuck! I felt stuck, and I had to figure out, if I’m stuck, where am I stuck?
Sarah: Right, what’s happening?
Dr. Nagoski: And how do I get out? [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: How do I get from here to the place I want to be, which is the sexy state of mind. So again, I did what anyone would do: I turned to the Father of Affective Neuroscience, Jaak Panksepp –
Sarah: As you do.
Dr. Nagoski: – and – as, as anyone would do. I have a very normal brain and a very ordinary life!
Sarah: Yeah, for sure!
Dr. Nagoski: He writes of seven primary process emotions. One of them is Lust. So these are seven core mammalian brain emotional systems or motivational systems, and Lust is the one where courtship and sexual contact happen. And I wanted, I wanted to get there. I wanted to get in the Lust space in my brain. So if I couldn’t get there, where was I? I was in the Fear space in my brain. I was stressed and anxious and overwhelmed, and I would get in the bed, and it doesn’t matter how much I love my partner, how attracted I am to him. I’m stuck in the Fear space, and until I get out of that space, nothing is going to happen.
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: So by being abled to recognize – like, these are the skills: recognize what space am I in emotionally.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: How do I get out?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And then the hard part is, where do I end up? ‘Cause you, the, like, here’s the tricky part: there is no doorway directly out of Fear into Lust.
Sarah: No! They don’t live next door.
Dr. Nagoski: So when you, when you think about times that you’re really, really stressed and you manage, like, very effectively to get out of a stressed, like, fear state of mind, where do you find yourself? Like, what sort of situation are you in? What emotions are you having?
Sarah: I honestly don’t know! I would really have to sit and think about it, because I don’t –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah!
Sarah: – I don’t label the next one; I’m just glad I’m out of that first one.
Dr. Nagoski: Right!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah! This is, this is why it was complicated and why it required the Father of Affective Neuroscience, ‘cause I, I thought about it and I was like, Well. So I go to, like, rest and repair, recovery for my body, and then I go to Seeking, which is another one of the primary process emotions. So this is curiosity and exploration and adventure. It’s intellectual curiosity for me, very often. For some people it’s actual, like, adventure out in the great wide somewhere?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: I have friends who sold all their stuff and traveled around the world. Sounds like a nightmare to me, but they loved it! Stuff went wrong all the time –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – and they got to collaborate together on, like, dealing with, like, the lost passport and the cancelled flight and all the things that went wrong, and it felt very bonding for them to have that adventure in the Seeking space, because they didn’t deal with it as like, Ugh! What a hassle! I – ugh – can’t believe we’re dealing with this. They were like, Oh! We’re going to do this together!
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: We’re going to have this adventure together.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: And it was great for them, and they have the babies to prove it!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: So for some people Seeking is like cooking, like curio- – what’s a new recipe I can do? It feels like an adventure to explore new flavors. For some people it’s going to an art museum or to a lecture. The curiosity Seeking space for me has a doorway directly into Lust, so if I can get out of Fear, I take care of my body, I get, I, I find myself in my Seeking space of being curious and exploring, and this was very easy when I was in grad school, ‘cause when I was in grad school I dated other grad students –
Sarah: Oh, well –
Dr. Nagoski: – and we would talk about each other’s research –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – and that’s, there’s a Slip ‘N Slide from affective neuroscience conversations right into the Lust space for me, because I have a very ordinary brain.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: But! Suppose you find yourself in another space: the Play space, which is the biological motivational system of friendship.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Where you engage in behaviors for the, for their own sake?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Not to any end.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Because everybody involved likes it?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And there’s nothing at stake.
Sarah: Yes, and it’s not clouded with judgment and negativity –
Dr. Nagoski: Right.
Sarah: – it is just open –
Dr. Nagoski: Totally free of judgment.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It is just – I mean, like, I think of my dogs when I think of the Play space. That play bow of like, Hey! That, like, softness and openness, which is an invitation that, like, if, if anything hurts, like, that was an accident; I mean no harm?
Sarah: Yep. Oops!
Dr. Nagoski: Oops! And then you, and then you move past it. So the Play space, when I was talking to people, early readers, and as I started teaching this idea of what I’m going to call the emotional floor plan?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Because it’s about mapping; like, how do I get from one place to another –
Sarah: Yes!
Dr. Nagoski: – in my own emotional landscape?
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: Right? It, the Play space turns out to be the one that surprises people as being really important as having a doorway into the Lust space. Sex on vacation.
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: Why do so many people so successfully connect with their partner on vacation when it’s difficult for them at other times? You have eliminated all the stuff you’re worried about, and you can just play! There’s nothing at stake. You can release all the worries and concerns and –
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: – identities that you need to hold onto in your –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – day-to-day life!
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: And just, just play! So the Play space, for a lot of people, turns out to be really important, and it’s one people don’t think about very often.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And that’s another space that, for me, has a doorway. Like, if I can get to the Play space?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And again, there’s no door from Fear into Play.
Sarah: No, you have to navigate.
Dr. Nagoski: I have to get to someplace; I have to get through the Fear space. I have to, like, process the stress; see all the other times that I have ever talked to you about completing the stress response cycle.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: And let me tell you, tits-deep hot water. Give me a hot bath. Like, that is one of the things that really does it for me. Let me cry for fifteen minutes –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – take a hot bath –
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: – listen to a very sexy audiobook, and I am ready to go!
[Laughter]
Sarah: Now, I want to ask you about books, but I also want to ask you before we move to that topic, I wanted to ask you about one of the elements of sustaining a strong sexual connection is uprooting the gender binary from your psyche.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. Right! Third characteristic of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection: one was that they have a strong friendship at the foundation of the relationship.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Nagoski: Two is that they prioritize sex; it matters to them –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – and so they talk about it and they maybe put it in their calendar, and it matters to them that they do it, and so they put in effort.
Three, they reject all of other people’s opinions about who they’re supposed to be as sexual people –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: – in order to create space for who they truly are, each of them individually as a sexy person and together as a partnership, and that includes all of the lies we have been fed since before we were born about who we are as gendered people. All the rules and regulations about who you’re supposed to like and how you’re supposed to express emotion and which emotions you’re allowed to express and what sex means to you, based on nothing more important than, like, the organization of your genital structures.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: It’s, it’s all, it’s all like a big fricking lie –
Sarah: It’s all nonsense.
Dr. Nagoski: – and it’s – all of it! And all of it is just obstructing your access to greater and greater pleasure in your life.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: And I will be totally honest: this isn’t easy for anyone, even folks who are trans and nonbinary, even in people who are not in heterosexual relationships, even people who’ve already done a bunch of work around this stuff. It is buried so deep, it got its roots in so early in our lives that you’re going to keep finding it over and over and over again.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: But when you engage in this practice of, like, de-binary-ing your own psychology and your relationship, the reward is, that is the doorway to the kind of sex that turns the universe into rainbows.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: I’m going to say worth it!
Sarah: Yeah, I hope so.
Dr. Nagoski: It is –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. It’s not easy!
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: And I’m, like, I’m not going to lie to people and be like, Just, just dismantle the patriarchy in your relationship; it’s a piece of cake!
Sarah: Just, yeah, just remove all of the gender binary language that you’ve ever heard in your life of several decades about how you should be as a person who identifies as X. Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: All the assumptions you have that somebody else put in your brain about what your partner is supposed to do and say –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and how they’re supposed to act –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and what their role is in your erotic connection. What if, all those assumptions, you just, you start from scratch?
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Nagoski: And there’s also just very simple, pragmatic steps you can take. Like, if your bedroom is reinforcing feelings and ideas about who you used to believe you’re supposed to be as a sexual person?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Get rid of that shit!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Change your bedroom.
Sarah: Paint is amazing.
Dr. Nagoski: Paint is amazing. Part of our process was just noticing – so we generally keep the door to the bedroom open ‘cause the dogs like to be able to get to the bedroom, but we, we don’t necessarily want the dogs in the bedroom during the sexytimes, so we close the bedroom door then, and it used to be that we had this little chest that propped the door open, which wouldn’t stay open on its own –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: – and so closing the door meant moving this heavy little chest and then pulling up a lot of the big corner of a carpet so that the door would close.
Sarah: That’s too many obstacles!
Dr. Nagoski: It was, it was just too many steps. There’s –
Sarah: Too many obstacles.
Dr. Nagoski: So we got rid of the rug, and we replaced the little trunk with a tiny trashcan.
Sarah: Victory!
Dr. Nagoski: Right?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: We, we live in New England. It gets cold in the winter at night –
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Dr. Nagoski: – and nobody wants to get out of bed to go get a towel, and, you know, sometimes there’s fluids involved in our…
Sarah: It can be a little messy sometimes, yes.
Dr. Nagoski: So you, so there’s wiping involved.
Sarah: Yes, of course! Got to have a sex towel.
Dr. Nagoski: So you put the sex towel in your bedside table. Don’t keep ‘em in the bathroom; just, just put ‘em right there so nobody has to get out of bed in order to do the wiping –
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: – in order to manage the wet spot.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: Just, just have ‘em right there!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: There’s simple, easy things you can do. If having, like, a lot of clutter on your nightstand or bedside table feels like a distraction and a to-do list, just move it somewhere else.
Sarah: Yeah! Put, get rid of it. And that, again –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – is a form of prioritizing sex, because you’re visually prioritizing your comfort.
Dr. Nagoski: If you keep your clothes in your bedroom and there are clothes that say mean things to you about your body?
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Dr. Nagoski: You can keep your clothes anywhere you want. Don’t keep them in the bedroom. They don’t belong in there. Only clothes that have nice things to say about your body –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – belong in the bedroom.
Sarah: Yeah. That’s why they’re pajamas.
Dr. Nagoski: That’s right!
Sarah: That’s right.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Now, one aspect about this book – one of my, one of my brain’s favorite things to do is to see so much of what I learn about in the world through the lens of romance. What is the romance –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – genre saying about this? How does the romance genre portray this? Because, I mean, romance, as we’ve discussed, is about empathy and intimacy and a lot of very vulnerable things, like feelings. So annoying, feelings. If you’re looking at this particular subject through the lens of romance, it’s really wild to recognize some of the aspects of romance that are incredibly sex-positive and incredibly empowering and incredibly human and humane –
Dr. Nagoski: Especially over the last twenty years? Oh boy, oh boy.
Sarah: Yes! And there are some that are not, because romance – I, when I got to the part where you were talking about sexual imperatives, and you listed –
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – sexual imperatives as coital imperatives, variety imperative, performance, confidence, the, the sex imperative itself. Like, you are a sexual person who has sex; you – that’s all, all of those imperatives –
Dr. Nagoski: Right.
Sarah: – are so baked into romance narratives of sex. Like, when I started writing about the genre, I realized just about every single sex scene I read was from the POV of the heroine, even if it was a heterosexual romance and the hero had point-of-view chapters. The sex was never from his point of view; it was always hers.
Dr. Nagoski: Hmm! Hmm!
Sarah: And I was like, But why? Why? Why does it need to be from her point of view? Why is that, why is that so interesting? And so when I finally read a sex scene from a male point of view I was like, Whoa! This is wild! Is this really what happens? [Laughs] Like, even the point of view comes with an imperative. And I’m wondering how you look at romance, being so very fluent in all of this research and all of these concepts of, you know, emotional hierarchy and sexuality. How do you look at romance as both the empowering and the limiting –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – portrayals of sex?
Dr. Nagoski: So the nature of a romance novel is to be about very – not always, but very often about the early falling in love, hot and heavy part of a relationship, and –
Sarah: Yeah. The courtship part, yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – what we assume Happily Ever After looks like is that sustaining forever.
Sarah: Right, but that’s not –
Dr. Nagoski: Of it staying.
Sarah: – that’s not how it works, right?
Dr. Nagoski: It’s not how it works, and it’s not even how it’s supposed to work.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Nagoski: So this is, this is the thing I call the desire imperative, the idea that, like, early in a relationship it’s hot and heavy; can’t wait to, like, get your hands on each other; slightly obsessive even; and that can last for a while; and then, like, you buy a fixer-upper house or you have kids or job stuff and life gets complicated – there’s a pandemic; who knows – and that sort of goes away? And you have two choices – it goes away so much that by the time you get past menopause you’re left to, like, hold hands at sunset on the beach or whatever, and that’s just it for you. And, and there’s only two options: either you accept the disappearance of your sex life, or you fight to keep the spark alive. Keep the spark alive to keep it the way it was when you first got together, the hot and heavy, falling in love, can’t wait to get our hands on each other.
Sarah: And even the keep the spark alive language implies that it will die unless you do something.
Dr. Nagoski: Right. If I could erad-, eradicate one phrase from the English language it would be Keep the spark alive.
Sarah: Oy, yeah. I can see why.
Dr. Nagoski: Or reig-, reig-, reignite the spark. Because the deal is, desire is not what matters. And I understand why novels are all about desire?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nagoski: Because it’s a story where characters are pursuing a goal.
Sarah: Yes!
Dr. Nagoski: I get it. Desire is what drives narratives. But pleasure is what drives eroticism. Pleasure is what drives sex. Desire is such a big thing. And in real life? You want the stakes to be low. You want there to be nothing at stake. You want it to be pleasure for its own sake because you both like it. So on the one hand I get the hot and heavy, falling in love. I am a reader of romance; I love it.
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: And, and…it’s, it’s getting better and better. One of the – obviously, Courtney Milan’s new book came out: auto-buy, immediate read, read it in one day.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: The, The Marquis Who Mustn’t. The main character’s parents are asexual. She doesn’t name it – it’s a historical romance; they’re not going to name it that? But it’s just this, like, normal – the heroine perceives her parents’ relationship as loveless because they don’t sleep in the same bed together, and she thinks that passion and eroticism is part of what it has to be in order for it to be love –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Nagoski: – and she has a talk with her mom about, like, Yeah, no, we just figured out that, like, neither of us cared about this thing that everybody told us we were supposed to care about so much, and so we don’t sleep in the same bed, and we love each other and are supportive partners to each other for all these decades –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and, like, that doesn’t have to be part of what it means for us to –
Sarah: Be –
Dr. Nagoski: – to love each other like crazy.
Sarah: Yeah. I think I met you at an RWA right before Come as You Are came out.
Dr. Nagoski: It was 2015, like a month after Come as You Are came out or something.
Sarah: Yeah! So 2015, we’re almost ten years later; it’s almost been ten years. Imagine going back to that time in romance and having asexual heroines. Asexual characters, even. It was just not even a thing that people were thinking of then. I love how much the genre can change and how quickly it can change? So back in 2020, Racheline Maltese said that romance has a liberation wing, which is where protagonists will bend the world to find their joy, and a compliance wing, where characters bend themselves to find their joy. And romance operates with both, right? But it’s so true, right? It’s so true.
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: There are, there are both –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – and I can think of thirty examples of both in ten seconds; it’s not a problem.
Dr. Nagoski: I’m noticing how strongly I’m reacting to, like, there’s only one of those that I like.
Sarah: Yes! There’s only one of those –
Dr. Nagoski: And –
Sarah: – that I enjoy!
Dr. Nagoski: – like, I notice, like, a sense of like, Oh no, oh no, oh no, when a story looks like it’s going to go compliance?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And instead it goes like Bend the world.
Sarah: Yeah. And one, one writer who’s really good at that, I think, is Nalini Singh, because, especially in her worlds, her worlds have rules. There are rules to how things happen, and you think, Oh, she’s going to either have to break the rules of the world to make this ending work or break the character’s core to make this work –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah!
Sarah: – and then there’s a third option that you do not see coming that –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – that is liberative, liber-, liberative, liberational? Of both. And it’s like, Oh-ho-ho-ho!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: Nalini! You devil! Like –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: There are so many ways in which romance remains compliant to sexual imperatives and reinforces heteronormative, patriarchal purity culture. There’s a lot of that. There’s still a lot of purity culture; even when you think it’s not, it’s there. It’s everywhere! But then you also have so many romances that are liberating the idea that there’s only one kind of sex and there’s only one kind of sexuality. Which is very, very inspirational, and it’s interesting to see, when you, when you have names for the imperatives, where they are, where you can spot them, right?
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. One of my, my favorites is the performance imperative?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So these come from a book that is about sex messages in the media, and applying these to romance novels is exactly what I was doing while I was reading this book. And my favorite one is the performance imperative, which they describe an ambitious employee working hard to pursue a promotion. So, like, you work, you put work into being a better sex person –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – because you want to be like a champion, like dress for the job you want, not the job you have?
Sarah: [Laughs] Like somewhere there’s an app and you want five stars.
Dr. Nagoski: Right! Like you’re trying to get the five – like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, like, the interpretation of that in the context of the gig economy that, like, with every sexual encounter you want to make sure you’re a five-star lover every single time? And, like, the amount of performance inherent in, like, I’m going to, like, make sure this person has a super experience! Whenever I read of, like, heroes who are just, like, so good in bed –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Like, he is really good in bed, and she is really, like, she is a master of everything in bed. That is, that’s not a thing in real life.
Sarah: That’s not real.
Dr. Nagoski: ‘Cause great sex comes from paying attention to the specific individual that you are with, and, if you possibly can manage it, paying really close attention to their pleasure while also simultaneously paying attention to your own pleasure?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And that’s not, like, a skill, like a skilled lover? That’s, that’s not what authors often mean when they talk about a skilled lover. They mean somebody who does good things with their dick usually.
Sarah: Yes. They know where the clitoris is, and – the thing that always –
Dr. Nagoski: Which, not bad.
Sarah: Not bad!
Dr. Nagoski: I’m in favor of it.
Sarah: I am in favor of, of, of the locational skills thereof. But everyone’s clitoris is going to react to a different approach, and the same approach –
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: – is not going to work for every single person, and so it’s like, okay, so he knows where it is, and he knows what it does, but that doesn’t mean he knows how this one works.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah, yeah. As porn star Nina Hartley puts it, The clitoris is not a doorbell.
Sarah: [Laughs] No!
What is this book that you mention that talks about the sexual imperatives?
Dr. Nagoski: Mediated Intimacy by three authors, all of whose names I’m not going to remember.
Sarah: That’s fine! I write, I, I put them in the show notes; like, I have links to all of these books, ‘cause I promise people are going to be like, What was the name of that book? I wish to read that book immediately.
One other thing, if you have, if you have time. When you talked about savoring all pleasure –
Dr. Nagoski: Yes.
Sarah: – as a catalyst to sexual pleasure. That savoring pleasure also counters very much this idea that we have to grind and work and rush, and we have to hurry, and we have to not savor anything; we have to get to the next thing! And it seems like –
Dr. Nagoski: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – a lot of this is also an anti-grind culture argument, that the idea of pur-, of pursuing pleasure and pursuing, prioritizing your pleasure and the pleasure of your partner is very much anti-grind culture. I assume that was a very, very happy byproduct of your work, generally speaking. You look so coy right now! [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: So –
Sarah: Who, me?
Dr. Nagoski: – you’ve been around the publishing industry for a while now, right?
Sarah: Oh! Oh yes. I joke often that I am, I have a rocking chair on the front porch of Romance Old Folks’ Home.
Dr. Nagoski: So you know that a publisher’s primary goal with a book is to, like, earn out the advance.
Sarah: Oh! For sure! Yes!
Dr. Nagoski: So I need you not to say out, until that happens, please don’t say out loud that my book is anti-capitalist.
Sarah: Oh, of course not.
Dr. Nagoski: But not a, it’s not a byproduct; it is an explicit, deliberate intention in the book.
Sarah: Fuck yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] So –
Sarah: We want a different kind of grinding, people! It’s a different kind of grinding that we’re after here!
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] Yeah. One of the most important books I read last year was Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop.
Sarah: Love that book! Love it!
Dr. Nagoski: Love! Love that book! Love. Following The Nap Ministry on all the social medias. I first encountered Tricia Hersey’s work when I was still in promoting Come as You Are mode in 2016. We happened to be at the same conference. I was already working on Burnout?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: I had already written the Sleep chapter, and I saw Tricia Hersey speak, and I was like, Oh fuck, I have had a very shallow analysis! I’m going to have to start that from scratch. And it –
Sarah: Oh bother!
Dr. Nagoski: – totally transformed my, that chapter, and then it transformed my work –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: – and then gradually, eventually, through what she calls the unraveling, it has changed my life.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: I’m going to have feelings now! A choice I made in 2015.
TRIGGER WARNING for talking about intentional weight loss.
Sarah: Heads up!
Dr. Nagoski: Because – thirty seconds of that: it’s a choice that I made in 2015 because I could, and I knew that the closer I could come to the culturally constructed aspirational ideal, the more seriously I would be taken as an expert. And it worked.
Sarah: I remember you talking about this before your TED Talk –
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah.
Sarah: – that you were conscious of yourself on camera and that you needed to conform to a particular visual to be listened to, and how fucking terrible that was, but also entirely rational choice.
Dr. Nagoski: Right.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Nagoski: And man, to walk into a room and be like, Oh, you’re the expert! Instead of at my body’s healthy natural size being like, Oh. Oh, you’re the expert?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: There’s, there’s a very real difference, and boy, thin privilege is fucking intoxicating. So I had to, I had to make a choice. Like, menopause and then long COVID.
Sarah: Oh bother!
Dr. Nagoski: I’ve had long COVID for about, ooh, fifteen months now.
Sarah: That fucker!
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah, it sucks. And I had to make a choice about intentional weight loss approaching the book tour.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: And I decided not to, but here’s the mental wrangling that it took me: my health was bad when I was engaging in, you know, how, like, any nutritionist or exercise person would have been like, You’re doing a good job! And I was, like, I almost passed out on a New York City street. Like, it was bad. And I decided not to do that, this, to myself this year, not because I prioritize my health, but because my husband was so worried about me –
Sarah: Mmm!
Dr. Nagoski: – back then. And, like, this is a whole book about restoring our connection? And I didn’t want to do that to him.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: So I made the choice to prioritize my health and wellbeing with whatever opportunity costs that may come with!
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Because my relationship with him is more important than any potential work anything that could come along that might be contingent on, like, what dress size I wear.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Nagoski: Which, like, it’s real –
Sarah: It’s very real.
Dr. Nagoski: – that there are opportunities I may lose because I’ve, there’s, I can’t find clothes at a Nordstrom that fit me. Alas. But that’s how it is, and I, I went ahead and made that choice, and for me, that was inspired by Tricia Hersey’s work and the unraveling from grind culture and other people’s expectations that my body is a commodity to be consumed.
Sarah: And that your, your, your dedication to grinding your body into a smaller size is an indication of your dedication to your life.
Dr. Nagoski: Right! Yes! Oh, Emily, I’ve, I’ve given up on myself!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: No.
Sarah: Getting along with my body for the first time: totally different thing, yo.
Dr. Nagoski: Better, better than ever before? And it isn’t easy.
Sarah: No.
Dr. Nagoski: And my God, you guys, the liberation. Y’all, y’all –
Sarah: So beautiful.
Dr. Nagoski: Y’all!
Sarah: So I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you wish to tell people about, in addition to Magnificent Sex, The Marquis Who Mustn’t, The Romantic Agenda, and Mediated Intimacy? I have been writing them down. They will be in the show notes.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. I mean, there’s, I’ve been reading a lot because I’ve been traveling?
Sarah: So Railed by the Krampus, yeah?
Dr. Nagoski: So audiobooks especially? Leslie Jones’s memoir as an audiobook.
Sarah: Ohhh!
Dr. Nagoski: The audiobook version specifically, because she does not read her audiobook. She sees what the story is, and she just tells the fucking story.
Sarah: Oh.
Dr. Nagoski: And it’s sixteen hours long, because she tells the story and she was like, they didn’t want me to put this in there, but I’m just going to tell this story, and she tells story of, like, the last time her father said that he was proud of her –
Sarah: Ah!
Dr. Nagoski: – and she’s, like, sobbing heavily in the booth. It is –
Sarah: Oh man.
Dr. Nagoski: – just stunning. It is so good!
Sarah: All right well, I already have –
Dr. Nagoski: So it’s Leslie F*cking Jones.
Sarah: I already have Barbra Streisand’s forty-eight-hour audiobook memoir. She reads it. It’s forty-eight hours. I have been told that it is, for some, a truly holistically religious experience, and I have that on hold, so I’ve got to add Leslie Jones right behind that! [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: Right. Maria Bamford’s memoir is very different; it’s called Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Nagoski: My favorite menopause book, ‘cause menopause, is What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna.
Sarah: Ohhh!
Dr. Nagoski: The founder of Scarleteen.
Sarah: Yes!
Dr. Nagoski: They have a take on menopause that is more nourishing to my soul than any other menopause book I’ve read, and I have read a lot!
Sarah: Well, it does kind of go in, hand in hand with your, with your, with your business.
Dr. Nagoski: Yeah. So Gender Magic by Rae McDaniel, R-A-E McDaniel? It may or may not be out yet; I got to read an early copy…
Sarah: Woohoo!
Dr. Nagoski: And especially for people who either are transitioning or love someone who is transitioning or thinking about it, this is, like, from the inside out, support for, like, finding who you are in a world that does not want you to.
Sarah: Mm-mm.
Dr. Nagoski: And another book that’s not out yet – it’ll be out one week after my book. If you’re like, I want a book that’s just about relationships, not necessarily about the sexytimes, Love by Design by Sara Nasserzadeh is so good!
Sarah: Ma’am, where can people find you if you wish to be found?
Dr. Nagoski: So now that I’m not in charge of my social media, they’re much more active.
Sarah: [Laughs] Well done!
Dr. Nagoski: [Laughs] So emilynagoski.com is the website. You can get the books anywhere books are sold. As you know, there is not one better way from the author’s point of view to get a book. If you can get it from your local bookshop, great! If you want to get it on Amazon or Target, do you! It’s exciting that my sex book is being sold at Target!
Sarah: It’s extremely exciting that your sex book is going to be at Target.
Dr. Nagoski: Fucking thrilling!
Sarah: Hell yeah!
Dr. Nagoski: I am going on book tour! So I’m beginning –
Sarah: Book tour!
Dr. Nagoski: Physical places, including both Ripped Bodice locations.
Sarah: Mazel tov! I’m so excited for your new book! Congratulations; you did the thing!
Dr. Nagoski: I did the thing!
Sarah: You did the thing!
Dr. Nagoski: I’m never doing it again!
I’m definitely going to write another book. It’s going to be short. I’m going to write the shortest book. I’m going to write a board book about sex.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode and the conclusion of our six hundredth episode – I’m very excited about that. Thank you to Emily Nagoski for being so honest and vulnerable and always being a wonderful guest to talk to.
I want to thank Mikhail from Pixabay for the nifty drumroll sound that I found. Thank you, Mikhail!
I will have all of the books that we mentioned in the show notes, along with links to some of the resources that Emily mentioned, and you can find that at smartbitchestrashybooks.com under episode 600 or in the show notes to the file that you are listening to right now.
As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this terrible joke is from, I want to say cyllan. Cyllan, if I’m saying that wrong, I apologize.
What do you call a food fight that breaks out at a Golden Corral restaurant?
Give up? What do you call a food fight that breaks out at the Golden Corral?
All you can yeet.
[Laughs] If you’re not familiar, Golden Corral is an all-you-can-eat American buffet restaurant. There used to be so many when I was younger. Where I lived in western Pennsylvania, there was Pappan’s and the Ground Round, but the biggest buffet where I lived was Hoss’s. So if you’ve ever had the all-you-can-eat restaurant experience, do not get in a food fight. You do not wish to all-you-can-yeet. Yeet! [Laughs more]
On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.
And thank you for six hundred episodes.
[end of music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Remember to subscribe to our podcast feed, find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Yay! Happy 600 and a new Emily Nagoski interview! Woohoo!
Happy 600th episode, and you couldn’t have picked a better guest! I can’t wait to listen after work!
Thank you! I hope you enjoy the episode!!
Congratulations on producing episode 600! Yay!! Thank you, Sarah and Emily, for sharing your conversation, and thank you, garlicknitter, for the transcript.
Thank you!! It’s been a big week for celebrations here.