Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.

Ok ladies, gentlemen, partners of ladies - if you haven’t read this, or added this book to your “must read” list, please do so! I finished this book in just about a week, and learned more about my body, messages about sex, and just sex in general then all my education put together! Which honestly, is just sad. Poor education about sex isn’t just a disservice to women, but really to everyone. This book busts myths, educates, and reframes unhelpful thinking patterns about sex that really do have the power to transform your sexual wellbeing. Like the other books I’ve written about, it’s a challenge to summarize all the good parts - the whole book was the good parts!!

I’ll start with discussing chapter 7, which addresses a term everyone is all too familiar with, and that’s “sex drive.” Emily specifically asks that after reading this book to tell everyone we know that sex isn’t a drive! So, I’ll start there and tell you that sex is NOT a drive! I repeat, sex is not a drive! I want to start here because I think this one chapter alone can help so many women already begin to make changes to having more ownership and confidence over their sex lives.

So if sex isn’t a drive, what is it? It’s an “incentive motivation system.” I’ll do my best to explain what this is. Incentive motivation system means that desire for sex is not determined by your “drive”, which is a myth so many us think and believe in. A “drive” is a survival mechanism, like hunger. When you’re hungry, you’re driven to eat. When you’re tired, you’re driven to sleep. When you’re cold, you’re driven to warm up. When you’re thirsty you’re driven to drink more. And so on. Emily says to think “drive = survive”. And we don’t exactly need sex to survive. No one has ever died from lack of sex, the way they die from other basic survival needs not being met. This is important because for so long women have been generally viewed as having “lower sex drives” than men, and this can lead to women feeling broken, confused, or not good enough for not having a “higher sex drive” compared to their male counterparts. They wonder if something’s wrong with them, if they don’t love their husband or boyfriend anymore, or have other questions about what this “low sex drive” could mean for their sexuality. It’s so important we start using correct terminology when discussing sex in any capacity.

So, ladies, if you find yourself with a lower desire for sex, don’t tell yourself anymore that it must just be because you have a “low sex drive”. You don’t. What you’re missing instead is the right context(s) to want sex more. Therefore, your incentive motivation system is low. You’re missing the right elements, or the right “contexts” to motivate you to want sex more. This whole idea of “context” for sex is kind of complex and discussed across almost every chapter, which is why you just gotta read the book to fully understand this! But long story short, creating the right context for sex means understanding better what factors in your life (outside of sex!) turn you on more (aka hitting your “accelerator” to move towards sex) and what factors turn you off (aka hitting your “brake” to slow you down from moving towards sex). If you’re struggling with low desire for sex, there is much, much more to the story than a “low sex drive". Too many “brakes” may be pressed at the moment (too many reasons to have not sex, and too few reasons to have sex), and you’ve got to start recognizing what those brakes are, and how you can release them. This can be anything from life stressors, to negative self body image (which so many of us women deal with thanks to a culture that sends us terrible messages about us and our bodies!), and so much more.

There’s one more thing I want to mention before I wrap this one up, and that’s the word “pudendum.” Ever heard of that one? It’s okay if not, I hadn’t either. But it comes from the Latin word “pudere” which means “to make ashamed.” And that word - pudendum - was the one of the first words to name female genitalia. Woooow. For me, that blew my mind. Since medieval times, the female body has been so misunderstood, and women have been shamed for their very anatomy. Emily goes on to explain how bogus this really is by educating us how male and female genitalia is all actually made up of the same parts, just organized differently. So fascinating, and I definitely didn’t learn about any of that during my sexual education growing up!

As a Christian, the education this book offers actually helped deepen my faith as well. It definitely is not written from a faith-based perspective, but there are truths that point back to God’s design. Just as a small example, when I think about males and females having the same parts, just organized differently, it actually makes complete sense. The same creator made us both! So why would it be any different? If God created male and female, and both male and female are made in the image of God, of course we have the same parts! It just makes sense. The other piece of this book that deepened my faith wasn’t just the education, but the normalizing as well. Over and over Emily states you are beautiful and you are normal. And of course that’s true. I am fearfully, wonderfully, and perfectly made because God made me. Any shaming I do to my body, my sex life, anything, is shaming God’s creation. And I’ve worked way too hard to learn how to fight body dysmorphia to shame God’s creation anymore! It’s the lies of shame from my enemy that keep from fully embracing God’s design for me, so thanks Emily for unintentionally deepening my faith and respect for God’s creation even more!

There are a lot of helpful activities and worksheets throughout the book that can be done alone, or in conjunction to work in therapy. If you’ve been struggling with your sexual wellbeing, or just want to learn more, I’d love to support you in that therapeutic journey. If this isn’t the right time to start therapy, at least read the book! I guarantee you will learn at least one thing, but probably many things, that can already help you start to feel more confident and happy with your sex life.