0:00

Welcome to Speaking of Sex with

0:03

the Pleasure Mechanics. I'm

0:05

Chris from pleasuremechanics.com and

0:08

on today's episode we are joined

0:11

by one of my

0:13

all-time favorite thinkers and

0:15

writers in the

0:17

sex education field, Emily Nagoski,

0:19

a long-time friend of

0:22

this podcast and a returning guest

0:24

here to talk about her new book, Come

0:27

Together, the Science and

0:30

Art of Creating

0:32

Lasting Sexual Connections. This

0:34

book is full of

0:37

incredible strategies and frameworks for

0:39

us all to rethink what

0:42

it takes to

0:44

generate and sustain lasting

0:47

sexual connections. I

0:50

loved this book. There is a link in the

0:52

show notes for you to grab your copy. And

0:55

at the end of this interview,

0:57

Emily and I started discussing a

0:59

powerful framework that was in this

1:02

book that I loved so much

1:04

I wanted to develop out into

1:06

a guided practice for all of

1:08

us to really deeply engage with

1:11

this framework of mapping

1:13

our seven core emotions into

1:15

a visual floor plan so

1:18

that we can find our

1:20

own specific pathways back to

1:22

lust. So I created a

1:24

guided practice for all of us. You will find

1:27

it in the Pleasure Pod at

1:29

pleasuremechanics.com slash

1:32

pod. Join the

1:34

Pleasure Pod, step into our inner

1:36

circle and unlock bonus resources like

1:38

this one, a curated

1:40

best of Pleasure Mechanics full

1:43

of our best resources

1:45

so you can quickly get started engaging

1:48

and exploring your erotic

1:50

potential. And join

1:53

us for a monthly live call.

1:55

Come together with the Pleasure Mechanics

1:57

community and be in community

2:00

and conversation with us. You

2:02

will find it at pleasuremechanics.com

2:06

slash pod. And

2:08

now here is my conversation with

2:10

Emily Nagoski. Emily

2:13

Nagoski, welcome back to Speaking of

2:15

Sex. It is I am

2:18

so happy to be talking to you again. For

2:21

folks who are new to you, I'd love

2:24

you to introduce your work and this your

2:26

new book, Come

2:28

Together, the science

2:30

and arts of creating

2:32

lasting sexual connections. And

2:35

how you came to write this book

2:38

after your others. Yes. So I'm Emily

2:40

Nagoski and I'm a sex educator. I

2:42

started my first training back in 1995.

2:47

There are people listening to this who were not

2:50

alive then. And the

2:52

passage of time is

2:54

very strange. I got

2:58

trained to go into residence halls to talk about

3:01

condoms, contraception and consent. I

3:03

added to that training as a

3:06

sexual violence prevention educator and

3:08

eventually as a sexual violence

3:10

crisis responder. This was

3:12

while I was getting a degree

3:14

in psychology with minors and cognitive

3:17

science and philosophy. And

3:19

I loved the brain

3:21

stuff. But all that. And

3:23

I hope it's like it shows up in my

3:25

work. You're like, yeah, yeah, brain

3:27

stuff. But none

3:30

of the brain stuff made me like who I am as

3:32

a person in a way the sex education

3:34

work did. And so

3:36

that's the path I chose. I started

3:39

training as a sex therapist. I got

3:41

a degree in counseling, realized about halfway

3:43

through that I do not have the

3:46

magical thing it takes to

3:48

be a therapist. And

3:50

so finished that degree, got a

3:52

PhD in public health, essentially, and

3:55

started working as the director of wellness education

3:57

at Smith College where I taught a class

4:00

called Women's Sexuality, which is a

4:02

deliberately provocative course title at

4:05

Smith College. And

4:07

it was a very intense experience teaching there. So

4:09

my last

4:12

question on the final exam was just

4:14

just out of everything we talked about

4:16

this semester, what's one important thing you

4:18

learned? And more than half of my 187 students

4:21

wrote something like, I learned I'm normal.

4:23

I'm normal. I'm not broken. I can

4:26

trust my body because I'm normal, even

4:28

if I'm different from other women. And

4:32

anyone who's graded exams will know that this is

4:34

not how it usually goes. I sat in my

4:36

office grading with tears in my eyes, feeling

4:39

like something important had happened. And

4:42

I wanted to do it again. And I

4:44

wanted to do it at a bigger scale. And that's the day

4:46

I decided to write Come As You Are. A mere

4:50

five and a half years later,

4:52

it was published. And from

4:55

writing Come As You Are, and then

4:57

talking to anyone who would listen about

5:00

the science of women's sexual well-being, came

5:03

both of the next two

5:05

books. The first thing that happened

5:07

is that as I was traveling around, people

5:09

kept saying, yeah, all that sex science is

5:11

great. But you know, the one chapter that

5:13

changed everything for me was that one about

5:15

stress and feelings. And

5:18

I said, I have an identical twin. And

5:21

I said that to Amelia.

5:24

And they were like,

5:26

yeah, so remember that time when you taught me

5:29

that stuff? And it, you know,

5:32

saved my life twice.

5:34

And I was like, oh, we

5:37

should write a book about that.

5:39

So we did. The next book

5:41

was Burnout. And it was the

5:44

science of unlocking the stress cycle. Because

5:47

the stress response cycle is the science

5:49

that I talked about in chapter four

5:51

of Burnout. Yeah. And

5:53

it's not not a sex book, right? Because as

5:55

we know, stress is one of the

5:57

number one reasons people can't find that

6:00

Connection can experience pleasure like they want.

6:02

Young still and so it's a book

6:04

we recommend all the time and there's

6:06

a whole interview about it and says

6:09

that word stress kind of just gets

6:11

you perks up. Check out that interview

6:13

on the book. And

6:15

a man. Of. says.

6:18

The best predictor of a person's sexual

6:20

well being is their overall well being.

6:23

So. It if someone is listen

6:25

to this is like I do not have

6:27

the wherewithal isn't to begin to think about

6:29

changing my sex. Nice. Burnham.

6:33

But the other situation is

6:35

that the stress of writing

6:37

come as you are and

6:39

then traveling for bookstore was

6:41

so stressful that I was

6:43

lost all interest in actually

6:45

having. Any of the sex that

6:47

I was spending my whole life thinking, writing, and

6:49

talking about. So. Ah,

6:51

and I tried following my

6:53

own advice from. Com is your.

6:56

I. Worked with a responsive desire model

6:58

put my body in. The Bad: I

7:01

let my skin touch my partner's skin

7:03

and I waited for my body and

7:05

brain to wake up and be like

7:07

I let this. I like this person.

7:09

This is a great eight yes and

7:11

instead what happened is I would cry

7:13

and fall asleep. And

7:15

you don't months? With.

7:18

Nothing. Nothing. Ah.

7:20

And inevitably I do the like

7:22

beating myself up cause I'm the

7:24

quote unquote expert and even I

7:26

can't fix the situation. So I

7:29

did what anyone would do. I

7:31

went to google Scholar, And I looked

7:33

at the peer reviewed research on couples is the same

7:35

strong sexual connection over the long term. And

7:38

what I sound their. Contradicted.

7:42

Everything that was in the

7:44

mainstream conversation about sex and

7:46

long term relationships. Because that

7:48

conversation. Is. All about keeping

7:50

the mother fucking sparkle eyes. Know.

7:53

Novelty. Adventure, try new things,

7:55

open your relationship up, and whoop

7:57

all those things if you like.

8:00

There for you. Great. And

8:02

also the people who sustained

8:04

strong sexual connections regardless of

8:07

their gender, regardless of their

8:09

relationship structure, regardless of whether

8:11

they're Bdsm, vanilla anything else

8:14

when they describe. Great.

8:16

Six. They. Don't talk about

8:18

The Spurs. Mean. Doesn't make the

8:20

list of the top ten characteristics. Of great

8:22

six. They. Talk about.

8:25

Vulnerability. And authenticity

8:27

and connection. They. Talk

8:30

about pleasure! And.

8:34

You. Know what? The number one

8:36

reason why couples have any

8:39

gender combination go to sex

8:41

therapy is for desire differentials.

8:44

We live in a world

8:46

where people are really worried

8:48

about desire. Meanwhile.

8:51

These. People who are. Doing

8:53

great, Aren't. Even thinking about

8:56

desire. What? The heck. And

8:59

so ah, I sort

9:01

of started working with that idea

9:03

and I looked at a whole

9:05

bunch of other aspect of neuroscience

9:07

what I'm sure we will talk

9:09

about and use it to improve

9:11

my own situation. And ultimately I

9:14

was like as. As

9:16

write a book about this even though I

9:18

knew writing a book was gonna. Hardly

9:22

destroy the sex lives that are

9:24

some things effects was it said?

9:28

But. Now we got strategy is. Of

9:30

the good news is so after I finish

9:33

come as you are. I tried using that

9:35

to fix things and it didn't work. After

9:37

I finish come together. Ah you know. I

9:40

had this hundred thousand word tome

9:42

of instructions and we've been using

9:44

it. And. Like.

9:47

Is The best thing I can say about the

9:49

book is even if nobody else ever reads it,

9:51

it has already. Made. Things better for

9:53

us than it is. May. be

9:55

ever been in our entire relationship losing it's

9:58

like are very first month of being together.

10:02

I love that for you. Me

10:04

too. And it's even though

10:07

like I am now in a

10:09

perimenopausal situation, which is a whole,

10:11

that's a delight. And

10:13

I also have long COVID, which is a

10:16

terrible pain in the ass.

10:19

I get great medical care, I'm

10:22

extremely fortunate, I'm getting better. And

10:24

also it still is a major barrier

10:27

in whether or not my brain and

10:29

body have access to pleasure on any

10:31

given day. And it's a microcosm right

10:33

of where so many of us

10:36

are at. So many of us

10:38

are overburdened, overstressed, hypervigilant about the

10:40

world itself. Sexuality

10:42

feels very fraught for many people right

10:44

now. And we're looking for that desire,

10:47

the spark. What

10:49

we're ignoring there is the context. And

10:53

if pleasure is the measure, was the

10:55

Nagoski anthem of Come As You Are,

10:57

the anthem of this

10:59

book is really center pleasure. Center pleasure.

11:01

Can you talk about what that means

11:03

and what it actually looks like in

11:06

practice to what you

11:08

say co-create a context for

11:11

pleasure? Right. So

11:13

we know from chapter three of Come

11:15

As You Are, that our

11:17

experience of pleasure depends on the context

11:20

in which a sensation makes its way

11:22

through our nervous system up to our

11:24

brain. Right. So when we are

11:26

in a calm, safe,

11:29

connected people

11:31

who are into polyvagal theory, when we're

11:34

in a ventral state, that's where our

11:36

brain really has access to pleasure. When

11:38

we're in a stressed, depressed,

11:41

anxious, lonely, repressed

11:44

rage, we've all got it, negative

11:46

affect situation, it is

11:49

much more difficult for our brain to

11:51

interpret any sensation at all, even

11:54

genital sensations, as

11:56

being pleasurable. So

11:58

What is the context? That allows

12:00

our brain to be in a

12:03

state where it can interpret the

12:05

sensations we receive as being something

12:07

to explore with curiosity and a

12:10

sense of plat. And

12:12

the answer to that question is

12:14

gonna be different for every one

12:17

for every relationship and it's gonna

12:19

change across time. But that conversation

12:22

between and among partners of like

12:24

what is the context where it

12:26

is easy for your brain to

12:29

experience the things I enjoy doing

12:31

with your body as pleasurable and

12:34

as both external circumstances and internals.

12:36

It something we can control, something

12:38

we can. Ryan of those man

12:40

is A Those inhibitions becomes part

12:43

of the strategy that you bring

12:45

together and this connection. And as

12:47

we're talking about this book like

12:49

I really want to highlight that

12:52

sexual connection yes as between partners,

12:54

perhaps long term partners, but ultimately

12:56

sexual selection as also with ourselves

12:58

with our own lives. and when

13:01

we talk about centering pleasure, it's

13:03

another language for what we call

13:05

prioritizing pleasure, allowing. Pleasure to be

13:07

something good for. On that we focus

13:09

on and then let in. And

13:12

that brings us to this word savoring which

13:14

when I saw this as earth's title is

13:16

one of the chapter titles in your book.

13:18

Hope you know praise handling around the room

13:21

and savoring as one of our favorite word.

13:24

What the savoring! Have to do with them.

13:26

So the reason. Both.

13:28

Of us will always have a job

13:30

is because we live in a world

13:33

where we talk about guilty pleasure all

13:35

the time and we never just talk

13:37

about. Pleasure. So.

13:41

to pause in any given day

13:43

and notice that something feels good

13:45

is whether it's through any of

13:48

our extra receptive sentences something you

13:50

see here smell touch or taste

13:53

whether it's something you think believe

13:55

or imagine whether it's a body

13:57

sensation to notice that something and

14:00

it felt good to pause

14:03

and capture it as a memory, like

14:05

a little looping video, like a, like

14:07

a gif of pleasure to

14:11

say out loud to a person who is with you,

14:14

this feels good. Look

14:17

at that sunset. Yes. Look,

14:19

look at that. Yeah. This food

14:21

is good. For

14:24

a long time in our house, my

14:26

husband and I basically did not have

14:28

hot water for like

14:31

a year and a half. My

14:34

husband would, I would

14:36

let him know what my timeline was for coming home from

14:38

work and he would fill the tub and

14:40

put a bucket heater in it. So

14:42

there'd be a hot bath waiting for me when I got home.

14:45

That's love. And

14:48

now that we have hot water, very,

14:51

not a week goes by that he does not

14:54

say to me, you know what I

14:56

love? Hot water, hot

14:59

water. Noticing

15:03

things that are pleasurable makes

15:06

it easy. It's like it reinforces

15:08

and builds the pathways in our

15:11

brains that experience pleasure. Every

15:13

time you notice pleasure, it makes it

15:16

easier for you to experience pleasure again,

15:18

to experience pleasure more deeply. So that

15:20

practice of savoring. And

15:22

so one of the books that I read as part

15:25

of my research is actually has nothing to do with

15:27

sex. It's called Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkamp. And

15:30

she talks about the ways that savoring

15:33

actually results in a life

15:36

that feels more worth living.

15:39

A life that seems longer because

15:42

you notice more moments along the

15:44

way. Instead of just

15:46

having day after day, that's the same. And

15:48

so in your memory, they fold together as

15:50

all being one day. And so

15:52

time seems to go really fast because

15:55

it's not that nothing happened. It's just the same thing

15:57

happened over and over. When you

15:59

notice... the moments of

16:01

pleasure, it creates points in time

16:04

of how your

16:06

life is passing. And because

16:08

it makes pleasure easier to

16:10

experience, it makes the quality

16:12

of your life overall better.

16:14

Your life becomes more worth

16:16

living when you pause

16:18

to notice the pleasure that happens in your

16:20

life. And I am not saying it is

16:23

easy. I'm a person who lives with depression,

16:25

I've experienced double depression, I've experienced the remarkable

16:27

triple depression. And in

16:31

those times, my conversations with my therapist

16:33

are like, can you find a fragment

16:36

of a second today that

16:38

was pleasurable? In

16:40

polyvagal body-based practices, they call

16:43

it looking for glimmers, just

16:46

a tiny little spark of light somewhere

16:48

in the midst of all the darkness.

16:50

And if that's where anybody is listening

16:52

to this, let me

16:54

tell you, I know from experience that

16:59

those tiny glimmers are there every

17:01

day. There's some tiny, like someone

17:04

like sparking flint in a cave.

17:06

There is a spark of light.

17:09

And you know, when you're

17:11

trying to start a fire in the dark,

17:13

that spark, you do it often enough, eventually

17:15

you're gonna catch flame. It's going

17:17

to happen. Especially if

17:19

you breathe on it. Yeah,

17:22

especially if you breathe on it. And

17:24

that's, you know, bringing the savoring practice.

17:26

I often think gratitude, journals, and things

17:29

that keeps it really mental and

17:32

abstract for people. Whereas

17:34

savoring pleasure in the moment,

17:37

especially while it is happening, it's a spending

17:39

time, as you said, I really love that.

17:42

I often say at people's, you know, parties

17:44

or weddings, like slow down

17:47

and savor this, right? Like suspend

17:49

time and look around you. But

17:53

the science shows us that, as you

17:55

said, like practicing pleasure makes pleasure easier.

17:57

Yes. It reinforces

18:00

those pathways, we start

18:02

building associations. And so

18:04

if you're a glimmer in the day, it's like

18:06

that one cup of tea that's just so right.

18:09

You know, we can build on

18:11

that. And especially when we share...

18:13

I think about, have you read

18:15

Hannah Gadsby's memoir? No.

18:18

They write about writing

18:21

Nanette and

18:24

using this sort of idea of

18:26

glimmers. They actually micro-dosed MDMA

18:29

and thought of tiny things that bring

18:32

them pleasure, like the chink of a

18:34

teacup nestling into a saucer, that

18:37

tiny sound being a place they can

18:39

go in their head when

18:42

they're talking about the difficult stuff to

18:44

hold themselves in a safe

18:47

place anchored up out of

18:49

the darkness. So, you know,

18:52

we're far from the first people to talk

18:54

about this too. Like it's worth saying out

18:56

loud that black women have been saying this

18:58

for generations. All I did

19:00

was read a bunch of neuroscience that

19:02

talked about like sort of the mechanism

19:04

underlying it. And

19:07

what surprised you about that science? So having

19:09

been so embedded already in the field and

19:11

kind of, I imagine you approached a lot

19:13

of science thinking you knew already. And

19:17

as you said, like it disrupted a lot of

19:19

what we thought we knew within the field. So

19:21

what were some of the surprises that kind of

19:24

upended the table for you? Honestly,

19:26

the science related surprises were

19:29

mostly negative, including

19:31

how bad and not

19:35

inclusive the science was, how

19:37

ableist it was, how, I

19:41

mean, if it didn't just completely

19:43

ignore trans people, it did

19:46

not write about trans people in a way

19:48

that I would want any trans person

19:50

to read. It would

19:53

represent a study of

19:56

a population that was 90% white women

19:59

as a society. study of all women.

20:02

It was very distressing

20:04

to me that I've been doing this work

20:06

for as long as I have and the

20:08

science is so far behind where the

20:11

world has

20:13

moved politically, that it has

20:15

been so

20:17

slow. I've

20:20

sort of mourned that and gotten used to the

20:22

idea that the science is going to be and

20:24

that it always is. The history

20:27

of sex science is that

20:30

the people who get studied create

20:35

a force that requires

20:37

the science to adapt to it. It

20:41

can go in the other direction where

20:43

the science assists the people who are

20:45

being studied, but

20:47

it is always a mutual

20:50

interaction and we're just in

20:52

one of those moments where the science needs to catch

20:54

up with people. The

20:58

other surprising thing had

21:02

nothing to do with the science at all and everything

21:04

to do with the

21:06

way I was writing about long-term relationships

21:09

and it's going to be feelings and

21:11

be about death and cancer. So if

21:14

people want to skip forward, go ahead.

21:17

This is the first time I've ever missed a book deadline because

21:20

two weeks before my book was due, a friend of mine

21:22

died of cancer.

21:26

Fuck cancer! She was right around

21:28

my age and she

21:31

had been

21:35

married to her wife for almost

21:37

exactly the same time that I

21:39

had been married to my husband.

21:42

It's not like

21:44

I didn't already know that death

21:46

is a part of life, but

21:48

this was this visceral reminder

21:54

and it had not been a

21:56

part of a book about sex and long-term

21:58

relationships when a lot of people think

22:00

about long-term relationships as till

22:03

death do us part. And

22:05

so I, the book was late, and

22:07

I completely changed the second half of the

22:10

book to acknowledge

22:12

that we are not promised

22:14

abundant time with the people we

22:16

love. We are

22:18

promised change. And

22:21

the way we carry and hold

22:23

change together is

22:26

what characterizes the quality of

22:28

our connection with that person. Even

22:30

knowing that we may not

22:33

have abundant time with this other person,

22:36

we can be patient with

22:38

them. If we wish they

22:40

would change faster, we can be

22:42

kind and compassionate with them, because

22:44

I don't want to waste a

22:47

day being mad at

22:49

them, because I chose to be with them,

22:51

and I want to be with them where they are.

22:58

Breathing that in and this sense that

23:00

when we talk about connection, which is

23:03

on the cover of your book, it's on the t-shirt

23:05

I'm wearing right now, we're not

23:07

talking about a heteronormative

23:10

monogamy relationship till death do

23:12

us part. That's your long-term

23:15

relationship, LTR. We're talking about

23:17

a web of connection between

23:20

us humans that includes our

23:22

friends, our best friends, our

23:24

colleagues, and how

23:26

the tidal shifts of life affect

23:29

us all within that. And

23:31

one of the things we don't make enough space

23:33

for in our conversations about eroticism and

23:35

sex and desire is grief. Grief. And

23:40

our ability to feel it, and that's so

23:42

many of us, just like we don't have

23:44

practice in experiencing ecstasy and

23:46

bliss and the bigness of that.

23:49

Grief is also a high arousal

23:52

state of deep

23:54

feeling that if we don't have

23:56

the skills to feel it, then

23:59

it can be really become a long-term

24:01

chronic roadblock to getting back to

24:03

feeling the rest of life. And

24:06

this has come up with us in conversations and coaching

24:08

sometimes where people are like, I just don't know why

24:11

I can't feel the good thing. It's

24:13

like, what grief or as you say rage

24:15

sometimes is in the way. Sometimes it's,

24:17

yeah, the two are. So

24:19

even though neurologically they have

24:22

different channels, grief and

24:24

rage, I find that rage is

24:26

often a mask

24:29

or a protective state for

24:32

grief. It's like it's standing between you

24:34

and your grief to try and keep

24:37

you safe from the grief or keep the grief safe

24:40

from you. And

24:44

how some of the same ways that we are intimate with

24:46

one another, both our lovers and our friends,

24:51

they function across the emotional spectrum,

24:53

right? So when we say just hold

24:55

me, just hold me might be

24:57

just hold me in my state of afterglow

24:59

after you just made me calm my brain

25:01

out. And it might be just hold me

25:03

while I cry and when I

25:06

grieve the loss of my beautiful

25:08

friends and

25:10

we might turn to our communities to hold us where

25:13

I... You know, I think a difficult

25:15

thing is when it's just hold me

25:17

while I grieve the hurt you caused

25:20

me. Like

25:22

you're my person and that hurt and

25:24

you're my person and I need you.

25:29

And so where do we meet for that, right?

25:31

And these are all of the conversations that

25:33

we navigate together in our relationships.

25:35

And when we're trying to be

25:38

long-term lovers with someone and

25:40

long-term could be months, it could be measured in

25:42

days, it could be measured in years or decades.

25:46

As I'm discovering on my poly journey right

25:48

now, duration is not a measure.

25:51

One of the questions that people ask is

25:53

what counts as a long-term relationship?

25:57

And For me, it's long-term

25:59

when you... Go through a major

26:01

change together when it survives a change.

26:03

it has been one relationship and that

26:06

now with something else. Because we did

26:08

that. Well. That's

26:11

big, censored or leads us

26:13

to this concept. And your book that

26:16

I love to these two words together. Connected.

26:18

Authenticity? Yes to sometimes we

26:20

feel like in. Connection with

26:22

people may be or natal family may

26:25

be our colleagues frenzy then, but we

26:27

don't truly feel ourselves or that we

26:29

can fully relax and be in that

26:31

ventral bagel state of. Safe.

26:33

A longing. So.

26:36

How do we cultivate connected

26:38

authenticity? What a take! Oh

26:41

mans! Asked

26:43

asked us to easy questions I

26:46

don't chess. Ah, Before.

26:48

We continue. I want to

26:51

take a minute and thank

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this link in the

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show notes and that

27:54

pleasure mechanics.com/toolbox where we

27:56

gather all of our

27:58

links to equip you

28:00

with the best tools and resources for

28:03

your erotic journey ahead. That's

28:07

pleasuremechanics.com/toolbox. And

28:09

now back to my conversation with Emily

28:12

Nagoski. So how do we cultivate connected

28:14

authenticity? What does that take? So there's

28:16

going to be different paths. I wanted

28:18

to say that it starts with cultivating

28:21

your own understanding of your authenticity, but

28:23

that's, I know for sure that that's

28:25

wrong. Part of what

28:27

Peggy Kleinplatz's research shows us is

28:30

that the paths that magnificent lovers

28:32

take, some of them start with

28:35

like individual cultivation and

28:38

transition into relationship. But

28:40

some of them start with relationship

28:42

where you discover your authentic

28:45

self through connection. Feminists

28:48

in the 80s called it connected

28:50

knowing a way of knowing yourself

28:52

through knowing others. And

28:56

both are legitimate. So

28:59

connected authenticity can start with either

29:01

connection or authenticity. What

29:04

matters is that you're

29:07

moving toward a place where you can

29:09

be as close to

29:11

a hundred percent of who you truly are in

29:15

the presence of another person and they

29:17

also can be a hundred percent of

29:19

who they truly are in your

29:22

presence. And it takes the

29:27

dismantling of all

29:30

of purity culture and the patriarchy

29:33

out of your brain. No,

29:35

Biggie. Yeah, right? Like easy.

29:40

There's only two ideas in the book that required

29:42

two chapters. One was the emotional

29:44

floor plan, which is like the big neuroscience

29:46

the idea in the book and the other

29:48

was the patriarchy, which I call the

29:51

gender mirage in this book because

29:53

I want straight people to read it and feel

29:55

safe. And let's

29:57

touch on that a bit because when you say, you know,

29:59

moving towards magnificent as

30:02

the research shows is as much

30:04

a process of unlearning and

30:06

dismantling myths and

30:09

you talk about these invisible

30:11

imperatives and

30:13

it's such a liberating framework

30:15

to remember that we

30:17

are all conditioned, we

30:20

are all raised within a

30:22

framework of what are often invisible

30:25

naturalized imperatives that until we see

30:27

them look real and that's why

30:29

the word mirage is just Nagoski level

30:31

brilliant here, right? Because it feels

30:33

real until you shift your perspective just

30:36

a little bit and then it fucking

30:38

dissolves. Yeah, the closer you get to

30:40

it the more you're like, it really did seem like there

30:42

was water there

30:46

and then I took five steps closer

30:48

and it evaporated.

30:50

It didn't evaporate, the water

30:52

was never there. It's

30:55

just the illusion went

30:58

away. Yeah. And

31:00

that can be both like a crushing disappointment

31:03

and also a liberation, right? Because you're not

31:05

moving towards something. Yeah,

31:07

man, people, one

31:09

of the difficult things about writing what

31:12

I would consider a selfie helpy kind of book is

31:15

that these books are usually written with

31:17

the idea of like,

31:19

look, there's an aspirational ideal toward

31:22

which you are trying to move. Let

31:24

me help you on that journey toward that

31:26

aspirational ideal. And I can't

31:29

do that because the aspirational

31:31

ideal is made of these sex

31:33

imperatives, which is a term I'm

31:35

taking from mediated intimacy, a

31:37

term written by three different people and

31:40

I can't remember all their names, but

31:42

the first author is Meg John Barker,

31:44

mediated intimacy, the idea of these sex

31:46

imperatives that are communicated. They were looking

31:48

at pop culture in particular, but it's

31:51

communicated through formal education,

31:53

through religion and also through

31:56

the medical industrial complex. all

32:00

of like our idea of who we're supposed to be as a

32:02

sexual person is a sexually

32:05

incorrect often deliberately

32:08

destructive fiction. Yeah, and our

32:10

effort to conform to that

32:13

ideal is only

32:16

destroying us So

32:20

the trick is not to like I'm not

32:22

trying to help people move toward an ideal

32:24

I'm trying to help them move

32:27

toward deeply embodying the

32:29

idea that who they are is someone

32:32

worth being More than

32:34

enough inherently lovable inherently worthy of

32:37

connection. Yeah Yeah,

32:39

already that did I tell you that when

32:42

before come as you are was published the

32:44

publisher wanted come as you

32:46

are not to be the title because it

32:48

wasn't aspirational enough and I

32:51

was like no No,

32:53

dude for women

32:55

the most aspirational idea in the world is

32:58

that they already are and Have

33:00

everything they need to be

33:02

lovable and good and

33:04

yet people will hear that and feel

33:07

into all that they actually do want

33:09

and feel as possible and this bigger

33:12

sense of connection and joy and bliss that

33:14

they sense maybe is possible and

33:16

the path there that you lay out in the book

33:18

is like an incremental

33:21

path of Warm

33:24

curiosity Staying

33:26

in that connected authenticity as

33:29

we strip away these Shoulds

33:32

and supposed to and we stop shitting

33:34

on one another what comes up then

33:37

and how do we just be warmly?

33:40

Curious with us and I love that

33:42

edition of warm curiosity It's

33:44

a really beautiful edition I

33:50

I'm so glad that part was

33:52

very not easy to write because

33:54

it again sort

33:57

of the puritanical foundation of

33:59

self-help American literature

34:02

is to like beat yourself

34:04

up until you're better. And

34:07

to say, what if you

34:13

were kind and loving toward yourself and

34:16

healed instead of beating

34:18

yourself up? It is a

34:21

profound shift in

34:24

approach. One of my biggest

34:26

concerns about this book is that it'll be too

34:30

big, too difficult, too

34:32

heavy a lift for

34:35

people. Because I'm

34:37

asking people to be really kind and patient

34:39

with themselves and

34:42

with each other. And

34:44

to entirely re-conceptualize what

34:47

they understand a long-term sexual

34:49

relationship to look like. That

34:51

it is grounded not in

34:53

desire, but in pleasure.

34:56

That it's not dysfunctional,

34:58

not to want, sex you do

35:00

not like. Which sounds so

35:02

obvious when you say it out loud. And

35:05

yet, again, the number one reason couples

35:07

seek sex therapy is because of a

35:09

desire difference. Last

35:12

night, I did a sort

35:14

of Q&A live event with people who pre-ordered

35:17

the book. And they gave me a stack

35:19

of like 80 or 90 questions.

35:23

And the ones that weren't

35:25

about orgasm or communication were

35:28

about desire. Nobody

35:31

really asked about pleasure. But

35:34

part of that question about desire

35:36

is why am I not liking

35:38

what I am supposed to should

35:40

like, right? And

35:42

that's the imperative. And I really feel like

35:44

this book was informed

35:46

by a neurodivergent standpoint, by

35:48

a standpoint that understands we

35:51

all have different needs,

35:53

like physiological needs to thrive

35:55

as individuals, let alone within

35:58

relationships. And part of of

36:00

the work here is that authenticity

36:02

means knowing who you are and

36:04

what you need, whether that's dim lights or

36:07

bright lights at night. And if you and

36:09

your partner need different things, you need to negotiate that. And

36:11

that's just one example of the millions

36:13

of negotiations we make as organismic

36:16

beings with organismic

36:19

needs. And

36:21

I wanna take a pause and then

36:24

unpack this idea of the emotional

36:26

floor plan. Because this is one

36:28

of the most powerful tools in the book. As

36:30

you said, it takes up multiple chapters and

36:33

it's revolutionary to get

36:35

concrete about

36:38

who we are as individuals and our

36:40

own pathways to things like lust. This

36:45

for me was the tool

36:47

that helped me move towards

36:50

something better in my own erotic connection. Because

36:54

it wasn't that I didn't like the sex

36:56

that was available to me in my relationship.

36:59

I knew that if I could just get

37:01

there, whatever that means, if I could just

37:03

get in the mood, if

37:05

I could put my skin against my

37:07

partner's skin and not cry and fall

37:10

asleep, that we would have a

37:12

good time. And

37:15

yet I couldn't, I couldn't, I just, I had

37:17

lost the ability to can, I

37:19

was stuck someplace.

37:22

And I tried to find out where it

37:24

was I was stuck. And

37:27

how to get unstuck out of that place and

37:29

into the place that I wanted to be, which

37:31

was the lust space. So I looked at the

37:33

affective neuroscience. I wanna mention

37:35

that it is totally bananas. That in

37:37

2024, there is not one agreed upon model

37:43

for how human or even mammalian

37:45

emotion works. There's

37:48

at least three really

37:50

big models for how emotion works.

37:52

At least three, probably more. I picked

37:54

the one that included sex.

37:58

And it's Yoc Pangseps. famously

38:00

known as the rat tickler,

38:02

the father of affective neuroscience,

38:04

and he looked at how

38:07

the structures of mammalian brains

38:10

build a foundation of emotion.

38:13

And then I made up a metaphor

38:16

to make it useful in life.

38:18

Thank you for that. Because I've read

38:20

the science and until the metaphor it was

38:23

so much more an idea and then it became

38:25

a strategy. Yeah,

38:28

me too. But on

38:30

some level I want this like just to

38:32

be like a sex book that helps people

38:34

have better sex lives. When I started writing

38:36

it I was like I'm gonna write a

38:38

short really approachable

38:41

friendly little book for you.

38:43

And as I wrote I

38:46

was like oh shit oh

38:48

man but I really like I can't just

38:50

talk about like what great

38:52

sex is. I also have to

38:54

talk about the barriers between us

38:56

and great sex and ultimately I

38:58

do have to help people navigate

39:01

those barriers. I have to do all three of

39:03

those things and it's not a complete book unless

39:06

I do. And that's why it's a hundred thousand

39:08

words. Love that. Love your

39:10

beautiful brain. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank

39:13

you. This has been like like a

39:15

brain bath of pleasure for me. Ventral.

39:18

It's been super so fucking ventral

39:20

for me. Yeah. Big

39:22

thanks to Emily Nagoski for joining

39:25

us for this conversation and for

39:27

this incredible book. You'll find

39:29

the rest of this interview all

39:31

about this incredible framework of

39:34

mapping your emotional floor plan

39:36

in the pleasure

39:38

pod along with a guided

39:41

practice so you can really

39:43

implement this powerful strategy and

39:46

find your specific pathways back

39:48

to lust. That's

39:50

all waiting for you in

39:53

the pleasure pod at pleasuremechanics.com

39:55

slash pod. Join our

39:58

pleasure pod. Explore with us as a

40:00

community, support the show. You

40:02

will also unlock a curated library

40:04

of the best of Pleasure Mechanics

40:07

resources and have the

40:09

opportunity to join us for live

40:11

monthly calls. You'll

40:13

find it all at

40:15

pleasuremechanics.com/pod. We can't wait

40:17

to welcome you all

40:19

there. And we

40:22

will see you next time with another episode

40:24

of Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics.

40:27

I'm Chris from pleasuremechanics.com

40:30

wishing you a lifetime of

40:32

pleasure. Cheers.