How to Bring More Pleasure into Life (and Sex) | Emily Nagoski
Feb 1, 2024
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Sex educator Emily Nagoski reveals how to sustain passionate intimacy. She explains why pleasure trumps desire and how stress impacts connection. Emily offers practical steps to invite more pleasure into relationships. Her insights on nourishing intimacy through pleasure can enrich partnerships when we center what truly matters.
Open communication about desires is crucial for sustaining a strong sexual connection in a long-term relationship.
Recognizing the impact of stress on sexuality is key for fostering more pleasurable and intimate connections.
By reframing our vocabulary and using positive language, we can create a more comfortable and open environment for discussing sexuality and improve our confidence and engagement in sexual conversations.
Deep dives
The Importance of Communication in Maintaining a Strong Sexual Connection
Talking about sex is crucial for sustaining a strong sexual connection in a long-term relationship. Couples who have extraordinary sex lives talk about sex with their partners all the time. Communication about sex allows for connection, shared pleasure, feeling desired, and experiencing freedom from life's stressors.
The Impact of Stress on Pleasure and Desire
Stress can negatively affect sexual desire and pleasure. The dual control model of sexual response reveals that stress acts as a brake on the accelerator of sexual response. For many individuals, outside stressors and life challenges hinder their sexual desire and intimacy. Recognizing the impact of stress on sexuality is key for fostering more pleasurable and intimate connections.
The Power of Cultivating Pleasure and Ease
Pleasure is a vital aspect of human life, and intentionally cultivating pleasure can lead to deeper connections, confidence, and joy. However, our culture often undermines the significance of pleasure and can perpetuate guilt or shame around enjoying it. By creating an environment of holding, where pleasure is nurtured even in small glimmers, it is possible to rewire the brain's responses and expand the experience of pleasure even in challenging times.
Reframing Language for Positive Sexual Conversations
An important aspect of healthy sexual conversations is the use of positive and empowering language. By reframing our vocabulary and starting with words that have positive connotations, we can create a more comfortable and open environment for discussing sexuality. This approach can be applied both in conversations with partners and in self-reflection. For example, creating lists of words that resonate as sex-related for ourselves can help us build a foundation of positive language. Additionally, practicing saying certain words, like 'penis' or 'vulva,' in different tones and contexts can help remove emotional weight and normalize these terms. Overall, by embracing a more positive and conscious approach to our language, we can improve our confidence and engagement in sexual conversations.
Understanding the Accelerator and Brake in Sexual Response
The sexual response mechanism in our brains functions through an interplay of an accelerator and brakes. The accelerator detects all sex-related information in our environment and sends turn-on signals to our brain. This includes sensory inputs, thoughts, beliefs, and sensations. On the other hand, the brakes identify reasons not to be turned on, such as external sensory inputs, internal sensations, stress, trauma, body image issues, or societal sexual scripts. While advice often focuses on stimulating the accelerator, struggles in sexual experiences are often due to excessive stimulation of the brakes. To sustain a strong sexual connection, it is crucial to address these brakes and create a context that allows the brain to access pleasure more easily. In doing so, we can shift the focus from desire to shared pleasure, as pleasure is at the heart of healthy sexual experiences.
She explains why pleasure trumps desire, how stress impacts connection, and the importance of open communication about desires. Emily offers practical steps to invite more pleasure into relationships as bodies change, and rejects cultural grind in favor of ease. Her insights on nourishing intimacy through pleasure can enrich partnerships when we center what truly matters.
