Understanding Turn Ons and Turn Offs

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski is a book about the science of women and sex. And who doesn’t want to know more about that topic? I’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people on the planet that aren’t interested in knowing more about the mystery that is a woman embracing her feminine divine through love and pleasure.

Nagoski makes the modern science of sex easy to understand and fun to read because of her masterful analogies. She describes the phenomenon of when the terrain doesn’t match the map. She explains that society has painted a picture (a map) of what sex is supposed to be like. However, often this doesn’t match our experience (the actual terrain). She helps us to create our own maps of how sex contributes to our lives.

If there’s one thing for you to take away from this book review, it’s that I’m inclined to recommend this book to almost everyone. It is chalk full of more interesting information than I can reasonably summarize here, but for the purpose of my blog, I’m going to summarize three of my favorite analogies below:

1. Accelerators and brakes

2. The internal monitor

3. Our brain as a flock of birds

1. Accelerators and Brakes

Nagoski explains that desire operates as a dual control model, and she uses the relatable metaphor of driving a car to explain this science. (page 27) Everyone has accelerators (turn ons) and brakes (turn offs). Examples of common accelerators are nice lighting, music, lingerie. Some people’s accelerators are adrenaline provoking, like maybe the excitement of potentially getting caught. Example of common brakes are children, stress, work, TV. Some people’s brakes are related to the physical environment and some people’s brakes are more mental and emotional. To optimize one’s sex life, one must manage both the accelerators and the brakes for oneself and one’s partner. Remove as many brakes as possible and add in as many accelerators as possible. Also note that some people have very sensitive brakes and/or accelerators. For example, some people take a long time to get going (slow accelerator) and some people get turned off very quickly (fast brakes).

Check out Nagoski’s Turning Off the Offs (Turn Offs) Worksheet here.

Check out Nagoski’s Sexy Contexts (Turn Ons) Worksheet here.

2. The Internal Monitor

Nagoski labels the part of our subconscious that innately focuses on orgasm instead of pleasure the impatient little monitor (page 264).

When Nagoski explains what the internal monitor is, she relates it to our sex life, specifically orgasms; however, I’m a fan of this concept in general and I believe it can be applied to all different scenarios. For example, it helps us understand the subconscious mind and why we do what we do. Basically, the internal monitor identifies something that we want and then if it doesn’t happen in the time frame that the internal monitor wants, it gets extremely frustrated. The frustration affects us profoundly and it takes us further from our goal. Here are three questions Nagoski suggest you ask yourself to communicate with your internal monitor:

• Is this the right goal for me?

• Am I putting in the right kind and the right amount of effort?

• Am I realistic in my expectation about how effortful this goal should be?

To put your internal monitors to rest to achieve orgasm, Nagoski recommends focusing more on the pleasure of the experience than the goal of climax. To put our internal monitors to rest regarding the way we show up for life – now that is a blog post for another time.

Check out Nagoski’s Sexual Cues Worksheet here.

3. Our brain as a flock of birds

She takes the science: Sexual pleasure (and orgasm) is an emergent property of a complete dynamical system and she makes it easy to understand with the analogy of our brain acting as a flock of birds (page 269).

She describes that in a flock of birds there isn’t one leader, but rather all the birds fly towards a common objective (magnetic pole). She states that if all the birds reach one common goal together, it’s synonymous with having a great orgasm (or achieving a goal). On the converse if some of the birds experience a predator and get off course (life stressors also known as brakes), then not as much of the collective gets to the target together (a good but not ecstatic orgasm).

Again, you can use these scientific interpretations of the human psyche and apply it to all areas of life. It’s been my belief that when our mind, body and soul ride the tide towards a common goal, the outcome is bliss, or whatever word you like to describe euphoria. Call it a tide or a flock of birds, oneness is the goal.

Check out Nagoski’s Sexual Temperament (Accelerators and Brakes) Worksheet here.

“I am done living in a world where women are lied to about their bodies; where women are objects of sexual desire but not subjects of sexual pleasure; where sex is used as a weapon against women; and where women believe their bodies are broken, simply because those bodies are not male. And I am done living in a world where women are trained from birth to treat their bodies as the enemy.” 

― Emily Nagoski