Come as You Are (14 page)

Their main conflict was about sex: Patrick, like about 80–90 percent of people, finds that stress hits his brakes, shutting down all interest in sex—he’s a “flatliner” (more on that in chapter 4). But for Olivia, with her sensitive accelerator, stress is like fuel—she’s a “redliner.” And since they’re both graduate students, they get stressed at the same time during the semester (final exams), which means that right when Olivia’s most interested in sex, Patrick is least interested.

Same context—opposite experiences.

And when you put it in the context of a relationship, it gets worse, because the two styles escalate each other—when Patrick feels stressed about the fact that Olivia wants sex and he doesn’t, that increases his stress, which hits his brake even harder. And when Olivia feels stressed about the fact that she wants sex and Patrick doesn’t, that increases her stress, which activates her accelerator even more. I call this “the chasing dynamic” (more about it in chapter 7), but Olivia had her own term for it:

“Shit show.”

Patrick added, “And it comes at a time in the semester when we’re both already stretched too thin and can barely feed ourselves, much less talk about our feelings. How can we fix it?”

I shrugged. “Easy. Work out a plan when you’re both calm, and then use the plan when you’re stressed.”

Olivia said, “Oh.”

There it was again—the disappointment that waved a giant red flag over a big emotional . . . something. Last time I missed it. This time I caught it.

“You were hoping for a different answer?” I asked.

“I was sort of hoping we could fix me.”

“Fix you? Are you broken?”

“I guess not,” she said, “but I just . . . it doesn’t feel good, the out-of-controlness. I was hoping I could rein that part in, both for my own sake and so that I don’t drive Patrick completely insane.”

Which is not unusual. The context of stress plus sex doesn’t bring with it an increase in pleasure. On the contrary, when she’s stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, Olivia said, “I feel this drive to orgasm, but it’s a drive that disconnects me from my body and from Patrick. I hate it. It’s like I’m a visitor in my body. Out of control.”

It’s a perfect example of
eagerness
without
enjoying.

“Ah, so it’s a challenge in your relationship and also it’s uncomfortable for you individually,” I said. “It’s pretty simple to change—simple, though not always easy.”

They both said, “How?”

you can’t make them

I use italics when I describe
expecting
,
eagerness
, and
enjoying
in order to be clear that I don’t mean wanting, seeking, or expecting in the usual sense of, “Hey, what do you want for dinner?” or “I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.” There is no deliberate intention—and often not even any awareness—accompanying the activation of these brain systems.
¹⁹

On the contrary. In a study of cocaine addicts, research participants’ mesolimbic systems responded to images related to cocaine that flashed on a screen for thirty-three milliseconds. If you asked them what they saw, they wouldn’t be able to tell you, because the images flashed too fast to be “seen” consciously, but it was long enough to light up the addicts’
eagerness
systems.
²⁰
The research subjects were not aware of having seen the images, yet their emotional brains responded.

In terms of the garden, this is the difference between what the
gardener does to the garden . . . and what the garden does all on its own. The gardener can weed and water and fertilize, but she doesn’t actually make the plants grow. Your
expecting
,
enjoying
, and
eagerness
systems are what make the plants grow. All kinds of things influence them, including how well you tend them, the weather (that is, the external circumstances of your life), and how well suited your plants are to your particular soil (your body and your brakes and accelerator). But the gardener can’t grit her teeth and make the garden grow; she can only create the best possible environment for the garden to thrive, and then let the garden do its thing. Chapters 4, 5, and 9 are about how to create that sex-positive context.

“is something wrong with me?” (answer: nope)

Sexual arousal, desire, and orgasm change all the time. Sometimes they change in ways that delight us, and sometimes they change in ways that puzzle or worry us. Sometimes these changes happen in response to a change in our sexual hardware—our genitals and the dual control mechanism. But more often they change in response to a change in our context—our environment and our mental states. Our mood. Our relationships. Our lives.

This may be the most important consequence of understanding the way context influences how your brain processes sexually relevant stimuli: When sex doesn’t feel great, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. Maybe there’s been a change in your external circumstances or your other motivational systems (like stress) that’s influencing your sexual response. Which means that you can create positive change without changing
you.

Another important consequence of understanding context is that it helps us understand why women are so different from each other. For many women, the most sex-positive contexts may not be the culturally sanctioned or readily available ones—such as hookups when you’re in college or the same old sex for the 1,287th time when you’ve been married for ten years. For some women, those are great contexts, but for other
women a great, sex-positive context might be an anonymous one-night hookup against a wall of other people’s coats in a stranger’s closet at a party. For others it’s the warmly affectionate sex of a long-term, committed relationship. For some women, it’s a wide range of contexts, and for others, it’s a narrow window. As long as a woman is attending to her wellbeing and her partner’s, it doesn’t matter what the context is, as long as it brings her pleasure.

But if we ignore context, then anyone who finds sex unfun or whose desire diminishes may be tempted to conclude she’s broken or just doesn’t like sex . . . when really all she needs is a better context.

In the right context, sexual behavior is arguably the most pleasurable experience a human can have. It can bond us with our partners, flood us with happy chemicals, satisfy deep biological urges, and transport us to spiritual heights. In the wrong context, though, it can literally feel like death. Depending on the context, sex can vary almost infinitely, from delicious to disgusting, from playful to painful—and because of the dual control mechanism, sometimes it’s two conflicting things at the same time.

As she learned about the relationship between context and her insensitive accelerator, Camilla decided to think of her low-sensitivity accelerator in terms of the shower metaphor—the garden metaphor never really worked for her, but something about the shower metaphor felt like a good fit. She noticed that romantic, affectionate contexts, exciting and novel contexts, and low-stress contexts increased her brain’s sensitivity to sexual cues.

Or, as she put it, “They heat up the water and build up the pressure.”

And the very best context of all, she thought, was when she felt pursued. The extended courtship that characterized the earliest part of her relationship with Henry might have been specifically organized around the contextual factors that maximized her
eagerness
for sex.

She and Henry talked about it, and they decided to try an experiment: He would create entire evenings where he courted Camilla, wooed her, and—eventually—won her. And they learned something from this that surprised them both: It wasn’t the pursuing. It was the waiting that turned her on.

The first time they tried it, it was a little awkward because she knew what was coming, so she kept trying to move things along, to show that she was on board with the plan. When he held her hand as they walked home from the movie, she tried to kiss him. But Henry stopped her, slowed her down. When he kissed her, she tried to deepen the kiss, but again he slowed her down. “I’m chasing you, remember?” he said. “I can’t chase you if you’re moving toward me.”

This was the lightbulb moment.

Camilla recognized that what she really needed was time for her
enjoying
to grow and expand until finally it activated her
eagerness.
They had been working with the hypothesis that it was feeling pursued that made her feel desire, but it turned out the real trick was not the experience of being chased but the amount of accelerator activation that comes with going slowly, delaying gratification. For her, the process of getting from
enjoying
to
eagerness
is a bit like the ticking pilot light on a gas stove—not quite enough gas, not quite enough, not quite, until phoof! she crosses from
enjoying
into
eagerness.

Or—going back to the shower analogy—her accelerator was like a hot-water heater that took a lot of time to heat the whole tank. It worked great, it just needed more patience, but it was so worth the wait.

Camilla and Henry are both careful, thoughtful people, methodical and slow paced, and this approach appeals to them deeply. It wouldn’t work for everyone. But great sex isn’t about doing what works for everyone, it’s about what works for you and your partner.

In this first part of the book, we’ve looked at how your sexual hardware—your body, your brain, and the context—influence your overall sexual wellbeing. We’ve learned that all three elements are made of the same basic parts in everyone, but each person’s brain, body, and context are
unique. In other words, we each have a unique “garden” in which we grow our sexual wellbeing.

The next part of the book is about what specific factors influence your context, in terms of your environment and your brain state. These are like the sun and the rain and—sometimes—compost of your garden. Some you have control over, some you don’t, and all of them influence how your garden thrives. In chapter 4, I’ll talk about two primary motivational systems—stress and love—and how they can influence sexual response in surprising ways. And in chapter 5, I’ll show how cultural factors in the environment—like social pressure to look or act a certain way, or moral and media messages about what’s “right” or “wrong” sexually—can influence sexual functioning, and how to untangle the knots that a sex-negative culture ties in our sexual psychologies.

tl;dr

• Your brain’s perception of a sensation is context dependent. Like tickling: If your partner tickles you when you’re already feeling turned on, it can be fun. But if they tickle you when you’re angry, it’s just irritating. Same sensation, different context—therefore different perception.

• When you’re stressed out, your brain interprets just about everything as a potential threat. When you’re turned on, your brain could interpret just about anything as sexually appealing. Because: context!

• 
Expecting
(anticipating),
eagerness
(wanting), and
enjoying
(liking) are separate functions in your brain. You can want without liking (craving), anticipate without wanting (dread), or any other combination.

• For most people, the best context for sex is low stress + highly affectionate + explicitly erotic. Think through your contexts with the worksheets that follow.

sexy contexts

Think of a positive sexual experience from your past. Describe it here, with as many relevant details as you can recall:

Now consider what aspects of that experience made it positive: