"Love is having. Desire is wanting. And you can want only what you don't already have."
Dr. Emily Nagoski is a sex educator with a PhD in health behavior who spent years teaching human sexuality at Smith College. Come As You Are translates the peer-reviewed science of sexual response into accessible, myth-busting guidance, arguing that most sexual concerns stem not from dysfunction but from a mismatch between how sexuality actually works and what people have been taught to expect.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Emily Nagoski reveals how desire actually works — the dual control model, responsive vs spontaneous desire, and why context is everything. 7-day…
Read Summary →Sexual response involves both an accelerator (things that turn you on) and brakes (things that turn you off) — most sexual concerns come from too much brake activation, not too little accelerator, which reframes many common struggles.
Nagoski argues there's no single normal level of desire or arousal — what matters is whether your sexuality works well for you in context, not how it compares to a cultural average.
Difficult emotions, including those tied to sexual shame or trauma, need to be fully processed rather than avoided — Nagoski frames working through them as a tunnel you move through, not a wall to get around.
"Emotions are tunnels. You have to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end."— Come As You Are
"Love is having. Desire is wanting. And you can want only what you don't already have."— Come As You Are
"The day you were born, the world had a choice about what to teach you about your body. It could have taught you to live with confidence and joy inside your body."— Come As You Are
Emily Nagoski reveals how desire actually works — the dual control model, responsive vs spontaneous desire, and why context is everything. 7-day plan included.
