122: The Science of Empathy and How to Keep Yourself Clear

How do you separate fact from fiction when it comes to creating and sustaining sexual desire? In this episode of Relationship Alive, our special guest is Emily Nagoski, author of the New York Times bestseller "Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life." Her work has been cited by both John Gottman and Esther Perel as a must-read for understanding how desire works, and how to nurture a sexual connection over the long term with your partner. Emily Nagoski and I dispel some modern-day myths about sexuality, and then we reveal some of the new science to help you create more pleasure in your life. And, as Emily says, "Pleasure is the Measure!"

Transcript:

Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. What if everything that you've been told about sex and desire was wrong? Or maybe not quite wrong, just missing really important bits of information that would help you understand the big picture. As it turns out, there's a lot that we've come to know through science about what turns us on and what turns us off. But this information is relatively new and hasn't quite made it out to the mainstream or the cover of Cosmo, at least not yet. How do you know if what you're experiencing is normal? And what can you do to discover more about who you are as a sexual being and to find more connection and sex in your relationship, without creating pressure on yourself or on your partner? Today's guest has many of the answers to these questions.

Neil Sattin: Her name is Doctor Emily Nagoski and she's the author of the New York Times bestseller "Come as You Are", which John Gottman says is the best book he's ever read on sexual desire and why some couples stop having sex. Esther Perel also refers to Emily's work. So, if John Gottman and Esther Perel, who, at the moment, come from different camps on the question of sexual desire, if they can agree on Emily Nagoski's work, then you know that she's done something truly magnificent. There's gonna be a lot to cover and, as usual, we will have a detailed transcript and action guide for this episode available to you at neilsattin.com/normal. Or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to get your copy. Emily Nagoski, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive.

Emily Nagoski: I'm so excited to talk to you.

Neil Sattin: So let's start at the very beginning.

Emily Nagoski: Very good place to start.

Neil Sattin: Exactly. Where did this book come from for you? It's about desire and it's about understanding what makes us tick. And in particular, it's written for women and about women's sexuality, though there's so much relearning for men to do as well. And I'm wondering if you can just create our garden here for us for this conversation. Where did this book come from and why was it so important for you to write it?

Emily Nagoski: Sure. I'd been teaching sexuality in some form and some context, for at least 15 years when I started teaching a class called Women's Sexuality at Smith College. Smith is a women's college so I had a class of almost entirely women, 187 of them. And Smith students are not ordinary human beings. Smith alums include Gloria Steinem, and Betty Friedan, and Catharine MacKinnon, and my favorite, Julia Child. And so the very first day, I'm teaching the anatomy class, of course, I just start with the anatomy. And a student raises her hand and says, "Emily, what's the evolutionary origin of the hymen?" And 15 years I'd been a sex educator, I had never even wondered the answer to that question. So I knew it was gonna be an intense, interesting semester. And it really was. They pushed me really hard. I shoehorned in as much science as I could into this beginner level class. After a semester of really hard work, my last question on the final exam was just tell me one important thing you learned. It can be... Just take the question seriously, you can have your two points no matter what you say. Just tell me one important thing you learned after all this cutting edge science.

Emily Nagoski: And I thought they were gonna say the evolutionary theory, or attachment theory, or arousal non-concordance, or responsive desire, or any of these other things. And more than half of them, of 187 extraordinary students, more than half of them just wrote something like, "I'm normal. I learned that I'm normal. Just because I'm different from other women doesn't mean I'm broken. I can accept my sexuality as it is, and my partner's even when it's different from mine." I'm grading final exams with tears in my eyes thinking, I don't know what happened in my class, but I think it must have been something extraordinary and I wanna do it again, and I wanna do it on a much bigger scale. And that's the day that I decided to write "Come as You Are." And five years after that is when "Come a...