The Science of Horniness

doesn't mean that there's anything wrong at all. And instead of worrying about how sexual interest comes and goes, can we focus instead on whether or not you're experiencing pleasure in your life. I'm Emmilinagaski and this is the Come as you Are podcast, where I answer questions about sex with science. In this episode, I want to introduce you to a really simple, but radical shift in the way we think about sexual interest. Pop culture teaches us it's

all about getting turned on. Movies and TV portrayals of sexual desire have led us to a collective misunderstanding about how horniness really works, as in, how it works in our brains. So today we're going to talk about the real way horniness works. It's called the dual control model, and it is, in my opinion, one of the single most important, most life changing pieces of research on human sexuality.

I'm going to be answering a listener's question today, and bringing me that question is my producer mo I'm hey, Emily. Here we are. It's our very first episode of the Come As You Are Podcast. How are you feeling about it? It's thrilling. Are you thrilled? I'm thrilled. I'm feeling really good. I also just feel really lucky to be on this show with you. Like one, I'm, you know, sematically incapable

of chill, like I'm a very overeager person. But also it's very special for me to get to work with you, in particular because I read your book Come As You

Are when I was in college. I went to the University of North Carolina UNC Chapel Hill, and your book was something I found on a suggested reading list, I think in a women's studies course, and I just fell in love with the message of your book, and I kept Come As You Are on my mantelpiece in my like off campus college house as a symbol for everyone that came over to my house that like, I own my body and I'm having sex for me and I'm pursuing my own pleasure, and it was a big part

of like my young slut era. And I really appreciate that a gift you gave me. That's amazing. I love that. I feel like it could not possibly be random chance, like we were destined to work on this project together. Yeah, your book really did change my perspective on so many things, and so when I heard that you were working on this show, I was like, please pick me, pick me. It was raising my hand really hard. I love that.

Another reason I'm so excited for this podcast to exist because like I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, and I had abstinence only sex said, and I was a like unknowing at the time, little gay kid, and I basically was horrified and scared by the sexual education that I got or the lack of sexual education

that I got. But the little that I did get was basically like STDs can kill you, and if you have sex once, you're ruined forever and no one will want you after that, And that really it affected me. And I think having real and non judgment information, like the message that you have income as you are and in all your work, like having that out there actually makes a huge difference in people's everyday sex lives. Well yeay, And I see my work as being the opposite of

absinence only education. Not because I'm like everybody should have sex all the time. I think people should have sex when and how they choose too when is right for themselves, but because I believe that sex need not be scary in our lives. I think that if we can embrace pleasure into our lives, That's really the whole basis of my work. It's the whole basis of the show. The Prelude episode with Adrian Marie Brown, if you haven't heard

it yet, please go back and listen to it. Yes, that's really the foundation of everything we're going to be talking about. Heart agree. I put a lot of special love into the Prelude, But this episode is our first episode where we're going to be serring a listener question. So we got a message on the come as you are hotline six four six, three nine seven eight five

five seven. I chose it because it really speaks to the time we're in right now, like the pandemic has changed a lot of our relationships with ourselves and of course with sex and with masturbation, but also just pleasure on the day to day, like just everyday pleasures and happiness. I think you're absolutely right. Rates of mental health struggles have vastly increased. People's sense of overwhelm and exhaustion and acxistential dread have increased vastly just over the last couple

of years. And is that going to interfere with our sex lives? You bet your bippy right exactly. Yes. I wanted to pull a question from a caller whose sexual desire or horniness has basically changed drastically during the pandemic. All right, so here we go. Hi. My name is Sarah, my pronouns are she her. I'm thirty four and single, and I used to have a lot of fun with myself. I had and I still have all these fancy toys. But over the last few years, it's like my desire

to masturbate has just completely faded away. Like the other day, I realized I haven't masturbated in like six months, and I just don't feel like my old self washing porn does not cross my mind. I bought this new toy to even help me get back in the mood, and I've only used it once, I don't even want to get out there and date because I'm just not motivated by sex. It sounds like work to me, and I don't know what's wrong, Like by the time I get home from work, walk my dog, make dinner, I just

want to sit down and watch TV. And I feel really tired all the time. And so I wonder if you can help me figure out what's wrong with me. This answer might shock you, but no, I can't explain what's wrong with you because there is nothing wrong with you. Everything that we're hearing in this question is just Sarah's brain responding normally to an abnormal world. What science do we need to understand to answer this question for Sarah? Okay, this is thrilling for me. It's like I'm introducing you

to my most famous friend. Welcome to the dual control model, how our brains process sex related information. Dual control model means there's two parts. In the first part is that sexual accelerator that gets turned on. It notices all the sexy information in the environment. That's everything you feel with your basic senses, what you see here, smell, touch, taste, but also the things that you think, believe, or imagine and also the sensations inside your body, the sexual excitation system.

The accelerator notices all of that, and it sends that turn on signal the many of us are familiar with. But also at the same time, in parallel, you have breaks that are noticing all the good reasons not to be turned on right now, everything with your basic senses, the everything you see here, smell, touch, taste, and everything you think, believe or imagine, and all the sensations in your body, it notices everything that's a potential threat, and it sends the turn off signal. So arousal is not

just the process of turning on the OS. It's also, and more importantly, the process of turning off the offs. When people are struggling, the usual advice of how to deal with any difficulty around arousal pleasure, desire, orgasm, The usual advice you hear is like, let's add stimulation to the accelerator, watching porn, doing roleplay, handcoffs, all that stuff. And sometimes that can work and can be great. But a lot of the time when people are struggling, it's

not because there's too little stimulation to the accelerator. It's because there is too much stimulation to the breaks. Our listener says, it's been a couple of years. What's been happening the last couple of years, right, I don't know, a global pandemic where your breath could potentially carry a lethal virus that might hit the break as like a good reason not to be turned on right now as a potential threat. She says, the dating feels just like a lot of work, no kidding. The first time I

heard this, MLA, this truly blew my mind. May do and what I especially love. So this is one of my favorite things about the dual control model is that there can be some stimuli that both hit the accelerator and hit the brake, especially someone like you who grew up being told that sex is like dirty and dangerous. Sex related stimuli will activate the accelerator because it's sex related, but also you were taught it's dirty and dangerous, and

so it's also going to hit the break. And what's effect is that going to have on your sexual arousal sexual interest? WHOA if you try to drive a car with your foot on the accelerator and on the brake at the same time, how does that go? Wow? Wow wow wow? Okay, listeners can't see me. But I just took my cowboy hat off, so I can process what you just said. A lot of feelings about that that

I didn't know. We're there, Like, of course something can hit my accelerator, but if I was told my whole life that it shouldn't hit my accelerator, then it can also that same thing can also be hitting my brake. Oh, this is something I should process later with my therapist. I was gonna say that sounds like something you should talk to your therapist about, but I want to make sure that you know that your breaks and accelerator can

be trained. So in the same way that your breaks learned to respond to sex related stimuli, they can learn not to respond just by practicing having a little bit of exposure and relaxing, feeling calm and safe, and allowing the shame that you absorbed from culture to let go. Like your sex life will only get better because of this revelation. So that's one of the really powerful things.

Way beyond just like turn ons and turn offs? Is this just a like in just like one is Ambivalence is totally normal because of the way your brain has been trained to respond to stimuli. And the other thing is that the same stimulus in one context might activate the accelerator, but in a different context it'll hit the brakes. Like if you are like private and the door is locked and you know you're not going to be interrupted, and you're feeling really aroused and turned on and trusting

of your partner. If you have a partner, it can feel really fun to be tickled. But if you're in the grocery store having a fight with your partner and they try to tickle you, that sensation is not going to activate the accelerator. And that is normal. I cannot tell you how many people have asked me if there's something about their body that's broken, because a sensation that really turns them on in one context either doesn't turn them on or is actively annoying in a different context. Right,

breaks an accelerator, girls, what you need to know? Okay, I think it's really important to clarify that, Like, you're not talking about the break an accelerator as a metaphor, right, This is not a metaphor. This is the literal way our brain's process information. Yes, because it's a real thing that is really happening in your real, actual brain. You are an animal with a body. You have a head, there's a skull, and inside that skull there's a brain.

And inside that brain is a cluster of neuroconnections that respond to sexuality, some of them to activate arousal and some of them to stop arousal. I literally remember the day. It was nineteen ninety nine. I was sitting in the counseling office at Indiana University in John Bancroft was explaining

the dual control model. He drew a picture of the brain and the spine as he was explaining, and I was like, Oh, there's a break that this was a physical mechanism that literally existed in the central nervous system, the excitatory and inhibitory impulses. This is not a metaphor. This is the literal way our brain's process information. Right.

One of the reasons I chose this question is because she is just talking about her experience with masturbation, and I never really thought about masturbation having these same levers of turn ons and turn offs before. I've only thought about that in the context of like partnered sex. But you're saying it's the same system whether it's masturbation or

partnered sex. Right, Yeah, it's the same brain. What about this question makes you think that the dual control model is the answer the breaks and the accelerator is the answer to Sarah's question. You know, there are two phrases. First of all, there's I don't feel like my old self, which indicates that there was a change. And often when there's a change, people think it's something about themselves that has changed, when actually what has changed is the text

in which her brain is interpreting all this information. So she's not broken. Something happened in the world that made her brain adapt and adjust, and that's totally normal when you understand that, yes, there's an accelerator, and also, yes, there's a break that's responding to a global crisis. Oh, it's not me, it's the world. This is my brain responding normally to some very nutso stuff that's happening in the world. And the other sentence was it just feels

like a lot of work. It sounds like a lot of work to me. Yeah, right, that's there being a lot of pressure on the brakes. Oh interest, especially for a person who has a history of really enjoying masturbating their accelerator. We know responds really well because they have this history of being aroused and enjoying sexuality, and now a bunch of stuff that's hit the brain, and it feels like a lot of work. What's changed is nothing about this person, but just the world that their brain

is processing. More stuff is there that hits the brakes. So like if, for example, she made a list of today all the things she knows activate the accelerator and all the things that she knows are hitting the brakes, and then she thought back to you know, twenty nineteen, for example, or twenty sixteen even better, and made a list of things that activated or accelerator then and things that hit the brakes then, and compared, you'd be able to see, Oh, it's not that I change, it's just

the context changed, right. I actually have worksheets for this in the company you are workbooking, and you're getting download them for free from my website, where you think through multiple and it actually really helps to think through multiple experiences because if you get up to three, you're gonna start noticing patterns in what activates your accelerator and what

hits your breaks. Yeah, I'll put the link to that worksheet in the show notes, and I'm going to text my girlfriend right now and be like, let's fill out these sexy worksheets tonight. I think we should take a break. What do you think perfect? And then when we get back we can talk about how to apply this science in the real world. And I think we can answer Sarah's question. Okay, I want to recap the question. So

we got to call in at the commas. You are hotline six four six three nine seven eight five five seven, and it's from a listener who uses the pseudonym Sarah. She's thirty four in single and she used to love I actually found a few synonyms for masturbation online. That's what the internet is for. It is, in fact, for that. So let me just try out of few, and you tell me which ones you like better. Okay, Oh my god. She used to love poaching the egg. This is my

personal favorite. She used to love debugging her hard drive. What that's hilarious. Sorry, She used to love softening the peach. She used to love burping the worm. Oh my god. Okay, what that makes sense of a person who jaculates? It's burping a baby. Oh Emily, that got so much worse. Oh my god, I'm sorry you hadn't. No, of course you hadn't thought of that. No, um giving herself a hand typical. That's good. Okay, you got the picture of

how Sarah used to be. I do. Okay, great, um, But recently something has changed, so hang on, let me play the clip. Over the last few years, it's like my desire to masturbate has just completely faded away. Like the other day, I realized I haven't masturbated in like six months, and I just don't feel like my old self washing porn does not cross my mind. I bought this new toy to even help me get back in the mood, and I've only used it once. I don't even want to get out there and date because I'm

just not motivated by sex. Before we even get into answering this question, I want to start with an even more basic question to you, which is is this is there something wrong with like losing interest in masturbating. Let's say you know you don't masturbate. Somebody doesn't masturbate for five years and they just don't want to, like, does that mean that something has broken in their brain? Oh heck no. It is absolutely normal for interest in sex

to come and go if you will. There is a natural ebb and flow to our interest in sex that's influent by the larger context. So, for example, at the beginning of a relationship, the hot and heavy, fallen in love, that creates a context that makes it really easy to think about sex kind of all the time. Compare that to being in the middle of a I don't know, global disaster, and that creates a context that really puts

sex on the back burner. Science has shown us all along that nothing bad happens to you if you don't experience sex per se. So if we are still maintaining adequate love and connection, then sex can go away, and it is no kind of emergency. It's just an indication that other things have piled up in our priority list that have to be cleared away to free up the break so that our accelerator can do what it's there to do. What I also noticed in this question is

that she says she doesn't even think about it. Sex drops off the priority list. We're thinking about all this other things, dealing with family and dealing with work and life and all that stuff, and sex goes away. It's that we've deprioritized pleasure in the midst of all of our stress and strife and struggle. And we've also given the nature of the pandemic, we've lost access to the resources we used to spend on self care. And we know from the statistics that women and fems have had

this hit them especially hard. They're the ones who have had to leave their employment. They've been at home maybe with kids. And when you are stuck in parenting mode and caretaking mode, that is a million miles away from sexy, aroused pleasure in my body mode. Right, So we know that it has taken a toll on people's well being, cutting them off not just from social support, but also from the mental wherewithal to transition into a space of

appreciating and loving the sensations of their bodies. Yeah, that's so true. Like we talk about the toll it took on our social well being and how actually we realized all these social connections are really important to our mental health, but there hasn't been that big conversation about how the pandemic that we're living in has changed our sexual well being. And fair enough, like the social connection is a literal drive.

We die without it. It is more important, But sex is one of the key ways that humans give and receive love and care. Could you talk about some of the common things that hits people's breaks, Like what is an example of something that hits the breaks that's a habit or a pattern in our lives. The daily habits mostly are a matter of getting just absorbed in the

management of life. So like the amount of time we have to spend working or dealing with our families, or taking care of our basic fundamental needs, feeding ourselves, cleaning ourselves, managing schedules and time with other people, and writing checks to pay bills. Like life is complicated and we are busy, and it is so easy for pleasure and sexuality to

just feel like they're off, way in the distance. In the same way that these daily habits interfere with our access to pleasure, it takes a daily habit of prioritizing pleasure. If half an hours too much, make it three minutes where you just notice something pleasurable. If it's mindfully eating food,

that's a pleasure. If it is standing in the shower and feeling your skin like as you wash your body, really noticing the sensation of soapy water dripping down your skin, like notice the pleasure, and remember that you are actually alive in your body, not just moving from task to task. Right, So it doesn't necessarily have to be like a sexual thing that is hitting the brakes or hitting the accelerator. It could be it could be something like a great shower,

not necessarily sexual hitting the accelerating. The most important things about understanding the breaks is that most of the things that hit the brakes have nothing to do with sex. Even though I feel like it probably is the case that when people are raised with sex negative education, a lot of those breaks that they're learning are related to sex. Most of it is just like the rest of our lives, interfering.

Do you have any other practical advice for Sarah? It seems like she wants to masturbate again and wants to really enjoy that connection, like wants to want it again. That seems like her question. She's like, I want to want it again? Why don't I? What's the problem? Do you have any sex specific advice? I'm not actually sure because she feels like there's something wrong with her that

it's gone. So I believe that step one is grand your self permission not to be interested for a while, Deliberately choose to feel normal, healthy and happy and not interested in sex for a while. No one is ever under any obligation to be interested in sex ever, So try that first and then begin to explore other pleasures. Create space, the space that you've been using to worry

about sex. Use that instead for space to experience all the many different ways that we experience pleasure in our daily lives, from the satisfaction of like lying down in bed with clean, fresh sheets. Showers are always a big one. Food is always an opportunity for a pleasure, walking outside and feeling the breeze and the sun and watching leaves change if you live in a place where leaves change. And then see if interest in sex begins to bubble back up, and if it doesn't know worries, and if

it does, gently pursue it. I love the suggestions that you have for like activating the accelerator again are they don't involve spending any money. They're just experiences that you have in your body of like taking a shower, eating something really delicious, Like they don't It's not about buying the two hundred dollars dildo, right, Those are the shower and the food or things you were going to do

any exactly. Yes, Yes, I love that. And I think a lot of times we're told and she even says she bought a new toy and thought that was going to do it, and no, it didn't work. Right, it's just another piece of hardware to ignore. Yeah, a lot of times we're told like, oh, are you losing interest in sex? Buy stuff by this thing, buy that thing,

and that that'll rejuvenate your sex life. But I think that really gets to the point you were saying earlier, that like, it's not necessarily about juicing the accelerator more and more and more I'm buying more stuff. It's about like finding a way to turn off the brakes so that you really are noticing you. Even more than that, I think people do feel this sort of obligation to be interested in sex. We're told that if you're not interested in sex, there's some sort of problem with you

and your body. You need to always be trying to want sex, to try sexy new things, and we can't just allow our brains and bodies to just shift away from sexuality for a while. And here's the irony. If you believe you are supposed to be interested in sex, all the time and you are not interested in sex. Does that activate your accelerator? No? Right, It just that feeling of like I'm supposed to want sex, but I

don't want sex. It just hits your brakes some more So, if you believe you need to juice the accelerate, that belief is probably just making it more difficult for you to want or like any sexual experience than might present itself to you. Oh my god, I love that you're saying this. So you're saying like Sarah's sitting on the couch watching TV. At the end of the day, she's feeling guilty about the fact that she has masturbated in six months, and that is not helping her have a

great experience of wanting to masturbate next week. It's it's doing the opposite instead of getting the full pleasure that she could be getting from watching she Hulk. Yes, I was gonna say great British Bakoff, but she Hulk. Same, same, same difference. We're going to take a quick break and when we get back, Emily, I want you to like sum up the basics of the dual control model a TLGR. If you will, I hope you enjoy the company of

my most famous friend. I did enjoy the company of your most famous friend, and I have a feeling we're going to be seeing her again and again and again on this series. Yes, indeed, we'll be right back. We're back, and it's time for a classic Emmally Nagowski tlgr let us recap. So sexual response is actually a dual process of turning on the os and also crucially turning off the offs. And when we're struggling, the solution is more often about turning off the offs than it is about

turning on the odds. And that's especially true when we are still living through a pandemic. There are so many things hitting our breaks these days, so I want to make sure we offer some practical tips for how to turn off the offs. I have five practical tips for you ready. First, consider what activates your accelerator and what hits your brakes. This can be as simple as writing those pairs of lists off the top of your head.

Like you already know, the smell of your partner's skin when they come in from having done yard work is something that activates the accelerat. You know that reading romance novels in the bathtub activates the accelerator. You know that stress, body image stuff, parenting stuff, especially a bad day in

the news, hits the brakes. It might help instead to think about two or three different experiences you've had sexually that were great or just okay, and compare what happened in those experiences that it activated the accelerator and what hit the brakes. That's step one. Step two is to assess your current context. Once you have a sense of what impacts your sexual response, compare that to what's happening

in your life right now. If you're struggling to find a new romance author to spend some time within the tub, or if you can't be close to your partner because they're traveling a lot from work. Is there news consistently that turns your experience of the world into like navigating a hellscape. Those are things that are influencing the way your brain is processing sex related information and potential threats.

So assess your context is number two. Third. Categorize these aspects of your context as things you can control and things you can't control. You can ask folks for book recommendations so you can have some control over I can't find a new author to read. You can set limits on how often or how deeply you consume the news. You have permission not to consume the news. You have some control there too. To have control over your context.

Maybe you can't control your partner's work, travel, And remember I recommend that you focus especially on the stuff that's hitting the brakes, since those are more likely to have an impact, but some of them you may have no control over. You have no control over the actual what the news is, but you do have some control over your degree of exposure to it. Fourth, choose a small number of the things that you can control and make

a plan to create change. To help you select what to focus on, it can help to rank the controllable variables of your context by how easy or difficult they would be to change, and by how much of an impact they would have. Right, so the easy to change big impact factors those are the low hanging fruit. Easy to change low impact factors may make a small difference, but they're still worth doing right not just for these small change they make, but also they increase your experience

of self efficacy. Like see I can make a change if I decide to do it, which can help you feel more confident when you go on to tackle those more difficult to change but higher impact factors. And then, finally, above all, especially in a situation like this, listeners, remember the goal is simply to spend pleasurable time with your body. It doesn't have to be about adventure or novelty or wildness. It's not furry handcuffs and porn. It certainly doesn't have

to be about orchasm. God knows. It's just time to practice engaging pleasurably with your own body, mind, and spirit, so that as your context shifts more toward an accelerator activating less breaks hitting life, you have plenty of experience connecting you erotically with yourself so that you're ready when the moment comes. So to speak, no pun intended. A moment comes. The amount of cumpuns we're gonna have on

the show is about to be simply irresponsible. Make sure that you subscribe to Come as you are so that you are notified about next week's episode when it comes out on Wednesday. And we're going to be answering another real listener question. This time it's about a very crooked penis. And if you're like me and you're thinking penis as you yawn, I'm over them. This episode is about much more than just the penis. Emily teaches me a mind blowing anatomy one oh one lesson about genital structures, and

I come away a changed woman. I see by clitterists like an entirely different organ Now, so you know it, hit subscribe. How was that? Was that? Good? Amazing? God? This is so fun and it's your job. Do I get better than that? No, it doesn't get better than that. Welcome to My World, Come as You Are is a production of Pushkin Industries and Madison Wells. It's hosted by Emily Nagosky. You can find Emily on Instagram at e

Nigowski and on Twitter at Malin Nagowski. You can also sign up for her newsletter at emil Nagosky dot com, where she writes about everything from the clitterest in your mind to orgasm after having hysterected me. It's an incredible newsletter. Highly recommended. This show is co hosted and lead produced by me Mola Board. You can find me online at Mola Board and on TikTok at podcast dot slut Sorry mom. My co producer on this show is the Fabulous Britney Brown.

Our editor is Kate Parkinson Morgan Sound design and mixed by Anne Pope. Executive producers are Mia LaBelle and leetal Malade at Pushkin Thanks to Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, Sophie Crane, Courtney Guarino, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg. At Madison Wells thanks to Kylie Williams, Elizabeth Goodstein and Gg Pritzker. Additional thanks to Rich Stevens, Lindsay Edgecombe Frolic Media,

and Peter Acker at Armadillo Audio Group. Original music for this series was composed by Amelianagowski and arranged and recorded by Alexandra Kalinovsky. Additional music from Epidemic Sound. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot Fm. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,

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