2021.67.100 Come as You Are

Come as you are by Emily Ngoski

This is a nonfiction book about female… sexuality?

I learned so much and felt so seen by this book.. to the extent that I was worried I would have to return it to the library before I finished it (I couldn’t renew it since more people want to read it) so I went out and ordered it but it’s backordered!

Anyway, things I learned:

You have an accelerator and a break. Some people’s are more sensitive than others and you can’t really change their sensitivity. What you can change is what is pushing on your… gears? Also everything (basically) is about context!

Most women experience responsive desire (as opposed to spontaneous desire). What this basically means is that desire comes after arousal.

There is nonconcordance (I think that’s the word?) between your physical and emotional responses. For men, they typically match up about 50%, for women, that’s closer to 10%. So you may be very turned on but your body is not doing what it’s “supposed” to do or the other way around. This is where the whole “you said no, but your body said yes so you actually meant yes” came from. You said no and meant no and your body was just responding to sexually relevant stimuli. That does not mean you wanted it! The example in the book was that you’re looking for a place to eat and your body points out literally everything edible whereas your brain is like ‘no, obviously I don’t want to eat that’

I’m sure there’s more but this is what I remember at the moment. I really want to reread the book and try to actually do the exercises.

#67 of 2021

I ended up purchasing this book and rereading the updated version. I read it quite slowly the second time and although I did learn stuff I kind of feel like I need to keep rereading it until it sticks. I still highly recommend it though.