Sex Educator Emily Nagoski’s New Book ‘Come Together’ Is a Product of Experience

A decade ago, as the sex educator Emily Nagoski was researching and writing her first book, “Come as You Are” — a soon-to-be best seller exploring the science of women’s sexuality — she and her husband stopped having sex.

Nagoski began appearing everywhere, reassuring women that their sexuality was not a problem that needed to be solved or treated. She talked to the author Glennon Doyle and her wife, the soccer player Abby Wambach, about body image and shame on their podcast. She published a workbook to help women better understand their sexual temperament and sexual cues. Her TED Talks have been viewed millions of times.

But at home, she and her husband, Rich Stevens — a cartoonist whom she met on the dating site OkCupid in 2011 — were cycling in and out of monthslong sexual dry spells stemming from work stress and health problems. When I spoke to Nagoski at her cozy house in Easthampton, Mass., in the fall, and then again over the phone in January, she declined to offer specifics on just how long their droughts lasted. (She did not want people to compare themselves.) But she did not hold back about how they made her feel.

“Stressed. Depressed. Anxious. Lonely. Self-critical,” Nagoski, 46, said. “Like, how can I be an ‘expert’ — and I say that with heavy, heavy air quotes — and still be struggling in this way?”

After all, Nagoski had written the book on women and desire. She popularized the metaphor of the sexual response system as a car with an accelerator (that notices erotic stimuli) and brakes (that notice all of the reasons not to have sex. Like chores. Or a new baby. Or, just, patriarchy). When women struggle with arousal and pleasure, she explained in “Come as You Are,” it isn’t because the accelerator isn’t being stimulated; it’s usually because the brakes are being pushed too hard. Her talent was not for producing original research — this dual control model of sexual response, for instance, is not her idea — but she had a knack for sifting through the science to uncover what she believed to be most relevant to women’s day-to-day lives, and finding simple ways to describe it.

“She often reminds people that they are whole, they are not broken,” said Debby Herbenick, the director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at the Indiana University School of Public Health, who went to graduate school with Nagoski.

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