What is Reddit's opinion of Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life?
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OK. first thing, don't pressure her about orgasms. Being able to cum for women is a very mental thing. Pressure kills it. If she enjoys sex without an orgasm, let that be OK for the moment. I don't always cum when my husband and I have sex, but I always enjoy it. It's a lot harder for women to cum than it is for men, sometimes it just doesn't happen.

Second: both of you get this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

really really good book about female sexuality.

I am late to this thread but tacking onto your post to mention Come as you are is an amazing book about prioritizing female pleasure that I can't recommend enough to my girlfriends.

I'm late to this post but damn. Here's me, another LLF who's only remotely interested in sex about the time I'm ovulating. This is a new pattern I'm discovering in my mid-30's as I've been on hormonal BC since 18 and now off. It's getting more and more noticeable (and predictable) every month.

So circlesdontexist, if you need more actual "proof" that OP isn't some sort of freak of nature, it's actually pretty common. It sounds like you would REALLY benefit from reading this book, you are a little too ignorant on the subject to be so damn loud about it:

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life
Emily Nagoski

It's not an effort problem. And your partners, sex isn't a transaction for being a good partner. She's not bad and neither are you.

In essence your current solution is for to have sex she doesn't want to have for whatever reason. That never ends well.

This is a libido, desire problem because of a mismatch.

So, the best thing I can recommend is for you (both) to read

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_XM4NJAME30VZV1RS2H2E

We all have a gas pedal and a set of brakes where desire is concerned. Some of us are all gas and very little brake. Some of us have hair trigger brakes that keep us spinning pur wheels no matter how much gas we give. This book helps breakdown the various factors, help narrow down the factors that we can control for so the braking system gets backed up on and the gas gets going.

Start here. See if you two can figure out how to create the right circumstances for those brakes to stop getting triggered and give her desire a chance to get going again.

Please - go buy this book (I've included the handy link) Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. You can read it in a day or two. Or start by going on YouTube and look for one of the TedTalks she has done.

It explains responsive desire. Women can experience spontaneous desire, but as I said, physiologically, our bodies are different and require more. You're comparing your arousal time to his! Do you think you should be able to get it up as quickly as he can? Oh, no.

You say he is not selfish. I want to believe you. However, what he is telling you is, I'm not used to that, I prefer this and that oral sex or manual stimulation should be "optional". It is not. What he is willing to give does not meet your needs and he is not willing to compromise.

I have had very a similar experience. I have sexual trauma and have inherited a great deal of unhealthy narratives with regard to women's role in sex (focus on giving pleasure). In my previous relationship, I think a combination of existential crisis and birth control pills made me unable to have sex. Penetration was always very painful. I could hardly get wet. It felt like my vagina was just shut. It kind of wrecked my relationship because despite that I tried and tired and kept hurting myself (the ex-bf was nice) to the point where I become scared of penetration. When I anticipate a penetration I would just tense up. What I did is I started to take masturbation seriously as a way to explore my sexual organs. I recommend that you try reading the book called Come As You Are. It explores female sexuality struggles. The book was extremely helpful to me. For a while, I tried to learn to relax my pelvic floor muscle. I have difficulties peeing sometimes and that's a sign of tight pelvic floor muscle. I watched videos and read about how to relax the pelvic floor muscles. I did a number of deep breathing sessions where I breathe out and used my fingers to gently massage the inside of my vagina to help it relax. If you don't masturbate, you should. I never masturbated until I was 26. I did it to overcome this particular issue. I feel your struggle. I'm sorry you are going through this. You can reach out to me if you want to discuss more.

I'm in the same boat. You may want to read Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. I found it the first book that really described sexuality as I'd experienced it.

I really recommend reading Come as you are from Emily Nagoski. As a guy, I'd say it's a must read for any guy that want to understand his SO's sex drive and how to use it to build a good sex life.

Libido isn't an on-off switch. It's a very complex mechanism that's a little different for everyone. I highly recommend the book Come as You Are on the subject.

As a personal anecdote, I never had a libido until I started working out regularly.

Baby steps: read everything written by Lou Paget. Read Come As You Are by Emily N (amazon link) Start reading anatomy charts of the human nervous system and your partners particular reactions- using light touch, wartenberg wheel, and nails. Learn what the neurological exams doctors perform and WHY they do the things they do (I get old, cheap textbooks for things like this).

Reading a lot about the sexual response cycle and learning how to hack it- there is a normal cycle of getting more excited and less excited during sex (the technical term for it is arousal but that gets confusing). If you know what these cycles are, why they exist, and how to tweak them... you basically become a sex magician and an make other people's bodies do things and experience pleasure they've never felt before, and in my case, it makes me feel like a Sex God.

I have a few techniques that I have developed,

Some areas of the body have nerves further apart but at high sensitivity- like the sides of the ribs, down to the hipbones. So I'll do a light, random touch up and down the sides until my happy victim is purring, That means they've reached a level of neurological excitement and sort of plateaued there. Then you rake your nails down and it makes their entire body shake, and that ramps up the neurological excitement to another level- and you can then ramp up/let people cool down to get the effect you want.

Orgasm is a trained response. Nerves the fire together, wire together. So you have to train the nervous system to be able to orgasm in the first place, and then manage the neurological stimulation and excitement until the brain gets used to having multiple orgasms. Then if you do it repeatedly with high intensity of neurological activation (i.e, you have to make them come HARD- bondage helps because if your muscles are tensed beyond the normal activation point for movement it helps send the signal to the nervous system that This Is Serious and We Should Pay Attention, plus having someone begging not to come again and fighting to run away from you but BONDAGE and then give them an orgasm!) actually makes it easier to reach multiple orgasms in the future.

I also enjoy making non-genital places on people's bodies into a zone that they have been neurologically conditioned to respond to touch there as a sex thing. For instance. I have several people where I've turned the inside of their elbow into a place where they can come from me playing with it. Which means I can be out in public with them and sneakily rub that spot, it makes them all blushy and breathing hard and turned on, halfway to coming, but to anyone watching us at dinner... don't realize that I've got them halfway to having an orgasm and I'm tormenting them in public. Muahahaha.

How you do that is easy. You spend 10-15 minutes on genital stimulation. Then you go and work on the target spot (I like boobs for this) and play with them for the same amount of time. And then back and forth again. No orgasm for a long time, and keep this up. The end result is a lovely sexy trans wife who can come or gets close to cumming from me playing with her boobs.

TL;DR- mad scientist neurohacking for perverted reasons.

>Understanding responsive desire improved my marriage. Here is a link to the best book on the subject.
>
>https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI

Hey OP, this is clearly a difficult situation, and I cannot fathom the emotional pain and turmoil you're feeling right now. I know this will sound strange, but I'd like to suggest that you and your GF both read, "Come As You Are", by Dr. Emily Nagoski.

https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI

While the book is more geared toward women, I think you'll find the information very enlightening, especially the chapters that discuss sexual "accelerators" and "brakes". The book may give both of you enough insight to be able to make behavioral changes.

I hope you're able to work through these issues, but should that not happen, reading this book will at least provide you with some great insight.

Edit: formatting

I got a lot of out of the book Come as You Are by Emily Nagosaki. It talks a lot about female sexuality, including anatomy, pleasure, and how to work through some guilt. I'd recommend it for both you and her, actually.

Amazon link -https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1498922611&sr=8-2&keywords=come+as+you+are TED talk by the author - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HILY0wWBlBM

Understanding responsive desire improved my marriage. Here is a link to the best book on the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI

Hey, I'm very sorry you're going through this, me and many women out there can sympathize with you. I suggest reading these two books for starters, might help you get a better mindset on the whole thing. The issue here is that every woman is different and this is largely a psychological issue, so you'll have most success finding the root of the problem for yourself. Are you having anxiety/depression? These things lower your libido, make your pelvic floor clenched all the time which all causes the situation you're in right now. I know it's difficult but you'll need to work on it actively to fix it. Some of the techniques I'd suggest trying out are (and keep trying everything you can think of until you find something that works for you):

- first of all, going to a gynecologist to check if the issue is physical. Some women have tilted vaginal walls or pelvic floor deformities, hormonal imbalance can also cause a lack of estrogen which makes vaginal walls drop their elasticity, etc.

- kegel exercises

- pelvic floor massage

- deep/abdominal breathing exercises

- yoga/hip stretching exercises to help the blood flow down there

- dilating

- lots of foreplay and relaxation

- taking time to masturbate, do it mindfully, relax, discover your body and what you like, repeat with your boyfriend until you're ready for penetration

- use lubricant and try different poses, sometimes it's easier if you're on top so you're in the control of how fast and deep the penetration goes, don't try to push it past your comfort zone because sex isn't supposed to hurt and by forcing yourself to endure the pain might cause more damage than good

- sex therapist

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Emily-Nagoski-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=come+as+you+are&qid=1621521578&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Dr-Amanda-Olson-ebook/dp/B07HGCWQ46/ref=sr_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=vaginismus&qid=1621521444&s=digital-text&sr=1-15

I hope this helps :)

I suggest you read this book, that will let you know how normal you are : Come As You Are by Emily Nagowski.

And that you get HIM to read this book: Woman's Anatomy of Arousal by Sheri Winston, so that he can learn how normal you are, and ALSO so that he can gain an understanding of how women's parts actually work. It will help him realize that it's not just you, he may actually just be a truly selfish lover, who hasn't really pleased anyone before.

I know I've just told you, go read a book, but these two books will arm you with information that will be irrefutable and eye-opening. It's what you need. He's already just killing the messenger and invalidating your experience as woman when you try to tell him anything from your side.

The science and facts, have to do with both the structure of female erogenous zones and the conditions under which they work, ie how you can rub all the right things and do all the right moves, but if you are triggering a fight or flight response, even those won't work. It's useful for men to understand the science behind things, so they don't lay the blame for their own ineptitude, or lack of interest in trying, at their partner's feet.

Perhaps both of you can read this popular book: Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski

And maybe your wife might learn from this mobile app: https://meetrosy.com/

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_XM4NJAME30VZV1RS2H2E

Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374230897/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_Y0KGFT4Q4T5Q4ES1H7MD

Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0776PYDNM/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_QNDEQA5K0FSY01G84EF4

So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex: Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives https://www.amazon.com/dp/1538734850/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_9HWECY130ER2MXDYF454

You can't go wrong with these as a solid and wide ranging education.

This video is featured in this sub's wiki along with several other excellent TED talks.

Also, Dr. Nagoski is the author of one of the most popular books in this sub: Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life.

Sure, it’s pretty simple to make your sex life better. Go study, make it sexy. Try books like these

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_ZKEWM6V58RCFEMX31GN6

101 Nights of Grrreat Romance: Secret Sealed Seductions for Fun-Loving Couples https://www.amazon.com/dp/0962962821/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_QK7QZP1NPX9AF8TYB30Z

This book, right here. Read it. Then read it again. Then again. And memorize it. Take the quizzes. Do all the things. This book is a complete game changer. https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=sr_1_1?crid=IGMDXT4CZE8E&dchild=1&keywords=come+as+you+are+by+emily+nagoski%2C+ph.d&qid=1611848989&sprefix=come+as+you+are%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-1

Read "Come As You Are" by Emily Nagoski together. It's about exactly this and how context affects sexual excitability and inhibition.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LD1ORBI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

There's a great book called Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski with tons of great exercises to help you navigate situations like this.

One of the exercises that comes to mind is creating a Yes | No | Maybe list. I made a model of one you can download here that might be helpful.

> I got both - took a leap of faith on come as you are

Come As You Are is a completely different book. (I just noticed this is what you said you bought.) That's Emily Nagoski's nonfiction book written under her own name, and it's a perennial SO30 favorite.

The sequel to How Not to Fall is called How Not To Let Go.

There's no reason why you shouldn't try out a chastity belt yourself if that's something you and your boyfriend want to experiment with, but first it might be good to figure out if your lower desire is a result of a slow "accelerator" (SES), or a sensitive "brake" (SIS), or both. If you have a slow accelerator, then the chastity belt might help. If you have a sensitive brake...not so much. You can complete the Sexual Temperament Questionnaire here for free (see Chapter 2 worksheet) to find out whether you have a slow accelerator, a sensitive brake, or both.

I also highly recommend the full book Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski (Amazonlink), especially Chapter 7. It includes this wonderful exercise to help couples where one partner has a much higher desire than the other:

No Sex. That means no genital contact and no orgasms for, say, a month—or two weeks, or three months. Long enough to feel like a substantial barrier. The purpose of this is to remove every trace of expectation or demand that sex will be the result of any physical contact between you. There might be other things you put off-limits, too—anything that the lower-desire Partner B resists because of feeling pushed. Without the dread of, “Ugh, what if this perfectly pleasant kiss turns into an expectation of sex that I still don’t want?” both of you can relax and enjoy the physical intimacy you do share.
Alternate Initiation. Each person initiates at least once a week. Or once every other week if that seems like too much. Or three times a week if it seems like too little. The number doesn’t matter much, just negotiate a number that both of you feel is doable. The function of this rule is to break down the chasing dynamic so that neither feels pressured and neither feels deprived. Since you have the no-sex rule, what you’re initiating isn’t sex, but rather sensual touching (see the stages below for details). No demand, no expectations, no pressure to “perform.” Just touching and pleasure and affectionate awareness of bodies. At some point during the day or else right when you go to bed, one partner indicates that they are initiating sensual touching—verbally, nonverbally, whatever works. Find at least twenty minutes of uninterrupted time when you can focus on each other and be attentive and present, without distractions. If initiation happens at an inconvenient time, negotiate a better one and do it then. A standard approach is to progress along stages. You spend a week or two at each stage, alternating who initiates the gradually escalating sensual touching. Like this:

Stage 1. One person touches the other (excluding body parts that underwear covers) for the toucher’s pleasure, and then they switch.

Stage 2. One person touches the other (excluding body parts that underwear covers) for their own and their partner’s pleasure, and then they switch.

Stage 3. One person touches the other, now including genitals and breasts, for both partners’ pleasure, and then they switch.

Stage 4. Simultaneous touching for mutual pleasure.

And then penetration, if that’s a thing that happens in your relationship, first without any thrusting (“vaginal containment”) and then, in the final stage, with thrusting but without orgasm. But you don’t have to follow this series of stages. You can negotiate a variation that works for both of you.

Note: there's no reason why a kinky couple such as yourselves couldn't adapt this so that the final stages result in orgasms for you, but not for him.

The person doing the touching must practice “self-assertion” and the person being touched must practice “self-protection.” That is, in the first stage especially, the toucher must do what feels good, and the touchee must say when the toucher should stop doing something that feels uncomfortable. Some couples find it useful to use a scale, like –10 to +10, and the toucher stops doing anything below a –2. Some couples use a traffic light system—green light for pleasure, yellow for neutral, and red for “Stop that.” The purpose of self-protection and self-assertion is to untangle the knots in sexual communication by simplifying it down to “This feels good to me” and “I don’t like that,” without blame or judgment.

If you have a sensitive brake, another thing that might help is turning off your offs--the things that stress you out and make you not want sex as much as your partner. There are some things you can do on your own to turn off your offs, and other things you can ask (or demand) your partner to do, especially if he is a locked slave. If you don't buy the book, the free worksheets here from Chapters 4 and 7 can help with that.

I would suggest 1 that you keep complimenting her, and also to try Emily Nagoski's suggestion to ask your wife to look into the mirror every day and notice how beautiful she is. See her blog or book "Come as you are", or her podcasts/videos. The following is from her blog and her Tedx talk:

"Stand in front of a mirror as close to naked as you can tolerate. Look at what you see there. And write down everything you see… that you like. And of course the first thing that will happen is that your brain will be filled with all the noisy cultural bullshit about the things that are “wrong” with your body. That’s fine. Just notice those thoughts and let them go for now. You’ve got the whole rest of the day to have those thoughts. Right now, pay attention to the things you like. If it’s your eyelashes, your toes, whatever it is. Write it down.

Do it again tomorrow. And again the next day. The more you practice noticing your own beauty, the more you’ll see what a frickin’ frackin’ miracle you are, and the stronger a hold you’ll have on the keys to your own sexual wellbeing. Confidence is knowing what’s true. Joy is loving what’s true."

In fact - I recommend the video to both you and your wife.

Thank you, I hope it keeps working for you! <hugs to you both!>

OP, the blog Otronic mentioned starts here.

And this is an article that describes how my SO and I got started on this whole journey: Escaping a Dead Bedroom.

I was the low libido partner and in some ways we were in worse shape than you guys, but the crisis hit much earlier in our relationship, so we had more urgency about solving our problems and we didn't have more than a decade of accumulated habits and routines weighing us down. So some of the stuff that worked for us may work for you, but some may not.

Still, it may help just seeing it from the perspective of someone like your wife. What made me shut down completely was a stress overload. That's one of the most common libido killers, so it's something worth exploring. But we also had problems with initiating sex that we had to solve. To this day, I rarely get horny spontaneously and seldom initiate sex, even though I know how much I enjoy it, so we rely on scheduling and on ways to make initiating seem like less of a burden for him. Again, YMMV, but seeing how another couple got back to good passionate sex may help.

One more suggestion: our book of the month this month is Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski. It's one of the best explorations of women's sexuality I've ever seen, and you will both get a better understanding of your problems as a couple if you read it. Highly recommended!

Good luck!

Hey /u/ViStandsForStupid - I'd like to recommend that both you and your boyfriend read, "Come As You Are", by Dr. Emily Nagoski.

https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI

There are a great many things you will learn in that book, but the most important one is that you are normal, so don't forget that!

In later chapters you'll learn that there's really no such thing as a sex "drive". You'll learn that, "desire = arousal in context" (Chapter 7). It's not that your sex "drive" is low, but you need to have the right context/situation. It's a bit like taking a hot shower, but sometimes it takes a long time for the water pressure and heat to build up. Once it gets there, it's a great, hot shower, and you really enjoy it.

Get the book. Read it. I'm betting you're going to have a lot of "A ha!", and "Wow! How come I never learned that?!" moments. TL;DR: we live in a male-driven culture, so the things you've learned about sex are largely taught from a male point of view. Women are not men...they're women! This book will be an eye opener for both you and your boyfriend.

Best of luck to you!

Your girlfriend's presumption that, "...girls don’t like sex as much as guys" isn't accurate. I suspect, for her and many women, that it's more a matter of finding the right context: discovering ways of turning off the 'offs' and turning on the 'ons' so her desire builds. Keep in mind that women are not men, they're women. So, in this case, while 50%+ of men can be ready for sex spontaneously, that's only true for 10-20% of women; it's more about setting the right mood, if you will. Eliminating the stresses, not putting pressure on the situation, finding the things that turn her on in her brain - not just her body. I'm doing the topic a great disservice, and there are excellent books on this (see below).

Question: was your girlfriend like this at the beginning of your relationship?

P.S. If your girlfriend finds PiV sex painful, even with lube, then she ought to see a doctor to rule out any physical issues. That said, it may end up being more an issue of building desire than something physical, but she ought to be sure.

Some material that I like to recommend - even (especially?) for guys is: "Come As You Are", by Dr. Emily Nagoski.

https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform-ebook/dp/B00LD1ORBI

Look ignor the ass. It sounds like your husband has responsive sexual desire. You should read come as you are it’s about female sexuality but goes pretty well into the desire type, and how to address it.