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Taking her own advice
Nagoski knows that telling couples to “just access pleasure together” is easier said than done. For most people, herself included, a long list of things can hit their sexual brakes. In the past several years, she has dealt with perimenopause, a back injury, and then long Covid, which has caused severe vascular problems. For months, Nagoski could barely walk to her mailbox. And she is still healing.
In 2021, Nagoski was diagnosed with autism, after her therapist noted she was unusually relieved not to have to see or talk to others during the height of the pandemic. Around that time, she watched the Pixar short “Loop,” in which two teens, one of whom has autism and is nonverbal, learn to communicate on a canoe ride. “It’s just this six-minute, animated thing,” she said, as she teared up. Watching it, she realized, “I’m autistic.”
The diagnosis, Nagoski said, was an “enormous relief.” People on the autism spectrum are sometimes blunt and unfiltered, and the diagnosis helped to explain why she might be so good at what she does. “I think one of the reasons talking about sex is so easy for me is that I have not absorbed the same ‘shoulds’ in the same way,” she said.
“Come Together” is the first time Nagoski has publicly opened up about her sex life, a decision she initially felt ambivalent about. “Before I wrote the book, I wondered if revealing, like, ‘I, too, have struggled with desire in a long-term relationship’ would undercut my expertise.”
When asked what she and her partner did to move through their dry spells, Nagoski distilled it to this: First, she spent a lot of time talking to her therapist (whom she has seen for years) about how to speak to her husband about their issues in a way that felt loving and not accusatory. Next, before they tried initiating anything physical, the couple spent a lot of time talking about sex. Nagoski realized it was important to let Stevens be silly about their situation, she said. (Their inside jokes about his genitals can’t be repeated here.) It brought some levity to their conversations and helped them to realize how important playfulness is to their dynamic in the bedroom.
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