Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Quotes
"Everyone’s genitals are made of the same parts, organized in different ways. No two alike."
"Your sexual brain has an ‘accelerator’ that responds to sexual stimulation, but it also has ‘brakes,’ which respond to all the very good reasons not to be turned on right now."
"Your level of sexual arousal at any given moment is the product of how much stimulation the accelerator is getting and how little stimulation the brakes are getting."
"What turns us on (or off) is learned from culture, in much the same way children learn vocabulary and accents from culture."
"Your brain has a sexual ‘accelerator’ that responds to ‘sexually relevant’ stimulation—anything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine that your brain has learned to associate with sexual arousal."
"Your brain also has sexual ‘brakes’ that respond to ‘potential threats’—anything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine that your brain interprets as a good reason not to be turned on right now."
"There’s virtually no ‘innate’ sexually relevant stimulus or threat; our accelerators and brakes learn when to respond through experience."
"People vary in how sensitive their brakes and accelerator are."
"You can’t change the soil itself, but you can augment it and you can make smart decisions about how to manage it."
"Your SIS and SES are traits you’re born with that remain more or less stable over your life span, and no one knows precisely which factors cause them to change."
"Their eyes met and both of them experienced an instantaneous, 'Yes. This is it. You’re it.'"
"By the time they kissed, they were both in love—though neither had said so."
"It’s not so much a tank as a shower where sometimes there’s tons of hot water, and other times there’s hardly any water pressure."
"Love/Emotional Bonding Cues, such as feeling a sense of love, security, commitment, emotional closeness, protection, and support in your relationship."
"Feelings About One’s Body. 'It’s much easier for me to feel aroused when I’m feeling really comfortable with myself.'"
"It’s completely normal that context changes how you perceive sensations. It’s just how brains work."
"What gives is the dual control mechanism’s relationship with your many other motivational systems. What gives is context."
"When we ask them, 'What gets you in the mood?' women tell us: Having an attractive partner who respects them and accepts them as they are."
"The context—external circumstances and internal brain state—of a fantasy is very different from the context of real life."
"The key to managing stress effectively is to make efforts to complete the cycle—unlock from freeze, escape the predator, kill the enemy, rejoice."
"Our culture says that if the stressor isn’t right in front of us, then we have no reason to feel stressed and so we should just cut it out already."
"The brain can handle only a limited amount of information at a time; at its simplest, we can think of stress as information overload."
"Emotions are like tunnels: You have to walk all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end."
"The goal is to help you recognize how the stress response cycle and the attachment mechanism are integrated in your sexual responsiveness."
"Trauma isn’t always caused by one specific incident. It can also emerge in response to persistent distress or ongoing abuse."
"When a person has control over her body taken from her, she freezes, and then she can’t unlock."
"Recovery requires an environment of relative security and the ability to separate the physiology of freeze from the experience of fear."
"Attachment is the evolutionarily adaptive emotional mechanism that bonds infants and adult caregivers."
"Brain imaging research has found that the mesolimbic systems during a nondistressed experience of parental attachment are extremely similar to the experience of romantic attachment."
"Our bodies are pretty sure that if our attachment object doesn’t come back, we’ll die."
"We cry, they come. We turn around, they're there."
"When something painful happens I try to take a balanced view of the situation."
"I feel comfortable sharing my private thoughts and feelings with my partner."
"I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now."
"My parents taught me a lot of valuable things about commitment and loyalty."
"Your belly is our belly. I’ve got one too. Do you love me less for it?"
"I just feel a lot more confident in myself, in my body!"
"I am at risk/I am safe. I am broken/I am whole. I am lost/I am home."
"The water of life is here. I’m drinking it. But I had to come this long way to know it!"
"Your body is wrong. If you’re not trying to change it, you’re lazy."
"Take what’s relevant. Ignore what isn’t; it’s there for somebody else who needs it."
"Treat cultural messages about sex and your body like a salad bar. Take only the things that appeal to you and ignore the rest."
"Absorb what feels right for you and shake off what feels wrong. Let everybody else do everybody else."
"No girl is born hating her body or feeling ashamed of her sexuality. You had to learn that."
"You are the gardener. You get to decide what plants stay and what plants go."
"The genitals tell you, ‘That’s sexually relevant.’ The person tells you, ‘That turns me on,’ or ‘I am enjoying this.’"
"Genital response is the automatic, trained response to something that’s sexually relevant."
"You have to relax before you can trust. But women who are slow to trust can’t relax until they feel trust."
"Arousal comes first, before desire—for everyone, not just Camilla."
"Love is having. Desire is wanting. And you can want only what you don’t already have."
"Turn toward each other’s desires," says Gottman.
"Keep a comfortable distance," says Perel.
"For Perel, desire is eagerness. Wanting. Seeking. Craving."
"The goal of both approaches is to sustain curiosity."
"Orgasm is the sudden, involuntary release of sexual tension."
"You were born entitled to all the pleasure your body can feel."
"How you feel about your sexuality is more important than your sexuality itself."
"Since Ms. B. entered her mid-40s, she says, sex has been more about smoke and mirrors than thunder and lightning."
"If I believed I were broken, I would wish it were otherwise, too."
"But she’s not broken, she’s normal—in fact, she’s typical."
"What if she said to herself, 'Huh, I notice I haven’t wanted sex much lately. That’s an interesting little puzzle!'"
"Sometimes it’s as simple as that, like flipping a light switch."
"Context-free spontaneous desire is just the man-as-default standard, and screw that."
"Meta-emotions are how you feel about how you feel."
"Feeling okay about how you feel—even when it’s not what you expected—is the key to extraordinary sex."
"The scripts are written into your brain early, by your family and culture."
"It’s not how you feel—it’s not even being aware of how you feel. It’s how you feel about how you feel."
"Your knowledge about sex is a map of the sexual terrain."
"The sexuality you have right now is it. And it’s beautiful, even—especially!—if it’s not what you were taught it should be."
"It’s not how you feel. It’s how you feel about how you feel."
"You belong in your body. You belong in the world."
"It’s like how your fingers feel when you come in from the cold. It hurts for a while, but then they’re warm."
"The most important thing you can do to have a great sex life is to welcome your sexuality as it is, right now."
"It’s not about just wanting sex, it’s about creating a context—really, it’s about creating a life—that makes space for both people’s needs."