Men’s and women’s sexual arousal, desire, and pleasure work in essentially the same way. The sexual response mechanism in your brain—everyone’s brain—has two basic parts: It’s the same sensation (tickling), but a different perception. It’s either fun or annoying (or some variation thereof) because the context is different—your state of mind, the state of your relationship. And that’s normal. No one would ever judge or blame you for not wanting to be tickled while you’re feeling annoyed, right? So when I say, “Women want pleasure,” what I mean is we want to be in situations that facilitate pleasure. It’s not just the way your partner touches you that gives you pleasure; it’s the context in which the touching happens. For most of us, that means a context of low stress and high affection. Create a great, pleasure-inducing context and just about any sensation can be perceived as pleasurable. Who wouldn’t want that? Somebody to just remove all those stressors that hit the brakes? Who removes all the responsibility you carry around with you all day, every day? Who wouldn’t want someone you can trust with your body, who wants nothing more in life than to make you melt with pleasure? A context where a woman can trust her partner so profoundly that she can let go of control is a context where she feels safe inside her own body, and all the brakes are off. In the research, this shows up as “feeling desired versus feeling used by your partner,” “feeling ‘accepted’ by your partner” and has to do with the “style of approach/initiation and timing.” Focused, special attention that shows you the partner was thinking about you when you weren’t there, that they understand your needs and desires. This “understanding your needs and desires” thing is complicated, right? In romance novels, the hero just magically knows what the heroine wants and needs, but in real life, we have to tell our partner what we want and like, and we have to say it in a way that allows them to feel empowered and self-confident. Important caveat: What’s true about your body will be different from what’s true about your partner’s body. Neither person is “right” or “wrong”; we’re just all different. There are as many types of sexual expression as there are humans alive on earth, and confidence comes from knowing what happens to be true about our own individual sexuality. Your partner’s confidence is just as important as your own. You want to communicate honestly and openly about what you like, what you want, and what you’d like to try—or not try. And if you’re afraid that, in being honest, you might hurt your partner’s feelings or make them feel insecure or defensive…you’ll hesitate to say anything. You may even hide your desires. Worst of all is when an insecure partner judges a woman for wanting or liking what she wants and likes, for doing the things she’s done, or for having the thoughts and feelings she has. A couple’s ability to appreciate each other’s bodies and sexualities and welcome them as they are is at the core of all the first three things women want. Mutual acceptance creates a context that facilitates pleasure, that lets you turn off the brakes, that makes you feel worshipped. That’s why the last thing women want is: And since most of us have been taught to expect that our bodies are “supposed” to look and behave in ways that are totally unnatural (because patriarchy, ugh), a lot of us struggle to love ourselves as we are. We’re all in process, all the time, of learning and relearning that our bodies are beautiful and powerful precisely as they are. And this process is just that important little bit easier when our partner openly loves what’s true about our bodies. (P.S.: Your partner really wants you to be joyful about their body, too.) All we need is the right context, and our desire for sensuality and our pleasure in it will expand like a flame meeting air. Nagoski spent eight years as a lecturer and the Director of Wellness Education at Smith College. She has taught graduate and undergraduate classes in human sexuality, relationships and communication, stress management, and sex education. Now she travels all over training sexuality professionals, therapists, and lay people about the science and art of sexual well-being.
