Your sexual brakes matter more than the accelerator
Emily Nagoski found that most people trying to fix low desire are pressing the wrong pedal.
The standard model of sexual desire imagines a dial: turn it up, and you want sex more. Nagoski's research, laid out in Come As You Are, replaces the dial with two separate systems that run simultaneously.
The Sexual Excitation System — the accelerator — responds to anything the brain reads as sexually relevant: a touch, a scent, a memory, an image. The Sexual Inhibition System — the brakes — responds to anything the brain reads as a reason not to have sex: stress, self-criticism, physical discomfort, the pile of laundry visible from the bed.
The important insight is not that both systems exist but that they operate independently. Trying to increase desire by adding more stimulation — new locations, new techniques — only works if the brakes are already off. If someone's brakes are heavily engaged by anxiety or exhaustion, pressing the accelerator harder does little.
This explains a common mismatch in long-term couples. The partner with lower desire is not less interested in sex in the abstract — they may have a perfectly active accelerator. But something in the context is hitting the brakes hard, and no amount of novelty will override it.
Nagoski's argument is that almost all desire problems are brake problems first. The question worth asking isn't 'how do I feel more turned on?' but 'what specifically is in the way?'