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

Book by Emily Nagoski · 17 quotes · Sex, Self Criticism, Self Love

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

“This chapter is about the large-scale, long-term context--the years of "no" messages--and the deep patterns of thinking and feeling they create, patterns that are reinforced and reiterated over decades of life. These patterns are emphatically not innate, but they were learned early. You began these lessons long before you were capable of thinking critically about whether you wanted them. And just as you learned them, you can unlearn them, if you want to, and replace them with new, healthier patterns that promote confidence, joy, satisfaction, and even ecstasy.”

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“By limiting your exposure to media that makes you feel worse about yourself, you're not just improving your own sex life, you're also voting with your eyeballs, your ears, and your cash. You're joining an audience that will pay attention only to things that make women feel better about themselves. Wouldn't it be amazing to live in a world where performers and artists and media outlets were competing to make the largest number of women feel fantastic about their bodies right now? On behalf of women everywhere, thank you for anything you do to make that real!”

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“We need to discharge the stress response, complete the cycle, before our bodies can move on. "Home" is the place--physical and emotional--where we can discharge stress without being judged or shamed or told we just need to relax or forget about it. "Home" is where we receive our partner's "loving presence." People who listen with a loving presence are calm, attentive, and warmly attuned to the other person.”

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“Sometimes people resist letting go of self-criticism--"I suck!"--because it can feel like giving up hope that you could become a better person, but that's the opposite of how it works. How it really works is that when you stop beating yourself up, you begin to heal, and then you grow like never before.”

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“Here's an emotion-dismissing meta-emotion I hear a lot: "If there is no solution to an uncomfortable feeling, there's no point feeling it." Yes, there is. The point of feeling a feeling you can't do anything about is to let it discharge, complete the cycle, so that it can end.”

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“When people ask me, "Am I normal?" they're asking, "Do I belong?" The answer is yes. You belong in your body. You belong in the world. You've belonged since the day you were born, this is your home. You don't have to earn it by conforming to some externally imposed sexual standard.”

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“What you do is you start loving responsive desire. Figure out what contexts give you a fantastic relationship and hot sex. Context-free spontaneous desire is just the man-as-default standard, and screw that. Don't use somebody else's standard to measure the quality of your sex life.”

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“One more thing about women's external genitals. The name for the whole package of female genitalia is "vulva." "Vagina" refers to the internal reproductive canal that leads up to the uterus. People often use "vagina" to refer to the vulva, but now you know better.”

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