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

Emily Nagoski, PhD

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Alice says:

This is a valuable read for people who want a better understanding of sexuality, desire, intimacy, and emotional connection. It’s especially helpful for people who have struggled with shame, confusion, pressure, mismatched desire, or feeling like something is “wrong” with them sexually.

It offers an empowering, research-based perspective on sexuality that feels both compassionate and practical. The author does an excellent job normalizing the wide range of human sexual experiences and helping people understand how stress, emotions, relationships, and context can impact desire and intimacy.

One of my favorite things about the book is how validating it is. It challenges a lot of harmful myths around sexuality and replaces them with science, self-compassion, and curiosity. I also appreciated how approachable and nonjudgmental the writing feels while still being informative and evidence-based. The concepts are easy to understand and genuinely applicable to real-life relationships and experiences.

The book openly discusses sexuality, sexual functioning, anatomy, desire, arousal, body image, relationship dynamics, and sexual well-being. It also touches on topics such as shame, trauma, stress, and sexual violence, which may feel activating for some people. While the overall tone is affirming and educational, people should know that the content is candid and direct.

This book can help people develop a healthier, more informed, and less shame-based understanding of sexuality and intimacy. I think people will come away with greater self-awareness, improved communication around needs and boundaries, and a deeper understanding of how emotional and environmental factors influence desire. It can also help normalize experiences that people often feel isolated or embarrassed about.

From the Publisher

An essential exploration of why and how women’s sexuality works—based on groundbreaking research and brain science—that will radically transform your sex life into one filled with confidence and joy.

Researchers have spent the last decade trying to develop a “pink pill” for women to function like Viagra does for men. So where is it? Well, for reasons this book makes crystal clear, that pill will never be the answer—but as a result of the research that’s gone into it, scientists in the last few years have learned more about how women’s sexuality works than we ever thought possible, and Come as You Are explains it all.

The first lesson in this essential, transformative book by Dr. Emily Nagoski is that every woman has her own unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and that women vary more than men in our anatomy, our sexual response mechanisms, and the way our bodies respond to the sexual world. So we never need to judge ourselves based on others’ experiences. Because women vary, and that’s normal.

Second lesson: sex happens in a context. And all the complications of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, and orgasm.

Cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines tells us that the most important factor for women in creating and sustaining a fulfilling sex life, is not what you do in bed or how you do it, but how you feel about it. Which means that stress, mood, trust, and body image are not peripheral factors in a woman’s sexual wellbeing; they are central to it. Once you understand these factors, and how to influence them, you can create for yourself better sex and more profound pleasure than you ever thought possible.

And Emily Nagoski can prove it.

About the Author

Emily Nagoski, PhD is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, and the coauthor of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She has an MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior, both from Indiana University.

About Alice Davies

Alice is a psychotherapist based in Chicago Illinois.  She works with individuals, couples, and diverse relationship structures navigating dating, relationship conflict, breakups, attachment differences, communication struggles, financial stress, and questions about how to build healthier, more fulfilling connections. She uses a warm, collaborative, and practical approach grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT) to help clients better understand relationship patterns, improve communication, and create meaningful change. Alice strives to create a space where clients feel understood, supported, and empowered to move forward with greater clarity and confidence.