Context: Good Sex Starts with "E"- Part II
In my earlier blog, Context, Pt.1: What Is It & Why Is It Important to Your Sex Life, you learned that Context - both the circumstances and your brain state at the present moment – informs your entire experience of sex. So how do you create positive, pleasure-centered context? First, you need to know about the Emotional Brain and what sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski has coined “The Emotional One Ring.”
Your brain has pleasure and reward centers which are run by three separate functions in the deep, old parts of your brain – Enjoying, Expecting, and Eagerness. These three functions make up your One Ring (yes, as in One Ring to rule them all). Your One Ring processes all of your emotional and motivational systems all at once, including stress responses (fight/flight/freeze/fawn), disgust, and all forms of pleasure. So, having sex, eating great food, winning a sports match – the One Ring mediates them all.
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Why is this important to positive, pleasure-centered context?
Take enjoying, or the “reward” mechanism. Does touching your own breasts and/or genitals feel good? How good does it feel? What about when your partner does it? Or someone you’ve just met for a first date? If you’ve only known your date for 5 minutes and they’re already groping you, you’re probably negatively enjoying this sexual context. However, if you’ve built trust with your date and you’re highly attracted to them, you’re likely positively enjoying this sexual context.
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How about expecting? In our first date scenario, your brain is linking what is currently happening with what you have learned logically comes next. If the circumstances of being touched sexually before you’re ready or consenting to it are present, your brain is likely expecting danger to come next. This activates your stress response system (which can happen in as little as 1/12th of a second!), which makes you want to escape to safety. If you and your date – who you’ve come to trust – are becoming physically closer, holding hands, and kissing, your expecting mechanism is filling in what *probably* comes next – a desire to have sex.
Finally, there is eagerness. Eagerness is like a gas pedal in your brain telling you to move toward or away from something. When the gas pedal is pressed and your stress response system is active during a negative first date experience, eagerness says to move away as quickly as possible from this situation toward safety. In our positive first date experience, eagerness tells us to move toward having sex, making you desire and crave it.
I know that was a lot of brain science, BUT this is all essential to understand when you’re wanting to create positive, pleasure-centered sexual experiences – especially when things are not naturally going well (which may be why you’re here!). Imagine what holding unresolved hurt from a fight does to the overall context of your relationship. By holding on to these hurt feelings, you may not be able to positively enjoy interacting with your partner. If you’re expecting that sex will happen weekly because that’s an agreement you’ve made as a couple, but you’re negatively enjoying interacting with your partner because of this fight, eagerness tells you to move away from them. You ignore your Emotional One Ring and engage in sex anyway – here is where the deep dilemma begins. Your emotional reactions to certain contexts live in your brain, even when you’re not thinking about them. Your brain has learned to expect your partner to be hurtful and, thus, any context involving your partner is now seen in your brain as something you do not want. No matter what you do, hurt and anger drown out desire, all because of something seemingly tangentially – but actually closely – related.
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You can replace a fight with many experiences – learning that sex is shameful from your religious upbringing, learning that sex is dangerous due to a violent sexual experience, learning that sex is painful or anxiety-provoking because of a sexual dysfunction. So now that you understand what context is and how the brain reacts to it, it’s time for the work: learning to identify what you (or your partner) have learned about what constitutes ideal sexual context. Tune in next week for an exercise you can do to identify positive sexual contexts.