Emily Nagoski: Accelerator, Brakes and Context

Who is Emily Nagoski?

Emily Nagoski was born in 1977 in the United States. She studied psychology at the University of Delaware, where she began working in 1995 as a peer health educator. She then earned a master’s degree in counseling and a doctorate in health behavior at Indiana University, with a specialization in human sexuality. That’s where she found herself in Bloomington, home of the Kinsey Institute, where she did her clinical training and where the researchers whose work she would later popularize were based.

For eight years, she directed wellness education at Smith College (Massachusetts), where she taught a course on women’s sexuality. In 2015, she published “Come As You Are,” which became a bestseller and has been translated into more than fifteen languages. “Burnout” (2019), written with her twin sister Amelia, and “Come Together” (2024), on desire in long relationships, followed.

One important point: Nagoski is an educator and a science communicator, not the author of the models she explains. The accelerator and the brakes come from the dual control model of John Bancroft and Erick Janssen, of the Kinsey Institute. Responsive desire comes from Rosemary Basson. Her contribution, and it’s a considerable one, is to have turned this research into everyday language, with a practical conclusion for life as a couple.

The central idea

The brain handles desire with two independent systems: an excitation system, which notices everything that’s stimulating, and an inhibition system, which notices every good reason not to go there (danger, fatigue, embarrassment, consequences). Nagoski calls them the accelerator and the brakes. Each has a sensitivity that varies from person to person, and most difficulties with desire come from brakes that are pressed too hard, not from an accelerator that’s broken.

Two ideas follow. The first: variability is the norm. The book’s subtitle, which tells readers they’re normal, sums up her mission. The second: context is king. The same touch, exactly the same, can turn you on during a quiet Saturday and shut you down on a Tuesday in the middle of an urgent email. That isn’t fickleness. It’s how the two pedals work.

The key concepts

The accelerator and the brakes: the dual control model

Bancroft and Janssen formulated the model in 2000, first to understand erectile problems of central origin, before widening it. They built questionnaires to measure how sensitive each pedal is: the SIS/SES scales for men (2002), then a version for women (2006). A useful detail for a couple: there isn’t one brake but two. The first responds to the fear of not measuring up. The second responds to possible consequences (being overheard, being seen, a door that won’t lock). You don’t ease the two of them in the same way.

Context is king

For Nagoski, context is two things: the circumstances (the place, the time, the noise, the kind of day you’ve had) and the state of mind you’re in as you live them. Stress, mental load, an unresolved tension and a body that gets commented on are the most common brakes, and none of them looks “sexual.” Hence her conclusion, which the MyLoveLab program has kept as it is: the best thing you can do for desire this week often has nothing sensual about it.

Spontaneous desire, responsive desire

Nagoski takes up Basson’s circle and makes it popular: desire can come first (spontaneous) or along the way (responsive), and both are normal. She offers proportions (about 15% of women with mostly spontaneous desire, 30% with mostly responsive desire, and the majority somewhere in between depending on context), while pointing out herself that these figures are fragile and that research is lacking. What to keep: the category, not the percentage.

Nonconcordance

The body and the felt experience don’t always tell the same story. A meta-analysis by Chivers and colleagues (2010), covering more than 130 studies, shows that the match between physical response and felt desire is moderate in men and low in women. Nagoski draws a simple, protective rule from this: the body doesn’t speak for desire, the person does. In a couple, that means listening to what is said and never interpreting a body.

What the research says

The dual control model has been one of the most studied frameworks in sexology for twenty-five years. Here is what the key studies establish, and how far they go.

Bancroft and Janssen (2000) lay out the model: excitation and inhibition are two distinct systems, and people differ in the sensitivity of each. It’s a theoretical proposal, grounded in neurobiology, not proof in itself.
Janssen, Vorst, Finn and Bancroft (2002) build and validate the SIS/SES questionnaire (45 items) with men: one excitation factor and two inhibition factors clearly emerge.
Graham, Sanders and Milhausen (2006) validate an inventory adapted for women with 655 participants, again finding two main factors, excitation and inhibition, and good stability over time.
Bancroft, Graham, Janssen and Sanders (2009) take stock: individual differences in sensitivity help explain some of the difficulties with desire and erection, risk-taking, and variation between people. The model is robust, but it explains a part, not everything.
Chivers and colleagues (2010) document nonconcordance: physical response is not a reliable measure of desire, especially in women.
Mark and Lasslo (2018), in their review of 64 studies on desire in long-term relationships, find the everyday brakes (stress, fatigue, body image) and the relationship levers (communication, novelty, security) that Nagoski highlights.

Limits and criticisms

The first limit is the one that applies to any popularization: “Come As You Are” has no data of its own. It’s a synthesis, a brilliant one, but a synthesis. Some claims go further than the studies do, starting with the proportions of spontaneous and responsive desire, which Nagoski herself calls fragile in the revised 2021 edition.

The second limit is the model’s own. Dual control rests mostly on self-report questionnaires, often filled out by students or Western adults. It describes individual tendencies, not what happens between two specific people on a specific night. And the metaphor simplifies: not every brake needs to be “eased.” Some are a safety system doing its job very well, and Nagoski says so, but the summaries you read online often forget it.

The third limit is how it gets used. The book is addressed first to women, and men and couples are better served by “Come Together.” And “change the context” can turn into a slogan that misses causes that can’t be fixed in the bedroom: pain, a medication, depression, a hormonal upheaval. A lasting drop in desire, especially with pain, is something to see a doctor about.

How MyLoveLab uses it

In the Intimacy and desire dimension, level 4 (“your accelerators and your brakes”) owes it everything: two independent pedals, an accelerator that lacks room, brakes as a safety system, context is king, and the strategy ease the brakes first, stimulate second. The test asks no explicit questions: it looks at whether fatigue, load and unresolved tensions have taken the place of curiosity, because that’s where the brakes camp out. And the program keeps Nagoski’s two safeguards: words rather than the body to express desire, and a doctor when the body stays quiet for a long time.

The MyLoveLab test measures the Intimacy dimension along with six others, in 15 minutes. No explicit questions: it looks at the climate, the conversation and the sense of safety between you.

Measure my Intimacy dimension

Exercise to try tonight

The brakes inventory

Nagoski suggests looking for the brakes before looking for stimulation. Here is the version for two, with nothing sensual in it, that takes a quarter of an hour.

Separately, on a piece of paper, write down three brakes from the past week: fatigue, a screen in bed, an unresolved tension, a body that got commented on, a door that won’t lock, schedules that no longer overlap. No judging.
Still separately, write down one context where you generally feel most available: a moment, a place, a state of mind. Not an action, a context.
Swap papers and read in silence. Then each of you says one sentence: what surprised you about the other’s list.
Together, choose just one brake to ease this week. If it has nothing sensual about it, that’s normal. It’s actually a good sign.

If a brake is called “pain” or “since the treatment,” the first appointment is a medical one.

Frequently asked questions

What is the dual control model?

A model formulated by John Bancroft and Erick Janssen (Kinsey Institute) in 2000: desire depends on two independent systems, one of excitation (the accelerator) and one of inhibition (the brakes), whose sensitivity varies from person to person. Desire that doesn’t show up is most often explained by brakes pressed too hard, not by a broken accelerator.

Did Emily Nagoski invent the accelerator and the brakes?

No. The metaphor is hers, the model is Bancroft and Janssen’s, and responsive desire comes from Rosemary Basson. Nagoski is an educator and science communicator trained at Indiana University, and she cites her sources. Her contribution is to have made this research understandable and usable for couples.

What does “context is king” mean in practice?

That the same touch can turn you on or shut you down depending on the circumstances and your state of mind at that moment. In practice, the most common brakes are stress, fatigue, an unresolved tension and a body that gets commented on. Easing them (settling the tension, taking screens out of the bedroom, sharing a load) often does more for desire than any stimulation.

Should a man read “Come As You Are”?

The book is addressed first to women, but the model applies to everyone, and understanding your partner’s brakes is already a useful step. For couples and desire over the long term, “Come Together” (2024) is a more direct fit. Either way, it’s popular science: solid, and best read as such.

References

Bancroft, J. & Janssen, E. (2000). The dual control model of male sexual response: A theoretical approach to centrally mediated erectile dysfunction. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 24(5), 571-579.
Janssen, E., Vorst, H., Finn, P. & Bancroft, J. (2002). The Sexual Inhibition (SIS) and Sexual Excitation (SES) Scales: I. Measuring sexual inhibition and excitation proneness in men. Journal of Sex Research, 39(2), 114-126.
Graham, C. A., Sanders, S. A. & Milhausen, R. R. (2006). The Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women: Psychometric properties. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35(4), 397-409.
Bancroft, J., Graham, C. A., Janssen, E. & Sanders, S. A. (2009). The dual control model: Current status and future directions. Journal of Sex Research, 46(2-3), 121-142.
Chivers, M. L., Seto, M. C., Lalumière, M. L., Laan, E. & Grimbos, T. (2010). Agreement of self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal in men and women: A meta-analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(1), 5-56.
Basson, R. (2000). The female sexual response: A different model. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 51-65.
Nagoski, E. (2015). Come As You Are. Simon & Schuster.
Mark, K. P. & Lasslo, J. A. (2018). Maintaining sexual desire in long-term relationships: A systematic review and conceptual model. Journal of Sex Research, 55(4-5), 563-581.

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Emily Nagoski: Desire Has Two Pedals, and Context Decides Which One You Press