Is It Sexual Dysfunction or Asexuality?
Spoiler: Either way, you're not broken.
Confidence and Joy is a newsletter by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Subscribe here. You can also follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!
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Q: Hi Emily. I just finished Come As You Are and listened to your podcast with Glennon. The book was so good!
Do you have any book recommendations for people who actually have sexual dysfunction? How would one know the difference between having a sexual dysfunction (which is something I assume can be worked on) and just being asexual?
I definitely still feel broken and don't think I fit into the "normal" category of what you describe in this book.
Thank you!
A: You’re definitely normal. Wait, let me qualify that: if you’re experiencing unwanted pain, find a great medical provider who will listen and take your pain seriously. Evidence-based, effective interventions exist for treating a wide variety of sexual pain disorders.
If you’re not experiencing pain, and if, during the sex you have, everyone is consenting, you’re normal. Period. Done. You’re normal. Did you hear that? Normal. Even if you have what diagnostic criteria would categorize as a “sexual dysfunction,” you’re still normal. Sexual functioning changes as our bodies and lives change. It’s not that there’s something “wrong,” per se, it’s that there’s a change.
The super-important sneaky trick that our brains pull is that the belief that we are broken hits the brakes and so our sexuality does not function the way we expect it to or wish it would. That means that an essential step in improving your sexual functioning is to stop viewing yourself as “abnormal.”
You are not broken. You are not broken. You are not broken. You’re not. You’re normal. Even when your sexuality is not working the way you expect or the way you wish it worked.
This is the Confidence and Joy Newsletter. Confidence is knowing what is true about your body, heart, mind, soul, culture, partner, life circumstances, and more. Confidence is knowing what is true, even when it’s not what you were taught is “supposed” to be true. It’s knowing what’s true, even when it’s not what you wish were true.
Confidence is easy, because it’s most of what education does. Ethical sex education teaches you what is true and supports you in developing skills to be your full sexual self, whatever that looks like for you. (Unethical sex education tells you what your sexual self “should” be.)
Confidence is difficult, too, because all of us have learned a lot about sex over the course of our lives, sometimes from formal education or from our families or faith communities, but mostly by the mainstream culture we’re surrounded by. So we walk around feeling like we know a lot about sex. And we do. We know a lot. Alas, nearly everything our culture teaches us about sex is completely, entirely, wildly, dangerously incorrect. So to develop confidence—that is, to learn what is true—you must also be willing to let go of the untrue things you’ve spent decades of your life believing.
And then there’s joy. The hard part.
Joy is loving what is true. Loving what’s true about your body, heart, mind, soul, culture, partner, life circumstances, and more. Loving what is true, even if it’s not what you were taught is “supposed” to be true. Loving what’s true even if it’s not what you wish were true.
The difficult part of confidence, the letting go of all the untrue things, is a major skill to help you get to joy. All the many untrue things you were taught provided a kind of “measuring stick” against which you have measured your own sexuality to see if you’re doing it “right.” And if you believe these things are true but you don’t match it, then you believe there’s something wrong with you and how can you love your sexuality if it seems like there’s something wrong with you?
Let go of the untrue things and you let go of the bogus measuring stick. This creates space for what’s true: there is no measuring stick. There’s just you, in all your glory.
When you can turn toward what is true with compassion and kindness, with patience and courage, when you shine a loving light on what is true—a light unfiltered by lies, whether deliberate or simply misguided—that’s the context that allows you to access joy.
Confidence and joy are the foundation of all effective treatment for any sexual “dysfunction.”
Now, there are a lot of different kinds of diagnoses for sexual dysfunction. They’re primarily categorized as arousal difficulties, orgasm difficulties, and desire difficulties. The fact that you’re wondering if you’re asexual suggests to me that you’re not so much distressed about arousal or orgasm as you are about DESIRE.
And it’s a common misconception that asexuality is about a lack of desire for sex; it’s more precisely understood as a lack of sexual attraction. If you’re thinking asexuality may describe your sexual orientation, I would refer you to my conversation with Aubri Lancaster, the asexual sex educator. The ultra-short summary is that asexuality is a sexual orientation, like being gay or straight or bisexual or anything else. It’s about who you are attracted to. Gay people are attracted to people of the same gender; bisexual people are attracted to people of more than one gender. Asexual people are attracted to… no one.
Read my conversation with Aubri Lancaster here.
If you have never experienced sexual attraction toward anyone, you might find that the asexual identity is a good fit for you. There are other ways to be asexual of course. There are “microlabels” about degrees of asexuality—demi-sexual, graysexual, fraysexual, to name a few. There are microlabels about attitudes toward sex, like cupiosexual, meaning people who don’t experience sexual attraction but do want to be in a sexual relationship. There are microlabels about reciprocation and about sexual attraction and fantasy. Asexuality isn’t just one thing, and—hear me really loud and clear here—all experiences of asexuality are NORMAL. Check out my conversation with Aubri and the resources she recommends, for more reading.
I hope that helps explain why I know you’re already normal and how you can come to understand your sexuality better, which will allow you to love your sexuality better, just as it is.
If you have Netflix, I was interviewed for a documentary series called Principles of Pleasure. I hope you enjoy it!
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
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Signed copies of Come As You Are can be obtained from my amazing local bookseller, Book Moon Books.
Stay safe and see you next time.
