She wrote a bestseller about women's sex lives. Then her own fell apart.

Follow her own advice

Nagoski knows that telling couples to “just have fun together” is easier said than done. For most people, including themselves, a long list of things can hit their sexual brakes. In recent years she has had to deal with perimenopause, a back injury and then Covid for a long time, which has caused serious vascular problems. For months, Nagoski could barely walk to her mailbox. And she is still healing.

Nagoski was diagnosed with autism in 2021 after her therapist noted that she was extremely relieved not to have to see or talk to others during the height of the pandemic. Around that time, she watched the Pixar short film “Loop,” in which two teenagers, one of whom has autism and is nonverbal, learn to communicate during a canoe trip. “It's just a six-minute, animated thing,” she said as she burst into tears. When she looked at it, she realized, “I'm autistic.”

The diagnosis, Nagoski said, was a “huge relief.” People on the autism spectrum can be blunt and unfiltered, and the diagnosis helped explain why she might be so good at what she does. “I think one of the reasons why talking about sex comes so easily to me is that I haven't absorbed the same 'have to' in the same way,” she said.

“Come Together” marks the first time Nagoski has spoken out publicly about her sex life, a decision she initially felt ambivalent about. “Before writing the book, I wondered whether revealing 'I've also struggled with desire in a long-term relationship' would undermine my expertise.”

When asked what she and her partner did to get through the dry spells, Nagoski distilled the following: First, she spent a lot of time talking to her therapist (whom she has been seeing for years) about how she talked to her husband about their situation had to be discussed. issues in a way that felt loving and not accusatory. Before attempting to initiate anything physical, the couple then spent a lot of time talking about sex. Nagoski realized it was important to let Stevens be crazy about their situation, she said. (Their inside jokes about his genitals cannot be repeated here.) It brought some levity to their conversations and helped them realize how important playfulness is to their dynamic in the bedroom.