A little slower. I have heard women say those words in my office for decades, usually only after they trust me enough to open up about what they really want sexually. The woman saying them runs meetings, raises children, and argues with insurance companies without flinching. In bed, the same three words can feel nearly impossible to say.
She knows what she means. What she’s calculating is the cost: the disappointment, maybe the defensiveness and cold silence, the argument she has no energy for at 9:45 p.m. Most women I care for have run this math so many times they no longer notice they’re doing it. When our culture treats sexual confidence as a skill a woman has failed to learn, it misses the calculation entirely.
Here is the math underneath the math. In the United States, 54% of women experience sexual violence involving physical contact in their lifetime [1]. Nearly half experience physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking by an intimate partner [2]. Worldwide the figure is one in three, and the World Health Organization says the true number is higher because so much goes unreported [3].
That means the woman in your book club, in my exam room, and in your mirror has better-than-even odds of living in a body that learned to scan for danger. Her nervous system did its job. It taught her to brace and keep quiet when something feels off.
Bottom line: a woman’s first need is safety, and desire comes second.
Sex researchers describe arousal with the dual control model, which works like an accelerator and a brake, and the brake responds to threat [4]. Most advice to women goes straight for the accelerator, e.g., lingerie, toys, a testosterone prescription.
I believe we have it backward. For most women I’ve cared for, the brake is pressed to the floor by a body that doesn’t yet feel safe, and no accelerator truly overpowers that.
Physical safety is the priority, then emotional safety is what she needs next: knowing she can be imperfect, take too long, change her mind, or say that hurts, and still be appreciated, loved, and cherished. Being cherished in her imperfection is what lets the brake release. IMO, that’s hot.
Shame does the opposite. A woman under shame monitors herself through every encounter. How does she look? Is she taking too long? Has she already asked for too much? How does she smell? Did she clean up enough? Her attention goes to how she’s coming across, and pleasure cannot land when you’re busy putting on a show.
These habits come from many places: silence about sex at home, criticism, trauma, coercion, or a relationship where keeping the peace became the price of staying. They won’t mean the same thing for every woman. A woman who can’t speak in bed may run a company by day, because power in one room doesn’t transfer to another.
In my conversation with Dr. Emily Morse about pleasure and sexual shame, a larger question kept surfacing: *whose experience is allowed to change the terms of an encounter? *Cultural leadership, as I use the term, means questioning an arrangement people have learned to treat as natural. Who sets the pace? Why is one act the main event? Why does a request to stop need an explanation?
Most of those answers were inherited, and nobody chose them. One sentence can expose the whole arrangement: I want to be close tonight, and I don’t want intercourse. The sentence is clear. The response tells her whether intimacy has room for her preference or treats it as a problem to solve.
Most women run a safety calculation before they ever reach desire, and the statistics say they have good reason to. Desire depends on a brake that releases only when a woman feels physically and emotionally safe, which means being cherished in her imperfection. Much of what blocks that safety was inherited, and nobody chose it. Techniques, toys, and hormones cannot substitute for it.
This work belongs to partners too. Listening means more than letting her finish a sentence, it means changing what happens next, accepting a “no” without sulking like you’re an adult, and hearing that an old habit never felt good without demanding reassurance from the woman who finally said it.
For many women, desire arrives after welcome touch or connection begins, a pattern Rosemary Basson described as responsive desire [5]. That pattern is never a license to continue contact she doesn’t want. Curiosity requires that stopping stays a real option, with no penalty attached. Safety comes first here too.
The medical questions still matter. Pain, vaginal dryness, medication effects, postpartum changes, and menopause symptoms all shape sexual experience, and each deserves real treatment, whether that means pelvic floor therapy, vulvovaginal care, or sex therapy. A woman should never have to choose between getting her body treated and getting her relationship taken seriously.
I don’t want pleasure to become one more performance women must get right. Some women want less sex, and some want none. The question is whether she has room to know her own preference and have it honored.
Michael Murphy, who co-founded the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, wrote a sentence I return to often: We live only part of the life we are given [6].
I believe this truth lands harder on women than on men. Women are raised on bargains: be easy and you’ll be loved, be agreeable and you’ll be safe, stay small and you won’t get hurt. Each bargain costs a piece of aliveness, paid in installments so small most women never see the total. The cultural contracts around sex are some of the most expensive we ever sign. (I wrote more about bargains, including 10 bargains you made and what each bargain is costing your body.)
So I’ve come to treat aliveness as a vital sign, as real as blood pressure or heart rate or breathing. When it drops, something is wrong, and the fix rarely comes from trying harder to please. Women have to pursue aliveness deliberately, because the culture won’t hand it to us.
Reclaiming aliveness is a sign of our own awakening, and we are hardwired for it.
I know this personally. My cognition runs fast and extra loud, and my body speaks slowly and sometimes silently, so discerning a true whole-body yes takes me real effort. That’s exactly why I treat the body’s small signals as data worth waiting for.
Pleasure should never depend on being easy, undemanding, or skilled at protecting everyone else from discomfort. A woman has a stake in what happens to her body even when her answer complicates the evening. The part of her life she hasn’t lived yet is still waiting for her, whenever she is ready, and only on her terms.
Finish these two sentences in writing, without editing:
The part of my life I’m not living yet is...
To feel safe enough to live it, I would need...
Then ask yourself where you’re cherished in your imperfection and where you’re only tolerated. If you're in a relationship where it can be heard, say one answer out loud. Being able to speak your truth without fear of what happens next is one measure of safety. You're never obligated to say it where it isn't safe.
On Wednesday I’m going live with paid subscribers + founding members on exactly this topic: safety, pleasure, and what nobody told us about how female desire works. Bring your questions, and join us at 11 am PT / 2 pm ET. It will be recorded.
Notes
[1] Kathleen C. Basile et al., The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Sexual Violence(Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022).
[2] Ruth W. Leemis et al., The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Intimate Partner Violence(Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022).
[3] World Health Organization, Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates, 2018 (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2021).
[4] Erick Janssen and John Bancroft, “The Dual Control Model: The Role of Sexual Inhibition and Excitation in Sexual Arousal and Behavior,” in The Psychophysiology of Sex, ed. Erick Janssen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 197–222.
[5] Rosemary Basson, “The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model,” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 26, no. 1 (2000): 51–65.
[6] George Leonard and Michael Murphy, The Life We Are Given: A Long-Term Program for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1995).
