Sex Spoken Here: Arousal Non concordance - a podcast by Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey- Psychologist & Sex Coach |Everything Sex

Sex Spoken Here:  Arousal Non-concordance: When your Body says ‘yes’ but you don’t want sex and aren’t enjoying it.

 

 

Welcome to my virtual therapy room!  I am Dr Lori Beth Bisbey and this is Sex Spoken Here. Remember that this podcast deals with adult themes so if you don’t have privacy you might wish to put on your headphones.   This week I am talking about arousal nonconcordance.

 

What? Huh?  I can hear you saying.   In simple terms, arousal nonconcordance is when your genital response doesn’t not match your internal experience.  For example, if you have a vagina, you are feeling really turned on but you are not wet.   Everyone experiences nonconcordance at times and it can be extremely confusing.  The most upsetting examples of nonconcordance, are around rape and sexual assault.  Many people experience orgasm during rape and this can lead them to believe that they wanted the rape.  Sometimes worse than the self-blame is the blame heaped on them by others – and the attitude of the criminal justice system when they are not aware that nonconcordance is a normal response in these situations and that orgasm does not mean that there was desire, enjoyment or consent.

 

Dr Emily Nagoski, sex educator discusses nonconcordance in detail in her book ‘Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life.’ She gave a TED talk at TED2018 that covered this topic as well.   She highlights that when sex research is done with men measuring penile response to determine arousal in response to stimuli and comparing it to subjective arousal reported by the man, there is only about a 50% concordance between the two.    That means 50% of the time there is nonconcordance – the man reports arousal but his penis doesn’t harden or the man doesn’t report arousal but his penis is hard.   She reports that if you do the same experiment with a woman – there is only 10 percent overlap.  Think about that for a second.  Though a woman’s genitals react to sexually relevant stimuli, the overlap with subjective arousal is only 10%. 

 

What does this actually mean?  Something can be sexually relevant but not something a person would find desirable.  Bondage is sexually relevant but Marc finds it tedious.   Images of anal sex are sexually relevant and cause Jerry to lubricate but she finds the idea of anal sex repugnant.  One of the things this highlights is how important the brain is in female sexual response. 

 

Emily Nagoski talks about Ross Buck’s framework to think about emotion that allows us to better understand nonconcordance. 

‘Emotion I is the involuntary physiological response – your heart rate and blood pressure, pupil dilation, digestion, sweating immune functioning.  Genital response falls into this category and my college friend who got wet while she was bored, tied up waiting for her partner to come back, experienced this kind of response but nothing else.

Emotion II is involuntary expressive response to a feeling.  It’s body language- or more accurately, paralanguage – things like vocal inflection, posture, and facial expression – all the cues we use to infer another person’s internal state.  A great dinner date will be full of Emotion II, as you find yourself putting your hand on your date’s arm, gazing into their eyes and smiling.  These are often influenced by culture but have a great deal of universality and they can be intentionally controlled to some degree but not as much as you might think.  Did you choose the expression on your face right now? 

Emotion III is subjective experience of a feeling. If someone asks you how you feel and you check in with yourself to find the answer, what you’re noticing is Emotion III.  This is subjective arousal – the conscious experience of ‘I want you so much I can hardly stand it’  which may or may not be accompanied by genital response (Emotion I) or eye contact (Emotion II).

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