Your Arousal Has Two Pedals

(Most people only ever look at one.)

There's a model in sex research called the dual control model. It works like a car.

Your system has an accelerator, and it's scanning for everything sex-relevant. Touch, smell, a look, a memory, that thing they do with their... voice.

And it has brakes, scanning just as constantly for reasons not to be aroused. Stress. The dishes. Body self-consciousness. The door that doesn't lock. An old memory that never got resolved.

When people want less sex, almost everyone tries to press the accelerator harder. New lingerie. New techniques. Anything to try to want it more.

But if your foot is on the brakes, it doesn't matter how much force you put on the accelerator.

You won't be going anywhere.

So "what turns me on?" is a fantastic question, but another important question to ask is "what turns me off?"

The mental load you carry into the bedroom or the relationship. The difficult conversation at work you're replaying in your head again and again. The resentment that never got spoken.

Everyone's pedals are tuned differently, too.

Some people have a sensitive accelerator: easily revved, anywhere, anytime. Some have sensitive brakes: needing a lot of safety, a lot of context, before anything moves.

Neither is broken, better, or more evolved than the other. They're just different tunings. And knowing yours (and your lover's) may explain years of confusion.

The dual control model comes from researchers at the Kinsey Institute, and Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are is the best deep dive if you'd like one. What I'd add from the somatic side: finding your brakes isn't only a thinking exercise. It's also a somatic enquiry, that held breath, that tightening in your chest.

If you'd like support exploring your own brakes and accelerators, this is the kind of work I do with my clients as a Somatic Sexologist. Book a Discovery session if you’d like to explore working together.