What is the Dual Control Model of Sexuality?
And how might this model be especially useful for folks leaving Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal spaces?
We received quite a bit of feedback from an Instagram Story that we posted yesterday.
By the way, if you aren’t following us on IG, please do so:
The story we posted was the following:
“Folks who leave Evangelical communities often feel pressure to make up for lost time. However, rushing into sexual experiences is rarely a good thing. The desire for these more diverse experiences often arises from urgency rather than a personal internal desire.”
Julia and I talk about this in the context of our most recent podcast episode, in which we discuss taking a break from setting goals.
Folks who grow up in Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) spaces often experience high volumes of anxiety because of the unique pressures on behaviors and decisions. These theologies simultaneously focus on the past and the future: Reflect on and repent for former times that you “missed the mark” (past) so that you can receive eternal life (future). EMPish goal setting centers around two priorities:
Get yourself to heaven through a combination of good behaviors, correct political positions, effective amounts of repression and denial of the self, sufficient self-flagellation (depending on how vengeful you think God is).
Helping other people get to heaven through a combination of evangelizing the Gospel and ensuring that you “don’t cause other people to stumble.”
In our episode, we invite listeners to reenvision a relationship with goals that is less outcome-specific and more process-specific. As we’ve said on Relationship 101, in relational health, the how is more important than the what.
The IG post was a summarization of a larger conversation on the podcast in which we explored how folks can practice a new relationship with goals in their sexual lives. Upon listening to the podcast, we realize that it would have been helpful to talk about the dual-control model of sexual response, created by John Bancroft and Erick Janssens and popularized by
in her masterpiece Come as You Are.Bancroft, Janssens, and Nagoski explore how people access sexual desire, and thus move through the physiological processes of arousal, orgasm, and other forms of pleasure. The dual-control model addresses all of the factors that inform the pace at which someone might move through a sexual experience. Some folks engage with sexual desire quite quickly—spontaneous desire. (We’ll talk in another Substack about how spontaneous desire, for some folks, may be influenced by sociological forces, such as media depictions of sexuality and expectations of masculinity.)
But for most folks, desire comes more responsively. There are psychological and/or sensory circumstances (sexual excitors) necessary for a person to move into a sexual experience. There are also psychological/sensory circumstances that prevent a person from moving into a sexual experience (sexual inhibitors).
A person may not be aroused when they begin a sexual experience, but can intentionally create these sensory circumstances so that they can access desire more effectively, and work to collaborate with their partner so that desire builds throughout the experience.
Nagoski brilliantly compares the dual-control model to a car’s accelerator and brake system in Come as You Are. When you turn a car on, the car is still, thanks to a combination of the parking and emergency brake. Once you put the car in drive (for the sake of the metaphor, a decision to move toward physical pleasure), the car is automatically drifting forward. Driving involves a relationship between accelerating (sexual excitors) and braking (sexual inhibitors). Both are a necessary part of the driving experience, and understanding when and how to use accelerators and brakes makes the driving/sexual experience more manageable, safe, and enjoyable.
With folks who are moving out of religious spaces for the first time, developing a relationship with sexuality is akin to a 15 or 16 year old learning how to drive for the first time.
It’s scary, both for the teenage driver and the person in the passenger seat. Because a new driver has to figure out what their relationship with the accelerator and brakes is going to be.
One 16 year old driver falls in love with the accelerator, and doesn’t use the brakes until the last minute, when they suddenly slam on the brakes, and the bodies in the car jerk forward. Another 16 year old driver consistently hits the brakes when they may not need to, creating a herky-jerky ride.
Often, a person coming out of deconstruction often falls into one of those two categories in regard to their initial non-Purity Culture informed sexual experiences.
But over time, a person and couple will figure out the relationship with accelerators and brakes that works for them and their relationships, just as a 16 year old figures out how to safely and effectively drive a car. Driving and sexuality are both about feel and intuition, and those develop with a lot of practice. When discovering and rediscovering sexuality, practice is not confined to traditional sexual experiences (masturbation, partnered sex), and includes exploring all kinds of pleasure, talking about sex and sexuality with other trusted people, and using anatomically and scientifically accurate terminology.
Sex therapy and coaching can be a great, safe space to discuss what sexual excitors and inhibitors might be, and how to incorporate those into developing sustainable, meaningful sexual practices and experiences.
Julia and I are both taking new clients in our sex therapy and sex coaching practice, and are especially eager to work with relationships where one or both partners grew up in Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal spaces. We schedule free 30 minute consultations with potential new clients. If you’re interested, please email us at sexvangelicals@gmail.com.
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah