Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life

A sex therapist and neuroscientist describes anhedonia, the inability to feel a satisfactory amount of pleasure--and provides the pathway back to fully enjoying sex, food, time with family and friends, and other pastimes, while also staving off depression, anxiety, and addiction. Assaulted with opportunities for pleasure everywhere--from sex to food or exotic escapes--our culture is becoming more depressed and anxious. Research has shown that many people are having less sex, and that those who do have a lot enjoy it less. For more than thirty years, Nan Wise has worked as a therapist helping people gain a satisfying sex life. In recent years, her work has shifted to the study of anhedonia--the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable--and why more people than ever suffer from it. In Why Good Sex Matters, Wise not only reveals the fundamental problem in how we think about sex and pleasure but also how we arrived at this problematic relationship to begin with. This fascinating book helps us reclaim our innate capacity for joy, fun, exuberance, curiosity, and humor, while showing how reaching our sexual potential makes us smarter, happier, and more productive people. Ultimately, it reveals how a new understanding of sex can lead to a more expansive experience of pleasure in all aspects of our lives.