Sexual accelerator

What is the sexual accelerator?

The sexual accelerator (the sexual excitation system, or SES) is the part of your sexual response that turns arousal on: it picks up everything that makes your surroundings sexually relevant and gives your body the signal “on”. Together with the sexual brake it forms the dual control model of arousal. The more sensitive your accelerator, the faster you get aroused.

How the sexual accelerator works in practice

Your accelerator responds to what you see, smell, hear, and feel. The smell of someone, a look, a touch in the right spot: the accelerator notices it and sets something in motion. Take an evening that starts well, with attention and without haste. For one person a single look is enough to press the accelerator, for another it takes longer before the same signal lands. That difference in sensitivity is normal. According to psychologist Noam Shpancer, Erick Janssen and John Bancroft of the Kinsey Institute devised this model in the 1990s, and it works like the two pedals of a car: the accelerator speeds up, the brake holds back.

Where the model comes from

The idea is called the dual control model. Researchers Panzeri and colleagues (2021) sum it up like this: sexual arousal depends on two systems, excitation and inhibition, and the two stand apart from each other. So you can have a sensitive accelerator and a sensitive brake at the same time. Bancroft and Janssen proposed the model around 2000, and developed measurement scales for it, the SIS/SES scales, to measure how strong someone’s accelerator and brake are. In the popular book Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski brought the accelerator-and-brake metaphor to a wide audience.

Why this model makes desire easier to understand

The nice thing is that your desire is no longer a riddle. If it doesn’t come on its own, it’s not necessarily down to too little accelerator, but often to a brake set too hard. For you, that insight means you can look more precisely for what turns arousal on, instead of forcing yourself. For the two of you together it means “I’m not in the mood” is rarely unwillingness, but usually a brake reacting to something. What it does not do: the model explains your response, but it’s no switch you flip. A sensitive brake doesn’t disappear with a good explanation alone.

What you can do with it

• Find out what turns your accelerator on. For one it’s touch, for another an atmosphere or a look. Once you know it, you can seek it out.
• Look at your brake too. Often it works better to release the brake than to press the accelerator harder.
• Don’t expect the same pace. Two people with differently set pedals rarely get going at the same time, and that’s normal.

What the sexual accelerator is not

“Low desire means a broken accelerator.” Rarely. More often the brake is set too hard, from stress, tiredness, or worries. Accelerator and brake are two separate systems.

“More stimulation always solves it.” Not if the brake underneath is on. Then the accelerator keeps pressing with no effect.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, and this model matches what I see all the time. Women often think there’s something wrong with their desire, while the accelerator works fine the moment the brake comes off. That brake is usually not unwillingness, but haste, tension, or the feeling that something has to happen. When I make sure there’s no time pressure and nothing has to happen, the brake releases on its own, and then the accelerator turns out to have been there all along. Attention without haste does more than any technique.

Further reading

• Sexual brake is the counterpart, and usually the key to more desire.
• Sexual response cycle places accelerator and brake in the larger whole of arousal.
• Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are (2015), explains the model accessibly for a wide audience.

Where this fits on this site

I don’t sell theory, but I do work the way this model predicts: no haste, no pressure, so your brake comes off on its own. Curious how a meeting without time pressure goes? Then take a look at intimate togetherness. Talking first is always possible, and it commits you to nothing.

Sources

• Validation of the Sexual Inhibition/Sexual Excitation Scales (SIS/SES). Panzeri et al., Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2021. Provides that excitation and inhibition are two independent systems, that the dual control model was proposed around 2000 by Bancroft and Janssen, and that SES measures the excitation part.
• The Accelerator and the Brake: What Is Needed for Good Sex. Noam Shpancer, Psychology Today, 2023. Provides the accelerator-and-brake metaphor, the origin with Janssen and Bancroft of the Kinsey Institute, and that the two systems work independently.
• Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are, 2015. Provides the accessible working-out of the accelerator-and-brake model for a wide audience.

Related terms

• Sexual brake. The counterpart of the accelerator, which looks for reasons not to get aroused.
• Sexual response cycle. The larger frame in which arousal plays out.
• Libido. Your desire for sex, which depends partly on how accelerator and brake are set.
• Sex therapy. Where a sexologist works with this model on desire complaints.