Making Nice with Naughty: An Intimacy Guide for the Rule-Following, Organized, Perfectionist, Practical, and Color-Within-The-Line Types (Paperback or Softback)

You've mastered every area of your life. So why does sex feel like something you're failing at? You plan ahead. You meet every deadline. You hold yourself to high standards. But in the bedroom—the one place that demands spontaneity, vulnerability, and surrender—your greatest strengths become your greatest obstacles. Your mind won't stop. There's always a to-do list to finish, a rule to follow, a standard to meet. And no matter how many self-help books you read, none of them were written for you—the organized, perfectionist, type-A person who can't just "relax and enjoy it." This one was. What Makes This Book Different Most intimacy books diagnose the problem. This one gives you the roadmap.

• Not "too clinical": Unlike books focused purely on the neuroscience of desire, Making Nice with Naughty delivers a clear, step-by-step framework built specifically for overcontrolled personalities—people who need a structured path to unstructured fun.
• Beyond conflict resolution: Gottman-style books stop at arguments. This one goes into the bedroom—directly addressing sexual perfectionism, the rigid mental rituals that kill spontaneity, and sexual performance anxiety for men who've never had a medical problem.
• Actually actionable: Where visionary books explain why desire fades, this one tells you how to get it back—with hands-on exercises drawn from Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT), including the Style of Coping assessment, the Flexible Fantasy exercise, and eight targeted mindfulness practices for taming the overactive mind.
• Sees the neurodivergent and "old soul": If you've always felt like an outsider—hyper-mature, serious, never quite fitting in—this book was written with your psychology at the center, not as an afterthought.

What You'll Learn Inside Making Nice with Naughty applies the RO-DBT framework—used clinically for overcontrolled conditions like perfectionism, OCD, and treatment-resistant anxiety—to the specific challenges of intimacy. You'll learn to stop overthinking during sex, release the rigid internal rules that suppress desire, and reclaim the psychological flexibility that spontaneity requires. Specifically, you'll discover:

• How your overcontrolled temperament quietly undermines desire—and what to do about it
• Why reigniting desire in long-term relationships requires both "fuel" and "oxygen"—and how to generate both
• How to use RO-DBT skills for intimacy so anxiety becomes a companion rather than a roadblock
• A path through sexual healing that addresses perfectionism, purity culture conditioning, and performance anxiety—without shame
• How to be more spontaneous in your relationship without abandoning the structure that makes you you

About the Author Thomas L. Murray, Jr., Ph.D., is an assist professor at Grand View University. His work has been featured in The Guardian, Huffington Post, and the BBC. Dr. Murray, as an AASECT certified sex therapist and licensed marriage and family therapist, has spent 20+ years working with the exact individuals this book was written for—high-achieving, overcontrolled clients who excel everywhere except, perhaps, in their own bedrooms. He is also one of them. His clinical expertise and his own lived experience with an overcontrolled temperament inform every chapter of this book.

If you've read every relationship book and still feel stuck, this is the one that was missing from your shelf. Scroll up and click Buy Now to finally stop overthinking and start reclaiming the intimacy you've been working so hard to deserve.

Thomas L. Murray, Jr., Ph.D., forensic sexologist, international trainer, educator, and couples and sex therapist is a widely sought-after expert in sexuality and intimate relationships.For 20+ years, Murray has worked with everyday folks to embrace their weirdness, shed labels and shame, lean into anxiety, and build better and stronger relationships.Murray's doctorate is in marriage and family counseling from the University of Florida. Clinically, he combines a pull-no-punches, no-beating-around-the-bush style. This integrated style has helped folks quiet the mind-chatter that interferes with happiness, intimacy, and quality sexual relationships.Dr. Murray has appeared in numerous venues, including the Huffington Post and The Daily Mail, as well as radio, television and podcasts, including the Practice of Being Seen and Shrink Rap Radio. He's a highly acclaimed presenter at local, regional, and national conferences on various mental health and relationship topics. Dr. Murray has published numerous articles in professional journals and has faculty affiliations with UNC Greensboro, Walden University, and Lindsey Wilson College. He currently teaches at Northwestern University's Family Institute.