Facts About Sexual Desire

What is being turned on supposed to feel like? According to all of the messaging around us, it's this simple, automatic thing that you should just get, especially when you're young. But sexual desire is really anything but simple, and yeah, we're talking about sex, but before you all go getting frisky in the comments, sexual desire is an aspect of physical and mental health. There's lots of very legitimate science around it, but it's treated as taboo or inappropriate, and that leaves a whole bunch of really important issues lurking in the dark.

Sexual desire is the desire for some sort of sexual interaction with someone or yourself, because desire in and of itself is not fully understood. It is often referred to as "food." With food, you can have a desire for something, but there is no arousal for it, meaning that yeah, I really want some cake, but your mouth didn't water right, so the arousal portion is more of the physical response to the desire. So basically, someone can want to have sex, but they may not be physically aroused. and the reverse is also true. Someone can be physically aroused but have no mental or emotional desire to engage in sexual activity; this mismatch is known as arousal non-concordance, and studies show that women are more likely to experience it than men. To understand more about issues like this, it's critical that we untangle physical arousal from sexual desire. In fact, there are two types of desire: spontaneity of desire and the desire to engage in sexual activity. Responsive desire is when you may not really be in the mood, but after a little warm-up like kissing, touching, or flirting, you do start to want to have sex.

One of the biggest misconceptions about desire is that it should be spontaneous. This misconception feeds into common stereotypes we see all around us, like men having contrition. Most people's desires tend to be responsive rather than spontaneous, but you may certainly have both, and people have them in varying proportions.

Respondent desire was only recognized and defined around 20 years ago, and much of the world's sex messaging doesn't really talk about it, and when it does, it's not always in a positive way. Many people report having low desire, but could some of this be because they're actually experiencing responsive desire in a world that has only taught us about spontaneous desire?

Really, it all boils down to brain stuff. I'm not saying it's all in your head; there is genuine neurobiology, and we all have brakes and accelerators. The sexual excitation system is your accelerator; when your brain perceives anything as a favorable sexual stimulus, it sets off a chain reaction of neurotransmitters and hormones that can lead to physical arousal. The sexual inhibition system is your brake. This is what stops those positive responses in their tracks, so it can be something your brain consciously or subconsciously perceives as a threat, like a fight with your partner or the possibility of a sexually transmitted infection, and research has shown that these two systems work together in what's known as the dual control model, so when the excitement is higher than the inhibitions, you're probably more in the space to engage.

Some people may have more sensitive brakes or faster accelerators, and you can be any combination of the two. Our brains do not exist in a vacuum; they are affected by everything around us and within us, such as drugs, past experiences, body image, relationship status, trauma, physical and mental health, our personal history with sex, and of course the ever-present societal messaging about sex: what kind you have, who you have it with, when or how often you have it, and what that says about you as a person. Basically, everything impacts sexual desire, and that is part of the reason why it has been difficult for any professional, like on the medical side or on the mental health side, to be able to quickly pinpoint exactly why hyposexual desire disorder comes to fruition.

People who feel, for whatever reason, that they have low sexual desire might feel that they're broken or sick. which obviously impacts the quality of life and makes relationships and sex more difficult. It also creates the opportunity for wellness and pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs and supplements that claim to fix it, but in some cases, it might be that you are normal, and it's our perception of what's normal that's the problem we should fix.

I want to make it really clear here that we're not talking about physiological sexual dysfunction in this episode if you're experiencing pain with sex or extreme emotional distress. If you're dealing with something like vaginismus or hormone fluctuations as a result of pregnancy or menopause, these things can absolutely impact your desire, and it's really important that you speak to your ob-gyn or your primary care doctor about it. But the bottom line is that when it comes to pretty much anything in the health field, you are unique, and this includes sex, so what's normal is going to be unique to you because there's no one normal that can be applied to everyone. So take the time to figure out what revs your engine, get in touch with your own desire, explore, talk about it, and find the contexts that work for you.

Thank you so much for reading this article to this point. If you have another issue like this that you would like me to talk about, please let me know in the comments, and I'll see you next time.