Desire - Part I

Popular culture would have us believe that we should experience spontaneous desire all the time and if we don’t, then either we have a low sex drive or there’s something wrong with our relationship. But the truth is that desire is subject to context. Culture, our gender identity, emotional state, the quality of our relationships, energy level, our own unique sexual blueprint, and whether we have a sensation seeking temperament or not, are just a few things amongst many others that will determine whether and when sexual longing takes place.

We can experience spontaneous and responsive desire to varying degrees at different points in our lives. Some people will experience spontaneous desire on a more regular basis, while others will identify with having a more responsive style. Both are completely normal, and there is no wrong or right way to initiate sex. As Emily Nagoski, sex educator and expert on women's sexual wellbeing writes in her book, “we are all made of the same parts, organized in different ways.” What’s important to realize here is that desire, in the typical sense of the word, does not need to be present to lead to consensual sex. It can come after sexual arousal is reached as explained in my Instagram post.

It’s true that couples do tend to experience a higher degree of spontaneous desire at the beginning of their relationship. If we, however, use this as baseline for what is “normal,” rather than seeing it as a different type of longing, then we are at risk of letting the sexual connection we had with our partner completely wither. If you are waiting for spontaneous desire to fall from the sky in a long term committed relationship, there is a high chance that the sex will eventually phase out. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it does require us to reframe our way of thinking; it requires us to foster responsive desire and to be active agents in our own sexuality.