some sex!” This is how it works for maybe 75 percent of men and 15 2 percent of women.That’s Olivia. That’s “spontaneous” desire.
But some people find that they begin to want sex only after sexy things are already happening. And they’re normal. They don’t have “low” desire, they don’t suffer from any ailment, and they don’t long to initiate but feel like they’re not allowed to. Their bodies just need some more compelling reason than, “That’s an attractive person right there,” to want sex. They are sexually satisfied and in healthy relationships, which means that lack of spontaneous desire for sex is not, in itself, dysfunctional or problematic! Let 3 me repeat: Responsive desire is normal and healthy.And it’s how roughly 5 percent of men and 30 percent of women experience desire. That’s Camilla. Only about 6 percent of women lack both spontaneous and 4responsive desire.
You’ll notice this leaves about half of women and about one in five men unaccounted for. These are folks whose desire style is probably—drumroll, please—context dependent. That’s Merritt and Laurie. And they’re normal, too.
But actually? It turns out everyone’s sexual desire is responsive and context dependent. It just feels more spontaneous for some and more responsive for others, because even though we’re all made of the same parts, the different organizations of those parts results in different experiences.
So in this chapter I’ll explain what responsive desire is, how it works, how to make the most of it, and what to do if you and your partner have different desire styles.
We’ll start with where desire comes from: Desire is arousal in context.
And then we’ll talk about what desire is not—it’s not a drive, not a “hunger”—and why that matters so much. Which will bring us to the surprising truth about what desire is: It’s curiosity. When we understand how curiosity works, we’ll also understand why sex sometimes feels like a drive, even though it never is. We’ll spend some time talking about what’s unlikely to cause desire problems—hormones and monogamy—and what is much more likely to cause desire problems—sex-negative culture and the chasing dynamic.
And we’ll wrap up the chapter with three strategies for maximizing desire, based in the best available evidence. desire = arousal in context
Here’s how sexual desire really works. First, arousal begins when you activate the accelerator and take pressure off the brake—turn on the ons and turn off the offs. (And of course, because you’ve read chapter 6, you know that arousal is what happens between your ears, not what happens between your legs.) And then desire comes along when arousal meets a great context.
5 People can experience this in a variety of ways,depending on the context and the sensitivity of their brakes and accelerator. To illustrate, let’s think through three different scenarios, each with the same stimulation, same brakes and accelerator, but different contexts.
Scenario 1. You’re feeling very calm and happy and trusting, not doing anything in particular, and your partner comes over and touches your arm affectionately. The touch travels from your arm, up your spine, to your brain. In this state of mind, your central nervous system is very quiet, there’s very little other traffic, and the sensation of your partner’s touch says, “Hey, so, this is happening. What do you think?” And your brain says, “Affection feels nice.” The stimulation continues, your beloved partner touching your arm affectionately, and the sensation travels up to your brain and says, “This is happening some more. What do you think?” And your brain says, “Affection feels really nice,” and tunes its attention more to that sensation. Then your partner starts kissing your throat, and that sensation makes its way to your emotional brain and says, “Now this is happening, too. What do you think?” And by then the brain says, “That is fantastic! Go get more of that!” In that context, sexual desire feels responsive.
Scenario 2. You’re stressed, exhausted, or overwhelmed, it’s very noisy in your brain, there’s heavy traffic, lots of yelling and horns honking about all the stuff that’s stressing you out. Your partner’s affectionate touch travels from your arm, up your spine, to your brain, and it says, “This is happening. What do you think?” And your brain says, “WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER ALL THIS NOISE!” And by then the sensation is over. (Sensations are a little bit like Snapchat.) If your partner keeps touching you, the sensation keeps asking your brain, “This is still happening. What do you think?” And eventually it might get your brain’s attention, and your brain might say, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’VE GOT ALL THIS OTHER NOISE TO CONTEND WITH!” And if the sensation ever gets noticed enough to expand out of your brain’s emotional One Ring, it comes out in the form of, “Not now, honey.”
Scenario 3. Your sexy, sexy partner has been away for two weeks, but you’ve been sending each other frequent texts, which started out flirty but have been gradually escalating in explicitness and intensity as you get more and more into teasing and tormenting each other. By the end of the two weeks, just the sound of your phone receiving a text makes you gasp and tremble. There’s noise in your brain, but all of it is chanting, “Sexy, sexy partner!” By the time your partner gets home and touches your arm affectionately, you’re set to go off like a rocket. In that context, sexual 6desire feels spontaneous.
Camilla and Henry had embraced her erotic “slow heater” and were collaborating to find contexts that activated her accelerator. But Henry was left with a lingering discomfort that it felt forced to do things to turn Camilla on when she wasn’t already “in the mood.” It felt somehow unnatural.
Sometimes you can watch a fact drop into a person’s brain like ink into water. I saw it happen when I explained to Camilla and Henry that, in fact, her desire style was totally normal.
“Arousal comes first, before desire—for everyone, not just
Camilla,” I said.
“Arousal comes first?” Henry said.
“Yup. Desire emerges when arousal crosses the person’s individual threshold. Camilla, you happen to have a high threshold, but it’s the same basic process for everyone.”
“You are kidding me,” Camilla said. “Seriously, has pop culture gotten anything right about sex?”
Henry didn’t give me a chance to answer—this was important for him, the solution to his turn-Camilla-on-when-she-doesn’t-yet-want- sex conundrum. “You’re saying we just have different thresholds, is
that right?”
“Right.”
For Henry, sometimes just seeing Camilla walking around after a shower was all the arousal it took to activate desire. He said, “And I like that! I like seeing her walking around all damp and naked. I wouldn’t want her to stop doing it just because I wasn’t turned on before I saw her. So . . . if the equivalent is true for you”—he turned to Camilla—“I don’t have to feel uncomfortable creating equivalent contexts for you, right?”