You and your partner are struggling with sex and intimacy in your relationship.
One partner tends to want sex more often, while the other partner may struggle to experience desire and finds sex to be a chore.
There seems to be a ticking clock when it comes to when you will have sex again, which creates a lot of pressure and anxiety around sex.
Sex usually happens out of obligation and anxiety rather than true desire, arousal, and passion.
You both have tried to do new and exciting things in the bedroom but nothing seems to help bring a sense of spark and desire back.
The person with higher desire begins to feel undesirable and shame around their sexuality and want for sex.
The person with low desire begins to feel broken, like they are the problem, and that sex is not for them. They may feel guilt and shame around sex being such a hard thing for them to want and enjoy.
Sex begins to be avoided because you cannot get out of this cycle.
Many of the couples I work with experience this exact cycle and come to me desperately needing help in trying to understand why one person in the relationship is not experiencing desire for sex.
The Different Types of Desire
Something that most people do not know about sexual desire is that there are multiple ways to cultivate desire.
Mind-blowing right?
Spontaneous Desire
When most of us think of desire, we tend to think of spontaneous desire. This is the desire that happens out of the blue and hits us on the head while walking down the street. This type of desire seemly comes out of nowhere and is fueled by sexy thoughts, maybe someone you saw that you find attractive, and sometimes hormones. It happens in anticipation of pleasure.
This type of desire is common and is experienced by both men and women.
However, there is another type of desire that is rarely discussed.
Responsive Desire
Responsive desire is desire that is cultivated from responding to pleasure in a safe and inviting context.
When we have sexual stimuli that is a turn on and it is in an environment and context that allows us to respond in a positive and calm way, we can cultivate responsive desire.
Duel Control Model
The research on responsive desire also comes with the understanding of the duel control model of sexual response.
We all have break and accelerator systems in our brain that notice sexual stimuli and decide when it is appropriate for us to become aroused or not.
The breaks and accelerator work in tandem to cultivate desire or to stop desire in its tracks.
Our accelerator or the gas pedal, is the part of our brain that notices all the sex related information in our environment. What we see, hear, taste, smell, feel, all the sensations in our body, and what we think, believe, or imagine are all part of what the accelerator is noticing and wanting to respond to.
Our breaks are the part of the brain that inhibit our sexual response based on it not being the right time to become aroused. A lot of breaks tend to be things we are struggling with emotionally, mentally, or within our relationships. Stress, body image, trauma, and relationship issues are common influences on the breaks that lead to people having a harder time experiencing desire. When we cannot stop pressing the breaks, even if there are things that are pressing the accelerator, we are not able to cultivate desire.
Context
Now in order for our accelerator to be turned on and our breaks to be turned off, we also have to be in the right context to receive this stimuli. Context is comprised of both external circumstances and our internal state.
For example, your partner may come up behind you and kiss your neck. If you are out in the open in the kitchen or living room where the kids or someone else in the house could walk by or you are distracted by something else, this may not spark desire and you may say, “Not right now!” If your partner kisses your neck when you are in your bedroom with the door closed and you know you have some time before being interrupted, this kiss may spark some desire and you will want to explore it further. This is an example of external circumstances.
If your partner begins to initiate sex in a way that resonates with you and your belief system has taught you that pleasure is only for your partner and sex is shameful, that initiation may not arouse you. Whereas if your partner begins to initiate sex and your belief system is that sex with your partner is about mutual pleasure between the both of you and that you are a bad ass sexual being who deserves and enjoys pleasure, that initiation may spark immediate desire followed by a steady increase in arousal. This is an example of your internal state.
The context we are experiencing sexual stimuli in is just as important as the sexual stimuli itself.
When we can successfully turn on our accelerator with sexual stimuli, turn off our breaks, and have this all happen within a context that allows us to respond to the stimuli instead of ignore it or turn it down, we have created responsive desire.
What Can I Do Next?
If you would like to learn more from the amazing woman who wrote the book on this subject, you can check out the book “Come As You Are” by Emily Nagoski, you can listen to the new “Come As You Are” podcast series she created on the book, and you can check out this great video she made on these key concepts as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqX38J9ya1I
If you and your partner are struggling with desire for sex in your relationship and you would like to explore more about how responsive desire could help you and your partner find the pleasure and satisfaction you are looking for again, please click the button below to schedule your FREE 30 minute consultation.
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