In sex therapy, one of my favourite processes to walk alongside clients with is the debunking all of the should's, the have-to's and the must-do's that we carry around sex. Man, do we have a lot of them. When we don't have sufficient, pleasure-centred and inclusive sex education, we're left with very limited scripts about what sex is, what it means and what ought to happen. Layered on top of this is the current state of dating, gender roles and expectations, this can create a sticky relationship with sexual desire and one that is associated with demand, entitlement and pressure. It can become transactional and performative, and this in itself is deeply unsexy.
When we view sexual desire as a demand on ourselves or our partners, we might feel pressure to have sex, to do it faster than we’d like or feel compelled to act every single time we get a whiff of arousal. It’s almost Pavlovian. On the (arguably) lower levels of this, it can look like feeling obligated to have sex because your partner wants it, having sex when you're not really turned on and rushing yourself to get there, or being in our heads measuring how turned on we are and if it's fast enough/sexy enough/regular enough. In the therapy room, it sounds like...
"My partner initiates sex, and I'm sitting at 1/10 aroused. I feel like I should be at 8/10 or 9/10 in the next minute, so I say no to sex altogether."
"I get a whiff of sexual desire from my partner while I'm sitting at 0/10 and don't want them to get their hopes up. I send them as many signs as I can to tell them no."
"My partner initiates sex and I'm at 2/10 aroused. We get started and I spend most of the time questioning if I'm turned on enough."
"My partner initiates sex and I'm at 0/10 aroused. I rush myself to get on the same level as them in the next five minutes. I rush so much that I can't enjoy it."
"I feel turned on, so I have to masturbate and get it out of the way because I can't control myself."
I have seen the dark side of this unspoken demand amongst therapy clients, just as we've all also seen this in rape culture and sexual violence stories when someone feels sexual desire coupled with a sense of demand and entitlement - "I feel desire, so I take sex." It is also how we stumble upon more myths around sex like the concept of blue balls, which is the misinformed belief that if folks with penises experience arousal without ejaculation, they will experience significant pain.
When we associate sexual desire with demand, we create a strict and rigid line from a sensation in the body to a "need to have sex". I put that in quotation marks because there is never a Need to Have Sex. Unless with the intention of creating a pregnancy and even that is less of a Need these days, having sex is a Want and because this Want can often involve other people, it must come with the reality that sometimes others can't or won't meet us in it or that we can't for others. Even if they are our long-term boos and we love them dearly, when we experience sexual desire as a demand, it can quickly become tangled up in deeply unsexy things like obligation, pressure, disconnection and disappointment.
Reframing sexual desire as an invitation is a concept that I expand on and borrow from queer sex therapist, Casey Tanner's debut book, Feel It All. When we reframe sexual desire as an invitation, all it asks of you is "do you want to play?". This can help relieve the internal pressure valve that says we should be immediately turned on like a light switch. It sees sexual desire and the sexual experience in general as something that we create together, and not something one person simply imposes upon the other.
Seeing it as an invitation can also help us connect to our bodies and what we want because we can meet ourselves where we are at in that moment, rather than focusing on where we are not. It can also help break up our rigid sexual scripts by inviting more variety and choice into the whole experience. Switching it up in this way means that we can savour the build-up and enjoy the warm buzz of arousal simply because it feels good, and not always as a means to an end. Just like you can experience a crush, a fantasy or sexual attraction and not act on it. We can enjoy the rush of energy and the heightened sensations that can come with arousal. Suddenly every song feels alive, food tastes better, and touch feels explosive. We can let it simmer, indulge and play with it throughout the day or throughout the week if or when we want to tip over that edge.
Just like any other emotion or sensation in your body, all that is truly required of you is to notice it and let it be there. Sexual desire is one and the same. Where we can also get stuck is by attributing a whole lot of meaning to its manifestations or lack thereof, for example, a crush on a particular person, a fantasy that's a little less politically correct, a dream that's wildly outrageous, or an erection that goes awry. In the realm of partnered sex, we do this a whole lot -"If you don't want sex, you don't love your partner." "If you don't cum, you're not attracted to your partner.""If you fantasise about this, it must mean that you want it." "They're turned on by this other person, so it must mean they don't want me." Yada yada yada.
You can absolutely go down many wild rabbit holes about what sexual desire and these various manifestations means. Freud might say that you want to fuck your mother, astrology might say that your Venus is in retrograde, your God might say you're a filthy little sinner. It can mean any of these things or nothing at all. You have agency in creating the meaning, and what I've found in my world of sex therapy is that it's just a sensation in your body. Let it be an invitation to sink further into it, and decide if you'd like it to be translated into action. If not, enjoy the warm and fuzzy feeling simply because you can.
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