Desire is a weighted word. On the one hand, it is worthy to grace many erotica titles, it can be used as a noun to describe the genitals (Think: “His broad hand slid south towards her desire”) and it remains a steadfast description of a character’s current state. Someone is overcome with desire or is pulsating or dripping or brimming with desire. It’s erratic, it’s uncontrollable, it’s animalistic. It can be a fleeting feeling, though, adding pressure to act on the primal pleasure in case the moment never arises again. This leads to the hyper-sexualized woman trope, the one who desperately searches for anyone that can please her ever-growing urges. She’s sex-crazed! She’s in heat!
Yet on the other hand is the other weaponized version of desire: That of low desire. Another term that fills titles and headlines, low desire is often paired with scientific jargon and equated with negativity. The common narrative follows that if and when you have low desire, you are broken. Therefore, products flood the market to boost one’s low desire—pills, supplements, powders—for both men and women, though certainly women are the main target.
But what is desire? Does it only happen when we’re “in heat”? Can humans even be in heat? And when we do feel like our desire is low, is it fixable? To answer these, let’s first examine the hormonal system. Estrus refers to the short window of about five days—the days leading up to and including ovulation—in which there is a chemical change in the female’s brain. In the vast majority of mammalian species, during estrus, the female is more sexually receptive, as in more welcoming of male advances, and sexually proceptive, as in actively seeking sex. It is only at this time do the females require sex to conceive offspring, once this window closes, so does she.
While there is a 25% change in brain chemistry during our infradian cycle, women obviously can and do have sex before, during, and after their “estrus” window. This is why revolutionary sexologist Dr. Emily Nagoski suggests hormones aren’t always to blame for out of whack desire. As she explains in her book Come As You Are, desire is pleasure in context and there are two ways to experience it: spontaneously or responsively. Spontaneous desire occurs when arousal and sexual urges arise seemingly out of nowhere—such as seeing an attractive person on the street. Spontaneous desire appears in anticipation of pleasure. Nagoski argues that most people believe desire, specifically sexual desire, is supposed to work this way. Like a light switch.
Responsive desire, then, appears in response to pleasure and this is where the context—setting, relationships status, current mental/emotional/physical state—becomes key. Imagine a lover tracing their fingers down your arm. In certain contexts, like a relaxed evening after dinner with someone significant, the soft stroke on bare skin can send sparks in all directions. But in other contexts, like a touch from a complete stranger in a stuffed subway car in August can be revolting. This is desire forming from a situation of potential pleasure (no kink-shaming) already happening versus initiating or waiting for desire to happen. When we insist that spontaneous desire is the only “normal” desire, we insist that those with responsive desire are sick—which is totally false. In fact, Nagoski jokes that really everyone’s sexual desire is responsive, that it simply “feels more spontaneous for some and more responsive for others.” And some of us may even experience a combination!
Considering both responsive and spontaneous desire and pleasure coming from context, it’s a little easier to approach the question of “fixing” low desire. By definition, low desire is a relationship (i.e context) issue. “Problematic dynamics emerge when partners have different levels of desire and they believe that one person’s level of desire is ‘better’ than the other person’s,” says Nagoski.
People who feel they have low desire may feel broken. On the flip side, people who feel they have high desire and frequently crave sex may also feel broken. But neither is wrong or broken. The only thing research has predicted of low desire is your context—that is, all of the stress, depression, anxiety, trauma, attachment we each carry with us.
Yes, women have a change in brain chemistry throughout their cycle. Hormone experts like Dr. Martie Haselton and Alisa Vitti can share a wealth of information on how hormones can be tracked and their powerful influence. But desire is context-dependent and our contexts are in constant ebb and flow. Nagoski says it best: “Sexual desire emerges in response to pleasure. When it works. Which sometimes it doesn’t.” But when it doesn’t, know you are not broken. You just have to change the context and with practice, you can have extraordinary desire.
by Shelby Lueders