Sex Drive 101: Decoding Desire

Continuing our mini series on sex drive and libido, this week we’re exploring desire - specifically the two distinct desire types that may be determining your appetite for sex. If you’re feeling ‘stuck’ in your sex-life, this episode is for you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The two desire types

• How to recognise your predominant desire type

• How to communicate your desire

• Balancing out mismatched libidos

• How to increase desire

This podcast is for YOU, so if you ever have any questions you’d like me to answer on the show, or topics you’d like me to cover – reach out to me on email here or over on instagram @eleanorhadley

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The Sensuality Academy Podcast is edited and produced with thanks to Lucy Arellano. You can find her work at @lucy_podcastva

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Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Sensuality Academy Podcast!

Hopefully you’ve listened to episode 35, all about arousal - and if not, I recommend pausing now, and listening to that and then coming back to join me. You’ll get more of a full picture that way.

In this mini series, we’re talking about about Sex Drive and libido and the systems at play in our bodies that have an impact on our desire for sex. I can’t tell you how often I hear from people - women in particular - who feel like they’re broken because they don’t desire sex in the same way as their partners, or the typical things that “most people” find arousing, don’t do it for them.

I want to preface this episode by saying this: you are not broken. You are normal. What’s broken is our understanding of sex, arousal and desire. What’s broken is our cultural denial of women’s pleasure, the serious lack of research on women’s sexuality, the conditioning that we have around what constitutes good sex, the male-centric perspective of sex and the hyper focus on orgasms as the be all and end all of successful sex.

If I can even help just one of you out there have a better understanding of your sexuality, I’ll be very happy. 

Now, let’s dive into desire! To recap, remember: 

 Desire is categorised as an interest in or appetite for sex - something akin to thirst and hunger

Whereas Arousal, as we discussed last episode, is the physical manifestation of sexual response - and we have systems at play which will impact our levels of arousal - the brakes and the accelerators.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring the two main types of desire - Spontaneous and Responsive. Understanding the difference between these and where you may sit on the desire spectrum will help you to better take into account what approach works best for you. This is also super helpful for you and your partner to understand, particularly if you feel you have mismatched libido’s.

(DESIRE TYPES)

Spontaneous Desire = sudden desire for sex

• Can happen out of the blue when doing things totally unrelated to sex - the urge just comes over you

• More of a primal desire

• 15% of women have a spontaneous desire style - wanting sex out of the blue

• Whereas 75% of men have a spontaneous desire type

• And of course since culturally we typically see sex through the male lens - often spontaneous desire is seen as the only type, or considered ’normal’ for everyone

• This can be incredibly damaging for those out there - of any gender - who don’t experience spontaneous desire, leading them to think they’re broken or be labelled as such by uninformed partners because we don’t understand the different systems of desire.

Responsive Desire = when physical arousal occurs before mental arousal

• This is when physical stimulation inspires excitement and gets you going 

• You respond to advances

• An example is not particularly wanting or thinking about sex until your partner initiates sex and when you start engaging in it, it gets you going and you experience the desire for sex as a result 

• Can look like all day foreplay

• Reading erotica

• Essentially anything that has an extended build-up, allows for responsive desire

• 30% of vulva-owners have a responsive desire style - want sex only when something erotic is already happening

• Whereas 5% of men or penis owners have predominantly responsive desire

What about the others?

• The rest experience a mix of the two depending on context 

• Context is super important

• Your brakes and accelerators will play a big role here too

• Something else to consider is that your desire type is impacted by your hormonal levels

• Because male hormone levels tend to fluctuate throughout the day, they will often feel more desire at certain times of the day

• Whereas the female hormonal cycle operates over roughly a one month, 28-day cycle, which means we experience very different desire and arousal depending on where we’re at in our cycle

• For example, ovulation tends to make us menstruators very horny, and we may be more sensitive and less interested in sex during our period. 

• Everyone is different here, but if you tune in to your hormonal cycle (regardless of gender), you will likely notice a pattern

• Not only that, but as our hormonal cycles shift throughout our life cycle, our desire and arousal will be impacted at different ages too

• So, you may have experienced both spontaneous and responsive desire in your life - which is totally normal. 

• What’s important to understand is your current desire response - or those in the moment - so you can adequately work with it

So, now that you understand a bit more about your desire type - how can you increase desire, particularly if yours is responsive?

• The best ways to ramp up your desire is by increasing novelty, pleasure, ambiguity and intensity. 

• So if one partner is spontaneous, and the other is responsive - it’s important that we recognise and work within those two types. Similar to our love languages we have these different languages that our bodies speak sexually in terms of our arousal and our desire so if we know these we can understand more about our own sexuality and we can understand each other even better as well. All this will lead to much, much more fulfilling connected sex.

• This means not judging someone for their spontaneous desire, even if we can’t understand how they could possible feel like sex in a certain moment or situation

• It also looks like taking the time to warm up a responsive desire type before initiating sex. It’s about recognising and being understanding that they might not feel like sex at any time but if you invite them, if you initiate it then perhaps they will warm up to it. 

• That doesn’t mean coercing against their will or trying to convince them, because you think they have a responsive desire type. It’s about really reading the subtle cues and communicating clearly to understand what it takes for them to feel ready for sex.

• If you’re responsive - this requires you to be aware of what actions or behaviours tend to lead you towards desire in the first place.

• Once you recognise these patterns, you can share them with a partner so you’re speaking the same language and you can now understand each other more deeply.

Sex drive and libido are very nuanced subjects, but I hope that this breakdown of spontaneous vs responsive desire has helped you in some way to understand your own sexuality a bit more. If so, I’d love you to share this episode with your lover and your friends, take a cheeky screenshot and share to your stories - you never know who might benefit from having a listen and I always appreciate the love and support.

Before I go, a reminder that my Sensualista Tour is in full swing - check out my website - eleanorhadley.com/events for all the tour dates, locations and to book in. I’ll be teaching in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Gold Coast, Byron Bay, and Newcastle over the next few months.

Now - booking in such a range of workshops and liaising with so many studios is no joke, so events are going up as they’re confirmed - and I'd highly recommend checking the events page regularly, turning on post notifications on instagram, joining the Sensual Sunday email list and adding your name to the workshop waitlist - which you can find at eleanorhadley.com/workshopwaitlist

I can’t wait to meet you all in real life! I bloody love teaching in person SO much so I’m super excited to have so many workshops coming up! You all know I’m super passionate about helping as many people as I can to discover their sensuality so it would mean the world to me if you could actively share my posts and links to my events with your networks. Due to the nature of my work and the bullshit that is internet censorship - I can’t advertise in the same way that many others can, because my ads get rejected for sexual content. It’s very frustrating, especially when I know this work can be downright life changing. So, the more people like you I have who spread the word, the better. I really appreciate you and your support. Thank you.

Alright, my loves, that’s all from me this week. I hope you enjoyed this episode, I hope it resonated with you and I hope you can put it in to practice. I’ll chat to you again next week, until then - stay sensual.