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what is being turned on supposed to feel like according to all of the messaging around us it's this simple automatic thing that you should just get especially when you're young but sexual desire is really anything but simple and yeah we're talking about sex but before you all go getting frisky in the comments sexual desire is an aspect of physical and mental health there's lots of very legitimate science around it but it's treated as taboo or inappropriate and that leaves a whole bunch of really important issues lurking in the dark sexual desire is the want for some sort of sexual interaction with someone or yourself because desire in and of itself is not fully understood it is often referred back to food
so with food you can have a desire for something but there is no arousal for it meaning that yeah i really want some cake but your mouth didn't water right so it the arousal portion is more of the physical response to the desire so basically someone can want to have sex but they may not be physically aroused and the reverse is also true someone can be physically aroused but have no mental or emotional desire to engage in sexual activity this mismatch is called arousal non-concordance and studies show that women are more likely to experience it than men are and to understand more about issues like this it's really important that we untangle physical arousal from sexual desire in fact there are actually two different
kinds of desire so desire is actually split into the two it's the spontaneous desire as well as the response of desire spontaneous desire is where the thought or feeling i'd like to have sex just sort of pops into your head out of the blue and responsive desire is where you may not really be in the mood but after a little warm-up like kissing touching or flirting you do start to want to have sex one of the biggest misconceptions about desire is that it should be spontaneous only this misconception feeds into common stereotypes we see all around us like men having out of control sexual appetites or women as having little innate desire but that's far from the truth and anyone regardless of sex or gender can experience spontaneous or responsive
desire spontaneous desire actually doesn't happen as often as people think it does most people's desire tends to be responsive though you can certainly have both and people have them in different measures responsive desire was only acknowledged and defined around 20 years ago and lots of the world's messaging about sex doesn't really talk about responsive desire and when they do it's not really in a positive way many people report experiencing low desire but could at least some of this be because they're actually experiencing responsive desire in a world that has only taught us about spontaneous desire really it all comes down to brain stuff that's not me saying it's all in your head there is actual neuroscience
essentially we've all got breaks and accelerators the sexual excitation system is your accelerator your brain perceives something as a positive sexual stimulus and ignites this cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones that can turn into physical arousal the sexual inhibition system is the break this is stuff that stops those positive responses in their tracks so stuff that gives you the ick this can be something your brain consciously or subconsciously perceives as a threat like a fight with your partner or the potential of a sexually transmitted infection and research has shown that these two systems work together in what's called the dual control model so when the ses excitement is higher than the
inhibitions you're probably more on the space to actually have sex when it is reversed you're less likely to have sex some people might have more sensitive breaks or faster accelerators and you can really be any combination of the two that's totally normal and our brains don't exist in a vacuum they're affected by everything around and in us things like medications past experiences physical and mental health body image relationship status trauma our personal history with sex and of course the ever-present societal messaging about what sex what kind you have who you have it with and when or how often you have what that says about you as a person basically everything impacts sexual
desire and that is part of the reason why it has been difficult for any professional like on the medical side or on the mental health side to be able to quickly pinpoint exactly why hyposexual desire disorder comes to fruition people who feel for whatever reason that they have low sexual desire might feel that they're broken or sick which obviously can impact quality of life and make relationships and sex more difficult it also creates the opportunity for wellness and pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs and supplements that claim to fix it but in some cases it might be that you are normal and it's our perception of what's normal that's the problem we should fix because until the
early 2000s most research into the dual control model had only been done in men this data was then used to form scientific and medical norms of sexual desire and response that were just applied to everyone else and that means that the norm is going to be off base for at least some of us i wish that people knew that sexual desire is entirely changeable as in it changes throughout your entire lifespan but it also changes with context so sexual desire is not written in stone it's gonna be about what you do in your daily life to sort of feed back into it now i want to make it really clear here that we're not talking about physiological sexual dysfunction in this episode if you're experiencing pain with
sex or extreme emotional distress if you're dealing with something like vaginismus or hormone fluctuations as a result of pregnancy or menopause these things can absolutely impact your desire and it's really important that you speak to your ob gyn or your primary care doctor about it but the bottom line is that when it comes to pretty much anything in the health field you are unique this includes sex so what's normal is going to be unique to you because there's no one normal that can be applied to everyone so take the time to figure out what revs your engine get in touch with your own desire explore talk about it and find the contexts that work for you thank you all so much for watching seeker's body language if you have
another topic like this you want us to cover in this series let us know in the comments and i'll see you next time
