Desire Discrepancy
I recently spent a day in Toronto filming sexual health videos for an amazing company called Lifespeak. Lifespeak is a mental, physical and family wellbeing company that partners with businesses to provide their employees expert content on wellbeing topics. They believe that sexual health is a part of overall health and invited me to speak on several sexual health topics. Take a look at the video produced on sexual desire discrepancy. Transcript is below.
Do you have a higher sex drive than your partner? Or do you have a lower sex drive than your partner? If so, you are not alone. Most long-term couples have what’s called a sexual desire discrepancy. This means that there’s a discrepancy in the levels of desire between the two partners. If most long-term couples have a discrepancy in their sexual desire, what do they do?
First, let’s talk about the two different types of desire. One type of desire is called spontaneous desire. This is the type of desire that’s typically depicted in movies and media. It’s that type of desire where you spontaneously want to have sex. The second type of desire, which is equally important, but not something typically seen in movies or media, is called responsive desire. Responsive desire is the type of desire where you are sexually neutral. Sex is not on your mind. However, the ingredients that need to be in place to be sexual are in place. Common ingredients are having energy, feeling calm, having privacy, and feeling close to your partner. These ingredients are in place, and your partner initiates sex. And you think, “Hmm. . . I wasn’t thinking about sex. But I’m relaxed and have energy, so I’m open to this.” Then the sexual activity gets started, your body starts to get aroused, and then your mind follows and you think “This is nice. I’m glad we’re doing this.” This sexual experience then leads to feeling connected to your sexual partner and opens the opportunity for you to be responsive to sexual experiences going forward. Again, this is called responsive desire.
One easy way to think about these two types of desire is that spontaneous desire is a microwave and responsive desire is a slow cooker. With spontaneous desire, very quickly things get hot, like a microwave you only need to push a few buttons. With responsive desire, it takes time and ingredients for things to heat up and cook. Just like the slow cooker, you gather the ingredients, and then let them slowly heat up. You’re probably wondering, why are these two types of desire relevant to desire discrepancy?
Often, couples who have a desire discrepancy simply have different types of desire. One is a microwave and the other is a slow cooker. And the microwave doesn’t understand why their slow cooker partner doesn’t get hot as quickly as they do. And the slow cooker doesn’t understand how their microwave partner is always ready for sex. If you have a desire discrepancy in your relationship, it’s possible that one of you is a microwave (spontaneous desire) and one of you is a slow cooker (responsive desire).
Action Plan:
What do you do if one of you has predominantly spontaneous desire (the microwave) and the other has predominantly responsive desire (the slow cooker)?
1. First step is to understand that your desires differ and that neither desire is right or wrong or better than the other.
2. Second, once you have this understanding, come together as teammates, and identify what ingredients need to be in place to kickstart that responsive desire.
When you think about the ingredients that need to be in place, you can think about how some ingredients hit the gas pedal and increase desire and some ingredients hit the brake pedal and decrease desire. Common ingredients that hit the gas pedal are: feeling emotionally close to your partner, feeling good about your body, feeling relaxed, having energy and privacy. Common ingredients that hit the brake pedal are: feeling disconnected from your partner, feeling too full after a meal, stress, and feeling exhausted. To kickstart responsive desire, you want to make sure there are more ingredients hitting the gas pedal than those hitting the brake pedal.
3. And then finally, once the ingredients have been identified, work with your partner to get these ingredients in place as often as possible. The more often you get these ingredients in place, the higher the likelihood that the space will be created for a physical connection.
It’s important to note that having a desire discrepancy is different than one partner having clinically diagnosable low sexual desire. For some couples one partner has a sexual dysfunction called hypoactive sexual desire disorder. To meet the criteria for hypoactive sexual desire disorder, you need to report little to no sexual thoughts, fantasies, or desires for sex for at least six months, in all sexual situations (both solo and partnered sexual activities), and that these symptoms cause you distress. If this describes you, then you would benefit from seeing a sex therapist or sexual medicine provider.
Overall, if you have a desire discrepancy in your relationship, talk with your partner. Once you both have a better understanding of how you each experience your desire (microwave or slow cooker) then you can start to work as teammates on making this discrepancy less discrepant!
