#33: Sexual Desire, with Karin Calde

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Do you and your partner disagree on how often to have sex? Does it seem like one of you wants it more than the other? If so, you’re not alone! This is the reality for most couples. In this episode I explain what spontaneous and responsive desire is, as well as the many different factors that influence the likelihood that we’ll feel turned on in any given situation.

What will work for you and your partner depends on your past and current experiences, but I offer a few tips at the end to help you bridge the gap.

To learn more about desire, you might find it helpful to read Emily Nagoski’s book, Come As You Are; although the intended audience is women, men can learn a lot from this book. Ian Kerner’s book, “She Comes First” is another good one, especially for straight men. If you want more book recommendations, let me know!

If you and your partner and struggling with issues around desire and would like to work with me, send me an email: [e-mail]

You can also check out my website: www.drcalde.com

TRANSCIPT

Podcast Intro:

[00:00] Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

Episode:

[00:50] Karin: Hello and welcome, everybody, welcome to the first episode of Sexy September! I'm super excited about all the episodes this month, and I wanted to start with a solo episode because I wanted to specifically talk about desire, because desire is a huge topic for people, and it is the number one reason that people seek out therapy or coaching for their sex lives. It is something that people really struggle with. So what I'm going to be talking about today is going to be helpful. Now, at the end, I'm going to leave you with three tips. So you'll want to stick around for those because I think those are going to be helpful too. Desire is largely misunderstood because we're never given this information. So unless we consciously seek it out, then we are going to be fairly powerless to do anything about it. So that's why I think this is so useful. It really is a big topic. There's a lot of information here, so I'm going to try to keep it to the most important parts of it.

The first thing is that oftentimes it's actually not a problem with desire, but a misunderstanding of how desire works. There's no one normal way to feel desire. So essentially we can experience two different kinds. There's spontaneous desire and there's responsive desire. In spontaneous desire, it doesn't take much to get you going. You can smell something or just be in the same room with your partner or seemingly have no real trigger for it, and you just are feeling sexy and you want to have sex with your partner. You're turned on, you feel desire. It's what we see in the movies and on TV shows when the sparks fly between two people and they both feel that spontaneous desire and is often what we equate with a healthy sexuality, which is really missing the mark, because there is another way to feel desire which is absolutely normal and just as good, and it's called responsive desire. So responsive desire is when you have someone who is perhaps willing to have sex, but they're not necessarily really turned on. They need to start engaging it, feel the pleasure of having the sex, and then comes the desire. Again, both are completely normal and most people experience a combination of both of these kinds of desire in different situations in different times of their lives. But men tend to feel more of the spontaneous kind and women tend to experience more of the responsive kind. But again, lots of crossover and it can be the absolute opposite for you.

So people tend to experience more responsive desire when they're with partner for a long time or maybe when they're under stress and also as they age. So that becomes more common. What's most important is that the sex is pleasurable for both people and that is going to increase the likelihood that people are going to keep having it and keep wanting to have it. For a couple to continue to have sex throughout their relationship is a really healthy thing and adds something vibrant to the relationship. So I'll just throw that out there.

So now I'm going to talk about something called the dual control model and this is also super important to understand. So this was discovered by Eric Johnson and John Bancroft, I think it was in the early 90s. But what I'm going to give you is like a simplified explanation of this. But basically there is a sexual gas pedal and a sexual break for everybody. And the brain is constantly scanning the environment, checking to see if it's safe and sexy. They're looking for a reason to be turned on, even though you don't really know that that's what your brain is constantly doing at a low level, but that's happening. It's also constantly scanning the environment, looking for threats and reasons to not be turned on and reasons to not have sex. Now, each person has a sensitive or insensitive or somewhere in between gas puddle and each person has a sensitive insensitive or somewhere in between break. And these two things are always working in concert with one another. Essentially it's the combination of these two elements that determine how often a person or how much a person wants to have sex.

So when it comes to the issue of desire, it helps to know what hits your sexual gas pedal and what hits your sexual break. Now it's a good idea to make a list of what turns you on and turns you off. You could even press pause right now and start making that list so that you can see if you can come up with as many things as you can. But I'm also going to give you some common triggers that might help you. And then sometimes when people have that starting off point, they can come up with more. And these can include really little things, but those little things can have a big impact and that's okay. What's important is knowing what they are so that you can then do something about it if you want to.

Now, oftentimes in couples or throuples or however your relationship is structured, where one isn't as interested in sex, one or both try to press harder on the gas pedal. They think that getting toys and sexy clothing or no clothing or role playing or talking about fantasies or taking more risks, all those things might improve things, and they might. But sometimes that is just going way too far for people and it's just overwhelming. And that doesn't help. Oftentimes when it comes to a partner experiencing low desire, the things that are hitting the brakes are more relevant and important to pay attention to. So if you remove those things, you're more likely to see a shift in sexual interest. Now, some of those things are easy to remove and others are not so easy. And sometimes some professional help is needed. So the list of things that often hit the brake pedal is long and this is not exhaustive, but some of the main categories and big things include a trauma history, especially a sexual trauma history. A person can have really sensitive brakes, but if they have a trauma history, they could have a really sensitive gas pedal. But if they have a trauma history, that's going to slam on the brakes and stop everything. Your beliefs, do you believe that sex is good or bad or that it should happen in a certain way that can hit the brakes? Body image and performance anxiety, especially how much you accept your body, that's really important. Mental health medications you're on hormones, although that can be overcome if you really want to. That's not a deal breaker. Physical health, but that's not always as much of a factor as you might think. Environment. How warm are you? Is there an annoying noise? Are you afraid that someone might hear you or walk in on you? Or there's unfinished work to do around the home. Those things can contribute. So think about environment, your energy level. Of course, being exhausted doesn't usually make someone feel sexy. Stress is a big one. For some people, this can fire them up. But for most people, it's a sex killer relationship status. And this is maybe one of the biggest ones. So have you been fighting? Is there something unresolved between the two of you? How much tension is there in the relationship? Do you both feel seen and heard and appreciated by the other? How have you been treating each other lately? And maybe most important of all, is there trust? Do you feel like your partner is really there for you? That's a big one. Okay, so another way I like to think about a lot of this is how is your nervous system? If you are in fight or flight or freeze mode, then you're probably not going to want to have sex. And even if you do have sex, it's less likely that you will enjoy it or have an orgasm. So getting regulated is really important. How can you feel calm and connected? And I have a lot of ideas about that, but we're not going to go into that here. So those are a lot of the things that impact desire.

But I have a few more things to say about this and I'm going to repeat something that I said earlier. What's most important is that the sex is pleasurable for both people and that will increase the likelihood that they will keep having it and even to some degree the frequency. It's not going to be equally pleasurable for each person every time. There is going to be variability. Sometimes it'll be great for both, sometimes it will be not so great for both. Sometimes it'll be good for one and not so great for the other. And that's fine. Sometimes one person won't be very interested, but their partner is. But the first person wants their partner to feel good so they agree to have sex anyway. But the key there is that they should never feel pressured or coerced. This should be fully their choice. The next thing I want to say is that a healthy sexual relationship that is likely to last well into a couple's orthopedicals twilight years is one where everyone's wants and desires and pleasures are all considered. Oftentimes we center intercourse and orgasm and that kind of thinking can actually end up harming sexual relationships and certainly impact one's level of sexual desire. So think beyond the box. There is so much more to sex than intercourse and orgasm. Think pleasure. Said in another way, someone is not going to be very interested in sex if it was never very good in the first place. So this is a place where you can get creative. I love it when people think about sex as their adult playground. I want to encourage you to be open minded and be willing to do things differently and create what feels good for you and your partners.

You don't and probably shouldn't -- I don't usually like to say the should or shouldn't word, but here it really applies -- you don't need to follow the same rules that you did when you were in your 20s, when you were in your forties and fifties and beyond. Your body is different and your relationship is likely to be different. And in fact, sex in midlife and beyond can actually be a lot better because it is more human and it is often more emotionally connected. That is what ends up making sex better for most people.

So I want to leave you with some tips and these are all really important for good, healthy sexual relationships. So the first one is use lube. I cannot overstate this. Whether you're alone or whether you're with a partner, whether you're using toys or not, this is going to make the experience better. This is especially true for women as they age. When they enter perimenopause menopause, then they're not going to have as much natural lubrication. But natural lubrication is not an indication of how turned on you are or how good you are or whatever at sex. Okay? I want to clear that up right now because some people still believe that and that's not true. So use lube. I recommend silicone lube. If you're using toys, you might want to use water based because the silicone based lubes can damage the toys. Second tip talk. And I know this is so hard. It's so hard because we are not raised in homes, usually where we talk about sex. And so it's hard to suddenly feel comfortable doing so. But I encourage you to try and the more you do it, the easier it gets. And I would recommend even scheduling something every six months. Third tip. Sex is a partnership. It's really important that not one person's experience is prioritized. You can prioritize one person in a particular sexual encounter, that's okay. But when you regularly do that, it's going to SAP the other person's sexual energy and it's just not how mutual pleasure and enjoyment and that deep, satisfying, even sometimes transcendental experiences are had. So it is a partnership.

So if you have questions for me, I sure hope that you will let me know. I'm going to be putting my email in the show notes, but I'm also reachable on Instagram where you can follow me there. I'm the love and connection coach. I hope you enjoyed this episode and again, I hope you'll share it and leave me a review. I appreciate you all. Bye for now.

Hey, just a reminder. This was just the first of four episodes of Sexy September. Next week I'm going to be talking with Hannah Spanke, who is a sexologist, and we are going to talk about sexuality. We'll discuss the disconnection that is often seen between men and women, how to rebuild that connection using a framework for talking about sex with your partner. We talk about what men and women seek from one another and why we commonly adopt certain gender roles. We also talk about how men and women can open themselves up to sex, get to know what we really want and so, so much more. There's a lot to gain from this conversation, so I hope you will tune in next week. And then after that I have an episode about sex and menopause and then I wanted to be sure to push the boundaries a bit for those of you who want to go beyond vanilla sex. So I have an episode devoted to the topic of Kink. So for those of you who are new to Kink, I think you'll gain something valuable out of that episode. Okay, that's it for now. I hope you have a great week.

OUTRO:

[15:53] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love Is Us. If you liked the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the Love and Connection Coach.

Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music ali Shaw for my artwork and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.