Lesson 2.1: A New Kind of Libido
Lesson 2.1: A New Kind of Libido
As hormones shift, many people find their relationship to desire changing in ways they didn’t expect.
Early in life, most people experience a lot of spontaneous desire, the kind where you simply feel like having sex out of the blue. As time goes on and as hormones change, spontaneous desire tends to not come around as frequently. This is where things get tricky. You may feel like something’s wrong with you or you’ve lost all of your sex drive.
I want you to know – just because you don’t have desire out of the blue – that does not mean your sex drive is gone!
There are two types of sexual desire: spontaneous and responsive.
Responsive desire sparks arousal in response to touch, intimacy, or intentional effort rather than a sudden internal urge. And why not – of course we deserve a little effort!
It is responsive desire that dominates sexuality for most people as hormones shift.
If you have any misgivings about this, I want to set them right immediately. Responsive desire is 100% as valid as spontaneous desire. There is nothing wrong with you. You have not lost your sex drive. You are as much of a sexual person as you want to be.
Once we have an understanding of spontaneous vs responsive desire, we can stop waiting for arousal to present itself out of the blue. Instead, if arousal is wanted, we can take steps to bring it about.
In the next lesson, we’ll talk about independently working to understand shifting desire before bringing this framework to relationships in Module 3.