Responsive desire

What is responsive desire?

Responsive desire is desire for sex that only arises after arousal has started, not before. You feel no urge up front, but you begin from closeness or touch, say, and the desire comes along the way. It is the counterpart to spontaneous desire, which rises on its own. The idea comes from the sexologist Rosemary Basson.

What responsive desire looks like in practice

You often only recognize it once someone explains it. Take a woman who thinks she has “no libido”, because the urge never rises on its own while she does the dishes or lies staring at the ceiling. If her partner starts slowly with touch, with nothing that has to happen, she notices the urge is suddenly there halfway in. That is responsive desire: the wanting was not there beforehand, but came once arousal was underway. In Rosemary Basson’s model that is not an exception but one of the normal routes to sex.

Where the idea comes from

For a long time one order counted as the right one: first desire, then arousal, then orgasm. Around the turn of the century Rosemary Basson set a different model beside it, drawn as a circle instead of a straight line. Someone can begin sex from something other than desire, emotional closeness or the wish to be near a partner, say, after which arousal builds and desire follows on that. Desire and arousal then feed each other back and forth. What the old, straight model read as a shortfall, “where is the urge”, is in Basson’s model simply a second, equally valid route.

Why it matters to know this

The biggest gain is relief. Anyone who thinks something is wrong because the urge does not come on its own discovers that the desire has a different entrance, not a broken button. For you that means you stop judging yourself for something that was never the problem. For a couple it takes the sting out of a common misunderstanding: the partner with more spontaneous desire no longer reads “no initiative” as rejection, but understands the other needs a run-up. The sex educator Emily Nagoski made this insight widely known with her book Come As You Are, where she describes responsive desire as a style of wanting that shows up more often in women than in men. What it is not: a switch you flip on command. Responsive desire still needs a good context, time, safety and attention, and if the urge stays away for good and it bothers you, that is something to raise with your doctor or a sexologist.

What responsive desire is not

“No desire beforehand means a low libido.” No. Responsive desire says something about the order, not the amount. The urge comes, only later.

“So you just have to force yourself.” Not that either. It is about willingness and a cue that is right for you, not about dragging yourself through something. Without willingness, nothing comes.

“Only women have responsive desire.” It is described more often in women, but men know it just as well. The style is not tied to a sex.

What I see myself

The line I hear most often is a variant of: I’m afraid I don’t really want it, because I feel nothing beforehand. With my background as a psychotherapist I almost always recognize responsive desire in that, not a problem. Once the pressure is off and there is time to get going slowly, the desire turns out to be there after all, just not where they were looking for it: at the start. I’m not a doctor and your health is not mine to manage. But the room to begin without performance pressure and see whether the urge comes along the way is part of how I work.

What you can do with this

• Don’t judge yourself for the absence of desire up front. Begin from closeness or touch if you need to, and see whether the wanting comes along the way, instead of waiting until the urge is there on its own.
• If the urge stays away for good and it genuinely bothers you, raise it with your doctor or a sexologist. Responsive desire is a normal variant, but lasting complaints deserve a professional.
• Set up a context that is right for you: time, safety, and no performance pressure. Responsive desire leans on the circumstances, not on willpower.
• Tell a partner that your desire needs a run-up. Then the lack of spontaneous initiative isn’t read as rejection.

Further reading

• Sexual response cycle places responsive desire in the larger whole of the phases of arousal.
• Libido is about the strength of desire, where responsive desire is about its order.
• Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are (2015), is the most accessible book on responsive versus spontaneous desire.

Where this fits on my site

If you don’t know whether the desire will come, that is exactly what I make room for. No clock, no performance, but the time to get going slowly and notice whether the wanting rises along the way. How an appointment like that begins is on the page about intimate togetherness. Talking first is always fine, and it commits you to nothing.

Sources

• Human Sex-Response Cycles. Rosemary Basson, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 27(1), 33-43, 2001. Gives the circular model in which desire can follow arousal and the two feed each other back and forth, instead of the fixed order desire-arousal-orgasm.
• The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model. Rosemary Basson, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 26(1), 51-65, 2000. Introduces the responsive component of desire as a normal variant, meant to keep a different order from being read as a disorder.
• Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are. Simon & Schuster, 2015. Gives the broad popularization of responsive versus spontaneous desire as two styles, and the finding that the responsive style is described more often in women than in men.

Related terms

Responsive desire is a concept within the sexual response cycle: the route where the desire only comes after arousal.

• Sexual response cycle. The larger model responsive desire is one of the routes of.
• Libido. The strength of desire, where responsive desire is about the order.
• Edging. The deliberate stretching of arousal, the phase responsive desire leans on.
• Tantra. The tradition where getting going slowly is the starting point, exactly what responsive desire asks for.