Are you Lightning ⚡ or a Flower 🌸?
One of the most helpful things I first stumbled across when I lost my sexual desire was a really powerful reframe of how desire is experienced by a feminist scientist- Dr. Emily Nagoski, in her book Come As You Are.
When desire to have sex with a partner dips, it can feel really confusing, isolating, even a bit scary. Often we think there’s actually something wrong with us because that desire to have sex has just gone… and that’s not normal, right?
But did you know there are two different ways that you can experience desire for sex?
And if yours doesn’t align with the most well-known way, I have excellent news about another way to feel desire that is normal, healthy- and means you aren’t broken, you just work differently!
Read on to find out more…
Desire that hits us like lightning ⚡
The way we all think desire works is that the feeling of wanting to have sex comes out of the blue- a bit like lightning ⚡.
This is the kind of desire that we see on TV or in films- the explosive, ripping each other’s clothes off and shagging on the kitchen counter kind of sex.
It hits like lightning- intense, urgent, electric and seems to appear like magic.
This instantaneous “lightning” type of desire is what researchers call spontaneous or impulsive desire.
If you experience desire spontaneously, you’ll find that:
You don’t need much prompting to get in the mood
You want sex at random times- seemingly out of the blue
You’re usually the one initiating sex (because you find you want it more than your partner)
You often feel desire first, before your body becomes sexually aroused
It is called this because desire for sex appears before touch, before intimacy, before any context.
According to researcher Emily Nagoski, experiencing desire in this way is really common- about 75% of men and 15% of women experience desire spontaneously.
But what if my desire doesn’t work like this?
If you used to experience this urge or sudden need to have sex, but then that feeling disappears, you might feel like something has gone wrong inside, and perhaps a sense of powerless around how to get it back, because we’re not really sure where this magical feeling comes from in the first place.
However… notice that only 15% of women experience desire in this way. What about the rest?
It’s very likely they experience what’s called responsive desire instead!
Desire that unfolds like a flower 🌸
Brilliant feminist scientist Emily Nagoksi in her book called "Come As You Are" writes that lots of women don’t fit into this model of wanting sex before there's any sexual contact.
And that’s OK!
Because instead they experience what she calls “responsive desire”.
If you experience responsive desire, you might find that…
You don’t think about or want sex very often
You rarely initiate sex with your partner
If your partner asks you if you want sex out of the blue, you really don’t feel like it…
Women who experience desire in a more responsive way commonly don’t often feel in the mood for sex before it happens.
BUT they DO experience desire in response to a trigger. So in response to touch, a feeling, intimacy- essentially within a context that allows their desire to emerge.
Responsive desire is therefore more like a flower- unfolding slowly with the right conditions that enable it to thrive.
If you experience desire in this way, you’re in good company. Around 5% of men and 30% of women find they experience responsive desire (the rest experience a mix of both that may change over time, between partners or even across different sexual encounters).
📺WATCH this video with The Libido Fairy explaining more about responsive vs. impulsive desire
The key is pleasure.
Emily Nagoski really centers in on pleasure as the key aspect of how you experience desire:
“Where spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure, responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure”. (Emily Nagoski)
She writes that both types of desire are normal and neither is better than the other, but interestingly it’s responsive desire that is associated with great sex over the long term (woohoo!).
The Takeaway
The point here is that if we believe that impulsive or lightning is the only and most correct form of desire, it leaves us feeling powerless to know how to get it back and feeling abnormal if we don’t experience it this way.
But instead, what if we believed desire is something we have the power to activate?
Understanding that desire can unfold, like a flower, if we know the conditions and contexts that allow desire and pleasure to emerge is key to knowing how to unlock your own desire.
So there is hope- and we’re not broken! The key step is to start figuring out what brings you pleasure, and go from there.
How did this land with you- are you lightning or a flower? I’d love to know more in the comments.
