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The appetite for sex – libido or desire - is the energy/drive to seek out sexual activity, pleasure and arousal, and satisfaction in orgasm. This can include erotic play, fantasy, masturbation and sexual intercourse.
Sexual desire is an appetite or drive that varies between people, circumstances and partners.
Women’s sexual activities frequently begin for reasons other than desire, such as: increasing emotional closeness with her partner, to feel more attractive, to conceive, and only sometimes to satisfy her own sense of desire or sexual need. When motivated for one or many reasons, even though sexual desire may not be present initially, the woman may respond to sexual stimuli, guide her partner, or provide them herself. When a woman is ‘sexually neutral’ then desire can be experienced after being stimulated and aroused, so that continued arousal and the resulting feelings of desire reinforce one another, and sexual satisfaction is now desired, and may involve one or many orgasms. This positive outcome allows the woman to reach her original goal- to feel closer to her partner, and experience sexual pleasure, and this increases her subsequent sexual motivation.
Many physical or psychological factors can affect the desire for sex negatively or positively. Often women fear that they are deeply flawed because they don’t have a hot and urgent sex drive that it seems everyone else has- especially as portrayed on the media. The burden of these [false] expectations can have a disastrous effect on women’s sex lives, creating problems where none really exists. Women who aren’t aware of regular sex interest can usually respond with enthusiasm if their partner initiates sexual activity under the right circumstances.
Surveys have shown that 8% to 33% of women report or are assessed to have low sexual interest or desire. When considering absence of ‘spontaneous' sexual desire this could be as high as 80% [1], and although spontaneous desire may sometimes be present before stimulation begins, absence of innate or spontaneous desire/interest does not equal a dysfunction [2].
Inhibited sexual desire is not a dysfunction in the absence of love and physical attraction, but it is if it reflects sexual avoidance with an attractive, appropriate and loving partner when the woman wishes to feel desire.
