By Jamie Azar, Sex, Relationship, and Intimacy Coach
Society has a tendency to conflate love, romanticism, desire, arousal, and attraction, which can put a lot of strain, pressure, and expectation on a person, people, or relationship, especially if we’re expecting all of this from one person. Mononormativity, the assumption that monogamy is the default, natural, or superior way to structure relationships, and allonormativity, the assumption that experiencing sexual and/or romantic attraction is universal and expected, create implicit frameworks, expectations, and defaults that may not align with how one currently relates to themselves, others, or within their relationships.
Many people refer to desire, arousal, and attraction interchangeably, however, the three are quite different from each other, and understanding the differences can help you communicate better with partners, reduce confusion, and deepen both intimacy and self-awareness.
Think of desire as the wanting, the longing, the yearning. It’s the mental and emotional longing for sexual or intimate connection. Desire can be both spontaneous, appearing out of nowhere, or responsive, emerging in response to stimulation, closeness, or context. Desire can exist without immediate arousal, and you can want sex even if your body isn’t yet responding.
Arousal is the physiological response of excitation in your body. It’s the body’s response, often involving lubrication, erection, increased heart rate, sensitivity, etc. It can be triggered by touch, erotic imagery, hormones, or even stress release. Sometimes it happens with desire, but not always. Unlike desire that is a mental or emotional wanting, arousal is about the body.
Attraction is the pull toward someone or something. This can be sexual, romantic, aesthetic, or emotional. Attraction can be extremely diverse and nuanced. For example, you can be physically attracted to one person, emotionally attracted to another, spiritually attracted to someone’s energy, and all of this can exist outside of desire for sex, or romantic connection, for example.
So, why is this information helpful? Firstly, it can help partners communicate more clearly about needs. Not that all elements have to exist in a relationship, however, if you’d like them to, you might get curious around certain blockages around desire, arousal, or attraction. We won’t want sex that isn’t worth having, so if you’re experiencing low desire, you might first ask yourself, do you enjoy the sex you’re currently having? If not, how can you take more agency and find more room for innovation, creativity, play, and fun? Are you struggling with arousal? You might consider the type of foreplay you’re having, the types of stimulation, changing or exploring new types of sensation play, or preparing your mind and body before sex or intimacy in a way that opens responsive desire.
People also worry that they’re no longer attracted to their partner(s), generally in longer term relationships. This can easily happen if you cohabitate with your partner or spouse, become enmeshed, or lose your senses of differentiation or unique identities, becoming overtly familial or familiar with each other. You might be stuck in parenting roles and feel disconnected from your identities as individuals outside of being caretakers. Sharing a new experience with your partner(s), getting dressed up and going on a date, creating time for self-intimacy, and having conversations around this can help shift patterns of familiarity into more possibilities for eroticism and differentiation.
Understanding the nuances between desire, arousal, and attraction also normalizes diverse experiences, especially for people with responsive desire, asexual spectrum identities, or fluctuating libidos. For example, people on the asexual spectrum may or may not experience sexual attraction, and some may feel romantic, aesthetic, or sensual attraction without wanting sexual activity. Recognizing these variations helps validate that there’s no single “right” way to experience intimacy, and that each person’s relationship to desire and attraction is unique.
It’s also important to recognize that none of these- desire, arousal, and attraction, are necessarily linear. We can make space for fluidity, change, and all the while gain more self- awareness and cultivate more creativity and innovation when it comes to self and relational intimacy. And though people spend much of their time worrying about desire, arousal, and attraction, what I find is generally most important is one’s relationship with pleasure.
Contrary to desire, the wanting, pleasure is the enjoying of anything that feels good, sexual or non-sexual activities. When we can begin to nurture our relationship with pleasure, we feel more desire for life, we become aroused by our own senses, and delight at the magic and mystery of our own life experiences; we start believing we’re worthy of feeling good and start caring for our bodies, which may or may or may not involve sexual desire.
Emily Nagoski said it best- pleasure is the measure. And so, when we can start worrying less about desire, arousal, and attraction and focus more on pleasure, we can allow our bodies to do what they know how to do best-to be in receptive delight to beauty, to joy, and to presence. When we can learn to alleviate pressure and expectations around sex, we can re-center pleasure, outside of linearity, goals, and scripts and create intimacy on our own terms.
Jamie Azar is former graduate of the Pleasure Psychology and Sexology Certification program, a sex, relationship, and intimacy coach, educator, writer, and mindfulness practitioner based in South Carolina. She offers 1-1 coaching with singles, couples, throuples + to co-create a safe, sex-positive, transformative, liberating, and empowering space that fosters personal and relational growth. She specializes in dismantling limiting beliefs, deconstructing, and destigmatizing harmful narrative constructs, to help clients reframe and redefine their understandings of selfhood, sex, sexuality, and relationships. To work with Jamie go here!