Is Your Sex Drive “Broken” or is Your View of Sexuality Warped?
If you’ve ever felt like your sex drive is broken, flawed, or weird for not craving sex every day, week, month, or year; Firstly, I’m sorry that society, your friends, partners, or you yourself have you convinced of that. Secondly, I invite you to consider your understanding (or lack thereof) of the spectrum of asexuality, and your potential place within that spectrum. While a low libido can certainly be attributed to one’s hormones or biological conditions (Wittmann, 2021), perhaps our tendency to look for external factors to blame for just not feeling “in the mood” reflects our misunderstanding of sexuality and how desire works.
What to Ask
Ask yourself: If someone doesn’t want to engage in sex with their partner often, why do we often view this as wrong, sad, or unfair? Why are low-sex drive partners encouraged to meet their higher-sex-drive partner’s needs if intimacy is not something they feel compelled toward? Why is our automatic idea of a “good” sex life often centred around how often the partners are having sex rather than whether their needs are being met? Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (hereby referred to simply as “Ace”) by Angela Chen (2021) explores this very idea. Ace dives right into society’s idea of sex and desire within the first few chapters, explaining key concepts and reminding the reader that just as society has decided being straight is the “default” for sexual orientation, society has seemingly also decided that wanting sex is the “default”. This is a notion Chen refers to as “compulsive sexuality”. This idea perpetuates the myth that a good relationship is one where sex takes place, and often.
Sex Drive Clarity
It's important to clarify that asexual people or those who experience low attraction or desire don’t all swear off physical intimacy altogether. It’s possible to experience low or no sex drive or sexual attraction and still choose to have sex or masturbate for any number of reasons. It’s also important to distinguish that sex drive and sexual attraction are two different things. Sex drive is something you might know more commonly as libido – this physical sensation combined with thoughts of wanting to experience intimate touch and pleasurable sensations. Sexual attraction is when this drive is directed toward another person (or persons). So, an asexual person might experience sex drive without being driven to have sex with someone. Chen refers to this in Ace as “undirected sex drive”. An asexual person or someone with low sex drive or attraction might still decide to self-pleasure when they experience undirected sex drive. Asexuality does not equate to total celibacy.
Ace invites the reader to consider whether one’s sex drive or attraction is low due to disability, trauma, stress, health conditions, or whether it’s always been that way – they could still consider themselves asexual if they feel comfortable doing so. I invite you to consider that having a low sex drive is not a problem to be fixed, and to instead give yourself the grace in considering what factors may be contributing to your drive and attraction.
While low drive and/or attraction could be chalked up to the factors above, and addressing those factors could affect your sex drive and/or attraction, maybe it’s worth considering that you’re not broken or wrong for not wanting sex. You may simply fall somewhere on the spectrum of asexuality. Whether you choose to identify as asexual, or work on accepting that your baseline experience of sex drive and attraction are lower than those you compare yourself to, know that your needs matter just as much as anyone else’s and you deserve to have as little (or as much) sex as you’d like.
Conclusion
If you’d like to learn more about asexuality and sexual desire, I highly recommend reading Ace. No two people’s experiences of sexual desire, attraction, and asexuality are entirely the same. It’s worth taking the time to understand yourself (or your partner, friend, family member, etc.) better. If you’d like someone to accompany you as you explore your relationship with sex, working with a therapist can be helpful for unpacking beliefs and prior experiences and feeling supported as you explore your identity.
Written by Kayla Noseworthy
References
Chen, A. (2021). Ace: What asexuality reveals about desire, society, and the meaning of sex. Beacon Press. ISBN: 9780807014738.
Wittmann, D. (2021). Ask the experts: Does a low sex drive mean I have a hormone imbalance? Urology Care Foundation.