In her previous blog Clinical Psychologist Ashley Depasquale discussed libido, or sexual desire in broad terms and discussed how ones health, relationships, and environment might contribute to spontaneous and responsive desire. Below, she digs a little deeper in to individual factors that may contribute to understanding what turns you on, and off.

One key way to understand your sexual health a little bit is to understand what impacts our experience of sexual arousal. Sexual arousal is our experience of being turned on. It’s how we respond to sexually relevant information in our environment. This includes things like what we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell, as well as our own internal thoughts and sensations in our body. We can understand how our body responds to this information through the Dual Control Model. The Dual Control Model has two parts that interact with each other; the Sexual Excitation System (SES) and the Sexual Inhibition System (SIS) and together these parts influence the turning on or the turning off of arousal.

The Sexual Excitation System (SES)

An easy way to understand this system is that it is like an accelerator. Our accelerator takes in all the information in our environment that is sexually relevant and tells us to turn on or go! What hits your accelerator is unique to you and will depend on your life experiences. For some this might be reading a romance novel, the smell of your partner, or receiving a massage while for others it may be an intelligent conversation, being showed thoughtful care, or imagining sexual fantasies.

The Sexual Inhibition System (SIS)

As you might have guessed this system is like our brakes. It takes in relevant information in our environment that is telling us not to be aroused and to turn off. Again, information in our environment telling us to turn off will be completely different for each person, but this might include things like being in a rush and not having time to turn on, being out in public, engaging in sexual activities you don’t particularly enjoy or find fun, or having other things on your mind. Stress is also a significant factor that can hit the brakes.

How is this information useful?

Understanding this model can be really helpful if we are struggling with our sexual arousal or desire, particularly if we are experiencing a decrease in these things. Popular media will often focus on how to how to hit the accelerator and increase our desire. Common suggestions include recommendations to buy some new lingerie, roleplay a fantasy, or try something new to spice things up. However our accelerator and our brakes are working together, and whilst focusing on how to turn on can be useful (and fun!), spending time addressing the things that are hitting our brakes can be even more important. Imagine driving a car and only focusing on hitting the accelerator, whilst our foot is also firmly down on the brakes. Research suggests that the most common inhibitor to sexual desire is too much stimulating our sexual inhibition system, and focusing on this is most likely to effect change.

Where to from here?

So, now that we know all this information, what's next? We all vary in how sensitive our accelerator and brakes are. This is normal and having a more sensitive brake or accelerator than your partner or someone else does not mean there is anything wrong with you. What hits our accelerator and brakes can also change and will very much depend on context. For example your partner kissing your neck whilst you're in bed together cuddling might turn on your accelerator, however if they do this after a long and stressful day in front of your mother it may instead hit your brakes. To understand what hits your accelerator and brakes it can be helpful to think about a few different sexual experiences in your life, ones that have felt really pleasurable and others that have missed the mark or felt like hard work. Spend some time thinking about what may have been hitting your brakes and accelerator and compare the differences in your contexts. This can be helpful to develop perspective and see that when we are struggling with arousal and desire there isn’t anything wrong with us, it just means that we are in our context that’s placing a lot of pressure on our brakes and not allowing much space for pleasure.

My brakes are on, what can I do?

Write a list and try to address the things that you think might be having the biggest impact. Where you can problem solve and remove some of the pressures on your brakes. However we understand that something the pressures in our environment are outside our immediate control. For example, if financial stress is hitting your brakes right now and you can't change this then finding ways to manage your stress might be helpful, for example exercise, connecting with others or meditating. Having brave conversations with people in your environment may also help ease the pressure on your brakes. Once you slowly start to take the pressure off you can then begin to explore fun things that hit your accelerator. Hopefully by doing this you might start to experience an increase in arousal and desire.

If you have tried exploring a few of these things but think you might benefit from additional support you can always reach out to professional support.

Author: Ashley Depasquale

Clinical Psychologist