Why Your Libido Is Like a Car
It’s a slightly odd thing to say, but bear with me: your libido is like a car. It has an accelerator and it has brakes.
The brakes are probably easier to identify. You know what puts you off sex: stress, tiredness, worry, relationship difficulties, distraction, feeling under pressure, or that nagging sense that you're somehow supposed to be performing. Most men will have experienced the brakes at some point.
But what about the accelerator? What actually makes you want sex? That may be a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Men are often assumed to have a straightforward relationship with sexual desire. We see something we like, the accelerator goes down and away we go. But real life is more complicated. And perhaps one reason for that is that men don't spend much time getting to know their own accelerators.
I'm not talking simply about what you find attractive. I'm talking about the things that make you feel sexual. It might be anticipation, feeling desired, a particular kind of touch, flirting, intimacy, novelty, confidence, or simply having enough time and privacy. It might be something specific that you've never really stopped to think about. Your accelerator is personal.
So perhaps men should become more curious about their own turn-ons. What catches your attention? What kinds of thoughts or fantasies have energy for you? What makes you feel playful, interested or alive? What do you find yourself returning to in your imagination?
This isn't about making a list of things you're supposed to be into. Quite the opposite. It's about investigating the difference between what genuinely interests you and what you've learned you're supposed to find exciting.
We all absorb ideas about what a man should want. There is an expectation that men should always be up for sex, that a “real man” is naturally horny, experiences spontaneous desire frequently, and doesn't need much encouragement to get going. If you don't fit that picture, it's easy to wonder whether your libido is somehow deficient. But that stereotype can also make it hard to become curious about your actual sexuality. If you're supposed to be permanently switched on, why would you need to investigate what switches you on?
And it can change over time. The things that pressed your accelerator in your twenties may not be the things that do it in your forties, fifties or sixties. Your circumstances change, your relationships change, your body changes, and your understanding of yourself changes. Yet because men are often told that sexual desire should be constant, a change in libido can feel like a loss, even like evidence that something is broken.
What you want from sex can change, too. At one point, sex might be largely about excitement, novelty or simply wanting sex. At another, you might find yourself wanting intimacy, connection, sensuality or playfulness. None of those desires is more or less legitimate. They're simply different.
So if you once wanted sex frequently and now want something slower, more sensual or more connected, you don't necessarily have to see that as losing something. Perhaps you're discovering something new. The question isn't necessarily whether you still want what you wanted ten or twenty years ago. It's whether you're curious enough to discover what you want now.
Think about the times when you've genuinely wanted sex, not when you thought you ought to want it, but when the desire was simply there. Developing your erotic mind can simply mean becoming more aware of your imagination, preferences, sensations and desires. You might discover turn-ons you've never really given yourself permission to notice. Or you might discover that something you once found exciting no longer does much for you.
We tend to notice our brakes because they're inconvenient. We notice when desire disappears, when an erection doesn't arrive, or when we're too distracted to get into sex. But it can be useful to notice what makes the accelerator move.
Because perhaps the question isn't always, “What's wrong with my libido?” Sometimes it might be, “Do I actually know what turns me on?”
Getting to know your own accelerator doesn't mean finding some formula that will make you want sex all the time. It means becoming more curious about your sexuality, and perhaps discovering that what you really want is more interesting than what you thought you were supposed to want.
There is a difference between knowing what turns you off and knowing what turns you on. It might be worth exploring the second one.