How Normal Is Your Sex Drive?

How often should we want sex? There is no simple answer, says Dr Emily Nagoski.

- Dr Emily Nagoski

Doesn’t she like me anymore?

When he touches me like that, I  used to love it, but now it’s annoying!

Where did my libido go?

I’m still madly in love with him and I want to have sex, but I just...don’t!

The questions you’ve just read in those bubbles are only a handful of the ones I get asked about sex. As a sex educator and the author of a new book, Come As You Are, about the science behind sex, pretty much every question I’ve been asked boils down to the same thing: ‘Am I normal?’ And the answer is often the same. ‘Yes, you’re normal. He’s normal. That’s normal, too.’

In fact, over the past 20 years, I’ve become convinced that the single biggest issue causing desire problems is that women get too focused on whether they want sex, and forget to pay attention to whether they actually like the sex that they’re having. So how can you shift your focus and maximise your sexual potential? It’s actually a lot easier than you might think...

Why Sex is Not a Drive

The idea that we each have a set level of desire ranging from ‘nope’ to ‘gimme more’ is kind of basic. You might assume that apart from fluctuations depending on the newness of a relationship, your level of interest in sex is fairly static.

But what if I told you that the science behind your sex drive can more accurately be described as a dual-control model of sexual response—and that it’s really not a ‘drive’ at all?

The dual-control model says that the sexual-response mechanism in your brain has two parts. First, there is an accelerator that responds to all of the sexually relevant things that are in your environment and sends a signal that says, ‘turn on!’ (this could be his smell or touch, or even the feel of denim).