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| People playing Scrabble. Image source. |
Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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[content note: sex]
We are now in chapter 7 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], which is about libido differences. In this post, I'll cover the first half of the chapter: pages 121 to 130. Specifically, it's about how purity culture/ evangelical Christianity commonly teaches that men want sex ALL THE TIME, and women basically don't like sex. And how this teaching causes a lot of problems (and also is just not true).
This post is mostly about how I just don't understand the concept of sex drive. So don't take it as me criticizing "The Great Sex Rescue." If we imagine a universe where "sex drive" is a real thing that exists, then I would say that almost everything "The Great Sex Rescue" says in this chapter sounds very reasonable and is probably correct. (Until it gets to the part about HSDD.) I am way too asexual to be able to tell if we actually live in such a universe or not. Probably yes? Because everyone talks about sex drive like it's a real thing, so I suppose it is?
So, let's get started.
So, it's about libido, also known as sex drive. I really don't understand the concept of sex drive. I really feel quite baffled by the way people talk about it. I am asexual and I seem to not have a sex drive. (???) Based on what I've pieced together from other people's descriptions, it seems to work like this:
Sex drive is about how often a person feels a physical "need" to have sex. A "high sex drive" means a high frequency of feeling a need to have sex, and "low sex drive" means low frequency. Apparently the way it works is, every so often, a person's sex drive will prompt them to want to have sex, and if their partner's sex drive is also prompting their partner, at the same time, then they have sex. (The partner could be prompted by a "responsive" sex drive, we'll talk about that.)
And apparently, the way people talk about it, it seems like people believe that the prompting from one's sex drive is a necessary prerequisite to having sex. (???) Like people always talk about "how can I increase my sex drive?" because they want to have more sex, but apparently they can't just simply have more sex, they need to coax their sex drive into prompting them first, and then they can have sex. This is extremely confusing to me. (And this was the main reason I was so confused by the book "Come As You Are.")
The way I see it, it makes a lot more sense to just decide when you want to have sex and when you don't. Like, just decide based on what you want and what fits your schedule. It sounds horribly inconvenient to have to structure one's behavior around these biological "needs" which could randomly occur at any time.
Is there some reason that people believe they can't just have sex because they want to have sex, and instead they have to wait for their "sex drive" to kick in and prompt them to have sex? I'm just brainstorming here- maybe the sex isn't as good when you just intellectually choose to do it, rather than doing it from a biological "need"? Maybe people have trouble getting aroused when they're not being prompted by their sex drive? Wait, maybe the "prompting" actually is arousal????? Omg, what is the connection between sex drive and arousal? I never even thought about that!
I mean, maybe there is some reason that sex is better when it's prompted by sex drive, rather than just because you decide to have sex. I personally don't have the experience necessary to make a comparison.
Actually, I do have one anecdote: A few years ago, when I was pregnant, sometimes I felt like I really wanted to masturbate or have sex. Maybe that's what sex drive is. It was because of the pregnancy hormones; pregnancy hormones are wild. Anyway, it was horribly inconvenient, because what if my husband didn't happen to want to have sex at the exact same time? Feels really unworkable to me, to have that always be the basis for when one ends up having sex. I'm glad that only happened to me in that one specific period of time.
Really makes a lot more sense to say to your partner "Do you want to have sex this weekend? Which day do you have time?" (But apparently people think that's "unromantic" or something? Apparently it's more romantic when you're in the middle of doing something else and then you get interrupted and you end up having sex? Like I said, baffling.)
Okay, so, we've established that I do not understand sex drive. Let's actually talk about "The Great Sex Rescue" now!
This chapter starts out talking about how American parents have so much trouble trying to convince their kids to eat broccoli, but French parents don't seem to have that problem. This is because Americans act like there are certain foods kids will like, and certain foods that kids aren't expected to like, whereas French parents treat all food as something that kids would like. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy- if you expect your kids to not like broccoli, and you say "oh just eat a few bites of broccoli, then you can have dessert," then it's likely your kids will understand that they're not supposed to like it, and so, they won't.
In the same way, the book says, conservative Christians don't expect that women will like sex. They talk about it like it's something that wives are required to do for their husbands, that men need it and women don't, that wives have to do it even if they are in pain or tired. Trying to convince women to have sex with arguments like "it doesn't take that long!" instead of anything that hints that sex can actually feel good for women. And all of this adds up to women believing that they won't like sex, and then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
My experience with this is sort of mixed. I was taught 2 completely contradictory things in purity culture:
- Sex is the greatest feeling EVER. Everyone wants it, everyone is tempted by it, everyone needs to enact rules in their dating relationships so they don't fall into the trap of having sex. It bonds people together, and it can feel so amazing and addictive that it causes people to stay in bad relationships, and this is why you must not have sex before marriage. And if you wait till marriage, oh wow, your wedding night will be AMAZING. It will be THE BEST THING EVER. It will be indescribable, mind-blowing. Sex is the highest form of communication, the greatest expression of love. It's truly knowing someone, the highest form of intimacy. It's amazing and everyone wants it. (And this applies to both men and women.)
- Women don't really like sex. But, men need it, so wives have to do it for their husbands. This is a central part of what it means to be a wife- you have to have sex that you don't want. Even if it's painful, even if you're really stressed or tired, even if you have 3 kids and they've been driving you crazy the entire day- men need it, and women just can't possibly understand how much men need it, but men need it so much that it overrides all of those excuses.
Yes, really, purity culture teaches both of these things. Uh, but, how to reconcile them? I guess maybe you could say that sex outside of marriage is tempting and exciting for everyone, but sex in marriage (after the honeymoon) is unenjoyable for women? Maybe that would be a way of believing both of those things? I don't really know...
But anyway, way back when I was young and didn't know anything, I thought I had a high sex drive. Because I'm generally enthusiastic and passionate about a lot of things in life, and I have a lot of romantic attraction, so doesn't that mean I'll be super-excited about sex, when the time comes? (Spoiler: lol no, it doesn't.)
(I remember reading a reddit thread one time, where a woman asked "is it weird if I don't masturbate?" and people replied "no, not weird, it's fine, some people just have a lower sex drive." And I was like, personally offended that people would think that not masturbating means someone has a low sex drive, ahem, I do not masturbate because it's a SIN, but I still have a high sex drive because obviously sex is great and everyone wants it and my wedding night will be mind-blowing, this is God's plan for me. Spoiler: lol if you don't masturbate, and you never even wanted to masturbate, never even thought about it, that means you have a low sex drive.)
So I was taught both of these points in purity culture- that sex is amazing and everyone likes it, but also, that women (married women specifically???) don't like sex. I didn't really pay much attention to the second part- Christians said wives are required to have sex, and I thought, "well that won't be a problem at all, because sex is amazing and I'll be totally into it." But then, after I did start having sex and it was painful and confusing, I already had this internalized belief that explained it- women don't want sex, but they have to give it to their husbands anyway.
And maybe that happens to a lot of women. Maybe they have sex for the first time, and it's painful, and instead of thinking "let's figure out how to do this so it's enjoyable and not painful", they think "well, sex is painful for women but we have to do it anyway, that's just the way it is." And that's the self-fulfilling prophecy that this book is talking about. Yes, that feels very real.
And I guess that would have happened to me too, except that it was so painful and impossible, that I was actually unable to fulfill my "wifely duty." It was either give up on PIV [penis-in-vagina] sex entirely, or spend a lot of time looking for answers. I went looking for answers, and that's how I found out about asexuality, and later, vaginismus. (See: Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality) But if it had only been a little bit painful, and I could have forced myself to just keep doing it anyway... then yeah, that's what would have happened. I would have thought that's just the way it is for women, and I have to do it because "men need it." Thank nonbinary God that I found out about asexuality instead.
(Which is also why I'm so concerned about the straight women aces... how many women out there fit the definition of asexual, and would benefit from learning about asexuality, but they just don't know about it? Straight people are less likely to come across resources that talk about asexuality, compared to people who already have some kind of connection to the LGBTQ community. I worry about the straights.)
Next, we have a section where "The Great Sex Rescue" introduces the concepts of spontaneous or responsive libido:
Could part of the problem be that we don't actually understand what libido is? Watch any TV show or movie, and the plot when it comes to sex is always the same: The couple is together, and they're panting. So they start to kiss, they take off their clothes, and they end up in bed. That's basically it, right? They pant, and then they kiss, and then the clothes come off, and then they're in bed.
Pant. Kiss. Clothes. Bed.
That's what we think libido looks like.
But what if that's not the way libido works for many people?
I gotta say, as an asexual I have never seen any sex scenes in movies that felt realistic to me, so I'm kinda lost here. It seems like this is directed at readers who expect that sex should always look like what it looks like in the movies, but, lollll, I can't even imagine. (Like... watching a sex scene and then thinking "yes, ideally sex should happen to me in this way" instead of "what on earth is going on, none of this makes any sense." lolll I can't even imagine.)
But I guess yeah, if that's a thing that people think, it's good to tell them that sex doesn't have to look like that.
Some people have a felt need for sex that leaves them physically frustrated if they don't have sex. That's what we call spontaneous libido. But some people have more of a responsive libido. Once they begin making love, arousal kicks in. In our follow-up survey, we found that among women who are reliably aroused by the time sex is over, 29.1% were aroused when they started, but 70.9% weren't yet aroused but knew they would get there. If libido is simply the ability to desire and enjoy sex, then just because you're not aroused first does not mean you don't have a libido; it just means yours may work differently than your spouse's.
Then there's a graph that compares 4 different categories of married Christian women- "Women were asked, 'Before sex, I feel...'"
- already sexually aroused
- not yet sexually aroused but I know I will get there when we're having sex
- not yet sexually aroused and I am unsure as to whether or not I will get aroused during sex
- not aroused and I know I will not become aroused during sex
The contrast between spontaneous and responsive libidos shows that there are many different "normals" when it comes to sexual desire. You aren't made wrong if your libido manifests differently than your spouse's. But what often happens is that those with responsive libidos say to themselves, I'll initiate sex when I begin to pant. So they wait to pant. And nothing really happens, so they figure, "not tonight" and go stream a few more episodes of Law & Order. But if they had just jumped in, they likely would have started panting. We don't have to operate like the pant-kiss-clothes-bed scenario. It's okay if one of you is like that and the other is more kiss-clothes-bed-pant, or even bed-kiss-clothes-pant. As long as you're both panting at some point, and you're both enjoying yourselves, that's perfectly healthy sex.
One thing I'm really enjoying about this book is how it goes into detail, explaining things that nobody else bothers to explain because it's assumed that everyone intuitively gets it. You know, things that aces are always extremely confused about, because no we don't intuitively understand them, and everyone refuses to explain. (Like the chapter that explained what people mean by "one thing leads to another.") For example, this whole thing about movie sex scenes and "panting"- I'm starting to get the idea that panting means arousal (????). Like... oh... is THAT what all those movie scenes were attempting to portray?
So... I'm confused about this hypothetical person who thinks, "I'll initiate sex when I begin to pant" and therefore never has sex. I'm more familiar with the idea of a wife initiating sex she doesn't want because she believes "men need it" and she has to. In other words, she doesn't "pant" but of course she believes she should have sex anyway- her lack of "panting" is not an excuse. This hypothetical person who does NOT initiate sex is perhaps influenced by a slightly different variety of purity culture than I was.
But anyway, if they don't "pant", and therefore never have sex, I don't see a problem with that? Like... someone doesn't feel like they want to have sex, so they don't have sex, this seems completely fine, why would this be a problem? I suppose there could be a few reasons why the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" might see this as a problem:
- Maybe this person would actually really enjoy having sex, and it's unfortunate that they're missing out
- Maybe this person's spouse is unhappy about not having sex, and if the "responsive libido" partner would just go along with it anyway, they would both have a good experience- the spouse is needlessly missing out on something that's really really important to them
- Maybe having sex is an essential part of marriage- they need to do it in order to have a good and healthy marriage
My asexual opinions on these:
Reason 1: Yeah maybe, but that's something the person has to decide for themself. You can't really advise people "oh try this thing, you'll enjoy it" because who knows, if they're not naturally interested in it, then there's not really any good evidence one way or the other on whether they'll benefit from trying it.
But more importantly, I am just SO CONFUSED by the idea of a person who has had sex before and enjoyed it, but thinks they it's simply not possible to have sex again unless they first feel some nebulous "panting"/arousal feeling. Are there really people sitting around saying "I would like to have sex, but I can't actually do anything about it until my body starts telling me to, and who knows when that will be, oh well"???
Surely I'm missing something here, right?
Reason 2: So in this case, the lack of sex isn't a problem in and of itself. It's the mismatch between what the 2 partners want, which creates the problem. So, talk to each other!
And again, I'm very confused at the idea that one partner might say "it's really important to me to have sex" and the other will say "well yes, I also like to have sex, and I wish I could have sex with you, but unfortunately I am not 'panting' right now so it's simply not possible." ??????
Surely I'm missing something, right?
Reason 3: Well as an asexual I say LOLOLOLOLOL. Yeah this one's just not true.
You know what it sounds like, when I hear about "responsive sexual desire"? (I first heard about it from the book "Come As You Are"- that book talks about it A LOT.) It sounds like this scenario: Let's imagine that your friends ask you to play Scrabble with them. And you don't really feel like playing Scrabble, so you want to say no. But you go along with it anyway, perhaps because you feel it's good to spend time with your friends. And then, when you're in the middle of playing Scrabble, you're having a great time and you wouldn't want to stop, and you're glad you let them talk you into it.
But this could apply to ANYTHING. Anything that's "you didn't feel like doing it, but once you get into it then you enjoy it and you're glad you did it." Exercise. Reading a book. Going shopping. Making art. (And if I can say something about depression here- in my experience when I had depression, EVERYTHING is this. Any productive, healthy activity, like I hated the thought of getting up and doing it, but if I could force myself to do it, then it really would make me feel better.) It's an inertia thing.
So I just don't understand... why is "responsive desire" for sex discussed like it's an innate biological fact, but people don't label themselves like "I have spontaneous desire to play Settlers of Catan"/ "I have responsive desire to play Settlers of Catan"? Like this just seems like a completely normal thing to me, that you might not feel like doing something, but then once you start doing it, you enjoy it... but the way "responsive sexual desire" is talked about, it's like... it's like people feel it's important to label it because they didn't expect sex to work that way? Or like, when it's responsive desire for sex, that's a primitive-level biological drive, whereas for other activities it's a higher-level psychology thing?
I guess I can sum up my confusion like this: People talk about "responsive sexual desire" like it's a revolutionary, groundbreaking idea. But, hasn't everyone experienced "responsive desire" for all sorts of other activities? Why are people acting like sex is somehow different?
Maybe I'm missing something, and sex somehow is different. (This reminds me of reading blog posts from aces and aros that say, "I don't understand how romance is different from friendship? The activities people want to do with their romantic partners, I want to do with my friends... maybe romance isn't a real thing at all????" and I'm like... I'm asexual but I have SO MUCH romantic attraction, yeah romance is a real thing. So probably I'm doing the same thing now, missing some huge important fact about sex drive or whatever.)
But hey, apparently the concept of "responsive sexual desire" is really useful for a lot of women. So, good for them! Uh... if anyone has insight on this, feel free to share in the comment section.
And, actually, let me come back to this question that I asked in my "Reason 1" section: "Are there really people sitting around saying 'I would like to have sex, but I can't actually do anything about it until my body starts telling me to, and who knows when that will be, oh well'???" Actually, I'm in some social media groups for women in long-term relationships with men, and people really do post things like "I want to increase my sex drive." I don't get it! If you want to have sex with your husband, then go ahead and have sex with him, why do you need to "increase your sex drive" first??? If you don't want to have sex, then don't! Nothing wrong with that!
The way it reads to me is, these women feel like they *should* be having more sex, but they don't actually want to. So they're trying to make themselves want to. But, whyyy??? NOT COOL how they've internalized the idea that they're not having sex "enough" or that something is wrong with not wanting sex. (And I could be misinterpreting this... I know it's a very common asexual experience to incorrectly assume "everyone is just having sex because of peer pressure and they don't really want to." So.)
Maybe what they mean is "when we were younger, sex was really great, but now when we have sex, I don't have those same feelings any more, and I wish I did, how do I recreate those feelings again?" Now that makes sense to me. And maybe for most people, sex is more enjoyable when it's prompted by sex drive, rather than just intellectually deciding you want to have sex. Maybe that's what they're getting at? I have no idea.
Or maybe, what they mean is "my husband wants to have sex but I don't really like to, are there ways that we can make sex a better experience for me?" I definitely understand that. I don't see what sex drive has anything to do with it though.
ANYWAY. I don't have "spontaneous" or "responsive" sex drive at all. I just have sex when I decide I want to, for various reasons which honestly make A LOT MORE SENSE than "my body is randomly pushing me to do this thing." (???) And when I decided I wanted that, the next step was to learn how to have sex, which actually was really difficult and took a long time because I'm asexual af. Getting arousal to happen mechanically by stimulating with fingers or a sex toy. Using lube. It works, and those are the things I recommend to aces who want to figure out how to have sex.
I don't get why people talk about this like it's just supposed to happen "naturally" and it's wrong to actually, ya know, learn it like you'd learn any other skill. When I first started IDing as asexual, the biggest benefit was I was able to stop searching all my feelings and desires, to try to find the ones I could follow in order to result in sex without me really having to do much thinking. I don't have any such feelings, it turns out, and it's really great that I could just accept that fact, and then take the next step of actually planning out analytically how to do the research and figure out how to have sex. Instead of hoping that somehow it would mysteriously happen "naturally" just because I love my partner or whatever.
Wow I am shocked at how long this blog post has gotten [editor's note: she is actually not shocked]. Let's see what else "The Great Sex Rescue" has to say.
The next section is about gender stereotypes. Christian marriage resources always assume that men want sex way more than women. Men need sex, and women don't like sex at all. Men have spontaneous libido and women have responsive libido. All these things are taught like they're *always* true about *everyone*. But, "The Great Sex Rescue" points out, these are just generalizations. Even if men have a higher sex drive than women on average, that doesn't mean EVERY straight couple will have a man with a higher sex drive than the woman. There are plenty of couples where the woman has a higher sex drive.
And in evangelical culture, women who are in that situation feel completely lost. Like, she's in a situation that wasn't ever supposed to exist. Or maybe she'll think she's not attractive enough, and not satisfying her husband's sexual needs well enough, and that's why he doesn't seem to want her as much as he "should." "The Great Sex Rescue" points out how messed up this whole ideology is. And also, there's a section on how harmful it is to men, when Christians teach that men don't need emotional connection, they only need to ejaculate frequently enough and they're good to go.
But, uh, there's this:
Libido exists on a spectrum, and a couple will occupy two points of that spectrum. One will be higher, one will be lower, or the two will overlap. On the extreme ends of that spectrum, we cross over into dysfunction: at some point libido becomes so high that we have sex addiction issues, or so low that it disappears into hypoactive sexual desire disorder, often combined with anorgasmia (see fig. 7.2). [Fig. 7.2 is a one-dimensional spectrum showing "Normal libido" in the middle, "Hypoactive sexual desire disorder" on the left end, and "Sex addiction" on the right end.]
Unfortunately, much Christian teaching treats women who are lower on the spectrum than their husbands as if they are already past that cutoff point, even if they're not.
And then a few paragraphs later, there's this question for the reader to think about:
CHECK-IN: In your marriage, have you felt that your spouse has an abnormal libido-- like there's something wrong with them? Do you think that's actually true, or is it just a normal difference in felt need?
So, umm, this is the part that I have a problem with.
For a bit of background on hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD): Many people in the asexual community are very uncomfortable with the existence of this as a possible diagnosis. It's basically treating asexuality like a medical problem that needs to be fixed. Remember when people thought homosexuality was a disorder, and tried to "fix" gay people with reparative therapy? How about we don't do that to aces? (See these blog posts from other aces: Journal Club: Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder? and Drug Watch: New Addyi Marketing Campaign, “Find My Spark” and a brief primer on hsdd & flibanserin)
First of all, let me say, I understand the point they're trying to make in these paragraphs, and the reasons why. When a couple has "mismatched sex drives", people often act like it's the woman who is the problem. Like the man is the objective standard that the woman should be measured against. Like the problem is that her sex drive is too low, not that his sex drive is too high. Not cool.
The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" are saying, it's not right that people treat a wife's "lower sex drive" like it's automatically the problem, when she's in a totally average range for women. Okay, yes, so far I agree. They're saying that, as long as both people are in the "normal" range in the middle of the spectrum- not so high that it gets into sex addiction, and not so low that it gets into HSDD- then they can make it work. Even if their sex drives aren't exactly the same, they are able to be compatible with each other.
But, they're saying, if your sex drive is wayyy too high, or wayyy too low, then yes YOU are the problem, there's something wrong with you, you need to change.
Uh.
Let me offer a different take on this:
If your "sex drive" is extremely high, or extremely low, the issue is that it's difficult to find a partner who is compatible with you. If you do find a partner who is basically in the same range (or you find that you're happy with an open relationship or some other arrangement like that), then, that's great, no problem at all! So there's nothing inherently wrong with this.
And, I would say, you should figure out if you're "sexually compatible" before you decide to get married.
But here's the problem: The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" believe you shouldn't have sex before marriage. So... there's no way to know if you're sexually compatible with your partner or not. I suppose that there may be some indicators that can help you kinda guess if you have a high or low sex drive... and I know there are lots of aces out there who are very confident that they never want to have sex, even though they haven't experienced it before. But that didn't work for me... like I said, I always assumed I had a high sex drive, lolololol. I didn't find out that PIV sex made no sense until I actually tried it. And I'm really glad my husband and I had sex before marriage, because blah, imagine if I had to wait that much longer to figure out I'm asexual.
I think what's going on in this section of "The Great Sex Rescue" is... okay I'm going to be very blunt here... imagine if you are a normal person, and you fall in love and decide to get married, and of course you don't have sex before marriage. And then once you get married, you, a normal person, find out that your spouse is way off the extreme end of the sex drive spectrum. Your spouse is hypersexual, or asexual. Like, what on earth, this is so unfair to you, a normal person. If you had just married another normal person, you could have made it work; even if your sex drives were different, you still could have been compatible. But, oh geez, something is wrong with your spouse, and there's no way you could have known about it beforehand, this is so unfair! And obviously it's your spouse who's the problem, because you are a normal person.
If people aren't allowed to have sex before marriage, then you have to treat people who end up being sexually incompatible with most everyone else like they are the problem. If everyone was "normal", and people didn't have sex before marriage, then after they get married these normal people will discover that their sex drives are different, but not that different, so they can still be compatible.
If people aren't allowed to have sex before marriage, there is just no room for people who are sexually incompatible with most everyone else.
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| Gif from "Star Trek: First Contact." Data says, "Captain, I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say, to hell with our orders." Image source. |
To hell with that. Be queer! Know yourself! Try out a hundred different microlabels if you have to. Know what you want, know what's important to you in a relationship and what's not, and then communicate with your partner(s)! There's nothing wrong with high sex drive or low sex drive or no sex drive. The only problem is if it's incompatible with your partner, so talk to your partner and figure that out! And some people find that they need to break up because of this incompatibility- that's reality, unfortunately, but it's good to figure that out before marriage.
Ugh, this whole "abstinence until heterosexual marriage, and then compulsory sex in marriage" is such a SCAM.
All right, that's the first half of chapter 7 of "The Great Sex Rescue." To sum up: I'm asexual, and the whole concept of "sex drive" makes no sense to me. But I definitely agree with the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" when they critique the common Christian marriage teaching that men always want sex, and women don't like sex. That teaching is definitely harmful. The part I take issue with, in this chapter, is when it implies that everything in the "normal" range for sex drive is acceptable, but when you start getting into the "HSDD" range, then there's something wrong with you.
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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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