I get clients asking me everyday, “Is it me?” “Am I abnormal?” “What do I do to increase or decrease my sexual desire?”
As I predominantly work with trauma and a lot of times direct or indirect sexual trauma survivers and/or their partners. A lot of them have extremely low or no sexual desire.
Well, for indirect sexual trauma survivers, what I’m going to say may be contraversial. I’m only speaking for my small number of clients, this may not apply to everyone. Most of my clients suffer from indirect sexual traumas, partially we can blame sex negative culture. A lot of sexual shaming or body shaming started early childhood from almost everyone…
So I tell my clients,
your low or no sexual desire is as adaptive then (when traumas happened) and now (we’re still suffering from toxic or negative sex culture) as it should be.
It is the lack of safety and lack of pleasure in sexual or non-sexual realms of our lifes to blame, NOT you.
As a foodie, I’ve never worried about losing desire for food…What I do is simple, keep planning special or everyday pleasurable food experiences. And if I do not have energy to do all the planning, I trust my foodie friends and food positive society to cultivate a safe and pleasurable environment.
However, if I do reflect on limited amount of times when I do not have food desire, it’s either when I feel under the weather, or when the people I’m going to eat with, the foods I’m going to eat or the environment I’m going into completely turned me off (lack of pleasure). Then I won’t have any longing or craving to eat, which is completely the result of lacking pleasure. It's a 100% adaptive response to whatever the context I am in.
We shouldn’t blame on “disordered” desire for bad sex.
Lack of desire didn’t make sex bad, it’s lack of safety and pleasure, lack of sex positive culture.
Stop overthinking or pathologize desire. Oh man, now I have the “desire” to criticize our pathological ways to label anxiety, OCD, depression and everything else on DSM as the problem....
All these “disorders” are NOT just “disorders”, they are or they were adaptations to our environment at some point. Or you can even name them as our “protectors”
Imagine without low desire to stop your erotic energy in a NOT so safe, respectful, consentual, cuious, playful, attractive, pleasurable context.
Stop blaming people with low or high desire, stop forcing these people to expand or minimize their sexual needs when they’re not ready, blame our sex negative society may work but society cannot move until a lot of us starting to breakthrough the so called “norm”. We all know that we cannot force others to do it with or for us.
So how about sharing a little bit of our societal responsibility or burden, instead of wanting our partners to have the right amount of desire for us or for society to figure out the right way to make a sex positive and body positive for everyone, we challenge ourselves a little bit starting today.
Contribute 1%, and only 1% to help building a safer and more pleasurable sexual experience for you or your loved one(s) today.
If you agree, what would you do?