Sexual desire doesn’t follow expectations

“The assumption that men have higher sexual desire than women overall is simply not consistently supported by the data in the context of relationships,” write Kristen Mark and Julie Lasslo in a new article that looked at 64 studies on sexual desire written since the 1970s.

The authors say desire ebbs and flows between both partners for a variety of reasons, many of them more related to societal expectations. Men who feel insecure about a relationship might be less ready to initiate sex, while desire in both partners can be affected by such factors as childbirth or illness.

“We’ve got these gendered expectations around, they’re doing a disservice to both men and women,” said Mark, who directs the University of Kentucky’s Sexual Health Promotion Lab. “When men have lower sexual desire, they’re not meeting society’s expectation to always be ready for sex. And then for women, it’s also problematic, because when women have more desire than their partners, it can feel foreign to them for a variety of reasons.”

Mark is also interested in their findings about sexual expectations for long-term relationships.

“The idea that for you to expect your sexual desire to be the same forever — you set yourself up for disappointment and that can im- pact relationship satisfaction,” she said. “One should expect their sexual desire will change throughout a re- lationship, that doesn’t mean the relationship is doomed. It just indicates that sexual desire is quite complex.”