He got the sitter. You shaved your legs in the shower. The place had the good lighting, and the fish was absolutely scrumptious.
You sat down across from him wanting to feel something. The wine came, the starter came. Your body stayed exactly where it had been all week. Shut. Polite. A slight tightness in the jaw, in the neck, in the shoulders.
Then the drive home, and backs turned to each other in bed.
I talk about that evening in You Booked the Date Night and Still Felt Nothing, because so many of you have lived it. The whole plan rests on one story about desire: if it were right, it would just arrive. That story describes one of the two types of desire. For a lot of bodies, the wanting runs the other way round.
What is spontaneous desire?
Spontaneous desire is wanting that arrives before anything has happened. A thought, a glance, and the wanting is already there.
It is the version most of us were taught. For a long time it was treated as the only real kind, so anyone whose wanting did not arrive that way assumed something had gone wrong with them.
What does responsive desire mean?
Responsive desire means the wanting arrives second. Touch comes first, or closeness, or the right context, and desire grows out of what is already underway.
I call this your Desire Style. It is the order the wanting arrives in, and it sits alongside your Touch Pattern and your Pleasure Language as one of the ways you are wired.
Safety is the switch that turns it back on. Once your body has been shown that it is safe, desire can come back again.
Responsive desire vs spontaneous desire: how do they compare?
They differ in what comes first, and in what waiting does to you.
| Spontaneous desire | Responsive desire | |
|---|---|---|
| What comes first | The wanting | Touch, closeness or context |
| What sets it off | A thought or a glance | Something already underway |
| What waiting to “feel like it” does | Nothing to wait for, it is already there | You wait for something that was always going to come second |
Rosemary Basson first documented the reversed order in 2000, from research with women, in a circular model where closeness and stimulation can come before the wanting. Emily Nagoski carried it into the mainstream with Come As You Are, and the figure she cites is roughly 30% of women and about 5% of men running mainly responsive, with responsive desire becoming more common after the first six to twelve months of a relationship. For decades a body that wanted second was filed under a disorder, and Basson’s model places it where it belongs, as a normal variant of how desire works.
Which type of desire do I have?
You can usually tell by what happens when you wait. Notice which of these sounds like you.
- You rarely think about sex out of nowhere, and you enjoy it once it has started. That leans responsive.
- A thought or a glance is enough to get you wanting. That leans spontaneous.
- Your wanting used to arrive on its own and now turns up later, after closeness. That shift is common after the early months of a relationship, and expected for a lot of bodies in their 40s, 50s and 60s.
None of these is better. Each one simply tells you which door to use.
What do I do if my desire is responsive?
Stop waiting to feel like it first, and set up the conditions the wanting can follow. This is the order I teach.
- Touch Base® first. Thumb to forefinger, feel the ridges, say “I am safe right now”, and hold for two minutes.
- Swap the date night for a date morning. At the end of the night you are tired. Plan between 45 and 90 minutes earlier in the day.
- Set up the room. Both of you clean. One person gets the room ready, tidy, with the music out.
- Start with touch that has no destination. The only job is to feel safe.
- Let the wanting arrive in its own order. When your body knows it is safe and it turns hot, go for it.
Desire only comes to a body that trusts its no will be honoured. I wrote about that in The Body Does Not Open on Command. If your wanting has gone quieter with menopause, this answer goes further.
Picture another year of booking the table and waiting for the wanting to arrive first. Then picture one slow morning where the touch comes first, and you let your body answer.