The Supposed Disparity of Desire

Challenging the notion that men want sex more than women do

My last intimate relationship was often rocked by the same argument that played out again and again.

“You just don’t care about sex,” my partner complained. “What am I supposed to do when I want it all the time and you don’t?”

I was always shocked by his frustrated proclamation, which was in response to a polite rebuff of his advances. My perspective on the situation was very different: I noticed that he would experience arousal and expect to satisfy it, no matter the location or time of day. It was easy for him — all he had to do was pull down his pants and he could be done in a few minutes if we were being efficient about it.

But I’d have to at least disrobe from the waist down, try to wrangle my wandering thoughts, push aside the deadlines and chores waiting for me, focus, strain, concentrate, make sure I was pleasing him without losing sight of my own orgasm that I knew he would prefer I’d achieve sooner rather than later… And when we were done, I’d be tired and sweaty and have to put my clothes back on, while he’d be fresh and satisfied and only have to pull up his pants and zipper.

So no, as I tried to explain to him, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to have sex. I just didn’t want to stop doing the dishes at 4:30 PM so we could have a quickie against the sink that might end up feeling like more effort than it was worth (at least for me). No, I didn’t want to take dinner off the stove so he could bend me over the dining room table. No, I didn’t want to get sweaty just after my morning shower and end up being late to work so we could make love on the bathroom counter.

It’s not that I didn’t value spontaneity or trying new things or indulging in sexual pleasure when the opportunity arose. But honestly, it often just wasn’t worth it to me. I’d rather wait until we went to bed, until we were already halfway undressed, until I knew I could relax from the day’s tasks and stresses.

He’d cajole and caress sometimes, trying to talk me into it. “Come on,” he’d say. “Take a break from this. Let’s have a little fun.”

But he didn’t seem to understand that “taking a break” was only going to extend my day. It’s not like he ever finished washing the dishes for me after those mid-afternoon sex breaks. He didn’t help me cook dinner after zipping up, or offer to drive me to work, post morning quickie, so I could catch up on tasks while sitting in the car.

My lack of willingness to engage in sex at the drop of a hat was not at all born from a lack of desire — for him or for sexual engagement, in general. In fact, I have always had a very strong sex drive. I find myself thinking about sex to the point of distraction. I become sidetracked at work because it’s so easy for me to get caught up in fantasies. I write about sex both in my nonfiction and fiction work and find that my inspiration and motivation never diminish.

I explained this to him, but he didn’t seem to believe me. I didn’t talk about it, he said. I never mentioned this deep desire, or behaved in a way that illustrated these feelings.

Well, no, of course, I didn’t. I didn’t expect my every desire to be met, therefore, there was no reason to express them. Men, I’ve found, don’t always understand this. They do grow up to believe that their desire is paramount and that it is reasonable to expect fulfillment.

I suspect these very different perspectives go a long way toward understanding why the myth that men experience more sexual desire than women still persists to this day.

I find it frustrating when men complain about our sex drive, or when the media responds with shock and amazement that women are scrabbling for sexy entertainment like Outlander and 50 Shades of Grey. The assumption that fuels both of these scenarios (that women don’t have a strong desire for sex) is incredibly reductive, biased, and insulting.

It is only very recently that women have been given permission (no, that we have given ourselves permission) to voice our desire. And we still do not live in a culture that unanimously supports or protects this expression, which means we still aren’t able to be as vocal or transparent as we would like to be.

Assuming that our silence or lack of advances are indicative of a sex drive that’s consistently lower than a man’s is egregiously false. Finally, research is beginning to confirm that there might not be a desire disparity, after all. As Rachel Nuwar stated in her 2016 article in BBC Future, The Enduring Enigma of Female Sexual Desire:

For decades, researchers bought into society’s belief that men have higher desire than women, since large studies consistently confirmed that finding. But more recent evidence reveals that differences between the sexes may actually be more nuanced or even non-existent, depending on how you define and attempt to measure desire.

Research around sexuality is inherently flawed by our own cultural biases, as was highlighted by a 2011 study conducted by Ohio State University that tried to determine the frequency of sexual thoughts in men vs. women by collecting self-reported data from participants.

Professor of psychology and lead author of the study, Terri Fisher, discovered far more than just the frequency of participants’ sexual thoughts. She found that those who reported feeling comfortable with their sexuality were more likely (unsurprisingly) to think about sex. Further, she states:

People who always give socially desirable responses to questions are perhaps holding back and trying to manage the impression they make on others. In this case, we’re seeing that women who are more concerned with the impression they’re making tend to report fewer sexual thoughts, and that’s because thinking about sexuality is not consistent with typical expectations for women.

Eight years later, though we’ve made great strides in this department, we women are still fighting against the constriction of our culture’s sexual expectations. We’re still arguing with our partners about why we aren’t as interested in sex as they are.

In reality, our lack of desire is the product of so many things:

• We’re busy and stressed out.
• We’re carrying the majority of the invisible workload which means many of us are working the mental-, emotional-, and sometimes physical-equivalent of two full-time jobs.
• Our bodies (and therefore levels of desire) change throughout our monthly cycle.
• We’re exhausted.
• We might be going through a major transition.
• Some of us struggle with body image issues that make it very hard to fully relax during sex or to even feel attractive enough to want to engage in sexual activity.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of what might be causing us to reject our partners’ sexual advances. There could be even more factors at play.

But the point is: We do want sex. We do think about it a lot. There’s just a lot more to it than the simple journey from desire to satisfaction that men generally traverse. Our path is a little more circuitous.

I think often of those arguments with my boyfriend who insisted in frustration that I didn’t think about sex as much as he did. That I didn’t like it or want it as much as he did. I remember how angry those comments made me.

As I would tell him when he came up behind me and tried to initiate sex while I was doing the dishes: the soapy water had made me think of the last time we had showered together. I had been remembering the feel of his lips on my neck, how hot they were, how hot the water was, how easily the soap made my hand slide down his stomach…

That’s what I’d been thinking about while washing those dishes. Sex. With him. Yes, I would’ve loved to have stopped and turned around in his embrace in that moment, accepting his advances, surrendering to the tug of his desire — and my own.

Except for the fact that I wanted to be able to turn off my brain by 8:30 that night, like I wanted to do every night, so I could relax, stop thinking about the day, stop worrying about tomorrow, and yes, maybe even have leisurely sex in our comfortable bed. And if I stopped to have sex mid-chores, then my hopes of ending my day by 8:30 would go unrealized. And worse, I’d end up feeling angry and resentful, spending the rest of my day washing those dishes and the dishes from the dinner I had cooked, cleaning up the kitchen, preparing lunches for the next day, checking the schedule, answering work emails, all while he was sitting in his recliner, playing video games in his post-orgasm haze.

So you see, I’m not interested in the story that women don’t like or want sex as much as men do. It’s no longer an effective argument for nudging me into having sex when I don’t want to. I do want to have sex. I was just thinking about it two minutes ago.

“If you really want to see me express my desire,” I told my partner, “do the dishes from time to time. Make dinner. Help me around the house. I swear, if I walked in here and saw you sweeping the floor, I’d have my hand down your pants before you even realized I’d come into the room.”

Predictably, he didn’t test my theory.

But he didn’t have to. I know myself — how I feel, what I want, what I need. And I know so many of my fellow females feel this way, too.

Don’t tell us that we don’t want sex as much as you. It’s insulting and sexist.

Don’t let yourself believe that, either, and grow hopeless in the perception that you’re always going to want more than your partner can give you. That’s not necessarily true. You might not have any idea how much sex she wants. Hell, she might not even know, if she’s never felt safe or supported enough to express and act upon her desires.

Help her make room for that instead of judging her or despairing over your presumed sexual mismatch. Find out what she needs to be more open, expressive, and active when it comes to initiating and/or participating in sex.

The desire is already there. Your job isn’t to simply realize your own but to create the circumstances in which she can realize hers, as well. You might not get it when you expected it, when you wanted it — but you’ll likely get it more often than you thought possible.

Maybe then we can throw away this tired, sexist notion that women don’t want sex as often as men do.

Yes, actually. We do.

(Author’s note: I understand that there is an increasing number of people who identify as asexual. When I use collective pronouns here, I am simply making generalized statements and in no means wish to disrespect this or any other demographic.)

© Yael Wolfe 2019