The stereotype is that guys tend to have higher sex drives and until recently, I believed it. I never understood the experience of needing to get laid but now I finally do and it’s not pretty.
- I’ve always been in relationships. There are some perks to being a serial monogamist and regular sex is one of them. I’m not really one for casual sex, but loving, connected, meaningful, and sometimes downright dirty sex in a relationship is right up my proverbial alley. Since I’ve rarely been single for more than a few months at a time, sex hasn’t ever really been lacking.
- I’ve never had a problem finding sex when I wanted it. For this reason, I’ve never really experienced a time where sex was off the table for any significant period of time. If I had a partner, he’d pretty much always be up for sex if I was and that made it pretty easy to take it for granted.
- I don’t have a super strong sex drive to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love sex, but I’m not usually the one to initiate. More often than not, it’s my partners who get itchy feet first, so until recently, I never really found myself missing sex. My partner would always initiate long before I got to the point of really needing to get laid.
- Even if I wasn’t having sex, masturbation was always an option. There have of course been times in my life where my partner wasn’t available or I was single for a while, and the mood would strike. It was always easily remedied by some good old-fashioned alone time though. I even discovered the joy of masturbation in and of itself and that kept me plenty busy.
- Suddenly, I find myself in the midst of a dry spell. Right now, because of various external factors, I find myself in the midst of a dry spell despite being in a relationship. I’ve never really been confronted with this before and it’s like I don’t know what to do with myself.
- It’s like a flip has switched in my brain. Suddenly I feel like a predator, out in search of sex wherever I can find it. My partner and I are in an open relationship which means sex with other people is fair game. With this in mind, my brain is going nuts. It’s like I can’t look at a man without getting turned on. My body is constantly in a state of low-level arousal and the slightest thing would set me off.
- As it turns out, sex isn’t a drive. According to research into female sexual desire, sex drive isn’t really a thing, at least not the way we’ve been taught. Instead, a lot of women experience desire in response to sexual contexts rather than being the ones to initiate it. This means there’s no such thing as having a “low” sex drive—just more responsive or more spontaneous. While I might usually fall into the responsive category, when that’s not an option, I seem to switch over to spontaneous, which is how most men experience sexual desire.
- The context is right but the circumstances are not. Since I’ve discovered this short-cut to my libido, I’ve possibly become even more frustrated. I’m in the midst of this highly erotic context—needing to initiate, rather than being wooed by a lover—but my situation is putting up a brick wall. I’m not into casual sex, so even all that eye-candy isn’t doing much more than dangling a carrot just out of reach.
- Self-pleasure just isn’t cutting it. In the classic words of Greenday, “Masturbation’s lost its fun.” I love delighting myself, but after a while, solo play gets a little monotonous. And let’s be honest, a dildo is no substitute for an actual human being. I’m craving a partner and there’s nothing more to it.
- I’m starting to understand how guys must feel. This whole saga has given me a whole new appreciation for the dudes in my life. Until this experience, I never got it when guys described the plight of having sex on the mind all the time. Now I totally do and honestly, it’s really annoying. While sex-fueled thoughts are no excuse for some of the messed-up shit guys do, being in this state of mind at least helps me empathize with the “need to get laid” mindset that men seem to know all too well.