For years, individuals and couples have walked into my office saying the same sentence in different forms:

“I don’t know what happened to my desire.”
“I love my partner, but I feel nothing, I have no desire.”
“Maybe something is wrong with me.”

Behind these words lies a profound misunderstanding — one that causes unnecessary suffering in relationships.

We use the word desire to describe three different systems: drive, arousal, and actual sexual desire or libido. But these systems are not the same, and confusing them leads people to believe they are “broken” when, in reality, the issue is simply misidentified.

Episode 6 of Beyond Love makes the effort to bring clarity: To understand desire in comparison to drive and sexual arousal — how it works, why it goes quiet, and how to reconnect with it — we must distinguish these three systems.

1. Sexual Drive: The Biological Pulse

Drive is the most primitive of the three systems. It is purely biological, hormonally influenced, and evolutionarily designed to ensure reproduction. It is the “need” or the impulse to have sex with any suitable partner.

Research from Masters & Johnson, Helen Singer Kaplan, and contemporary sexologists shows:

• Drive is homeostatic — it rises and falls like hunger or thirst.
• It is not relational; it does not care who the partner is.
• It can be high, low, or variable across the lifespan.
• Many adults have a perfectly normal sexual drive, even if they report “low desire.”
• Drive is the body’s readiness, not the mind’s wanting. It explains why someone can be physically capable of sex yet feel erotically disconnected.

Drive is a biological impulse. Desire is psychological energy. They are not interchangeable, although closely related.

2. Arousal: The Body’s Reaction

Arousal is the physiological response — lubrication, erection, increased heart rate, and genital blood flow.

Research from Erick Janssen, Meredith Chivers, Ellen Laan, and Pfaus shows:

• Arousal can be triggered mechanically (touch and stimulation), even without desire.
• It can also fail to activate when a person wants sex but is anxious, distracted, stressed, or emotionally disconnected.
• Arousal is influenced by the nervous system, especially the balance between anxiety (“the brake” -sympathetic activation) and relaxation (“the accelerator” -parasympathetic activation).

In other words:

Arousal is the body’s “yes,” not the mind’s “want.”

People often mistake arousal for desire — or lack of arousal for lack of desire — which creates confusion.

3. Desire: The Mind’s Orientation Toward Pleasure and Meaning

This is where most misunderstandings occur.

In the early 2000s, Rosemary Basson reframed many women’s sexual experiences as “responsive desire,” and Emily Nagoski popularized this concept, illuminating how the body responds to context.

While this framework has helped normalize many women’s experiences, it has led some to believe:

• That desire must always follow pleasure
• That desire is purely contextual
• That if there is no trigger, there is no desire
• That desire responds to context

But the science is more nuanced.

Desire is not reactive — desire is generative.

Desire is:

• an inner orientation
• a psychological movement
• a sense of aliveness and wanting
• a meaning-making process
• a relationship with one’s erotic identity

My work adds that desire itself is not created by context — it becomes accessible when internal and external conditions allow it to emerge. Conditions don’t create desire; they allow desire to emerge.

Research from Basson, Brotto, Dewitte, and Pfaus confirms:

• Desire can occur without arousal.
• Desire can be dormant yet intact.
• Desire is deeply connected to imagination, identity, emotional space, and self-perception.
• Desire becomes inaccessible — not absent — under chronic stress, resentment, over-familiarity, anxiety, or lack of erotic self-expression.

My theoretical framework fits here:
Desire is inherent energy — its expression is shaped by context, but its origin is not.

This is why a person can say:

“I still have desire inside me… I just can’t access it.”

And clinically, this is exactly what we see.

Why Desire Goes Quiet — Even When Love Is Strong?

Most people assume that desire fades because:

• Hormones changed
• Attraction declined
• Something is wrong with them or the relationship
• Aging, menopause

But research shows a different picture:

Desire becomes quiet when the mind that creates desire becomes overloaded.

This happens when:

• The self stops feeling desirable
• Imagination becomes stagnant
• Roles overshadow identity (parent, spouse, worker)
• Emotional fatigue shuts down the erotic system
• The couple or the individual loses curiosity
• Psychological space collapses under responsibility

Again:
Desire doesn’t die. It becomes inaccessible under the wrong psychological conditions.

This is why couples who love each other can feel emotionally flat, even though nothing is “wrong.”

Love is stable.
Desire is dynamic.
They run on different systems.

Rebuilding Desire Means Rebuilding Access

In Episode 6, we explore how to restore desire not by forcing arousal or increasing drive through hormones, but by changing the internal conditions where desire is generated. This process, which we call reigniting desire, involves:

• restoring the erotic self
• cultivating curiosity
• building inner and relational space
• bringing imagination back into the erotic mind
• reducing anxiety to re-open erotic pathways
• using play, lightness, and joy to reawaken vitality

When these elements shift, desire reappears — often surprisingly quickly.

Not because it was gone.
But because the mind can finally access it again.

A More Hopeful Understanding of Desire

If you take one idea from this article and episode, let it be this:

Desire is not fragile!

It is resilient.
It waits for permission and the right psychological conditions to emerge.

Most couples do not need hormones, pressure, or performance-based strategies to feel a strong desire. They need understanding — a new, compassionate map of how desire works inside the mind.

Because love sustains us…
But desire keeps us alive within the love we have chosen.

Dr. Aleida Heinz

Contact me: drheinz4u@gmail.com

Find Episode 6: Drive, Arousal, and Desire, and subscribe when you like it:

YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@heinzaleida

Spotify: Beyond Love Podcast