Sexual desire is the pleasant anticipation of erotic experiences accompanying or helping to trigger the arousal reflex. We distinguish different forms of sexual desire, based on the various personal needs that motivate sexual acts. These needs may be primarily sexual in nature or not. We distinguish between:
1. Desire for fusion
Here, sexual intercourse is motivated by intense emotional needs, being “in love”, fusion wishes, the fear of loss.
2. Biologically triggered desire
The physiologically based desire for procreation is partially hormonally triggered (e.g. during ovulation). In women, periodic
vasocongestion (e.g. premenstrual) may also trigger a wish for orgastic discharge.
3. Sexual desire
Various sexual play forms and interactions are motivated by the search for sexual arousal and its accompanying pleasure,
as well as orgastic discharge or orgasm – alone or with a partner. Sexual desire is often accompanied by the wish for validation
of one’s own masculinity or femininity.
4. Coital sexual desire
Here, sexual intercourse is primarily motivated by the search for sexual arousal through coitus, the pleasurable emotions and
fantasies linked with it, and the self-abandonment that occurs during orgasm.
Coital sexual desire is based on differentiated personal learning steps:
The development of adequate sexual arousal, corresponding sources of arousal, and an arousal mode that includes variations in
intensity, rhythm and movement facilitating the channeling and diffusion of arousal, i.e. an Undulating Mode or Wave Mode.
For women: the development of vaginality, that is discovering and developing the vagina as a space of female eroticism, and a
space for the pleasurable experience of meeting with another person’s eroticism – and that person’s penetrating penis, finger,
etc.
For men: learning to eroticize the ability to penetrate, that is, to desire and experience pleasure in penetrating another person’s
body with penis, finger, etc.
Eroticization of the difference and the distance: developing the ability to eroticize another in his/her differentness, as well as in
spatial distance. For heterosexuals, it is the ability to let oneself get aroused by the differentness of the other’s sex and to
eroticize it.
Eroticization of intimacy: developing the ability to eroticize closeness, attachment, love, tenderness, etc.
Developing a feeling of belonging to one‘s biological sex and sexual self-confidence.
The development of sexual and emotional attraction codes regarding other people.