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College Women Talking Sex
Adebusola Abujade / Her Campus Media
Wellness > Sex + Relationships

Desire or Arousal? Is there a difference? Let’s Find Out!

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Savannah chapter.

Behind closed doors, we all know sex can be a pleasurable connection between individuals. In the bedroom, there is usually tons of sexual tension between an intimate couple. However, are these individuals aroused during this “energy transfer” or do we seem to just desire these pleasurable feelings without any actual arousal? Let’s find out…

First and foremost, what is sexual desire and sexual arousal? 

Sexual desire can be defined as the level of WANT for a sexual activity. In most cases, these types of desires can be inspired by certain physical feelings between individuals or thoughts about something that you may find amusing in the bedroom with the lady or man you fantasize about. Meanwhile, what does sexual arousal mean? Sexual arousal can be described as the FEELING you experience once you engage or turned on some sort of sexual activity. Typically, when an individual is turned on, numerous signals are sent to the brain in which your body reacts to. For example, when a female is turned on, a natural lubricant is released from her vagina as a response of being aroused while men may get an erection as a response of being aroused by something they are sexually attracted to as well.  Starting to get it a little bit? Let’s keep going…

Now, what is the difference between sexual desire and sexual arousal?

Now that we know the difference between these two terms, how can an individual make a distinction between the two? Although these two terms correlate with one another, they are quite different from one another. Sexual desire focuses on the psychological response to and about sexual activity while as sexual arousal focuses more on the physiological response from a sexual activity. As a woman, I can naturally make the distinction between when/how my man turns me on (sexual desire) versus how my body may react to his touch (sexual arousal). As humans, we naturally tend to think our sexual desire is driven by being sexually aroused so, for something to physically transpire between two individuals, we need to convince ourselves mentally that we WANT it first. However, this isn’t the case for everybody sometimes.

Now that we know the distinction between the two, what’s next?

It isn’t always important to get a grip on the debate between sexual desire versus sexual arousal if you want to increase your passion for sex in your life. However, it is important to understand why you feel the way you feel once you are turned on and ready to get things on and poppin behind closed doors with your special man or lady. In fact, with various factors impacting our desire and body, wondering how your body can be in the mood for sex is quite interesting and still yet confusing to where we still conduct research every day.

Hey Guys! My name is Courtney 🥰! I am a member of the Savannah State University chapter for HerCampus . Be sure to check out some of my exciting content here on the site ! IG: Adaaywithc