Contents
“Sexual attraction is essential to maintain complicity”
Sexuality
These are the main differences between sexual attraction and sexual desire, both important in a relationship
According to new research from Queensland University of Technology, when it comes to sexual attraction, women rate age, education, intelligence, income, confidence and emotional connection higher than men, who give higher priority to attractiveness and physical constitution.
And it is that in a healthy relationship there must be sexual attraction between the members or, as the psychologist and relationship expert Lidia Alvarado describes it, they have to “put each other on.” Apparently, this ingredient “is essential to maintain complicity”, as well as passion, play and intimacy in the relationship. In other words, “it puts us on and obeys an involuntary impulse that awakens our sexual desire and consequently we want to have sex with that person who has caused it.”
Sexual desire
Hopefully that sexual attraction be accompanied by sexual desire, having awakened the desire to have sex between them, but it is not always present because it is an impulse that is affected by different emotional, physical and even external factors and circumstances: «Stress, anxiety, pressure, excess At work, worries and a long etcetera can affect sexual desire, causing them not to feel like having sex “, contemplates the expert in couple relationships. We can’t decide at will when do we want to feel sexual desire or not, although we can choose what to do with that desire when we feel it.
“Sexual desire can be awakened without someone who has surfaced and it does not have to be directed towards someone in particular, it can be impersonal and satisfied through masturbation, for example,” says Lidia Alvarado. In fact, if you have a desire for sex, you can even consummate that desire with someone for whom you do not feel sexual attraction. The latter, on the other hand, necessarily requires that there be a person who “puts us” and in doing so will trigger our sexual desire towards that particular person.
Each one can consciously choose what to do with that sexual attraction, whether to consume it or repress it, but cannot voluntarily decide who attracts him or not sexually: “When you feel sexual attraction for someone is what makes you and this awakens in you sexual desire or the desire to have sex with that person, “he says.
Therefore, while sexual attraction can be defined as “the sexual interest that we feel involuntarily for someone”, the sexual desire they are the desire to have sex and it is not necessary that there be an object of desire as such; They can appear at any time caused by some stimulus or simply obey something purely physiological and beyond control.
There seems to be a fine line between sexual desire and attraction and sometimes they get confused, but in reality there are differences between the two.
Both attraction and sexual desire are necessary for a healthy relationship, although the desire for sex as such, and according to the definition that we explained before, can fluctuate due to the influence of other factors.