If you happened to see our practice’s recent newsletters, you may have noticed that I recently completed my Ph.D! I would love to share a little about the research behind my dissertation and, more importantly, how it has directly influenced the way I think about intimacy, connection, and desire in my work with clients.
As a therapist, I became fascinated by the way sexual desire impacts almost everyone and everything at one point or another. Desire can serve as a powerful window into our psyche, but it easily fractures relationships when misunderstood. Too often, a drop in desire is misinterpreted as a loss of attraction or interest. But desire is rarely that simple; so many aspects of ourselves, our lives, and our relationships influence its natural ebb and flow. This complexity is what inspired me to make it the heart of my research.
While my dissertation specifically examined women’s sexual desire, many of the core insights speak to broader questions about intimacy, self-connection, and what truly helps us cultivate a richer relationship with ourselves and the people we love.
So… what actually helps us cultivate a meaningful and connected intimate life?
When couples experiencing desire discrepancies enter therapy, the lower-desire partner often feels that a lack of desire means something is “broken” or that they are failing their partner. Up to this point, many people have only received traditional advice that frequently treats desire like a simple biological reflex to be fixed—or worse, a duty to perform. Short of some sort of mental Viagra, how can we cultivate this desire?
My research examined three experiences that may help cultivate desire:
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Sensual Embodiment: Nurturing the Self and the Body
Much of sex happens through nonverbal communication. While that can help you connect more deeply with yourself and your partner, it can also lead to self-surveillance and a disconnect from what actually brings comfort or pleasure. My research shows that desire thrives when we focus on sensual presence, but when our nervous systems stay on high alert, it shuts down the pathways that allow pleasure to flow.
True sensual embodiment involves getting lost in your own sensory experiences. Sustainable desire is built on finding comfort and safety within your own body, requiring ongoing attunement and compassionate care. Through that attunement, we are able to assess and meet our body’s needs and advocate for them. Whether it is listening to sleep and hunger cues or communicating to a partner about how to make intimacy more pleasurable or when something feels uncomfortable, this attunement and care helps restore bodily trust.
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The Art of Savoring: Expanding Our Experience of Pleasure
Desire can often feel like a random emotion that possesses you with no regard for your own will. But one interesting finding from my research is that desire is connected to our ability to stretch pleasure across time. This is where savoring comes in, the practice of intentionally noticing, appreciating, and prolonging pleasant experiences.
It is hard to desire something that you don’t find pleasurable in the first place, so the starting point is exploring your experience of pleasure throughout sensual or sexual moments.
Interestingly, most people with lower desire than their partner still have pleasurable sexual experiences when they happen, yet they continue to struggle to get in the mood beforehand. Due to stress, mental load, or prioritizing a partner’s satisfaction, we often subconsciously “dampen” or rush through pleasurable experiences. Do you fully feel mental, emotional, and physical pleasure throughout the entirety of a moment?
Uncovering where we experience these dampening effects offers crucial clues for building our capacity to savor. The act of savoring expands our pleasure across time—before, during, and after an event. While engaging in different types of savoring directly boosts overall well-being, relational savoring practices have a particularly profound impact on our intimate connections.
To combat emotional dampening, savoring invites us into three temporal dimensions:
- Anticipating future pleasure: like looking forward to a warm bath, a relaxing evening, or physical touch.
- Attuning to the present experience: slowing down to truly anchor into what you are feeling right now.
- Reminiscing about past pleasurable experiences: reflecting nostalgically on moments of joy.
A common pattern I see in long term couples is when physical touch begins to feel less comforting and more demanding. Your partner starts to cuddle you and all you feel is how tired you are; your body begins to stiffen because you don’t want to reject them, but you’re just not in the mood. Over time, many couples stop being physically affectionate altogether, sometimes giving up kissing or making out entirely unless it’s intended to initiate sex.
When you are able to uncouple physical affection from the expectation of sex, it frees you to savor the present moment. That present savoring deepens your connection, which in turn fuels reminiscing and future anticipation. Taking the pressure off the outcome also allows for touch to build natural anticipation which can help cultivate authentic desire.
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Before “Spicing Things Up,” Build a Safe Foundation for Curiosity & Exploration
Popular relationship advice loves to prescribe novelty as a quick fix for low desire. But in my clinical work and research, I’ve seen that you cannot force curiosity or playfulness when you feel guarded, overwhelmed, or emotionally disconnected.
For genuine desire to unfold, there needs to be a safety prerequisite. Exploration requires the courage to be vulnerable—to share your internal world and attune to your partner’s changing landscape. When emotional safety is established, you move away from performance pressure and move toward deep, mutual presence. Gaining confidence in your ability to successfully attune to each other helps navigate the relationship in a way that makes your emotional and sexual experiences feel more pleasurable, allowing passion and desire to grow.
Throughout this research, I found myself returning to one central idea: perhaps desire isn’t something we “lose” at all. Perhaps it is something we cultivate by learning to reconnect with our bodies, protect our capacity for pleasure, and remain curious about ourselves, our partners, and the life we’re creating together.
