I thought I was wrong for not wanting sex until after I started having it

Turns out, it is called 'responsive desire', and it is absolutely normal.

- Ella Dorval Hall

Growing up in the early 2000s, I was obsessed with rom-coms. I studied them thoroughly, taking mental notes about how to play it cool, flirt, and most importantly, what finally having sex would be like IRL. While I would later come to learn that movies are, er, extremely unreliable sources of information, it was already too late. What I saw on-screen became the backbone of how I thought sex worked.

Among the long list of ill-advised expectations romcoms created for me was one that led me to spend the majority of my adult life thus far believing there was something seriously wrong with me: the scene when the two main characters gaze into each other’s eyes, and within seconds, start making out and having sex—on a table, in an elevator, in a car...you get it. Wherever they are, no matter the circumstances, both parties are always mentally and physically ready, with no foreplay whatsoever.

“It’s in every movie, romance novel, or sexualised commercial,” says queer sex educator Whitni Miller, a pleasure coach who specialises in desire discrepancy. “We are sold the idea that if you don’t want sex just by thinking of it for two seconds, then you must be frigid or broken.”

WHAT’S RESPONSIVE DESIRE