There are moments in life when desire doesn’t disappear because something dramatic happened; it just vanishes. Quietly. You only notice it when you’re lying next to someone you love, someone you enjoy touching. Or when you realize you haven’t felt a single erotic spark for days, weeks, maybe months. Not out of rejection, but out of absence.
When meeting author and sexual storyteller Lisa Opel, it’s one of the first things she says. Not apologetically. Not defensively. Just plainly:
“For a long time I thought something was wrong with me. I liked sex. I had fun. And suddenly there was nothing. No spark. No impulse. Just a busy mind and a body that wasn’t responding.”
This sentence points to something much larger.
Something countless people experience — mothers, non-mothers, women, men, couples — and yet hardly anyone understands:
Responsive desire.
Desire that does not appear spontaneously.
But as a response.
A resonance that arises only when the body feels: Now I can. Now I’m safe. Now there is room.
Desire that arises only when something happens
I ask Lisa how she explains responsive desire without making it sound clinical.
She laughs and then clearly explains:
“There’s spontaneous desire, and there’s responsive desire. And responsive desire doesn’t mean ‘I don’t want you.’ It means: ‘I only get turned on when something brings me there.’
So many people need a spark, a bridge, a way in, and that’s completely normal. It doesn’t mean they don’t have desire.”
She tells me that:
more than 70% of women experience desire responsively rather than spontaneously
Not because anything is “wrong,” but because that’s how their bodies are built.
“We glorify spontaneous desire. In films, in porn, in dating culture. This idea of ‘boom, I’m turned on.’ But that’s not how most people work. And I wish we would finally talk about that.”
I nod, because I know how many couples lose themselves at exactly this point.
One person feels rejected, the other feels pressured, and both believe the problem is them.
But it’s just one simple misunderstanding:
Not every desire begins on its own.
The mental load package: Why desire can’t emerge when the nervous system is full
I bring up mental load: this invisible, endless, overwhelming package so many people carry. The emotional labor, the planning, the responsibility, the constant alertness.
Before I finish my sentence, she jumps in:
“Oh my god, that package…
If I’m sitting there with all my worries, my thoughts, my to-dos, how the hell am I supposed to want sex?
I’m not even in my body yet. And responsive desire needs connection first.
I need connection before I can feel anything. Without it, nothing happens.”
She says it with a matter-of-factness that feels like an answer to a thousand misdiagnosed “relationship problems.”
It’s not disinterest.
It’s capacity.
Desire needs free capacity.
“I often tell my husband: Give me ten minutes. I know myself, and I need a transition. Maybe a shower, maybe a porno, maybe a moment to myself.
And that’s not a ‘no.’ It’s ‘wait for me, and I’ll come to you.’”
How many relationships would heal if that sentence was part of our culture?
Finding the way into desire: Rituals, fantasy, warmth
Lisa tells me openly how she found her way back into her body when she lost her desire.
These are small ordinary things, but they reveal a big truth:
Desire is a room, not a lightning bolt.
“For me, desire doesn’t start with arousal.
It starts with feeling present.
When my body softens, when I feel warmer, lighter, more playful, that’s when something opens. Laughter helps. Curiosity helps. Sometimes it’s imagination, sometimes it’s being gently distracted out of my head. Desire follows once I’ve landed back in myself.”
Her voice softens. Not because the story is romantic, but because it is true.
She talks about oxytocin without ever naming it.
About transitions without theorizing them.
About fantasy without idealizing it.
“I need touch, but not immediately erotic touch. I need to be held, warmed, grounded first. And only then can I feel what my body might want.”
That “might” matters.
Responsive desire is not a guarantee. It’s an invitation.
Desire that arrives when the body has space.
When the body feels foreign and why that’s normal (for everyone)
When Lisa talks about motherhood, she’s quick to clarify that she doesn’t want the conversation to be only about mothers.
She wants to stay inclusive.
“I had my kids, and my body felt foreign. But that feeling is not exclusive to mothers.
So many people feel foreign in their bodies. Stress makes you foreign. Pain makes you foreign. Exhaustion makes you foreign. Life makes you foreign.”
She explains that during these phases, responsive desire often becomes invisible.
“How am I supposed to feel desire when I don’t even know how to feel myself?”She tells me she had no one around who shared honest stories. No one who told her the awkward, earthy details.
And how isolating that was.
“I didn’t have a village. No one told me their real stories. I was crying on the toilet thinking I was alone.
But so many people go through this.
We just don’t say it. And when no one speaks, we’re all ashamed.”
Her voice sharpens, full of urgency:
“What happens to a society when we stop telling these stories?
We get lonely.
Radically lonely.
Because everyone is googling instead of talking to each other.”
When couples collide: Spontaneous vs. responsive
I ask Lisa what it was like between her and her husband.
She doesn’t hesitate:
“For my husband, physical closeness was like grabbing coffee with a friend. Warm, easy, natural.
For me, it felt stressful, because I wasn’t in my body yet.
He was spontaneous.
I was responsive.
And we kept missing each other.”
She pauses, then says one of the clearest things I’ve ever heard about relationships:
“Responsive desire is not a problem.
The problem is that no one understands how it works.
Couples think it’s rejection or lack of interest,
when in reality, they just have different systems.”
She gives concrete examples: the small, practical things that keep intimacy alive:
“Sitting closer on the couch. Kissing without it needing to lead somewhere. Feeling wanted even on days when desire doesn’t show up. Saying what’s happening in your body instead of explaining it away. Naming uncertainty without apologising for it. Letting desire be a process, not a promise.”
It’s refreshingly honest, and completely normal.
Language makes desire possible
Toward the end of our conversation, Lisa becomes almost fierce, in the gentlest way, about one thing:
Language.
“We don’t have a language for sex.
None.
Not for the awkward moments, not for the taboos, not for the shame, not for the transitions.
I want to make education sexy, but realistically sexy.”
She wants a language for sex that isn’t clinical, isn’t pornographic — just human.
“I write stories because stories create access.
They give us language.
They soften us.
And they give us the words we can actually use in real life.”
Then she says something that feels like the heart of the entire conversation:
“Responsive desire is just honesty.”
“Honesty with yourself.
With your body.
And with the person you’re sleeping with.”
Desire begins where pressure ends
Responsive desire is not a flaw.
Not a weakness.
Not a crisis.
It is an invitation.
A different way of entering pleasure: one that understands transitions, softness, warmth, fantasy, connection.
A way of desiring that doesn’t revolve around spontaneity, but around presence.
Desire starts neither in the head nor in the genitals.
It starts the moment we allow ourselves to function the way we actually do.
Coming next
This is Part 1 of our 3-part conversation with Lisa Opel.
In Part 2, we explore the power of storytelling. How sharing real, unfiltered stories about sex, bodies, shame, and life can heal loneliness and reshape how we relate to each other.
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