Is It a “Drive” or a Desire?

It’s not a given that a man will engage in sex from the overflow of his lover heart.

Take for example the fact that we call it a “sex drive.” Sex is not a drive. A bodily drive is one that is necessary for your survival. You need oxygen. You need food, water, sleep, and shelter. You even need love and connection. You don’t “need” sex.

Sex is a desire. Calling it a “drive” isn’t just bumbled wording. It encourages us men to treat sex as something akin to life and death, which confuses our relationship with our bodies. Men get stuck relating to sexuality as a necessity, an urge we must answer, something we are powerless to stop. This perspective keeps men from having a conversation with our bodies and sexuality, and puts us in survival-reaction mode.

Furthermore, given that men on average have a higher sex “drive” (i.e., a more frequent desire for sex), a woman may feel pressure to give a man his “required” dose of sex. It’s sometimes even said that if she doesn’t, he will succumb to the temptations of porn or seeking another woman to meet his need. This mindset ignores the biblical call to self-control (Titus 2:6), obligates women to a duty, and keeps men immature, at the mercy of an urge. And then sex loses its beauty.

But what if sex is a desire? Well then, a whole world opens up for you. In her book Come as You Are, researcher Emily Nagoski says it so well: “Your partner is not an animal to be hunted for sustenance, but a secret keeper whose hidden depths are infinite” (p. 226). That makes sex an act of exploration and adventure, full of heart and relationship, discovery and freedom.

Sex may be powerful, but you are not simply at its mercy. The lover in you gets to play and grow and change, and to approach sexual desire with curiosity. We are not taught this as men.

And I daresay, in the absence of this teaching, we lose our sensuality, too, resulting in a confused and difficult relationship with our bodies and our sexuality. It’s past time to recover a richer, more accurate understanding of this deep desire.

Gracious Father, thank you for creating me for connection, and for the reminder that I need not be at the mercy of a bodily “drive.” Amen.