How Patriachy Conquered Desire, And How To Get It Back
If your body says no but your mind says you should, that’s not desire. That’s conditioning.
If you feel guilty for wanting too much — or for not wanting at all — that’s not your libido speaking. That’s a script you inherited.
Patriarchy teaches us to mistake submission for surrender. To confuse pleasing with pleasure. To treat arousal as a performance rather than a response.
Women are trained to be available.
- To stay quiet about what hurts.
- To fake enthusiasm.
- To manage someone else’s ego instead of listening to their own body.
Men are taught that desire should be constant, urgent, uncomplicated.
- That hesitation is weakness.
- That their worth is measured by conquest rather than connection.
And all of us — regardless of gender — learn to override the truth of our nervous systems in service of someone else’s expectations.
Sarah came to see me because she thought something was wrong with her libido. She’d been with her partner for seven years. He was kind, attentive, did the dishes without being asked. She had no reason not to want him.
Except she didn’t.
“I feel broken,” she said. “He deserves better.”
I asked her to tell me about the last time they had sex. She described it mechanically — the positions, the duration, whether he finished. I asked if she enjoyed it.
She paused. “I don’t know. I mean, it was fine. He liked it.”
I asked again. Did you enjoy it?
Another pause. Longer this time. “I don’t think I know how to answer that question.”
This is what patriarchy does. It teaches women that sex is something that happens to them, not with them. That their role is to facilitate someone else’s pleasure. That being desired is the closest they’ll get to desiring.
Sarah had spent seven years — and decades before that — learning to monitor her partner’s experience instead of her own. She knew when he was close to orgasm. She didn’t know when she was feeling genuinely turned on versus performing availability.
Her desire wasn’t broken. It had gone underground. Because desire requires presence. And you can’t be present in your own body when you’re busy managing someone else’s.
_______
Then there’s Marcus. Mid-forties, successful, married with kids. Came to therapy because his wife told him they needed help. She said she felt like a prop in his sexual fantasies. That sex felt transactional. That she wanted connection, not choreography.
Marcus was confused. He initiated regularly. He’d learned the “right” moves. He asked if she finished. What more could she want?
We talked about his own desire. I asked him what turned him on — not what he thought should turn him on, but what actually stirred something in his body.
He looked at me like I’d asked him to explain quantum physics.
“I mean… sex turns me on,” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”
But when we dug deeper, Marcus realized he’d been performing desire since he was a teenager. Being sexual meant being masculine. Being masculine meant being in control. Hesitation was weakness. Tenderness was risk. Actual vulnerability? Unthinkable.
He’d learned to associate arousal with conquest. With validation. With proving something.
He’d never learned to associate it with feeling something.
His body went through the motions. His nervous system stayed on guard. And his wife could feel the difference between sex rooted in performance and sex rooted in presence.
When I asked Marcus the last time he felt genuinely turned on — not obligated, not performing, not proving — he couldn’t remember.
That’s not low libido. That’s disconnection. And disconnection is patriarchy’s greatest trick.
We learn to say yes when we mean maybe. Maybe when we mean no. No when we mean not like this.
The body actually does keep the score. It remembers every override. Every performance. Every time we chose compliance over consent — even if we were consenting to ourselves.
And eventually, desire stops showing up. Not because it’s gone. But because it’s no longer safe.
I worked with a woman named Jess who’d been in therapy for “intimacy issues” for three years before we started working together. She’d tried everything — hormones, supplements, scheduled sex, sensate focus exercises. Nothing worked.
“Maybe I’m just asexual,” she said. “Maybe this is who I am.”
I asked her if she ever felt desire. Ever. For anyone or anything.
She thought for a long time. Then, quietly: “Sometimes when I’m alone. When I’m not expected to do anything with it.”
There it was. Desire existed. It just wasn’t safe to show itself in relationship.
We traced it back. The boyfriend in college who sulked when she wasn’t in the mood. The partner who said her boundaries made him feel rejected. The cultural messages that told her a good girlfriend is an available girlfriend. The thousands of micro-moments where she learned that her no was an inconvenience. That her maybe was manipulation. That her body was supposed to be ready on demand.
Jess’s desire wasn’t gone. It was protecting her.
It knew that in her relationship, wanting meant owing. That arousal meant obligation. That opening meant being consumed.
Her body was wiser than any diagnosis. It was saying: Not until it’s safe. Not until you can want without consequences. Not until desire is yours to feel, not his to claim.
Reclaiming desire means unlearning the rules. It means asking: What do I actually want — not what should I want? What feels good in my body — not what looks right from the outside?
It means learning that desire isn’t something you owe. It’s something you feel.
It means understanding that your no is complete. Your yes is enthusiastic. Your maybe means pause, not proceed.
_______________
For Sarah, it meant learning to notice sensation in her own body instead of monitoring her partner’s face. It meant permission to say “that doesn’t feel good” without managing his reaction. It meant discovering that she actually enjoyed sex — but only when she was allowed to be honest about what she didn’t enjoy.
For Marcus, it meant unlearning the script. Slowing down. Asking questions instead of following a routine. Learning that his wife saying “softer” or “different” or “not right now” wasn’t rejection — it was invitation. An invitation to meet her as she actually was, not as he needed her to be.
For Jess, it meant renegotiating everything. Setting boundaries that felt impossible at first. Saying no and watching to see if the relationship could hold it. Learning that her partner’s disappointment was his to manage, not hers to fix. Discovering that desire could return when it wasn’t weaponized against her.
This work isn’t easy. Patriarchy is embedded in our nervous systems.
It lives in the automatic apology when you say no. In the guilt when you want too much. In the shame when you want differently than you think you should.
It lives in the belief that men should always want sex and women should always want connection. That dominance is masculine and submission is feminine. That desire is linear, simple, uncomplicated.
But desire is none of those things.
Desire is responsive. Contextual. Shaped by safety, trust, power dynamics, past experiences, present circumstances. It changes. It evolves. It disappears when we’re not safe and returns when we are.
Desire requires a nervous system that feels safe enough to relax. A body that trusts it won’t be overridden. A relationship where no means no and yes means yes and maybe means let’s find out together.
Reclaiming desire means recognizing that arousal isn’t always linear. That consent is ongoing. That you’re allowed to change your mind. That curiosity is different from pressure.
It means understanding that being wanted is not the same as wanting. That pleasure performed is not pleasure felt. That you can love someone deeply and still not want to have sex with them in this moment, in this way, under these conditions.
It means learning — or relearning — that your body is yours. That it knows things your mind has been taught to override. That when it says no, it’s not broken or difficult or frigid or dysfunctional.
It’s intelligent.
Your desire was never broken. It was protecting you. It was adapting to survive in systems that taught you to disconnect from your body.
And now? You get to reconnect. Slowly. With patience. With permission — especially permission from yourself.
Not to perform. Not to produce. Not to prove.
But to feel. To choose. To claim what’s yours.
This is the work. Not fixing your libido. Not becoming the person you think you should be.
But meeting yourself as you actually are. Listening to what your body has been trying to tell you. Unlearning the lies that desire is obligation, that pleasure is performance, that you owe anyone access to your yes.
Your desire is not a problem to solve. Its a quest to be seized. A voice that’s been silenced. A knowing that never left — it just went underground until it was safe to emerge.
And when it does? When you learn to trust your own wanting? When you discover what desire feels like when it’s not filtered through someone else’s expectations?
That’s not recovery. That’s revolution.
