Working with couples requires ongoing exploration of sexual behavior and satisfaction within intimate relationships. As a relationship therapist, I would be doing my clients a disservice if I avoided asking questions about sexual habits and satisfaction in their relationship. And so, I dig in with questions like,
Who initiates sex most often?
If you are not having sex, when and how did it stop?
How close do you feel to your partner during and after sex?
How well do you communicate your wants and needs during sex?
What stressors/obstacles are in the way of more frequent intimacy?
What does your partner do that really turns you on?
What does your partner do that turns you off?
Based on couples’ presenting concerns and goals, assessing sexual developmental history, attitudes, values, and experiences helps me understand the underlying scaffolding before meaningful change can occur.
While doing this work, I’ve found myself needing language for something I observed repeatedly but couldn’t quite capture with terms like “desire” and “turn-ons.” Every person seems to have a unique range of conditions under which sexual desire is likely to emerge. Those conditions can expand or contract depending on context. I began referring to that window of openness to sexual desire and arousal as a person’s Latitude of Arousal. Our Latitude of Arousal widens or narrows depending on emotional, relational, sensory, cognitive, and environmental conditions. Rather than viewing arousal as something that either appears or disappears, Latitude of Arousal invites us to understand how context widens or narrows a person’s openness to desire. Context refers to the external and internal conditions surrounding a sexual experience. Latitude of Arousal refers to the degree in which those conditions create openness within a person’s nervous system to sexual desire.
Thinking about sexuality this way shifts the clinical focus. Rather than asking questions like How often do you want sex? or Which partner has the higher desire? I become curious about what widens or narrows a client’s Latitude of Arousal:
What helps create conditions that foster desire to emerge?
What closes the window toward desire?
Are there medical, behavioral, or emotional factors at play?
My concept of Latitude of Arousal is not intended to replace existing models of sexual desire. Rather, it serves as an organizing clinical framework that integrates work on responsive desire, sexual accelerators and brakes (Nagoski, 2015), attachment, and contextual influences into a practical lens for assessment and intervention.
John Gottman describes how many couples present with one higher-desire and one lower-desire partner (Gottman, 1994). Gottman’s distinction between higher- and lower-desire partners is clinically useful. Yet, in my work, I often find myself asking a complementary question: What are the measurable elements that widen or narrow one’s Latitude of Arousal? Are they fixed? Do they change?
Couples vary considerably in how they report sexual satisfaction and frequency of sexual contact. Clients often get hung up on the frequency of sex. It is not uncommon for unidentified expectations and perceptions of what is “normal” to play a part in what sexual satisfaction gets measured against. Early stages of love often create a naturally expansive Latitude of Arousal. Novelty, anticipation, oxytocin, dopamine, emotional availability, hope, and increased physical affection all widen the window in which sexual interest can emerge. As relationships mature, many of these naturally occurring conditions become less automatic, requiring couples to intentionally cultivate the contexts that once happened effortlessly. Couples also experience shifts over time within their relationships, reporting decreases in sexual activity anywhere between three months and three years into a new relationship (Weeks et al., 2016). Additionally, couples report shifts in libido when children enter the relationship (Perel, 2007). Frequency and desire discrepancies may describe a couple’s experience, but they often do little to explain why desire emerges more easily in some contexts than others.
What conditions consistently increase your interest in sexual connection? What reliably narrows your openness to desire? What helps your nervous system feel safe, relaxed, and receptive?
In her book Come as You Are, Emily Nagoski’s language of sexual accelerators and brakes provides an invaluable framework for understanding how context shapes desire. Building from that foundation, I have found it clinically useful to think of one’s Latitude of Arousal as the unique range of experiences, relational dynamics, emotional states, sensory cues, and environmental conditions that broaden or narrow one’s openness to sexual connection. Clinically, chronic stress often narrows the Latitude of Arousal. Sexual trauma may constrict Latitude of Arousal. Emotional safety can widen it. Financial or survival stressors may narrow it. Relationship repair, playfulness, and emotional connection often expand it.
When working with couples, I often explore and highlight context to help partners map out ways in which sexual desire gets nurtured. Because context shapes the physiological and emotional conditions that influence Latitude of Arousal, it deserves careful clinical attention. Context may include the children being asleep, reduced household demands, emotional safety, privacy, relationship repair, or the absence of unresolved conflict. Latitude reflects how open a person’s nervous system is to becoming sexually interested.
Nagoski (2024) also introduces what she calls the “Desire Imperative,” arguing that pleasure (not desire) should be at the center of sexual experience. Nagoski summarizes this idea with the phrase “Pleasure is the measure” (2024) to help people move away from feeling pressure to perform or climax, and ease into a more holistic experience of pleasure through the process of touch, helping clients assess what does or doesn’t feel good along the way. In this framework, low desire becomes less relevant. When the focus is placed more on pleasure and less on desire, desire becomes less necessary for a satisfying sex life. When individuals move from feeling reluctant about sex to experiencing pleasure during the process, desire often becomes less central than the quality of the experience itself.
Shame narrows our Latitude of Arousal. In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown defines shame as the intensely painful feeling that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Shame is a universal human emotion that thrives on secrecy and judgment. Shame often manifests as an internalized belief that something about ourselves is fundamentally wrong (Brown, 2021). When it comes to sexual gratification and exploration, it’s important to note that many aspects of sexual experience fall within a broad normative range. This means that most likely what we feel and face within our bodies can be viewed with curiosity, and without judgment. Approaching one’s sexuality with curiosity rather than judgment expands latitude by reducing shame and increasing openness to self-understanding. It is also important to recognize that sexual desire naturally ebbs and flows over time (Perel, 2007). Sometimes partners might withhold intimacy as a means of gaining leverage or punishment (Weeks et al., 2016), which is not indicative of an emotionally mature or healthy dynamic. Sexual autonomy (the ability to choose and engage in sexual self-expression or fantasy) is generally associated with healthy adult sexuality.
My own experience has taught me that my Latitude of Arousal has very little to do with stereotypically sexual cues. Instead, my latitude expands when I experience kindness, emotional intelligence, thoughtful conversation, curiosity, emotional safety, and watching my partner treat other people with generosity and care. A soft tone of voice, feeling appreciated, shared values, and witnessing someone consistently show up for others all widen my openness to intimacy. Those experiences may not appear overtly sexual, but they create the emotional landscape in which desire becomes much more likely.
If Latitude of Arousal can narrow in response to stress, shame, resentment, and exhaustion, then it can also widen through emotional safety, repair, novelty, playfulness, curiosity, affection, and shared meaning. Rather than viewing desire as something people either have or lack, the concept of Latitude of Arousal invites us to become curious about the conditions under which desire is most likely to emerge. When couples shift their attention from measuring desire to cultivating the contexts that support it, conversations about sex become less about performance and more about understanding, connection, and mutual care. Seen this way, the question is no longer Why don’t we desire each other? but What conditions help desire feel possible again?
References
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House.
Gottman, J. M. (1994). Why marriages succeed or fail: And how you can make yours last. Simon & Schuster.
Nagoski, E. (2015). Come as you are: The surprising new science that will transform your sex life. Simon & Schuster.
Nagoski, E. (2024). Come together: The science (and art!) of creating lasting sexual connections. Ballantine Books.
Perel, E. (2007). Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence. Harper Paperbacks.
Weeks, G. R., Gambescia, N., & Hertlein, K. M. (2016). A clinician’s guide to systemic sex therapy (2nd ed.). Routledge.
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