The word arousal means being in an awake state and focused on a certain stimulus. In this blog we will be discussing sexual arousal as it’s #ArousingApril! Just as a refresher from last week, arousal is different from desire. Desire means wanting sex (emotionally) whereas arousal means the physical response of your body.
This is gonna take us back again to the lessons of the vulva (the entirety of the female sexual organ from the outside) and the vagina (the inside/entrance if you will). There are a number of physical changes that happen due to physiological responses.
First step in arousal: desire
The whole process starts with desire. You and your significant other are getting hot and heavy, kissing, touching, getting that foreplay done like champs! What is happening in this process is that you have worked on getting relaxed first, maybe got some breathwork in, and then moved on to getting physical. This allows the mindset side of things to be ready to allow the body to take over. There are women who struggle with this part (which is why we had #ForeplayFebruary). It means that spontaneous sexual interest (for example day dreaming about sex) doesn’t happen. Most of you are now probably wondering if it is then just a simple case of using a female viagra and the answer is no. Female sexual response is MUCH more complicated than just adding a pill. It’s a combination of mental and physical aspects. For example, certain antidepressants can lower desire and women lose testosterone as they age which again lowers desire.
Second step: from desire to arousal
As said before, from desire we move on to physiological changes and physical changes. Outside of the vulva, our body itself starts to decide what needs blood and what really doesn’t. Our nipples become erect, our pupils dilate, our skin flushes (hello hot flashes) and every thing goes up (such as blood pressure, breathing and body temperature). Going back to the vulva, the vagina gets lubricated, the clitoris swells because of extra blood flow and opening of vessels, the lips swell and get a glossy sheen on them. If you ever watch porn (you really should, it’s either entertaining or arousing), you can actually start to see the difference between actual arousal and fake arousal. Sometimes you will see a sheen, but it’s a fake one (lube also gives a sheen). As can be seen in the picture, the difference is very distinct as soon as you know what to look for. Arousal is another step where problems can arise.
In the case of arousal it means that the body itself doesn’t maintain its level of arousal OR is unable to reach that level of arousal. As I mentioned before, as women our levels of hormones change over our lifetime and we get to the point where lubrication will start to diminish (this natural occuring lubrication), which can lead to problems with arousal. Again, there is no specific reason to need medication perse for this. Problems with arousal are very complex, partly due to the female sexual arousal not being a simple problem. There have been companies that looked into launching a female arousal pill, but in their testing ran into the problem that a placebo worked better. That means that a pill without any working element worked better than the pill WITH the working element, suggesting that just the thought of taking something may help with arousal.
What does this mean?
You might now be thinking: yeah, okay, and then what? Well, it means we have a lot to do in the mental aspect of sexual desire and arousal before we start worrying about adding pills. It means that if this is something you struggle with (maintaining your arousal or even getting aroused), you may want to start figuring out what’s going on in your mind. You can consider keeping a diary as a way to figure out what happens when you want to get nasty. Can you masturbate without a problem? If you would like help, remember I’m here to guide you. Just contact me to set up your first call!
