The want to want.
I hear it often in my sessions: The desire to want more sex, often followed closely by the wish that wanting didn’t feel so damn hard.
For many adults, especially those juggling work, caregiving, mental load, and emotional labour, sex isn’t absent because something is “wrong.” It’s absent because pleasure has slowly slipped down the priority list. So instead of anticipation, sex starts to feel like another task.
Research consistently shows that chronic stress suppresses sexual interest by activating the body’s threat system, making desire physiologically harder to access (Bancroft & Janssen, 2000; Hamilton & Meston, 2013). In other words, if your life feels like a relentless to-do list, low desire is an understandable response.
If this sounds like you, and you genuinely want more sex in the coming year, I’d suggest putting the lingerie ads down. Not because lingerie is bad, but because more effort, pressure, or performance is rarely the missing ingredient.
As a sex therapist, here is what I would suggest instead:
1. I would reduce pressure before I increased touch.
Pressure is one of the fastest libido killers there is.
The science backs this up. According to the Dual Control Model of sexual response, sexual desire is shaped by a balance between excitatory and inhibitory systems (Bancroft & Janssen, 2000). Pressure, obligation, and the fear of disappointing someone act as powerful “brakes,” often overriding any sexual “accelerators” that might otherwise be present.
Many people try to fix low desire by doing more: more initiating, more scheduling, more trying to be “in the mood” and, yes, more lingerie. But desire grows in conditions of safety and choice, not demand. So before adding anything new, I would actively remove pressure by naming openly that intimacy doesn’t have to lead anywhere, and allowing sex to be optional rather than expected.
2. I would stop waiting for spontaneous desire and work with how desire actually functions.
One of the most damaging myths about sex is that desire should appear out of nowhere. Yet, for many adults, especially in long-term relationships, desire is more often responsive than spontaneous—that is, it emerges after connection and erotic stimulation, not before it.
So if you’re waiting to feel turned on before engaging with anything erotic, you may be waiting indefinitely. That doesn’t mean forcing yourself into sex you don’t want; it means recognising that desire often follows erotic actions.
3. I would prioritise safety over spark.
Sex doesn’t thrive in environments of emotional unsafety. From a nervous-system perspective, this makes sense. Sexual arousal requires a shift out of threat and into a state of relative safety. Studies show that anxiety, hypervigilance, and relationship distress are all associated with reduced sexual desire and arousal (Hamilton & Meston, 2013).
So before asking “Why don’t I want sex?” I would ask:
Do I feel emotionally safe here?
Can I say no without consequences?
Do I feel seen and heard?
What does excite me right now?
4. I would disconnect intimacy from performance.
When sex becomes about outcomes such as orgasm and frequency metrics, it often stops being pleasurable.
Performance pressure increases self-monitoring, which research shows is linked to reduced arousal and lower sexual satisfaction (Masters & Johnson, 1970). In simple terms: The more we monitor how sex is going, the less we are able to feel it.
If I wanted more sex, I would deliberately shift focus away from outcomes and toward experience. For many couples, this includes periods when sex is explicitly off the table, allowing intimacy to rebuild without stakes. Counterintuitively, this often increases desire over time.
5. I would read smut.
Yes, smut.
Erotic fiction is one of the most accessible, low-pressure ways to engage the sexual imagination and the research supports this. Exposure to erotic stimuli has been shown to increase sexual desire and arousal, particularly in people with responsive desire patterns (Rupp & Wallen, 2008).
Importantly, reading erotica:
Requires no performance
Can be entirely private
Allows desire to unfold without anyone else’s needs involved
For many people, fantasy and imagination are safer entry points into desire than real-life sexual interaction, especially after periods of stress or disconnection.
6. I would treat pleasure as a health issue, not a reward.
Pleasure is often framed as something to earn after productivity—our little reward for doing good work. But when pleasure is perpetually postponed, desire doesn’t wait patiently. It actually diminishes.
Research in both sexual health and well-being consistently links pleasure, play, and positive affect with improved sexual desire and relationship satisfaction (Fredrickson, 2001; Diamond & Huebner, 2012). A life stripped of enjoyment is not neutral to desire; rather, it is actively hostile to it.
If I wanted more sex in 2026 I would start by asking where pleasure fits in my life at all. Because having more sex isn’t about trying harder or wanting differently. It’s about creating the conditions in which desire is allowed to exist.
All this to say, the answer to “wanting to want” is not actually fixing yourself so you want more. It’s creating conditions that make wanting easy. So give it a go, what have you got to lose?
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.