Content note: I talk about sexual coercion / pressure in this essay but it’s not the main focus of the piece, and none of the sex I talk about in this essay was non-consensual, just sometimes a bit reluctant.
I’ve long thought that enthusiasm is one of the most important qualities in a sexual partner. As a person who has what the sexologist Emily Nagoski would call “responsive desire,” I often don’t feel much of a pull toward having sex until someone else has conveyed their own desire and gotten the ball rolling. In other words, whereas for some people, desire precedes the process of pursuing and achieving physical arousal, for me it works the opposite way: it’s often only once I’ve become physically aroused (by touching, or kissing, or porn, or erotica, or whatever) that I actually feel any mental or emotional desire to have sex.