Cory Silverberg: What is Sexual Response?

Sexual response is usually understood to mean things that we don’t consciously control. So, for example, choosing to take your clothes off because you’re partner is calling you to bed to have sex isn’t, strictly speaking, sexual response. Pouring a drink on someone who is being sexually inappropriate, while also a “response” to (unwanted) sexual advances, also isn’t, strictly speaking, part of sexual response.

Sexual response is usually measured in the body. Things like increased heart rate, flushed skin, dilation of the pupils, heightened awareness, are all parts of sexual response. Sex researchers have also traditionally defined male sexual response as distinct and different from female sexual response.

What is a Sexual Response Cycle?
Sexual response cycles were first devised as a way for scientists, doctors, and therapists to try and make sense of how our bodies respond to sexual stimulation.
The idea of there being a predictable cycle, one that is similar for everyone, is an artificial creation, but it can be helpful when studying or trying to treat sexual complaints and dissatisfaction. The original research that proposed sexual response cycles is over thirty years old, and for the most part the theory has gone unchallenged, with a few notable exceptions.

The original sexual response cycle as defined by Masters and Johnson in 1966 described a process for both men and women of increasing arousal to climax, and included four phases:

1. Excitement phase
2. Plateau phase
3. Orgasm phase
4. Resolution phase

Helen Singer Kaplan, a prominent sex therapist and author working around the same time as Masters and Johnson, proposed a slightly different model of sexual response. Her proposal grew not out of physiological research in a laboratory, but out of her clinical experience as a sex therapist. For Kaplan, sexual response included:

* Desire
* Excitement
* Orgasm

One of the most important parts of this model is the addition of desire, which is primarily psychological. Nowadays “disorders of desire” are all the rage among pharmaceutical companies looking for a female version of Viagra.
Benefits of the Sexual Response Cycle Concept
Sexuality is so complicated, and is deeply connected to our physical, psychological, and spiritual selves. Because of this, it can be difficult to see the forest from the trees when it comes to our own sex lives.

Sexual response cycles can be a helpful way to start teasing apart sexual experiences, and thinking about sexual behavior in terms of a cycle of sexual response can give people clarity and help them better understand what’s going on for them. But it is important not to let the idea of a “typical” or “normal” sexual response cycle make you feel bad if you’re experience doesn’t match what it says in a textbook (or on a website).

In reality, the sexual response is an imposition on a very fluid process of excitement, arousal, tension, release, and more. At times there may be a “typical” pattern, but other times things will be completely different. Our sexual response flows and changes, and often the descriptions you hear won’t exactly match your experience. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, it is just an example of how sexual response is truly unique to each of us.
Problems with Traditional Descriptions of Sexual Response
Most of the teaching about sexual response is based on the research of Masters and Johnson first published in 1966, and Helen Singer Kaplan’s alternate model developed in the early 1970s. There are a number of potential problems with the way that sexual response has traditionally been defined:

* Early research had several limitations, not least of which is the fact that the sexual response of individuals willing and able to be observed and monitored while having sex may differ in many ways from the general public.
* Sexual response is traditionally only described in terms of physical events (heart rate, blood pressure, engorgement, etc…). While sexual response may be observed in the body, it is experiencedcognitively and psychologically, and our subjective experience of sexual response should be included in descriptions.
* Creating artificial stages of sexual response ends up informing both research and clinical practice, and by encouraging us to focus on small parts of our sexual experience may create a problem of “not seeing the forest from the trees”.