Unraveling the mystery of female desire

By Hillary Rosner

updated 9:28 a.m. ET Sept. 29, 2009

Ask a man what the magic formula is for turning on a woman sexually and you're likely to be met with a heaving shrug. For years, scientists have been just as perplexed. And to a large degree, arousal has mystified even women themselves. The only consensus: the female mind, heart, and genitals all need to be in on the effort in order for arousal to occur. But recently, a handful of sex researchers have gotten on the case — and their fascinating findings may help improve your sex life.

One of the most intriguing research nuggets to emerge: While male sexuality is fairly predictable — they tend to be aroused by naked women and naked women hooking up with other naked women — female sexuality is stimulated by a surprisingly wide array of turn-ons. Meredith Chivers, Ph. D., an assistant professor of psychology at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, calls this "the nonspecificity of women's sexual arousal." Chivers created a buzz with a study in which she showed both men and women a variety of sexually explicit images — nude male and female bodies, heterosexual and homosexual sex, and sex between bonobos (a particularly frisky species of ape) — while measuring physiological signs of genital arousal as well as their subjective feelings of desire.

For the guys, the findings were straightforward enough: The straight men in the study were physically aroused by women, gay men were aroused by men, and neither group felt any stirrings for the apes. The men's physical reactions (erections) were in agreement with what they reported being turned on by.

The women in the study, on the other hand, didn't react as predictably. While they reported feeling aroused in the ways you might expect (straight women were turned on by men, lesbians by women), measurements of their vaginal blood flow showed that they were physically aroused by all the forms of coupling they saw — even the bonobos. Still, when asked after viewing them to report which images they found titillating, most of them chose only those which matched up with their sexual orientation. Were they lying?

Not exactly. The women in Chivers's study were aroused by all the images — but that doesn't mean they desired to have sex with the people (or animals) they saw. "Women have the capacity to get turned on by a broad range of things," she says. "This is normal and not necessarily a challenge to sexual identity."

Lori Brotto, Ph. D., an assistant professor in the University of British Columbia's gynecology department and the director of its Sexual Health Laboratory, has been studying how the disconnect between women's bodies and brains comes into play during sex with a partner. "Women report thinking about nonsexual things during sex," she says. Many women wonder things like "When am I going to get to the gym?" or "What am I going to wear to work tomorrow?" The problem is, focusing on future-oriented matters interferes with women's ability to feel either desire or arousal.

Brotto offers two possible explanations: "Women are consummate multitaskers, and society rewards this ability." Women have become so good at doing a million things at once — talking on the phone, cooking dinner, watching TV, reading a magazine — that it often becomes hard to slow it down or turn it off during sex and just enjoy the moment. Sound familiar?

There's a physical explanation, too. As counter-intuitive as this may sound, men are more in tune with their bodies than women are. Guys typically notice and touch their genitals at a younger age (by virtue of the fact that a boy's are more visible than a girl's). They also begin masturbating earlier. "Because of this, their brains notice changes in their bodies more quickly," Brotto explains, "whereas women's bodies can be very excited and their minds don't notice it at all."

Or sometimes it's just that the mind takes a while to catch up. Ever since sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson revolutionized thinking about human sexual function and dysfunction in the 1950s and 1960s, conventional wisdom has held that there's a linear progression: People feel desire and then become aroused; the physical sensations intensify and it all ends with one big earth-shattering orgasm.

But current research is showing that for some women, desire doesn't necessarily come first. The sexual contact may be what gets you in the mood. "When a woman's partner initiates sex, she may feel indifferent to it at first," says psychologist Sandra Leiblum, Ph. D., director of sexual and relationship services at the New Jersey Center for Sexual Wellness. She may be stressed or tired or, to Brotto's point, focusing on a million other things. "But often, if she plays along she starts to feel aroused, and then the desire kicks in," Leiblum says.

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