Blog

What Your Body Is Actually Doing

Let’s talk about arousal. And I don’t just mean the physical kind, though we’ll get there. Arousal is your body and brain saying, “I’m paying attention to something that feels good.” It’s a heightened state of awareness and sensation. Your heart rate picks up a little. Blood flow increases. You feel more present, more alive in your body. It’s your nervous system shifting gears.

The ancient Greeks had a word for this. Eros. We tend to think of Eros as just sexual desire, but it’s much bigger than that. Eros is life force. It’s the energy of aliveness itself. It’s what makes you feel awake, present, drawn toward something or someone. Esther Perel, whose work I reference often, describes Eros as the very opposite of deadness. When Eros is alive in you, you’re not just going through the motions. You’re actually here.

Rollo May, the psychologist and author of The Courage to Create, wrote that Eros is the source of all creative energy, not just sexual. It’s what pulls an artist into a painting, a musician into a piece of music. It’s that state of total absorption where self-consciousness falls away and you are just fully in something. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (cheeks-SENT-me-high) called this flow. That experience of being so completely present that time disappears, effort feels effortless, and you feel most fully yourself. Athletes feel it. Composers feel it. And couples can feel it with each other.

For those of us who are members of the Church, there’s a doctrinal layer here. We are made in the image of God. And God, above all else, is a Creator. That creative energy, that Eros, that aliveness and impulse toward beauty and connection and making something, that is not incidental to who we are. It is the image of the divine in us. When you feel that pull toward your spouse, that warmth and wanting and aliveness, you are experiencing something that reflects your divine nature. Eros isn’t something to manage or suppress. It’s something sacred.

Physically, arousal involves increased blood flow to the genitals, which produces lubrication in women and erections in men. Skin becomes more sensitive. Your senses sharpen. But Eros doesn’t start there. It starts with that flicker of attraction when your spouse walks into the room. The warmth you feel when they reach for your hand. The way your body leans in when they’re close. That’s Eros. That energy of aliveness and wanting.

What arousal is not, and this is important, is a contract. It’s not a promise of where things are going. It’s not a green light. It’s not a signal that you’ve consented to anything beyond what you’re currently feeling. Eros is just a feeling. A beautiful, pleasurable feeling in your body. And that’s enough.

Isla had honestly forgotten that. She’d been married to Luke for nine years, and somewhere along the way, she had gotten so trained to manage where arousal might lead that she’d stopped letting herself feel it at all. If she felt that warm, drawn-in sensation when they were watching a movie together, her brain would immediately start calculating. Is this going to turn into something? Am I ready for that tonight? And if the answer was no, she’d mentally check out. She didn’t want out of closeness with Luke. She was afraid of what feeling close to Luke might mean she owed him.

That’s a really common pattern. And a lot of it comes from what happens when Eros is allowed to just exist in you, versus what happens when it has somewhere it’s expected to go.

Why Arousal Is Worth Feeling

Eros is pleasurable. That sounds obvious, but a lot of people have forgotten this because their relationship with arousal has become so tangled up with obligation and outcome. The feeling of being turned on, being warm and sensitized and present in your body with someone you love, is actually one of the best feelings there is. It doesn’t need to go anywhere to be worth having.

Eros also creates connection. When you’re in that state with your spouse, you’re more attuned to them. You notice them more. You’re drawn toward them instead of just coexisting in the same space. It builds a kind of emotional electricity between you. Emily Nagoski, in her research on female sexuality, describes this as the difference between being engaged with your partner and simply being near them. Eros is engagement.

Staying in that arousal without immediately acting on it also builds anticipation. And anticipation, as anyone who’s ever wanted something for a long time before getting it knows, makes the eventual experience richer. Eros that has room to breathe can deepen and grow in a way that rushed arousal never does.

And there’s a broader benefit too. Couples who can comfortably exist in a state of desire together, without that desire always needing to be resolved immediately, tend to report a much stronger sense of erotic connection in their marriage overall. There’s a warmth and aliveness between them that goes beyond just how often they have sex. Eros is present between them in ordinary moments, over dinner, on a walk, in a conversation. That energy is worth protecting.

Grace had this. She and Mason, three years into their marriage, still had moments where she would genuinely feel drawn to him. She’d notice it when he was cooking or laughing with friends. A warmth, a wanting. It was real and it was good. But what happened next was always the same. Mason would notice. And the moment he noticed, there was something else that popped up that would quiet that eros.  That something was an agenda.

What an Agenda Does

When arousal gets paired with an expectation, even an unspoken one, it stops being a feeling and becomes a problem to manage. And when that happens consistently, Eros leaves the relationship. It just stops showing up.

Mason wasn’t pressuring Grace or being unkind about it. But the moment he sensed she was interested, his whole demeanor would shift. He’d get more attentive, more focused on her, in a way that felt less like genuine connection and more like strategy. He’d suggest they head to bed earlier. He’d put his hand on her knee with a particular kind of intention. And Grace, who moments ago was genuinely feeling something warm and real, would feel it drain away. Her body recognized the shift before her mind had words for it. The Eros had become a currency, and she didn’t want to spend it.

This pattern, where one partner’s visible arousal becomes a cue for the other to pursue, is incredibly common. And it doesn’t just happen with the spouse who wants sex more often. It works in reverse too. The spouse who wants sex less often, who learns, consciously or not, that showing interest creates an expectation, will stop showing interest. They’ll suppress the feeling before it can create a situation they’re not ready for. So they stop touching, stop flirting, stop letting themselves feel anything that might be interpreted as an invitation.

What that means, practically, is that Eros disappears from the relationship. Not because the desire is gone, but because it’s become unsafe to feel it. When any affection must lead to sex, affection will stop.

Isla told me once that she used to love sitting close to Luke, their legs touching on the couch, watching something together. It felt intimate in the best way. But she’d stopped doing that because when she sat close, she felt like he assumed she was interested in sex. Maybe he did. Maybe he was just responding to her warmth and hoping. She wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that she felt the shift, and she started protecting herself from it by removing the closeness. She still wanted him. She just needed the closeness to exist separately from the pressure she felt every time she got close to him.

Luke had no idea that’s what was happening. He thought he was reading signals. He thought Isla had just pulled away from him.

Some spouses who want sex more often do carry a belief, usually unexamined, that if they get aroused, their spouse is responsible for solving it. Sometimes that’s what’s driving the shift Grace felt in Mason, and what Isla felt in Luke. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s just enthusiasm, or hope, or not knowing how to just sit in the feeling without acting on it. The intent doesn’t always matter. If the spouse who wants sex less often feels like their closeness creates an expectation, they’ll stop being close.

Dr. Lori Brotto at the University of British Columbia has studied how non-evaluative awareness of sexual sensation, simply noticing what you’re feeling without immediately judging or acting on it, significantly improves sexual satisfaction for both men and women. When Eros doesn’t carry freight, it gets to stay around longer. And when it stays around longer, it has room to grow into something both people actually want.

The problem with an agenda isn’t that someone wants sex. The problem is that the agenda turns a shared feeling into a transaction. And transactions are the enemy of Eros.

What It Looks Like to Stay

So what’s the alternative? What does it look like to stay in arousal without an agenda?

It looks like noticing the feeling and letting it be there, without immediately trying to take it somewhere or protect yourself from it.

It looks like saying to yourself, “I’m attracted to my husband right now. That Eros is alive in me right now.” And just… leaving it there. Not moving toward anything, not pulling back to protect yourself. Just feeling it.

And what about when one of you is ready to take it further and the other isn’t? That’s going to happen. No agenda means no agenda for either person. The spouse who wants more gets to feel that wanting without it becoming pressure. The spouse who wants to stay where they are gets to say so without the moment collapsing. A simple “I’m happy right here” or “I’d love to keep going if you’re feeling it” keeps it mutual and light. What reinstates the agenda through the back door is when “I want more” hardens into expectation, or when “I’m good here” gets met with withdrawal. Either one shuts down the safety that made the Eros possible in the first place.

For Grace, this started as an experiment. She and Mason had a direct conversation about what was happening, that her arousal was essentially shutting down because she never felt safe to just feel it. Mason heard that. They made an agreement. If Grace was affectionate or flirtatious, Mason would not interpret that as an invitation for sex. He would just be present with her. He could feel his own Eros in response to her and enjoy that. But he wouldn’t move toward initiating. Not unless she initiated first.

The first few weeks, Grace didn’t fully believe him. Her nervous system had been trained for years to expect the pursuit. So she was cautious, testing the waters. She’d sit close to him on the couch and wait to see what happened. And he just sat with her. He’d put his arm around her, or not, but there was no agenda in it. Slowly, she started to feel safe staying in the feeling. And something surprising happened. Her Eros, no longer shut down by anticipatory dread, started to linger. It started to feel like something she wanted more of.

This is exactly what Esther Perel talks about when she writes about erotic space. Eros requires freedom. It requires the sense that you are choosing something, not being maneuvered toward it. When Grace had that freedom, her Eros came back. Not all at once, not immediately, but it came back.

Isla and Luke got there too, but it took longer because the pattern had been running for longer.

Building a New Relationship with Arousal Together

Isla finally told Luke that she’d stopped sitting close to him on purpose, and explained why. She was trying to protect herself from the pressure she felt every time she got close. Luke was quiet for a while. He’d just been responding to what he thought were signals from her, the way he thought a husband who wanted his wife was supposed to.

What they started to work on was learning to separate physical closeness and affection from sexual interest. Sex wasn’t the problem. Isla just needed to know that she could want to be close to Luke without that closeness having a destination. She needed the closeness to feel free.

They started small. Intentional snuggling with nothing expected afterward. Holding hands on a walk. Kisses that were just kisses. Luke had to do internal work here too. When he felt that Eros rising and chose not to act on it, at first it felt like deprivation. But over time, he started to notice something else. He liked being with Isla when she wasn’t bracing. He liked the way she’d lean into him when she wasn’t monitoring where things were going. He started to realize that what he actually wanted wasn’t just sex. He wanted her Eros directed at him, relaxed and genuinely present. And the only way to get that was to stop making every moment of closeness about where it might lead.

A few months in, something shifted. Isla initiated. Because she wanted to. Because her Eros was alive and she felt free enough to follow it. And she knew she had the freedom to want to without obligation. That’s a completely different kind of yes than the one you give because you’re afraid of what happens if you say no.

The key principle at work here is what some researchers describe as non-contingent desire. Eros that isn’t conditioned on what will happen next. Arousal that you’re allowed to feel just for its own sake. When that’s the environment your relationship creates, both partners relax. The spouse who wants sex less often stops suppressing and hiding. The spouse who wants sex more often stops scanning for signals and strategizing. And the space between them, which had been filled with tension, starts to feel like something you actually want to be in. That shift has a ripple effect that goes well beyond the bedroom.

What This Creates Over Time

The couples who figure this out describe their marriages differently. They use words like “playful” and “alive.” They talk about a kind of closeness that isn’t specifically about sex but that makes sex better when it does happen. They talk about feeling genuinely desired rather than just pursued. What they’re describing, whether they use the word or not, is Eros. That life force back in their marriage. Sometimes it looks like flow, that absorbed, timeless state where you’re both fully present and nothing outside the two of you exists for a little while. That is one of the most beautiful things a marriage can hold.

When you know that your spouse can sit in Eros without immediately converting it into pressure, you trust them with your feelings. You let your guard down. You stop performing and start actually feeling. And that’s where genuine connection lives.

Grace told me recently that she and Mason will sometimes be in that warm, connected state together and just let it stay there for hours. They don’t always take it anywhere. Sometimes they do. But the point is that it’s a choice, both times. Staying in the Eros because it’s good. Moving into something more because they both want to. No agenda either way.

That freedom changes everything. It changes how often Eros shows up, because it’s no longer something to avoid. It changes how present both people are during sex, because they’re not performing or managing expectations. It changes the emotional temperature of the marriage, because closeness is finally something safe to seek.

Eros is one of the most beautiful things you can cultivate in your marriage. It’s worth learning to feel it, to trust it, and to let it exist between you and your spouse without immediately needing to know what it means or where it’s going. The feeling itself is the point. Let it be enough.

Alright my friends, that’s all I have for you today. Remember, love is a journey, not a destination. Stay committed, stay passionate, and stay connected. I’ll see you next week…ba-bye.