The Secret Life of Your Desire

What 75+ of you revealed about how we lose it, hide it, and begin to reclaim it.

Apr 16, 2025

Dear Desire Mappers!

What Does Desire Look Like to You?

Over the last month, I invited readers to share their experiences with desire: what it feels like, where it gets stuck, and what kind of help they wished existed. Over 70 people responded with raw, powerful, and deeply personal insights.

Today, I'm sharing what you taught me.

This isn't just data—it's desire, decoded. And it's shaping the course I'm building to help us all understand and express our erotic nature with more clarity, confidence, and compassion.

The first thing the survey asked was for you to describe what Desire looks like to you. This was a fascinating and open ended question, and the results are shown below in the word cloud.

What do you notice?

What stood out to me- sex is a small word meaning it wasn’t mentioned by many of you as a core component of desire.

Feeling, need, wanting something, were all very common.

Desire doesn’t = sex.

Desire is a deeper process about longing, feeling wanted, and needing another.

But this was only one of the questions in the survey about Desire.

The secret life of your desire became more apparent when you were asked about the areas in your life where you felt your desire could be improved.

After analysing the data 4 main themes emerged.

Let’s dive in.

THEME ONE: Desire is Often Disconnected from the Self

Many of you spoke about feeling “cut off” from desire. Whether because of trauma, social conditioning, religious shame, or just the daily grind, the most common struggle wasn’t about having desire—it was about finding it again.

You described:

“Feeling numb.”
“Not knowing what I want.”
“Shame around even thinking about it.”
“Desire was used against me, so I buried it.”

Even those of you in relationships admitted they didn’t know how to reconnect to their own erotic world. You weren’t sure if you currently have low desire or if it had just been buried too deep to find.

THEME TWO: Desire Becomes Dangerous Without Language

Another striking pattern: the pain of not being able to put desire into words.

Some of you mentioned that you have a rich inner erotic world, but couldn’t express it. Others had trouble even knowing what you wanted until it was gone. Many of you said they didn’t know how to talk about your desire without risking rejection, confusion, or misunderstanding.

“It’s in my head, but I can’t find the words.”
“If I ask, it feels needy.”
“My partner shut down. I should have said something sooner.”
“I’ve never even told anyone what I really want.”

Language, whether it be internal or external matters.

Without it, desire becomes a silent ache.

THEME THREE: Desire Wounds Show Up in Relationships

Perhaps the most emotionally charged theme was the impact of mismatched desire.

You shared stories of divorces, breakups, infidelity, and years of silence—all rooted in different levels of wanting.

“We stopped having sex, but we still loved each other.”
“I was the high-desire partner, and I felt broken.”
“We both gave up. No one knew how to talk about it.”
“I felt like my desires were a burden.”

Often, sadly many of you assumed the problem was you—too much, too little, too confusing.

But what many of you also said would have helped was clear: communication, education, tools, and a shared language to explore without blame.

THEME FOUR: Desire is partly Shaped by Culture

From purity culture to porn culture, religious guilt to neurodivergent shutdown, upbringing emerged as a major influence on how you see and seek desire.

Some of you wanted permission.

Others wanted understanding.

Many of you wanted to undo decades of conditioning.

“I learned that my desire didn’t matter.”
“Being raised religious made me afraid of pleasure.”
“I still don’t know if what I want is normal.”
“As an older woman, I was told my desire should be gone. It’s stronger than ever.”

Your desire is not just about libido.

It’s a mirror of who you are and the world you grew up in.

And it’s time you understood it on your own terms.

Introducing: Decode My Desire The Course To Address Your Needs

Based on these 75+ responses, the upcoming course will help you:

Reconnect to your own desires with clarity
Build confidence expressing them without shame
Navigate mismatched desire with curiosity and skill
Explore how your upbringing, culture, and relationships have shaped your erotic identity
Practice what you learn with exercises, journal prompts, and optional partner explorations

It will include: