Luring the Elusive: Narratives about Sexual Desire for One’s Partner by Women and Men in Heterosexual Romantic Relationships

Abstract

In this qualitative study, we explored women’s and men’s experience of sexual desire for their romantic partner and its link to dyadic interactions. During interviews and focus group discussions, our participants described sexual desire as ‘elusive’, ‘conditional’, ‘responsive’ and ‘malleable’. The subtheme ‘elusive’ refers to sexual desire having a will of its own, while the remaining three refer to prerequisites for, triggers of, and strategies for enhancing sexual desire respectively. These subthemes come together in the overarching narrative ‘luring the elusive’, which articulates one’s responsibility to accommodate sexual desire for one’s partner, but also the necessity to acknowledge its elusiveness.

Acknowledgements

The quality of this study has been enhanced by the contributions of a number of persons.

Firstly, we wish to thank Prof. Dr. Peter Rober for his guidance regarding methodological issues and his time and effort for training the first author and the contributing student-researchers in qualitative data analysis.

We are additionally grateful for the valuable contributions of Lise Rosquin and Annelies Gilissen. As student-researchers, they have been insightful sparring partners during the preliminary data analysis stage, and a tremendous help in the practical organization of the member checking focus groups, as well as in the preparation of this last piece of data for analysis (transcribing).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, Sofia Prekatsounaki. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes

1 Although a small number of women in lesbian and men in homosexual relationships could be recruited also, the limited data of this small group can as yet not be discussed in this paper.