understanding sexual arousal
Sexual arousal is the psychological and biological change that occurs, influenced by a number of factors including:
The brain’s capacity to create images and fantasies
Our emotions
Our sensory experience
Hormones
Degree of intimacy between people
image: nsey benajah
The psycho-bio-social factors:
The psychosocial factors that influence arousal includes your perception on whether the following things are normal, or shameful. The social or cultural messages about sex, and your personal attitudes towards sex. How you feel about your past experiences, and your ability to fantasise. The kind of dynamic with others, you might be less likely to feel arousal toward someone you don’t know compared to your partner.
The biological factors that influence arousal include your hormones [like oestrogen and testosterone], the neurotransmitters in your brain [serotonin and dopamine], spinal reflexes and neural pathways in the body.
To facilitate sexual arousal, we need to consider sexual stimulation.
image: nsey benajah
Touch
Touch is found to be the most effective sense to engage for sexual arousal. To do so, people usually stimulate erogenous zones, which are areas of the body that are particularly sensitive to sexual stimulation.
Primary erogenous zones are areas that contain a dense concentration of nerve endings. This includes ares of the genitals, anus, perineum, nipples, neck, armpits, mouth, nostrils, navel, ears, and inner thighs. These areas of the body where you have more nerve endings are more likely to be sensitive to touch compared to other body parts.
Secondary erogenous zones are areas of the body that have become erotically sensitive through learning and experience. This can be pretty much any other part of the body that isn’t a primary erogenous zone. So if your partner stroked you gently across your upper back, and tenderly kisses you there during every sexual interaction, this could form into a secondary erogenous zone.
Vision
Research has shown that visual stimuli is second to touch in stimulating sexual arousal. The way people look, what they wear, and how they present themselves can be a huge turn on. however the research also shows this is more so for men than women. It’s worthwhile noting what you might find visually attractive, or arousing.
Smell
A person’s sexual history and cultural conditioning will influence the smells they might find arousing. For example, the smell of genital secretions may be erotic, if not for the social conditioning taught to people to find it distasteful.
Cultures all over the world have developed the tendency to mask natural odours. However, research has shown that people who menstruate secrete a substance called pheromones during their fertile periods, and that others have receptors in their noses that can identify this.
Taste and Hearing are largely variable as contributors to sexual arousal. This can be a person-to-person kind of thing.
So to understand arousal, it requires each person to recognise the psychological [stress, attitudes about sex], social/cultural [messages about sex], biological [hormones and neurotransmitters] factors. As well as whether there is sufficient sexual stimulation through senses like touch, sight and smell.
