Many of us confuse arousal with desire.

If you're finding it increasingly difficult to 'get in the mood', and it's causing distress within your relationship(s), distinguishing the two can be really helpful.

DESIRE is the strong feeling of wanting to have something happen or wishing for something to happen.

AROUSAL is the action or fact of arousing or being aroused.

Or more simply, desire is the wish, arousal is the action.

When tiredness, health issues, age, children etc get in the way, desire for sex can lessen (or disappear entirely). We're often too busy for desire to appear and it can be very hard to force ourselves to feel it. Yes, reading erotica and sending sexy texts can help but desire in the middle of the day doesn't always lead to desire at night.

But you really don't NEED desire to enjoy lots of amazing sex. Understanding this can enable you to get out of the pattern of 'I don't feel like sex so I'm not going to have it'.

What you do need, is arousal. And arousal happens regardless of desire. So when you're lying with your partner thinking 'I'm really not in the mood', prepare yourself instead for the possibility of being aroused. Allow some interaction that might trigger arousal, like massage, kissing or whatever feels good. Desire can unfold as arousal builds and before you know it, you're actually feeling like sex and having it!

Yes it's easier to engage in lots of hot sex when desire is rampant, but that just doesn't continue for a lot of us throughout life. Too often we expect ourselves to want sex like we did as a teenager or in the first throes of love, but when we understand that desire isn't always ongoing, we can concentrate on arousal and give ourselves the opportunity to increase desire through arousal.

Don't wait for desire to arrive. You may be waiting an eternity and be missing out on the best sex of your life. And, of course, more sex leads to more desire, so give it a good hot go (even if you're a bit tepid to begin with ).

"Don't wait until you are ready to take action. Instead, take action to be ready." Jensen Siaw

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