In early life, usually just before puberty, males are said to be quite flexible regarding their “preferred sexual incentive”,although they later become inflexible. Females on the other hand remain flexible throughout their life cycle. This change in sexuality due to sensitivity to variations in situational, cultural, and social factors is called erotic plasticity.
Otherwise, we know very little about the feelings of sexual desire and sexual arousal in prepubertal children or whether any feelings they may have can be comparable to what they would experience later on in life as an adult.
However, we do know that boys typically experience and commence sexual interest and activity before girls do.Men, on average, have significantly higher sex drives and desire for sexual activity than women do; this also correlated with the finding that men report, on average, a larger total number of lifetime sexual partners,although mathematicians say "it is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women".
Sex drive was also related to sociosexuality scores, where the higher the sex drive the less restricted the sociosexual orientation, or the willingness to have sex outside of a committed relationship. This was especially the case for women. Lippa utilized data from a BBC internet survey to examine cross-cultural patterns in sex differences for three traits: sex drive, sociosexuality, and height. These three traits all showed consistent sex differences across nations, although women were found to be more variable than men in their sex drive.
On average, male sexual desire remains stronger, more frequent, and longer into the life cycle than women’s.Though women do not experience sexual desire as often as men, when they do, the intensity of the experience is equal to that of men.Societal perceptions of men and women in addition to perceptions about acceptable sexual behaviour (e.g. men are more sexual and sometimes insatiable while women should be more reserved and almost nonsexual) may also contribute to expressed levels of sexual desire and expressed sexual satisfaction.
DeLamater and Sill found that affect and feelings towards the importance of sexual activity can affect levels of desire. In their study, women who said that sexual activity was important to the quality of their lives and relationships demonstrated low desire, while women who placed less emphasis on sexual activity in their lives demonstrated high desire. Men also presented similar results.
These findings were reflected in a Conaglen and Evans study where they assessed whether sexual desire levels influence emotional responses and cognitive processing of sexual pictorial stimuli. They found that women with lower sexual desire responded to sexual stimuli in the picture recognition task more quickly but rated the sexual images as less arousing and less pleasant than the other desire groups.
It has been found that women can become physically aroused when presented with explicit sexual imagery and stimuli without experiencing psychological desire or arousal.This led to 97% of women in a study reporting that they have had sexual intercourse without experiencing sexual desire while only 60% of the men reported the same thing.
Also, women may form a more significant association between sexual desire and attachment than men.Women may be more prone to desire fluctuation due to the many phases and biological changes the woman’s body endures through a life cycle: menstrual cycle, pregnancy, lactation, menopause, and fatigue.
Though these changes are usually very small, women seem to have increased levels of sexual desire during ovulation while during menstruation they experience a decreased level of sexual desire.
In women, an abrupt decline in androgen production can cause cessation of sexual thoughts and the failure to respond to sexual cues and triggers which previously would elicit sexual desire. This is seen especially in postmenopausal women who have low levels of testosterone. Doses of testosterone given to women transdermally have been found to improve levels of sexual desire and sexual functioning.
Older individuals are less likely to declare themselves as being at the extremes of the sexual desire spectrum. By the time that individuals reach middle and old age there is a natural decline in sexual desire, sexual capacity, and the frequency of sexual behaviour.DeLamater and Sill found that the majority of men and women do not officially report themselves as having low levels of sexual desire until they are 75 years old.
Many would attribute this lull to partner familiarity, alienation, or preoccupation with other non-sexual matters such as social, relational, and health concerns.
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