Our desire: what it reveals about us and how to reclaim it
with Margaux Terrou
Each year, to mark the launch of The midnight whisper, Ysé gives women a voice to speak about sexuality.
This year, to go even further, we spoke with Margaux Terrou, sexologist and author of La Malbaise. Today, she shares an inspiring reflection on desire, what it reveals about us and how we can reclaim it.
Desire is a word we use often, without really pausing to think about it. A word we assume is self-evident because it runs through our intimate lives, our relationships and our bodies. And yet, in reality, it is laden with injunctions, norms and inherited narratives, sometimes passed on without our even realising it. We rarely grow up asking ourselves what desire actually means to us. Instead, we learn what we should feel, when we should want it, how we should respond to another’s desire. Very early on, desire becomes something to succeed at, to maintain, not to lose, rather than an inner movement to listen to.
When women are asked what desire represents for them, the answers are often multiple, sometimes contradictory, combining momentum, curiosity, fear of disappointment, fatigue, pressure, and the idea that one should be available, open, alive, even when the body or mind says otherwise. Desire is then experienced less as an intimate force than as a silent indicator of normality, a barometer of the relationship, an expected proof of femininity.
And yet, the word desire comes from the Latin desiderare, literally “to regret the absence of the star”. This already tells us something precious: desire is not something that is always there, immediately accessible, ready to be activated. It is something that can be lacking, obscured, displaced, without disappearing altogether. Not feeling desire does not mean it no longer exists. Sometimes it simply means it is elsewhere, waiting for fairer conditions in which to emerge.
Confusing desire with libido often contributes to this misunderstanding. Libido refers to a more global energy, all the things we can follow with the phrase “I feel like”: I feel like dancing, singing, eating, going out, wearing lingerie, making love, meeting someone. Desire, on the other hand, is deeply relational and contextual, shaped by history, past experiences, self-perception, and feelings of safety or constraint. One can have an active libido without feeling desirous. One can desire without wanting to have sex. Desire is not limited to the sexual act, nor is it measured by the frequency of intercourse.
Sexuality is not innate, it is learned. It is built from collective narratives, gendered injunctions, and phrases repeated until they become invisible, such as the persistent opposition between men supposedly driven by needs and women reduced to secondary, adaptable, negotiable desires. This naturalised view erases an essential reality: desire is a construction, shaped by education, culture and our relationship with the body, and it follows no legitimate hierarchy between the sexes.
Desire can appear at different moments and in different spaces: in the mind before the body, in the body before conscious wanting, in the connection before the gesture, or sometimes outside any explicit sexuality at all, in a look, a sensation, a feeling of being present to oneself. It can be spontaneous or responsive, arise unexpectedly or be born of a reassuring context, a climate of safety, a rediscovered sense of desirability.
Reclaiming one’s desire rarely begins with a technique or an immediate solution. It begins with simple yet demanding questions: what does desiring mean to me, independently of what I have been taught? Do I experience myself as the subject of my desire, or primarily as the object of another’s? At what point did I learn to turn away from my sensations in order to meet external expectations?
There is also an essential idea, often forgotten: the first person we are meant to desire is ourselves. Desiring our own body, not as it should be, but as it is today. Desiring our rhythm, our limits, our sensitive zones, our refusals too. Limits are not the enemy of desire; they are often its condition. Understanding them, setting them and respecting them creates a space in which desire can circulate without feeling constrained or threatened.
Discovering what brings real pleasure, rather than expected pleasure, is part of this journey. Understanding how we like to be desired, what sets us in motion, what freezes us, what opens us up and what closes us off. Moving away from automatic sexuality towards a conscious, embodied, chosen sexuality.
Desire is not a goal to be reached. It is an intimate language: sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, that requires time, listening and gentleness. Making room for it is already a way of encountering it differently.
