Many times when we lack desire we think it is because there are no things that are exciting us. Because our partner no longer attracts us, because we are asexual –oh, how many times have I heard that word used incorrectly!–, because we are not very interested in the subject… But there is something we do not see, and that is that when we talk about desires not everything is about impulses, but also about brakes.

For years they have sold us a fairly concrete idea of sexual desire: that it appears on its own, by magic, when the relationship is going well and there is chemistry. But reality is a bit more complex. And understanding this can prevent a lot of relationship anxiety.

Sexual fantasies arouse a lot of curiosity, but also a lot of guilt. There are people who are scared by what they imagine or wonder what that says about them. But perhaps the first thing to understand is that fantasizing is not the same as desiring. We can fantasize about a specific situation and have no real interest in putting it into practice. Fantasy is not a contract with reality, nor does it necessarily mask an unconscious desire for a philia or a trauma. Sorry, psychoanalysis.

Orgasm has become, for many people, a kind of final exam for sex. If it doesn't happen, it seems like the encounter was incomplete, mediocre, or a complete failure. This is called the orgasmic imperative: the idea that every sexual encounter must end in orgasm and that it is the ultimate proof that sex went well.

Rosa Font Massot He hasn't been far off the mark, and has set out to write about desire. About sexual desire, urgent and vital, but also about the spiritual desire for creation, the desire to sing. And, furthermore, about the desire to forget our dying condition, to change our perspective, to contemplate ourselves from the outside, or from very high above, as suggested by the verses of Iorgos Seferis that head the last canto of this poem: "Under the sky, we are the fish and the trees." About the desire to understand life from its origin, without the mediation—and the extreme, intimate complication—of consciousness. It is, for all these reasons, an ambitious book: "The Poem of Desire "It aims to be the construction of a literary space where amorous desire is a fusion with the world and with all that we perceive and are."