Not understanding nicotine vs libido

So, I was hanging out causally on twitter until I saw this post:

Romy: the thing I don't understand about ppl who lose their libido in middle age is the idea that the low libido person is often apparently just fine with this. if I lost my interest in food I'd start experimenting with new foods to find something I like, bc enjoyment of food is important to me.

if menopause obliterated my sex drive, I'd get myself on peptides or testosterone, I'd be buying handcuffs and wigs and a furry costume just to double check. how does anyone go from having a normal amount of sex to just having no sex for years without thinking that's worth a serious intervention? I guess a bunch of ppl also lose the ability to want to want sex?

I was like “nah, can’t relate”, though this was mostly pointed at Romy. Why would you care about libido so much? I don’t get it.

So I started looking at the comments… and most people had explanations like “I think most people are just pretty low agency”… which are just non-answers, and basically take Romy’s premise as obvious.

uhm… what? is it really so unthinkable? I don’t get it at all.

I guess I’m probably the weird one here, but I want to understand.

---

why care about the libido specifically?

In my mind, desire and enjoyment are pretty disentangled. There are a lot of things I want to do, and a lot of things I enjoy doing. I also have a lack of time to do all these things. Being often pulled toward one object when it was busy with another seems, to me, pretty annoying? People seem to enjoy nicotine, though a nicotine craving seems like it would interfere with getting on with other parts of my life.

In my mind “libido” points towards the desire more so than the enjoyment, and this seems like an area of life where this is particularly decoupled in most people?

The stories I can tell for how the desire and enjoyment might be split up:

1. the physical act is the enjoyment, the wanting is just motivation

2. the wanting/unfulfillment state feels bad, and you get a lot of relief when it no longer feels bad that it feels good

   • This sounds like “no longer being in pain” to me?

3. the wanting/unfulfullment state feels good

(1) seems workable, (2) and (3) seem… not much of a loss? I’m not sure

why nicotine vs libido different?

so I don’t really understand how a lack of desire for one part of life is so heart-breaking? I have a lot of things I want to do, and I generally find it easier when I can just focus on doing one or two things for a while.

I would think “oh, having your mind occupied to be so often thinking about one thing when you were thinking about another thing seems kinda annoying, maybe similar to having a nicotine addiction?”

So I ask a quick survey on how ubiquitous this really is… whether there is any similarity with something like nicotine

(there is some pretty heavy bias in that, this survey was done on Glosso).

But mostly it seems like people like their libido but dislike their craving for nicotine? with some exceptions for both.

Even if the proportions are probably skewed, people just really do value having a high libido? And mostly don’t think of their nicotine craving in a similar way? I ask people sometimes and often the answers are similar.

(mis)understanding nicotine

What drives a specific desire for libido is, as opposed to nicotine?

For nicotine:

• Often it can done taken solo, or is often enjoyed sociably

• It is a desire is present very often

• People (at least initially) seem to quite enjoy it

• People seem to miss it a lot when they don’t have it

• Its limited in how much novelty there can be

• People have a lot of moral value judgements about it

For people with libido, my understanding is though:

• That this applies for even people who mostly enjoy things solo or are very unsatisfied?

• This applies even if its not the only form of joy in your life?

• That people do just like it even if its not that high novelty?

bargaining some kind of understanding…

I can understand a few additional points

• enjoying the craving in itself is a bit weird, but sounds kind of plausible.

• I can understand wanting to make your partner happy if they have a high libido

• I understand it has its own flavor of enjoyment

But it also feels like a large inference jump that people would be “extremely upset” that they didn’t have libido? How can a strong craving be so enjoyable to so many people? how can this be so single-handedly important to a relationship? Isn’t it true that basically all types of enjoyment are different flavors?

so is it just magnitude?

But final guess, is the main factor just becomes: “people associate the enjoyment from sex as being really good, and the enjoyment from nicotine as being quite mild.”

Compared to me, people seem to enjoy food much more, but this seems even higher than that? (I do enjoy food sometimes if its novel and tasty, but it kinda does wear off overtime if its not novel).

---

I’m still confused…

Perhaps most of this is downstream of some strong intrinsic desire handed down from evolution. That its not really a rational [desire for desire], as much as it is some untouchable value handed by evolution.

I slightly get it, I do feel some internal desire to want to have kids, separate form other reasons you might want to have children. I quite enjoy cuddling, though the “desire” and “enjoyment” seem quite separable.

But the “near-zero-libido” frame just seems to often hit people emotionally in a way similar to how one might suggest that one not eat meat, that I just don’t understand.