Is it normal to not experience sexual arousal?
Sexual arousal
However, when a person fails to be aroused in a situation that would normally produce arousal and the lack of arousal is persistent, it may be due to a sexual arousal disorder or hypoactive sexual desire disorder. There are many reasons why a person fails to be aroused, including a mental disorder, such as depression, drug use, or a medical or physical condition. The lack of sexual arousal may be due to a general lack of sexual desire or due to a lack of sexual desire for the current partner. A person may always have had no or low sexual desire or the lack of desire may have been acquired during the person's life. There are also complex philosophical and psychological issues surrounding sexuality. Attitudes towards life, death, childbirth, one's parents, friends, family, contemporary society, the human race in general, and particularly one's place in the world play a substantive role in determining how a person will respond in any given sexual situation.
Sexual arousal
Another explanation of sexual arousal is offered by the approach which Kazimierz Imieliński calls the "psychohydraulic model of sexuality." This point of view likens human sexuality to a steam boiler, with biological processes or internal irritants creating sexual tension. If the level of this tension reaches threshold, sexual arousal occurs as the expression of necessity to let off steam. Gary F. Kelly (Clarkson University) describes this model as follows: