“Psychologists commonly hold that, for both women and men, internal fantasies are drawn from our unique ‘love maps’, a term first coined in 1980 by Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University to describe ‘the sexual temple expressed in every individual’s erotic fantasies and practices.’

In other words, our love maps describe the subconscious blueprint of our erotic desires. The love map lies at the root of our sexual preferences, explaining why we prefer one physical type over another and influencing our sexual fantasies and practices. Each of us has a distinctive love map, as unique as a fingerprint, but there’s no real consensus on exactly how our love maps or sexual templates are formed.

Some say early life experiences and impressions shape our love maps, beginning with an unconscious tendency to seek out characteristics found in our opposite sex parents. Fetishes also ostensibly derive from our experiences, when an early association of an object or image with a sexual stirring becomes emblazoned into our sexual psyche.

Others believe that our early pubescent masturbation fantasies forge our love maps. Early experiences that results in sexual stimulation and orgasms are instinctively repeated. Is it entirely circumstanial that a teenage boy first masturbates to a typical Playboy centrefold and is later drawn to busty blondes?

Others have the opinion that emotional cravings and unconscious psychological needs inform the love map. All of these theories have merit, and in my estimation there is some truth to each. In the end, our love maps are most likely a dynamic, ever-evolving confluence of factors.

This is why porn, particularly the ready access of Internet porn, is such a personal bete noire: It’s not just the simplistic, erroneous view of female sexuality that bugs me, but the degree to which it creates dependence on external triggers that can both obscure and override the organic development of the love map.

Men deprive themselves of the time to luxuriate in fantasies and desires that are personal and individual, and they frequently turn to the geric visuals of porn to catalyse the process. More and more men are turning away from their intimate relationships as a source of sexual exploration and settling instead for erotic junk food.”

An extract from Passionista: The Empowered Woman’s Guide to Pleasuring a Man by Ian Kerner, Ph.D.

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