Various drives can act simultaneously in relation to eating behaviour. I can eat both because I am hungry and I wish to please my dinner host. Different functions are being met at the same time. But co-occurring drives may also be in conflict: I may want to eat because I am hungry, yet not want to eat because I have been putting on too much weight. Some drives may be ego-dystonic: that is, I experience an urge I would rather not have (I continue to feel hungry although I’ve already eaten too much). And so I may need to manage drives that create conflict, as conflict creates psychological distress. The management of drives involves optimising the fit between drives, their possible expression, and my values and beliefs, so that internal and external conflict is minimised. In such a process, a particular drive may be rationalised by changing or amending a value or belief, or a particular drive may be inhibited or embraced behaviourally to match an underlying value or belief. Situations may be avoided altogether to limit the activation of unwanted drives. Furthermore, the meanings attributed to a drive can be coloured to match the underlying values and beliefs.
There are other complications. For example, eating might satiate a physiological drive. However, when eating is motivated by loneliness, no satiation occurs. In this case, eating may help someone feel better momentarily, but it is unrelated to bodily needs, and it won’t fulfil the need for company. In other words, the outcome of the activity doesn’t meet the goal of the drive that set it in motion. The circumstances of eating can also change the extent to which related subjective drives are met. I can eat a burger alone, but the experience will be different when I eat a burger prepared for me by a friend. When this happens, I don’t only eat a burger; I am also the recipient of my friend’s love and intent to bless me. I feel special and significant by the intent and energy and sacrifice of my friend. The event becomes not only an act of eating; it now carries layered meanings in regard to relationship. Eating alone accentuates loneliness: eating with another might mean acceptance and recognition by another person. Without these other meaning layers, I might eat simply to combat my loneliness, which can result in overeating — even though my body has had enough, my loneliness remains, and so I keep eating. Alternatively, I might lose interest in eating altogether where other critical needs are not being met.
And so we see that eating has a primary physiological function, but also has psychological and social functions. Moreover, the motives relating to eating may be mixed and vary greatly and independently of its physiological function; and the circumstances of eating further affects what drives are met. This is also true for functions and drives relating to sexual behaviours. While I might argue that sexual relating has the physiological function of procreation, and the psychological and social function of belonging, the drives relating to sexual activity and the goals they represent can vary considerably and independently of these functions. Furthermore, like eating, the need for sexual expression does not discriminate what sexual behaviour is good for the health of a sexual relationship. In this respect, the term ‘sexual drive’ is similar to the term ‘eating drive’, in that it gives no information about the great variation of possible drive goals except the implied biological imperative, nor does it identify what constitutes a ‘healthy’ or ‘functional’ expression of such drives. There are drives that shape behaviour that have little to do with the primary functions of that behaviour. For example, eating or sexual behaviour in order to ‘prove a point’ may have some fleeting social or psychological value, but it does not serve any enduring purpose. Similarly, eating junk food alone or masturbating to pornography may provide some fleeting pleasure, but again, such behaviour does not serve a functional personal or wider social goal.
And so ‘sexual drive’ is best thought of as a complex profile of any number of drives. It is coloured by hormones, mood, situation, personal history, and personal and societal expectations and values which relate to both primary or secondary functions of sexual behaviour. The relative strength of each drive can vary, affecting a person’s overall drive profile from one circumstance to the next, and so affecting the person’s ultimate decisions and behaviour. There will naturally be debate as to what might be considered ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ functions of behaviour: is this relative to a person’s drive profile (reflecting the most powerful prevailing drives), to sociocultural values and expectations, or to biological imperatives? Each no doubt plays a role, and it is up to the reader to decide whether the argument for what serves as primary functions in sexual behaviour is convincing, and whether the various expressions of such drives might be seen as ‘healthy’ or ‘functional’.
The notion that sexual behaviour involves both multiple drives51 and multiple functions has important implications. It is the particular mix of drives that predict whether the resulting sexual behaviours are likely to promote the long-term wellbeing of the parties involved, and to perform the multiple functions required. As such, it might be argued that a healthy mix of drives serves a protective function. For example, if pleasure and enjoyment is the only motivating drive, it might find expression in such behaviours as binge-eating, smoking, and recreational drug use, negatively affecting a person’s long-term wellbeing. Similarly in sexual behaviour, where the attainment of pleasure and enjoyment is the only or pre-eminent drive and function, the long-term wellbeing of the persons involved may be compromised. Various forms of sexual exploitation come to mind. If pleasure and enjoyment is the only function and goal of sexual behaviour, the relevance of with whom, how, when or where I have my sexual experience relates only to the degree of pleasure I might anticipate. Once this drive is paired with the need for intimacy and to belong, however, a different picture emerges.
There is further a principle that moderates sexual behaviour (and behaviour generally) which might for our purposes also be thought of as a drive. It is the drive to homeostasis at the biological level, and its counterpart at the psychological level; the drive to internal consistency — that is, to think and behave in a manner consistent with one’s self-image and past history.52 This drive to homeostasis results in the maintenance of the existing equilibrium in biological systems, while the drive to internal consistency results in interpretation of subjective events so that such interpretation remains consistent with the existing decisions and perceptions that define a person’s sense of self — that which orients that person. For example, if a woman decides she is unattractive because she is carrying too much weight, even though her doctor sees her as dangerously underweight, she will nevertheless experience a strong drive to starve herself in keeping with her perception and orientation. Meanwhile, her body has adjusted to very low food intake and seeks to maintain its current internal equilibrium. Because of the stability of her self-image, this behaviour becomes very difficult to shift. And so, although the drive profile is dynamic, the brain seeks stability, consistency and familiarity. These two opposing forces — the brain’s capacity to adapt to hormonal and social changes with accompanying drive profile changes, and the brain’s competing need to create a stable and familiar sense of self (internal consistency) — creates a dynamic of its own, potentially with its own conflicts.
A person makes decisions and develops perceptions in their early years that shape their sense of self, and that emerge as basic schemas or belief systems.53 These are not inherent or inevitable, but they are nevertheless powerful and difficult to change, because of this drive to homeostasis. The motivation is to match subsequent behaviour to the self-image, reinforcing the image. Such decisions and self-perceptions might include: ‘I’m unattractive’; ‘I don’t belong’; ‘I’m not good enough’; ‘I’m worth more’; and so on. Perceptions of this kind result in a person not attempting activities that are inconsistent with their self-image, or feeling anxiety or dysphoria should they find themself in situations that require them to attempt activities inconsistent with their self-image.
This principle also operates in relation to a person’s