From cognitive malaise to erotic stagnation: reforming the functional view in light of sexual boredom

This commentary proposes a minor revision of the functional account of boredom developed by Andreas Elpidorou in The Anatomy of Boredom. While I endorse the core insight that boredom is an aversive, informative, and motivational state that regulates our engagements with the world, I argue that restricting this regulatory function to cognition renders the account incomplete. The central claim is that sexual boredom constitutes a genuine instance of state boredom that falls outside the cognitive scope of the original framework, thereby motivating its expansion. Drawing on empirical research, I characterize sexual boredom as a temporary, context-dependent affective state arising from suboptimal sexual engagement. Like cognitive boredom, it involves an aversive phenomenology, conveys information about inadequate engagement, and motivates behavioral change. However, its target domain is sexual/bodily rather than cognitive engagement, indicating that boredom’s regulatory function is not exhausted by cognition. The analysis further situates sexual boredom within broader concerns about well-being and feminist critiques of pornography, extending the political and existential dimensions already emphasized in Elpidorou’s account. The proposed revision is minimal: boredom should be understood as regulating engagement simpliciter, encompassing both cognitive and non-cognitive domains. This preserves the explanatory strengths of the functional view while broadening its scope.