I argue that human sexuality, and in particular the difficulties associated with it, should be understood as responses, expressive and repressive, to love. Sexual trouble cannot be articulated in terms of a conflictual interplay between “nature” and “culture”, but instead manifests a fear of wholly giving oneself to one’s desire for the other, announced in arousal. I discuss the rôle of fantasies as defensive strategies through which desire is depersonalised, and thus limited and perverted, show how Freud’s attempt to sunder sexual desire from the “object”, the other person, misfires, and problematise certain Lacanian dicta on the alleged “impossibility” of sexuality and desire.