The Myth of the Single Cause: Why Sexual Preferences Don’t Come From One Place

Tel Aviv — “I don’t understand why it’s this,” D., 34, said during her second session with a sex therapist last week. She lowered her voice, as if confessing something dangerous. Then: “It’s my childhood, right? Or trauma? Or my exes? Or maybe I was just born this way?”

It’s a familiar script.
People desperately want one clean origin story — a sharp point in the past that explains everything about their adult desire. A moment to point at and say: There. That’s where it started.

Human beings like order.
Science, for better or worse, rarely cooperates.

Because according to psychologists, neuroscientists and sex researchers across Israel, the US and the UK, one thing has become clear:

There is no single cause.
There never was.

And the hunt for one usually leads to more anxiety, not clarity.

Why we keep searching for “the one cause”

Dr. Karen Dolev, a clinical psychologist from Haifa, calls it a “control reflex.”

“People want a key,” she says. “One small explanation that makes everything feel manageable. A single story that ties the whole thing together.”

The problem?
The brain doesn’t deal in stories. It deals in patterns.

So as soon as you try to locate desire in one memory, one event, one parental dynamic, you lose sight of the entire system that actually creates it.

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The simple explanations — and why they fail

Culture loves shortcuts.

“It’s your childhood.”
“It’s porn.”
“It’s trauma.”
“It’s personality.”
“It’s genetics.”

All of these contain a grain of truth — but none of them explain the phenomenon alone.

Dr. Ori Weinstein, a researcher of human sexuality at Tel Aviv University, puts it sharply:
“Any model that tries to explain sexual preferences with one factor is missing at least seven others. It’s like trying to explain a symphony through a single note.”

He says the problem isn’t the explanation itself, but its exclusivity.
Yes, childhood influences matter.
Yes, exposure to explicit media matters.
Yes, biology plays a part.
But the moment one of them becomes the explanation, the picture collapses into oversimplification.

Weinstein calls this the “origin fallacy” — the belief that desire must trace back to one source, one story, one psychological root.

“Real humans just don’t work that way,” he says.

The three most common false assumptions therapists hear every week

Across clinics in Tel Aviv, New York and London, the same beliefs repeat endlessly.
Three in particular have become almost mythological.

1. “It’s because of what I saw at home.”

Not exactly.
Family dynamics shape emotional safety, attachment styles, communication — but rarely produce sexual preferences directly.

“A quiet home doesn’t make you attracted to quietness,” Dolev says. “Sometimes it does the opposite. The home is one piece, not the whole puzzle.”

2. “It’s because of porn.”

A convenient explanation, because it comes with a clear villain.
But research shows something else: porn is an accelerator, not a generator.

It doesn’t create desire from scratch —
it gives form to patterns the brain already registered years earlier.

3. “It’s just my natural taste.”

A romantic idea, but scientifically shaky.

“There is no ‘natural taste,’” Weinstein says. “There are reinforcement patterns.”

What the brain rewards, it remembers.
What recurs, strengthens.
What feels familiar, stabilizes.

It’s not pure biology.
Not pure psychology.
Not pure culture.

It’s the overlap.

So what does shape sexual preferences?

Current research — especially in neuropsychology — points to a fairly consistent model:

Sexual preferences emerge from three integrated systems:

1. The brain — learning arousal patterns during adolescence
2. The emotional system — attaching meaning, safety and memory to certain cues
3. The cultural environment — shaping the “visual language” of desire

It’s never either/or.
It’s always and/and/and.

Dolev’s metaphor:
“It’s like a stew. One ingredient may dominate, but the actual flavor comes from the combination.”

Three short stories — and three completely different origins

To understand how diverse these pathways can be, here are three anonymized cases that therapists shared.

1. A., 41

His preference patterns formed around safety cues.
The only stable adult in his childhood had a specific emotional style — calm, observant, steady.
His adult attraction mirrored that old sense of security.

2. L., 29

Hers came from what she called “a tiny forbidden edge.”
Not trauma — just a moment of rebellion and novelty in her teens.
Her brain linked tension with excitement.

3. N., 24

His preferences came almost entirely from cultural exposure.
A specific aesthetic kept appearing in his feeds.
He thought it was an inborn desire.
His therapist suspected it was learned pattern recognition.

Three people.
Three stories.
Three completely different origins.

Why we insist on simplifying something that isn’t simple

Because simplicity is soothing.

A single cause allows a sentence that calms the mind:

“It’s because of that.”

It’s short.
It’s clean.
It feels like closure.

But it’s rarely accurate.
And often — not helpful.

Weinstein explains the problem:

“If you think it’s just your childhood, you miss who you are now.
If you think it’s just porn, you miss who you were then.
And if you think it’s just genetics, you’re ignoring the culture you live in.”

So what actually helps?

Therapists suggest a simple shift:

Stop asking “what caused my desire?”
Start asking:

What is the structure of my desire?

What emotional patterns shape it?
What cultural images refine it?
What neural templates formed earlier in life?

Where do those three meet?

That’s where understanding begins — not in the hunt for a single origin story.

Conclusion

Sexual preferences don’t come from one moment.
Not from one memory.
Not from one family dynamic.
Not from one gene.
Not from one exposure.

They emerge from a convergence of systems —
a combination of biology, emotion and culture.

Or, as Dolev phrased it in a line that captures the whole issue better than any academic paper:

“People want one key. I always tell them: there is no key. There is a whole ring of them.”