Category: Libido

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Quarantine Horniness

It’s still a bad idea to sleep with someone new, even if both of you have been social distancing.  

A person walks past a mural of a mask-wearing couple kissing on March 21 in Glasgow, Scotland

By Alex Abad-Santos

In 2012, the immortal chanteuse Britney Spears sang about the erotic thrill of the apocalypse.

“I can’t take it, take it, take no more. Never felt like, felt like this before,” she sang, voicing a deep, roiling desire to dance with someone she’d just met. “C’mon get me, get me on the floor. DJ, what you, what you waitin’ for?”

Spears suggested her lust was so enthralling that not even global annihilation could get in her way.

“See the sunlight, we ain’t stopping. Keep on dancin’ ’til the world ends,” Spears continued. “If you feel it, let it happen. Keep on dancin’ ’til the world ends.”

The reality of our current apocalyptic scenario — the coronavirus pandemic — is a lot less sexy than the sweaty, bare-skin-pressing-on-bare-skin circumstances Spears envisioned. Quite the opposite. People living in 42 states (and counting) have been told to stay home, following the leads of countries like Italy and Spain that have gone on full lockdowns. Government officials have begged people to not just remain indoors but also to cut off any physical contact with others.

The aim of this restrictive measure is to reduce the spread of the virus, not letting it jump from person to person. And sacrificing physical contact for the global good means that interactions with people you don’t share a home with now exist primarily online over texts, Zoom calls, direct messages, and social media.

Through social distancing, we’re cut off from most physical contact with our friends and family. We’re also meant to keep away from people we were having sex with or want to have sex with, unless we already live with those people. And all the people who were having or were interested in having sex with us can’t pursue those aims, either

In Spears-speak, everyone you want to dance with ’til the world ends is now off-limits. But that has neither stopped people from irresponsibly hooking up (or claiming to be), nor kept some from pursuing and being pursued

While there are directives from health officials — New York City has a widely circulated memo about how its horny residents should refrain from hooking up and send nudes or video chat instead — I wanted to ask experts about why some people’s sex drives are even more stimulated than normal during a time where we can’t tap into those desires with other people. I also wanted to know: How risky is it to act on those sexual desires with someone, even if they’re also self-quarantining?

Being hornier than usual right now is perfectly normal. So is not wanting to have sex at all.

In the first week of social distancing, I noticed a few more green circles popping up on my Instagram feed than usual. Green circles are the platform’s way of indicating that you’re on someone’s “Close Friends” list, seeing a post made for a specific set of eyes decided on by the user. On my Instagram feed, these Close Friends posts usually come from gay men sharing thirst traps, a particularly randy brand of photo or video — usually shirtless, sometimes featuring underwear — that’s designed to get attention. The goal is to get the viewer to slide into your DMs, usually sending a reply involving the fire or eyeballs emoji

The question became clear: Was the lockdown on physical intimacy driving up the frequency, and thirstiness, of these private posts?

Instagram told me on March 23 that although there have been upticks in use of the platform’s “live” feature since March 16 (when the first US quarantine measures went into effect), it didn’t have specific data on whether there has been a dramatic change in frequency of “Close Friends” posts on the platform during the past month or so of worldwide quarantine measures.

Without a solid answer and nothing more than anecdotal evidence, I asked the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, which studies human sexuality and relationships, for its take. Kinsey is in the middle of conducting a study on how the pandemic has affected people’s sexual relationships, and its researchers have found that the number of people engaging in sexual behavior online has increased, as well as the number of people who have completely disengaged.

“When you look at the data, you actually see movement at both ends,” social psychologist Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at Kinsey and author of Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire, told me. “You have a higher percentage of people now who are saying [that] they’re masturbating and having more sex. But you also have a higher percentage of people saying they’re not engaging in any sexual behavior at all. And the people at the low end and not having any behavior — that increase is much bigger than the increase at the other end of the spectrum.”

Lehmiller says experiencing a lack of sex drive is tied to the distress of the situation. The death tolls ratchet up constantly, horrific stories come out of hospitals each day, projections talk about hundreds of thousands of deaths, and it seems inevitable that by the end of the pandemic, each one of us will know someone that’s been affected by the disease. Not being in the mood is completely understandable.

But that same apocalyptic scenario can trigger arousal too.

“There’s a whole body of research and the theory is called Terror Management Theory,” or TMT, Lehmiller said. “The idea behind it is that when we face the prospect of our own mortality, it leads us to cope, or it leads us to change our attitudes and behaviors in a way that it’s designed to cope with that existential threat.”

And for some people, TMT manifests itself in sexual interest and desire, or adopting new ways to express themselves sexually. Those expressions could be sexting, sending nudes, or initiating video chats — all of which can spin off from a single thirsty Close Friends post.

“Something we’re seeing in our data is that people are incorporating more online sexual activities that maybe they’ve never done before into their sex life as a way of getting some sexual fulfillment and also connection with other people,” Lehmiller told Vox. “So it definitely does seem to be the case that there is more sexting, for example, going on right now. And more sending of nudes and other things like that.”

Our social etiquette and norms have also changed.

Many people may now have much more privacy to send a sext or DM at any time of day. Nights and weekends — times when Lehmiller says we’re most likely to engage in sex-seeking behavior — are now almost indistinguishable from afternoons and weekdays, blurring the lines of when it’s appropriate for us to start flirting and thirst-trapping. And there are now a lot of people home during the day to receive and reciprocate these messages.

These different factors can really do a number on the way our sex drives respond.

I asked Lehmiller why my circle of gay friends and several gay men I spoke to in particular seemed to notice more thirst traps on Instagram and DMs than they did before. The research that Lehmiller is doing at Kinsey, which surveys more than 1,000 participants, found that gender or sexual orientation wasn’t a determining factor in whether someone was expressing themselves more during the pandemic, he said.

“The people that are most likely to experience that increased in sexual desire are people who already are very comfortable with their bodies and have a positive body image,” Lehmiller told me. “If you’re somebody who was embedded in a network of people that had a level of interest in sex to begin with, you’re probably seeing even higher levels of sexual interest coming out right now.”

Why it’s so risky to sleep with someone right now, even if they’re social distancing

I spoke to a number of people for this article, and found that, although Lehmiller said gender and sexual orientation wasn’t really a factor in sexual behavior, the gay men I interviewed seemed to be the most frank, candid, and innovative when it comes to their online sex lives. A 31-year-old New Yorker whom we’ll call Andrew told me about a 32-person Instagram group DM he participates in where nudes are exchanged.

“It started as a, ‘Can I send you nudes during these trying times?’” he told me, explaining how the massive DM chain began as a poll. “And a ‘yes’ vote was basically consent for receipt and I got a lot of yeses, so I thought, wouldn’t it be fun?”

The group is so popular, Andrew said, that there’s apparently a waitlist to get into the DM chain.

Hunter (whose name has been changed to protect his privacy), a 24-year-old from New York, explained that he too has been sending out more nudes and posting flirty Close Friends Instagram stories because physical intimacy is off the table.

“I started doing it naturally just because of the circumstances, but it’s reinforced by seeing so many of my peers doing the same thing,” Hunter said. “I think we’d all rather spend our time flirting and complimenting each other instead of thinking about sickness and death.”

Hunter and Andrew are actually following the New York City’s public health directive, which encourages “video dates, sexting or chat rooms” as opposed to meeting people online.

And they, like their fellow New Yorkers, have been asked to socially distance themselves for more than three weeks now. Theoretically speaking, that’s longer than the reported incubation period for the disease. But it’s important to keep in mind that just because people have dutifully followed self-quarantine measures and think they might be okay to go out to see someone once in a while, it doesn’t mean that they no longer pose a risk to each other

It’s simple: Sleeping with someone who doesn’t live in your home is still a risk, because at this point, anyone outside of your own home could stand as a health risk to you right now.

“Social distancing reduces your risk greatly, and it reduces the risk that you pose to others greatly, but it’s no guarantee that you didn’t get it when you went to the grocery store three days ago,” Anna Muldoon, a former science policy adviser at the US Department of Health and Human Services and PhD candidate researching infectious disease and social crises at Arizona State University, told me. “Every time you leave your house, there’s some level of risk. When people say they’ve been self-quarantining for two weeks, very few of them actually mean they’ve had zero risk of exposure in two weeks. And the other thing is, on your way to that [sex] date, you’ve got to get there somehow, and that’s another exposure risk.”

Muldoon said perhaps someone living in your neighborhood or even your building could be the least worst choice to sleep with for someone who absolutely can’t hold off. (Muldoon does not recommend sleeping with a neighbor, emotionally speaking.) She said that people who go to the same places that you’re going to are generally exposed to the same level of risk as you.

Humans are going to do human things, and sex is a very human thing,” Muldoon said. “I think that if you’re in a situation where it’s like you’ve talked to the person long enough that you really believe that they’re following all the precautions, and you’re in the same neighborhood having to walk the same streets, or go to the same grocery store anyway, your risk is relatively similar. I don’t love the idea, because you are increasing both of your risk, but you’re probably being exposed to the same things.”

The thing to keep in mind if you do decide to have sex during these troubling times, experts say, is that it’s not just your health you’re going to worry about. You’re making yourself responsible for someone’s health and vice versa. It’s a personal call as to whether that’s a decision you want to make. It’s absolutely fine and even a better decision that’s backed by doctors and health officials, if you don’t want to expose yourself to other people right now — or if you just want to fire up Instagram, send some consensual nudes over DMs. Or even if you just want to keep your love life to text-only for now.

“This is a moment that we’re all learning to develop deeper relationships again. It’s a kind of weird experience,” Muldoon said. “We had all adjusted to sort of a really fast trajectory into sleeping with people and really sped-up forms of dating, and this thing is forcing us to go back to old-school getting-to-know-you things.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What Causes Low Sex Drive In Women?

And How Can I Increase Mine?

There are real treatments available.

By Alyssa Dweck, M.D.

Not in the mood to get busy tonight? Don’t panic just yet. Libido in women is complicated. There are a whole host of factors that influence sex drive and affect why you might not want to have sex (tonight, this week, or even for the last several months).

But if it’s more of a persistent concern and it’s causing you distress, it’s worth looking into further and discussing with a trusted medical professional; the gyno is the first stop for most women. Your libido could be falling flat from something as common as stress or the birth control you’re taking, or it could be a sign of a bigger health issue. But you won’t know the underlying cause or how to solve it until you bring the issue to your doc’s attention. Okay, now let’s dive deeper.

Libido can ebb and flow for all sorts of reasons.

First, I want to remind you that there’s no such thing as a “normal” sex drive. Take the stats out there about how often other people typically have sex with a grain of salt; it varies for everyone (and, hey, people lie!). Female sex drive is nuanced, and your libido rises and falls naturally.

For example, you might have a higher sex drive around the time of ovulation (the body’s way of telling you to get frisky during your fertile time, even if you’re not actively trying to become pregnant). Or, you may not feel like being sexually active during other times of the month, like when you’re on your period (though if you’re into period sex, it can be enjoyable too).

You can also experience changes in your hormones or neurotransmitter levels from certain medications you’re taking (antidepressants, for example, could lower your drive or alter your ability to orgasm), which, in turn, can mess with your sex urge. The same can happen if you have an underlying hormonal condition like a thyroid disorder or polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

Another player when it comes to sex drive that you might not necessarily expect is hormonal birth control. Most BC pills (or patches and rings) contain the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which are necessary for regulating your cycle. What the pill is doing is preventing ovulation. And as a result, the typical peaks and dips of those hormone levels don’t occur, so you’re not experiencing that surge of estrogen during ovulation, which is typically what makes women want to have sex during that fertile period.

Plus, the amount of testosterone you produce also naturally decreases significantly if you’re on the Pill, which also might make your drive slip a bit. For other women, though, feeling confident and secure in their method of birth control could make them feel more like having sex. It really depends on the person and their particular hormone levels.

Or, major life changes may impact your sex drive, like if you’ve had a death in the family, recently lost a job, or are going through a bout of depression. If your mental health or emotional circumstances could have something to do with it, you may just need to be gentle with yourself and work with a mental health pro to address the issue.

It’s also totally possible that you’re just in a self-esteem rut and aren’t feeling as sexual. The bottom line is, it’s important to be honest with your gyno and/or therapist about alllll of these factors so that they can consider all possible factors that could be affecting your libido.

Or, you may actually have hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

Beyond the typical contributing factors to low libido, you might be showing signs of a well-recognized medical condition called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD. It presents as low sex drive, but to the maximum extent. HSDD is characterized by having a pretty much completely absent sexual drive and lack of fantasizing about sex in general.
Most patients who struggle with HSDD compare it to a light switch—they used to have regular sexual desire, but for no identifiable reason, they all of a sudden have *zero* sex drive, no matter the partner or the situation. In cases of HSDD, there’s also always distress associated with low libido, meaning an emotional component of being upset or distraught over the fact that you’re not thinking about sex.

It’s a little bit tricky to diagnose HSDD. Patients fill out a brief questionnaire about their low sex drive and how it’s affecting them emotionally, and doctors screen their responses to diagnose the disorder. If, when docs assess a patient’s answers, it seems the cause of low drive could be related to something like relationship or marital problems, or a different medical or medication issue, your MD will work on addressing and treating that with you first.
But if you do get a HSDD diagnosis, don’t panic. Believe it or not, HSDD is common among young women—one in 10 premenopausal women suffer from it—and it’s not something to be ashamed of at all.

To treat low sex drive, you have a few different options.

Treatment, as you can probably guess, depends on the underlying cause. But your doctor will likely recommend one (or more) of the following courses of action.
1. Consider seeing a sex therapist.2. Revisit books and movies that might help light your flame.
This practitioner will manage the emotional and psychological components of low sex drive and will also address how your drop in libido might be affecting your relationship, or your desire to form a new relationship.

When I work with people suffering from HSDD or low libido in general, I notice that some have a fear that this may cause their partner, if they have one, to stray or leave them. This is also something you can delve into further with a sex therapist, if your low libido is bringing up intrusive thoughts like this. In my practice, I often recommend reconnecting with your partner with a regular date night. Basically, it’s a “prescription” for intimacy.

To find a mental health practitioner with expertise in sexual health in your area, check out Aasect.org.

2. Revisit books and movies that might help light your flame.
You may simply need to do some solo homework to get back in your groove. This can include a variety of different tasks (that you’re comfortable with, of course). For some patients, watching porn or reading erotica does the trick for getting sexual thoughts back on the brain. You can incorporate this during solo time so that you can start fantasizing on your own, and then you can involve your partner in the scenario.

Another thing that helps sometimes is going out on a limb with sexual activity. That could mean a fun role play scenario for some people. For others, that could mean having sex in another room of the house besides the bedroom to keep things interesting.

3. Talk to your doc about medications and supplements that can boost your drive.

If you have HSDD, medication might be necessary to treat the condition. In 2015, a drug called Flibanserin was approved by the FDA to treat HSDD in pre-menopausal women. It’s a daily pill that may have some side effects, like dizziness, nausea, and fatigue, according to the drug’s website.

More recently, another drug called Vyleesi got approved. It is uniquely administered with an auto-injector (it’s like an Epipen) that you can take on demand to get you prepped for sex. Vyleesi works on melanocortin receptors, or energy regulators, in the brain. Studies showed increased desire and decreased distress in those taking Vyleesi. One common side effect is nausea. [Ed note: Dr. Dweck has worked as an HSDD educator with the parent company of Vyleesi.]

Other options include off-label use of testosterone supplementation via prescription or over-the-counter herbal supplements to enhance sex drive.

If months go by and you’re not able to get back to your normal level of sexual desire, that could be the right time to also alert your health-care provider that you’re not feeling like yourself.

But the main red flag is not how long your drive is low (for some people it’s weeks, months, or longer)—it’s the question of whether your low libido is distressing to you. That’s when you should bring it to your gyno’s attention.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What Causes A Sexless Marriage?

And How To Fix A Relationship Without Sex

By Pam Denton

There’s more to intimacy than sex.

If you find yourself trapped in a sexless marriage and don’t know what to do to restore the passion and intimacy, then it’s time to reframe your idea of what the problem in your relationship is.

Many married couples have less sex as time goes on, but it doesn’t hurt the connection and intimate times with one another.

So how can you fix a relationship when there’s no sex and you’re worried that you and your spouse are drifting apart?

The truth is that your sexless marriage likely does not have anything to do with sex.

In fact, in many cases, your sexual shutdown has more to do with your relationship versus any true lack of physical compatibility or desire for sex!

So, it’s time to give yourself (and your partner) a break — allow yourself permission to overcome the lack of sex in your relationships and reclaim the rightful pleasure in your marriage. You deserve a marriage filled with hot, sweaty, sweet, soulful, passionate, and intimate moments.

All roads lead to sex. After all, we were created from sex. Not to mention it’s one of the most natural ways to connect, intimately, in partnership and marriage. Yet, for so many marriages sex becomes a thing of the past and an “issue.”

Sexless marriage is rampant within our culture. Couples fall in love, get married, and their once hot connection dwindles out and the “flame of desire” dies. There are a lot of deep and intimate reasons why this happens, but these three are the most prevalent:

Unresolved conflicts.

First and foremost, when conflict goes unresolved it forces a wedge in a marriage. This wedge shuts down the passion and desire for intimacy, touching, and lovemaking. In many cases, the relationship becomes superficial, cold, and even hardened. Years of dormant, unresolved, issues fester like poisonous venom, leaking out in sarcasm and hurtful words. Or, words are rarely spoken, making intimate dialogue non-existent.

Stress.

Second, you may begin to feel that you love the person you’re with and, in your mind, you want sex but stress and tension have gotten in the way so you have put up walls of resistance. Here, the marriage becomes a melting pot of stress, fighting, disagreements and shut down.

Hormone imbalances.

Lastly, there’s the body. Body issues get in the way of intimacy and block contact because you “just don’t feel like it anymore.” The feelings that once had you loving sex, have switched off due to your physiological imbalances and lack of desire to connect.

No matter what the cause, these issues are all very tough to deal with, and can ruin a marriage … if left unattended. The great thing is, you can resolve them and make way for sex to reappear (better than ever) in your marriage!

Here are 5 ways to fix a relationship that’s missing physical intimacy, without even having sex:

1. Let go of what a “great sex life” looks like

Let go of all of your preconceived notions of sex in marriage and realize that we’re all human, with issues to resolve.

Let go of the shame and guilt you feel towards your relationship.

By letting go of your inner critic and the pressure you’re putting on yourself to have sex, you will begin to free yourself (and mind), in order to get to the root of the problem.

2. Believe in your partner’s good intentions

Relax, find comfort that you and your partner are together for a real, honest reason. And no matter what your circumstances, you can rekindle the flame of love.

The stress and unresolved conflict between you two will resolve with open honest dialogue.

3. Dig up the dirt

Society teaches us not to dig up other people’s dirt. But in marriage, you have to get down and dirty with the truth, in order to build an honest connection of love.

Relationships challenge you to grow in intimacy and love. When you carry a lot of baggage in a marriage, there is some deep dirt to tend to and you can use this dirt to fertilize your sexual pleasure.

4. Trust your partner to try

Trust is why you got married in the first place, right? It wasn’t really just about sex, it was because of a special connection. You trusted this person and you felt connected in a special and fantastic way.

So trust that you are in the partnership for a good reason; trust that your partner was the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, through the good and the bad.

Your sexless marriage is just the symptom of the bad. The raw truth asks you to get undressed, emotionally, and reveal your inner conflicts, as a step toward healing them.

5. Ask for help

Find a therapist, coach, or support person. When you ask for help to overcome the issues, then marriage gets much easier. It may prove difficult to deal with these alone, when you have been sexless and fighting.

So, you can receive the honest help that you need, when you’re able to openly ask and tell your partner that you are hurting with objective guidance.

Sex should always be an amazing experience, one that builds a strong partnership. But, sex is at its best when you can connect to your partner, in an adept and loving way. These 5 steps will help you ignite a new passion that may, possibly, be even better than when you first met.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Real Orgasms And Transcendent Pleasure:

How Women Are Reigniting Desire

By Malaka Gharib

How can more women allow themselves to experience sexual pleasure?

That’s one of the central questions in The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution, a book published this month by public health researcher and journalist Katherine Rowland.

Rowland explores why American women aren’t happy with their sex lives — and what they can do about it. A landmark study from 1999 found that over 40% of women surveyed experienced sexual dysfunction — the inability to feel satisfied by sex. A contributing factor, noted the researchers, was the lasting psychological effects of sexual trauma.

The Pleasure Gap
American Women & the Unfinished Sexual Revolution
by Katherine Rowland

The Pleasure Gap highlights how desire and the mind are linked for women. “Pleasure is inextricable from our social status, compressed and constrained by financial factors, by safety factors, by objectification,” she says. We need to remove these barriers, she says, to experience sex with the “full freedom, expression, range and truth that we’re endowed with.”

Rowland argues that it is possible for women to take charge and reignite their libidos. She talked to NPR about why fake orgasms are a cause for alarm, how much sex couples should have per week and “sexological bodywork.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You take issue with some of the research that tries to quantify sexual frequency and the idea that once a week may be the “optimal” amount. So how much sex should we be having?

Our national obsession with sexual frequency and the terrifying specter of dead bedrooms overrides the fundamental importance of sexual quality. There is no volume of sex that’s more or less good.

For whatever reason, researchers have embraced this idea that we should be having sex once a week — that it’s enough to sustain relationships and that it keeps depression, heart disease and obesity at bay.

But none of that research looks at how participants actually feel about that sex — other than feeling good that they can check the box for having done it.

You interviewed more than 120 women for this book. Many in heterosexual, long-term relationships told you that sex was an act of drudgery and that they often did whatever it took to get the job done. This felt sad to me.

I found myself feeling beaten down by the near ubiquity of stories of faking it in that context.

We tend to treat faking it as such a jokey matter. When the media reports on studies that try and capture the percentage of women who fake orgasm during sex, it tends to be from a male perspective saying “ouch” — focusing more on the bruising of men’s feelings that occurs when women are lying to them as opposed to concerns surrounding the fact that women aren’t feeling good.

That women are feigning their pleasure in order to hasten that experience along — I think we need to treat that with real alarm. We need to ask: What’s going on in that women are engaging in spectacle as opposed to actually allowing themselves to feel sensation?

Your book explores how some women have a low desire for sex. How does this happen?

Among the women who I spoke to, the persistent low desire was heavily associated with the idea that sex should revolve around penetration as the main course, with maybe a polite prelude of a foreplay, rather than thinking about sex as a broader universe of intimacy.

It’s the combination of a larger culture that privileges male sexuality over women’s, a culture that doesn’t teach women that pleasure belongs to them. A lack of anatomical self-knowledge. And feelings of sort of persistent danger and women being often censored and censured for expressing their desire.

You push back against the idea that the female orgasm is mysterious and elusive, which is how the media has sometimes described it. What would be a more accurate way to understand the female orgasm?

It’s more like riding a bicycle. You learn how to do it. And what we see is that as women become more versed with what their body can do, orgasm becomes more readily achievable.

The female orgasm tends to get wrapped up in these fuzzy terms like “elusive” and “hazy” and “mysterious” because women aren’t encouraged to explore what actually feels good. But if they were encouraged to self-pleasure and explore in real, sincere ways by themselves and with their partners, I think they would find that there is a world of pleasurable sensation available to them.

In your book, you say that the goal is for women to have a “profound sexual experience.” What do you mean by that?

It can mean a number of things, and I don’t think it necessarily has to be a sexual encounter in terms of our often narrow understanding of sex. The women who I spoke to describe it to me as feelings of transcendence, of approaching sex not just as a way for getting off or feeling good, but as a portal into a deeper state of self-knowledge.

They often use the word “spiritual” — the alignment of self, sensation and possibility. Pleasure so deep it felt like a homecoming, like they had been restored to themselves, to the depths of their potential.

How can women regain control over their sex lives?

The first thing to do would be to stop absorbing [unscientific] outside knowledge. There is such a rash of faulty information out there as a result of our lack of sound science and solid education. We’ve seen this proliferation of experts pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Online, you’ll find doctors who promise that by injecting more blood into the vagina, it will give it a face-lift that will bolster orgasmic potential. Or self-proclaimed “sexperts” who put on female ejaculation retreats. Those kinds of offerings often exist side by side with credentialed and validated interventions.

The second thing is to get to know your body. I think the most powerful intervention that I documented in my book was the realm of sexological bodywork.

What is that?

It’s a somatic approach to sexual healing that can — but does not necessarily — include genital touch. There’s a profound opportunity there for ethical violations, especially because it’s not a regulated practice. But for some of the women who I spoke to, they’ve said that this was the missing link in understanding their bodies.

Sexological bodywork practitioners facilitate your self-knowledge of your body, pleasure, comfort, boundaries, feelings of confidence and being able to articulate “no.” For example, “No, I don’t want you to touch me here” and “I don’t want you to look at me here.” This helps women ask why they feel this way — and get to a point where they can say “yes.”

For women in a relationship with a man, how can male partners do more to help?

Men can — and should — play a central role in helping women fully engage with their desires and sensations.

They can do this by being compassionate and nonjudgmental listeners. By creating an erotic atmosphere in which men and women’s needs command equal importance, and by encouraging interactions that depart from the wearied script of male arousal and release. Just as society tends to overly complicate female sexuality, we oversimplify men’s, and they also benefit from shifting dynamics around.

Any ideas of how to do that?

I spoke with a number of couples, and one shared a story that made a deep impression.

They’re both middle-aged and both are experiential sexuality educators, so in many respects they’re versed in subjects like male privilege and the ways female satisfaction gets short shrift. But all the same, these issues were showing up in their intimate life.

At the woman’s request, they decided to make sex just about her — so that it flowed from her interest and followed the course of her arousal. She told him, she didn’t care how he took care of himself, but she didn’t want to be a part of it.

They came to call these sessions “The Experiment.” To their mutual surprise, it lasted for a whole year. As they recounted this experience, the woman thanked her partner for his generosity, and he immediately and firmly responded, “No, it was my pleasure.” They both felt they had benefited from the woman’s sexual growth and the shared opportunity to expand their erotic vocabulary.

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What I learned talking to 120 women about their sex lives and desires

I spoke with widows, newlyweds, monogamists, secret liaison seekers, submissives and polyamorists and found there was no such thing as desire too high or low

By Katherine Rowland

Male desire is a familiar story. We scarcely bat an eyelash at its power or insistence. But women’s desires – the way they can morph, grow or even disappear – elicit fascination, doubt and panic.

In 2014, as experts weighed the moral and medical implications of the first female libido drug, I found myself unsatisfied with the myths of excess and deficit on offer, and set out to understand how women themselves perceive and experience their passions.

Over the course of five years, I talked with 120 women and dozens of sexual health professionals. My reporting took me from coast to coast, and spanned conversations from a 22-year-old convinced she was sexually damaged to a 72-year-old learning how to orgasm. I spoke with widows, newlyweds, committed monogamists, secret liaison seekers, submissives and proud polyamorists.

I also dropped in on psychotherapy sessions, consulted sexologists, went inside the battle to get “female Viagra” FDA approved and profiled practitioners blurring the lines between sex work and physical therapy. In Los Angeles, I sat with a group of determinedly nonplussed sex coaches as they took in a live flogging demonstration, while in New York I stood among a thousand women whipped into a fist-pumping frenzy by a guru who declared the time had come for them to reconnect to their sensuality.

Against the background claims that women are disordered patients who require a pharmaceutical fix, or that they are empowered consumers who should scour the market for their personal brand of bliss, I found that there was no such thing as desire too high or low. Rather, desire contains as many tones as there are people to express it.

Low desire isn’t a symptom

In five years of conversations, I heard frequent variations on a common story. Somewhere in the mix of parenting, partnering and navigating the demands of professional life, women’s desire had dimmed to the barest flicker. In place of lust, they acted out of obligation, generosity or simply to keep the peace.

“What’s wrong with me?” many asked of their medical providers, only to come away with confounding answers. “Your flatlined libido is perfectly normal,” they were told. “But it’s also a medical concern.”

Just what constitutes normal stirs intense debate, in part because female sexuality shoulders an immense weight. It’s where observers have long looked for clues about human nature and for proof of immutable differences between men and women. The chief distinction, we’re told, is that women are less desirous than men.

And yet, low desire is often cast as an affliction that women are encouraged to work at and overcome. Accordingly, some women I talked to consulted therapists to understand why intimacy was tinged with dread. Others tried all manner of chemical interventions, from antidepressants and testosterone supplements to supposedly libido-rousing pills. A number of women accumulated veritable libraries of spice-it-up manuals. No matter the path, I heard time and again how women compelled themselves to just do it, committed to reaching a not necessarily satisfying but quantifiable end.

Low desire is a healthy response to lackluster sex

However, as women further described their malaise, their dwindling desire seemed less the result of faulty biology than evidence of sound judgment. It was a consequence of clumsy partners, perfunctory routines, incomplete education, boredom and the chafe of overfamiliarity.

In short, it was the quality of the sex they were having that left them underwhelmed. As one woman put it: “If it’s not about your pleasure, it makes sense you wouldn’t want it.”

Straight women are struggling the most in their erotic lives

While all women, regardless of sexual orientation, experience dips in drive, the utter depletion of sexual interest might be more common to heterosexual women, because their desires are less clearly defined to begin with.

“I spent most of my life with no sense of what I want,” one straight woman in her late 40s told me. Another, also in her 40s, reflected that she and her husband “did sex the way [she] thought it was supposed to look”. However, she said: “I don’t know how much I was really able to understand and articulate what I wanted.”

For both women, along with dozens of others that I spoke to, dwindling desire was an affront to identity. It exposed the limits of what they had expected of themselves, namely that they should settle down with one man and be emotionally and physically content from there on out. Their experiences mirror what researchers have uncovered about the so-called orgasm gap, which holds that men are disproportionately gratified by sex.

The picture subtly shifts when you look at which women are enjoying themselves. A 2017 survey of more than 50,000 Americans found that lesbians orgasmed 86% of the time during sex, as opposed to 65% of straight women (and 95% of straight men). Investigators speculate that lesbians and queer women enjoy greater satisfaction because of anatomical familiarity, longer sexual duration and not revering penetration as the apex of erotic mingling.

I would further surmise that queer women are often more satisfied because, unlike a lot of straight women, they have fundamentally considered the nature and object of their desires.

There’s nothing funny about faking it

The subject of faking it tends to seed jokey reactions, which frame the issue of female pretending as a slight to the man’s self-esteem. When she fakes it, he is the wounded party: her absent climax becomes his loss.

According to one well-trafficked 2010 report, 80% of heterosexual women fake orgasm during vaginal intercourse about half of the time, and another 25% fake orgasm almost all of the time. (When CBS News reported on this study, the headline opened with “Ouch”; there was no editorializing on shabby male technique – all the focus was on the bruising consequences of women’s inauthentic “moaning and groaning”.)

Faking it was ubiquitous among the women I spoke with. Most viewed it as fairly benign, and I largely did too. That is, until the subject cropped up again and again, and I found myself preoccupied with an odd contradiction: as women act out ecstasy, they devalue their actual sensations.

On the one hand, this performance is an ode to the importance of female pleasure, the expectation held by men and women alike that it should be present. But on the other, it strips women of the physical and psychological experience of pleasure. Spectacle bullies sensation aside.

Women aren’t looking for a magic pill

One might think from the headlines that equal access to pharmacopeia ranks high among women’s sexual health concerns. After all, men have a stocked cabinet of virility-boosting compounds, while women have paltry options. But this was not my takeaway.

While some women opined that it would be nice to ignite desire with a pill, few saw the benefit of boosting appetite if the circumstances surrounding sex remained unchanged. While desire was frequently tinted by a sense of mystery, its retreat was rarely presented in a black box. Almost across the board, women spoke of their sexuality in contextual terms: it changed with time, with different partners and different states of self-knowledge.

In 2018 an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior surmised “Research has not conclusively demonstrated that biology is among the primary mechanisms involved in inhibiting sexual desire in women.” Rather, the authors said, body image, relationship satisfaction and learned values intervene to shape women’s experiences of lust. Even though FDA-approved drugs like Addyi and Vyleesi are marketed to suggest that desire dips independently of life circumstances, those involved in drug development are certainly aware of these other influences. The strength of their impact on women’s minds and bodies may even be contributing to the challenge of developing effective pharmaceuticals.

In the case of Viagra and its competitors, it’s assumed men want to have sex, but physically cannot, and so a feat of hydraulics allows them to consummate the act. But for women, the problem is more, well, problematic: they might be physically capable, but emotionally disinclined. Insofar as that is the case, we need to attend the reasons behind their reluctance.

Desire comes from liberating the erotic imagination

In the course of my reporting I attended a training session known as SAR, for Sexual Attitude Reassessment. The two-day workshops designed for sexual health professionals are intended to inundate participants with sexual material in order to highlight where they hold biases or discomfort, and they showcase a lot of explicit content.

The session I attended featured media depicting a gay head-shaving fetish, a medical-latex threesome and a wincing scene involving male genitalia, a typewriter and a miniature cactus. It also included frank confessionals from people whose bodies and lifestyles don’t necessarily accord with the culture’s rigidly gendered and ableist stereotypes – such as what it’s like for a trans woman to experience pleasure, or how a little person (the preferred term for adults with dwarfism) self-stimulates when his or her fingers cannot reach the genitals.

The idea, beyond highlighting all the “inscrutable, mystical loveliness” of sex, in the words of one facilitator, is to get participants to seek out what turns them on or disgusts them, or both.

In my recollection, the word “dysfunction” never surfaced in the programming. Rather, sexuality was framed in terms of accessing delight and accepting nonconformity. The subject of low desire was not viewed as a matter of sexual disinterest, but rather a result of how, owing to the greater culture, women hold themselves back, condemn their fantasies, foreclose on what they really want and sell themselves short on the idea that sex and love must look a certain way.

Women push themselves toward physical encounters that they either do not want, or for which they have not allowed desire to adequately develop. I came away with the impression that sexual healing had little to do with tricks or techniques, and almost everything to do with the mind, with sensing an internal flicker of I want that – and feeling empowered to act accordingly.

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How to Handle Sexual Problems

(And Get Your Sex Life Back On Track)

by Bonnie Evie Gifford

The results are in: we’re officially having less sex than ever – but not through choice. Could our trouble discussing our sexual worries be getting in the way of having a good time?

Sex. It’s not something we really talk about as a nation, is it? For many of us Brits, talking about sex is right up there with discussing our finances and actually confronting queue jumpers instead of tutting angrily. Somehow, sex has been relegated to something we don’t talk about in polite company. Why is that? Sex is great!

According to researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, our decline in having sex isn’t because we’re feeling less inclined to have a little quality alone time with our partner(s). Half of women and nearly two-thirds of men would like to be having more sex, but due to our busy schedules, stress, and feelings of exhaustion, we just aren’t making it a priority.

Could we be unwittingly missing out on the health benefits of regular sexual release, and could our reluctance to speak about of sex-related worried be making things seem that much more scary?

The benefits of sex – it’s more than just gratification

Don’t just take my word for it – science has been proving the benefits of a healthy sex life for years. According to the NHS, sexual arousal is good for your heart, penetrative sex can act as a stress buster, plus other forms of orgasms can help you feel more relaxed in similar ways to exercise or meditation.

The feel-good hormones released during sex can also temporarily help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. The increase in physical activity that often comes with intimate relations can also help you to get a better night’s sleep, particularly if you orgasm as this releases prolactin (a hormone that makes you sleepier).

Sexual arousal and orgasm can also boost your oxytocin (the hormone that helps you feel connected to your partner) whilst lowering cortisol (a stress-related hormone). It’s a win-win. Sex just once or twice a week can help you fend off illness and boost your immune system, whilst those who have sex report a better sense of wellbeing and feeling healthier.

Doing the deed isn’t the only part of sexual relations that can benefit us. Hugging can help lower your heart rate and blood pressure, not to mention the benefits of feeling loved and supported; according to one study of 10,000 men, those who felt “loved and supported” faced a reduced risk of angina regardless of age and blood pressure.

Being single doesn’t have to present a problem. Masturbating can release the same feel-good hormones we benefit from with others, along with the added benefit of allowing us to better explore our own bodies, helping us figure out what we do (and don’t) like. Studies have even suggested a little solo fun can help you improve your body image.

The benefits don’t stop there. For men, more frequent ejaculation has seen evidence of decreased chances of a prostate cancer diagnosis before 70. For women, the benefits can be even greater. Sexual activity has shown to help relieve menstrual cramps, improve fertility, help strengthen pelvic muscles and vaginal lubrication, decrease incontinence, and even protect against endometriosis.

Encountering sexual problems

Sexual problems can affect anyone, at any time, regardless of age, sexual preferences, or experiences. Nearly half a million of us are diagnosed with an STI each year. Only one in three of us are satisfied with our sex lives, with nearly a fifth of us experiencing a different sex drive from our partners that we feel has put a strain on our relationships.

The Let’s Talk About Sex report revealed that one in three UK adults have experienced a sexual problem. It may not feel like it, but we aren’t alone. Sexual problems are more common than we may realise. What’s important is recognising when we encounter an issue that we need to talk, find out more, or seek support with.

5 common sexual problems (and how to handle them)

1. Decreasing sex drive and impotence

A loss of libido or decreased desire for sex can be particularly common for women during certain times in their lives. If you are feeling depressed, are pregnant or recently gave birth, these can all be common factors that may affect your sex drive.

Other psychological or physical factors can affect men and women. Diabetes, hormone disorders, depression, tiredness, as well as addiction (drug or alcohol) are all issues that can lead to a loss of libido. Relationship problems or past sexual experiences can also impact your desire for intercourse.  

While a decrease in sexual desire isn’t necessarily a cause for concern, if you are worried it may be affecting your relationship, causing disappointment, arguments, or even leaving you feeling like you may be drifting apart, it could be time to seek help.

Psychosexual therapy offers the chance to speak with a specially trained therapist who can help you explore and overcome sexual dysfunctions. Knowledgeable in a wide range of sexual problems with individuals of all ages, a psychosexual counsellor can help you to better recognise your sexual needs and desires, working through negative thoughts that may be affecting your ability to enjoy sex and intimacy.

Relationship counselling can be another form of talking therapy that can help you and your partner(s) to explore how you are communicating physically and verbally. Helping you to identify areas which may be affecting your ability to feel safe, relaxed, and able to enjoy sex, relationship counselling can help you to become more aware of each other’s needs, working together to find a solution that fits.

Talking therapies aren’t the only options to help handle your sex drive. Yoga can have a surprising benefit on not only your health and sense of wellbeing, but also on your sex drive. According to one study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, regular yoga practice can improve women’s levels of sexual desire. The study revealed 75% of participants sex lives improved significantly, particularly for women in their 40s and older.

If stress, anxiety, or depression is affecting your sex drive, hypnotherapy may be able to help. A clinical hypnotherapist may be able to help you handle related symptoms, as well as improve your confidence or sense of self-worth. Hypnotherapy can help some people connect with their subconscious mind, addressing events or issues that may be affecting their mood, self-esteem, or enjoyment in life.

What we eat can be something we overlook when it comes to considering our overall health and wellbeing. If stress may be affecting your sex drive, it could be worth considering what you’re eating.

Nutritionists can offer natural, healthy, simple tips and advice for how we can reduce our stress levels through our eating habits. Remembering to eat regularly, keep refined carbs for treats, and include enough protein in our diets can all have a surprising impact on how we are feeling.

If you are concerned about potential erectile dysfunction or impotence, speaking with your GP can be the first step towards finding the option that works for you. Visiting a sexual health clinic can also provide the same treatment you would recive with your GP, with most offering walk-in services and quicker results.

Common in men over 40, this is usually nothing to worry about, however, if the issue persists, your GP is the best port of call. Most frequently due to stress, anxiety, tiredness, or how much you drink, erection problems can also be caused by physical or emotional problems.

2. Sex addiction

While people have joked about being nymphomaniacs and sex addicts for quite some time, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has only recently accepted sex addiction as a recognised mental health condition. Also known as compulsive sexual behaviour, many experts hope that this official recognition will help dispel the shame and worry that may be stopping individuals from seeking help and support.

But how do you know if you are a sex addict? And how do you begin seeking support? Counsellor and Vice Chair of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity (ATSAC), Ian Baker, explains how identifying sex addiction isn’t as simple as assessing how much porn you watch, or how frequently you masturbate.

“You don’t just say you’re a sex addict because you watch an hour of porn a day. I’m not here to say masturbation is wrong, or fetishes are wrong, because someone’s sexual identity is important.

“It’s how it is affecting other parts of your life. Are you dropping friends? Are you not picking up your kids because of this? Are you using it to manage low mood or anxiety? [Speaking with a counsellor and gaining a diagnosis] isn’t walking in and saying ‘you’re sleeping with sex workers – you’re a sex addict.’”

Signs of sex addiction can include frequently seeking casual sex, having multiple affairs, excessively using pornography, experiencing feelings of guilt after sex, obsessive thoughts around sex or planning sexual encounters.

If you are concerned about how your relationship with sex, masturbation or pornography is impacting other areas of your life, there are a number of different places you can turn for help.

Working with a psychosexual therapist or a relationship counsellor can help you to better identify, accept and change behaviours that may be affecting other areas of your life. Psychosexual therapy (also known as sex therapy) can help you improve physical intimacy with your partner; manage sexual difficulties; identify physical, psychological, emotional, or situational causes of sexual issues.

If you have recognised you have a problem and are seeking to make positive changes, working with a hypnotherapist for sex addiction can be another option. Helping you to change the thought patterns and behaviours that may be causing you problems, a clinical hypnotherapist will use the power of suggestion to help you alter how you think and react to certain situations.

Taking into consideration your potential triggers, past experiences and lifestyle, your hypnotherapist can tailor your sessions to you, helping you break out of the negative cycle you have become caught up in.

3. Premature ejaculation

Coming too quickly (known as rapid or premature ejaculation) is a common ejaculation problem. While there is no standard or right length of time for sex to last, one study revealed the average time it takes for a man to ejaculate after beginning penetrative intercourse is around five and a half minutes.

Common causes of problems with ejaculation can include depression, stress, anxiety about performance, and relationship problems, as well as physical issues such as recreational drugs, prostate or thyroid problems.

International guidelines say regularly coming within one minute of entering your partner is considered to be premature ejaculation. While studies have found that premature ejaculation can have any impact on all parties involved, it’s worth noting that there isn’t a right or wrong way to achieve mutual sexual gratification. It’s completely up to you (and your partner) to find what you are happy with. If the time taken to come is causing you distress or emotional turmoil, it could be worth seeking advice.

Speaking with your GP can help you to identify and treat potential physical and underlying conditions. Your GP may be able to offer medication options such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), though they may suggest you try self-help options first.

If you are unsure about seeking professional advice, there are a number of self-help options you can also try (though speaking with an expert is always advised). Self-help options can include:

  • Switching to thick condoms to decrease sensation
  • Masturbating up to two hours before intercourse
  • Taking breaks during sex to distract yourself and prolong the experience

Couples therapy can be another option for those in a long-term relationship. A therapist can help you work towards improving your communication, speaking openly about issues that may be causing you stress or distress, as well as helping you to become more mindful in the moment.  

Another complementary option that studies have shown may help includes acupuncture. Using fine needles to balance the energy levels within your body, acupuncture can be used to help treat sexual performance, reduce stress and balance hormone levels. Techniques can also be used to prolongue sexual performance and boost your sex drive.

4. Pain during sex

Feeling pain or discomfort during or after sex is most often a sign that something is wrong and shouldn’t be ignored. This pain may be caused by an infection, illness, physical or psychological problem. If you are experiencing pain or discomfort, it’s important to speak with your GP or visit a sexual health clinic.

For women, changing hormone levels during the menopause can cause new vaginal dryness in a third of women that may lead to pain, as well a uncomfortable hot flushes, trouble sleeping, and other symptoms. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or SSRIs may be two options your may offer. Trying over the counter lubricants and moisturising creams from pharmacies may also help.

For men, pain during sex (also known as dyspareunia) is less common, but may occur during or after ejaculation. As causes can be physical or psychological, it is always worth checking with a medical professional before trying complimentary or alternative therapies. Hypnotherapy for pain management can help some individuals change their thought patterns surrounding pain, helping them to perceive pain in a different way.

Life coach and podcaster Ben Bidwell, better known as The Naked Professor, shares his own experiences with dyspareunia.

5. Boredom or differing libidos

Feeling bored in the bedroom or having vastly different libidos can have a significant impact on both our relationships and sense of wellbeing. Differing sex drives can lead to partners feeling guilty that they may not be satisfying their other half, or worry that their partner no longer finds them attractive.

Counsellor Graeme recommends speaking with your partner as one of the best courses of action.  “Talking to your partner about your relationship and the sexual side is very important. If [you] don’t discuss how [you’re] feeing, then misunderstandings inevitably appear as you assign thoughts and feelings to your partner.

“It can be difficult to talk about, but in the long run being honest bout how you feel is going to allow you to be clear about what can and cannot change. It’s important to recognise that there is an element of reality that you can’t change. Libido is another part that needs to be integrated into the relationship, and will require negotiation and compromise.

“While relationship counselling and visiting health care professionals can be useful, remember that it is your relationship so only you and your partner will know what it is like to be in that relationship ad how it can work. Outsides can help when it is difficult to talk to each other, but they cannot decide what is right for you.”

If you are worried that your differing libidos may be causing problems, there are a number of natural ways to increase your sex drive. One option, herbalism, can help you regain your balance, counteract illness and stress (both of which can affect your libido). Tracking what you eat can also help you to counter signs of stress, improve blood flow, and promote the release of endorphins.

Try eating more almonds and walnuts to increase your mineral intake and help combat stress, or switch your regular sweet treats for dark chocolate. Containing phenylethylamine, this amino acid promotes the release of endorphins and can help naturally boost your libido.

Making sure you’re getting enough sleep can also help to increase your sex drive. Try exchanging massages with your partner; this can not only help ease tension and lower stress levels, but can help you to feel closer to each other and may act as a simple catalyst for more frisky activities.

Worried boredom and routine may be settling into your bedroom romps? Counsellor Jo explains why and how sexual boredom can occur, and what you can do to get past it. Sex and relationship psychotherapist, Thomas, explains more about sexual desire and the search for ourselves in relationships.

“Sexual desire doesn’t happen in isolation. We live in a highly sexualised culture, yet more and more people are unhappy with their sex lives and are unsure what to do about it.

“It’s difficult and confusing to be present and always in touch with our true self. It’s an ongoing discovery between who you are, who you think you should be, and who you want to become.

“Sexual desire is an aspect of a person’s sexuality. It varies significantly from one person to another, and also varies depending on circumstances as a particular time. It’s constantly moving and complex. It can be aroused through imagination and sexual fantasies, or perceiving an individual that one finds attractive.

“Sexual desire can shift from intensely positive, to neutral, to intensely negative. It’s normal for our desire to go up and down at different times in our lives. The main issue is if this is causing you distress, that you are able to discuss it and find a way to reduce this distress.”

If you’re worried about a sex-related issue we haven’t covered above, check out these sex and intimacy questions, as answered by sex and relationship therapist Lohani Noor from the hit BBC Three show, Sex on the Couch. As well as answering questions, Lohani shares her three top tips for talking about sex with your partner.

For more information about relationship couselling and hypnotherapy for sexual problems, visit Counselling Directory or Hypnotherapy Directory now. Or if you’re on your PC, enter your location in the box below to find a qualified therapist near you.

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How to Move Forward When You’re in a Sexless Marriage

A Q&A with a clinical psychologist who specializes in getting couples to talk openly about sex.

By Sophia Benoit

Recently, a 36-year-old man posted something stupid on Reddit. This is not breaking news—this happens likely thousands of times per day, but the post made it over to Twitter, and people went in. The issue at hand? The guy hated his wife’s haircut. While he knew he couldn’t tell her not to get her hair cut, he admitted, “I know it sounds stupid, but every trip back to the hairdresser feels like a little slap in the face.” However, the husband mentioned one small detail that got everyone’s attention: he and his wife do not have sex.

Redditors mostly provided uncharacteristically astute commentary: “I don’t think this is about her hair. The haircut is just a tangible thing that you are focusing on. Your main issue is the lack of sex,” one user wrote. Reddit has long been a sanctuary for people in sexless marriages. There’s a whole subreddit with 182,000+ subscribers called r/DeadBedrooms, where people go to complain, commiserate, and seek help for their relationships. (There is no official demarcation of what makes a marriage “sexless,” but studies usually count couples who haven’t had sex in the last year, or marriages where sexual intimacy happens ten times or fewer a year.) The subreddit’s top post of all time is actually the story of a person with a lower libido (dubbed “LLs” on the site) trying to initiate sex with their partner. The poster triumphantly explains their realization after initating sex the night before, “My husband’s mood today is fantastic…I’m realizing how much of his joy is missing in a sexless marriage[.] I will keep reading here and working on my end of initiating.” For most posters, that’s the ultimate fantasy: their partner finally understanding just how important sex really is to them, and more importantly, why.

The traditional (read: heteronormative and sexist) narrative is that men are always ready to have sex, while women are constantly faking headaches to avoid it. That’s simply not the case. According to Pam Costa, M.A. in clinical psychology and founder of Down to There, a site devoted to getting people to talk about sex more, men and women pretty much experience low sex drive equally. Costa asserts that while sex can feel “easier” at the beginning, after a few years with someone, the “in love” hormones fade. Sex can start to become less frequent as couples encounter road bumps like depression, physical health concerns, the loss of loved ones, pregnancy, childbirth, and miscarriages, or as a result of mismatched desire levels. But sometimes, the problem is simply that people don’t know how to talk about the sex that they want to be having. And no matter the reason, Costa says that honest communication about sex can help. We asked Costa our biggest questions about sexless marriages and how to address them.

How common are sexless marriages?
The accepted rate is somewhere between 10-20 percent of marriages; I consider that pretty common. One of the first things I want people to know, if they’re in a sexless marriage, is that they’re not alone. They’re in good company. It’s very common.

Are men and women equally concerned about sexless marriages?
Absolutely. I think it’s harder when a male partner has lower desire, because we do have this cultural narrative that men should always be ready. Because of this, in a hetero relationship, there can be additional shame when it is the male partner who has a lower sex drive. But, again, you’re not alone.

What makes a sexless marriage so damaging?
Sex is often a very important component of intimacy, and we all seek out intimacy in different ways. For some of us, emotional intimacy is more important than physical intimacy, or cuddling is more important than penetration. When it comes to a relationship, having shared forms of intimacy is really important. Often, in couples that come to me, one person says, “But I’m fine. Everything’s fine!” And the other person says, “How can you say that? This is anything but fine.” That’s where it starts to impact other parts of the relationship: If one person is missing the intimacy that’s important to them, they can start to be resentful or frustrated. Or the person who doesn’t want to have sex can start to feel guilty or broken.

So, you could have a sexless marriage and still believe you have a good marriage?
Yes, exactly. You can have a sexless marriage and have a happy marriage. You also don’t have to have sex to make it a marriage.

Right. Some people, including those who are asexual, might be completely fine not having any sex.
Yes, if one partner is asexual (doesn’t feel sexually attracted to anyone, or has low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity) this could absolutely play a role in a marriage being or becoming sexless. For someone who already knows they are asexual, choosing who does not require sex to be part of a satisfying relationship—or who is more invested in the emotional or other aspects of the relationship—can work very well. For someone who only discovers once in the marriage that they are asexual, discovering this identity can provide a lot of relief to both the person who identifies as ace [asexual], as well as their partner: the tension around the ace partner not wanting sex suddenly has a reason that is not related to the relationship itself.

What are some of the common causes of sexless marriages?
There are usually two big reasons. One, there’s a desire mismatch, just like how people like to eat different amounts. What can often happen with that mismatch is that the person who desires sex more asks and initiates; when the other person says no, they start to feel rejected. And no one wants to feel rejected, so they slowly stop asking. That’s very common. The other thing that also happens is that you have some sort of life milestone that makes sex difficult. Maybe you have kids, who are taking more of your time and attention. Maybe you got laid off at work. There are also things like health crises, and maybe you didn’t have sex during that period. Or maybe you have pain during sex.

Are there situations that cannot be “fixed”? Couples whose sexual desires are simply too incompatible? What do you do then?
Yes, which I why I encourage couples to review their sexual history together. What peak sexual experiences have you had?—or have you never had any? That way you can learn more about what you need to have sex that you enjoy. When you can do that—and not from a pressurized standpoint of “You have to provide that for me” but from a standpoint of “Wow, when we were on vacation in Hawaii and we had sex in a bathroom that was really a turn on for me because it was spontanteus”—that really helps. Then you can ask, “What are other ways that we can bring spontaneity into our sex life?” That’s a really good thing to learn about yourself.

When you are able to actually start to having those difficult conversations more from a curious angle than from a pressure angle, you can start to see whether or not there’s enough overlap between what the two of you desire to make it work. Certainly I work with couples who do that and realize: “We’re not enough of an overlap; does that mean we need to separate? Does that mean we need to be creative about how we get our intimate needs met? Or do we need to go outside of this relationship?”

How should partners communicate about desire discrepancies?
When I work with couples with a desire discrepancy, what we often figure out is that one of the things often underlying that is: “I’m not getting the type of sex that I want in order to desire it.” If you’re the partner who has higher desire, relative to your partner—and these are probably the people who are going to be most distressed by a sexless marriage—I think a little bit of introspection is usually helpful to acknowledge that maybe the reason you guys stopped having sex is that your partner stopped getting what they need to desire sex.

This can happen for a lot of reasons. In the beginning hormones make it easier, so we think we don’t have to try hard. There’s also lack of sex education: Sometimes someone hasn’t learned about their own desire, or how to give a partner pleasure. Or maybe they weren’t taught about how to talk about sex. So maybe they lack the skills to communicate with their partner about what they desire. Maybe if I’m the higher desire partner, I never learned how to ask my partner what they want, and create an opportunity for them to provide feedback.

What’s the first step of course correcting a sexless marriage?
When someone comes to me in a sexless marriage, wanting to have more sex, there are four steps that I go through with them:

  1. Know that you’re not alone.
  2. Seek support. Talk with your friends about it or find a coach or a therapist. Read a book—I recommend Come As You Are.
  3. Speak up. If you want to bring this up with up with your partner, speak up lovingly about why sex is important to you because otherwise they don’t know. The script I usually encourage goes something like this: “Hey this relationship is important to me, you are important to me, and intimacy in a relationship is important to me. I care about us and I want to work on improving our intimacy.”
  4. Ask what’s important to them. Because maybe sex isn’t important to them, but something else is—better communication, help around the house, or mental health.

What happens after you first bring this up? What’s the work that has to be done?
I think it’s important, when talking about a sexless marriage, to realize that the idea of going from no sex to the classic script that we have around sex might be a bit of a stretch. If you’re a hetero cis couple, you might need to expand your definition of sex—outside of “penis in vagina,” or beyond orgasm. Throw away the myth that you have to finish, because that’s a lot of pressure. When I have couples who are trying to go from a sexless marriage to a marriage where they’re having sex again, expanding that definition of sex is really helpful.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How To Boost Your Sex Life While Looking After Your Mental Health

by Bonnie Evie Gifford

We’d all like a bit more passion between the sheets (and on the streets, if that’s what does it for you), but can you give your sex life a boost without risking your overall wellbeing?

Going through a dry spell. Having a crisis of confidence. Just feeling plain ol’ frumpy, fed-up, and unsexy. It happens to us all at some point or another (well, unless you’re some kind of fabulous, self-loving, body-confident kind of person who rarely has an off day – in which case, please tell us your secrets).

The thing is, when things feel bad, it’s easy to fall into a shame spiral, for your thoughts to automatically become more negative, and to allow self-sabotaging, defeatist thinking to rule. Worrying about a little thing like your sex life can feel trivial when there are so many other things to be concerned about – it shouldn’t be a priority… right?

Sex isn’t just fun, it’s good for you. Sex is good for your heart, the closeness that comes with sexual encounters can help lower your blood pressure, decrease stress, and even fend off illness. Studies have shown that those who have more sex report feeling healthier than those who don’t.

We share seven ways you can boost your sex life while still putting your mental health first.

1. Identify your stressors

Why is it you feel your sex life needs a boost right now? What is it that is causing you to feel dissatisfied. Identifying the cause (or causes) of your negative feelings around your sex life (be those feelings of anxiety, worry, stress, or dissatisfaction) can help you to uncover any underlying problems.

Stress can be a major factor in our overall sense of health and wellbeing. If you’re worried stress or work-related anxiety may be affecting other areas of your life, try these 10 simple ways to tackle stress right now, or discover how you can beat back to work anxiety (and stop it taking over your free time).

By taking the time to sit back and ask yourself these kinds of big questions, you can begin to reveal if there are any areas of your life that need addressing. We all experience periods of work-related stress, relationship worries, and ill mental health or wellbeing during our lives.

Acknowledging that you are struggling is the first step towards seeking help and support – be that of loved ones, or a professional. Through fixing what is really causing you disruption and discomfort, you may begin to see a positive impact on other areas of your life.

2. Acknowledge your libido

Throughout your lifetime, your sex drive will fluctuate. It’s completely natural to go through periods where you experience less sexual desire than others, for both men and women. It’s ok to not be feeling it.

If you are experiencing other relationship issues, stress, depression or exhaustion, it’s worth noting that all of these can all be contributing factors to a lower libido.

If you’re worried, it can be worth speaking with your GP, checking out NHS inform’s advice, or talking with a psychosexual therapist. Sex therapists are qualified counsellors who have extra training to help with sex-related difficulties or concerns, and can help you feel more intimate with your partner, as well as exploring new ways to help you feel more comfortable.

Working with a hypnotherapist can also help decrease any embarrassment or nerves that may be affecting your libido, encourage you to reframe your thoughts, regain confidence, and even manage menopause symptoms.

As counsellor Graeme explains, having different libidos doesn’t have to negatively impact your relationship.

“In most relationships the sexual drive or libido is different in the partners. Of course, often when we start a relationship it feels like it will last forever; you can hardly keep your hands off each other; you are both very ready to have a sexual relationship; you seem to share the same level of desire and have a great time together. Of course this honeymoon period rarely lasts forever, and as the levels of hormones drop back to more normal levels we settle down into the day to day existence of being a couple. Each of us returns to our normal libido.

“All too often this can affect the relationship; the partner with the greater sex drive can feel rejected, or that the couple has fallen out of love. All of these are a reflection of them trying to make sense of the different drives.

“Talking to your partner about your relationship and the sexual side is very important. If the couple don’t discuss how they feel then misunderstandings inevitably appear as you assign thoughts and feelings to your partner. It can be difficult to talk about, but in the long run being honest about how you feel is going to allow you to be clear about what can and cannot change.

“It’s important to recognise that there is an element of reality that you can’t change. [Their libido] is another part of them that needs to be integrated into the relationship and will require negotiation and compromise.

“Mismatched libido is a relatively common problem in relationship counselling and couples can get past it and have fantastic long-term loving relationships by being honest, talking about it, and finding creative solutions that celebrate both partners’ needs and the whole relationship they have.

3. Make small changes to your environment

Your bedroom doesn’t just affect how you sleep – it can also have a surprising impact on your sex life. Creating a more relaxing, calming environment can help you to relax, gain higher quality rest, improve your sleep, and feel less distracted. As one nutritionist explains,

“Lack of sleep massively affects our hormones and daily lives. We are less able to deal with mental or physical stress, our metabolism can slow down, sex hormones are disrupted, and we can get cranky or distracted easily.

Removing your phone from the bedroom can help avoid one of the biggest passion killers – phubbing. If you ever find yourself scrolling, clicking on notifications, or automatically opening up Insta when you could be spending some quality time with the one you love, this could be a sign that social media is affecting your relationship and you may need to get control of your scroll. Find out more about the benefits of taking a break from your phone, and how sleep get help increase your sex drive.

4. Remember: confidence is sexy

Paris Hilton is quoted as having said “No matter what a woman looks like, if she’s confident, she’s sexy.” Is that really true? Can our confidence influence how sexy we feel?

Confidence and self-belief comes from our positive thinking, relationships, and friendships. It can affect your mood, behaviour, and even how you carry yourself. When we have low self-confidence, our negative self opinions can affect other aspects of our lives, from relationships to our careers.

If we can’t believe in ourselves, why should anyone else? Yet changing our own negative self-view can feel impossible. NLP Coach Vicki explains how working with a life coach can help boost your confidence and self-belief,

“Once you start to notice your self-talk and your self-language you will soon come to realise that you are self-sabotaging. Becoming aware of your self-sabotaging thoughts and language will allow you to realise the damage you are creating, you can then replace with self-praising thoughts and language.”

Counsellor Wendy explains how you can begin stepping outside of your comfort zone and improve your confidence.

5. Rediscover foreplay and rekindle intimacy

If you’re in a long-term realtionship, improving your sex life often starts with working on your relationship. Lulls in desire and the frequency of sexual acts can become more common when you are with someone for a longer period of time.

Focusing on improving the quality of your relationship and increasing your sense of intimacy can help you to feel closer to one another, whilst resparking feelings of desire. Planning date nights together, practising open communication, setting aside quality time together, or doing activities outside of the bedroom can all help.

Bringing the focus back to foreplay, over the main act itself can help to increase both your desire and libido. Spending time together touching, kissing, or just being close with each other can all act as ways in which you can feel closer, helping you each to focus on the here and now.

6. Ditch nasty habits

We’ve all had that one (or more) bad habit that we know we should kick, but we just… haven’t gotten around to it yet. But what if your habit is having a bigger impact than you may realise?

According to one study, smoking is one of our biggest turn-offs in the bedroom, with over half (59%) of Brits agreeing. More than a quarter of us have considered ending a relationship due to our partner’s smoking habits.

Quitting bad habits like smoking or excessive drinking can increase your energy levels, improve your immune system, and increase your life expectancy. Hypnotherapy, behavioural therapy, group therapy, and telephone counselling for smoking are all options that can offer a supportive, expert environment to help you change your habits for the better.

Looking after yourself through addressing addictions and practising self-care can help boost your sense of wellbeing and encourage you to start reprioritising the things that matter most in your life.

7. Come together outside of the bedroom

Increasing your passion in the bedroom may be the end result, but it doesn’t have to be the sole focus. By addressing your overall intimacy, you can feel more relaxed, closer to the ones you love, and more able to open up and share.

Emotional intimacy and closeness is key to having a more fulfilling partnership. It can help you to better meet your partner’s needs, as well as communicate your own.

Holding hands, hugging, or touching more can all help release more oxytocin, allowing you to feel calmer, less stressed, and closer. Research has shown hugs can have a huge range of benefits, from protecting us against illnesses to boosting our overall health, happiness and sense of wellbeing.

Creating quality time in your busy schedules to be together can be a great first step towards putting your partnership first, and reaffirming with each other how important you are. While life’s stresses and strains may continue to get in the way, nurturing our relationships with the ones we love is vital in showing them how much we care for and appreciate them.

If you are concerned your mental health may be affecting your overall sense of health and wellbeing, it’s important to reach out and seek help. Contact your GP to find out what help is available in your local area or call Samaritans on 116 123 to speak to someone 24/7.

To find more sex and relationship help and support, visit Counselling Directory. Or discover how hypnotherapy and life coaching can help improve your confidence and self-esteem.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Not Sexually Compatible With Your Partner?

Here’s How To Work On It.


By Caroline Colvin

A couple’s compatibility doesn’t hinge on just one thing. Compatibility takes into account a couple’s habits, interests, attraction, and the effort both partners are willing to put into their relationship (among so many other factors). Sex is one important part of an even bigger compatibility “whole,” but it’s not everything, nor is it the most important part of a relationship for every couple. Nevertheless, a healthy sex life is a priority for some, and if you feel like you’re not sexually compatible with your partner, you might feel a little discouraged. But don’t panic, your relationship isn’t doomed. There are a few solutions you and your partner can consider to help make your sexual relationship work.

Dr. Carol Queen, staff sexologist at sex toy company Good Vibrations, explains that sexual incompatibility tends to become an issue because of the taboo around sex. If you and your partner don’t talk about sex openly and comfortably before you become super committed, you might not even realize how different your sexual tastes are.

“We talk about sex like there’s a ‘normal’ baseline. There isn’t!” Queen tells Elite Daily. “As long as we’re not imposing on someone else coercively or non-consensually, we all have a right to our sexuality. It’s not a problem that we’re different. It’s a problem that we don’t understand that’s one element of partner compatibility to consider.”

Queen recommends three possible solutions: taking care of your sexual satisfaction through masturbation, opening up your relationship so you can see other people with whom you’re more sexually compatible, or asking your partner to work on becoming more compatible with you. “The most effective way to do this is probably to see a sex therapist together, though there are other things you can do instead if that isn’t an option,” Queen says.

For starters, she recommends not having this conversation while in bed. “Do it over a quiet dinner, a glass of wine — but not a lot of glasses. This isn’t a good mix with inebriation, or on a walk. Don’t spring the conversation on them,” Queen says. “Ask for some of their time to discuss something important.”

Then, let your partner know that it doesn’t seem like you two are a perfect fit in terms of your desires. For example, this could be a matter of your partner having kinky tastes while you prefer something a little more traditional, or vice versa. Your dissatisfaction might stem from the fact that your partner might not be able to help you orgasm, or perhaps they have a lower sex drive than you. There could be several reasons you feel this incompatibility. Tell your partner how you feel and then ask them what they think.

You might find that they agree with you and are willing to work on your sexual compatibility together. This starts with honest communication about your sexuality, including boundaries and priorities. According to Queen, one concrete way to approach this is by sitting down with your partner and creating individual “Yes, No, Maybe” lists. In the “Yes” category, you would write down all the things you already know you like and want to make a regular part of your sex life. In the “Maybe” category, you would write the things you’d be willing to try. And finally, in the “No” category, you would write the things you don’t want to do. From there, you and your SO would avoid everything on your “No” lists, and work to find common ground on the “Yes” and “Maybe” lists.

“If you and your partner can talk openly about these kinds of things, you can pretty likely find a sweet spot of activities you both enjoy,” says Queen.

If you find that you or your partner have one non-negotiable turn-on or kink that the other refuses to try, try not to panic. Queen admits this isn’t an “easy fix,” and describes the situation as one that has “led many couples to therapy, to open their relationships, or to even break up.” Nevertheless, “if you can communicate clearly and lovingly about your differences, you have a head start,” she says. Talk it out to work it out.

Ultimately, whether it’s the sex you’re having now or something new you try out in the future, make sure you’re having sex because you want to. You should never feel like you need to have a type of sex that you don’t want to just to keep a partner, Queen says.

If you and your SO are interested in opening your relationship, Queen says you’ll “need to make sure you are caught up on your communication skills, can handle jealousy, time management, and all the things you need to be good at to successfully have an open relationship or a polyamorous one.”

A book many sexperts (Queen included) recommend is Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton. “I promise you the book is wise and worthwhile,” Queen says. You can also sit down with your partner and make “Yes, No, Maybe” lists for polyamorous relationships too.

Talking about sex can be tough. It’s why you might find yourself dating someone long-term who you’re not sexually compatible with. You and your partner might need some time to process the discussion, especially if it was difficult on you, and that’s OK.

If after you have this discussion “your partner just won’t hear you and denies what you’re saying and experiencing, that’s a red flag,” says Queen. “In a situation like this, therapy is called for. Breaking up might even be called for. If a partner denies your perspective is even real, and does not commit to work on the relationship, you may not be in a situation that can be improved.”

It might feel like a serious bummer, but try to remember that you deserve a happy, healthy sex life, and if your partner’s not willing give that to you, you shouldn’t be afraid to find someone who will.

No matter what you and your partner end up doing, it’s important that you talk through your issues. Queen says that not talking about them can prompt problematic relationship behaviors, like affairs or faking pleasure. Talking to your partner isn’t a 100% guarantee that all of your problems in the bedroom will be solved, but it’s a start, and it’s also one solid, brave, healthy step you can take to work on your relationship before calling it quits all together.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Vegans Have Higher Sex Drives and May Be Better in Bed

Vegan foods enhance sexual function

By Lauren Wills

In the 2018 James Cameron-produced documentary “The Game Changers,” it is revealed that vegans have a high sex drive.

Registered dietitian Bonnie Taub-Dix — the creator of BetterThanDieting.com and author of “Read it Before You Eat It — Taking You From Label To Table”— has further explained why this is the case.

Speaking to INSIDER last summer, Taub-Dix stated that circulation is a key factor in enhancing sexual function. She said, “We want to look at foods that boost circulation, because not only do we want to boost circulation to your brain – which is your sexiest organ – but it also boosts circulation to other parts of your body that you want to work properly.” 

 

She noted that “most of the foods that are vegan can do that. Foods like cayenne pepper, dark chocolate, fruits, leafy greens, sunflower seeds, beets. All of those foods would help to boost circulation, and when you boost circulation, there’s a greater chance that you’re going to get the response [down there] you’re looking for.” 

The dietitian also pointed out that when consuming more fruits and vegetables and “eating a healthier diet,” a person is “less likely” to require certain medications which may reduce libido and sexual performance.

Plant-based diets can also help to unclog arteries from the fatty deposits caused by meat and dairy — increased blood flow will inevitably help with sexual activity, affecting men especially.

Taub-Dix encouraged people to cut down on meat and dairy, advising that “even going from a diet that is very animal product heavy to one that is more plant-forward would be a good idea.”

If you really want to improve your sex life, it is vital to eat a whole food diet. Taub-Dix warned about indulging in “junk food,” and instead suggested focusing on plant-based protein sources because, “if you don’t have enough energy, your sex drive may suffer.”

Plant-based foods are heavy in zinc and vitamins B, which can increase libido — bananas, chickpeas and, avocados, in particular, are good for this. Going vegan can also increase serotonin levels, which can both boost sex drive and increase happiness. Serotonin levels are also linked with oxytocin levels, the “love hormone” that creates stronger feelings of intimacy and affection.

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The 5 things sex therapists want people to know

Female pleasure is equally as important as men’s

By Chelsea Ritschel

Millennials may be dating less, but that doesn’t mean they are any less interested in sex. 

In reality, sex is an important and often integral part of relationships for people of all ages, sexual orientations, and genders.

However, whether you consider yourself sexually experienced or are exploring sex for the first time, there are certain things that everyone should know when it comes to sex, according to sex therapists.

Sex therapy is a type of talk therapy intended to help couples resolve a range of sexual issues, from psychological and personal factors to medical hurdles.

Stephen Snyder MD, host of the Relationship Doctor podcast on QDT Network and author of Love Worth Making, told The Independent that the first thing anyone engaging in sex should know is that sex “is about more than just sex.”

According to Dr Snyder, couples frequently encounter an issue where they only become aroused together “if sex is on the menu”.

In comparison, the happiest couples, according to Dr Snyder, are actually those who engage in something called “simmering”.

“The happiest couples enjoy feeling excited together even when it’s not going to lead to sex,” Dr Snyder said. “In sex therapy, we call this ‘simmering’.

Simmering is essentially extended foreplay, “like what most teenage couples do in-between classes. Clothes on but definitely erotic”, Dr Snyder told us. “Simmering tends to keep the fire lit – so when you actually do have sex, you’re not starting off cold.”

This can mean engaging in foreplay such as kissing or rubbing, without intending for it to lead to sex. 

Foreplay is especially important because it prepares the body both physically and psychologically for when you do have sex.

Dr Snyder also told us that he wants people to know that “not all orgasms are created equal” – and that couples should aim to enjoy sex without focusing solely on reaching orgasm.

“Ideally, orgasm should be like dessert: a great way to end a fabulous meal, but hardly the reason you went out to dinner,” he said.

However, when it does come to orgasms, Sari Cooper, a sex therapist and the director of Centre for Love and Sex, wants women to know that “their pleasure and orgasms are equally as important as their partner’s”.

According to a 2017 study published in The Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 37 per cent of American women require clitoral stimulation to experience orgasm, compared with just 18 per cent of women who said that vaginal penetration alone is enough.

In comparison, one study found that men reach orgasm 85 per cent of the time.

Cooper also told us it is important for women to know that sex should not include pain. While there are various reasons that a woman may be experiencing pain during sex, with dryness the most common cause, that does not mean it is not normal, and those who do experience pain should seek professional help.

Finally, Cooper wants people to be aware of what she calls “sex esteem” – a term she coined to “articulate a person’s knowledge and acceptance of their desires and skills needed to express these to a partner”.

To achieve a healthy and fulfilling sex life, it is essential that you are able to discuss what you want from a partner, which starts with first understanding your own body, sexuality and desires.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How To Support A Partner Who’s Dealing With A Low Sex Drive

By Vanessa Marin, M.S.

Most couples at some point find themselves in a situation where there’s a desire discrepancy: One partner wants more sex than the other person does. This situation is so common that I regularly have people coming to my sex therapy practice looking for solutions. The good news is that there are many!

Research has found many reasons some people might be or become less interested in sex, from the psychological to the physical to the relational and situational. Most conversations around mismatched libidos focus on helping the partner with less sexual desire find ways to get turned on again, and while that can certainly be part of a couple’s path toward a satisfying sexual life together, that strategy on its own can sometimes add more stress and pressure for that less libidinous partner.

If you’re someone whose significant other or spouse has a lower libido, your focus should go beyond just trying to find ways to turn your partner on. As a sex therapist who supports couples with mismatched libidos, I recommend a more holistic approach. Here are a few key ways to support a partner dealing with a low libido that’s causing them distress:

Be very attentive and considerate of your partner’s insecurities.

It’s really important to know that the person dealing with desire difficulties is probably judging themselves. They may think that something is wrong with them or that they’re “broken” in some way. So the partner who has the relatively higher desire needs to be kind and sensitive. All couples should approach their sex lives as a project that they work on together. They should talk about what they each need out of their sex lives to feel connected.

Use the framework of curiosity.

Oftentimes, the partner with seemingly lower desire is misunderstood. It’s not that they have low or no desire; it’s that the right circumstances haven’t been in place for their desire to be able to show itself. Approach your partner with curiosity. What kinds of contexts do they need to feel desire? What blockages get in the way of them feeling desire? If you don’t know, what dynamics could you experiment with?

It’s OK to keep initiating.

You’re always allowed to ask for what you want from your partner. And your partner is always allowed to say what they want in response. I do encourage partners with the relatively higher sex drive to keep initiating.

The pattern I typically see is that the partner with the higher sex drive will stop initiating. They’re either hurt from being turned down, wanting to feel desired by their partner, or wanting to not pressure their partner. But not initiating feels even more stifling, so the partner with the relatively higher desire starts to feel resentful. The partner with the lower desire can sense that resentment, and it makes them pull away even more.

Remember that your partner doesn’t owe you anything.

I hear various forms of this question being asked: Is the person with the lower libido responsible for agreeing to sex every now and then to satisfy their partner?

We have to be really careful about the word “responsible.” You never have to do anything with your own body that you don’t want to do. You never “owe” your partner anything. That being said, in relationships, we often do things for our partners that we don’t necessarily want to do or love doing. If you feel fully allowed within your relationship to say “no” to sex, you may find that you sometimes have the space to be open to being intimate with your partner, even if you weren’t originally in the mood.

Celebrate and honor your partner’s no.

As I mentioned above, if you give full permission to say no to sex, you’ll find that more space actually opens up for intimacy. One of the best ways to support a partner with a lower sex drive is to truly and fully give them permission to say no. Keep reminding them over and over again that you don’t want them to feel guilty, and you don’t want them to feel any pressure. If you take the teamwork approach to your sex life that I mentioned above, that also really helps. You take the energy you would normally waste feeling guilty and instead turn it toward creative problem-solving, together.

Prioritize your intimate relationship with yourself.

You can handle some of your own sexual needs! We should each have a relationship with our own sexuality, separate from our relationship with our partner. When your partner is the only outlet for your sexual needs, that puts a lot of pressure on them. You having a joyful relationship with your own body and being able to take care of yourself makes a big difference to your partner. They may even be open to keeping you company while you take care of yourself!

Creating an environment of safety, support, and curiosity—rather than pressure, stress, or resentment—will go a long way toward helping you and your partner develop a mutually satisfying sex life.

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Overcoming intimacy challenges after 50

By Julie Pfitzinger

Confidence: “The quality or state of being certain.” That’s the Merriam-Webster definition, but for many people who are starting to date again after 50, confidence can falter and it can be difficult to be certain about anything.

For those who have lost a spouse or partner to death, divorce or a break-up, a feeling of being vulnerable may begin to settle in, leading to concerns about finding intimacy, as well as about when and how to fully open up to another person.

In the Dating After 50 series on Next Avenue, we’ve covered several topics including online dating and dating etiquette, which have provided tips and suggestions for the “how” on ways to start dating again.

But there’s another kind of how — how to make yourself emotionally, and physically, available to someone new. Taking a risk to share yourself and everything you have to offer at this stage of your life. Accepting and acknowledging what potential partners are offering you. Being confident about what will happen next. And knowing that even though it might not be easy, you are certain that you are genuinely ready to find fulfillment and happiness with another person.

Are You Ready to Move On?

Experts like Lisa Copeland, an author, speaker and dating coach in her fifties, say the first step to tackling that feeling of vulnerability and to start building confidence is to properly grieve the end of a marriage or relationship, whether through a break-up, divorce or death, before you even think about moving on.

For those who have divorced, Copeland says the best way to tell if you are truly ready to date is to gauge if “you’re feeling fairly neutral about your former partner.” She notes, “If you don’t feel that way yet, you are going to bring that [experience] right into the new relationship.”

The situation is different for widows or widowers. “If they had a good marriage, they are wanting to repeat the same relationship with a different person,” Copeland says. The lost spouse is also often brought into a new relationship, but that person frequently becomes “like a saint,” she says, which can be counterproductive to establishing an authentic connection with another person.

Before opening yourself up to dating, start by building a new social circle. The first step, says Copeland, is “to get out of the house.”

“Make friends. Take classes. Get involved with activities. When you are involved in doing things you love, you will light up,” she explains.

Taking that first step to put yourself out there can be uncomfortable. Copeland is a big fan of Meetups, which she says are “an amazing way to connect with others.” In her view, going into a Meetup gathering with a mindset of simply making new friends is best.

“If you meet someone, that’s just a bonus,” she says.

Different Ideas About Sex

Fast forward a bit: You’ve met someone, the two of you have found common ground and the relationship is progressing well. But what comes next could produce the biggest crisis of confidence you’ve had, well, in years: the thought of a sexual relationship.

“People often approach sex with very different ideas,” says writer and speaker Walker Thornton, who is in her 60s and the author of Inviting Desire: A Guide for Women Who Want to Enhance Their Sex Life. “The basic question most everyone starts with is: ‘Am I going to get naked with this person? And then what do I do?’”

The first roadblock is often body image, which Thornton says is typically more of an issue for women than men, although men are definitely not immune to concerns.

“Women are more concerned about sags and folds,” she says. “But men are worried about getting an erection or about satisfying a woman.”

When it comes to sex, Thornton encourages women “to share the valuable information” they have about what they like and don’t like with a partner.

“What we desired at thirty is different from what we desire at fifty,” she says, adding that she understands that for many women, the conversation about likes and dislikes is uncomfortable.

“But if you can’t even ask [a partner] about sex, how are you going to do it?” Thornton wonders.

The Myth of STDs and STIs

One particular conversation that is vitally important is around the topic of STDs and STIs, explains Thornton, and it really is non-negotiable.

“Here’s the simplest way to couch that conversation: I care about your health, so I will be tested. If you care about my health, I ask you to do the same,” she says. “Offer to send him or her a copy of your test results and ask them to send theirs in return.”

The conversation shouldn’t stop there. Thornton goes on to say that if a partner is unwilling to use a condom, for example, “they aren’t showing you that they respect your health and well-being.” If that is the case, Thornton says, “be prepared to say ‘No’ to sex, and say that this refusal makes you question their commitment to being in a relationship.”

It’s a myth that older adults don’t get STDs or STIs such as syphilis and gonorrhea; condoms can protect from genital herpes, which while not life-threatening, can be very uncomfortable and more so for women than men, says Thornton.

Make a List of What You Need

Other health issues may also come into play in sexual relationships between older adults. “Sometimes, you have to broaden your definition of sex,” says Thornton. “Focusing on pleasure, in ways inclusive of orgasm or not.”

Chronic illness can be an issue, as can cancer treatment, which often results in hormonal changes; other challenges may include fatigue or muscle/movement problems. “That can lead to a discussion about a time of day that’s better for sex, or accommodations that are needed for a bed,” explains Thornton. “Again, the best way to address all of these issues is through conversation.”

Thornton, who most frequently speaks to groups of women, often suggests making a list of just what you are looking for when it comes to a sexual relationship in midlife and beyond.

“If you have sex with someone, do you anticipate that this will be an exclusive relationship? Or if your partner decides he or she doesn’t want a sexual relationship, is that okay? Maybe it is,” says Thornton. “For you, is sex merely a goal or a natural progression of becoming intimate with another person?”

‘You Have More Freedom’

Copeland, who has been divorced twice and is now in a relationship, says there is often healing to be done before people are ready to fully open themselves up to a new person. Still, she adds, it’s vital “to know your value and know that you are worthy of someone.”

“One thing that’s often overlooked when it comes to dating after fifty is that you have more choices. You have more freedom than you did when you were younger,” she says. “You can have companions or lovers, or be in a committed relationship.”

However, Thornton — also divorced and in a relationship — understands how some might not perceive this place in life as a place of freedom.

“If we think our time is limited, we can feel more vulnerable,” she says. “But it’s really all about going into dating with an open attitude. Be willing to take the risk.”

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Not tonight!

Why men are not always in the mood for sex

By Marjorie Brennan

A leading researcher challenges the belief that all men have higher sex drives than women. Many feel under pressure to initiate intimacy and would prefer greater equality in bed.

It is one of the most famous phrases in the English language but it is doubtful that Napoleon ever uttered the words “Not tonight, Josephine”.

However, it remains a humorous standby precisely because of its ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ unlikelihood. What man ever turned down sex when offered up to him on a plate?

However, it could be that this isn’t as unlikely a scenario as we think, according to Canadian relationship therapist Sarah Hunter Murray, who has carried out extensive research on the subject of male sexual desire. She has delved beneath the stereotype of the man who is always ready for sex, finding that many men don’t always feel ‘up for it’ and are uncertain and fearful about how to raise the issue with their partners. As a result, relationships and intimacy are at risk.

In her book Not Always in the Mood, Hunter Murray aims to debunk the myths that surround men’s sexual desire. She says that we have been culturally conditioned, through songs, films, television and advertising, to view men as having an insatiable sexual appetite.

“As a sex researcher, I started studying women’s sexual desires, which were complex and nuanced, with so many factors impacting whether women were in the mood or not. I started to notice there was a counterpoint. In the research, there was this implication that men’s desire was always high or they were always in the mood, and would never turn down sex,” she says.

Over the course of 10 years, Hunter Murray interviewed 237 men of all ages and backgrounds in an attempt to discover whether this was really the case.

“I started by interviewing men without knowing what I’d find… it wasn’t long before they showed they wanted to discuss a more complex narrative than the one we had heard.”

While in initial interviews, the subjects would suggest they had higher sex drives than their partners, when Hunter Murray probed deeper, a different story began to emerge.

“With the in-depth interviews, we would talk for an hour, and they started opening up. I’d ask ‘is there ever a time you’d say no?’ and they’d say ‘if I was sick, or tired’, and I felt the more space men had to express their experiences the more I’d hear stories like ‘my wife and I aren’t really on the same page, we’re emotionally disconnected, I’m not always so turned on, sometimes my wife will suggest having sex before we’ve had a chance to talk and I feel pressured to say yes’.

It struck me that those interviews would begin with men following stereotypical descriptions of their desire — and how we rely on those first minutes and those stereotypes.

Hunter Murray’s book is an attempt to change the conversation around sexual desire, from a male and female perspective.

“What I mostly see is that women either presume men’s desire should be high, so that if their partner has lower desire than them — which is quite common — they take it personally, that he’s not attracted to her or there’s an issue with the relationship. They can also feel frustrated if their male partner does have a high level of sexual desire but they feel ‘he’s just a horndog’ and it has nothing to do with attraction, that he just wants to experience the physical pleasure.

“But I also hear from men in my research that sex is a really intimate way for them to connect and when they initiate sex they can feel quite vulnerable. In addition to physical pleasure, they want some emotional connection.”

Sexual politics has become a hot-button topic, with the advent of the #MeToo movement, and an increasing awareness of sexual harassment and violence towards women. The rise of social media has also seen an exponential rise in the availability of often violent porn, as well as the disturbing advent of the ‘incel’ — men who see themselves as ‘involuntarily celibate’, who express their desire in online chatrooms to punish women for their rejection. How does Hunter Murray see such issues as affecting the portrayal of male sexual desire?

“Women have experienced a lot of harm from men, whether through power or sexuality. But I am hearing a lot of men saying ‘that’s not my experience, that’s not how I want to be’. The men I interviewed were all in [heterosexual] relationships, while the incel is all about not having a girlfriend, so that’s a different subset of men.

“With a lot of the men I spoke to, they were aware of the idea of what men should be, this more traditionally masculine approach to sexuality — being in control, providing pleasure, not being the one who’s desirable or receiving sexual advances, being in the dominant position but what I’m hearing from men is that they question how many people that really fits.

“I’ve spoken to men who say ‘how can I refuse sex, isn’t that going to upset my partner?’ or ‘am I a real man if I don’t do this?’. It’s important to put it out there that the idea of what masculinity means can change over time and we can question what fits, what’s healthy and what no longer fits.

“A lot of the men I spoke to said they enjoyed their female partners initiating sex, when she expressed her desire and her attraction to him, when she flirted, when she touched him sexually or romantically. They said they enjoyed this egalitarian approach to sex rather than the pressure being on them to be the initiator.”

Hunter Murray’s research also found that while on a case-by-case basis, there may be men with higher sex drive than women, men are not statistically likelier to be the partner with a higher sex drive. She stresses the importance of men and women challenging sexual stereotypes and norms.

“Women have been brought up in a culture training them to be demure, or gatekeepers, but a lot of women have higher sex drives which they quash because their male partners haven’t as much of an interest — they feel they shouldn’t step into a dominant sexual role.”

While stereotypical attitudes may not reflect the real picture when it comes to sexual desire, Hunter Murray says that lifestyle factors can also affect men’s sex drive in a way that is not acknowledged.

“We’re aware of how motherhood, child-rearing and running a household can take a toll on a woman’s sexual desire. But we also need to take into account the changing role of the father in society,” says Hunter Murray. “In the past, the dad went to work and wasn’t as involved with his children as much, whereas now we see a lot more involvement for the most part and there are more stay-at-home dads. These are normal stresses and distractions but they can have an impact on men the same as women. Men also talk about wanting to support their family, and that’s also a pressure.”

Hunter Murray believes the link between men’s greater role in family life and their decreasing interest in sex is not reflected in research because much of it is based on university [student] samples.

Much of her research, she says, is reflected in her clinical practice as a relationship therapist, where she sees many men who, as they get older, panic that they are suffering dysfunction when in reality, what they are experiencing is normal.

“Men come in, in their midlife, concerned their sex drives are not as high. They have financial responsibilities, they’re taking care of kids, they’re not getting enough sleep, they have ageing parents. It’s about normalising such experiences — it makes sense that sex drive wouldn’t be as strong. But a man may jump to erectile dysfunction just because he’s not in the mood quite as often. That’s what made me want to write the book — it resonated not just in a research context but because quite a lot of men and women are struggling with these issues in their relationships.”

Ultimately, it is about connection and communication with our partners, says Hunter Murray.

“It takes our strongest version of ourselves to say ‘I want us to connect, I want to be close to you, I want sex to feel good’ — that’s a very vulnerable thing to do — ‘I care about you and am putting myself out there, do you care about me too?’.”

Men want to be desired

Hunter Murray found that in relation to levels of desire, about one-third of the time men have higher sex drives, one-third of the time women have higher sex drives, and the rest of the time it’s about even.

She also found that many men wanted to feel desired by their partners, to receive compliments, to be told they were sexy. “The more that happened the more validated they felt, and it wasn’t just sexual, they felt love and affection.”

Men in their late 30s and early 40s were the ones who identified being most aware of (and sometimes the most distressed about) their desire not being what it used to be.

Desire naturally changes and decreases over the course of a relationship. Companionate love, where our partner feels more like a companion and not our sexual partner, is normal and healthy.

One New Zealand study researching the female partners of men who took Viagra, found the women actually preferred the fact that their partners had softer erections as they aged, as they found Viagra-induced ‘rock-hard’ erections painful.

Murray Hunter’s research found that being sick was the main reason for men saying no to sex, with being tired in second place.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Audio Porn?

Women Are Leading In The Multi-Million Dollar Category of Erotic Tech

by Estrella Jaramillo

Audio erotica and porn has been steadily growing on the Internet for years. Just Google the key words and you’ll find various podcasts, YouTube channels and even Reddit threads offering sexy sounds, sometimes crowdsourced from the community.

However, the Aural Honeys and Sounds of Pleasures of the Internet might just not cut it for the highly educated, equality conscious and politically engaged tastes of Millennial women. They expect curated experiences that create a sense of wellness and an opportunity for sexual exploration, while feeling safe and empowered. And they want their wants and needs to be at the center of the show.

From extensive Airbnb descriptions and locations like Tulum to POV audios of feminist boyfriends that want to please you, the new wave of audio erotica startups have hit the spot (pun intended!). In 2019, they have collectively raised over $8 million to build scalable products that are pleasant both to Millenials and VCs alike.

These are the female-founded startups disrupting the audio erotica and sexual wellness category.

Dipsea, Immersive Erotic Stories For Millennials

The bulk of mainstream porn has been largely designed to please heterosexual men and it presents a very limited vision of human sexuality. Women often feel a strong reaction or are less inclined to it. It leaves very little to imagination and empathy plays no role in it, which is fundamental to female arousal. In fact, research shows that 90% of women use “mental framing” (or scenario creation) to get turned on. Yet most of the innovation and investment in female pleasure has so far been focused on the body rather than the brain.

Dipsea was founded in 2018 by Gina Gutierrez and Faye Keegan. This year they raised a $5 million round co-led by Bedrock and Thrive Capital, who were joined by prominent names including the CEO of bra darling Third Love, Heidi Zak. Dipsea will also be available on Android starting August 15.

Dipsea includes categories for hetero, queer, and group situations, as well as different “heat” levels. It’s the Headspace of erotic content. The founding team is very intentional about offering personalized options for all tastes and have built their library with psychological safety and exploration at the center of their core values.

“It’s not just about getting turned on, but allowing people to explore what they like, what communication they want, if they like BDSM… It’s about exploring your boundaries in a safe space,” says Gina Gutierrez, Dipsea cofounder and CEO. “Also, preferences change over time. We want to meet people where they are at every stage of their lives: single, married, divorced and figuring out their sexuality anew…”

The attention to detail stands out: Dipsea stories are plagued with Millennial cultural references, like yoga classes turned spicy, trips to Tulum and uber rides that spark an erotic scenario. “Erotica has been around for a long time but hasn’t been upgraded in innovation and research. We are a startup studio creating original content, not just based on our intuition as females, but actually based on data from users,” adds Gutierrez.

Ferly, Emotional Sexual Wellness In Your Phone

Billie Quinlan and Anna Hushlak launched Ferly this year after speaking with around 400 women about their preferences, fears and concerns around sexual wellness. Most women stated that they lacked the language to assert what they wanted, or had not explored enough on their own due to shame, or had many doubts around their desire being normal.

“We started working together in 2017 with the idea of improving mental and emotional health for women and girls in the developed world,” says Dr. Hushlak, CSO of Ferly. “We realised that there was still so much shame around sex and sexuality, even though it’s such a strong component of wellbeing. We started exploring areas such as objectification, body image, sexual health and pleasure.”

Together they created an app that offers women guided practices combining body and mind, journaling and reflection exercises, contents and affirmation practices. Ferly approaches sexual wellness as a system, instead of isolating the different parts. “We need to understand three interconnected elements: Biology and bodies, emotions and psychology and, also incredibly important, the cultural environment and social world, including media, porn, and social messaging around sex,” adds Quinlan.

The contents in Ferly are curated following this bio-psycho-social model applied to generate behavioral change. Their contents are aimed at affirming good behavior, rewiring negative beliefs, etc. They use an interdisciplinary approach and work with tantra experts, therapists, sexologists, and consent educators, among others, to create the best experience.

“The outcome we want to generate is self-development, and sex is the tool to achieve this. We encourage people to develop healthy habits through a practice of sexual self care,” adds Dr. Hushlak, who states that their mission is to create a robust sexual wellness studio. 

The London-based startup has users in 53 countries, and just closed a $1.5 million pre-seed.

Quinn, The Massive Opportunity Of Crowdsourcing Audio Porn

Caroline Spiegel founded Quinn after struggling with sexual dysfunction herself due to an eating disorder, and frustratingly trying to find resources beyond mainstream porn or vibrators. She soft-launched Quinn earlier this year with cofounder Jaclyn Hanley and says she is integrating user feedback to expand the platform: “It’s a mix between professional and amateur content. Some women like moans recorded on an iPhone, and some like voice actors performing with ocean sounds in the background.” says Spiegel.

Spiegel has established some rules against incest, minors, non consent, and beastiology and feels strongly about the responsibility to create a site where the content reflects a society with healthy intimate values. The CEO also points out that there are other sites specifically aimed at satisfying those preferences. She is in the mission of fighting the stigma around female sexual expression and exploration.

Finally, the founding team emphasized the opportunity for erotic content creators: “Creating audio porn is really cool because you can stay anonymous while you gain a following, make money, and help a ton of people feel really good!” concluded Spiegel.

Emjoy, Creating Healthy Sexual Habits And Ending Female Pleasure Shaming

Andrea Oliver García, Founder and CEO of Emjoy, started her career in the world of venture capital, both in London as well as in Barcelona, where the company is headquartered. Despite her extensive experience and network in VC and the increasing interest in femtech and sextech, she was surprised to learn that raising a seed round was not going to be that easy. Reputation concerns and stigma were getting in the way of securing the financial resources to build Emjoy.

“I have always considered myself a feminist, and as I grew up, I realised that many of my girlfriends lived their sexuality with shame and knew very little about themselves – some even doubting if they had or hadn’t experienced an orgasm,” said Oliver García, CEO of Emjoy. “Then I came across several studies such as the pleasure gap. Shockingly, data shows that over 40% of women struggle to attain an orgasm, and that 30% of women worldwide experience libido issues.”

All of the content is proprietary and mostly audio-based, and it includes some animated video for educational purposes, like genital anatomy. The app offers guided practices from experts in psychology, sex therapy, education and mindfulness and covers topics like how to boost one’s libido, getting to know your body, increasing pleasure and improving sexual communication.

Emjoy is now available on Android and iOS and the team just announced a seed round of $1 million led by VC firm Nauta Capital to double the team and grow in the US and UK markets.

The audio erotica market is heating up, and it’s all made by women with women’s pleasure and safety in mind.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!