Are you living la libido loco? Popular media and porn seem to tell us that real women have insatiable sexual appetites, unable to go a full day without stopping for a quickie. Reality may leave you some place else, where, depending on the turn of the tides in your hormonal ocean, you may have not felt like having sex for some time now. Either that, or you go for months at a time with a voracious desire for intimacy and sex, without being able to pin point why. Many people experience gross fluctuations in their sex drive, but don’t have a lot of understanding of the underlying forces.  Here are five reasons your libido may be M.I.A. and, also, five ways to get it off the most wanted list and back under your control.

Hormonal Imbalance

There are five hormones responsible for a properly functioning libido (the so-called “sex drive five”). They are: cortisol, thyroid, estrogen, DHEA, and testosterone. You may be laughing “ha, no, testosterone is the male sex hormone.”Actually, while it is that, it’s much much more. Women actually have ten times more testosterone than they do estrogen, and it is largely responsible for confidence and sexual desire. Testosterone peaks in women’s mid 20s, and lessens until menopause. While hormones get the bad rep of being the main culprits of sex drive loss, nothing can change without having your brain on board.

Mental Health Issues

It has long been said: the brain is the largest sex organ. And, this is especially true for women. The physical signs of arousal can all be present, but if a woman isn’t there mentally, then she is probably about as turned on as a door knob. Sometimes it seems that men simply have to bump into something the right way, and they’ve brought themselves to a full state of arousal. Unfortunately, it just isn’t as easy for women. Call us smarter, but our minds have to be engaged. Mentally absent, you are unable to be in the moment with a partner, much less reach orgasm. A mental roadblock can result from overwhelming anxiety, depression, social pressure, a lack of self-esteem, or a lack of trust in your partner.

Intimacy and Connection with Sexual Partner

If a woman finds herself regularly in the mood for a solo session, but unenthused about dancing the duet between the sheets, she isn’t considered to have a low libido. The issue then, is that a trusting connection hasn’t been established between partners. Actually, anything that causes dissonance within a romantic relationship can limit lust, such as boredom, anger, miscommunications, or neglect. Poor libido is also incredibly common among couples trying to bounce back from infidelity. You’re at your most vulnerable, naked in front of someone else, so a delicate cocktail of situational factors need to be set in place in order for you to feel safe.

Sexual Trauma

Naturally, having experienced a sexually violating experience in early life or anytime in the past will increase the difficulty with which one can achieve sexual arousal. It is very common for victims of extreme sexual abuse to require many years of counseling and a patient partner to come to a place where they feel safe in the bedroom. However, it isn’t only the extreme cases that take their toll. All women have experienced sexual harrassment to some degree or another, and coming to understand the effect of these experiences will shed light on our own sexual identities.

Medication

We’ve already touched upon the fact that depression can lead to severe sexual dysfunction, but the medicine many take to cure it isn’t much better. In fact, SSRIs can be worse than the underlying condition they’re combating. Many other meds could be to blame, such as those for treating high blood pressure for anxiety, or another big one, birth control. A good way to tell if your prescriptions are behind your impotence is to think back and try to remember whether you noticed a difference before and after going on the medications.

5 LADY LIBIDO BOOSTERS

Exercise Often

You’re not going to feel sexy if you don’t feel good—first things first. The benefits of exercise pretty much run the gamut, including reducing stress, improving mood, and feeling better about your body. Your body is your sexual instrument after all, so treating it to multiple weekly cardio sessions will make you more inclines to work it out between the sheets.

Aphrodisiacs & Diet

“So I simply eat a magical fruit and my sex drive will be kicked into high gear?” you may say chuckling with the laughter of disbelief. Laugh away, but figs, bananas, spinach and avocados (avocados are obviously the sexiest) are known aphrodisiacs and the way that they work is by promoting blood flow to your genitals. Other libido boosters are ginger, ginseng, eggs, dark chocolate and watermelon (just maybe don’t eat them all at once 😉 ).  However, the most important thing is to follow a healthy overall diet. Eating to many processed foods, dairy, or drinking too much alcohol can be the worst ingredients for your libido. Swap your beer for a green tea and start feeling sexy from the inside out.

Swap Meddling Medicines

Many many women report decreased sex drive while using hormonal contraception. Seems pretty ironic, no? Double protection—no risk of conceiving because you wont even want to have sex! Go to your gynecologist and tell her you want to try a different pill or make the switch to a non-hormonal option, such as condoms or a copper IUD. As I mentioned earlier, many other kinds of medicine can be responsible for your lowered libido, so simply check in with your GP if you suspect something. If you can’t point the finger of blame at a medication your taking, a severely reduced libido can be caused by an underlying condition, so it’s never a bad idea to have a check up.

Make Me Time

“Me Time” can often strengthen “We Time”. While us single ladies (and lads) may fantasize about finding the perfect partner, those of us who are partnered dream of spending some quality time alone. Sometimes you just need to be and feel completely alone. This allows you to process emotions, think clearly, and just be your total self, without being worried about anyone else. Temporarily making yourself unavailable to your partner (and potentially kids) will make you much more available, both emotionally and mentally,in the long run. Sometimes we can mistake desperately needing more alone time for the dislike and resentment of a partner. So go off and treat yourself, and come back and treat him//her to your restored attention and affection.

Make Conscious Together Time

If you spend a lot of time with your partner, or perhaps, even live with them, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where you take one another for granted. A romantic Saturday evening might mean binge-watching a tv drama in your sweatpants. As tempting as that sounds, consciously setting aside time to do something special for one another will make you both feel valued and appreciated. Splurge on that new fancy restaurant in town and get yourself all made up. Pretend as though it’s your first date and let the butterflies ensue. Maintaining a romantic connection with a partner is perhaps obviously, one of the most important ingredients to having a good sex life.

Do you have any sexy tips to share? Let us know in the comments below! Happy Friday Amazingy 🙂