4 Reasons Knowing What Kills Sexual Desire Could Improve Your Sex Life
Knowledge is power
Improving your sex life isn’t necessarily about fancy toys or role-play — it’s about knowing what kills sexual desire (and how to deal with it). As a clinical sexologist and sex coach, a large part of my job is helping clients figure out their turn-offs and guiding them on how to manage them. Because no matter how in love you are, after years or decades together, you’ll come up against desire obstacles, and knowing what they are will make all the difference.
Four Reasons You Need to Know What Kills Sexual Desire
1. You can get rid of desire obstacles
Desire isn’t just about what turns us on, it’s also about what turns us off and navigating these turn-offs. When you know what kills sexual desire — you can get rid of all the obstacles standing in the way and have truly great sex.
Obstacles can come in many forms, but oftentimes, for my clients with low desire, they have to do with feelings of pressure and stress about sex.
Say you’re feeling really jazzed about date night and looking forward to connecting with your partner, emotionally. But the minute you get home from the restaurant, they slide their hand down your back in that way, and you instantly feel stressed and annoyed. You know what your partner wants and all of a sudden there’s no part of you that wants it. No matter how great the evening has been up ‘till that point.
Why? Because the way your partner tries to start a sexual encounter, stresses you out.
Knowing that a major desire obstacle is the way your partner initiatives sex, will help you remove this obstacle. This can be done in a myriad of ways, but the easiest one is simply letting your partner know how you want them to initiate sex (or to initiate it yourself!).
When you know about all obstacles to your desire, you can create more desire and passion in the bedroom. The kind that makes your toes curl and your body shiver with delight.
If you want help working out your unique sexual obstacles, my free quiz The Desire Test, will help you do just that.
2. You can be more lenient with yourself
Sex drive isn’t just a biological urge, it’s a complex emotion affected by a whole host of things. And knowing what these things are, means you can know there’s nothing wrong with you for having low desire at a specific point in time.
So many of my clients feel like they’re broken or like there’s something wrong with them because their desire has dipped. And part of this feeling stems from viewing desire as a basic need, such a hunger and thirst.
Who can blame them? We were never taught about sex drive in school, and most of us didn’t have parents that wanted to engage in a lengthy “birds and the bees” talk anyway.
But when we learn how desire actually works and we know deep down how complicated desire can be, we can also accept when we’re not in the mood, because we understand why we aren’t.
And with less pressure and stress to feel desire we, paradoxically, create an environment where desire might flow more easily.
3. You know when sex is a good idea and when it’s not
Just as it’s important to know your desire obstacles, it’s equally as important to know when sex trying to move past these obstacles just isn’t a good idea.
There are times in our lives when sex is something we want or even need.
We crave the touch of our partner and want to connect intimately.
But there are other times when connecting on a sexual level isn’t a good idea. When trying to help our partner remove these obstacles or removing our own obstacles, shouldn’t be a priority.
If you know your partner is feeling stressed about a deadline at work or they’re worried about the kids, if you yourself feel like you “should” have sex with your partner but you’re struggling to get just one night to yourself where you can decompress and not think about giving more of yourself to anyone — it might be better to hold off on sexual advances.
This will help keep conflicts about sex at bay and enhance emotional intimacy in the long run. Because when we respect what our partner is going through, or we respect what we ourselves are going through — the pressure and stress surrounding sex melts away, resulting in a win-win for our love life.
4. You have fewer conflicts about sex
We often talk about how hard it can be to be the partner with low desire in a relationship (and rightfully so!). But wanting sex more often than your partner can be equally as taxing.
Constantly being turned down or being the sole initiator of sex in our relationship can make us feel like our partner has fallen out of love with us, or that they no longer find us attractive.
However, when you know what kills sexual desire, you can more easily detach from your partner’s low libido. You can know it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with that cold they haven’t gotten over yet, their worry about their un-well uncle, or even their own struggles with body image.
This enables you to be more lenient with yourself and your partner, which in turn, reduces conflicts about sex.
With less hurt feelings and arguments surrounding sex, it’s easier for us to connect emotionally and physically, because sex isn’t equated with something negative and stressful.
In the end, this is what really helps create more long-term desire and intimacy.
The secret to how to keep a relationship alive with passion and improve your sex life isn’t so much about lube and gadgets. While they may help add some spice — the stuff that really moves the needle is understanding what kills sexual desire. When you know this, you can create the sex life you want and deserve because you’re both easier on yourself and your partner. It’s that simple.
Leigh Norén is a sex therapist with a Master of Science in Sexology. She helps people reduce stress, shame, & anxiety surrounding sex so they can get their sex drive back and enjoy their partner again. If you want to learn more about obstacles to your sexual desire, download her free resource: The Desire Test.
Originally published at LeighNoren.com.
