Maybe Her Low Libido is a Sign of Boredom
Over-familiarity and domestic roles can kill a woman’s sex drive
How often have you heard about a heterosexual couple who no longer has much sex because the woman just doesn’t seem very into it anymore? She was frisky all the time when they were dating, but once they moved in together or got married, her libido just started to wane. It’s a common occurrence, but not for the reasons that you’ve probably been led to believe.
It’s not that women are less sexual than men.
It’s not (necessarily) that it’s hormone changes, because this drop off in libido happens to women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s as well.
It’s not that the women were tricking the men into moving in together.
The most likely reason is that the woman just got bored — and it tanked her sex drive.
Despite a social desire for the comfort and stability of a relationship, long-term commitment can be very hard on heterosexual women’s libido.
Study after study from around the world has shown that when a woman moves in with a man, it’s quite common that her interest in sex will decrease within the first year or so.
- because her partner is overly familiar
- because things have gotten too rote and routine
- and because the domestic roles that women tend to take on typically have the effect of desexualizing them.
“Moving In With Your Boyfriend Can Kill Your Sex Drive” was how Newsweek distilled a 2017 study of more than 11,500 British adults aged 16 to 74. It found that for “women only, lack of interest in sex was higher among those in a relationship of over one year in duration,” and that “women living with a partner were more likely to lack interest in sex than those in other relationship categories.”
Although most people in sexual partnerships end up facing the conundrum biologists call “habituation to a stimulus” over time, a growing body of research suggests that heterosexual women, in the aggregate, are likely to face this problem earlier in the relationship than men. And that disparity tends not to even out over time. In general, men can manage wanting what they already have, while women struggle with it.
This may be quite different from what you’ve been led to believe. After all, there is a strong cultural narrative that men are just naturally randy and promiscuous, and that women are naturally sexually reticent and choosy. But the truth is, that is often due more to socialization than biology. Angus Bateman’s famous studies on fruit flies in 1948 were thought to prove Darwin’s suppositions about what was sexually natural for humans, but it turns out they were both incorrect.
Aside from the fact that most primate females are far from sexually reticent or choosy, across many species, mating with several males confers a significant evolutionary benefit. Access to a variety of genetic materials can improve the health of offspring by weeding out inferior or incompatible sperm. In short, sexual variety has a lot of evolutionary benefits for females.
By 2012, a lengthy table in an academic behavioral ecology journal listed thirty-nine species, from across the animal kingdom, in which research had established that female promiscuity brings about greater reproductive success.
Fine, Cordelia. Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (pp. 36–37). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
This doesn’t mean that modern women all need or even want to be polyamorous and it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be likely to cheat, but it does shed light on the biological underpinnings of why women may get bored easily with the same sexual partner. In addition, as psychotherapist Esther Perel has noted, the things that we seek to cultivate in a loving relationship may at times be antithetical to keeping eroticism alive.
Love thrives on the intimacy of being entirely known and accepted by your partner, but the erotic is stoked by mystery and uncertainty. It thrives on the lack of predictability as well as the feeling of being truly desired. Perel quotes one of her female patients as saying, “I want to be appreciated as a woman. Not as a mother, not as a wife, not as a companion.”
When there is no bridge to cross to reach the other person because you are so comfortably and familiarly ensconced together, it dampens erotic desire. When you feel that you are the roles you play more than you are a desirable woman, it cools the fires. The cultural narrative that women mostly just want to be loved and taken care of sells most relationships short.
When men complain that their wives don’t respond to their amorous advances, chances are they are approaching them as husbands rather than as admirers. They make the mistake of thinking that a wife wants primarily to be loved, when in fact she principally wants to be desired, not just loved and taken care of. A husband who approaches a woman without wooing her is not likely to get much of a response, because he hasn’t addressed her core need.
How then can you stay together and keep her sexual interest alive over time?
Keep dating even after you move in together
Just because you’ve now “got” each other doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still continue to woo each other. Even if you can’t always go out on dates, it’s important for maintaining the erotic spark to make time for cultivating your relationship and your romance. Kiss for no reason, hold hands on the sofa, give each other compliments, and engage in non-sexual touch, to name just a few. Humans are hardwired to need physical contact and without it, touch starvation (sometimes known as skin hunger) can occur. Human touch builds intimacy and releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone.
If the only time you ever intentionally touch is during sex, a woman can start to feel like a sex dispensing machine rather than a lover — and the resentment that will foster is anything but erotic. Many men have been socialized to consider sex the only appropriate place for touch, but this is both unfortunate for them, and detrimental to many relationships.
In addition, triggered or responsive desire is more common for women than the spontaneous sort that is most common for men. It may take time for her to warm up. Viagra does not work for women because biological sexual response alone is not enough to stimulate desire in the same way that it does for men. It’s a great idea to have foreplay begin just after her last orgasm and continue until the next sexual encounter.
Don’t take her desire or her sexual availability for granted and it will go a long way toward keeping her hot for you. Just because she’s now your societally approved designated sex partner doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to be courted and shown that she is attractive. Feeling desirable is a fundamental aspect of female sexuality.
Mix it up
Even if you plan to stay sexually exclusive, there are still ways that you can keep sex from getting rote and boring. Talk to each other about fantasies, or things you’ve always wanted to try. Roleplay, experiment with sex toys, read erotica together, take a shower or a bath — the list of possibilities is nearly endless but the most important thing is to make it safe for her to talk about what she’d like your sex life to be.
Many women are afraid of hurting their partner’s feelings by potentially insinuating that he’s boring in bed or that he’s not magically knowing somehow what they want. In addition, many women have experienced some level of being shamed for having sexual needs and desires — whether that’s come from their religion or their culture, or just society in general. Making it acceptable for her to access her true desires is one of the most important things that a man can do to keep things hot in the bedroom. Then look for ways to keep changing it up.
Spend time apart
As Esther Perel notes, separation is necessary for eroticism to thrive. Toss out the idea of two become one.
It is too easily assumed that problems with sex are the result of a lack of closeness. But my point is that perhaps the way we construct closeness reduces the sense of freedom and autonomy needed for sexual pleasure. When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire.
Perel, Esther. Mating in Captivity (p. 48). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Naturally, too much time apart, too much independence and too many separate interests can also cause relationship stress, but some of these things can contribute to the separateness that feeds erotic desire. When two become one, there is no one else to connect with, no one to seduce, and no other person to get to know. Although this is true for anyone, over-familiarization tends to harm women’s libido the most.
Even if you are having sex frequently, even if she orgasms regularly, this doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s actually satisfied. As science writer Natalie Angier has characterized it, women are subject to “the multiple sheaths of compromise and constraint” that cloak and contort their sexuality. Patriarchal narratives that espouse what is appropriate for women, and decree how they naturally are in order to fit that mold keep many, many women from accessing or even understanding their own sexuality.
And when women’s desires are not being engaged with or met, their libido evaporates. Although there are other possible explanations for why a once randy woman no longer seems interested in sex, chances are good that she might be feeling over-familiar, desexualized, and bored.
© Copyright, Elle Beau 2023
