Is your relationship suffering due to these sex myths? Photo / Getty Images
Is your relationship suffering due to these sex myths? Photo / Getty Images
WARNING: This story deals with sexual content and is for adults only.
A sex therapist has some good advice for couples wondering if their libido is “normal” - and what is “normal”, anyway?
A low sex drive is the most common form of sexual dysfunction experienced by href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/women/" target="_blank">women, and it’s high on the list for men too. Yet we’re surrounded by misinformation about libido that’s perpetuated by unreliable sex education.
These myths hold people back from having an effortless sex life with their partner and, at their most extreme, can lead to tension and disconnection that can end a relationship.
Myth one: You should ‘close your eyes and think of England’ if you’re not in the mood
This old saying, thought to originate from the 19th century, refers to the belief that as a wife, your duty is to put up with your husband’s sexual advances regardless of your own arousal levels in order to appease your spouse and populate the motherland.
While the saying isn’t used as frequently today, its meaning has stuck around, minus the patriotism.
However, while making yourself have sex with your lover might help you to feel that you’re filling the role of a “good partner” in the short term, those who do this regularly tend to unwittingly create an association with sex as a negative, chore-like experience. This association can be challenging to budge once it’s created and leaves your libido lacking anything to get excited about.
Instead, I recommend utilising other tools to locate your genuine excitement to say “yes” to sex. This might include taking the subject off the table for a couple of months while you work with a sex coach or therapist to create a more positive, pleasurable association.
Myth two: You either have a high or a low libido, and it stays that way for life
While you’ll commonly hear people referring to themselves as being either high or low-libido, our desire system doesn’t actually operate in that way.
I like to think of our libido as a sex-obsessed mathematician that’s made its home in our brains and is running a never-ending calculation to determine how high your interest in sex will be at any given moment.
The variables of this equation are your internal context, which includes your thoughts, beliefs, emotions and senses, and your external context, which includes the physical environment you’re in and the people you’re around.
Because both your internal and external contexts are constantly changing, so is your interest in sex, making the labels “low libido” and “high libido” inaccurate.
It also means you have a certain degree of control over your libido, which you can exercise by experimenting with which contexts are most conducive to getting you in the mood.
A person's libido isn’t fixed; it fluctuates based on internal and external factors. Photo / 123RF
Myth three: Your desire should show up spontaneously, otherwise it isn’t going to show up at all
Unfortunately, pornos and sexy movie scenes have led us astray, though certainly not for the first time. What they typically depict is a version of desire that occurs in a rush of passion, with minimal effort required from anyone involved.
While this desire, called spontaneous desire, certainly does exist, it’s not the only type. Most women, and some men too, experience the other form of desire, which is responsive desire.
This means their turn-on shows up more gradually, and it happens when things deemed to be sexually relevant are already happening, like a hot and heavy makeout session or some teasing inner thigh strokes.
Applied to a real-life context, that means that it’s worth getting out of the habit of automatically saying “no” to your partner when they try to initiate sex. Instead, I recommend exploring some foreplay together for a minimum of five minutes, which gives your responsive desire an opportunity to show up to the party.
Once you’ve done this, then you can communicate whether you’d like to continue or not, though it’s important to know it’s not uncommon for responsive desire to take 20-40 minutes to show up in full force.
Spontaneous desire isn’t the only type of sexual desire; responsive desire is common, especially among women. Photo / 123RF
Myth four: Men have higher sex drives than women
I vividly recall being taught in my intermediate school sex education that men think about sex every seven seconds, with the insinuation being that women are far less interested.
While the seven-second myth is pretty obviously wrong, the belief men have higher sex drives than women is prevalent pretty much everywhere you go, and science has only recently caught up to prove this wrong.
When newer studies have taken into account that women typically need more time to activate their responsive desire, they find there are actually minimal differences between how much interest in sex men and women show. This is especially true when the negative impact that slut-shaming and other sex-negative ideals have on women’s sex drives is taken into account.
The idea that men have higher sex drives than women is a myth; both genders can have similar levels of desire. Photo / 123RF
Sofie Louise is an Auckland-based trained sex and libido coach who is passionate about supporting women in reclaiming their sexuality.
