The Biggest Threat to a Woman’s Libido
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What's the #1 risk to your libido?
I’ve written a lot about what builds women’s libido.
Emotional connection
Trust
Touch
Time to yourself
Feeling sexy from the inside
Pleasure, pleasure and more pleasure
Because libido is so much more than just that one-time-a-month horny feeling. That’s just the bare minimum of what it can be.
And because of the responsive nature of women’s sexual desire, it’s dependent on how we feel about our bodies and ourselves.
In its full sense, libido is the experience of aliveness in you
that comes from pleasure in your body — sensual and sexual pleasure —
that has you feel good.
It’s the ability to receive when being pleasured — and the desire to seek that pleasure out for you.
Libido is desiring pleasure for you.
But it’s not only that.
Libido is life force.
When you’re full on what feels good within you, you come alive.
You fill your cup — and what overflows becomes sexual desire for your partner.
Libido needs feeding. It needs daily nourishment and care.
But to wreck it?
It takes just one swing of the wrecking ball.
What’s the equivalent of a libido wrecking ball?
There are 27 versions, actually.
Any one of these is a threat to your libido.
Any two or more together are a threat to your love and connection and the longevity of your relationship.
Do you recognize yourself in any of these?
You don’t get enough sleep.
You reach for your work email upon waking, to find out how the world needs you — before you even have a moment to connect to your own body.
You go over a million things in your head while you’re showering and barely notice the water on your body.
You take care of something for your husband and/or kids while shoveling breakfast into your mouth.
You ignore connection bids like a good-bye kiss because you don’t have time.
You say yes to meetings you know will waste your time and energy.
You work through lunch, shoveling more food into your mouth, not even registering the taste of what you’re eating.
In that important meeting, you know you have something to say, but you keep quiet — then beat yourself up with “why didn’t I say something this time?”
You don’t have time to pee because you’re so busy, so you hold and hold it, just to squeeze in another email to make the boss happy with you.
You hold in your breath all day, your shoulders are tense, and your body is ready for battle (but you likely don’t notice any of that).
You say ‘yes’ to your begging boss or clients you want to please to take on another last-minute project even though you know that something else will have to give because you have no space.
You drive home, distracted, while managing a conversation with your mother / sister / best friend because you simply have no other time.
You walk into your home irritated (because you are yet to take a breath today, but you don’t even know it).
You see the mess the kids/dog/husband made and it makes you feel so disrespected and so unappreciated.
You’re livid and you snap at your partner/kids/dog from a place of powerlessness. Or you grit your teeth and stuff it in, but it comes out mean later.
You regret being mean and beat yourself up for it, because deep down you know that you’re a caring and loving person that does not do these things.
You take care of cooking dinner, when you just wish that you had ordered in or that your husband took care of it.
You make sure that the kitchen is sparkling clean, even though you’re exhausted and your body is screaming for you to stop.
You finish the work emails after the kids go to bed, feeling the weight of the guilt, responsibilities and exhaustion all at once.
You patiently listen to your partner’s day, wishing he could just be quiet and give you a hug instead.
You wish you could cry in your partner’s arms, but you don’t want to be a burden, so you turn away to go to sleep.
You feel his body against yours as he reaches out in desire, so you turn around and oblige, convincing yourself with the story that “you love to give,” even though your body, your heart and your soul are nowhere ready.
You bear the discomfort just long enough to feel good about having been there for him and making him happy.
But it doesn’t make you happy. Instead you feel the pangs of lonely bitterness. But you dare not say anything at all. You tell yourself that you don’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him what’s not working for you. You don’t want to be a burden.
You fall asleep reminding yourself that you can get by with very little and that you don’t need much at all, even though deep down you know that you’re starving.
And if this doesn’t play out this way, when the inevitable “It’s been a while” conversation rolls around, you promise to work harder at willing your enthusiasm for sex or your sexual desire to show up. You carry it all on your shoulders.
And you repeat it all again tomorrow and the next day, because you have stamina for suffering. There is no end to how much pain you can tolerate and how much you’re willing to take on to be loved. You remind yourself that you’re so grateful to have this relationship and you soldier on.
There is one way to categorize these libido-threatening behaviors, and I call it — self-betrayal.
You might also think of these as self-abandonment, losing yourself, or simply being out of integrity with what you know to be true about the state of your body, your thoughts, and your needs:
Disrespecting your body and its limits
Starving your emotional needs
Keeping quiet instead of using your voice to get your needs met
If libido is your life force, you chip away at it with your very own decisions
to prioritize everyone and everything — but yourself — every. single. day.
And if you don’t use your voice to get your needs met and advocate for yourself, how can you ever feed yourself, much less your own libido?
We are the biggest threat to our own libido — and also its biggest loser.
Because that self-betrayal stings.
It eats away at your self-confidence.
It makes you feel terrible from the inside.
It starves you of the nutrients you need to feel your best — for yourself and your relationship.
You cannot develop a healthy life force when you’re constantly starving and disrespecting your own life force.
But I know that you will still try to rationalize continuing to do it with the stories you tell in your head.
“I don’t need much,” you’ll say to yourself.
“I am a natural giver.”
“I am just grateful to be in this loving relationship.”
I know. You are. Finding and keeping a caring partner and loving relationship is one of life’s greatest gifts. You should be focused on protecting it.
But does that self-abandonment not cause you the little thing called … resentment?
You know this to be true because you don’t feel good when you’re exhausted or don’t get the attention that you need. And when you don’t feel good, your communication starts to get … edgy.
It’s not so bad in the beginning, just a little sarcastic joke here and there, or a critical barb at the way he takes the garbage out or does the dishes. He laughs it off, but you can feel his discomfort.
But then it starts to add up, and somehow little comments explode into big arguments over some stupid small stuff. And they never seem to resolve themselves or heal. You both feel less heard and understood.
So you both pull back in hurt. And now there is this chasm between you, an unmentionable distance that you try to cover up, but that makes itself known every day because these arguments seem to never stop.
And that loving relationship feels a lot less loving now.
So the question is … two questions, actually:
Can you go on, continuing to do what you’ve been doing, knowing that your actions are hurting you?
And can you go on knowing that your actions are actually hurting your relationship and the very love that you’re trying to protect?
The good news is that these are behaviors.
They’re not you. You’re not broken.
You’re a good and kind person, with a big heart.
But if your behaviors — especially not using your voice to get your needs met — are causing harm to you and your relationship, you can choose to change what you do so that they feed you AND your relationship. The power is in your hands.
P.S. When you’re ready to find your way back to yourself and your partner, here are a few options for you:
ENROLL in my signature step-by-step FEED YOUR LIBIDO process to learn to know what you need, how to voice that, and what to do to connect to your partner
SCHEDULE a consultation for you and your partner for individualized support