Why does sexual desire plummet and how can you get it back? This week - Jess shares specific tools, tips, and strategies to reignite sexual desire. She also explores the concept of responsive vs. spontaneous desire, the Fire & Ice list, and more!

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Rough Transcript:


This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health, or other professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns.

How to get your libido back

Participant #1:
You're listening to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast, sex and relationship advice you can use tonight. Hey. Hey. It's Jess here. And today we are talking about how to get your libido back because I receive many questions around this topic. But the latest is from a mother of two kids who's been married for five years. And she says. I've always liked sex. But after two kids and five years of marriage. I'm just not into it anymore and it's causing problems in my relationship. I'm totally attracted to my husband, but I'm just never in the mood and I want to get my libido back. Help. I think this is a pretty common experience. I think so many of us will see ourselves in this person whether we have kids or not, whether we're married or not, regardless of gender or relationship arrangement. And I want to begin by talking about the reasons we lose our libido. Because each of the reasons that we lose libido or interest in sex is probably more appropriate. Language can hold a potential pathway to getting it back. And that's a piece that I think maybe I should begin with, that libido can be a bit of a misnomer when we consider it a sex drive, because a drive, you know, the drive to eat, the drive to sleep, the drive to drink water, those drives are essential to survival of the individual, but sex drive is not essential to the survival of the individual. Yes, theoretically, we need to have sex to reproduce, but now we've got all these new technologies so we don't have to. And many of us are having types of sex that aren't going to lead to reproduction anyway. So I'd like to use the word sexual desire as opposed to libido or sex drive. And there are so many factors that affect sexual desire. So first I'm going to say that it's okay to not be in the mood for sex. Some people actually never desire sex, and this can be a really perfectly healthy baseline for those folks. Just as some people don't crave sugar or salt, some people don't want to have sex, and that is okay. I realize that this is not the case for this listener because they say they always like having sex, but if you don't desire sex and you don't want to have sex, that is perfectly fine. If that is your baseline, it doesn't mean that you're broken. I know that we love to pathologize and say that if you're not in the mood for sex, it's your diet or it's your exercise or it's your attitude or you have to relinquish shame. But for some people, they're just not into it, and that's okay. And then the second piece before we get into the factors that affect desire for sex is that many people, most of us, do not find ourselves in the mood for sex spontaneously. Right. We experience responsive as opposed to spontaneous sexual desire.