Myth About Womens' Low Sexual Desire

Many people are of the opinion that if a woman rarely wants sex there is something physically wrong with her. Maybe her sexual desire, her libido, would improve with the help of medical treatment? What pill can be prescribed that would get her back on the right track?

Like in many other areas, some health professionals (and certainly pharmaceutical companies) quickly reduce interpersonal, social, and cultural problems to a hormonal imbalance, that can be - and should be remedied with something we can buy in the pharmacy.

The biggest misconception of our present time is that problems like low sexual desire or depression are all due to hormonal or chemical imbalance. A misconception that is widely fed and supported research financed by pharmaceutical companies whose huge profits rely on people reaching for 'the pill'.

A woman's desire for being sexually intimate with her partner may be physiological. In that case a treatment that increases her testosterone levels might help to increase her sexual desire. More often, however, the lack of libido is due to a web of every-day-stuff including physical and mental health, histories of sexual abuse, nutrition, exercise, body image, career/job satisfaction, financial worries, parenting worries, and the quality of one's relationship.

Indeed, the lack of feeling loved, cared for, supported, listened to, respected, understood, and appreciated - to name just a few relational qualities - will without doubt translate into low sexual desire. The first port of call would be to assess the quality of the couple's relationship.

But just as in other areas of life, no two couples have the same needs. Sometimes a bottom-up approach is working:

improve the relationship = improve the sex-life.

For other couples a top-down approach is more successful:

improve the sex-life = improve the relationship.

Important to remember is that a relationship can suffer badly under the strain of opposing sexual needs. If your relationship is important to you, you can get help to tackle the problem in ways that suit you. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that having successful relationships is the main ingredient to happiness.