Pommy, if I may hijack your thread a bit more... Further to the above conversation, I came across this post today that might be helpful for those of us struggling with desire.
Quote
I used to be in the same boat in my own marriage. After fifteen-year marriage and two children, sex was the last thing I ever wanted to do and the furthest thing on my mind. How could I focus on wanting to have sex when I was so tired, stressed-out, and low energy all of the time? I really tried, but low-effort sex a few times a week still made him feel pretty unsatisfied and lonely. Eventually, I gave up and just never wanted to do it at all.
I started to blame him for the lack of sex. I told him that if he only paid attention to me, or did romantic things for me, I would want to have more sex with him. So in response, he would do more of those things, and I’d push the bar even higher. Now I didn’t want to have sex because he was only doing those things to get sex from me, so that didn’t help either.
I knew I wasn’t being fair, so I started looking at myself more closely. Why did I hate sex so much? He wasn’t perfect, but he was trying hard to be there for me. Also, I had read enough about love languages and what men really want to know that sex was something he really needed, not something he was being an ass about. This was important, so why were we wired SO differently?
I started to wonder why I never wanted to have sex if sex was supposed to be healthy for me, if it was supposed to stress-reliever. Why did I push it away so hard, and why did I NEVER want to do it?
I began researching for answers and came up with a few studies that sort of hit home for me. These studies showed that women are often aroused during the day and have no idea, and also tend to block this from happening without knowing about it. This is problematic because arousal—just arousal, I’m not even talking about sex or orgasm after arousal—stimulates the production of hormones that fight depression, make us feel happier and more energetic. Sometimes women develop a bad relationship with the physiological response the body has when it becomes stimulated, often due to negative societal conditioning in regards to sex. We’re told from a very young age that sex is bad, that being sexual is bad, so it made sense for me that this was a process that I may have been practicing for a while, and that this might have been going on in my body everyday without realizing it.
Once I had this epiphany, I started to wonder what would happen if I did take a few moments everyday to celebrate arousal in my body. Kind of like when a guy has an erection, or what many have confirmed to me happens when they have a random one during the day or whenever: I would pat myself on the back for it and feel positive about it.
But the “female erection” never came, or they were very few and far between. The thing is that spontaneous arousal is a normal thing and a sign of a healthy body and sexuality. When I realized this, I figured that I probably had the blocking part down so well that I wasn’t giving myself the chance to become aroused (and to enjoy the feel-good hormones and body positivity that came with it), selling myself short every single day.
To try and spark arousal recognition in my body, I started doing what I call Stimmies, which is short for stimulation. There's a book about this on Amazon if you search for it. This is basically a short exercise I came up with that I do every morning, fully dressed, with my morning coffee. I would find a short erotic story online, read it, become aroused, and then meditate on that feeling for a while. I would try and acknowledge any negative feelings that came up, feelings of shame or whatever, and focus on changing those thoughts into positive ones. I’d also focus on feeling grateful for the opportunity to be aroused and think about the hormones that were being produced in my body.
Just 5-10 minutes a day, and almost instantly I started noticing that I began having more little “erections” during the day—or at least, I was recognizing them more. I was stunned. Practicing arousal was working, and it was also making me feel more confident and beautiful, sexy and attractive. It was also helping me to feel more excited about climbing into bed at the end of the day with my husband.
I don’t know if this works for everyone like it did for me, but if you’re having low libido issues and you’ve tried everything else, it can’t hurt to try. There are so many couples out there suffering from this same issue, and I just want to spread the word however I can about this interesting concept/practice and what it did for me.
Also if you want to try doing this yourself there are apps like Rosy and Dipsea that are really great for erotica stimulation. I like erotica way better than porn and feel like its a lot more effective for me. I also came up writing my own erotic short stories and combined "activation" exercises to start practicing being aware of your body and arousal.
