Females and low libido

[doglover]

I haven't posted for a while - I've had a lot going on in my family, have been away on several trips and have been lurking since then. I have been finding this thread particularly interesting.

Thank you MrsNOP for a particularly helpful link and post.

Hairdog, your post was an eyeopener for me. A similar dynamic has occurred in the past in my relationship with my H. The details are slightly different - we have not gone so long between sexual encounters. But on too many occasions, mostly late at night but sometimes early a.m. or midday, my H has asked me outright "do you want to have sex?" and I have in one form or other rejected him. Knowing now what I know about how a rejection of sex felt like a rejection of him as a person I feel very badly about it.

But the truth was that on those occasions (which, to be fair, were often out-of-the blue comments, not preceded by cuddling - not that my H is averse to cuddling - he is actually often more into physical touch than I) I was not feeling very sexual and so I often replied quite honestly that I didn't know or wasn't sure if I wanted to have sex. What I think I meant by that was "I see that you have desire, but I don't seem to have the same kind of desire." Very often, however, I was also feeling "but if we start fooling around I could probably get aroused and go all the way". But I didn't say that - it would sound like I needed special persuasion. I wanted to feel spontaneous desire but felt like my H's question meant "do you feel desire?"

I don't have time to sort out all the feelings and issues here. But I think there were at least a couple of things going on.

1) It is helpful if my H nonverbally cuddles, caresses etc me *before* he asks me if I "want" to have sex, because until that happens, I don't feel the "want".

2) Likewise, it is helpful if I take the "just do it" approach more often and say "yes" even if I don't yet feel the "want" part, because: a) I know the want will come if I do it and b) it's important to our R that we enjoy sexual intimacy more frequently.

In MrsNOP's link to http://www.healthywomen.org/healthreport/april2005 I also appreciated the section on "keeping passion in your relationship". Particularly the advice to "touch each other 10 times a day. It could be anthing from a kiss to a pinch, but the understanding is that this is not going to leaad directly to sex. It's just a way of physically connecting with one another." For me this is a particularly important way of reminding myself of our physical relationship and nurturing my flickers of desire.

DogLover