One thing about the Suzanne Somers book, it describes the "downward spiral" very clearly, and when I was reading it, I felt I was reading about me and W. See, we've been "having trouble" since sometime before our 3rd child (he's 14.5 now). In fact, he was concieved in part because I finally "put my foot down" and insisted on a once-a-week schedule, at a time when our LM had been rather infrequent and unpredictable. IOW much like it is now, but somewhat more frequent. Anyway, we weren't using birth control because we'd had to use fertility drugs to concieve our first two, so we figured we were pretty safe, but... surprise!
At any rate, SS' book describes how many women have a drop in testosterone level after the second or third pregnancy, and its resulting effect on desire levels. This is also related to stress - which also ties into our sitch, because around the time the 3rd was born, I lost my job, and spent a long time marginally self-employed, and not making much money. No shortage of stress.
All of which leads to the following viscious cycle: she feels stressed, testosterone is also down, doesn't feel like ML, gets moody, etc.... he feels less loved, unconnected, and therefore disconnects more, doesn't do the little things that might mitigate the sitch somewhat, which reinforces her feeling of being less loved, which leads to less desire, less LM, which deflates his feelings of power and desirability, which leads to less loving behavior, more disconnection, etc....
Sound familiar to anyone here? The point the book makes is that various types of hormonal imbalance can wreak havoc with womens' emotions and well-being, and this can happen much earlier than most people think - even as early as the mid-30's. HRT may not always be indicated, but may in fact be needed more often than would be generally thought. The TYPE of HRT is important, though - the book makes the point over and over that what is needed is NOT the synthetic drugs most often prescribed, but special, "bioidentical" hormones that replace the real, natural hormones that are deficient. Not to say there aren't risks with these as well, but current research seems to suggest the risks are much lower than with the synthetics.
