We live in a society where sex is everywhere and permanent ardor is expected of everyone. If we do not feel what is expected, if we do not respond to those expectations, we may believe that we have a problem. In the case of long-lived couples, in addition, factors such as the coexistence, routinethe inertia acquired and the sons, if there are any, that put a stop to spontaneity. In such circumstances, sex can be boring, mundane, and… scarce.
“This hypersexualization of society asks us for a constant rapid desire and a desire that does not reflect reality. I have many couples in consultation who think that if they do not have almost daily relationships they have a problem and this is not at all a common rhythm between couples of long duration, not even several times a week”. So, from the outset, Paula Alvarez, sexologist and educator, takes a load off our shoulders. In other words, a more or less scarce sexual activity does not have to be routine or boring. What’s more, maybe it’s not even scarce.
Álvarez adds that there is no “standard desire”, nor do we all have the same hunger or the same thirst and that since “we can do without it”, wanting to have sex is not synonymous with having better or worse health.
You must activate your own desire
Lorraine Berdun, psychologist and sexologist, explains that desire sometimes vanishes due to day-to-day activities, but she breaks with that discourse that it is “the couple who has to provoke it.” Often, women, she says, shift that responsibility onto the other and “don’t activate enough his own arousal“.
We think that the desire has to be awakened from outside, but it is not exactly like that. It is the person himself, says Berdún, who has to activate that desire and not from the purely sexual but from all the dimensions that surround his life. “First, feel good about yourself (that eternal fight that all human beings have with ourselves every day) and from there work on all those things that make your day to day routine and sometimes even tedious. More when you have a partner, “he adds.
Desire must be worked from the inside out. If you are not ready, open and available, nothing that comes before you is going to work for you. To desire you have to ‘want’ you have to ‘give yourself permission’, you have to be ‘for and for’. And that takes effort. “If life eats you up in your day to day, reserve moments to be with your partner, park excuses, beat sloths And play,” he continues.
Escape from ‘amoeba mode’
For Paula Álvarez, the fact that sex is not necessary for survival makes it necessary to train it so as not to fall into “amoeba mode”. “To do this, we must feed what we sexologists call the “erotic map”, put on the spicy glasses and look for mischief in our day to day to feed our fantasy database.” Sexuality, he insists, is in the head, not the genitals.
Thus, the sexologist advises giving yourself some toy and use onanism to pull the thread of desire and find the keys that relight the spark of our excitement.
But Paula also attributes the routine and lack of desire to the “double shift” that many women do: “If you come home from work and you can’t lie down to rest and have your needs covered, you will hardly have a moment when you want sex “. “The fair division of tasks is the sexiest that we can contribute to our partner if we want their desire to come back”, ditch.
Take time for yourself (and your partner)
The psychologist and sexologist Lorena Berdún explains that in order to escape routine and feel like sex, the key is not to take the relationship with your partner for granted and strive to nurture the bonds with them. “He needs support, like a plant. And that is done with a lot of dedication, patience, affection, respect, listening, humor…”, she says.
That’s the theory, but how do you get it? “Spend time with your partner: look for gaps to dating, talk and communicate. Take care of yourself, open up and give yourself permission to feel that connection. That, among other things, is done by letting go of the control. Women want to have everything under control and sometimes it is necessary to let go,” she says.
In fact, Berdún poses an exercise: do you remember the last time you had a wonderful sexual relationship? “Think about what context you were in, what circumstances… Surely you were more relaxed than usual, unencumbered, passing a bit of daily worries. Sometimes, just changing the context changes the experience.”
Menopause is one more stage
It is common to link a lack of desire and a routine erotic life over the years in a woman. Paula Álvarez qualifies that there is no specific age in which they are more affected by the loss of arousal and that age is not an obstacle. Moreover, she points out that sex exists in the elderly and that it is other stages of greater professional and maternal activity that generate more stress and difficulty for sex.
For its part, Berdún means that women do not have to stop their sexual activity at any specific age, although there are specific stages that can favor moments of less sexual appetite, such as menopause. But the sexologist insists that it does not necessarily mean the death of desire: “You can have less sexual appetite due to hormonal causes, but be fully connected with your partner. You may have to make more effort not to lose that connection, but if you work on it, it is possible toget through the stage without drama”, Explain.