Erotically Uncharged Boomers

Researchers are wondering why so many women feel little sexual desire and what should be done for them.

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder studies suggest that around 30 percent of young and middle-aged women go through extended periods of feeling dim desire or of feeling no wish for sex whatsoever.  More than by any other sexual problem--the elusiveness of orgasm or pain during sex--women feel plagued by low desire.  The problems often overlap, but above all the others that can thwart an erotic life, the remoteness of lust is what impels women to seek treatment.  Not all women who feel erotically uncharged are desperate to change.  Some may not be dismayed in the least. 

The Human Mind: the organ that is the locus of desire

As is so often true in the poorly financed realm of sex research, relevant surveys are scarce, and statistics can't be cited with much confidence.  But judging by what figures exist, between 7 and 15 percent of all young and middle-aged women--an age range that researchers generally set between the neighborhoods of 20 and 60--feel distressed over the absence of desire.  Next to nothing is known about a host of basic questions, like whether most women with the condition have been affected from the start of their sexual lives or became afflicted during the course of adulthood.  Little is established, either, about why women may be somewhat more likely to become devoid of desire as they get deeper into middle age--and even this tendency itself is far from proven and is contradicted by some data.  In any event, while menopausal women generally lubricate less, their genitals still respond to with rushings of blood when they sit in front of erotic videos.

An underlying theory is that women's genitals commonly pulse with blood in response to erotic images or their partners' sexual touch, their minds are so detached--distracted by work or children or worries about the way they look unclothed, or fixated on fears that their libidos are dead--as to be oblivious to their bodies' excitement, their bodies' messages.  The skill of fully attending to sensation is essential. 

Sensation and Self-Image are linked

The power of positive thought is a cliche.  Yet, through melding the two something revelatory can occur.  Almost any method that gets people to think about sex may increase their interest in having it.

To repeat over and over, "My body is alive and sexual," no matter if they believe it, research shows that belief doesn't matter, that feeling will follow the declaration.

All this might seem awfully abstract, but the lesson for women, which has been distilled by sex therapists into three words, "desire follows arousal," is a real rearrangement of expectation and a reweighting of sexual theory.  And though some women do feel such craving some of the time--at the beginning of a new relationship, for example, or possibly at a certain point in the menstrual cycle--and though a few women may sense such electricity surging regularly through them, these images are largely illusory ideals.  More likely for most women, the start of plenty--and maybe the great majority--of sexual encounters is defined not by heat but by slight warmth or flat neutrality.  And there's nothing wrong with this--desire often arises during, not before.

Some data--however scant and even contradictory--hint that fantasy might not play as vital a role in women's sexual psyches as in men's.  In women, erotic imagining may be less frequent--and its absence may not correlate well with women's dissatisfaction over their levels of desire.  Meanwhile, the usual waning of erotic urgency over the course of long relationships, a decline that, according to many clinicians and one study, may beset women more steeply than men, could mean that proposed criteria like "absent/reduced sexual excitement/pleasure during sexual activity" are met by nearly everyone.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Various pharmaceutical companies, at various times, have pursued testosterone as a remedy for women's lack of desire, and some doctors prescribe it for the condition though the Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved this use.  Yet, there is a paradox.  Giving extra testosterone to women with desire problems can, it appears, spike sexual interest.  For reasons unknown, the administered hormone has a unique effect.  But there's a further complication.  In studies, women given a placebo often report a similar result, not quite as marked but definitely not insignificant either.  Perhaps, a similar result would occur when men are given a Viagra placebo.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, November 29, 2009