It’s Ok to Have Less Sex Drive Than Your Partner
By: Stark Raving
Tags: Sexuality, Sex, Health, Women, Gender

It’s Ok to Have Less Sex Drive Than Your Partner

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Things that might affect your sex drive: being tired, being stressed, birth control, whether or not you feel comfortable with your partner, hormone fluctuations in both men and women, levels of physical activity, work-life, family life, chronic illness, trust, personality, natural libido.

Things that don’t affect it: your gender.

We have this stereotypical idea that men will always want sex, and that women are reticent. It’s a trope of married couples in movies and TV — he longs to get physical, and she is happy to do it once a year under duress. In reality, each couple is different. We all have different levels of libido, which also vary throughout our lives.

This stereotype that in heterosexual relations what is normal is for the man to have more needs is harmful in many ways.

It reinforces the very same idea that created it: that sex is something that men want, and that is done to women — an idea that undermines consent because it suggests that all sex is done against a woman, making the difference between sexual assault and sex a difference of degree rather than what it truly is: a difference of nature. Sex is an act of pleasure between one or more individuals. Sexual assault is an act of power that uses sex as its weapon. The idea of sex being for men not for women also denies women their identity as sexual creatures and means that their pleasure is seen as optional.

Portraying it as normal that the guy in a heterosexual relationship should always be the one that wants it more also creates upset on both sides in the frequent cases when it is the opposite. A woman feels guilty for wanting sex too much. She may also feel insecure, assuming that if the man doesn’t want it at a particular time, it must be that he doesn’t want her, that she is undesirable. This is a logical thought process when it has always been made out that men want sex all the time. Meanwhile, the guy in such a relationship might feel emasculated by not wanting to have sex all the time, and may push himself to have sex when he doesn’t want to so as not to appear unmanly.

It’s important to dissociate sex drive from gender — it will make for better sex and happier couples. We should be able to talk about our sex drive and the times in which it is higher or lower than usual. There should be no shame in discussing it — in fact, it is an important part of consent. In couples, there are times when we feel like we should have sex just to please the other, regardless of our own desire. This can be unhealthy because sex should never be an obligation. Having an open conversation will alleviate this, because if each person can express freely their level of desire at a given time, no one will feel forced to do something against their will. Sometimes a compromise can be found — maybe he doesn’t want to have sex, but a sensual bath sounds perfect. Maybe she doesn’t feel like penetration, but a sexy massage or oral sex would be just the trick.

Discussing your sex drive with your partner can also help identify the times when a dip in libido might be the sign of something more serious. There is nothing inherently problematic in having a low sex drive. But sometimes it can be the sign of something deeper: maybe she isn’t having orgasms as often as she would like. Maybe he feels like doing something new. Maybe he is in the early stages of depression. Maybe her new birth control pill is killing her sex drive. Just chatting about your sex drive can help nip these problems in the bud.

Which is why we need to dissociate sex drive from gender, and start an open conversation about it.