It’s normal to feel disappointed or frustrated by your diminished libido. This feeling often leaves one or both partners in a relationship feeling uncared for or undesirable. If you are wondering why you don’t get horny like you used to, then keep reading because there are some very clear steps you can take to get back that desire you used to have.
In order to help reinvigorate your libido, it’s necessary to understand what contributed to slowing down your sex drive and then take corrective actions. A lowered sex drive is usually a symptom of other underlying problems. Once these are addressed, you will likely see an improvement in your sexual appetite.
6 Common Libido Killers
In any long term relationship, it’s common for your sex life to fluctuate. Most couples experience occasional dry spells followed by periods marked by increased sexual interest and activity. Your lowered libido is likely caused by one or more of the 6 most common factors which negatively impact sexual desire:
1. Boredom/Lack of Attraction
If your sex life (and your relationship) has become predictable, boring, and uninspiring, it’s no wonder your sexual urges are lacking. Counteract the boredom by reviving your attraction to your partner and spicing up your sex life.
2. Emotional Disconnect
If you and your partner have lost your emotional connection, you likely also lost your interest in connecting physically or sexually. Reestablishing your emotional bonds will eventually revive your interest in sexual intimacy.
3. Past Trauma
A history of trauma can rewire your nervous system to become hypersensitive to triggering conversations or situations. This can lead to firy escalations or emotional shut downs. Addressing past trauma is the first step in establishing your own mental health, and ultimately rebuilding your relationship.
4. Young Children
Exhaustion, stress, and emotional depletion are part of the landscape of raising a family. Young children require constant attention, and ultimately, your sex life will suffer as a result. That’s why it’s so important to schedule regular, uninterrupted time for just you and your spouse. Whether it’s date nights or morning hikes, you need to proactively set aside time for your relationship if you want it to thrive.
5. Busy Lives
Work, family, and other responsibilities have a tendency to creep in and take over your life if left unchecked. It’s up to you to set boundaries and schedule time for you and your partner to reinvest in your relationship.
6. Chronic Health Issues
Chronic physical and mental health issues affect your mood and libido. Working around these constraints requires flexibility and creative thinking. Many couples are able to reclaim emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy if they are willing to make the necessary adjustments.
Reawaken Your Sensory Love Languages
Once you understand why you are not turned on by your partner, you can start taking the steps to reawaken your desire. A good place to begin is through your senses.Touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound are the 5 senses everyone is familiar with. But there’s another, less familiar sixth sense of Interoception that can play a role too.
Interception has to do with an awareness of what’s happening inside your body. It has to do with your intuition and physical reactions such as butterflies in your stomach when you’re nervous. Reengaging any or all of these senses will allow you to build back the feelings of sexual desire.
If you think back to the start of your relationship with your partner, chances are there was a lot of sensory input. Your senses were likely working overtime throughout the first year of your relationship. After about a year, this attraction and connection naturally begins to wear down. Some couples are able to stretch it out to about 3-5 years.
For couples who have kids within this timeframe, sensory love languages can get misaligned. Mothers in particular feel all tapped out on touch after a long day with a small person constantly climbing on them or breast feeding. They may be overloaded on smell too – it all becomes too much.
If you feel sensorily overloaded, then you probably would prefer and value distance, quiet, and rest instead of engaging those senses more in relation to your partner. On the other hand, men often require more stimulation from any of the senses over time. Old routines begin feeling mundane and uninteresting, while change and new sensations feel exciting.
Therefore, the key to reigniting passion is resetting and realigning sensory love languages. One approach is to bring back and incorporate sensory input into daily routines and date nights. If you and your partner are watching TV at the end of an exhausting day, try to hold hands or cuddle under a blanket. Give each other a hug every morning or spoon at night instead of staying on opposite sides of the bed or falling asleep on the couch.
You can also listen too or play music together, or cook up some new recipes over the weekend. Explore fantasy and new communication methods to create excitement and interest. Regardless of which senses you engage, the idea is to reconnect through pleasant sensory stimulation. Some of these experiences might have even been what helped you fall in love in the first place.
Maintain Realistic Expectations
Most couples who describe themselves as sexually satisfied report that about 20% of their sexual experiences are less than ideal. So even couples who are happy with their sex lives feel unfulfilled a fifth of the time, which is a fairly high number.
Keep this statistic in mind with regards to your expectations of your sex life. Remind yourself that not everything is great all the time, and tailor your expectations to realistic levels. And if you feel like your relationship could use a boost, consider working with a couples therapist who can give you the tools needed to reclaim emotional and sexual intimacy.
