You enter an exciting new relationship. The passion is high and the two of you are doing the hanky panky every day and every night. You just can’t seem to keep your hands off of each other.
This new and exciting period of time right after beginning a new romance is commonly known as the “honeymoon phase” by the general population. In the polyamory community, this energy is known as “New Relationship Energy,” or “NRE” for short.
The words “phase” and “new” within such terminology speaks to the ephemerality that we know is inherently present in these situations; we know that it won’t last forever.
We know that sexual desire for our partners tends to wane over time.
Another phenomenon that we see time and time again is that the woman’s libido dies out faster than the man’s.
Why is that?
And, more importantly, is that something we can change or prevent? Don’t skip a single word of this article if you want to find out.
What We Know
MRI brain scans of old heterosexual couples show that even senior men react in the same sexually excited way when shown beautiful pictures of their wives as they did when they were younger. Women’s brain reactions weren’t as consistent. That’s old news.
There’s also the classic psychological phenomenon of habituation: the more you’re exposed to the same stimuli, the less intense of a reaction you will have over time. That’s even older news.
Sometimes, though, it takes more than just varying things up and constantly improving yourself to prevent habituation from putting you in a dead bedroom situation.
A recent article by 𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑰 ✨✨ has brought some relatively newer science to my attention. In “The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men” in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dr. Sari M van Anders, et al. identifies four factors that predict decreased libido in partnered women:
- Inequitable divisions of household labor
- Blurring of partner and mother roles
- Objectification of women
- Gender norms surrounding sexual initiation
If we take a look at each of these four factors, we can do a lot more to make sure our girlfriends and wives stay happily horny.
1. Inequitable divisions of household labor
You may have heard this one before. Basically, if women are doing all the house chores, their libido will decrease. So, is the solution to perfectly divide the house chores regardless of who’s the breadwinner?
The predictions from this study mention many times that these effects “may be moderated by women’s perceptions of this as inequitable and/or unfair.”
Note the word “perceptions.” Does she feel like the division of labor is unfair?
As a men’s dating coach, I had a client whose wife felt this exact inequity. My client was the primary breadwinner who worked in an office while his wife worked from home. Even after he said they split the house chores as evenly as possible, she still complained about it and their sex life suffered.
At first glance, this doesn’t make sense, right? He does more work in the office than she does from home. If we are to believe my client, they split the chores pretty much exactly in half. Why was she still complaining?
In our sessions, we discovered that there was an issue with how they were perceiving the results of the chores. The issue wasn’t directly about how the labor was actually divided.
They needed a more detailed conversation about the labor in relation to their abilities. It wasn’t that the wife wanted her husband to do more than half the chores; she got understandably upset whenever the things he supposedly “cleaned” weren’t actually clean by her standards. This led to resentment about the division of labor, leading to a poorer sex life.
Think about this from her point of view. Even if the chores were technically divided fifty-fifty, would she see it that way if she thought his chores weren’t actually getting done?
If you have a vision for how your relationship(s) can be more fair, communicate with your partner(s) so that you’re both on the same page. Communicate enough so that both of you can get to a point of perceiving it as fair.
2. Blurring of partner and mother roles
The article by 𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑰 ✨✨ that I was talking about focused on this factor:
In summary, if she feels like she has to be your mom, of course that’s going to kill her libido.
If she begins to feel like you can’t even take care of yourself properly, I’d imagine she would start seeing you as less of a man.
So, if your girlfriend or wife starts acting more nurturing toward you in any sort of motherly way, I’d advise that you either step up to make sure she understands that you can take care of yourself well, or balance it out by being more “daddy” to her. The study is talking about “nurturant inequities,” after all.
3. Objectification of women
The study says that heteronormative objectification of women “positions women as sexual objects for men partners, and women’s bodies as offerings gifted to men for sex as part of a relationship contract” and that women “report high levels of body dissatisfaction” due to unrealistic beauty standards.
If you were a woman who thinks you need to use your beauty and sex as part of a relationship contract, but simultaneously feel dissatisfied with how you look, wouldn’t you start developing some negative attitudes about sex? If you could only feel sexual when you felt beautiful, you would logically feel less sexual if you felt less beautiful.
This part of the paper is a bit more complex because women can feel either more or less sexual when they get closer to beauty standards. Being able to put more effort into making yourself hot can make you feel more confident in yourself, but it can also make you see even more flaws and increase insecurity.
If you’re a man who’s ever tried to build muscle in the gym, you already know how this feels: you’ve never felt smaller than when you actually started getting bigger.
Realistically, I would say the best thing you can do here is to always make sure that you are reassuring your partner of how attractive you find them, both inside and out.
See it as a form of showing appreciation. A lot of people slack off on showing appreciation for their partners after they date for a while.
4. Gender norms surrounding sexual initiation
Where do gender norms surrounding sexual practices come from? Who cares. What matters is that many of the current gender norms are doing more harm than good, so we need to work toward liberating ourselves of harmful societal standards.
For example, this study posits that “women are taught to be responsive to men’s sexual initiation but not to be agentic about starting sex,” and is clear in saying that “not wanting sex when a partner initiates is not the same as not wanting sex.”
I have no idea what kind of boyfriend or husband would be uncomfortable with his girlfriend or wife initiating sex, but the study suggests that “men partners’ comfort with women initiating sex will positively contribute to the women’s desire.”
Still, even if you’d be ecstatic with the idea of your girlfriend or wife initiating sex, does she really know that? If you actually sat down to talk about it, you both might be a little surprised.
Other predictions from this section of the study mention “seeing sex as a duty” and “an inability to refuse sex” as correlative to decreased libido. All of these things point to the same theme of sexual agency.
Are you an advocate of women’s sexual agency? In short, if you’re a feminist and your partner knows it, it’s going to help her stay horny. More on that here:
In my opinion, this one is far more about prevention than cure. Have that talk about gender norms and sexual agency early in the relationship. If you’re already at the point of having issues with mismatched libidos, talking about the idea of her initiating sex more can lead to more frustration for both of you, so focus on the other factors more for the time being.
Have you ever experienced mismatched libido in a relationship? Tell me your experiences in the comments!
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This post was previously published on Write A Catalyst.
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