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Welcome to Sex help for smart people. I'm Dr Laura Jurgens. I'm here to help you have better sex, intimacy and relationships. So let's get at it.
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Hey everyone, welcome to episode 80. I am so glad you are here. We are gonna talk today about why you might have low desire, and we're specifically going to give you, like a podcast version of a quiz. There's 10 questions that I think can really guide you to pinpointing what's underneath the low desire challenge you might be having. There are questions that will help you assess specifically where those challenges with desiring sex are coming from. But please know that what wherever you are, wherever you are with sexual desire, is absolutely okay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are probably having a very reasonable response to certain situations that tend to cause low desire. For most people, it's an incredibly common situation to not have a lot of spontaneous sexual desire and when, unfortunately, when you are in that situation, it gets like kind of weirdly pathologized. It's so normal and so common, but it's so sad to me, how many people feel like they are broken or that there's something wrong with them for not having a lot of sexual desire. And a lot of times this happens because they're in a partnership with someone who does have a lot of spontaneous sexual desire, and that person is maybe inadvertently getting, you know, kind of judgy about the situation, and thinking that their way is the right way, because that's what they want. They want to have sex a lot. And the other thing that a lot of times people assume about low desire is that it's this sort of like permanent state. It's like a tap that turns on and off. And that's absolutely not the case, especially if you decide to do something about it. If you don't do anything about the reasons why you have low desire, then yeah, it probably will persist that way, and that might be fine with you, and you might be okay with it, if you're not okay with it, and you want to figure out what's happening for you and how to find that yumminess again for yourself, or how to have a better sex life in your relationship or in Your Future. Maybe you are just starting dating. Maybe you have been single for a while. Maybe you are opening up a relationship and want to be dating different people, and you want to have enough desire to go around whatever the situation is. You may also just want to have more desire for yourself so that you get to feel like a sexual being walking through the world, so that you get to feel sexy for yourself, and I love that for everybody, Whatever your reasons are. If you don't want to change it, then don't worry about it. But if you do want to change it, it's really helpful to know where to start. And I think not talking about it or making it as if it's out somehow just related to hormones, which it's really not, is are doing a real disservice to people, because it doesn't normalize how common it is, and it really doesn't give you the tools. People just will go to their doctor, like their primary care doctor, and say, I need help because I don't want to have sex. Well, 90 plus percent of the time, this is not a medical situation. In my experience, there are a few situations, few cases where it is but the vast majority of the situations I see are not medical at all. And to be honest, if it were, yes, I guess that would be an easier thing, like maybe you could, you know, there isn't a pill just for that, although sometimes it will try to prescribe testosterone for women, this is not a systemic fix for most women, though it is not going to take care of the root cause, and you're just going to be like throwing hormones at a problem that's actually non hormonal most of the time, every now and then, sometimes it Is hormonal, and sometimes in certain age ranges, it can be a little bit hormonal, but a lot of times that is not going to take care of it. And so if you have tried that and it hasn't worked again, whether you're a woman or a man, and I've had men also go on testosterone, find out that it doesn't work at all to change their desire, and we've had to get to the root cause. So it is very normal for people of all sexes and gender identities to have challenges with desire. We want to know what it is that's going on for you. Okay, so we're gonna ask, I'm gonna ask you these 10 questions, and I want you to just follow along with me and. If you are in a car and you can't really, like, jot down the notes that you might want to jot down, do not worry. You can always just come back later and do like, you know, a speed Listen, put it on one and a half times or something. I don't know if it makes me sound like a chipmunk, but that might be kind of fun. But you can always come back to this later and just do a listen first, and just do the self reflection part, and then you can come back and kind of look at the details later. But there's only 10 questions, so it's not going to be that onerous,
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all right. Number one, how entitled Do you feel to being physically pleased by someone else? Another way of saying that is, are you able to relax into receiving pleasure. So really think about this, and think about whether you feel bad or guilty or worried, or you feel fully entitled regularly to receiving physical pleasure from someone else, all right. Number two, how sexy Do you think your body is, including your genitalia? I want you to really reflect on whether you feel that there's anything gross or repulsive about you and your current shape, age, weight, skin, I don't know how whatever things that you tend to judge yourself About or about your genitalia and just thinking, reflecting, do you feel generally supportive? I'm like, Hey, I generally feel sexy regularly. That doesn't mean you constantly have to feel 100% sexy all the time. You don't have to feel sexy when you have the flu. You don't have to feel sexy when you have like, bloating, like, you know, just we're thinking, generally, you have access to feeling approval for your body and your genitals regularly. Alright. Number three, do you have pain or discomfort with sex? So you may never have pain with sex. Maybe that doesn't happen very often for you or ever. But for a lot of people, there can be moderate discomfort to severe pain. So think if you have pain with sex, this is a really common reason why you might have lower desire. All right. Number four, how interested are you? Generally, when you have time in self pleasure and masturbation. Do does it feel okay? Do you really enjoy it? Do you not know what to do that feels good? Do you feel shame? Do you feel like you do it compulsively, but you don't really take the time to enjoy it? So distinguish between I started to do it compulsively to get an orgasm, but I don't really take my time and enjoy it versus I actually really enjoy it. And so that's a really important distinction. Do you let this be luxurious time for yourself to have pleasure in your body, or does it sort of feel like kind of a compulsion or something you avoid? All right? Number five, this one requires you to know a little bit about your own most erotic moments or fantasies, and the absolute best way to figure this out is to get on my newsletter and get the free guide to finding your deepest turn ons. I walk you through exactly how to understand your own erotic mind, the psychological arousal that you need through the specific emotions that you are looking for in erotic connection. So it will help, if you've done that, pull that out and refer to it, or if you know it, but if you haven't done it, I want you to think about your most arousing fantasies or moments in in your life. They don't have to be in real life. They can be in your imagination, and try to see if you can figure out what that emotional experience was that felt so great, and how I want you to ask yourself, how close are the feelings that I'm getting from my most recent sexual encounters to the feelings in my most arousing moments or fantasies. So this is trying to figure out whether there's a match or not, right? Like maybe you're not getting those feelings in your recent sexual encounters, and if those are the feelings that you need for peak psychological arousal, and you're not getting them, then it's really going to affect how much you want sex. Okay? Number six, how much novelty? So that just means something that's new and different. How much how many new experiences? How many different experiences are in your current or most recent sex life, and that includes self pleasure, so whether you're partnered or not, how much new different approaches novelty is present for you. Okay. Number seven, how severe is your history of sexual abuse trauma, relational family trauma or religious trauma? And if you are at all unsure, what I want you to do is this little thought exercise I want. You to imagine that your experiences happen to someone you love, and rate this answer this question as if it were about them. And I ask you to do this because we often underestimate our own experiences. Now, some people overdo it, but most people, the vast majority of people, will underestimate and minimize the impact of religious shaming on their bodies or their sexuality, family trauma, relational family trauma, like ways that you weren't attuned to or cared for or didn't get your needs met, or weren't allowed to have needs or felt unsafe. Those kinds of things, sexual abuse and trauma. A lot of us, especially women, will discount or minimize the ways that we felt unsafe or have actually been harmed. So please do not underestimate those things. And if you tend to do that, or you think you might be doing that once you imagine it happening to someone you love, like your best friend, your child. I know it's gonna be hard for you to imagine having to your child, but like, maybe try your best friend or your sister or something, somebody that you actually love, and answer the question as if it was about them. Okay, how severe is that? So zero means, like, you have absolutely none. Give yourself, you know, sort of like a three if you had, like, some moderate shaming experiences or repression, and a five on the scale of five, right? If there was abuse or trauma, okay? Number eight, how much do you feel actively unattracted to or repelled by your partner? If you have one, or to other people that you might if you don't have a partner, to somebody that you might be dating or considering engaging in some sort of sexual activity with. And I ask this not just, like, how much do you feel attracted to them? Because sometimes we tend to answer that like, as if, like, they have to be the most attractive. Like, we just want to, like, tear our pants off every time they walk in the room, kind of thing. That's not the issue. The issue is, is there any sense of repellent or avoidance or unattraction? I'm going to just let that word be in existence for now. Is there any sense of being unattracted to the person? You don't have to think they're the sexiest thing in the world, but let's notice if there's some sort of like revulsion or unattraction, all right. Number nine, how seen, heard, understood and emotionally connected do you feel with your partner? And another way of thinking about this one is how much built up resentment is there with your partner? If you have one about it could be about anything and everything. Doesn't have to be anything about sex. It could be about how they load the dishwasher, and boy, does that run really that that one runs deep for a lot of people. If you have a lot of built up resentment, then you the chances that you feel connected, seen heard and fully understood are fairly low. So ask yourself, really honestly, how emotionally connected seen heard and understood do you actually feel, and how much resentment is there that really affects people's libido? All right? Number 10 grand finale here, and this one, I'm going to give you a couple extra questions to reflect on, just to help kind of follow up with this, to clarify it for you, because it's really a big one for a lot of people. And this question is, how much pressure Do you feel around sexuality, around sexually connecting with your partner or around being sexual. Do you feel pressure? And this means pressure that you might feel to get turned on quickly or easily, pressure you might feel to actually have sex, pressure you might feel to show sexual pleasure and or pressure you might feel to orgasm, or pressure you might feel to stay hard, or pressure you might feel to perform and or pressure just to put sex on your to do list as another thing you, quote, unquote, have to do, that's another kind of pressure. This pressure could be coming from your partner. It could be coming from yourself,
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and it often does come from ourselves, but it also includes a fear that you are disappointing your partner if you are not wanting to have sex or wanting to have sex the way they want it. That is another kind of pressure. The fear of disappointing someone is a type of internal pressure. So that's the question. How much of any of these kinds of pressure Do you feel around sexuality, and a follow up on this one when you're ready, when you've already answered how much pressure you actually feel, what kinds and then try to identify for yourself, what kinds of pressure that is. The follow up is, is it actually coming from expressed disappointment from your partner? I. Or maybe they're sulking, emotionally withdrawing, or even putting you down, calling you names, calling you frigid, or calling you cold or whatever, or actually complaining. So that would be direct pressure, including the emotional coercion of just emotional withdrawal or sulking. That's pressure that's coming from your partner, how much of it is actually coming from your partner versus coming from within you? Because you believe that you should be doing X, Y or Z, and X, Y or Z could be I should be having more sex. I should be having more orgasms. I should be getting turned on faster or more easily, or I should be getting turned on by what they're doing, like I should be somehow getting turned on by their touch, even though I don't really like it, right? That's pressure from you, all right? So the answers to these questions are starting points. They are not the ending point. Obviously, hopefully that's clear. They are starting points for your past to figuring out what's in the way of your desire. And if you have low desire, the chances are very, very high that there are just actual obstacles in the way of your own free, authentic desire, the desire that for you would just flow in your body. And that doesn't mean it's spontaneous. That doesn't mean that it doesn't need some warm up and some flirtation and some of whatever your core desires are, whatever your psychological arousal needs are, but there is desire to be found once those things are met inside you, for the vast majority of people. And if it's not freely flowing, if you don't know how to access it, then chances are some of these obstacles are in the way, at least now you will know what some of those obstacles are these questions are meant to guide you to identifying what some of those obstacles are when you are ready to get rid of them, reach out for a consultation, and we will get rid of those obstacles for you. I will help you know how to do that. That is what I do all the time, very successfully. You don't have to be ready for that right now. It's 100% okay if you're not, but at least you will know what's in your way, instead of feeling like there's something wrong with you, because a low desire response to any of these obstacles is incredibly functional and normal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. There may be some things that need to be tweaked about the way that you and your partner, if you have one, are approaching sex, or the way that you've approached sexuality in the past, in your life, the habits that you've built, the ways that you talk to yourself in your mind about it, the ways that you treat your own body, or you treat yourself sexually, the pressure, removing some of the pressure, removing the shame, all of that stuff is absolutely possible, and it works for people all the time, and they have better lives. So I just want you to know that it is possible for you when you're ready. All right, my friends, thanks for being here. I'll see you next
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time. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide. Find your secret. Turn arms. It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com
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and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time you.
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