Could Your Low Desire Actually Be Grief?
My standard poodle, Zoe, 3.5 years old.
What Losing My Dog Taught Me About Intimacy, Desire & Healing
Last year, my husband and I didn't have sex for months.
As a Sex and Intimacy Coach, that probably isn't the opening you were expecting.
Desire has never been something I've struggled with. If anything, desire has been one of the guiding forces in my life. Not just sexual desire, but the desire to feel deeply, to experience intimacy, to create beauty, to build meaningful relationships, and to live fully. Which is probably why it took me so long to understand what was actually happening.
Towards the end of 2021, my husband and I became the proud owners of a standard poodle pup called Zoe. Over the next three and a half years, she became the centre of our universe. And just last year, Dean and I were preparing to move to Paris with Zoe. We’d pictured long walks through Parisian neighbourhoods, lazy afternoons sitting outside cafés while Zoe charmed strangers from nearby tables, and weekends exploring parks and markets with her trotting beside us. We even joked about creating an Instagram account just for her because she was so iconic.
Then, one Sunday morning, everything changed. Two days after Dean's thirty-fifth birthday, Zoe woke us up early and climbed into bed for cuddles. We spent a slow morning together before taking her to our favourite café, where she sat beside us on the bench seat as she always did. Then we headed to the park for a game of fetch. After just a few throws of the ball, she let out a yelp mid-air and collapsed. At only three and a half years old, Zoe died from a heart attack in her favourite park.
In the days and weeks that followed, I realised I wasn't only grieving Zoe herself. I was grieving all the futures that had included her. The Paris we had imagined with Zoe. Eventually moving to the South of France with Zoe. The adventures we thought we would have with Zoe. The version of our life that had seemed so certain only hours before.
What surprised me was how grief can deeply infiltrate everyday life. I would find myself crying unexpectedly after seeing a standard poodle on Instagram. I'd walk into the house and instinctively look towards the window, expecting to see her waiting for us. I would hear a noise in another room and momentarily think it was her.
And then there was the silence. The absence of familiar sounds, routines, and interruptions that had once felt so normal. No excited greeting at the front door. No tennis balls dropped at my feet while I was trying to work. No poofy poodle head appearing beside the dining table in the hope that food might accidentally fall from the sky. It was only after those things disappeared that I realised how much life had been built around them.
What surprised me most wasn't simply the grief itself. It was how differently my husband and I experienced it. My usually affectionate, often clingy husband retreated into his own little world. For the first time in our relationship, I felt profoundly alone in something that had happened to both of us.
Although the loss was shared, our grief unfolded very differently. Somewhere in the middle of that difference, intimacy began to disappear as well.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, intimacy disappeared too.
Looking back now, it all seems so obvious. Of course grief changed the way we related to one another. Of course our connection to each other felt different. Of course desire wasn't at the top of the priority list.
And sometimes, what looks like a desire problem is actually grief. Until we understand that, we risk trying to fix something that doesn't need fixing at all. This was something I explored further in my article Why Don't I Want Sex Anymore? 12 Hidden Reasons Women Lose Desire, where I discuss the many physical, emotional, relational, and psychological factors that can influence a woman's connection to desire.
Signs Your Low Desire May Be Connected to Grief
Looking back now, it seems obvious that I was grieving. Zoe had died unexpectedly, our world had been turned upside down, and both Dean and I were trying to find our footing in a reality we never anticipated. Of course desire changed. Of course intimacy felt different.
What I didn't understand at the time was that many women are experiencing something remarkably similar without ever recognising grief as part of the conversation.
As an online intimacy coach, I often see women assume their low desire is a libido problem when grief is actually the deeper story. In fact, many of the women who discover my article Low Libido in Women: Why You Might Not Feel Desire (And Why You're Not Broken) arrive convinced there is something wrong with them, only to realise their bodies are responding intelligently to circumstances they haven't fully acknowledged.
Grief can arise whenever we lose something meaningful to us. A relationship. A dream. A version of ourselves. A future we had quietly imagined. Sometimes the loss is obvious. Sometimes it is so subtle that we don't even realise we are carrying it. Yet the body often knows long before the mind catches up.
As you read through the list below, notice whether any of these experiences resonate with you:
✓ A significant relationship has ended
✓ You have experienced the death of a loved one or beloved pet
✓ You have gone through infertility, pregnancy loss, or challenges around motherhood
✓ Your body has changed through illness, ageing, childbirth, or weight gain
✓ You no longer recognise the woman you see in the mirror
✓ You feel disconnected from the version of yourself you used to be
✓ You are navigating perimenopause or menopause
✓ You have experienced betrayal, heartbreak, or infidelity
✓ You are grieving a dream that never happened
✓ You are carrying burnout after years of caring for everyone else
✓ You have gone through a major life transition, such as divorce, relocation, career change, or becoming childfree
✓ You feel emotionally numb, flat, or disconnected from pleasure
✓ Your desire has disappeared around the same time as one of these losses
If several of these resonate, it may be worth gently asking yourself:
Am I struggling with low desire, or am I grieving?
Sometimes what appears to be a libido problem is actually a grief process that has never been given permission to exist.
Grief expert David Kessler writes that grief is about losing the future we imagined. A woman may be grieving the marriage she thought she would have. She may be grieving the children she imagined she would raise. She may be grieving a body that no longer feels familiar after illness, ageing, childbirth, or weight gain. She may be grieving a version of herself that once felt carefree, adventurous, confident, or connected to her own sensuality.
Others are grieving things that never happened at all. The baby that never arrived. The relationship that never materialised. The career that never unfolded. The move overseas that didn't happen. The life that existed only in dreams.
These losses rarely come with flowers, sympathy cards, or formal rituals but that doesn’t make them any less real or painful.
What I have learned through my own experiences and through my work with women is that grief does not disappear simply because we ignore it. It doesn't vanish because we tell ourselves we should be grateful, resilient, positive, or over it by now.
Grief has a way of waiting patiently until we are willing to acknowledge what has been lost. And sometimes, what we interpret as low desire is actually grief asking to be seen.
Why Grief Impacts Desire
When I lost Zoe, it was obvious that I was grieving. But many of the women I work with are carrying losses that are far less visible. Whether the grief comes from heartbreak, burnout, infertility, a changing body, or a future that never arrived, the body often responds in remarkably similar ways. Understanding that response is one of the keys to understanding desire itself.
When women come to me worried about desire, they often assume the problem lives within their sexuality. While hormones can certainly play a role, there are many reasons women lose desire, which I explore further in Why Don't I Want Sex Anymore? 12 Hidden Reasons Women Lose Desire. They question whether they have lost attraction to their partner. Whether they need to communicate better, schedule more date nights, or somehow force themselves back into feeling the way they once did.
One of the things I appreciate most about Sexpert Emily Nagoski's work is her emphasis on the relationship between stress, the nervous system, and desire. In her book Come As You Are, she reminds us that desire does not exist in isolation. It exists within the context of our lives.
When we are carrying heartbreak, uncertainty, loss, exhaustion, fear, or emotional overwhelm, our nervous systems naturally shift into protection. This isn't dysfunction. It's wisdom. A grieving body is not focused on pleasure. Instead, a grieving body is focused on adaptation. It is trying to make sense of what has happened, adjust to a new reality, and conserve enough energy to keep moving forward. It’s focused on survival.
Looking back, this is exactly what was happening for Dean and me. For months after Zoe died, intimacy simply wasn't available in the way it had been before. Not because our love had disappeared, but because we were both carrying enormous sadness. I wanted closeness. Dean wanted space. I wanted to talk. Dean retreated inward. Neither approach was wrong, but it created a loneliness that caught me off guard.
Why Grief Can Create Distance in Relationships
One of the most painful aspects of grief is that it often reveals how differently people move through loss. Esther Perel has spoken extensively about the tension between togetherness and separateness in relationships. We often assume that if two people experience the same event, they will respond in similar ways. In reality, grief tends to magnify our differences.
One partner may seek comfort through conversation while the other withdraws. One may want physical affection while the other struggles to access touch at all. One may cry openly while the other becomes practical, task-focused, or emotionally distant.
What makes this particularly difficult is that these differences can easily be misinterpreted. The partner seeking closeness may feel rejected. The partner seeking space may feel overwhelmed. Before long, two people grieving the same loss can begin feeling deeply alone. This is one of the reasons so much of my work focuses on helping women navigate intimacy, communication, emotional connection, and major life transitions, topics I discuss further in What Does an Online Intimacy Coach for Women Actually Help With?
This is one of the reasons I believe conversations about desire need to become far more nuanced. Sometimes low desire isn't a relationship or a libido problem. It is simply grief moving through a relationship in two different ways. When we understand that, we can stop treating ourselves as broken and begin approaching ourselves and our partners with greater compassion.
Your Desire Doesn't Need Fixing
One of the most liberating realisations I have had, both personally and professionally, is that not every experience of low desire requires fixing. As women, we are constantly encouraged to optimise ourselves. We are told to fix our hormones, fix our mindset, fix our relationships, fix our bodies, and fix our libido. While there is certainly value in education and support, I think we sometimes rush too quickly towards solutions without first asking whether something is actually wrong.
Michaela Boehm often reminds us that pleasure is not a luxury. It is a vital part of being alive. But pleasure cannot be forced. Like desire, it tends to emerge when the conditions are right. After Zoe died, I didn't need a strategy for increasing libido. I needed space to grieve. I needed time. I needed compassion. This philosophy sits at the heart of Integrative Sex Coaching?, which focuses less on fixing women and more on helping them understand, trust, and reconnect with themselves.
Many of the women I work with are carrying similar self-judgements. They tell themselves they should want sex more often. They should be over the breakup by now. They should have moved on. They should feel grateful. They should stop crying. They should be stronger.
But healing does not respond to the “shoulds.”
In my experience, desire often begins to return when we stop making demand of it, and create the conditions for it to emerge naturally.
Could Your Low Desire Actually Be Grief?
If you have been wondering where your desire went, I gently invite you to consider a different question.
Instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?" what if you asked, "What am I grieving?"
Perhaps you are grieving the end of a relationship. The loss of a dream. A body that feels different than it once did. A season of life that has come to an end. A version of yourself you miss. A future you imagined that never arrived.
Whatever the loss may be, I hope you know this:
Your grief makes sense.
Your body makes sense.
And your desire makes sense too.
There is nothing broken about a nervous system that prioritises healing after loss. There is nothing wrong with a body that needs time. There is nothing shameful about moving at the pace your heart requires.
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is stop trying to force ourselves back to who we were before and instead become curious about who we are now. For many women, this process of rediscovering themselves is made easier in community, which is one of the reasons I created the Wonderfully Wilde Women's Collective and wrote about the healing power of shared spaces in Why Women's Circles Matter.
Ready to Come Home to Yourself?
If you've spent months, or perhaps years, feeling disconnected from yourself, your body, your desire, or your sense of aliveness, I'd love to support you.
Many of the women I work with arrive feeling confused, emotionally exhausted, or quietly convinced that something is wrong with them. Often, what they discover is something far kinder. Beneath the numbness, the frustration, or the self-judgement is a nervous system asking for care, a body asking to be heard, and a deeper truth waiting to be acknowledged.
Through my Body • Eros • Soul Framework, I help women reconnect with themselves, rebuild trust in their bodies, and create the conditions where intimacy, pleasure, desire, and aliveness can begin to flourish once again.
If you're ready for personalised support, I invite you to book a free 15-Minute Clarity Call to explore whether 1:1 Integrative Intimacy Coaching is the right fit for you.
About Sabina Wilde
Sabina Wilde is a 500-hour Certified Integrative Sex Coach & Educator, holding a Bachelor of Psychology and a Master of Teaching. She specialises in helping women reconnect with their bodies, desires, pleasure, and authentic selves through a trauma-informed, body-centred approach. Drawing from psychology, embodiment practices, nervous system education, and intimacy coaching, her work supports women to move beyond shame, numbness, burnout, and self-abandonment into deeper connection, self-trust and aliveness.. She is the founder of the Wonderfully Wilde Women's Collective and offers 1:1 online coaching, women's circles and workshops around the world.