Low Libido in Women: Why You Don’t Feel Desire (And How to Reconnect)
I’d love to introduce you to two women, these are fictional characters that share many similarities with the women I support as a Sex & Intimacy coach.
Sophie is a 42 year old lawyer living in London with her partner, James. They’ve been together for 9 years. They’re good, steady, and kind to each other. Their friends call them the power couple - no kids, jobs they love, great holidays, a beautiful apartment…
But something has changed over the years.
In the beginning, there was a spark. Sex was easy and exciting. It came naturally for Sophie.
Now, everything feels… familiar.
She finds herself thinking: I still love him… so why don’t I want him like I used to?
For Melanie, life looks very different.
She’s a 34 year old stay at home mum with three young children living in suburban Melbourne with her husband, Luke. She’s constantly needed, constantly touched, constantly holding the mental list for the whole family.
On occasion she’s caught herself fantasising about having an accident just so she can get some peace and quiet from a hospital bed.
It doesn’t end. She loves her children deeply. There’s no question about that.
But by the end of the day, she feels completely spent.
And when her partner reaches for her in the evening, she pulls back (and it’s not because she doesn’t love him).
Melanie feels unseen, unappreciated and exhausted.
Her husband doesn’t fully see what her days hold. The invisible work. The constant tending. The way she’s been giving all day, in a thousand small, unnoticed ways.
For Melanie, resentment has been building up alongside the love.
And in the privacy of her own thoughts, there’s an uncomfortable truth she doesn’t want to admit out loud: That her partner feels like just another person who needs something from her.
Luke has become another pull at her body, another person she has to manage whether it‘s his doctor appointments, gifts for his friends or family, even his relationship with his mother. And no one is holding Melanie.
And then comes the guilt.
Because she knows he’s carrying pressure too, financially, practically, and part of her feels she should want to meet him there, that he deserves to be satisfied too even if she is tired, overwhelmed and overextended.
Why You Don’t Feel Desire (And Why It’s Not What You Think)
One of the biggest misunderstandings around libido is the idea that desire should just appear out of nowhere. Spontaneously. Consistently. Without needing any contexts or conditions to prompt it.
So when it doesn’t (which is totally normal) it can feel like something is wrong with you.
But desire, for most women (and some men) doesn’t work like a light switch that just flips on when you’re “in the mood.”
It’s far more responsive than that.
It’s shaped by:
your nervous system
your stress levels
your emotional world
your relationship dynamics
your physical energy
and the wider context of your life
Which means that overtime, especially with familiarity (Sophie’s story) and the pressures of motherhood (Melanie) low libido can become the norm.
Responsive Desire: The Kind of Desire Most Women Actually Experience
For a long time, desire was understood in a very narrow way as something that should come first before sex.
You feel turned on…then you want sex.
But for many women, it happens the other way around.
You might not feel desire at the beginning at all.
But once there’s:
connection
touch
a sense of relaxation
space to land in your body
something starts to build as this is called responsive desire
Responsive desire emerges after engagement, rather than before.
And for many women, simply understanding this can be a BIG turning point (as well as relief).
What you may have been interpreting as “low libido” is often just a different pathway into desire.
Why Low Libido Is So Often Misunderstood
Many women come to sex coaching believing they’ve lost something or something is wrong with them. That they used to feel desire easily, and now they don’t. Or that they should feel it more than they do.
When we start to look more closely, there’s usually a change in context that can help explain why someone isn’t wanting it so much, why it’s different now.
If you come back to Sophie, nothing in her relationship is obviously “wrong.”
She loves James,
They get along.
Their life, from the outside, looks stable, perfect even.
And yet, underneath that, something has shifted.
The spark that was once there at the beginning, the ease, the anticipation, isn’t there anymore.
Sophie hasn’t stopped loving her partner over the years, in fact, Esther Perel might say that love is part of the problem here too. She is famous for her views on love being at times damaging to desire, "Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it".
But because familiarity has settled in and routine has taken over, life has filled up the space where desire used to have room to grow.
And slowly, almost without noticing, Sophie’s started relating to sex differently.
Less as something she’s drawn towards…and more as something she feels she should want and guilty for not desiring it more with James.
But when you look closely, there’s always the context to consider.
For Sophie, it’s not that desire disappeared out of nowhere.
It’s that something changed in how she and James relate now.
At the beginning, there was a sense of anticipation woven into everything. Sophie would take her time getting ready for dates with James, she’d shave her legs, wash her hair, attend monthly waxing appointments, she’d spend hours thinking about what to wear…
There was a kind of playful energy around it all too. She’d message her friends, giggling about the date James was planning for her.
James would send clues during the day. Sometimes flowers with a note. Sometimes a small, unexpected gift, something that made her feel thought of.
There was novelty. Surprise. Excitement.
A feeling of being chosen again and again.
Now, it looks very different.
Dinner is often decided at the end of a long day. Takeaway on rotation between Indian, Thai or Vietnamese.
Or one of the same few pubs and restaurants where they don’t have to make any decisions. Everything is easy and comfortable.
Often they meet up straight from work, no pause, no transition, still in the same clothes she’s worn all day, still carrying the energy of everything that’s come before - all the meetings, emails, conversations and decision making.
And then when they sit opposite each other, Sophie and James find themselves, without either of them really meaning to, shifting their conversation into logistics, plans, bills, and whatever else needs to be done.
There’s no excitement and nothing that creates a sense of pull. Nothing that builds anticipation or desire.
Life has become completely predictable for Sophie and James.
Like so many couples before them, their sexual polarity, curiosity, the sense of desire between them has faded.
So now, Sophie feels both sadness and pressure: I can’t keep doing this. There has to be more…
Desire isn’t separate from the rest of your life. And when you’re in a long term relationship like Sophie and James, life often becomes full, fast, and demanding and no weekend away, toy or sex hack can fix this overnight.
“Brakes” and “Accelerators”: Why They Matter
One of the most helpful ways to understand desire comes from Emily Nagoski, who describes sexual response as a balance between what turns us on (accelerators) and what quietly turns us off (brakes).
Accelerators are the things that create openness — connection, novelty, relaxation, feeling wanted.
Brakes are the things that dampen that response — stress, pressure, fatigue, distraction, unresolved tension.
And most of the time, when desire feels low, it’s not because there isn’t enough “turn-on.”
It’s because there’s too much sitting on the brakes and just like a car, it doesn’t matter how much acceleration you apply, if the brakes are down, you’re not going anywhere.
Let’s come back to our mother of three, Melanie. By the end of the day, she is so utterly exhausted and touched out. Every moment of her day she’s been responding to small voices, small hands, constant requests. Held. Pulled on. Needed.
There’s very little space where her body has belonged only to her.
And alongside that, there’s the mental load she’s been carrying all day. What needs to be organised next. What hasn’t been done yet. What tomorrow will require.
And it doesn’t just switch off in the evening. It follows her.
So when her husband, Luke, reaches for her, she pulls back.
Her body can’t take it anymore.
And even if part of her wants to feel close…another part of her is still holding everything she hasn’t had space to put down.
This is what “brakes” can look like in real life.
It’s rarely a lack of love or attraction.
But:
no time to reset or rest
an activated nervous system
unspoken resentment
a sense of being needed, rather than met
managing everyone else
sacrificing yourself for everyone else
feeling like the only adult in the relationship
feeling neglected
overstimulation
messy house/environement
And when each of these carry on into the next day, and the day after, it’s very hard for desire to rise.
And because so much of this is normalised, especially in certain seasons of life like motherhood, it often goes unnoticed or is considered “normal”.
When Desire Doesn’t Match Your Partner’s
Another layer that shows up in relationship is a difference in sexual temperaments.
One person wants sex more frequently.
The other feels less inclined, or needs more time, or a different kind of lead-in.
This is often called desire discrepancy, and it’s incredibly common.
But it can quickly turn into:
pressure
self-blame
feeling like you’re “the problem”
Especially if you’re the one with less spontaneous desire.
What’s important to understand is that difference doesn’t mean dysfunction.
It means there are two people here with different sexual temperaments, two different patterns, two different ways of accessing desire. Emily Nagoski talks about this in her book Come As You Are and offers a couple of quizzes to help you determine what your sexual temperament is and how to work with your partner(s).
If the Sex Isn’t Great, Why Would You Want More of It?
This should be an obvious one, but sadly, often it isn't. If you’re not having deeply pleasurable, connected, or satisfying sex, it makes sense that you don’t want to be having more of it.
It’s not particularly motivating to keep having “bad” sex.
In life, we generally avoid things that don’t feel good, so why should sex be the exception?
Why would you want (or be expected) to keep doing the same old thing that isn’t bringing you pleasure?
Sadly, many women, including myself, have experiences of:
pushing through discomfort
prioritising a partner’s experience
staying in situations that didn’t fully meet them
not knowing what they like or how to advocate for their needs - this is so common thanks to terrible sex education and cultural shame around sex
trying to communicate our needs/what we like and not being heard or shamed for it
And over time, that shapes desire. Some of us learn that it costs less emotionally to centre our partner’s pleasure, or we pull back and give the bare minimum (whatever that is) to keep the peace and the relationship alive. And we end up feeling all kinds of emotions around this - shame, guilt, anger, grief as well as disconnection from our bodies, our sexual aliveness and our pleasure potential. And so much of this comes down to a lack of effective sexual education and self advocacy.
Desire Is Not Fixed - It’s Responsive to Your Life
One of the most important things to understand is that your desire isn’t static.
It changes with:
stress
hormones
life stage
relationship dynamics
emotional connection
how safe and resourced you feel in your body
Which means low desire isn’t something you are, it’s something that’s happening within a particular context in your life.
And context can change.
Let’s revisit Sophie, nothing about her capacity for desire has actually disappeared over the 9 years she’s been with James.
But the conditions that once supported it are no longer there in the same way.
At the beginning, there was space in her life for anticipation.
There was time to get ready. Time to feel into herself before seeing him.
Time to miss him, to wonder, to feel that quiet build of anticipation and longing.
There was a sense of choosing, and being chosen in return.
Now, everything feels known. Sophie moves straight from one part of her day into the next.
There’s no real transition. No moment where she returns to herself before meeting James.
And without that…there’s very little space for desire to rise.
It's so easy to think that this is just how mature relationships are, that it’s inevitable we wind up loving our special person and having to accept that the spark, the anticipation and sexual aliveness is a thing of the past. And just accept that love is enough, at least we won’t be dying alone right?
But this is not the case (even if this is the story we see play out in our own lives and in the movies).
What’s changed is the rhythm of your life.
The way you move through your day. The way you arrive in your body. The space (or lack of it) between who you are out in the world, and who you are in intimacy.
One of the simplest ways to “get desire back” is by changing how you re-enter into connection.
There’s a line from Michaela Boehm that speaks so clearly to this:
“If you wait until you feel like it, your relationship can — and will — suffer terribly.”
So Sophie begins to learn how to shift gears.
Instead of expecting herself to feel in the mood at the end of a long day, she changes how she prepares to see him (like she did when they first started dating). NOTE: They also stop going to the same old restaurants and James starts to book exciting new places - the start to date properly again.
Sophie now gives herself time to get ready before she meets with James. There’s no rushing straight from work into dinner.
Sophie’s also started to choose clothes that make her feel sexy, desirable and beautiful again. She spends time looking at herself in the mirror and seeing her beauty again. Seeing herself fully. Choosing herself before she heads back out into the world.
She plays music, lights candles, dances around the room as she gets ready.
All of these cue her body that it’s time to get out of her head and back into her body.
What she’s doing here is simple, but important:
She’s giving herself a transition. And a new context to meet James in.
She’s out of “doing mode”, out of being the responsible adult and out of being “on” all day.
And when she meets with James, she’s fully present and open.
When Sophie learns to shift gears, even briefly, something changes.
She feels less rushed.
Less depleted.
More available.
Sexier.
Open.
Longing for more.
So when she meets him, she’s arriving with a bit more space.
And that’s often enough, maybe not to create instant desire.
But to allow it to build.
A Different Way of Reconnecting With Desire
If desire has felt distant, the instinct is often to try and get it back directly.
To fix it.
Increase it.
Force it to return.
We might go to couple’s therapy, buy a new toy, watch porn together, anything to reignite the spark.
But often, what creates change is more indirect than that.
It begins with:
noticing what helps you feel more relaxed in your body
paying attention to when you feel even slightly more open or receptive
creating small moments of pleasure in your day that have nothing to do with sex
allowing desire to build slowly, rather than expecting it to appear fully formed
The reason “quick fixes” don’t work is that desire builds slowly, in response to the conditions around it.
You’re Not Broken
If you don’t feel much desire right now, it doesn’t mean:
you’re dysfunctional
you’re failing in your relationship
you’ve lost something permanently
It often means your body is responding to your life, your energy and your experiences.
Allow yourself a few minutes to sit with these questions. If you can journal about them, even better:
What has my body been holding or carrying lately that might not have space to settle?
Where in my life do I feel most like myself and where do I feel the most depleted or disconnected?
If I’m completely honest, what has my experience of intimacy been like for me recently- not what I think it should be like, but how has it actually felt?
And when you begin to understand what it’s responding to, you’ll start to see things shift.
If This Is Something You’re Navigating
If you’ve been sitting with questions like:
why don’t I feel desire
why is my libido low
why don’t I want sex anymore
Inside online sex coaching for women, this is the kind of work we do, understanding your patterns, your context, and your relationship to desire, so it becomes something you can reconnect with in a way that works for you.
For the Woman Ready to Come Home to Her Body, Reclaim Her Eros & Befriend Her Soul
If you’d like to explore deeper one-on-one support, you can learn more about Online Sex Coaching for Women here.
If you feel the pull to reconnect with your body, soften into your femininity, and experience the kind of healing that comes from being deeply witnessed, I invite you to join The Wonderfully Wilde Women’s Collective, a monthly circle opening in 2026.
And if you want embodiment practices, rituals, meditations, and stories of feminine reclamation, you can explore the full Sabina Wilde Blog here.
With wilde tenderness,
Sabina Wilde xx
With wilde tenderness,
Sabina Wilde x
