MAYBE TONIGHT, DEAR
Can sex drive be revived after baby?
November 20, 2009
Francine Kopun
FEATURE WRITER
There is an epidemic of lost sexual desire among women and they don't even want their sexy back, according to Laurie B. Mintz, author of A Tired Woman's Guide to Sex.
It's not just the baby years. It's menopause. It's overwork. It's feeling fat, craving sleep or being locked in a power struggle with your spouse. (Pick up your socks!)
Some surveys report as many as 52 per cent of women say their sex drive isn't what it used to be, according to Mintz.
Lower estimates peg it at 33 per cent – still a troubling figure, considering that sex is good for your health, happiness and marital harmony.
What's more, Mintz quotes two studies that found that some women who lose their sex drive aren't bothered by it, a sentiment she experienced herself.
"Both my professional ambition and my sex drive exited with my placenta," she writes. "After the birth of my first daughter, sex was undeniably less interesting than sleeping or holding her."
Jen Maier, 38, a Toronto mom of two, married for 13 years with children ages 6 and 10, remembers that period well. She felt hideous because of the baby weight. She was so tired she would have chosen sleep over a gourmet meal, a shopping trip and, certainly, over sex.
"I felt completely touched out. I had a nursing baby on me all the time. I really did not feel like being touched by anybody else," says Maier, founder of the website www.urbanmoms.ca.
It wasn't until her children were sleeping better and she had taken some of the baby weight off that her desire returned.
"It didn't go back to the way we were before because we were so busy, but it started to evolve into something different, probably now I would say even better," Maier says. "I'm probably less self-conscious. It might just be maturity and it could also be because my husband has seen me at my worst. Everything looks good relative to that."
For many women the solution is duty sex, Mintz says. It's like answering the office phone when it rings at the end of a workday. You know it's good for your career, so you answer it.
Making appointments for sex with her husband relieved Mintz of the burden of wondering when he would be asking her for sex, and whether she'd be too tired and have to disappoint him. But it wasn't enough for her. She wanted to reawaken her desire for sex.
Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss, writing in Why Women Have Sex, call it genital vasocongestion, which makes it sound like something requiring Kleenex and Vicks.
The old-fashioned word would be ardour. A more modern word is lust.
And lust, Mintz says, begins in the brain. She suggests women use the principles of cognitive therapy to change how they feel about having sex.
She recommends fantasizing about sex, talking about it (to your spouse), and spending time together. And not during what she calls "the dregs of the day" – that half-hour before bed when you crash and watch television.
Research shows that sexual attraction peaks among couples after doing new and challenging activities together, Mintz says. It doesn't have to be white-water rafting. Going to a comedy club instead of a movie counts. Getting a sitter to take the kids out to the park or a movie so you can stay home counts, too.
She cautions women to remember that the spontaneous sex they remember from their 20s wasn't exactly spontaneous.
Before you went on your first date with the person who is now your partner, you probably spent hours getting ready, building sexual tension and anticipation. Sex just didn't catch you unaware then, Mintz says. It was premeditated.
Toronto Star