Keine Lust auf Sex? No desire for Sex?

No desire for sex?

In today’s episode we want to talk about desire… or more specifically about a lack of desire

That’s one of the most common reasons why couples come to us. 

Either one of them has a lot of sexual desire while the other doesn’t feel like having sex. This leads to either conflicts in the relationship or to cheating. 

Or, it can also happen, that both have lost interest in sex because over time everything else has become more important.

For years, every hint from Damian that went in this direction mainly caused me to stress out or suddenly made me terribly tired or I remembered a lot of important things that I still had to do that evening.

Since the topic of “no desire for sex” is very complex, there is not ONE way to strengthen your own libido again, but different approaches that you can try out and explore for yourself.

1st tip: Give the topic the appropriate attention again

I don’t know about you, but at the beginning of my relationships, sex was always extremely exciting, even for me. I took a lot of time to make myself pretty for my partner, to create a nice space, to imagine what it would be like to be intimate with each other and what else we could try together. We sent text messages to each other that were full of hints and we used to look forward to meeting each other in the evening all day long…

But over the years, sex became more of a routine… we felt like there was nothing new to explore and priorities shifted…

Stress at work or a newborn baby made sex just another item on the to do list… pretty far down the long list… I spent the day just thinking about all the things I had to do and when we went to bed – tired and exhausted in the evening, sex was the last thing I wanted to do…

What had changed? To be honest, when we first started dating I also had a tough job…

What changed was my thinking… my focus. Evaluating sexuality as new, exciting and fulfilling. Or as boring, exhausting and frustrating…

Whether sexual desire arises or not – and, interestingly, whether someone reaches orgasm or not – is largely dependent on one’s own thinking.

Therefore, you can first ask yourself the question: How much attention, thought, time and energy do you devote to your sexuality – throughout the day or week???

As the saying goes: you reap what you sow. The more you focus on the topic, the more fulfilled your sexuality will be. Because no matter how long you have been with your partner, I can guarantee you: you can always develop further in you sexuality. The most important thing is to stay open and keep exploring.

2nd tip: Understand which factors promote your desire and which prevent it

Have you ever asked yourself what exactly gets you in the mood and what keeps you from feeling sexual desire?

That was a real aha effect for me. All I ever thought about before was how to get more interested, but no matter how hard I tried, it never worked…unless I was drunk. Then I couldn’t get enough sex.

So my problem was not too little desire per se, but an incredible amount of thoughts, fears, insecurities and stress that overpowered my desire. So it was particularly important for me to look at my turn-offs – the factors that inhibit desire – and to reduce them.

Turn ons and turn offs can vary greatly from person to person.

Factors that promote pleasure can be:

  • Love and connection, feeling accepted and loved for who I am
  • Security and trust, to be able to let myself go completely…
  • Compliments, appreciation
  • Own feeling to be attractive or adored by the other person
  • Relaxation or vacation
  • Romance – a beautiful room, candles, scent and nice music
  • Sexual fantasies
  • Sexy underwear or an attractive body
  • The temptation of the forbidden 😉
  • Physical closeness, hugging, cuddling 
  • Sensual Massage
  • Passionate kisses
  • Dancing, stripping
  • And of course positive reference experiences (expectations, experiences, probability of reward)

But think about what makes you personally happy. It can be helpful if you consciously remember moments in your life when your desire was very strong or when the situation was extremely sexually charged and see what exactly the reason for it was. 

Was it the partner, what they said or did, how they looked or smelled? Was it the temptation of the new or the forbidden, or the deep heart connection? 

Think carefully about what triggered the desire in you at that moment. And create your personal list of your turn ons.

If you have this list, it is of course also interesting to see what gets you out of sexual turn on. What are turn-offs for you? What is keeping you from feeling pleasure at all?

Desire-inhibiting factors are:

  • Primarily stress (from outside, or stress I cause myself)
  • The own thinking, fear of failing, not living up to the own or the partner’s standards and expectations
  • Insecurity and self-doubt about the own body
  • Fear of not reaching orgasm or coming too early
  • Remembering bad experiences in the past (stress, frustration, pain)
  • Shame and limiting beliefs related to sexuality
  • Missing connection through argument or criticism
  • Time pressure
  • Fear of getting pregnant or fear STD’s
  • Cold
  • Small things like a cluttered room, unpleasant smells, a ringing phone, etc.

Here, too, it can be very helpful if you collect for yourself what in the past has led to you not wanting to have sex or what has made you fall out of desire. Write down your personal turn-offs.

If you want to do this exercise, you can also download the corresponding workbook  on our homepage reconnectprem.com

So, In order to increase desire, you can either try to bring more turn-ons into my life, or try to reduce the turn-offs…

3rd tip: Get from the head into the body and feel more consciously

For me – and for many of our clients – that means: Thinking less and feeling more. 

For this, sport and conscious breathing can help, but also simply consciously perceiving and enjoying the body in everyday life. 

The stretching out in bed in the morning after waking up, the warm water in the shower, a deep breath in the fresh air, a few stretching exercises during work break or a loving hug. I had never noticed any of this before, but when I put my focus on it, I became more and more aware of how much pleasure my body can actually give me.

I know that this is a far bigger topic… if this is relevant to you, stay tuned… we will create a whole episode on this later on…

4th tip: Become aware of your own thoughts and question them

Meditation and mindfulness training helped me to become aware of my thoughts and to be able to change them. 

So if doubts, fears or judgments come up during foreplay, I increasingly succeed in observing them with interest, questioning them and letting them go again or replacing them with positive thoughts…

Another practice that also helped us was to just openly share all the things that were going on in my head during sex… Damian was amazed about how much I can actually think 😉 and through this practice, it was easier for me to stop identifying with my thoughts or fighting against them… like telling myself all the time „I have to stop thinking, I have to relax“, but rather look at what’s keeping me from doing it, share it with Damian and laugh about it… bringing more humor and lightness into the situation

5th tip: Find a form of intimacy that both enjoy

Another reason why one or both of you may not feel like having sex is that the image we get in the media of what sexuality “should” look like is just not working for so many of us. 

Only 30% of all women reach orgasm through vaginal stimulation alone. But in all movies we are taught that 10 minutes of penetrative sex should be enough to bring both of you to climax at the same time. Since that does not work for 70% of couples, there is a lot of shame and the feeling that “something is wrong with me”.

Yet, there are endless forms of “love making“ to discover – away from the pressure of expectations and the stress of having to have an orgasm.

It’s particularly important to remember that less is more. If you have the image in your head that sex needs to last at least 1-2 hours and be super active and tiring, then your resistance  will probably be pretty strong.

However, if you just plan to lie in bed naked for 10 minutes once a week to cuddle, breathe, feel, share… and then see what spontaneously wants to happen (or not), space for lightness, connection, curiosity and the discovery of new things can be created.

6th tip: Make a conscious decision to have an active sexuality

If all of this brings you little success, it can also be a legitimate way for some people to consciously decide to have sex on a regular basis – even if there is no desire at first.

I think that the idea that both partners always have to be super turned on and then sex just happens spontaneously is often just not realistic in everyday life – especially in a long-term partnership with a stressful job and kids.

Of course, Damian and I are often tired in the evenings and don’t feel a burning desire for sex. 

But since we know how incredibly enriching Tantric lovemaking is for our relationship, for the connection between us and for our lives, we have consciously chosen to anchor at least one evening a week in the calendar for our own Tantra practice.

As the saying goes: Appetite comes with eating. And that’s exactly how I realized for myself that sexual desire often only arises during sex. Even scientific studies discovered that desire, especially for women, often arises responsively and not spontaneously.

Similar to working out. When the alarm clock rings at 6 am, very few of us feel like doing sports. But once we are outside running, we almost always notice how good it is for us and think afterwards that we definitely want to do it again tomorrow. But the next morning, there is still no spontaneous desire for it.

So if you enjoy sex and always wonder why you don’t feel the desire for it more often, it can also be a good idea to consciously commit to it. And if you also spontaneously feel like it in between, great 😉

7th tip: Take a tantra course 😉

For me personally, the various Tantra courses we attended, really helped me to learn and implement all these things, so that the thought of sex no longer triggers stress, but mainly a tingling feeling of anticipation.

And that not only means that we now have sex more often, which we both enjoy to the fullest, but that it also leads to a deeper connection between us. More intimacy, closeness, less arguments and generally more relaxation and energy in my life.

That is why it’s so dear to me to share all these things with you.

A tantra course can help you…

  1. To automatically pay more attention to the topic of sexuality
  2. To come up with strategies how to bring more turn on’s in your life and reduce the turn-off’s
  3. To feel your body more in everyday life and to allow pleasure
  4. Perceive and question your thoughts, expectations and fears
  5. To explore different forms of lovemaking that strengthen the bond between you and your partner and bring you joy
  6. Commit to regular sex

Through my own journey and years of working with couples, I am now convinced that we need to clear just a few blockages that separate us from our natural joy and ease with sexuality over the years.

After all, every man and woman is able to feel desire, pleasure and ecstasy in bed.

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