Could anxiety be what’s killing your libido? We take a look at the connection, the science behind it and what you can do – plus, we speak to a woman who generously shares her own experiences of anxiety affecting her libido…
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Kate* has never had a high libido. Sex once a fortnight? Totally fine. Sex once a month? Also fine. Every two months? Not a massive cause for concern, though her husband would prefer it a bit more often.
When they had a child, sex dried up. “Having sex obviously becomes a bit harder – excuse the pun – when you have a baby because obviously you’re so tired plus you never know when the baby will start crying.”
“Bed is somewhere to collapse at night and be summoned from by the baby. And to be awake at night when I can’t sleep and my husband is snoring.”
Kate has an anxiety disorder that began when she started experiencing some perinatal mental-health issues. She immediately noticed the effect on her libido. “I have no libido,” she says. “Well, next to none.”
Her husband understands, she says. “Well, kind of. He knows how my anxiety can often make me feel really terrible, so he says he gets it, but I don’t know if he totally gets it?”
It makes sense
Low libido is a complicated issue, and it’s rarely related to a single cause. But it makes sense that anxiety can play a role in lower libido.
For people who may not get how extreme anxiety can feel – imagine you’re in a very stressful situation like being stuck in an elevator or losing your passport at the airport. Putting aside the ‘you’re in public’ thing, do you think you’d want sex in such a situation? Cortisol spikes, as your brain is trying to keep you alive, like it did for our hunter-gatherer ancestors when they heard a tiger roar. Often our body doesn’t distinguish between the severity of threats. And when you’re anxious about your anxiety, or about sleep, it can feel like that tiger is in bed with you – and not in a sexy way.
Expert advice
The Calm Clinic is a site with free resources that provide information, advice, and tips on various anxiety-related topics. All its content has been reviewed and analysed by experts and professionals who are specialists in the fields being discussed.
Micah Abraham’s article ‘How to Treat Low Libido From Anxiety’ provides both helpful background and practical help. “Stress and anxiety are physically and emotionally draining, which can contribute to a low libido,” he writes.
“When you have anxiety, it is not uncommon to also experience low libido. Your sex drive is directly affected by the way you feel, and anxiety is the type of condition that can make it hard to find your partner or the idea of lovemaking to be arousing.”
“Sexual desire is a positive emotion. Anxiety is a negative emotion. It is far more difficult to experience enjoyable emotions like sexual desire when you are often sad or distressed as a result of your anxiety. Anxiety causes the mind to focus more on the negative and makes overcoming it with positive emotions more difficult.”
Makes sense.
“Similarly, anxiety often increases distraction by various anxiety-related thoughts,” he writes. “Those distractions make it much harder to experience the moment, so during times when you would normally experience sexual desire, your mind is elsewhere focused on other things.”
“Anxiety can also cause significant fatigue, especially if you suffer from anxiety attacks which can leave the body completely drained. Anxiety may also cause poor sleeping habits. The combination can make it harder to become aroused.”
What can you do?
The starting point is doing what you can to manage your anxiety, including getting therapy, eating well, exercising, trying to get enough sleep. But if that’s proving hard, or in the meantime, here are some things to try.
The first is to acknowledge that your partner will feel a certain way about your loss of libido. Firstly, don’t feel guilty or like you have to solve this by yourself. It’s something to address as a couple. So communicate with your partner about the issue, however hard this might be. If you feel unable to, consider seeing a relationship counsellor or sex therapist.
The second is to do things that make you feel physically closer to your partner – hugs, non-sexual touch, curling up together on the couch. And spend quality time together. This builds intimacy.
Thirdly, you might decide to fake til you make it – at least at first. Consider scheduling sex. What’s a time of day when you feel less anxious than other times?
And lastly, if having sex very infrequently is fine for you both, that’s, well, fine. If your mum is having sex in her 70s, that’s great for her – but you do you.
Kate decided to feel the anxiety and do it anyway: once so far. “We did it at a time of day – midday – when I felt the least anxious. I realised that yes I could be anxious, but that some things could still get me more in the mood.” Some therapists say a little light porn could be in order, and Kate doesn’t disagree.
“Sometimes you just need a bit of a reset. Libido is still an issue, but it doesn’t feel as big an issue now.”
