Do you feel pressured because your partner wants more sex than you? Do you feel neglected because your partner refuses to make love as often as you want to? If this sounds familiar, you are definitely not alone. In fact practically any couple who has been together for any real length of time experience different level of sexual desire.

However sexual incompatibility need not mean the end of an otherwise good relationship. If you are willing to reassess your attitudes, negotiate your sexual needs and talk about your sex lives in an honest and respectful way, you can reclaim the intimacy and closeness that is weakening in your relationship.

How serious is the low libido problem?

One survey revealed that 33.4% of women and 15.5% of men reported lack of sexual interest. Though losing interest in sex may not be as common an occurrence for men as it is for women, but when men lose interest in sex, it scares them a lot more because their masculinity is so linked to their sexuality.

Loss of libido also makes men more likely to be unhappy about the rest of their lives than it does for women. Only 23% of men with loss of libido say they still feel very happy about life in general versus 46% of women.

Libido loss does not usually happen suddenly. It is a gradual process. When most relationships first begin there is high degree of passion and sexual frequency. Sex often happens effortlessly and spontaneously and desire feels mutual due to the newness of discovering one another as well as the newness of the relationship. After about 18 months, this new-found excitement and intrigue begins to wane and different sexual patterns can start to emerge. It can feel confusing and disheartening and you may question whether you are sexually compatible or if you still love your partner.

Desire fluctuates for a variety of reasons. Stress, fatigue, depression, performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, certain types of medication and ill-health can all contribute to problems. Hormonal changes can cause loss of libido and any underlying resentment or anger towards your partner will also interfere with your motivation to be intimate.

What to avoid?

One of the most damaging mistakes you can do is to blame one another for the different levels of sexual interest. Often the person with the lower sex drive is being targeted as the main cause of the problem. This can cause the accused person to get defensive and this can lead to greater sexual frustration.

How to face up to low libido

An important step is to acknowledge that both of you are different people with different levels of desire. After all, if your desires to eat, sleep, socialize, or exercise is unlikely to be perfectly matched with your partner’s, the same can also happen to your sex drive. Both also need to take responsibility for addressing this issue and making the necessary changes and adjustments.

It can be a bit embarrassing to talk about your sex lives and to clarify with your partner about what turn you on and what do not, but it is critical in re-establishing and maintaining a satisfying sex life. Couples experiencing desire discrepancy are encouraged to negotiate their likes and dislikes or to look for ways to compromise. Do not compare your sex life to anyone else or what you see in porn. What matters most is what is right for you as a couple.

In dealing with marital anger as a cause of low libido, you can either consider couples therapy or a real heart-to-heart talk. But in the meantime, it may be possible to jump-start your sex life. How to do it?

Well, just do it! A common misconception about sex is that we should get into the mood first before we do it. However the professional view is that if we keep waiting for the desire to come, some of us would never have sex again. It is sometimes important to just have sex even if you are not in the mood. Once you start, desire and arousal often follow. Do not let the time between sex drags on for too long.

Of course, it is most important that this has to happen under the situation when mutual feelings of kindness and respect already exist in the relationship. In this way you will be able to be open to your partner and experience sex as an act of love rather than a performance or just going through the motion.

It is also important to shift our attitudes towards sex by treating it as not just erections, orgasms and penetration and. Instead it should be regarded as a source of pleasure and intimacy. In meeting each other’s needs, you have to accept that you may get less sex than you ideally like and have to look for other ways to feel emotionally and physically close.

The bottom-line here is not about getting more sex, but getting better. Frequency should not be the sole measure of libido. Feelings count too. How you feel about the whole lovemaking process should be the true measure of whether your libido is healthy.