When the desire goes

Not gone because of them

One of the most painful things about losing your desire in midlife is how easily it gets misread, by you and by them. As though it must mean you have stopped loving them. As though it must be punishment. As though, if you really wanted to, you could just choose to want it again.

You can’t. And it isn’t about them. It is about a body whose chemistry has changed underneath you, in a way nobody warned you would happen, and a brain that has quietly turned the volume down on something that used to play loudly.

It is not that you have stopped loving them. It is that the part of you that used to reach for them has gone quiet, and you cannot will it back.

What you might recognise

• You can’t remember the last time you initiated. Not weeks. Months. Maybe a year.
• You hear the bedroom door close at night and feel relief that nothing is going to be asked of you.
• You used to feel the small everyday sparks. A hand on your back, a kiss in the kitchen, an outfit you caught yourself in the mirror in. None of that has been there for a while.
• When you do have sex, your body shows up and your mind doesn’t. You are calculating tomorrow’s shopping list.
• You miss missing it, more than you actually miss it.
• Erotic films, books, daydreams. The whole register is just… quiet.
• The thought of starting anything is exhausting before it has begun.

The hormones, plainly

Three hormones are doing most of this. Oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. They are all dropping, and not in a tidy line. They are also dropping in different ratios for different women, which is why one woman is fine and another is wrecked.

Oestrogen affects mood, sleep, attachment, and the small spark of arousal. When it drops, the spark goes quieter.

Testosterone, yes, testosterone, women have it too, is the hormone most closely linked to libido itself. Most women lose half of it between their twenties and their fifties. Nobody mentions this in school, or, often, at the GP.

Progesterone affects calm, and sleep, and how much your nervous system can hold. When you are sleeping badly and anxious, sex is not where the body has spare capacity.

And the rest of it, also plainly

Sometimes the desire has gone for hormonal reasons. Sometimes there is more going on, and the hormones are just one layer.

• The mental load. Carrying everyone else’s lives in your head all day. There is no spare capacity for desire by 10pm.
• Exhaustion. Real, bone-deep, perimenopausal exhaustion. The body cannot want what it does not have the energy for.
• Resentment, sometimes. Unspoken, ordinary, marriage-shaped resentment. The cup that hasn’t been brought up. The bin that hasn’t been emptied. The way you have been the manager of the household for two decades. None of this is sexy, and the body knows.
• Dryness or pain that hasn’t been treated. The medical side of it often goes ignored, and a body that braces against pain stops wanting.
• Antidepressants, contraception, some other medications. They can affect libido in ways your GP didn’t flag.
• History. If sex has ever been complicated, midlife sometimes brings the complication back up to the surface.

The grief of it

For women who used to enjoy sex, this is its own quiet grief. You knew that version of yourself. You miss her, sometimes. You don’t know if she is coming back, or coming back the same.

That grief is allowed to be real. You are not being dramatic. You are mourning a perfectly real part of who you were. Some of it returns, often, with time and treatment and care. Some of it doesn’t. Both versions of midlife are valid, and you do not have to pretend either one.

You are allowed to mourn the version of you who wanted things. That woman was real. You did not invent her.

What can help

• See your GP. Use the word libido out loud. Ask whether testosterone might be appropriate. Many GPs are still uncomfortable prescribing it for women. It is licensed, it is available, it is not a fringe treatment. If yours says no without giving a proper reason, you can ask to be referred to a menopause specialist.
• HRT, if it suits you. For many women, oestrogen replacement alone returns enough of the spark to make sex feel possible again. For some, testosterone in addition is the thing that does it.
• Treat the dryness and the pain. If sex hurts, the body will keep stopping wanting. Vaginal oestrogen, lubricants, time. See Dryness, pain and what helps.
• Sleep first, sex second. Most women find that desire returns only when sleep has. Address the sleep, even before you address the libido.
• Take initiating out of the equation for a while. “I love you. I am not ready to start anything tonight, but I am here.” That sentence preserves the connection without forcing a performance.
• Be honest with each other about what is happening. Not blamefully. Just descriptively. The whole intimacy thing covers how to have that conversation.
• Don’t take this on alone. SAM is here in the middle of the night when the shame is loudest. Friends who have been through it are gold. A therapist is allowed.

When you don’t know if you want it back

Some women, given the choice, would rather not return to the version of themselves who wanted sex. Some women find the absence of desire freeing. Some are relieved.

That is also allowed. There is no rule that says desire returning is the only good ending. The right outcome is the one that feels right to you and to the people you love.

You are not broken if you don’t come back to it. You are not broken if you do. Bodies change. So do lives. Both are allowed.