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People have different degrees of sexual desires. The level of sexual appetite also varies in an individual over the lifespan. Low sex drive can be caused by many factors including interpersonal and psychological. However, this does not mean it is a disorder. It tends to be a pathological condition when it brings distress, decreases the quality of a person’s life and becomes an unsettled dispute between the couples. Low sexual desire can arise from problems in a relationship or cause them.
What is viewed as low sexual appetite differs from a person to another? Sexual partners who compare the degree of the sexual drive at the early stages of the relationship with the sexual desire after a long run relation may label it as low sexual desire. More so, a person may experience problems in sexual desire with one partner and have no disparity with another partner. What one designates as low sexual desire may be a reflection of high sex drive in another.
Men and women have different levels of sexual responsiveness and desire. For men, they tend to get more aroused psychologically compared to women. More so, their sexual desire is highly tied to this psychological arousal. For women, their sexual appetite is highly based on the situation and psychological state. It is mostly prejudiced by the quality of the relationship with their partners plus how they feel about their body. Also, women often get sexual desire after being aroused genitally in what needs a longer foreplay period.
What Qualifies to Be Low Sexual Desire?
The desire and amount of sex considered healthy depend on an individual. Various reasons contribute to the change in sexual desire. The decreased sexual drive can cause distress but not always. Scientists and clinicians are working on how to categories problems linked with decreased sexual drive and whether there are medical treatment and psychological approaches that are efficient in easing the problems. The major part of these studies centers on the difference between sexual desire and arousal in men and women.
Symptoms of Low Sexual Drive
Lack of sexual desire is manifested by a partner lack of response to sexual activity. Some of the symptoms of the reduced sexual drive include;
• the Reduced level of sexual interest
• Erectile dysfunction
• Sexual arousal disorder
• Inhibited sexual performance by anxiety
• Lack of sexual fantasies
• Repeated lack of desire
Causes of Low Sexual Desire
Laboratory and medical tests do not often show low sex desire. In this case, you should rule out the physical changes such as variations in endocrine hormones. Depression is one of the major psychological cause of low sex appetite. Other significant causes include fatigue, stress, and low body esteem. In most relationships, loss of libido may be caused by bitterness and anger to a partner for his or her ignorance, critical or excessively dominant. More so, people who have been sexually abused in the past may inhibit low sexual desire in the future.
Treatment of Low Libido
One of the best and effective treatments for the reduced sexual desire for either a man or a woman is through counseling. This way, they can open up about their hidden resentments, interpersonal barriers to their feelings and resolve the conflicts between them. More so, the use of psychological therapies to combat anxiety is a perfect treatment as it relieves anxiety without affecting libido as it is the case with most psychoactive drugs. Magical pills cannot restore women sexual desire nor are they available. The best way is teaching men and women on how to arouse a woman by connecting psychological arousal and bodily sensations. For men, low testosterone levels are a major cause of low sexual desire and treatment with testosterone supplement will be useful in restoring the sexual appetite.
Sexual Drive in Men
Sexual appetite in men is believed to biological as compared to women. The fact that it is biologically driven, loss of sexual desire is not common in men. Problems of low sexual drive in men are often as a result of too much alcohol consumption, medical conditions, stress, and medications. It has been reported that pornography causes low libido while studies indicate that it has some positive and negative effects on men’s sexual desire.
Sexual Drive in Women
As previously indicated, sexual appetite in women is more complicated than in men. It is more about the state of their hormones, their feelings towards themselves and their partners, occurrences of their lives and other factors such as techniques of lovemaking by their partners. This makes the female sexual desire to be multifactorial and hence more challenging to treat. More so, with females having a general lower sexual desire than males, a further lower sexual desire in women may be worse in a relationship.
The Impacts of Age on Libido
Aging comes with aa declined sexual desire and function such as erectile dysfunction and low libido. Various factors including comfort with your sexuality, individual interest in sexual activities, mental and physical health, and intimate relationship status determine the level of sexual desire maintained over time. Myths and other negative cultural attitudes may affect the search for increased libido in older men and women. These problems are treatable through appropriate methods.
