Welcome to Healthyish. Thank you for joining us today on this Body and Soul podcast. I am your host, Felicity Halle. Now, mismatched libidos is the topic, so sexologist Lily Brown gets asked about a lot today. She joins us via our online studio to discuss factors that might be dampening your libido and how to manage the mismatched issue with your partner. Yes, folks, this week we are focusing on all things sex and relationships, picking apart our Body and Soul twenty twenty four Sex Census.
Now make sure you listening to our sister podcast, Extra healthy Ish, where Lily talks about how to get out of your head and into foreplay or she calls it out. Of course you can catch that wherever we get your podcasts. Really is so nice to have you on Healthyish. Thank you for joining us today. What a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Felicity and I have to say, listeners, we both turned up in really bright colors, so for me, that's a sign that the warm weather is coming.
Oh yeah, spring is on the horizon, and as somebody who comes alive in the spring summer months, I'm very much looking forward.
To that you and me both, which is probably why we're wearing the brighter into bright pink. But talk to us about what you hear. You know what's concerning you when it comes to well your clients and people's concerns around mismatched libidos.
Mismatched libido and concerns around libido or desire are probably one of the biggest concerns I hear both from individuals and couples in my practice, and a lot of what I've been seeing in the last six to twelve months is people presenting with low libido and mismatched libido, so
they have very little interest or desire for sex. And at the same time as all of these beautiful people that I'm speaking to experiencing low desire or mismatched desire, there's also a craving for more connection, more presence, and more pleasure both in the bedroom and beyond. And interestingly, as we're uncovering this, stress is one of the biggest things that is coming up and getting in the way have people been able to feel desire and been able
to access pleasure. Stress is one of the biggest libido killers and dampens your desire so much. Don't underestimate how much of an impact that high stress levels can have on your desire. And so while they're craving more connection and presence and pleasure, a lot of them, what I'm observing is that they're a bit stuck in that they know that they want this and there's more to be experienced, but they've just got low or no libido.
It's really interesting hearing that from you, because we talk a lot on this podcast about, you know, how the world is just getting busier and how the requirements on our time time. It just you know, even since the pandemic finished, we thought it was going to slow down a bit, but in fact it's tripled and quadrupled, and so many of us had just at that point of you know, teetering between being stressed and burnout, and we don't often think about the role this has on our libido completely.
The world that we live in is constantly moving at breakneck speed. And there's an amazing sexuality educator, Euphenia Russell, and they say, we're experience, been on the podcast before, incredible, They're incredible. And one of the things Euphenea says is that we're experiencing a crisis of pace, and I think that is absolutely true. I know I hear it from my clients, my friends, my colleagues. Everyone is feeling exactly as you said, teetering on that edge of burnout almost
all of the time. And not only is that really harmful to our nervous system in general and our capacity to enjoy life and prioritize pleasure and the things that feel good outside of a sexual context. But that of course comes into the bedroom with us.
Talk to us about some other things that might affect a libido.
So many things affect our desire or our libedo. It is almost an endless list, and so it's essential to recognize firstly that changes in desire or libido are a normal part of the human experience. Over the course of your life and realistically, over the course of a week, your desire levels will ebb and flow based on what you're being exposed to, what stimulus, what stresses, and so on, and so we can categorize them in a few ways.
So there's physical things like health conditions. Certain medications, for example, antidepressants can lower your desire levels, what your hormones are doing. So we're out in your cycle, whether your perimenopausal or menopausal, what your testosterone levels are doing. So there's lots of physical things that can affect our desire, and tho's psychological things. So we've just mentioned stress. Mental health more broadly is a really important one. If you're feeling anxious, stress depressed,
it's really hard to feel turned on. It's also additional things like body image or trauma history that can impact on desire. And there's relational things as well, which I think are often forgotten, but they are a really big part of desire. If there is conflict in your relationship or things aren't feeling well between you and your partner, of course that's going to impact your desire. How the mental load is being handled within your relationship, what your
communication patterns are like. All of these things feed into desire. And then of course there's contextual things, and context is vital when it comes to desire, and really we need a context that is low stress, high trust, high affection, and explicitly erotic in order for our arousal and desire to thrive.
The other thing I will add in there is social media and time spent on devices. I think this came up a few years ago in a study I saw, but that for me can take its toll on. And I love how you're calling it desire rather than libido. It seems a bit more like you want to get in touch with your desire. You can identify that a bit more. Libido seems quite scientific in some ways.
Yeah, it does. And desire really refers to your wanting or your interest in sex. And I think when we reframe it in that way, it then becomes less pathologizing, and it allows us to be less judgmental of ourselves if we are experiencing low desire and instead get curious about, Okay, what is it that's impacting and influencing my desire at the moment? Is it? Have I had a really stressful few weeks at work? Have I been fighting with my partner more than usual? Am I dealing with some hormonal
issues or some health issues right now? And just that reframe, I think, can help reduce a lot of pressure that we feel about trying to have our libido or our desire work in a certain way. Right A big thing that I hear with my clients is, oh, am I am I normal? Am I broken? Is it normal to
not want sex very often? Is it normal to want sex every day, and there's no such thing as normal, really, it's what's normal to you, and even your libido or desire baseline, as we've just discussed, felicity will change based on all of these different contextual elements that are in the picture.
How do we navigate it if you're in a partnership and you've got to mismatched levels of desire.
Communication is obviously going to be my first year, and I know that we hear it all the time. Communication is key, but we need to actually speak about it with our partners because often what I see in my practice is people feeling really embarrassed and ashamed and they don't want to speak to their pasts about it. But when we do speak about it, we're able to offload some of that shame and step into a place of connection and understanding with our partner. And then after we've
discussed what's going on, we're then able to get creative. So, if you are the lower libido partner or the lower desire partner, what would make you feel like sex more often or what would be helpful to get you in the mood. I think a big thing that people neglect is the level of emotional connection that's present in your relationship. For most of us, feeling emotionally connected and attuned to
our partner is really important for desire to thrive. And so focusing on things that build non sexual intimacy or that foster a sense of connection or make you feel close to your partner is really important to create a context where desire can come forth. And I think in addition to that, it's also about getting creative about what's possible with our partner. And so maybe that doesn't mean having penetrative right, That's not the only thing that we
can do. What about essential massage? What about a foot rub? What about taking a shower or a bath together, Things that are a bit slower paced and tend to have less pressure attached than thinking, all right, I need to get in the mood for sex.
Great advice, Lily, Thank you for coming unhealthy my pleasure.
Thanks Felicity.
Put the phone down and get into your pleasure. How often do you get sacked up on the phone when perhaps you could be spending more time participating and enjoying your own pleasure. Anyway, if you are interested in our sex sensus, I will leave link to it in the show notes. If you did enjoy this podcast this episode, tell us rate and review it. Of course, you can subscribe as well anything else you know where to go Body insoul dot com, dot you for US and socials.
Grob Our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow. Stay healthy,