Have you ever been up against it work, and almost not even realised it when your partner started ‘making moves’ because you’re still so engrossed in everything else that’s hitting the fan in your life? You’re not alone. Sexologist Chantelle Otten knows there is a serious connection between sex and stress, and it’s about time we faced up to it (and learnt how to address it with our partners).
Sexologist Chantelle Otten Reveals Impact Of Stress On Our Libido
Stress and sex don’t mix. When life’s good we have much more room to be explorative and accepting of our central selves and of our bodies. There’s also much more room for us to make sex and sexuality a priority in our lives.
Since Covid, I’ve seen a huge spike in people coming to sex therapy, but also people dropping out because they can’t afford it. We are going through this serious swinging motion where we all need help but don’t all have the luxury of time, money and space in our lives to be able to undertake those self-care practices.
It’s important to distinguish between sexual disinterest and experiencing a lack of pleasure from sex. They are completely different concerns. Lack of pleasure is a difficulty experiencing pleasure or an orgasm or even any sensory experience at all. Whereas low desire is a persistent lack of sexual interest or desire.
Having a lack of sexual desire doesn’t necessarily mean you have a disorder. It’s important to recognise that we’re all going to experience low sexual desire at some point in our lives, and that’s going to impact all of us. We have to normalise these things because by labelling them as a disorder, you can tend to pathologise, when it’s not only very normal to have low desire but it’s also becoming much more common.
I had a patient who was in a long-term relationship and she was worried that she had lost interest in sex after working with victims of sexual assault.
This patient was harbouring a lot of emotion that had been brought on by a huge amount of stress and trauma that was passed through her work. I understood this quite well. Sometimes when you handle complex cases through your work, you can tend to take that out on yourself and also on the people you love.
Control can play into low sexual desire in different ways. When you are dealing with stress, you can’t be free or vulnerable because you are keeping a tight control over your emotions. You have to be so open to let someone in during sex. And sometimes you just don’t feel like you have the capacity to do that. We can all relate to that.
In addition to stress, there’s many things that can lead to low desire at the moment, including money and health problems. Partners might also have something to do with it, but it’s important to look inwards first before we project that onto another person.
If you feel that there is sexual disinterest from your partner, first and foremost you need to consider how you are going to navigate a conversation. Often those conversations can
come out in a very frustrated way that doesn’t really get us anywhere.
Instead you need to come from a very gentle, soft place outside of the bedroom. A good place to start is by simply saying, “Hey, I’ve really noticed that you’re quite withdrawn sexually recently, and I just wanted to make sure you’re OK.”
You can stream Sex Therapy: Sessions with Chantelle Otten on Audible now.
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