Understanding a Woman’s Sex Drive

Whether you’re married or not, it’s helpful to know and understand all of the things that contribute to a woman’s sex drive. A lot of women and men aren’t aware of what’s going on in women’s emotions and bodies surrounding sex and because of that, they aren’t empowered. 

Several things can impact a woman’s sex drive:

1. Emotional connection with your spouse

2. Your beliefs about sex

3. Previous good or bad experiences

4. Seasons of life

5. What you were taught about sex

6. Emotions – depression, anxiety, self-hatred, shame, joy, love, acceptance, peace

7. Hormones

We must first start with the core value that sex is about connection, intimacy, and love. Sex is designed to be a safe place where both people are present and vulnerably giving themselves to each other. If sex is a beautiful part of connection with your spouse and not just about orgasming, even when your body, hormonally, may not want sex, your heart and emotions can still desire it. This has been true for me when my hormones are not ready to go my heart still desires to feel the closeness that sex brings.

Hormones dramatically affect your sexuality. When I preach about sex, I always make sure to include talking about hormones because it’s something that dramatically affects your sexuality that not everyone pays attention to. Hormones are one of the drivers of sexuality and as a woman, your hormones are always changing. Your hormones can change every 7-10 years and each month they also fluctuate. Knowing how your body works can help you understand your sex life. I have found that there are parts of my hormone cycle where my body is so excited to engage in sex and can easily orgasm. There are other parts of my cycle where I feel absolutely no sex drive and I can’t orgasm. Like I’ve mentioned above, there are so many things that affect your sex drive. Because I have self-awareness about my body I am aware that sometimes even when everything else is aligned my hormones are just not there. There can be times in sex where you know you won’t be able to orgasm and that’s okay! Because it’s just hormonal, you don’t need to think “my husband doesn’t please me” “there’s something wrong in our sex life” or “he doesn’t know what to do”. Your body simply may not be producing enough hormones to help you get there. 

Hormones impact the level and intensity of your sex drive. Some days when my husband kisses me, I feel nothing, and other days all of my hormones are ready to go. It’s a hormonal reaction. When I’m ovulating, I want sex and I want it now. If he doesn’t want sex when I’m ovulating, I have a much harder time with it than any other time of the month because there are so many hormones going through my body. Do you struggle with your sex drive maybe once a month? That’s your body. You don’t have a lust issue, your body is telling you “I need to make a baby right now.” Sometimes my husband will do things in foreplay and it will feel amazing and then another time of the month he will do the same thing again and I will feel nothing or not like it. He thinks he’s doing something wrong, but it just doesn’t feel good. This is the mystery of hormones. 

Sex has to be relational. The beauty I find in all of this is that sex has to be relational instead of just having one trick that works every single time. It’s the same as viewing God in the context of being relational or just a set of rules to follow. In religion, people want rules and systems so they don’t have to be present. Whereas in sex because our bodies don’t work the same way every day, we both have to be present and tune in. We have to figure out what’s going on in our bodies, it has to be a discovery process every day. Men can either look at it as “I’m never going to figure it out” or can look at it as an exciting mystery that they get to unfold over and over again. 

A huge majority of sex issues is communication. Women need to know their bodies so that they can give their husband’s maps – to help their husbands understand what feels good, where and when. Men often feel like they don’t have maps they need to navigate women. Women often say, “If I need to give you a map, then you don’t love me, you don’t care about me, and it’s not romantic.” If a woman always expects that her husband should always know how to please her, she’s going to be disappointed, he’s going to feel defeated and then also disappointed. Women think it takes the sexiness and romance away if you communicate what you want/don’t want but it’s completely the opposite. You have to get out of the mindset that it’s bad to communicate. Say, “Hey, that’s not feeling good, could you try this?” Give him some suggestions. Men, if your wife says that, do not go into a shame spiral. Do not shut down. Rather think “oh that’s awesome she’s trying to give me a roadmap to the treasure, that’s great.” 

No movie that shows a practical sex life. One of the biggest problems in sex is the hidden expectations of what sex should be like. In movies, they never show women’s hormones that affect their sexuality. They never show times when their sex drive is high or low or times when they need lubrication or don’t. This is another part of our body that responds hormonally in sex: the level of lubrication that we have. At certain parts of your cycle, you will naturally have more or less cervical fluid. Media tells you that when you’re wet, that means you’re turned on. Although that can be true, it’s also not always the reason. Lubrication is a huge part of your ovulation cycle. 

Pressure kills pleasure. If nothing he is doing is working, it may be because of your hormones, so shift to making it about him. When I chop onions, I tear up and the tears trigger a reaction in me where then I start to feel sad. The physical sensation of tears sparks an emotional reaction. The same can happen in sex, I can act more engaged than I feel. I’m not saying to fake orgasms, but I can choose to engage more than I feel. Often engaging like you are really into it can pull you into it. 

If you have a hard time with sex, you never get turned on, you used to have a great sex drive but then it stopped, we always recommend meeting with a counselor, there may be trigger’s or heart stuff going on. Also, it can be valuable to see a medical doctor and get your hormones tested to see if anything is off. As a sidenote, hormones, emotions, beliefs, etc can affect men’s sex drives as much as
they affect women’s sex drives.