Searching For Desire
The New York Times has a lengthy article about the frenzied search for a pill to increase female sexual desire. It follows the clinical trials of a drug called Lybrido, which are taking place at the Center for Sexual Medicine at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore. Lybrido targets women who were happy with their sex drives in the past, but have noticed a sharp decrease that can’t be explained by other factors such as menopause, antidepressants, or health issues. It’s difficult to pin down how many women suffer from decreased arousal (partially in fact because it’s so complicated to define decreased arousal), but experts think it’s between 10-30% of women aged 20-60.
While researchers have actually tested Viagra with women, drugs like Lybrido are interesting because they aim to affect the brain and the psyche rather than the body. Viagra creates physical changes that allow men to get and maintain erections, but hasn’t concretely been proven to have a direct effect on men’s levels of desire. With women, who don’t have penises that need to get erect, medication needs to be targeted to get them to want to have sex, not just be able to have sex.
The Times article goes to great lengths in describing a number of different theoretical frameworks for explaining why women seem to experience greater drops in their sex drives than men do. Author Daniel Berger writes, “One theory holds that it’s a challenge for both sexes to maintain passion over the long-term because it’s threatening to desire the same person from whom we seek security and true understanding. It leaves us feeling too vulnerable.” Another theory, propagated by couples therapist Esther Perel, argues that there isn’t enough distance and independence in modern day couples to sustain passion. She quotes, “ ‘Many couples confuse love with merging,” she writes. “This mix-up is a bad omen for sex. To sustain élan toward the other, there must be a synapse to cross. Eroticism requires distance.’ ” Berger also covers evolutionary psychology, which states that men are naturally set up to experience sexual desire throughout the course of their lives because their evolutionary goal is to propagate their DNA as far as possible. They’re helped along by the fact that it doesn’t require as many resources for men to create offspring – they’re not the ones who get pregnant and they don’t have to be around to raise the child. Women, on the other hand, are only looking for one quality partner, and don’t have the similar drive to spread their DNA as far and as wide as possible. Once they have a child, they have no motivation to keep engaging in intimacy.
The article covers the stories of several women who suffer from low libido. One woman shares the story of her passionate courtship with her now-husband. She was attracted to him immediately, and felt desire for him through the early stages of their relationship. As the years passed, she started to notice her sex drive dwindling down to nothing. She started going to great lengths to avoid sex. Berger writes, “Around once a week, her husband tried to reach through the invisible barriers she built — the going up to bed early, the intense concentration on a book, the hoping he was too tired to want anything but sleep.” Like many other women, she’s desperate for a cure. “ ‘They’ve got all these meds for all these other psychiatric issues,’ she said… ‘Something’s got to pop up that can help with this. Right? Right?’ ” Her sentiment is echoed by Berger, who writes, “How much easier it would be if we could solve the insoluble by getting a prescription, stopping off at the drugstore and swallowing a pill.”
Female sexuality is obviously an incredibly complicated topic, and while it may be tempting to try to draw conclusions or search for solutions for women as a whole, I’ve found that the individual variations in each woman’s life are far more important than we tend to give them credit for. The author breezes through a brief mention of the “to-do lists,” “lack of time,” and “demands of the kids”, but these factors have huge effects on women’s levels of desire. While there absolutely may be sexual disorders that are completely unconnected to women’s relationship issues, children, work lives, or psyches, much of the problem stems from these very things we are so quick to ignore. Yes, sometimes it would be fantastic to just have a pill to swallow to make the problem go away. But a quick fix bypasses the opportunity to learn new ways of working with the problems that will inevitably keep popping up throughout the course of your life and relationships. A pill might be able to someday affect your level of desire, but it won’t be able to change all of the distractions that have prevented you from desiring sex in the first place. A pill won’t make your kids need less of your time. It won’t make your partner start putting more effort and romance into your sex life. It won’t make your job less stressful. It won’t give you more alone time.
The perfect illustration of my point is vacation sex. Think back to the last time you and a partner went on a romantic vacation alone. It may have been ages ago, but odds are that you had the best sex of your life while you were on vacation. And how could you not – if it’s a good vacation, there are no kids, jobs, friends, families, errands, deadlines, or stresses to get in the way of you and your partner slowing down and connecting with each other. The key to working with sexual problems is trying to recreate that sort of relaxation and intimacy on an everyday basis. The very act of searching for this kind of peace and balance is what makes life meaningful. The difficulties in our lives – whether they be sexual or not – are obviously painful, but they are also tremendous opportunity for growth, wisdom, and exploration. That is, if we can allow them to be.