Why do you think sexual desire declines with time for many married women? This is the million dollar question, and one on the minds of researchers, drug companies, psychotherapists (even Ive written a book about it!), gynecologists, and all of the best friends who offer shoulders to cry on. While both men and women report a general decline in sexual satisfaction as a relationship ages, women still struggle the most with desire issues. And in a culture that seems to only increasingly value sexual intimacy, this is a mystery we want to solve. Several sex researchers recently decided to do something novel -and extraordinarily intelligent. They went to the source, and asked women themselves why their desire dissipated over time. And here is what they learned.
After confidentially interviewing 19 women for about two and a half hours each, taping and then transcribing the interviews (yes these are some devoted clinicians!), researchers identified three core themes in their data. That is, women repeatedly offered three basic explanations for why their desire was low. It is important to note that the majority of these women spoke highly of their husbands and their marriages they generally didnt attribute their desire problems to emotional issues inherent in their intimate connection, or a poor choice of husband. Instead, this is what they said. Reason number one related to the institutionalization of the relationship. More specifically, women felt that the act of getting married took much of the erotic spark out of the relationship. They felt that sex became overly accessible and it lost its excitement and appeal. Reason number two was described as over-familiarity. This consisted of the rote and predictable patterns of making love that evolve in a relationship as time passes, and a loss of romance between lovers. For many women, the art of making love was reduced to sex as it became more familiar. Finally, reason number three encompassed de-sexualized roles. That is, women felt like their other roles in life, most particularly that of mother, were discordant with a passionate self-image. Women described that their other roles made it harder and harder for them to feel sexy, desirable, and desirous of their partner.
