Low Libido Isn’t Always What You Think

Issue Thirteen: Desire Is a Language — Listen

Two women. Two very different lives.

But both came to me with the same story — or at least, what they thought was the same story:

“I don’t feel like having sex anymore.”

They had both tried to fix it.

They’d read the articles, made the effort, scheduled “date nights.”

They’d tried to think their way out of it.

But desire did not return.

For one woman, it began after childbirth.

A few years postpartum, her body still tensed at the thought of sex.

She felt frustrated — she wanted connection —

but every time her husband reached out, even for a hug,

her body tightened before she could think.

She’d tried everything the advice columns recommend:

date nights, lingerie, intimacy apps…

but nothing worked.

Each attempt only made her feel more broken, more resentful, more disconnected.

Then, one afternoon in session, she said something she hadn’t thought was relevant.

“Before kids, we’d get drunk, party… That’s how we had sex. It was fun, I guess. But now I can’t imagine going back there. I don’t even like who I was in those moments.”

Something in me paused.

“It sounds like your body is protecting you from going back to a version of sexuality that no longer feels safe or true.”

She went still.

Not in confusion — in recognition.

What she thought was dysfunction was in fact protection.

Her body wasn’t rejecting sex.

It was rejecting the only version of sex she had ever known — one that no longer honoured her truth and the new version of her. 

From there, the work wasn’t about forcing desire back.

It was about reimagining what eroticism could be.

We started to explore sensuality not as performance, but as presence — how to feel alive without needing to perform intimacy. 

The other woman was in perimenopause. She was on hormone replacement therapy, doing everything she could think of.

But desire still hadn’t returned.

When we looked closer, something deeper surfaced.

Two years earlier, her husband had lied about smoking — something she cared deeply about.

He denied it until she found proof.

They had “moved on,” but something in her hadn’t.

The lie had lodged itself in her body like a splinter.

And though her mind said it’s fine, we’re past it, her body remembered that moment of betrayal — the rupture in safety, the loss of trust.

Desire, after all, thrives on psychological safety.

Intimacy, at its core, is the willingness to be seen — to share vulnerability.

And when safety is shaken, desire retreats.

In both stories, what seemed like “low libido” wasn’t a problem to be fixed.

It was communication — 

a message from the body saying:

“Something here doesn’t feel safe.”

When we finally listen — with curiosity rather than judgment —

things shift.

Lack of desire stops being an enemy.

It becomes information.

It becomes language.

We can stop treating our bodies as obstacles

and start seeing them as allies.

Because the body is always speaking.

Sometimes it whispers through tension.

Sometimes it shouts through resistance.

But always, it’s asking to be listened to.

And when we listen — when we stop forcing and start understanding — the relationship changes.

Desire returns not as obligation or performance, but as a living, breathing dialogue — one that moves with safety, honesty, and self-trust.

If your body has been saying “no,”

maybe it’s not broken.

Maybe it’s communicating.

And maybe the invitation isn’t to push harder,

but to listen deeper.