Women Don’t Want to Have Sex

Now of course, that’s not all women. But over the years, I’ve worked with many couples where a cisgender female partner, in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship, has no interest or desire in sex. 

She’ll tell me, “I just don’t want it, it feels like another chore, I’d be fine if I never had sex again”. 

As I get to know her, I learn that, often, she has engaged in sex over many years because she believed that she had to. She’ll say, “Well, it’s my duty right? I’m supposed to have sex with my husband. If I don’t have sex, my partner gets grumpy and distant”. 

For these women, sex feels like a chore. Something has happened along their relationship lifespan where sex no longer feels enjoyable for them. They’re mearly checking a box, getting it over with, and moving on. Maybe that’s your story too. 

Why does sex no longer feel desirable for many women in long term relationships? 

How did sex become another job, or as I once read somewhere, “the third shift” of a woman’s day? 

Can women experience pleasurable sex after years of performing “duty sex”? 

Can a woman actually want sex after many years of feeling sexually shut down?

Is the goal of sex therapy to turn her sex volume up or to turn her partner’s sex volume down?

Below I share some thoughts on what can influence sexual desire for women along with healthy ways to address desire differences in a sexual system that feels inoperable. 

Three Phases of Relationships

When counseling women and couples on why sex feels like work, I reference the biological and anthropological research of author and researcher, Helen Fisher, Ph.D.. Teamed with neuroscientists, Fisher’s research helps us understand the patterns of passionate love. Her work points to a three-part framework that couples in long term relationships move through that ties directly to science. 

The Lust Phase

In the lust phase, you’re typically scanning the landscape for a mate. Driven by hormones, such as testosterone, a biological need to partner (think procreation, even if you don’t want kids) and a neurological need to connect, you scan the environment for potential partners. During this phase, you may have many different partners and/or relationships. Sex can feel abundant during this phase. 

The Romance Phase

After you’ve spent some time in the lust phase, you move into the romance phase. In this phase, you start to settle into one partner. Your brain releases lots of dopamine (think reward center of the brain). You stop scanning the environment, focus more on the bond of monagomy and become exclusive. You spend lots of time together, maybe even move in together and through lots of focus on each other, you cultivate an intimate bond. 

The Attachment Phase

In this phase, you commit. Many folks get married and start having children. Monogamy is solidified and while you may still focus on each other, you’re also focusing on your career, domestic life, child-rearing, extended families, money, health and your social lives.  

Sex is far easier in the lust and romantic phases of your relationship lifespan. During those phases, you still have all of your bonding brain chemicals firing off. You and your mate also tend to be filled with hope in your hearts as you plan for your futures and fantasize about potential married life together. 

But the attachment phase holds a heavy dose of responsibilities that if not shared equally, can leave any one partner feeling burdened. This is often reported by women who find that by the time they’ve ended their work day, attended to the kids and dealt with “the mental load” of life (planning the doctor appointments, birthday parties, teacher’s gift, playdates, etc.), they have nothing left for their partner. 

Some women report that if their partner could share more of the domestic and child rearing responsibilities equally, that this would decrease their own stress levels. In turn, with decreased stress, women develop increased capacity for sexual interest because it would no longer feel like “the third shift” of their day. 

Sex Education and the Culture of Marriage

It is unfortunate that most of the formal sex education we receive is devoid of any conversations about pleasure. The scripts in schools lean heavily into the biological side of sex education and pornography leans into the entertainment side of sex. This leaves most folks with little understanding of what actually makes sex a positive, pleasurable experience. 

The media culture, largely responsible for molding our sexual belief systems, tends to center male sexual pleasure over women’s enjoyment. Women receive messages that imply that they are “supposed” to be sexual, able to turn it on with any sexual advance. Men also receive unhealthy messages that can lead to performance anxiety and unhealthy definitions of masculinity.

For decades, sexual consent has been implicit and assumed within the legal act of marriage. That means that sexual intercourse was regarded as a spouse’s right.  In the United States, marital rape was finally recognized by law in all 50 states in 1993. Read that again. 

These cultural messages, of which there are many more, influence your sexual belief system and if you’re a woman, limit your ability to develop your own sexual agency. 

Her Body, Her Seasons

Another influence on sexual desire and arousal is a woman’s body evolution, which may not always match her partners. Factored into a woman’s sexual landscape is the impact of her menstrual cycle on her energy, mood and comfort. For some women, the impact of childbirth requires a physical recovery period beyond six weeks. Nursing mothers can exhaust their body’s touch tolerance.  Thyroid issues can propel hormonal fluctuations and general health issues. Symptoms related to peri-menopause and menopause can also feel like body betrayal or a deep sense of loss. Some of these experiences can even cause physical pain.

Your body moves through different seasons. It’s difficult for you to produce sunshine when you’re internally weathering a winter storm. 

Your sexual response is deeply connected to how you feel in your body. If you bypass what your body needs in order to sexually perform, your body can register this as a negative sexual experience, further shutting your sexual system down.

Steps Towards Restoring Sexual Agency

Agency refers to when someone feels they have control over something or that they have a say in what happens. 

It’s difficult for a woman to genuinely get excited about sex when it’s no longer for her. Some women grow up never knowing how to fully own their sexuality or their sexual pleasure. Others have felt ownership of their sexuality at certain points in life but not within the committed relationship.  When sex becomes a requirement to keep a partner happy, she might feel a loss of control. 

If this is your story, does this mean your sex life is doomed? Of course not. 

It does mean that you may need to put the emergency brake on sex for a little while until you can learn how to access your sense of sexual agency and empowerment. 

The Sexual Emergency Brake

Putting the emergency brake on sex means not having penetration of any kind, including intercourse. Period. Not typically forever but for awhile.

When I work with heterosexual couples, or women individually, we find ways to slowly nudge her sex volume up while also helping her partner to either dial his sex volume down a few notches, or to simply assume responsibility for his own sexual pleasure when needed. 

Together, we examine the parts of life that influence sexual desire for the woman. This can include things like her ability to practice self-care, levels of exhaustion, relationship to her body, sharing domestic responsibilities with her partner and overall stress reduction. We create space.

We also talk a lot about sex and help her remember the part of herself that once enjoyed feeling sexy and sexual with her partner. 

Very often, the partner who desires sex more doesn’t like the emergency brake. But if they can honor this phase with respect for the woman’s needs, the outcome is almost always a positive boost for the whole couple, not just one partner. 

This process helps the woman regain control of her sex life again, define what ultimately brings her sexual pleasure and empowers her to make healthy sexual decisions for herself, which now includes her terms. 

Sex Is Biological, Cultural, Personal and Relational

This article only covers a fraction of what can impact a woman’s sexual interest and desire. It also does not explore how similar dynamics can also show up in long term lesbian relationships, which in addition to these experiences, also can include such things as cultural stigmatization, past trauma around coming out, emotional intimacy superseding sexual intimacy and much more.

Many couples struggle to navigate the complexity of sex.

In this article, we’ve covered how sexual interest includes the physical body, it’s biological and neurological drives and it’s “changing seasons”. It also includes  cultural and media influences, personal experiences and of course, the sharing of sex in a relationship, which in a long-term relationship, travels through distinct phases.

There is often not only one reason a woman’s sexual system shuts down, but a lifetime of messages and experiences that influence her sexual interest.

In Summary

Even with the complexities that sex can present, you can find your way back to feeling interest and desire in sex again. With the right therapeutic guidance, you can learn to stop participating in a sex life that doesn’t work for you and start creating a sex life worth having.