Let’s talk about the L-word: ‘I think more Irish women than not are struggling with libido and desire’
Irish women are no longer afraid to ask for what they want in the bedroom, but talking about the ebbs and flows of our libidos is a relatively new conversation
'I certainly have noticed a huge amount of women starting therapy to understand how to really connect in with their sexual self,' says psychotherapist Orlagh Reid
'A lot of women don’t orgasm with penetrative sex' - Aoife Harvey, a chartered physiotherapist who specialises in women’s health.
'People tend to come to me when there’s an issue within the relationship dynamic' - psychosexual/relationship therapist Aoife Drury
Characters like Samantha Jones from Sex and the City empowered a new generation of women to be outspoken about their sexual desires
'I certainly have noticed a huge amount of women starting therapy to understand how to really connect in with their sexual self,' says psychotherapist Orlagh Reid
As a GP nurse in South Co Dublin, Samantha* has seen both ends of the spectrum when it comes to women and sexual desire.
“You have the teenage girls who come in to get fitted for [contraceptive] devices and they’re usually asking, ‘How soon can I have sex?’” she says. “And then, on the other hand, you have older women coming in after a procedure like a hysterectomy, and they’re more inclined to say things like, ‘I think I’ll just tell him I’ve to wait a few more weeks [than is standard] before I’m able to have sex.’”
Wherever an individual lies on the (fairly wide) spectrum of female desire, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s become a red-button topic. For Irish women of a certain age, and after a lifetime of below-par sex education and few cultural cues, flagging desire levels is something many of them only feel comfortable addressing now.
“I certainly have noticed a huge amount of women starting therapy to understand how to really connect in with their sexual self. The women I work with are [usually] in their forties, fifties and even sixties, and they’re coming to a stage in life where they can focus more on the sexual part of themselves,” says Orlagh Reid, a psychotherapist who specialises in sexology, intimacy and sexual wellbeing. “Their children are grown up, and they are no longer so consumed by the mothering or motherhood role, and they have a little bit more space to turn their attention inwards and reconnect with being feminine or sexual again.
A lot of women don’t orgasm with penetrative sex, and look, I suppose if men didn’t ever orgasm when they were having sex, they might not want to have it as much
“For a lot of these women, it’s not about reclaiming their sexuality so much as finding it for the very first time. I think a lot of women have identified that their attitude toward sex and sexuality has been tarnished, or comes with a lot of shame, and little understanding of sensuality and pleasure.”
Characters like Samantha Jones from Sex and the City empowered a new generation of women to be outspoken about their sexual desires
The generation of Irish women who were handed a sexual script by the likes of Sex And The City were more ready to be unapologetically, demonstrably sexual. The generation beyond that again have travelled fairly comfortably in this jet stream. Irish women embraced the sex-positivity movement and owning their sexuality, and are more comfortable than ever asking for what they want or need in the bedroom. Research by victoriamilan.com found that 75pc of Irish women reported having ‘high’ sex drives. But the idea that this desire might just ebb away, owing to any number of life factors, has probably remained the last sexual taboo. But it’s a conversation we are finally starting to get more comfortable with.
In the 1990s and Noughties, Irish women were given a sort of permission to be unapologetically sexual, and we took that opportunity with both hands. We have long had a singular, complex relationship with the ‘Big O’ for many different reasons. Much like our British sisters, some of our formative lessons came from the likes of Just 17, More or Cosmopolitan magazine (or later, online porn). And there, the emphasis has so often been on how to give sexual pleasure, rather than receive it.
“I think there are more women than not struggling with libido and desire,” says Aoife Harvey, a chartered physiotherapist who specialises in women’s health. “There’s a shift in our roles and we’re finding it hard to be everything to everybody. Aside from that, a lot of women don’t orgasm with penetrative sex, and look, I suppose if men didn’t ever orgasm when they were having sex, they might not want to have it as much.”
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I’m of that aforesaid Sex And The City generation. Now in my mid-forties, I’m hardly at the point where I’m swinging out of the chandeliers with wanton abandon every night after the nine o’clock news. Primarily, I put it down to a natural, inexorable slide out of the honeymoon phase that most couples experience. The stresses and anxieties of the pandemic often meant that there was little mental or emotional bandwidth left for much else beyond that in the last two years. Raising young children is almost certain to take a sledgehammer to a woman’s sex life, between the sleeplessness, the lack of energy and, in my case, a year on medication for postnatal depression (a known side effect, as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) dampen the dopamine neurotransmitter, preventing the hormones that cause our bodies to respond to sex from transmitting their message to our brains).
Furtively, I checked in on the sexual appetites of my pals at similar life stages and in the same living situations as me. I wasn’t surprised to find that we were all more or less in the same boat; what’s more, we all felt that it was something that needed addressing. “It’s like going to the gym, isn’t it?” one friend said recently of sex with her husband. “I dread it beforehand, but once I’m actually doing it and finished with it, I’m actually really glad I went there.”
While we’ve come a long way when it comes to talking about how to have more/better sex, the ebbs and flows of our libidos is a relatively new conversation. I put the question as to why Irish women seem keen to address their waning desire to psychosexual/relationship therapist Aoife Drury.
'People tend to come to me when there’s an issue within the relationship dynamic' - psychosexual/relationship therapist Aoife Drury
“People tend to come to me when there’s an issue within the relationship dynamic, so they may actually be fine with their own desire for [sex], but there’s a desire discrepancy between the couple,” she says. “If a partner has the same libido as them and is desiring sex as much or as little as the other person, that tends to be okay. And it tends to be less likely that people come to me with low-desire libido when they’re single.”
In fact, a whole industry has grown up around the idea that women of all ages are finally addressing their own libidinous concerns. Vella Women’s Pleasure Serum (which is designed to relax the vaginal and clitoral smooth muscle tissue, to boost sexual pleasure) is currently sold out on boots.ie. The serum was created by Dr Harin Padma-Nathan, a sex researcher involved in developing Viagra for men in the 1990s.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop has launched its DTF supplement, formulated to “support women’s sexual desire, arousal or mood” (a bargain at $55). It’s just one of a raft of supplements, aphrodisiac essential oils and gadgets on the market which promise to reignite the sexual spark for women. Those with deep-enough pockets can even take a trip to the Six Senses Spa in Ibiza and partake in the Pleasure Principles Retreat, designed for women who want to connect to their libidos with a programme of erotica, dance and journaling.
Shawna Scott, owner of Sex Siopa and sexual health/wellness shop BodyGrá, has noticed an uptick in physiotherapists in Ireland looking for products to recommend to their clients, many of whom are in the post-partum period.
“Firstly, I think it’s important to point out that whether you’re male, female or non-binary, you will experience low desire at some point in your life,” she says. “The thing is, we’re only really talking about it now. I think a lot of women have gone through events like cancer or childbirth, and this hasn’t really ever been approached in a holistic way and talking about how it affects their sex life, or how they feel about their bodies.”
Elsewhere, Irish sex expert Jenny Keane has offered a number of sellout Holistic Sex Education workshops since 2016, often online (jennykeane.com). Last year, Keane told me that the end goal of her workshops is “giving yourself permission to reach a state of connection, rather than a state of achievement. We’re moving from the idea of performance to something simpler, like appreciation.
“When I was doing public talks about sex, I’d always get an older woman who would hang back for a bit, then approach me and ask, ‘Can I talk to you about something?’ It was guaranteed at every public talk. They would often tell me that they’d never spoken to anyone about the stuff, but they knew that, because they were in a safe space, they weren’t going to be judged. We definitely have a history of women being shamed for speaking about their sex lives, but happily, I think we’re getting better at it.”
In 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration also gave its seal of approval to ‘female Viagra’, or Flibanserin, often sold under the trade name Addyi. Pharma giant Boehringer Ingelheim was the first to start developing Flibanserin back in 2006, when an antidepressant drug actually increased libido instead of suppressing it, a common side effect for antidepressants. It’s not yet licensed for use in Ireland, and there’s no indication on the Health Products Regulatory Authority’s website on when/if it might be. Yet despite the approval of the drug in the US being described as a landmark moment for women’s health, many experts believe that it’s not the silver bullet that it’s purported to be.
“No one has ever come to me saying they want to try something like that but I wouldn’t be advocating for those, because the research around female Viagra is really non-existent,” says Drury.
“We don’t come across it much this side of the Atlantic,” agrees Loretta Dignam, founder of The Menopause Hub. “Maybe doctors are having conversations, but I don’t hear talk of ‘female Viagra’ coming back from anybody I work with.”
Yet for all the encouraging growth within the female libido industry globally, it has its work cut out of it catching up with nature and the inexorable march of time. The menopause is often linked to waning sex drives among women. Dignam has been listening to the issues, anxieties and barely whispered truths of middle-aged women at The Menopause Hub for years.
“This woman, God love her, she’d been through the mill. She told me, ‘I’d rather drink a cup of cold sick than have sex with my husband,’” Dignam recalls. “And it’s more than just a physical thing, and it’s more than just an emotional thing. It’s a combination of things. If menopause is talked about as a puberty in reverse, and puberty is when the hormones are rushing around and you’re interested from a physiological and emotional perspective about sex, when you get to this age, it’s happening the other way around.”
Menopause, with its myriad side effects, is just one reason for a drop in female libido. Pelvic floor disorders/dysfunction (thought to affect one in three women) and birth trauma (thought to affect around 1,800 women in Ireland yearly) can also take a toll.
'A lot of women don’t orgasm with penetrative sex' - Aoife Harvey, a chartered physiotherapist who specialises in women’s health.
“Any pelvic pain will have an effect on someone’s sex life because there tends to be an anticipation of pain,” explains Drury. “Any type of trauma will almost inevitably affect how you feel about yourself, and therefore how you feel about yourself sexually.”
Sexologist Emily Power-Smith adds, “I remember reading a survey a few years ago, and when asked what the definition of good sex was, 40pc of women said, ‘If it doesn’t hurt, it’s good sex.’ The first thing I do is help a woman figure out why she isn’t craving sex. And that’s often really revolutionary for her, to give her the time and space to understand and accept herself.”
New mothers also commonly experience a loss of libido. “Very few new mums would have the same level of sex drive as before,” says Harvey. “It’s not necessarily a physical thing or a psychological thing, but a stress thing or a sleep thing. They tend to put it all down to, ‘I’m exhausted. My focus is on my baby and I just couldn’t think of it.’ Hormones also have a huge part to play, especially in breastfeeding. Often we will suggest vaginal oestrogen if someone’s really struggling, but most women I tell that to go, ‘Oh that’s great to know but I don’t really want to have sex, so that’s fine.’”
As for sleeplessness and stress, the likes of which few have escaped in the last couple of years?
“We look at the impact of cortisol and adrenaline, the former being the stress hormone that’s released when our antennae are on high alert,” says Drury. “If we’re in the flight-or-fight moments or there are stress or worries or concerns that are going on, it just impacts how we’re able to relax, and how we’re able to engage with the things or activities that release serotonin and dopamine.”
While menopause is a major factor in lower female desire, this is not a phenomenon reserved exclusively for middle-aged women, or new mums.
“Women are coming into me and saying that their libido is impacted by perimenopause and menopause, but they often do want to continue to have sexual relationships. They know that sex can be a bit like the glue that holds a relationship together and they don’t want to lose that. It’s definitely a myth that older women aren’t interested in sex beyond a certain age,” says Dignam.
Women have long been shamed for not being perfect; the difference now is social media. Women get these messages that to be good in bed, they have to have the perfect body
“It’s never really talked about that younger women can experience lower libido — the pill can play havoc with hormonal levels and thereby cause havoc with our ability to become aroused or our ability to orgasm,” says Power-Smith.
“Hormones are a big thing for younger women, not just because of the pill but because of their diet and exercise, and belly fat causes extra production of oestrogen,” she says. “Women have long been shamed for not being perfect; the difference now is social media. Women get these messages that to be good in bed, they have to have the perfect body, make the right noises in bed and basically be up for a standard set of activities. What this does, rather than emancipate people, it makes them feel more under pressure and more inadequate.
“And all of this feeds into lowering libido. You won’t want to take your clothes off if you feel your partner is going to judge you as harshly as you judge yourself.”
It does beg the question: while myriad physical factors are known to affect desire levels, how important a factor is psychology? And specifically, that element of self-consciousness?
'I certainly have noticed a huge amount of women starting therapy to understand how to really connect in with their sexual self,' says psychotherapist Orlagh Reid
'I certainly have noticed a huge amount of women starting therapy to understand how to really connect in with their sexual self,' says psychotherapist Orlagh Reid
Recent research undertaken by Imperial College London identified a hormone thought to help women feel less self-conscious during sex. Kisspeptin, also referred to as ‘Viagra of the mind’, claims to reduce overthinking and performance anxiety, and help women find their husbands more attractive.
It’s safe to assume that the women who have sought treatment for their waning levels of sexual desire aren’t alone. In the US, statistics indicate that around 43pc of women suffer from reduced sexual desire. The Society for Women’s Health Research notes that around one in 10 women have Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), a condition that is more sustained and prolonged than a mere ‘dry’ spell.
Some US reports put the figure at closer to 27pc of premenopausal women and 53pc of menopausal women. And perhaps no wonder — when oestrogen levels drop, it can lead to vaginal pain and sensitivity, which can affect libido.
Another thing that has hampered this conversation in the past are the cultural myths and misconceptions around female desire, some of which have stuck around for too long.
“One thing I hear, and weirdly I still get this a lot with [clients of] all ages, is that only nasty, dirty girls have libidos,” Power-Smith tells me. “The other thing I’ve heard is that nice girls don’t masturbate, and things like, ‘He should just know how to give me pleasure. I shouldn’t have to tell him.’”
“I think we’re starting to understand that there’s so much more mental and emotional work that needs to be done in this regard,” Sex Siopa’s Scott says. “You can’t just throw a pill at it. My one-size-fits-all answer for everything is to talk, talk, talk. And honestly, the people who come to me looking for those types of products, especially our male partners, are like, ‘My partner doesn’t want to sleep with me. Is there a pill for that?’ I’m like, ‘Oh man, you have so much more work ahead of you than you think.’”
