The Libido Crash - is it an issue in the LS, and if not, why?

[Fundamental Law 2,885]

An article on women's sexual desire entitled "The Libido Crash" , the cause of the (apparent) decline and a conversation about medications that do not effectively "treat the condition" recently appeared in Aeon.

 

Is this less of an issue in the LS community? And if it is less of an issue, why?

 

• Is it because couples self-select for the LS (they do not have the lost libido problem in the first place)?
  

 

• Is it because they actively work together at keeping the sparks alive, and the LS is simply one of many expressions of that hard work (they also have and play with toys, also make time to date each other, also make the bedroom 'fantasy central', etc.) ? Or
  

 

• Is it the LS itself, which encourages play with different partners, that nourishes libido?
  

 

The answers may not be exclusive--more than one may apply--but we're interested in how others see this.

[kikonkrome 844]

I think people's libido's peak and wane through out their lives. Certainly true of any long term couple that get's into tens of years. Let's face it through that time one of you, if not both of you are going to get sick. It would be pretty easy to imagine/foresee our swinging coming to an abrupt end if one of us was pretty seriously ill. It also recently happened to some close friends of ours.

 

Baring illness there is also the self selective paradigm. Couple's that swing have high libido's, it would be pretty tough deny that. I know of married friends who certainly do not have as active a libido as my wife and myself. Just from how their described lives much less their described sex lives it's pretty obvious.

 

So in my mind the question is: is it because you are sexually active and adventurous they your libido stays high, or is your libido high that makes you become more sexually adventurous. I conferred with the wife on this and she was of the opinion it is a use it or lose it proposition. I am of the opposite side, you use it because your libido is high.

 

I will say this any sexual activity is going to be influenced by the relationship, real or imagined between the parties involved. If you have a crappy relationship with your partner your don't even want to sleep with them much less have sex with them. It also helps explain the trouble difficulties we all have with group dynamics. Therefore spending the time to have a 'date' night with your partner, or a little one on one time certainly contributes to a healthy libido.

 

Fun Post!!

[Fundamental Law 2,885]

Our view: while libido is uneven --- some have higher and some have lower, everyone has up and everyone has down times, the attention that each couple gives to keeping the marriage "hot" makes all he difference. That means creating time and space and context for desire. Participation in the LS is an expression of that decision.

[SW_PA_Couple 4,024]

JoAnn and I saw Doctor Helen Fisher of the Kinsey Institute give a lecture many years ago at the Chautauqua Institute in New York State. It was an inspiration for both of us. The lecture was not so much about libido as it was about love. I do not know if my interpretation was correct but it rings in my memory as "Love is a Chemical" and that this chemical balance needs continually to be maintained by flirtations and other expressions. In a way she made it sound to me like work. I think it is. But this work has its rewards.

 

It makes me wonder if libido is maintained the same way. I'm no doctor of medicine and I have conducted no research. Personal experience tells me it probably is. The aroma of the particular fragrance that my wife wears perks me in a way that no fragrance warn by any other woman does. The look on her face when I bring flowers home makes me desirous of her. We play this game that when I leave a dried bean in a little dish on the night stand she should be ready when I get home. Most of the times she is waiting naked at the top of the stairs when I come in the door having retained the thought all afternoon.

 

So, the short form of the story is that I am not really ready to venture an opinion on whether or not lifestyle activity is nurturing libido. But it's a definite maybe. I would need to make the connections on my mind that swing is a form of a flirtation and that love and libido connect to each other strongly.!

[kikonkrome 844]

We play this game that when I leave a dried bean in a little dish on the night stand she should be ready when I get home. Most of the times she is waiting naked at the top of the stairs when I come in the door having retained the thought all afternoon.

 

So, I get inside jokes, and expressions of affection. But, I gotto ask, a dried bean? For sex? Wut?? Can you share the story of that one? I am not saying we do not have similar inside games and expressions, just 'a dried bean'?

 

Now I am going to be leaving dried beans all over the house.

[Glida 250]

I used to think that libido was a just a whole bunch of hormones and chemicals racing around the body deciding if we were 'hot' or not. After going through a libido crash about a year ago I have begun to think differently. I believe that libido starts in the mind and not the body. The idea of sex, fantasizing and thinking about having sex, it's connected to desire for me. During my libido crash, which lasted what felt like years, I didn't think about sex, didn't desire it nor did I do it. The LS didn't interest me either. I now know that other factors lead to this like problems in the marriage and life taking over. I do think if couples choose the LS then it's probably because their libidos are high to start with and through acting on it then it's maintained. But it's not limited to swinging, it could be gay porn, exhibitionism or BDSM.

 

I have a friend who has 0 libido. She's now divorced and lives alone and had a sexless marriage for years. Whenever we talk about sex, i'm very open about sharing my thoughts, she sometimes looks at me with such bewilderment like I'm speaking a different language. She can't fathom why a woman would wear lingerie even. So the fact that she can't comprehend sex is probably why her libido is so low.

[njbm 2,868]

I am sorry to report that as a man ages, his ability to achieve and maintain an erection becomes more difficult. His libido may say go for it, but his little brain is saying if you put a rain coat on me, I will dwindle into nothingness. Thank the pharma companies for Cialis, Viagra, etc., or there would be a lot more unsatisfied women out there.

[Fundamental Law 2,885]

I am sorry to report that as a man ages, his ability to achieve and maintain an erection becomes more difficult.

 

While this is true in the most general sense, it seems that different men age differently. Partially this is attributable to comorbidities--diabetes, vascular disease and so on. But equally there is a use it or lose it phenomenon. You are surely correct that PDE5 drugs (Viagra and successors) facilitate erection. But they do nothing for libido. And absent desire, erections are not going to happen.

[padoc 1,703]

If a person is generally healthy, we both think that libido is often times a hormonal problem or perhaps emotional  (unhappiness, stress, depression) or a combination.

[couplers 4,614]

Two observations from a woman in her early thirties living with two other women and two guys similarly aged:

• As time has gone on the libido of women goes up and the libido (or at least their performance) of a man goes down.  I don't mean to zero, but from several times at one go to a limit of a several times a day.
• My desire for sex sometimes goes up and down, but even when my interest is zero at the moment, when one of the others comes to me for sex, I politely give in and by the time he's starting in me or she's down on me, I'm at 100%.  Which brings me to:
• Women have an advantage in that regard because a little lube and you can always let a guy in.  Men have to get and maintain an erection.  So if you need to be going to get going, like I said in the previous point, it's an advantage to be a woman.  (OTOH, magic can be had in sucking his dick.  ? )