How To Increase Your Sex Drive Part 14

You don’t have to exercise so hard that you crawl home into a fetal position every night to get the benefits. In fact, there’s a growing body of evidence that exercising too much is detrimental to your sex life. For example, studies show that moderate exercise increases circulating androgens (sex hormones like testosterone, androstenedione, and dehydroepiandrosterone), but intense exercise decreases them.

My guess is that you don’t like exercising, in great part, because you pushed yourself too hard for too long. Well, now you know you don’t have to. But the bigger reason for your resistance might just be because you’ve been exercising for all the wrong reasons. Despite everything you hear to the contrary…

You Shouldn’t Exercise To Lose Weight

Weight loss is the single worst motivation for exercise. It virtually guarantees that you will come to hate it and that you will eventually stop. To understand why let’s examine a peculiar contradiction.

On the one hand, researchers have known for years that men who exercise have a better body image than men who don’t. That’s because exercise provides the basic building blocks of body confidence: Competence, agency and mastery.

As you get faster, stronger and learn new skills you get a renewed sense of wonder and admiration of what your body is capable of doing. In fact, studies show that even between men of similar weight and shape, the men who exercise feel a lot better about their bodies than men who don’t.

On the other hand, researchers noticed something unusual and unexpected: For many men, exercise worsened their body image.

When they dug a little deeper, researchers discovered that exercise’s effect on body image depends on your motivation for doing it. If you exercise to stay healthy and fit, your body image will most likely improve. If you exercise to lose weight, it most likely won’t.

Since many men have unachievable supermodel weight loss goals, they are bound to fail. Exercise as a tool for weight loss reminds them of how dissatisfied they are with their bodies. In fact, it creates more dissatisfaction because exercise as a weight loss tool sucks you into that cycle of self-loathing: Try, fail, shame. Try, fail, guilt. Try, fail, despair.

Exercising for the right reasons

Now, it’s ridiculous to think that weight control won’t be part of your motivation for exercise. Of course it will. But instead of seeing weight loss as a primary goal, see it as a secondary consequence. Otherwise, exercise goes from being a stress-buster to a stress-maker.

So, before deciding on an exercise regimen, get clear on your motivation. You can easily tell if weight loss is your primary goal if you say things like, “Well, I’m going to have to hit the gym extra hard tomorrow” after eating a rich meal. The proper response to eating a rich meal is to enjoy it, not to punish yourself with exercise.

The primary benefit to exercise is health and fitness, not weight loss. Yes, exercise produces weight loss but that is a by-product, not its purpose. You should work out to maintain optimal health, to reduce stress, anxiety and depression.

You should work out to get a sense of accomplishment, for a higher quality of life, for fun, to gain mastery and confidence, to build muscle, to increase energy levels, to strengthen your heart, improve circulation, prevent back pain, strengthen bones, improve posture, strengthen tissue around the joints, decrease risk for disease, improve mental functioning, increase confidence and self-esteem, improve sleep, increase resistance to fatigue, and reduce blood pressure.

In short, you should exercise to promote an overall sense of well-being. Which promotes good sex which promotes well-being. Exercise pops you into this powerful reinforcement cycle.

What If You Hate Exercise, Period?

Although the 20/70 workout doesn’t require a high level of fitness, the idea of a moderate-to-intense 20 minute workout can feel a little daunting to the committed couch potato. But then, any exercise is probably unappealing. Sofa spuds, I ask you to push the pause button on your resistance long enough to hear why exercise is so important to your sexual health.

Recall the reinforcement cycle– well-being produces good sex which contributes to well-being. Exercise inserts you into this reinforcement cycle by reducing stress, depression and anxiety and by increasing blood flow to the genitals. It is the single fastest way to affect the psychology of well-being and the physiology of sexual arousal at the same time. It is so critical to your success that it behooves you to commit to an exercise plan that you can stick to, no matter what level of effort you exert.

The Couch Potato’s Guide To Creating A Sex Exercise Regimen

The only exercise that matters is the exercise you’re willing to do. So, this guide isn’t so much about picking an exercise and showing you how to perform it, but about forming an exercise habit. Discipline and will-power will only take you through the first few weeks of an exercise program. Habit, on the other hand, is forever.

Pick An Exercise You Like Or Feel Neutral About

No amount of motivation is going to overcome resistance to a hated exercise. Pick something you like, or at the very least, something you don’t dislike. Never associate a habit with pain, only with pleasure. If it’s at all possible pick an exercise you can do outdoors. Some studies suggest that outdoor exercise can be as effective as antidepressants in treating mild to moderate depression and anxiety.

Vary The Exercises Frequently

Familiarity breeds contempt. Doing the same exercise day after day is a recipe for resignation. If you run on Monday, go to the gym on Tuesday, swim on Wednesday, do aerobics on Thursday. Variety is a prophylactic to quitting.

Start Slow

Don’t exercise for an hour. Don’t even do twenty minutes. Start with five minutes the first few days, adding thirty seconds every day until you get to 10 minutes. Then use the same scale to get to 15 and 20 minutes. Pain doesn’t build habits; pleasure does. If you don’t feel good after exercising, back off, you’re doing too much. Success starts with the lowest intensity possible and gradually moves up.

Exercise Every Day For 30 Days

Habits need daily reinforcement. You don’t get in the cigarette habit by smoking twice a week. You don’t get in the coffee habit by drinking it every few days. The only way to create an exercise habit is to condition it deeply enough to switch the behavior to autopilot. The best way to do that is to set a 30 Day Challenge. Exercise every day, preferably at the same time. The more consistent the action the more likely it will turn into a habit.

Create An Exercise Trigger

The latest science in habit formation shows that almost all habits have an event trigger. For example, having an alcoholic drink is a trigger for many smokers to pull out a cigarette. A shower might be a trigger for you to brush your teeth. Triggers work subconsciously to condition a behavior. The dinner bell rings and Pavlov’s dog salivates. A morning exercise trigger might be a cup of coffee. Drink it and immediately grab your exercise gear and head out the door.

Do it consciously for a sustained period of time and your subconscious will take over–you won’t have to think about picking up your gym bag after you finish your cup. Triggers, like habits, take time to form. Do it every day if you want it to stick.

Set A Consistent Time

An event trigger isn’t going to do you much good if you exercise at different times. Are you more likely to follow through in the mornings, at lunch or in the evening? Set a consistent time and follow it.

Measure Your Progress

Seeing your progress will motivate you to keep going, enhance your body image and increase the chance for success. Log your progress right away, as soon as you’re done working out. Don’t put it off. Don’t make it complicated–just the date and what you did. Over time you’re going to be amazed at your progress. When you go from 5 minutes of exercise a day to 20, for example, a real sense of pride and accomplishment takes over.

Report To Other People

Talk up your exercise to family, friends and co-workers. Peer pressure helps form habits.

Reduce Friction

If you wake up at five a.m. only to realize you can’t find your sneakers you might decide to go back to bed. Habit experts call obstacles like this “friction”–they make habits more difficult to take hold. So, get your gear ready before bed so you can zoom out of the house without thinking about it.

Movement Is Medicine

There is one last benefit of exercise I haven’t mentioned. It doesn’t just set the stage for you to feel desire; it also makes you feel more desirable. One study found that men who exercised two to three times a week felt more sexually desirable than men who didn’t. Move. Be active. Exercise. Your sex life is worth it. Your well-being is worth it. You are worth it.

Next week: Why exercising with your partner can feel like a pheromone.

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How To Increase Your Sex Drive Part 13

Would you do a 20-minute workout if you knew it would dramatically improve your sexual desire?  Break out your gym clothes because some breakthrough studies have shown that an exercise I call “20/70” makes men locked, cocked, and ready to rock.  

There are stunning new developments in our understanding of how exercise affects sexual functioning.  The findings directly contradict the scientific assumptions of the last forty years and may offer a radically different treatment protocol for men with low sexual desire.

This promising revolution started when a team of researchers led by Dr. Cindy Meston at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered, almost by accident, that a specific type of exercise can significantly increase sexual desire even in men with low libido.   

 For the last forty years, clinicians, researchers, and theorists assumed that the Parasympathetic Nervous System, which governs erectile response in men, was also responsible for sexual response in men.   There was no real empirical evidence for it.  They just had no reason to think otherwise.  

Thus treatment of sexual dysfunction centered around activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System.  For example, anxiety-reduction techniques (breathing, progressive muscle relaxations) activate the Parasympathetic while inhibiting the Sympathetic Nervous System.  They facilitate sexual response by decreasing negative thoughts that divert the processing and experiencing of erotic cues, but these techniques do nothing to stimulate arousal.  

Dr. Meston asked a startling question:  Could the Sympathetic Nervous System actually be the mechanism that triggers sexual response in men? 

Both systems work in complementary ways to keep the body running properly.  For example, the Parasympathetic Nervous System contracts the urinary bladder while the Sympathetic Nervous System relaxes it.  

Sympathetic is responsible for excitement; Parasympathetic for relaxation.  Sympathetic accelerates the human body while Parasympathetic decelerates it.  These are important distinctions in the study of sexuality because treatment protocols that activate one system inhibits the other. 

Exercise Was The Key

What Dr. Meston needed to test her hypothesis was something that would activate the Sympathetic Nervous System.   She chose exercise, which in moderate-to-high intensities generates the amount of Sympathetic Nervous System activity necessary for testing.  

Her test subjects were divided into an exercise and no-exercise group.  The exercise group spent 20 minutes on a stationary bike pedaling at 70% of their maximum heart rate.  Both groups were then shown an erotic film.   

As you’d expect, both the exercise and non-exercise groups experienced an increase in sexual arousal during the film, characterized by increased genital blood flow. 

 But the men who exercised had significantly, sometimes dramatically, higher levels of sexual arousal than men who did not, even though they watched the same erotic film. 

Now, the natural inclination is to conclude that exercise causes sexual arousal.  Not true.  Exercise sets the stage for it.  Without an erotic stimulus, there is no sexual arousal.    

What makes this study especially significant is that it’s been replicated over and over with the same results across different groups of men, even with men taking anti-depressants.  Especially notable is a study on men who struggled with low libido.  That study represented the first empirical evidence that men with low libido can be sexually aroused through the activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System.

Again, it’s easy to misinterpret these studies and think that exercise increases sexual arousal.  It does not.  Exercise followed by an erotic stimulus creates arousal.

Many of Dr. Meston’s fellow scientists believe these studies herald a revolution in the treatment of low libido in men.   For decades, the prevailing assumption was that the Sympathetic Nervous System inhibited sexual arousal in men.   But now there is strong evidence to the contrary.

How Exercise Gets Your Body Ready For Sex.

We know what exercise does to improve your sex life–it increases blood flow, which improves sensation, arousal, and the intensity of orgasm.  But exactly how does exercise do that?  By strengthening the most important muscle in your body–the heart.  Exercise, especially aerobic exercise (anything that elevates the heart rate for a sustained period of time–running, swimming, aerobics, etc), builds a bigger, stronger heart that can forcefully pump blood and make it circulate faster through the body, including the pelvic region where increased blood flow is critical to arousal.  

Increased circulation means faster delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the body while speeding up the exit of waste and toxins.  

Over time, the walls of the heart grow thicker and stronger, allowing it to pump more blood with less effort.  It also increases the number and size of blood vessels in the tissues thus increasing the blood supply to all parts of the body.   

Exercise isn’t a ‘good idea’ for improving sex; it is the single best thing you can do for it.  Without exercise, you are endangering the restoration of your love life.  

Putting The 20/70 Workout To Work For You

Simply having sex after you finish the 20/70 workout isn’t going to help.  You need to prepare an erotic stimulus after the exercise, which will then make you more receptive to sex.  Remember, exercise does not cause sexual arousal, it sets the stage for it.   It’s the wood in the fireplace waiting for a light.  

The instrument for ignition doesn’t matter.  Erotic stimuli are defined as anything that makes you weak at the knees.  It could be a film, a book, a poem, a memory, a picture, or anything else that would light up your tree.  

Capitalizing on the 20/70 discovery requires a bit of planning:  Schedule a romantic interlude with your partner ahead of time, pick your ‘erotic stimuli,’ do the 20/70 workout, take a quick shower, spend time with the erotic stimuli and let the games begin.  

The type of exercise you do (stationary bike, running, swimming) is irrelevant as long as it produces high levels of activation in the Sympathetic Nervous System.  

The studies defined a high level as 20 minutes of sustained exercise at 70% of your heart rate maximum.  To put the level of exertion in perspective, you should be able to carry on a conversation during the exercise.  It’s a 7 on the 1-10 scale of difficulty.  Still, always consult your doctor before starting any new exercise regimen.

The Problem

The real challenge isn’t the exertion (it’s moderately easy to do–test subjects were healthy, but not necessarily fit) but of making sure that you stay within 70% of your heart rate capacity.  The studies suggested that anything significantly below it doesn’t produce enough Sympathetic Nervous System activity and anything significantly above it may actually inhibit sexual arousal.

The easiest way to determine whether you’re staying within your 70% capacity during exercise is to buy a heart monitor.  Costs have come down considerably–you can buy them for $50-$100.

If you don’t want to spend the money, you can make your own calculations with an age-predicted maximum heart rate formula by the American Heart Association:

226 minus your age= Maximum heart rate x 70%= target heart rate (beats per minute).

 Make sure you maintain the pace by checking your pulse regularly during the exercise.  You can feel your pulse by placing your fingers lightly but firmly over the inside of your wrist or on your neck just below the angle of your jaw.  Count for 10 seconds using your watch and then multiply by 6.

Sex After A Workout?

Understandably, making love immediately after exercising isn’t a particularly pleasant thought to many men.   If you work out at a gym, where are you going to do it–in the locker room?  In the car?  Smelling like a petting zoo?  

Obviously, working out at home is advantageous.  But what if injuries or other factors require you to use the gym?  Will the time it takes to get home, shower and prepare decrease the 20/70’s effectiveness?  

The studies tested the presentation of the erotic film at 5, 15 and 30-minute intervals after the exercise ended.  The results held for the 15 and 30-minute intervals.  The big question, unanswered by the studies, is how long the Sympathetic Nervous System activity stays high enough to set the stage for sexual arousal.  

No one knows, thus the call to study the treatment implications.  But it stands to reason that if you’re going to try this route you should plan a love-making session as close to the end of the exercise as you can.  Without rushing yourself.   Putting pressure on yourself will neutralize the physiologic effect of the exercise.  

Experimenting With The 20/70

The 20/70 studies are so promising that they justify experimenting with their findings, even if they cause some inconvenience.  At the very least, you should consider a few self-pleasuring sessions after getting back home from a 20/70 workout.  

Always make sure to pre-plan your erotic stimuli–a video, a book, an engaging fantasy–anything that makes you, ahem, blink faster than normal.  Remember, exercise does not cause sexual arousal–it accelerates it in the presence of a turn-on.  

Incorporating the results of these studies into your sex life doesn’t mean that you have to do the 20/70 every day or that you should only have sex after you exercise.   

The thing about exercising is that the more you do it, the better your blood flow will become, strengthening not only your libido but your ability to feel more.  Exercise has been proven to rejuvenate nerve-endings that heighten sensitivity to touch, all the while revving up your hormones.  

The great news is that you don’t have to exercise for very long to get the benefits.  The 20/70 workout takes 20 minutes.  That’s less time than watching a sitcom.  Hell, you’ve waited in line longer than that!  

If 20/70 seems daunting, work up to it over the course of a month by starting with a “5/50 workout”–5 minutes at 50% of your heart rate–and gradually increase the time and the intensity. 

Next week: How to exercise when you don’t feel like it.

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How To Deal With Low Libido Part 12

Don’t Know What Arouses You? Make it up. Give yourself a pretend answer. You’ll be amazed at how accurate you’ll be. Pretending gives honesty permission to come out and play. If that doesn’t help try “what iffing” it. For example, you could say, “I don’t know what would make this better, but what if I asked him to hold me in a way that I felt more safe and protected?”

Or, “I don’t know what would help me feel more, but what if I moved my pelvis more rhythmically?” Or think about a man you consider sexy and ask yourself, “What would he ask for?”

Remember, our experiment isn’t to get you to endure a lovemaking session. It isn’t to white-knuckle your way until his climax. It’s to discover that you have the power to go from cold to hot by making decisions that lead to the heat.

How To Say NO Without Scarring Him For Life

You have the right to say no to sex anytime you want and he has the obligation to respect that. But you have an obligation, too, and that’s to make sure you don’t reject him cruelly. You can make it easier on him by following my two golden rules of sexual rejection:

Be affectionate. Most “low desire” partners withhold affection, thinking it’s the best way to head off an advance or to emphasize the point that no means no. Being cold and distant is an effective way of warding off sex but at what price? There’s a better way. Decline with affection.

Guys can take rejection if you make them feel sexually desirable. If you hold him in a way that makes him feel wanted, if you touch him in a way that makes him feel like he’s not the reason for your lack of interest, if you kiss him in a way that makes him feel physically attractive, if you act as if you’re still in love with him, if you wrap affection around your refusal you will get what you want without damaging the relationship.

Postpone, don’t reject. Never say no without saying when. A postponement is easier to take than a rejection. Now, the trick here is keeping your word. You can’t expect him to respect your boundaries when you break your promises.

As for your partner, he needs to spend a little more time in the Masturbatorium. Sometimes true love requires self-service. He also needs to learn how to handle disappointment. Just like you need to sometimes have sex when you don’t want it, he needs to sometimes keep it zipped when he does. After all, you’re in this thing together. A one-person sacrifice is like a hatchet–you’ll just end up wanting to bury it in your partner’s back.

Surprise Him By Initiating Sex

I know what you’re thinking: “What!! Isn’t it enough that I’m willing to have sex when I don’t feel like it? I have to initiate it too?” Actually, you do. Our goal isn’t to respond to desire (anybody can do that), it’s to decide on it. And what better way to practice your decision-making powers than to plan, prepare, and initiate sex? All on your terms, of course. Initiating sex not only forces you to think about what you need to make it enjoyable but to get in the habit of giving it to yourself.

Think of it as throwing yourself a party when you’re not in a good mood. What would you do to make sure you had a good time? What type of music would you play, what kind of drinks would you pour? What type of food would you serve?

It’s the same concept with initiating sex when your libido is low. What do you need to do to make it enjoyable? First on your agenda is understanding when your body best responds to sex. Early in the morning? Late at night? Dusk? Plan around it.

What sexual cues can you activate?

What moisture-making memories of past sexual encounters will help you look forward to it? And once the action starts always remember what questions to ask yourself: “How can I get more physical pleasure out of what I’m doing?” “How can I make my body feel better?” “How can I enhance the physical sensations I’m experiencing?”

Initiating sex when you’re not aroused is like agreeing to your partner’s advances when you’re not aroused. It’s the same boat with a different captain. Either way, it’s worth remembering that sex when you’re not horny is like eating when you’re not hungry. You force yourself to eat a few potato chips and the next thing you know you’ve poked a hole in the bottom of the bag and find yourself putting the gas station clerk in a headlock because he ran out of chips.

Try to initiate sex every seven to ten days. Do it as an experiment for you and a gift for him (he’ll see it for what it is–a gesture of love that rescues him from the spiral of rejection he can’t seem to get himself out of). By experiencing the power of calling forth desire you’ll go from being a low libido victim to a low desire victor.

And in the process, you may be surprised that your partner suddenly starts doing things you’ve been nagging him. Gestures of love tend to bring out the best in everyone.

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How To Deal With Low Libido Part 10

In our last installment on low libido we talked about the importance of sex cues. Below is a list of the most common ones.

This is not a comprehensive list as every man is different, but it’s a starting point. If you don’t know whether something is a sexual cue for you, find out. For example, if you’ve never read erotic stories, buy them and see if your panties don’t float to the floor.

Sex Cues

• Watching romantic movies

 

• Viewing soft or hard porn (especially made-for-men films)

 

• Reading erotic books or stories

 

• Hearing a resonant male voice

 

• Smelling a favorite after-shave

 

• Smelling a man’s natural scent

 

• Seeing a man dominate (in sports, business, or sex)

 

• Consciously fantasizing about sex

 

• Talking dirty

 

• Doing something physical that gets you in touch with your body: Sunbathing, dancing, exercising, playing a sport.

 

• Affection (hugs, kisses, holding hands)

 

• Showering together

 

A heart to heart talk with your date or partner

Context Makes Cues More Powerful

You can give your sexual cues more horsepower by providing them with a cue-friendly context. If a cue like reading erotic stories makes you hot, reading it in a crowded subway probably won’t. But reading it alone under a soft light while listening to chill-out music is a horse of a different color. Or a man on a horse of a different color, depending on your erotic preferences.

Identify, Cultivate & Engage Your Turn-Ons

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a cue is not a cue unless it drenches you with desire. You don’t need a downpour; a sprinkle will do. Low libido men tend to wait until they’re overwhelmed with the desire to act on it.

This is a mistake, first because you’ll be waiting a long time for a powerful mood to strike, and second because it’s more effective to oxygenate a small spark into a three-foot flame. Look for subtle effects, subdued responses, and understated feelings. Like a certain male body part, arousal starts out flaccid but with a little massaging it can grow to impressive lengths.

Remember The Time That…?

Once you identify the cues that make your body sit up, point, and yell “squirrel!” it’s important that you access your sexual memory bank. Specifically, for memories of the best sex you ever had. When was the last time a man kept you in the bedroom so long your family put your face on a milk carton?

Play it back in the theater of your mind with a 70 MM camera and an Imax screen. Where were you? What were you wearing? What were you doing? What was he doing? What were you feeling? What was he saying?

Basically, you want to add oxygen to the spark created by the cue. This is what I mean by desire being a decision. You decide to look for sexual cues. Then you decide to access them in a context where sexual response can flourish, and then you decide to fan it with flashbacks.

Cultivating sexual cues is like cultivating sensuality–by understanding what your body needs and freely offering it, the body pays you back with a higher mood state. Over time, you will gradually experience an increase in your sex drive. As you do, it’ll be time for…

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How To Deal With Low Libido Part 9

Desire tends to express itself naturally. You normally don’t have to think about it because it thinks for you. But for low libido men, desire is a decision. It’s a conscious intention to discover and learn new ways of keeping sexual energy alive.

Obviously, you can’t decide to be aroused, but you can decide to do things that lead to arousal. For example, if you’re tense you can’t “decide” to relax, but you can “decide” to take deep breaths and consciously relax your muscles, which results in relaxation.

Similarly, you can’t ‘decide’ to be sexually aroused, but you can decide to exercise, create an environment conducive to sex, follow the recommendations in this book, and set the stage for arousal to appear. Desire is like a flower. Sometimes it blooms without effort and sometimes you have to tend the earth to create the opportunity for the petals to spread.

Don’t Wait For The Mood To Strike, Strike Into The Mood

Imagine going to the gym only when you felt like it. You’d get so out of shape you’d break your nose doing a pushup. To prevent that from happening, most people have a routine—they knock back an energy drink, crank up the music, and do a few warm-ups.

Just like men figure out how to get themselves to the gym when they don’t feel like exercising, you’ve got to figure out how to get yourself to bed when you don’t feel like making love. You can’t wait for the feeling to come up. You have to come up with the feeling.

But wait. Why should you come up with the feeling if it doesn’t come up on its own? Isn’t there something wrong with a relationship that requires you to conjure up desire as if you were a medium conjuring spirits in a séance?

No, there isn’t. There’s something wrong with your understanding of the sexual response. Let me explain.

Sexual response works in different ways for different people. High libido people don’t have to wait for a thought, a feeling, or a situation to get turned on. They’re basically hormones with feet. They’re so highly attuned to their body’s responses that they act on the slightest hint of arousal. They don’t have to bring forth sexual thoughts or fantasies because they come without effort.

Low libido people are the opposite. They tend to wait until they’re flooded with feelings before they act. They interpret the absence of dramatic stirrings as proof they have little or no sexual desire.

But that is a falsehood, a grave misreading of how sexual response works. It’s true that sexual desire is often unbidden. It just appears. But it’s also true that it is bidden. It appears because you called it forth. In other words, you can wait for the feeling or you can come up with the feeling.

How “Cuing” Revs Up Low Libidos

Sometimes even basic biological drives need what psychologists call “cuing” to get them to surface to awareness. Take hunger, for example. Sometimes you’re so busy and distracted that you forget to eat. But a cue will remind you. It can come in the form of looking at your watch and realizing you should have eaten hours ago or smelling freshly baked bread. Cues don’t create desire, they remind you of them.

Situational cues act as triggers for an appropriate response. A change in lighting signals the start of a show. A sound effect is a cue for an actor to say his line. A gesture by a conductor signals a new direction in the music. Your partner’s smell may be the cue for sexual stirring.

A cue is a prompt. A stimulus, either consciously or unconsciously perceived, that elicits or signals a type of behavior. It can be artificially set or organically grown. A cue can work accidentally (somebody walking by with a fresh batch of cookies) or on purpose (setting an alarm to remind you to eat). Sex drives can be ‘cued’ in much the same way.

First, you have to understand what prompts a sexual response from you. Is it seeing romantic films? Watching erotic movies? Hearing a deep, resonant, sexually confident male voice? Sniffing an especially appealing after-shave? Picking up on a man’s natural scent?

Is it a long-lasting look into a man’s eyes (if you’re wondering why that can be so powerful it’s because a look-lock releases phenylethylamine, a chemical that accelerates attraction. Some call this the copulatory gaze).

Cues trigger a response thatbrings your desires to conscious awareness. And from there, your self-imposed chastity belt tends to unbuckle naturally. The challenge is to understand what your sexual cues are so they can trigger a response.

Next week: Types of cues and how to use them.

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How To Deal With Low Libido Part 8

Men with low libido are less able to detect their sexual desires during the infrequent times it does make an appearance. They are less likely to pay attention to, accurately identify, and therefore act on the physical sensations of arousal like a quickening pulse, muscle tension, and blood flow.

Sex is the physical expression of your need for emotional intimacy, love, union, and partnership; a tangible way for you to give something of yourself. Typically, the desire for it appears on your door as a loud, insistent knock. Over time, your mind has learned to block its sounds. Occasionally, it opens the door, treats this longing as an unwanted vacuum cleaner salesman, and tells it to go away.

But your body insists so the knocking continues. The mind goes into pretend mode. It thinks, “Knocking, what knocking? It’s the tree branches bumping together.” It’s not long before the body, weakened by a lack of nurturing, knocks softer and softer, to the point that it becomes so faint your mind doesn’t have to ignore it or pretend it isn’t there–it truly doesn’t hear it.

For the most part, the knocking never really goes away. Just because you can’t hear it clearly doesn’t mean it’s not there. Your job is two-fold: To be on the lookout for the knocking when it comes and create the environment so that it will.

I Don’t Feel A Thing

There are two types of libidinal depressions: Low Libido or Low Sensation. With Low Libido, you don’t want it, you don’t think about it, you don’t fantasize about it, you’re not even receptive to it.

With Low Sensation, you may think about it, you may want it, you may be receptive to it, but your body doesn’t react the way it used to. It’s a classic case of “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

None of my recommendations for jump-starting your libido will work if you have such an underlying physical condition. Start eliminating the possibilities by looking in your medicine cabinet.

Any drug that affects your hormones, nerves or blood circulation has the potential to make you able to say “NO” to sex in eight different languages. Everyone knows anti-depressants can let the air out of the libidinal balloon, but did you know that popular over-the-counter drugs like Tagamet, Benadryl and Aleve have the potential to do it too?

If you suspect there might be a physiological component to your low libido/low sensation, wiggle your index finger and dial your doctor. Otherwise, let’s assume that your low libido/low sensation is caused by stress, fatigue or maybe that you were simply born with a lower libido than other men.

A Word About Alcohol

Alcohol mugs libidos. It sneaks up behind you, knocks you to the ground and steals your valuables. It relieves you of your libido and absconds with your performance. Alcohol metabolizes in the liver, which is also responsible for metabolizing testosterone, a crucial sex hormone.

Too much liquor and your liver may start converting your testosterone to estrogen, contributing to a loss of sex drive. Alcohol also dulls the nerves that transmit sensations and decreases the body’s ability to pump blood around the genitals, which is critical to sexual functioning. You should not be drinking while you’re trying to raise your libido.

That said, I feel your pain. Sex tigers don’t drink milk. It’s hard to imagine a romantic dinner without at least a glass of wine. Advising moderation is fine, but how much is too much? A study at Southern Illinois University showed three and a half drinks for a 150 pound person starts getting in the way. Every measure of arousal the researchers looked at went south after three and a half drinks.

The good news about alcohol is that it tends to relax you and melt away reservation, inhibition and worry, the absence of which makes for great sex. So yes, alcohol is great for sex, until it isn’t. Stay away from alcohol as much as you can for the next few months. Nobody likes to be “chemically inconvenienced,” but drinking moderately or not at all will be a big help.

A Word About Smoking

If you smoke like the catalytic converter just went out on your muffler, you’re going to reduce your sex life to ashes. Nicotine constricts blood vessels which leads to hardening of the arteries. As your arteries become harder and narrower they let less blood into your genitals, making it harder to get in the mood, enjoy sex, or achieve orgasm.

Quitting reverses the process, but not without some side effects along the way. It’s not unusual for people who quit to temporarily feel mentally unfocused, sexually unsettled, or suffer a temporary loss of libido. If the problems persist, talk to your doctor about nicotine-replacement therapy to help ease the transition.

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How To Deal With Low Libido Part 7

When shame walks in the door lust flies out the window.  Men with healthy body consciousness treat their natural desires as welcome guests.  They open the door, take their coat, hand them a drink and welcome them into the living room where the fragrance of a gourmet meal wafts in from the kitchen.  The message is clear:  You are welcome.  Mi casa es su casa.

Men with noticeably bad body esteem treat their natural desires as unwelcome guests who muddy the carpets and eat all the pretzels.  They stand by the door and say, “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”    

What’s causing this low libido? 

I want you to consider something that may never have occurred to you:  Your loss of libido is a coping strategy that your mind uses to protect itself from experiencing shame.  What appears to you as a baffling lack of desire is actually a subconscious decision on your part to get rid of it so you don’t experience more hurt.  

Basically, you have an internal conflict between your conscious desire (“I want to want to have sex”) and your subconscious unwillingness (“If I have sex he will see how fat I am, lose his erection and stop loving me.  He’ll make fun of me or fantasize about skinnier men.   I don’t want to see the disappointment in his face when he sees my thighs jiggle or my stomach pooch out.   I WILL DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT”).

Really, it’s lousy self-talk when you’re making love.

Somewhere along the line, your subconscious decided the best way to protect you from more pain was to reduce or eliminate your desires .  

Or rather, push them so far down that they seem undetectable.  Remember, “subconscious” means below the level of conscious awareness.  You’re not aware that you made the decision but you can certainly see the effects of it. 

The solution?  Bring your subconscious thoughts to awareness.  Understand the decision your subconscious made in order to protect you.   Start by reframing your thinking from “I want but I can’t” to “I want but I won’t.”

Can’t vs Won’t

This isn’t some pop psychology/build it and they will come nonsense.  There’s a big difference between CAN’T (an inability) and WON’T (an unwillingness).  I know it doesn’t make sense that you’d be unwilling to do what you desperately want, but you only have to look at the millions of men who struggle with an inability to ejaculate during intercourse to see a parallel.  They want to ejaculate.   Their penis is rock hard.  They’re able to do it when they’re alone, but they just can’t do it when they’re having intercourse.  They’re fighting your fight:  A conscious desire subverted by a subconscious fear.

If you want your libido to “come back,” you have to consciously ‘undecide’ a subconsciously made decision.   You have to stop believing the demonstrably false assumption that your partner is going to be repulsed by what he sees and stop loving you or mortify you with disappointment and ridicule.  

You have to stop believing that sex is an opportunity to be shamed and start believing it’s a springboard to a stronger emotional connection with the man you love.  You have to believe that sex doesn’t cut you up into a million pieces; that in fact, it makes you whole.

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How To Deal With Low Libido Part 6

For men, intimacy is oxygen.  Cut it off and you turn your partner into a sexual asthmatic—chronically coughing and wheezing in his attempt to breathe you in.  He’ll experience a tightening of the chest and eventually his lips turn blue (among other organs).

Make no mistake, when you constantly reject your partner’s advances with some version of “I’VE GOT CLOTHES TO FOLD,” he hears it as “I don’t love you.”  Or want you.  So, go away.

For men, sex equals love

A lack of touch leads to emotional scurvy.  When love, which used to flow freely, gets harder to come by, it’s hard not to turn the rejection against yourself.  You believe you’re to blame, that you’re no longer attractive, that your manhood is useless, your desire pointless and your needs unworthy.

If your unwillingness to have sex continues long enough he’ll grow distant and angry which then really puts you off sex.  But his negativity is an understandable reaction to having love withdrawn.  His anger is a manifestation of the hurt that lies underneath.  He feels punished for something he didn’t do.  The effect of the punishment causes pain; the unjustness causes anger.  It’s hard for you to see this, of course, because now you’re reacting to his self-defensive distance and anger, rather than his understandable hurt.

Rejecting his sexual advances makes him suspicious, insecure, inadequate, vulnerable, hurt, resentful, and unloved.  And it’s especially easy for him to think you’re cheating on him. 

A Proxy For Self-Esteem

It isn’t just that the most powerful expression of love got taken away from him.  Sex is a proxy for a man’s self-esteem and masculinity.  It’s a platform for confidence and virility.   There’s not much room for masculinity and virility when you’re reduced to nagging and negotiating for sex, or being the only one initiating it or knowing your partner is merely tolerating it.  

My point in bringing all this up isn’t to make you feel guilty; it’s to make you understand the consequences of your withdrawal.  Reversing the damage will take some work and you need to be highly motivated, not by guilt but by love–for the man in your life and your own sense of who you are and what you’re capable of growing into.  Nobody should take a vow of sexual poverty when they date or get into a relationship.  Especially you.  

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How To Deal With A Low Sex Drive Part 3

I am regularly shocked when I see how couples treat their bedrooms.  They are often so filled with obstacles and diversions it’s a wonder that any sex could be had.  I’ve seen bedrooms so filled with clutter I could hardly make out the bed.  They remind me of playing tennis with three chairs in the middle of the court.  How are you supposed to hit the ball if there’s always something in the way?

Too many people use their bedroom as if it were a half-storage unit, half-entertainment center.  The bedroom is for sleeping, relaxation, and sex.  Anything that doesn’t promote those three things needs to be moved out.

The energy in your bedroom can make the difference between putting you in the mood or locking you out of it.  The point isn’t to make it feel like sex is seeping out of the walls; it’s to make your body feel relaxed, warm, and receptive to pleasure.  We spend more time in their bedroom than any other room in the house, yet it’s often the most neglected space in the house.

From lighting to fragrances, you can have a bedroom that entices your body from the minute you walk in.  Here a few hints that can dramatically transform your experience of sex, love, and sleep.  You know you’ve done a good job when you walk in and your body sighs with pleasure.

Lighting.

The lighting in the perfect bedroom should generally be soft and low wattage.  Consider installing a dimmer switch for your overhead light, so you can change the mood of the room easily. Colored bulbs or low wattage bulbs will help also.

If you like lamps in your bedroom, use 3-way light bulbs–that way you can read with the higher settings and set a mood with the lower ones.  Experiment with lamps by putting them on the floor.  The up-lighting gives off a nice glow.  Or put a dark towel on top of the lamps.  It’ll soften the light and add a bit of color. If you’re feeling adventurous, mix things up with a strobe light–it can make your lovemaking look like a dream sequence.

Candles: The Universal Language Of Romance.

Fire invokes romance, passion, and desire.  It’s primal.  Nobody’s mood stays the same when a candle gets lit.  Earlier I said you need a flower budget.  You need one for candles, too.  Get out of the habit of thinking that lighting candles are for special occasions.  Don’t just light them as a precursor to making love or because you’re enjoying a romantic dinner.  Light them all the time for any sort of reason.  Vary the sizes, colors, and placement.  Train yourself to create different moods.

Use lots of reds (stands for sexual attraction, passion, and love) and whites (stand for personal power and romance).  To symbolize a happy and close relationship, consider placing two candles close together.  Mirrors can accentuate the lighting in your room.  Enhance the glow of candles by placing them in front of or even on top of mirrors.  On a side note, if you place a larger mirror on the wall opposite a window, it will help reflect natural light and open the room up a bit.

Bedspread.

The bedspread is probably the most important visual element in the bedroom because it takes up so much space.  Don’t go overboard with flashy designs or strong colors.  Go with muted colors.  Think romantic oasis, not flashy nightclub or botanical garden.

Floors.

Wood floors are beautiful but they’re not soft.  If wall-to-wall carpeting isn’t feasible then buy a wool-silk rug–with candlelight, it creates a beautiful, shimmering effect.  Stepping onto a shag or a sheepskin rug by the foot of the bed feels great whether you’re climbing into bed or getting out of it.

Windows & Walls.

Shut out the world with blackout curtains or a three-fold layered window treatment like wooden blinds and sheer curtains topped by floor-to-ceiling draperies.  Generally speaking, the more fabric you put on walls and windows, the more soothing and sumptuous the room will be.  Covering an entire wall with floor-to-ceiling drapes quiets the room in a provocative way.

Paint the walls a rich color and keep everything else in the room light and neutral.  Choose body-flattering colors and avoid green or yellow.  No one looks good in green reflection and yellow makes you look jaundiced.  Not a good look for sex!

Pillows.

Gay men often make the mistake of over-pillowing the bed.  While it may look good, it psychologically puts the bed off-limits by taking up so much room.  An over-pillowed bed sends a strong signal that the bed is a decorative prop rather than a place for communion.  It is a subtle but unmistakable “do not lay here” sign.  All you need is two sham-size pillows placed against the headboard and two to four sleeping pillows.

Bed Linens.

You want the sexiest tactile experience, which you can only get with thread counts starting at 450 to 1,000.  Keep the sheets as plain as possible–no distracting designs or embroideries.  Silk and satin feel awesome against your skin but they do slide around and good luck getting the stains out.  Try flannel sheets—they’re cuddly and warm.  Or try mixing bedding textures, like silk sheets with a satin pillow and a flannel blanket.  Mix linens up so you’re always experiencing something new and exciting.

Scenting your bedsheets is a great way to enhance a sexual ambiance.  Try the following:

Add several drops of your favorite aromatherapy oil to the softener section of your washing machine.  Or put the drops in a small cotton handkerchief or washcloth and throw it in the dryer with your bed linens.

Spray your sheets with a sheet scent spray, such as ‘Smooth as Velvet’.

Pour a quarter-cup of scented bath salts in the final rinse cycle.  Or throw a tied-up washcloth filled with salts in the dryer to tumble along with the bedsheets.

Scent a washcloth or small piece of fabric with your favorite perfume or essential oil and throw it into the dryer with the bedding.

Dust some ‘Kama Sutra Honey Dust’ between your sheets. Honey dust absorbs perspiration and won’t get sticky like a lot of powders.

Fill a spray bottle with water and add a few drops of your favorite essential oil and then spray it on your sheets.

Next week: Discovering your erogenous zones.

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