Dr. Ravi Kothari

Hello Friends!

Welcome once again! I'm Dr. Hitesh Shah, a sexologist from Mumbai. So, our today's topic is low sexual desire in women. Well, this is a very common problem amongst our Indian population specially. The reasons are many. If we try to understand, why does a woman feel low desire or less interest in sex, we need to evaluate it at various level. Of course, there are women who have constitutionally low sexual desire but are few. Most of them have either psychological factors or relationship factors or many of them also have medical or hormonal factors. So, let's try to understand them in detail. Now, we must rule out all possible medical factors. Whenever a woman, especially when they come after marriage, the couple is frustrated/depressed because the woman feels she's not able to respond to her husband. Husband tries to cope up, tries to cooperate.

He's very understanding, but at the end of the day he's a man, he's a human being. He has his own desire and passion, he doesn't get response from wife so he's also frustrated. Many years pass through for many couple. Sometimes they come when they have pressure to conceive babies, sex life is just forgotten. So, even for conceiving, they need sex and the wife just doesn't feel the desire to have sex. And all of these also leads to various marital issues, disharmony, fights, quarrels or extramarital affair by husband or depression in wife or husband. So, it's very important that this problem is quickly communicated between the couple and they come to the doctor for the right treatment. Once the diagnosis is made, treatment is possible. So the common medical factors are any chronic disorders or disease in the system, person tends to feel low desire. Common hormonal problem in women like PCOS, hyperthyroidism and low haemoglobin - anaemia which are very common apart from diabetes which also cause low desire along with some lubrication disorders. So these are very common medical factors, so first we evaluate whether there are any medical factors or not.

If not, we simultaneously try to understand in detail the psychological relationship aspect. As for psychological reasons are concerned, we understand the makeup of the woman, the personality, the upbringing, the attitude, and the cognitive factors of the woman about sex. There are women who feel sex is bad, sinful, is just for having baby and something what animals do so one shouldn't indulge in sex except for having a baby. There are women who have negative impact about sex because they heard somebody’s experience of painful first night, or they have seen rape scenes in television or a movie or they have heard someone's experience which is very painful and they develop a kind of disinterest or aversion or they start camouflaging their own sexual desire. There are women who are very psychologically shy or reserve so they don't explore their own sexuality or they are also not free or they are too much controlled by their husband in the bed so their desire don't really come up and they also feel really ashamed that if they would feel free on the bed, then what would their husband think! So, these are all psychological complex or controls which a woman develops within herself.

It also can be her forced marriage, they don't want to marry the guy but are forced and they don't develop the sexual interest. There are few women who are probably having a lesbian orientation, the attraction for only same-sex so they don't indulge in sexual desires for the opposite sex. Then, there are relationship issues between husband and wife. They feel alone or left out, or not being loved by the their husband or not respected by their husband or issues within the joint family or in-laws. All these keep them indulged in stressed out situations. There are also working women who are working entire day, the kitchen, and they really feel fatigue after the entire day. There can be vitamin deficiency also, these can be due to lack of nutrition, so these all stresses are phases that every woman passes through at some stage of their life. And the stress leads to low desire in woman.

There are women who don't want to have baby so show less interest in sex. Also, they are women who want to conceive and there is more conceiving pressure than enjoying sex life. So, there are multiple reasons why women can have low sexual desires. There can be multiple factors as stated above. Any of these factors in given case, we can help the women out in experiencing the desire, we can help the couple out once, when diagnosed. Also, what is important is the sexual chemistry in the bed. What kind of foreplay they do, how husband is taking interest in woman, how he's boosting his self image as lots of woman lose their self image. They feel less appealing, less attractive, questioning whether their husband likes them or not or if, are attracted to someone else. These self esteem issues lead to low sexual desire. In short, we evaluate all these factors in every case and try to help the woman as an individual and both of them as the couple. So, problem can be sorted out and you both can get back to your privileges of happy marriage. Right? So all the best to you and in case of any queries or concern, you're welcome to meet us at Lybrate platform. I'm Dr. Hitesh Shah once again. See you again with some more educational videos.

Thank you!