Cancer - How It Affects Your Sex Life?

Hampered drive for physical intimacy may not be the case with everybody suffering from cancer. Since, each individual is different with varied sexual needs, it is rather impossible to predict how cancer would affect a person’s sex drive. But certain treatments of cancer might take a toll on your libido and subsequently, your sex life.

Cancer and certain treatments of cancer, can be the reason behind your low libido as they can cause:

1. Imbalance in the sex hormones
2. Scarring of the skin
3. Breathing problems
4. Diarrhea or bowel problems
5. Pain
6. Tension or anxiety
7. Depression or sadness
8. Irritability
9. Fatigue (Tiredness)
10. Persistent sickness

With any of these side-effects, you may not have the urge of indulging in sexual intercourse because of the constant irritability and pain, essentially resulting from weakness. You might also think less of yourself, with no care for the way you dress up, make up or do your hair as you used to do before. With fatigue playing nemesis to your libido, you may feel entirely washed out, exhausted and spent after your intensive chemotherapy sessions.

1. Speak out: Try unburdening yourself of the worries and anxiety in front of your partner or the doctor and make them understand how you truly feel about yourself. They may be able to guide you home.
2. Plan your rumble beforehand: You can plan your sexual activity by taking pain killers an hour prior to lovemaking.
3. Foreplay helps: Remember, sexual contact cannot spread cancer, ever. An intense session of foreplay has never disappointed anybody and it might work wonders if you have been going through all the rigor of cancer and its treatment lately. It would make you feel genuinely cared for; this might just egg you on to come out of that shell of depression and anxiety and enjoy sex like the way you used to.