Libido: how to bring it back without pillsHow to increase female libido without pills

How to increase female libido without pills

You can increase a woman’s libido without pills if you act in two steps: first understand what is smothering your desire and remove it, and then bring into your life what lets desire catch fire, the way oxygen feeds a flame. In the opposite order it does not work: beautiful lingerie will not make up for five hours of sleep and last week’s resentment.

When people ask me how to raise libido, they usually expect a list of foods, the name of a magic pill or an exercise. This is where I always remember the story of Pfizer, the company that makes Viagra. For several years it tried to make the same kind of pill for women, and in 2004 it officially admitted failure: female desire does not work the way male desire does. For a man it is often enough to increase blood flow to the genitals, and an erection happens. For a woman things are a little more complicated: besides physiology there is also her psycho-emotional state, and without it the body does not switch on by itself.

That is why I always ask women: what is stopping you from wanting right now? What exactly is bothering you? And most often the answer is chronic tiredness, sex you don’t like and that brings discomfort, the feeling that at home you are the service staff and nobody thinks about you or takes care of you, no emotional closeness with your partner, no attention to foreplay. Many women think their libido is low, when really they have no strength or energy and no emotional connection with their partner, so desire simply has nothing to hold on to.

What libido is and where it comes from, I covered in detail on my main page about female libido. Here it is practice only: what you can do at home, as a couple and for your own dear self. I look at desire on three levels at once: the body, the head and the state you live your day in. Usually a woman tries to fix everything on one single level: she works only with her body, or only with her head, or only with her state. But the effect lasts only when you work on all three levels at the same time. Working on just one is like changing a light bulb in a house where the fuses keep blowing: the action seems right, but it is useless, because it is the whole wiring that needs fixing.

What smothers desire	What to try at home	When that is not enough
Lack of sleep	Go to bed before 11 pm: set an evening “lights out” alarm and turn off social media an hour before sleep	Insomnia does not pass for weeks
Pain, burning, dryness during sex	Lubricant, more time for caresses before penetration	Pain keeps coming back, you need a gynaecologist
Sex as a duty	More physical and emotional contact with your partner than penetration itself: hugs, touch, talking	Your partner does not accept a no
Shame about your body	Ask yourself: who is judging me, who am I supposed to be “a certain way” for, whose expectations am I failing to meet	Disgust at your own body does not go away
Monotony in the relationship	Look for new experiences and emotions that the two of you will live through together	Arguments and resentments have been piling up for years
Anxiety in bed: “do I look good?”	Focus on sensations rather than on thoughts about how you look and who is judging you	Panic, tears, memories of abuse

Sleep, workload and everyday chores: where to start raising libido at home

The easiest way to raise libido at home is through rest: a tired body chooses sleep, and it is right to. While you are sleeping five or six hours, the rest goes slowly. But having no energy and having no desire are not the same thing: sleep brings the energy back, but desire still needs some work. That is exactly why my practicum “Healthy and Desired” has a whole level about your state: the difference between “I wake up and have the energy to want” and “I wake up already drained” (the practicum is in Russian and Ukrainian).

Look honestly at your evening. Work, dinner, homework, dishes, laundry, and at half past eleven you are expected to be passionate in bed. There is physically nothing for desire to grow from.

What you can do this week already:

• lighten your evening: agree with the rest of the household that they take on part of the chores;
• keep the phone out of the bedroom for at least half an hour before sleep;
• take back one hour a day that belongs only to you.

The last point does not seem to be about sex, but it is the most important one. Because a woman who has no time for herself rarely feels desirable and rarely wants sex.

The body: movement, pain and Kegel exercises for women at home

I won’t be revealing a secret: regular physical activity improves mood and sleep, and that directly affects your interest in intimacy.

Any sport will do; what matters is that you enjoy it and can do it regularly: regularity is the key to success. Ideally, over a week you would have cardio (dancing, swimming, brisk walking), strength training and separate work on your pelvic floor muscles: different kinds of exercise give the body different things.

And a very important point about intimacy itself. If sex hurts you, no exercise and no workout will bring desire back. The brain learns quickly, it forms the link “intimacy equals pain”, and it switches desire off in advance. I go through the causes in my article on pain during sex, and relaxing the muscles that are braced for pain is the first thing I teach in my practicum.

A separate word about the pelvic floor muscles. Kegel exercises for women can be done at home even without any devices: squeeze the muscles as if you were stopping the flow of urine, hold for a few seconds, relax. But these are exercises without load, which makes them like squats without a barbell: the muscles wake up, yet gain no strength. Strong, elastic pelvic floor muscles bring more blood to the clitoris and vagina, more lubrication, brighter arousal and orgasm, and desire follows: among my students this is the most common feedback. How to do them correctly and why they give many women no results, see my article on Kegel exercises for women.

The head: fantasies, masturbation and warming up before intimacy

Desire lives in the head before it lives in the body, so it needs feeding: fantasies, thoughts about sex, erotic books or films that you personally like. If your head is full of to-do lists all day, there is simply no room for sex in it.

One of the phrases I hear most often in consultations: “It is so hard to make myself start, but once we begin, I like it.” This is not a malfunction; this is how responsive desire works, as described by Rosemary Basson. It wakes up along the way. So the task is not to wait until you want it by yourself, but to allow yourself to start small and see what happens next. In my practicum “Orgasm. Everything you need to know” there are separate lessons on this, “Your sex drive and what affects it” and “The gas and the brake of your arousal”: there we learn to press the gas and release the brake instead of waiting for desire to show up on its own (the practicum is in Russian and Ukrainian).

My advice here is simple: warm yourself up. A couple of hours before intimacy, recall a pleasant fantasy, read something erotic, do a few contractions of your intimate muscles, caress yourself without aiming for orgasm. You then come to bed no longer starting from zero.

Masturbation works for desire too. A woman who knows what feels good to her can show it, and sex stops being a lottery.

Sex as a duty, without pleasure, makes a woman insensitive and unkind. Down with self-sacrifice.

The couple: talking, novelty and scheduled sex

In long relationships desire is sustained by novelty, the feeling that you are desired, and the ability to talk about sex. That is the conclusion of the 2018 systematic review by Mark and Lasslo, which gathered the research on desire in long-term couples.

Novelty does not mean extremes. It can be a shared activity the two of you have not tried yet: a trip to an unfamiliar city, dance lessons, a hike in the mountains. In such situations you see your partner from the outside, and that matters for desire.

Many people put off talking about sex for years because they are afraid of hurting the other. It is better to start not with complaints but with what you like and what you would like more of. “I really love it when you kiss my neck for a long time” sounds different from “you never do any foreplay”.

Scheduled sex sounds boring, but it helps many couples with children. You know in advance that Thursday evening is yours, and you can tune in to it over the day. Spontaneity in a family with small children most often means there is no sex at all.

If desire has gone only towards your husband, while your interest in sex in general is alive, that is a separate story. For it I have a step-by-step model, “The Helm: 8 steps”, which I describe in my article on how to want your husband again.

Shame and beliefs: what blocks desire from the inside

Sometimes it happens like this: the body is rested, the partner is attentive, and there is still no desire. Then it is important to work on what you think about sex and about yourself: many prohibitions have lived in the head since childhood and quietly work as a brake on your arousal.

“Good girls don’t want that”, “a woman who enjoys sex can’t be trusted”, “the body should be hidden”. Such phrases are rarely said out loud, but you can recognise them by the reaction: you are ashamed to ask, awkward about undressing with the light on, guilt rolls in after pleasure. Desire is in no hurry to switch on in such a setting.

Where do they come from? We absorbed most of these beliefs in childhood and adolescence: we had no experience and trusted every word from mum, grandma or a teacher. Ask yourself: would you hand control of your life to your 13-year-old self today? Hardly. Yet in bed she is often the one deciding.

You can work on a belief on your own and in five steps give it back to whoever handed it to you:

1. Put the belief into one sentence. For example: “sex before marriage is bad”.
2. Find the source. Mum scared you, grandma kept repeating it, you read it in a book, heard it from friends.
3. Test it for logic with adult eyes. Most of the time it falls apart at the very first question.
4. Wrap it in a gift box in your mind and give it back to whoever gave it to you. With a smile: “Thanks, but I’ll pass on this, take it back”.
5. Replace it with a new sentence in your own words. For example: “getting to know a partner before marriage means taking care of myself”. The wording doesn’t matter; what matters is that the new belief is yours, a grown woman’s.

The second common obstacle in bed: you look at yourself through your partner’s eyes. Can he see your belly, how is your hair lying, is he trying for too long. While the head is busy judging, the body has no room for arousal.

You can try an exercise. Set a timer that goes off once an hour. At the signal, ask yourself: how attractive do I feel right now, from 0 to 10? Answer honestly. At that moment straighten your back, because posture really matters, and do 25 short contractions of your intimate muscles (blinks). And notice how your state changes in the moment.

If shame about your body is strong, start with your attitude to yourself; that is separate work, which I write about in my article on loving yourself and your body. And if abuse or a painful experience stands behind the prohibitions, it is important to work through it: you can come to me for a consultation, and we will go through it gently, step by step.

How to increase female libido after 40 and while breastfeeding

After 40 and while breastfeeding, desire is more often blocked by physical things: dryness, poor sleep, hot flushes, tiredness. They do need removing, but the body is only one level here: if the head still says “I am not who I was” and there is no energy left at all, desire will not come back.

While breastfeeding, oestrogen levels are low, and the vaginal lining becomes thinner and drier. Sex can become unpleasant, and the body remembers that. Lubricant, a slow pace and intimacy without penetration help. Plus sleep: if you get up three times a night, there is no energy to want, and that is a question of state, not of desire. Usually desire returns gradually, as the child grows and the nights become calmer.

After 40 many women notice that “wanting it by itself” happens less and less often, but desire flares up along the way. This is an expected change. During perimenopause, night-time hot flushes and dryness are added, and these are treated: a gynaecologist can offer local remedies, as described in the 2020 NAMS position statement on the genitourinary syndrome of menopause. I write more about this age in my article on desire in menopause.

A rise in libido before menopause also happens, and it surprises women. The children have grown up, contraception is no longer a worry, there is time. That is not a hormonal surge, it is freedom.

Natural remedies, teas and foods for libido

Teas, tinctures, honey with nuts and other natural remedies for increasing female libido are barely supported by research. If you enjoy them as a ritual, there is no harm, but do not expect an effect from them.

Maca, saffron, ginseng, magnesium: what is known (expand)

There is some data on maca, saffron and ginseng, but these are small studies with cautious conclusions. A breakdown by product with sources is in my article on aphrodisiacs for women. Alcohol-based tinctures I would not recommend: in a small dose alcohol takes the edge off anxiety, but in a larger one it dulls both arousal and sensitivity.

People ask me about magnesium too. There is no direct evidence that it raises desire. A deficiency causes irritability, cramps and poor sleep, and through sleep it indirectly hits interest in sex too. So it is better to confirm a deficiency with a GP than to take a supplement at random for months and wait for a miracle.

What to do about it

If we pull together everything we have talked about, desire rests on three supports, and each of them needs work.

• Body. Look at how much you sleep and what you eat, whether you move, whether there is pain or dryness. Start noticing that you have pelvic floor muscles: do some blinks, do Kegel exercises, feel how they respond.
• Head. Notice the beliefs, the shame and the “I’m not allowed” that switch the brake on. Figure out what you yourself want, and learn to talk about it with your partner.
• State. Be in the moment and observe where your desire goes and why. Track on which days you have the energy to want and on which you already wake up drained.

This is something you can start noticing today. But noticing and changing are two different things: each step on its own holds only for a short while, and done at random it is easy to drop within a week. If you need a system, I have one.

What this looks like in real life. One of my students came after cystitis and hormonal pills, on which her desire had disappeared completely. A few weeks later she wrote: “After the course everything recovered, I want it more than usual! Orgasms come very easily”.

Desire does not live in one place, so in the “Healthy and Desired” practicum (the practicum is in Russian and Ukrainian) I go through all three levels at once: you get a PionBox with trainers from me and start from day one, five minutes with the trainer in the evening, five minutes of breathing in the morning, I check your technique through a short video report, shame, beliefs and “I’m not allowed” we work through on live Zoom calls, and your state we restore with meditations and practices. That way the result stays with you for a long time, not for a couple of weeks.

Don’t put it off

If you are reading this and recognising yourself, don’t put it off. It will not sort itself out, I have seen that in hundreds of thousands of my followers. The brake presses harder and harder, “duty” sex becomes a habit, and the distance in the couple grows. In a year the same task will cost more: in energy and in the relationship. Start today, you have read to the end for a reason.

You have two paths.

1. Figure it out on your own: catch up on sleep, buy lingerie, drink herbal tea, read another article and wait (you have probably done that already…).
2. Figure it out with me. You can come to a free consultation: I or my team will help you find what is smothering desire in your case. Knowing the cause and knowing what you specifically should do are two different things. And if you already know you want to work with the body, the head and the state at once, come to me for the “Healthy and Desired” practicum.