Are You Dead Down There?

HER: I just don’t want him touching me down there.

ME: I get it, he’s been telling you that you have a low libido. 

Women say the words “down there” all the time when they talk to me. I’m used to it now, but in the past, I thought they were talking about a story trending out of Australia.

​“Down there” is unmentionable. Not okay. Embarrassing. 

​But it isn’t.

My lovely client’s been married for many years. Every single day over all those years, her husband told her she’s Low Libido. Like as a definition. After a while, even though she’d had great sexual relationships with other men before they got married, she believed him. 

When she called me for her first session she said “I have a low libido. I want to want it, but I’m just dead down there.”

She loved her husband, but her “dead down there problem” meant that when her husband tried to connect with her, she batted him away or rolled her eyes. He constantly felt rejected. He told her in large and small ways that she was “frigid”.

It was a lose-lose situation - a tragic one that eventually led to his heartbreaking infidelity. 

Neither of them knew the first thing about female arousal. Like most people, they saw women through a male model of “turned on” or “turned off.” Open and shut. 

A lot of us know that “women need foreplay” to get turned on. But that’s just a tiny piece of the puzzle. Candles, a bubble bath, and tender kisses are okay, but they don’t get to the core. Turn on happens upriver from any “HOW YOUR MAN SHOULD TURN YOU ON” headline you might read in the socially distanced checkout line at Safeway. ​

​Women get turned on when the people around them see them as erotic.
​
If you show up with a bunch of roses and the attitude that your woman is never going to be turned on anyway (so what’s the use), I guarantee that things are going nowhere fast. 

The men (and women) around us are fuel for our eroticism. (This includes you. It’s not limited to you, but we can talk about that later.) When others see us as sexually powerful, we see ourselves in that reflection. We react from a deep, raw place. 

This is why some women are “so much more sexual” than others. They are seen as sexually powerful from their partners and others in their environment. It’s a simple feedback loop. They see themselves in others’ eyes. And they respond. The opposite is also true. 

This is one of the most damaging things about the way our culture responds to sex and sexuality. We mute ourselves. Many of us seldom talk about sex and if we do, it’s to complain about sexual pain or not wanting it. We’re reinforcing a message that women shouldn’t be turned on. 

Women need variety. We get bored with you and with ourselves. We need sex that feels good to OUR BODIES RIGHT NOW - not the way it felt good years ago. We hate it when you shame us about our bodies or our way of being. When you see us as “low libido” dried up, frigid or cold, we become that.

Want your woman to be sexy? Listen to what REALLY turns her on now and give her that. Look for the tiny spaces of pleasure in her life. Let her show you the way. Her eroticism is at the core of her true nature, but the key is in your hands. 

When you celebrate her, see her, welcome her, guide her, hold her, take her - she’s open, flowing, responsive, alive and hungry. 

This is what it means to welcome the sexual nature of a woman. 

Women have been socialized to believe that there’s something wrong with us. We’ve internalized pervasive cultural misogyny. This affects everything about us - including our libido. We’re all in this - just like we’re all in a culture of racism and need to figure out how to get out. 

Female sexuality is more SoCal wildfire than a gas fireplace. It starts with the right conditions, takes a spark to light it, wind to whip it up. Once it’s on, it goes for weeks. It’s powerful but you don’t just flip a switch to turn it on or off. Maybe that’s why society fears it so much. Some women burn more easily than others. But under the right conditions, even the Olympic Peninsula burns hot. 

Know anyone who wants to work on this? Send them my info.