How to Increase Your Libido

Painful sex is quite common in women who have endometriosis. There are a few things you can try to make the experience less painful, but sometimes sex is completely out of the question until you’ve had surgery. The problem is, once you’ve had the laparoscopy to excise endometriosis, sex may not be painful anymore, but your libido may be really low.

When the brain and body don't connect

A low libido is always frustrating, but even more so when you’ve been looking forward to finally having pain-free sex after surgery. Sadly, it’s not uncommon. It is said that your brain is the largest sex organ, and that’s not wrong. And when sex has been associated with pain for a long time, it can take a while for your brain to accept this.

Retraining your brain

Luckily, a low libido doesn’t mean that sex is off the table forever. There are things you can do to increase your libido. The key is to train your brain to associate sex with pleasure again, rather than pain. Sadly, when your partner has been waiting for you to get healthy enough for sex, there may be a lot of pressure on you to enjoy the intimate times with your partner. This pressure might make it harder to increase your sex drive.

So, what can you do?

Masturbate

It might sound weird to masturbate in order to increase your libido, but it does work. When you don’t have to perform for your partner, the pressure to have an orgasm is gone. Touch yourself to remind yourself what gives you the most pleasure. Take time to reconnect with your body. Even when you don’t feel like it, you’d be surprised how aroused you can become from masturbating. And if you’ve had a few pleasurable experiences masturbating, your brain will start to associate pleasure with sex again.

Don’t strive for an orgasm

Don’t put pressure on yourself to have an orgasm. Communicate with your partner that you just want to take it slow. Not having the pressure to perform will make you relaxed and will allow you to get in the mood. If you concentrate on enjoying the intimacy without the need to have a climax, you allow your body to become aroused. Try to remember what made you aroused before sex became painful, or when you masturbate, and recreate those moments.

Make time for sex

As boring as this may sound, a good trick to increase your libido is to schedule sex. Arousal doesn’t have to be spontaneous, it can be reactive. When we think of sex drive, we always imagine ourselves unable to keep our hands off our partner, but your libido can be coaxed. You can start with a massage and then move on to more intimate touching and see where it will lead. Maybe you just have a nice massage, but chances are, you’ll end up awakening your arousal. Scheduling this time will ensure that you at least try to make your libido come back to life.

A low libido can be very frustrating for both partners, but with a few tricks, you can easily get it back.