Menopause and the Disappearing Sex Drive

Menopause can wreak absolute havoc on a woman's sex drive. Personally, mine was never high in the first place. Once the menopause-fairy paid me a visit - kaput. Nothing. Nadda. Zilch. I couldn't care less if I ever had sex again. And I don't like it. My sex drive might not have been much, but it occasionally reared its horny little head. I miss it. I miss wanting to have sex.

So here is why menopause is so cruel to the sex drive. First of all, Mother Nature has designed us so that our sex drive goes up when we are ovulating. Apparently Mother Nature likes the idea of reproduction. When the ovulating becomes irregular - or just plain stops - we lose that precious spike in our sex drive.

When a woman becomes menopausal, she also loses estrogen. Estrogen is a mood elevator. It works in the brain to maintain interest in sex, and it also works at the level of the genitals to help make sex more pleasurable. Needless to say, less estrogen - less interest in nooky. Less estrogen also causes vaginal dryness, and that does not help the matter. When sex hurts - well, who wants that? Okay, so some people want that, but not most of us.

Just to confuse the matter, there is hormone testosterone to contend with. We only have a tiny amount of that testosterone, but when menopause hits it lowers even that small amount. And - according to some doctors - that testosterone is what really puts a little zing into our sex drive. We can't win!

So what do we do about this? It wouldn't be the end of the world if so many of us didn't have partners (husbands or whoever) who feels so very cheated by this process of nature. They take it personally. And try explaining it to them. Ha! Lack of sex drive is just not something that the average male understands.