# Does your level of sexual need change?



## stuckinboston (Jul 28, 2010)

For example, can a LD person's sex drive increase to or near the levels of a higher-desire partner? And vice-versa, can a non-LD person's sex drive decrease to the level of a LD partner?

Scholarly articles, personal experience, anecdotes - it's all good.


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## Anon Pink (Jan 17, 2013)

Yes. I hurried my sexuality for year and had no drive. I worked on myself and learned to drive my drive. Then the hormones prior to perimenopause kicked in and I became insatiable.

There are others her who will hopefully jump in.


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

stuckinboston said:


> For example, can a LD person's sex drive increase to or near the levels of a higher-desire partner? And vice-versa, can a non-LD person's sex drive decrease to the level of a LD partner?
> 
> Scholarly articles, personal experience, anecdotes - it's all good.


Unfortunately, the HD is concentrated on the LD and being rejected. The result is usually that the HD will have sexual confidence stripped, which results in lowered sex drive can even cause ED...

I think an HD can drive the LD's sex drive if the LD is a compassionate LD in that they want to please their HD. They will get into the act and get used to doing it more often. I don't know that they can become a beast of an HD, but I suspect that if some decide they want to be like that they can.


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## committed_guy (Nov 22, 2011)

stuckinboston said:


> For example, can a LD person's sex drive increase to or near the levels of a higher-desire partner? And vice-versa, can a non-LD person's sex drive decrease to the level of a LD partner?
> 
> Scholarly articles, personal experience, anecdotes - it's all good.


Yes. I was UHD (Ultra High Drive) and now I would say I am more mid. My wife is LD and never really changed.

However, I have read lots of stories of people changing. Usually what happens (and is happening in my case) is the HD husband gets rejected for so many years that his libido fades away. Usually in her early 40's a wife will have an increase in libido prior to menopause and then wonder why after years of refusal her husband doesn't want to have sex. I've been saving up all the things she told me in order to refuse sex for the first decade of our marriage and looking forward to telling her those same things in a few years.


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

Anon Pink said:


> Yes. I hurried my sexuality for year and had no drive. I worked on myself and learned to drive my drive. Then the hormones prior to perimenopause kicked in and I became insatiable.
> 
> There are others her who will hopefully jump in.


How where you able to adjust your drive?


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

committed_guy said:


> Yes. I was UHD (Ultra High Drive) and now I would say I am more mid. My wife is LD and never really changed.
> 
> However, I have read lots of stories of people changing. Usually what happens (and is happening in my case) is the HD husband gets rejected for so many years that his libido fades away. Usually in her early 40's a wife will have an increase in libido prior to menopause and then wonder why after years of refusal her husband doesn't want to have sex. I've been saving up all the things she told me in order to refuse sex for the first decade of our marriage and looking forward to telling her those same things in a few years.


They have no idea how they damaged the psyche of the man It took 1000's of hits to train him to be this way...


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

treyvion said:


> They have no idea how they damaged the psyche of the man It took 1000's of hits to train him to be this way...


A successful FWB situation with someone who likes you can fix much of this in a short amount of time, but it still takes time and repititions to undo the damage. 

With the one who trained you to be that way, around that person if you rely on them for the need you will be still affected.

With the new person, not so...


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

committed_guy said:


> Yes. I was UHD (Ultra High Drive) and now I would say I am more mid. My wife is LD and never really changed.


UHD can be on the border of obsessive, and maybe obsessive. Many of us have been there. 




committed_guy said:


> However, I have read lots of stories of people changing. Usually what happens (and is happening in my case) is the HD husband gets rejected for so many years that his libido fades away. Usually in her early 40's a wife will have an increase in libido prior to menopause and then wonder why after years of refusal her husband doesn't want to have sex. I've been saving up all the things she told me in order to refuse sex for the first decade of our marriage and looking forward to telling her those same things in a few years.


Yes what is normal for us to hear of is HD husbands rejected for so long, he doesn't want it anymore. His pee-pee doesn't even get hard anymore, so if she has an increase in libido later in life she will put the blame on him and cheat on him with someone who doesn't have libido issues.

On TAM I was newly introduced to women who are HD's who are starved down by their LD husbands. Their libido too is dragged down and they feel like they are being robbed of something important in life, they have the same feelings as a man. With enough drag down, their libido too will decrease, and their vaginal response and lubrication may also minimize over time due to lack of attention.


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

I can only speak from the high to not-so-high transition.

Age will of course take its toll. So will a lifetime of lackluster sex. My drive is lower than I ever thought it would be while I still had a pulse, and I'm pretty ambivalent about that. It's nice to not want to jump the wife every night when climbing into the sack, it's even nice to get an offer and think "Wow, I really DON'T care tonight", but it's also like having a close friend die, or at least move far, far away, whom you then only see once or twice a year.


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## Lionelhutz (Feb 2, 2012)

My wife and I have had our sex drives always moving in opposite directions. We have each had our turns as HD and LD. We were only on the same page for the first few years we were together.

I agree that constant rejection with either destroy the HD person's drive or send him or her off to seek sex elsewhere.


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

Cletus said:


> I can only speak from the high to not-so-high transition.
> 
> Age will of course take its toll. So will a lifetime of lackluster sex. My drive is lower than I ever thought it would be while I still had a pulse, and I'm pretty ambivalent about that. It's nice to not want to jump the wife every night when climbing into the sack, it's even nice to get an offer and think "Wow, I really DON'T care tonight", but it's also like having a close friend die, or at least move far, far away, whom you then only see once or twice a year.


with my drive returning, i definately feel more like a man. a man being starved by his wife SHOULD desire other women, should remember he's a desireable man and can get it elsewhere.


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## 1812overture (Nov 25, 2013)

Anon Pink said:


> Then the hormones prior to perimenopause kicked in and I became insatiable.


Is this common? Surely it is not universal.


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## SimplyAmorous (Nov 25, 2009)

> Originally Posted by *Anon Pink*
> *Then the hormones prior to perimenopause kicked in and I became insatiable*.


YEP, that's what happened to me... age 42..... I went from being too occupied on other things (kids, projects, I don't know)...after having last son..getting an IUD... to realizing .."OMG what have we been missing [email protected]#"... I went a little NUTS, was wondering if I had sex addiction..... I know I had some sort of hormonal surge going on ... I went from wanting sex ONCE a week to literally 3 times a day.. (though he could not keep up with that!)... this lasted 8 months, then tempered down... and 4 times a week has been great... that was 5 yrs ago...

We've had more sex in our 40's than all the other years, unfortunate to say... it shouldn't have been this way.. as his drive was higher back then.. he was just alot more passive than I am-when I want something. 

This explains it > 



> *Balance the seesaw*. When they were first married, the man remembered, he always took the sexual lead, pulling his wife close and whispering his desire to make love. But now, 20 years later, she often makes the first move.
> 
> Again, hormonal changes are bringing the couple into closer balance. Men and women both produce *testosterone* and *estrogen*, but the proportion of each changes over the years.
> The male's shifting levels of estrogen and testosterone may make him more willing to follow than to lead, happy for his wife to set the pace. And as a woman's estrogen declines and her testosterone becomes proportionately greater, she may become more assertive.


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## GettingIt_2 (Apr 12, 2013)

committed_guy said:


> I've been saving up all the things she told me in order to refuse sex for the first decade of our marriage and looking forward to telling her those same things in a few years.


And are you expecting that she will put up with it and stick around just the way you did? The resentment and bitterness that you've allowed to take hold until you're looking forward to retribution might hurt her one day, but it's hurting you more. And she might do what you never had the strength to do: leave and look for a fulfilling sex life elsewhere. 

You allowed this. You accepted this. That doesn't mean she will do the same.


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## coupdegrace (Oct 15, 2012)

Speaking just for myself, I have always been HD. Some kind of sexual activity *at least* every other day keeps me from going crazy and thinking naughty thoughts. While I could have sex (or Bj or Hj) every day, every other day works for me because my wife is LD, and I had to make that compromising adjustment.


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## GettingIt_2 (Apr 12, 2013)

I addressed the low desire that kept my HD husband at sex only a few times a month. With a ton of communication and some therapy, we were able to ramp back up and have sex most days now. Even better than the sex is our repaired intimacy--we are closer emotionally than we ever were, even before the sex starved years. 

I was scared my husband would reject me after all those years of struggle. It was HARD on him, and he had shut down emotionally, socially, and personally in a lot of ways. But when I came to him and in all sincerity told him that I was sorry and wanted to change, he opened his arms and said he'd work on things with me.

I've brought it up to him many times--how he's managed to move past that dark time and look to the future with such optimism and enthusiasm. He told me that he made a conscious effort during our bad years to not allow himself to become bitter, to not allow resentment to eat him. 

I don't know how he did it. It was resentment that ate at me all those years and made me unable to find my desire for him. It took months of therapy for me to work through it, and learn to keep it at bay for good. But he did it as an act of will. 

I have asked him if he ever thinks that he could have moved on and found someone to share those years with him, and whether he thinks that would have been better. (I know I contemplated moving on in those years.) His answer was "maybe, but there are no guarantees." He says he never lost hope that we could find a way through, and that we could stay a family and not have the kids suffer through a divorce. He says there is no use in looking at what if's, or in second guessing what we have now.

I think about this all the time: why did we survive? Why did I come to put in the effort to change, and why did he accept that sincere effort instead of handing me the same misery I had handed him?

I think it mostly has to do with his character. He wanted to be able to live with his choices no matter what happened between us.


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## soulseer (Jul 26, 2013)

treyvion said:


> Unfortunately, the HD is concentrated on the LD and being rejected. The result is usually that the HD will have sexual confidence stripped, which results in lowered sex drive can even cause ED...


I had this experience. Once I realized I was the one who craved & initiated sexual situations a spell was broken.

I became self conscious about sex, resentful for not getting it and uncertainty if my wife wanted me sexually.

I am now recovering from a back injury where sex is difficult and this topic is now moot.


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## ScarletBegonias (Jun 26, 2012)

I keep my drive high by keeping sex on the brain throughout the day. Instead of treating my drive like a light switch I treat it like a fire that needs to be tended all day.
All day between DH and me there are sexy texts,sexy phone calls,teasing,innuendo,exchanging racy photos and whatever else we can squeeze in between tasks throughout our work day.

By the time we get home that drive is kickin on high. 


Conversely,with my ex it was like "what drive?". 

I firmly believe it's possible to adjust your drive.If you want to adjust it.


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## Plan 9 from OS (Jul 13, 2012)

I believe in most cases that HD and LD are a state of mind. I believe your sex drive level is largely dependent upon how much intimacy/desire/love you feel for your spouse. I'm not talking lust - which is more chemical based - I'm talking about how you perceive your spouse. If you perceive him/her as a roommate, another child, inherently lazy, self centered, etc, then your spouse will look less desirable to you. If you view your spouse as fun, engaging, a flirt, sensual and just plain awesome to be around then I believe your drive will become elevated. 

But that's the key - the mind and perception. Are you living with your lover? Or are you living with your roommate?


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

soulseer said:


> I had this experience. Once I realized I was the one who craved & initiated sexual situations a spell was broken.
> 
> I became self conscious about sex, resentful for not getting it and uncertainty if my wife wanted me sexually.
> 
> I am now recovering from a back injury where sex is difficult and this topic is now moot.


they degraded you, one chip at a time. one rejection, several body language and tone of voice guestures, some put downs. over and over and over again.

It strips into your masculinity, your sexual strength, can even cause ED and weakened erections.

The good thing is it can be fixed. Just as it was diminished bit by bit, it can be filled bit by bit. You may bounce back quick, but to be safe i would have at least much time having positive traction with sexual situations as you did having negative traction with it...

But so much comes back even after several positive encounters.

A new person is great because it's an entirely new image she casts onto you. 

I know many of us trying to make it work with an old person who probably betrayed us, or at least made us sex starved for an excessive period of time.


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

Plan 9 from OS said:


> But that's the key - the mind and perception. Are you living with your lover? Or are you living with your roommate?


At least I'm not living with a clown. Oh, the nightmares.


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## Plan 9 from OS (Jul 13, 2012)

Cletus said:


> At least I'm not living with a clown. Oh, the nightmares.


My avatar is a combination of a heavy dose of alpha coupled with a sexy proposition for my spouse. Gets her every time... Pure sexiness right there.


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

Please Plan 9....please change your scary, scary avatar.


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

Plan 9 from OS said:


> My avatar is a combination of a heavy dose of alpha coupled with a sexy proposition for my spouse. Gets her every time... Pure sexiness right there.


Looks to me more like a heavy dose of psilocybin. Stop trying to justify it just because it makes you're wife randy. Who did you marry - Jeffery Dahmer?


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## Plan 9 from OS (Jul 13, 2012)

Cletus said:


> Looks to me more like a heavy dose of psilocybin. Stop trying to justify it just because it makes you're wife randy. Who did you marry - Jeffery Dahmer?


Channeling my inner Freud: Sometimes a clown is just a clown...


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

Plan 9 from OS said:


> Channeling my inner Freud: Sometimes a clown is just a clown...


And for the first time in recorded history, I will channel my inner Bill Clinton and Freud simultaneously: sometimes a woman is just a humidor. 

I'll gracefully bow out of the threadjack now.

Shut up, clown.


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## Anon Pink (Jan 17, 2013)

treyvion said:


> How where you able to adjust your drive?



Among many many other things, I understood that the neural pathways to our pleasure centers are lazy and they take the well worn easy pathway. Most women have to work at keeping a sex drive after kids because the hormonal fluctuations along with changing body and healing tends to kill the sex drive and it doesn't usually turn back on by itself.

So, keep sex on the brain. Think about it, imagine it, touching yourself often, read erotic stories, look at erotic pictures, imagine the intimacy and loving closeness sex can bring. Put sex in a positive light rather then a power struggle sticking point.



1812overture said:


> Is this common? Surely it is not universal.


It is kind of common but not universal. Sometimes when the estrogen begins to slow we experience a period of higher testosterone. Women always have testosterone but the estrogen balances it. Which translates as a higher sex drive. 

I know know what a teenage boy feels. Poor kid!

ETA oh I didn't see SA's post...what she said....


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

Anon Pink said:


> I know know what a teenage boy feels. Poor kid!


With all due respect, you know no such thing. Suck every last molecule of estrogen out of your body and you'd still be left with a testosterone load way the hell below what the typical 16 year old boy has to suffer with daily.

I've often wished for the ability for a spouse to spend a week with the hormones of the other, just for the empathy that would be generated.


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## Anon Pink (Jan 17, 2013)

Cletus said:


> With all due respect, you know no such thing. Suck every last molecule of estrogen out of your body and you'd still be left with a testosterone load way the hell below what the typical 16 year old boy has to suffer with daily.
> 
> I've often wished for the ability for a spouse to spend a week with the hormones of the other, just for the empathy that would be generated.


Ooooh you don't know how much I wished the same thing! Would love for my H to feel what it's like to go through this crap every month! 

As far as feeling what a teen age boy feels... You say it's much worse? Good God I can not imagine! I would sit in meetings and if a man was speaking, I was wondering what he was packing! I could not stop myself from glancing at a mans hands and making potential comparisons. I had the dirtiest mind and EVERYTHING was about sex. And you say it's worse? We need to do more to help these poor boys!


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

Anon Pink said:


> Ooooh you don't know how much I wished the same thing! Would love for my H to feel what it's like to go through this crap every month!
> 
> As far as feeling what a teen age boy feels... You say it's much worse? Good God I can not imagine! I would sit in meetings and if a man was speaking, I was wondering what he was packing! I could not stop myself from glancing at a mans hands and making potential comparisons. I had the dirtiest mind and EVERYTHING was about sex. And you say it's worse? We need to do more to help these poor boys!


Um, yeah, it's worse. I'm still like what you describe today at 50. In my teenage mind, I was having sex with every girl in the room in every position my wet-behind-the-ears mind could conceive (sometimes with all of them at once!). A bare shoulder or a shapely leg was an automatic boner - those jokes in the movies aren' that far off. 

It does sound like you got a good taste of what it's like to be male. 

Amazing there aren't even more sex crimes, isn't it?


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

Anon Pink said:


> Ooooh you don't know how much I wished the same thing! Would love for my H to feel what it's like to go through this crap every month!
> 
> As far as feeling what a teen age boy feels... You say it's much worse? Good God I can not imagine! I would sit in meetings and if a man was speaking, I was wondering what he was packing! I could not stop myself from glancing at a mans hands and making potential comparisons. I had the dirtiest mind and EVERYTHING was about sex. And you say it's worse? We need to do more to help these poor boys!


Wondering if he has a Keilbasa down his thigh?

Some of us TAM'ers do... Many don't. Doesn't guarantee you won't be cheated on.


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## askari (Jun 21, 2012)

committed_guy said:


> Yes. I was UHD (Ultra High Drive) and now I would say I am more mid. My wife is LD and never really changed.
> 
> However, I have read lots of stories of people changing. Usually what happens (and is happening in my case) is the HD husband gets rejected for so many years that his libido fades away. Usually in her early 40's a wife will have an increase in libido prior to menopause and then wonder why after years of refusal her husband doesn't want to have sex. I've been saving up all the things she told me in order to refuse sex for the first decade of our marriage and looking forward to telling her those same things in a few years.


Committed - totally with you on this one, and in the exact same position.
Twenty years of rejection, only getting sex when SHE wanted it, vanilla sex, being called a pervert because I wanted a bj etc has driven me into a sexual desert...where I would rather have a bottle of wine than sex.

Sometimes it worries me that I am totally sexually dead...When I wake up in the morning with a boner I think Phew!

But I am not even interested in revenge...I just couldnt be bothered. But I will have the last laugh though; when the children are 18 and I say, 'bye'. here is your half, I'm off to make the best of what remains of my life. 
No b1tchyness or explanations etc. Just 'bye'.


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## treyvion (Apr 29, 2013)

askari said:


> Committed - totally with you on this one, and in the exact same position.
> Twenty years of rejection, only getting sex when SHE wanted it, vanilla sex, being called a pervert because I wanted a bj etc has driven me into a sexual desert...where I would rather have a bottle of wine than sex.
> 
> Sometimes it worries me that I am totally sexually dead...When I wake up in the morning with a boner I think Phew!
> ...


Just go find somebody new. Your wife already killed you.

The new one can bring you back to life IF you can leave the image your wife cast of you in the past. IE: leave all that crap, perceptions, and things over in the old relationship. Don't talk about it or think about it with the new.


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## EntirelyDifferent (Nov 30, 2012)

stuckinboston said:


> For example, can a LD person's sex drive increase to or near the levels of a higher-desire partner? And vice-versa, can a non-LD person's sex drive decrease to the level of a LD partner?
> 
> Scholarly articles, personal experience, anecdotes - it's all good.



I'm the LD person with an ultra HD partner. We have sex/sexual intimacy of some type almost every day of the week.

At the core, my natural drive remains the same... pretty much zero. I don't really give a crap about sex. BUT my desire to keep my HD partner satisfied in that area is VERY high, so I put a lot of conscious effort into making our sex life enjoyable for both of us. It's hard to describe... I CAN mostly keep up with him, I (usually) enjoy it, but it's also not really my thing and won't ever be. 

I do feel like since my partner IS satisfied, he doesn't need as much to _stay_ satisfied as when our sexual relationship was pretty bad.


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## askari (Jun 21, 2012)

Entirely - if only all LD spouses were like you!

Your husband is very lucky. Good for you to admit that sex doesnt really interest you but because you love your husband and sex is important for him, you step up to the bar.

Its what marriage should be all about - compromise, team work TOGETHERNESS.

Well done. I admire you.


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