From Low Libido to Pleasure Priestess: Rekindling Female Desire
Desire. The electric current that runs through your body, making you feel alive and ready. Ready to receive. The slightest touch from your partner on their way out activates the tantalizing anticipation of being together again. With desire, arousal blooms within you, opening like a flower in the sun.
If you feel like you've lost this spark, you might not even know when it happened. It may have waned gradually, it may have even vanished suddenly, seemingly without cause. If this sounds familiar, know that you are not broken, and you are not alone. 1 in 3 women reports low or sudden loss of desire at some point in her life and nearly half of all women report experiencing at least one problem with sexual function. It is normal to experience fluctuations in desire as life changes around us, however we don’t have to give up our desire completely.
Desire isn't a magical force that either exists or does not. It is a complex interplay of physical, emotional, and relational factors. In women, arousal follows desire and requires context and intention. Desire can be nurtured, rekindled, and brought back to life. Here we will explore some of the causes of low libido or sudden loss of desire, and what to do about them.
The path from low libido to “Pleasure Priestess” is a path of reconnection to your body, growing, healing old wounds and patterns, learning about yourself, and creating conditions in which desire can flourish. A Pleasure Priestess is a woman who fully owns, celebrates, and expresses her sexuality on her own terms, without carrying the burden of society’s judgement and shame.
We will explore seven reasons why women experience low libido, and practical and compassionate approaches that can help you overcome them. Whether you are experiencing only occasional dips in sexual interest or have been disconnected from your desire for years, this will offer a path back to your pleasure, your birthright. You deserve a fulfilling, exciting, and delicious sex life that reflects your authentic desires and deepens your connection with yourself and with your partner.
1. Relationship Resentment: Clearing the Path to Desire
In relationships, resentment is the number one cause of low libido or loss of desire. After you've been with someone for awhile, resentments may start to compound, growing and growing without ever really being resolved. The resentment may or may not be sex related, but its impact can be felt throughout the relationship, including in the bedroom. If resentment is causing low desire, you may feel sexual desire, but lack desire for your partner. Lack of emotional intimacy, lack of communication, and lack of repair after rupture create distance, tension, sexual shut down, and resentment.
Relationship resentment is one of the hardest to work through on your own. Working with a coach can provide a safe space to navigate difficult topics and repair conversations. Work on rebuilding trust through small but consistent actions and communicating as a way to listen to and learn about your partner. Create connection opportunities and foster positive tension. When negative tension and resentments take over, it can be very difficult to communicate with each other, so be sure to find your neutral before having hard conversations to help reduce additions to the resentment bank.
2. The Intimacy Gap: Beyond Physical Touch
In women, sex starts long before the physical act and requires context. If women do not get enough emotional connection and foreplay, they will likely not feel turned on. When they repeatedly do not have this need met, they lose their sex drive. A feeling of disconnection in daily life filters into other areas of the relationship and acts as a block to sexual desire.
To create opportunities for more emotional intimacy, talk to your partner about context and the importance of emotional safety, intimacy, and vulnerability. Explore what makes you feel emotionally connected and ask for it from your partner. Practice vulnerability and having vulnerable and honest conversations as a way to begin bringing back emotional intimacy and safety.
3. Not Knowing What Turns You On: Discovering Your Core Desires
Women have been taught to be distant from their desire and their sexuality. They may not know, or not feel able to ask for what they want to experience. Repeatedly not getting the type of sex they want leads to low libido. Societal messages condition women to disconnect from their sexuality and from their authentic desires. As a result of this disconnection, many women do not know what they want, or do not feel that it is ok for them to ask for it.
One way to get comfortable talking about sex, is to hire a sex coach and have the conversations with someone in a completely judgement and shame free space. Talking about your turn ons and core desires can serve as mental foreplay in addition to getting the type of sex that you really want to have! With a coach, you can uncover your core desires, script your hottest sexual movie, and learn how to teach it to your partner.
4. When Sex Hurts: Transforming Pain into Pleasure
Some women experience pain during intercourse, which can cause low sex drive. If your sexual experience is paired with pain, you may avoid it entirely. There can be many causes of painful intercourse. While some of these causes can be addressed through sex coaching, if you have a medical condition, make sure you are up to date with your medical team.
When you know your core desires and hottest sexual movie, you can begin to expand your sexual menu. When you take pressure off of penetration and increase the pathways and possibilities for pleasure beyond penetrative intercourse, you can rekindle your flame of sexual desire. Exercises such as full body pleasure mapping, yoni mapping, yoni massage, and yoni dearmoring can show you more of what is possible for you, rather than showing you more limitations.
5. Past Experience of Abuse or Trauma
When you have been disconnected from your desire and disassociated from your body due to abuse or trauma, a triggering event can make it feel like the event is happening again. This may cause a full loss of desire.
A trauma trained professional can help you live a fulfilling life and empower you to reclaim your pleasure even with a history of abuse and trauma. Our past experiences create a network in our body. Through trauma empowerment you can release that rigid network of past experiences and make space to create new, positive experiences.
6. Negative Body Image: Loving the Skin You're In
Many women feel that they must fit a perfect mold of the “ideal” body or image. With this tremendous pressure, and these societally imposed feelings, women may experience less enjoyment during sex, always tracking rather than feeling the pleasure of it. Women become disembodied when they are stuck in their heads worrying about how they look.
Celebrate your body in all of its glory! Create a landing strip for receiving and for pleasure, and tell your partner what words and actions you need from them to help dispel negative body image. Even if they’ve told you before, let them know that you want to hear it from them again (and again)! Practice mirror work and pleasure mapping to truly celebrate your body and create a landing strip for pleasure.
7. The Time Squeeze: Making Space for Pleasure
When life gets busy with work, kids, and the ever increasing responsibilities of adulthood, stress increases and pleasure decreases. Especially in women, a too full mental load can quickly lead to loss of desire. Additionally, when calendars become overfilled, we discover that some of the things you said yes to were actually a no. This adds to the overall resentment load that you are carrying and further distances you from real connection.
Give yourself permission to slow down, stop crossing your boundaries by saying yes when you mean no, declutter your calendar, and make intentional time to date your partner! Schedule in more of what really matters; date nights, sex dates, and coaching sessions. Spontaneous desire is not maintainable for most women, while responsive desire is something that can be created and built upon. By taking time to schedule more of what matters in the relationship, you create positive tension and anticipation, reduce some of that built up resentment, and create opportunities for connection and intimacy. Even on the busiest days, get in the habit of integrating quick moments of connection with each other.
Your Journey to Pleasure Priestess
In the exploration of female desire, rekindling your libido isn't a goal oriented destination—it's an ongoing journey of embracing self love, self-discovery and pleasure.
The path isn't linear. There will be moments of breakthrough and revelation alongside days when desire feels distant. This ebb and flow is natural and is nothing to judge or be ashamed of. This journey is about leaving perfection behind and establishing presence, sovereignty over your sexual experience, honoring your boundaries, and vulnerably and boldly exploring your core desires. It is a transformation from seeing sexual intimacy as a checklist item or obligation to a sacred expression of creation, excitement, and life force. It’s an embodiment of your beautiful erotic energy and an honoring of your boundaries, needs, and core desires.
Even the smallest steps create a ripple effect of transformation in your life. Growth and change can be intimidating and uncomfortable at first, but you don't have to walk this path alone. Desire, pleasure, and sexuality are not problems to be fixed but a garden to be tended—with patience, curiosity, and love. The pleasure priestess already lives within you, waiting to be remembered and reclaimed. All you have to do is choose to believe that you deserve pleasure, and then choose it again and again.
[Gina Victoria] is a certified sex and relationship coach specializing in helping women reconnect with their authentic desire. Through one-on-one coaching, couples work, and group programs, she guides clients to release sexual blocks and create fulfilling intimate lives. To learn more about working together or to access additional resources, visit [www.theintimateexperience.com] or follow [@the.intimate.experience].
