Where Has My Libido Gone? Simple Ways to Boost Desire as You Age

Where has my libido gone, long time passing? Where has my libido gone, long time ago?

With apologies to Peter, Paul and Mary, that old folk tune has been rattling around in my head lately, except I've swapped out the flowers. Because somewhere between the hot flashes, the achy knees, and the third refill on the blood pressure prescription, a lot of us look up one day and wonder where the spark went.

I've written in earlier posts about why libido decreases with age, and it's usually a combination of declining hormones, physical health conditions, and psychological factors. As men get older, testosterone levels decline, leading to lower energy, reduced interest in sex, and, for many, occasional erectile dysfunction. Menopause brings a steep drop in estrogen and progesterone that cools libido, causes vaginal dryness, and often leads to pain during intercourse. Chronic conditions like diabetes, arthritis, or achy joints dampen desire, as do medications for high blood pressure or anxiety that interfere with sex drive and function. Add in lower energy, boredom, lack of emotional connection, or simply being lulled into a no-sex routine in a long relationship, and sex can start to feel more like a chore than a pleasure.

Earlier posts have also covered ways to improve your libido: talking to your doctor about the sexual side effects of your medications and the alternatives, using lubes and vaginal moisturizers, behavioral changes like losing weight or quitting smoking, leaning into responsive desire, improving communication with your partner, and bringing a vibrator or other sex toys into the mix. These are all important things to do both for your sex drive and for your overall health.

Today I want to take a different path and focus on libido boosters that are natural, easy, and might just add a little spice to your life.

Get Good Quality Sleep

Good sleep can lift your overall mood and energy, and some research links sleep quality directly to libido. A small-scale 2015 study of women found that sleeping more the night before increased their sexual desire the next day, and women with longer average sleep times reported better genital arousal than those who slept less. Does that make you want to sleep in tomorrow?

But what if you find yourself lying there wide awake with a million things running through your head and you simply cannot drift off? Try "mind shifting" of deliberately moving your attention to something else to quiet the noise. Here are three exercises that might do the trick:

• Eyeball rolling. Close your eyes and keep them closed. Roll your eyes all the way up like you're looking at the ceiling, then all the way down like you're looking at your nose. Move them all the way to the left, then to the right. Finally, move your eyes in a clockwise circle, then counterclockwise. Keep going for a minute or more, until you start to feel calmer.

  
  

• List words. Come up with a five-letter word. We'll use MODEL as the example. Starting with the first letter, M, make a mental list of twenty words that start with M. Then move on to the second letter, O, and do the same, continuing through every letter in the word. With any luck, you won't make it to the L before you fall asleep.

  
  

• Visualize a favorite place. Once you've settled on a room or place, slowly picture and name each item in it. You might choose your childhood bedroom and gradually remember and visualize each thing: your Roy Rogers lamp and the goldfish bowl on top of your three-drawer brown dresser, next to the bed with the green bedspread from Sears. Travel around the room and recall as many details as you can.

  
  

The goal of these exercises is to calm your mind so you can get the kind of sleep that leaves you rested, restored, and maybe a little more sexually interested.

Get Moving

Exercise, activity levels, weight, and fitness are all tied to libido. Studies have linked obesity and inactivity to sexual dysfunction. Men with a higher body mass index (BMI), an imperfect but commonly used measure of healthy weight, are about 30% more likely to experience erectile dysfunction, and many also report lower desire and problems with performance. In women, obesity is similarly linked to lower libido, while heart health and cardiovascular fitness are among the better predictors of arousal.

And no, you don't need to start an exercise program like you're training for a marathon. Start by walking around the block and adding a little more distance each day. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, if your knees will allow it. Park farther back in the lot so you walk a little extra. Find an easy exercise video online and do it. Chair aerobics are gentle and will get you moving. The good news is that even small increases in physical activity may give your sex drive a lift.

Strengthen Your Pelvic Floor

Here's a libido booster you can start this very second, and no one around you will have the faintest idea. Yes, even right now, reading this. Your pelvic floor is the hammock of muscles that supports your bladder and, not coincidentally, plays a starring role in sexual function. For women, a strong pelvic floor can mean better arousal, stronger sensation, and more reliable orgasms. For men, it supports firmer erections and better control.

The exercises, Kegels, couldn't be simpler. To find the right muscles, imagine you're trying to stop the flow of urine midstream (just to locate them, not as a regular habit). Squeeze those muscles for a few seconds, then release. Do a set of ten, a few times a day. The beauty of it is the privacy: you can do them at a red light, in a Zoom meeting, or standing in line at the pharmacy, and the person next to you will be none the wiser. Like any muscle, the pelvic floor responds to a little regular attention and this is one workout that pays off in the bedroom.

Indulge in Aphrodisiac Foods

Foods considered aphrodisiacs are those that aim to stimulate the senses of sight, smell, taste, and touch. Little hard evidence supports the idea that any particular food reliably boosts desire, but there's no harm in experimenting, and many of these come loaded with vitamins and minerals that support blood flow to the genitals and a healthy sex life. Here are a few of the classics:

• Chocolate. Throughout history, chocolate has been a symbol of desire. It’s not just for its delicious taste but for its reputation for improving sexual pleasure. Chocolate prompts the release of feel-good chemicals like serotonin, which may carry some aphrodisiac effect.

  
  

• Garlic and basil. Add a little basil and garlic to the dishes at your next romantic dinner. The smell of basil stimulates the senses, while garlic contains high levels of allicin, which acts as a vasodilator to increase blood flow. More research is needed, but these effects could in theory help with ED. Just make sure you both eat the basil and garlic, so your garlic breath doesn't undo all your good work.

  
  

• Nuts. Almonds, walnuts, and hazelnuts help your body pump blood more efficiently, and pine nuts are loaded with arginine, which the body converts into nitric oxide to help dilate blood vessels. Nuts may support your heart health and blood pressure and, by extension, your ability to get and keep an erection.

  
  

• Avocados. Packed with heart-healthy fats, vitamin B6, and folate, avocados help fuel steady energy and keep your hormones in balance.

  
  

• Watermelon. Watermelon contains citrulline, which the body converts into arginine important for relaxing blood vessels along the same pathway Viagra works on, just far more gently.

  
  

• Pomegranate. It's called a superfood for a reason: it's packed with antioxidants. One small study found that drinking a glass of pomegranate juice a day for two weeks raised testosterone levels in both men and women. This is the hormone that kicks the sex drive into higher gear for everyone.

  
  

• Oysters. Oysters pack more zinc per serving than almost any other food, and zinc is crucial for producing testosterone and maintaining healthy sperm. Part of the oyster's racy reputation traces back to Casanova, the Italian adventurer and perhaps history's most famous lover, who is said to have downed dozens of raw oysters before bedding down his partners.

  
  

So, do these foods actually work? Research suggests it's mostly in our heads. They work if we think they will. So, if you're convinced that raw oysters or a square of dark chocolate will give your sex drive a jolt, your own anticipation of that powerful effect might just help make it come true.

Watch a Little Porn

These days you don't have to slink into the back room of your local video store to rent something to watch on your VCR. There's a never-ending supply of adult content online, in every theme and variation you can imagine. Watching a little, on your own or with a partner, can be a surprisingly effective way to wake up your libido.

A few caveats. Remember that porn is a performance, not a documentary; the bodies and the acts on screen don't always reflect real life (or real life at our age). And for some people, watching can tip into something compulsive, so keep it to a little. If the mainstream sites aren't your speed,  and for a lot of women, they aren't, it's worth knowing there's a growing world of ethical, female-friendly porn made with more realistic bodies, better storylines, and performers who are treated well. A little searching turns up options that feel less like a locker room and more like something you'd actually want to watch.

Shake Up Your Routine

Remember boredom, on that list of libido-killers up top? Long-term relationships are wonderful, but they have a way of settling into the same bed, the same hour, the same everything and desire tends to doze off right alongside us. The antidote is novelty. New experiences nudge the brain's reward system in a way that can spill over into desire, which is why a change of scenery so often reignites a spark you'd assumed had gone out for good.

You don't have to do anything wild. Make a real date of it instead of catching the tired tail end of the day. Try the morning, when you're rested, instead of bedtime, when you're running on fumes. Change the room, book a night away, or try something the two of you have never done before. Even small departures from the usual script can remind you both that sex is meant to be play, not one more item on the to-do list.

Redefine What You Want

There's so much more to sex than intercourse, and it might be time to ask yourself what you actually want. It's perfectly okay if you're done with penetration. It's okay if you genuinely only want sex once a month. It's okay if you're more curious about self-pleasure these days. Think about what you truly want out of your sexual experiences without judgment, and without anyone else's expectations sitting on your shoulder.

Plenty of older women are completely content without penetrative vaginal sex. For many men, simply being able to get an erection matters more than how often they're actually having sex. And physical intimacy of touch, closeness, affection is good for all of us, with no penetration required. So, reflect, honestly, on what you desire and what still gets you excited. That kind of clarity is its own sort of aphrodisiac.

So, Where Has My Libido Gone?

Here's the good news: probably nowhere. It didn't pack a bag and slip out the back door in the night. More likely it's just been waiting — for a good night's sleep, a walk around the block, a little novelty, and your permission to want exactly what you want.

None of these suggestions comes with a guarantee. But they're natural, they're easy, and most of them are free. At worst, you'll sleep better, move a little more, and eat some excellent chocolate. At best, a fresh routine and a few of these small experiments might bring back something you were sure was long gone.

Where has my libido gone, long time passing? Turns out, not nearly as far as you feared.

(Image Source: Canva)