Igniting woman's sexual desire is more than popping pill

Lori Brotto, psychologist, and one of the world's leading experts on sexual dysfunction and arousal disorders, has been married 12 years, has children aged eight, seven and three, and could be forgiven if - how to put this delicately? - she wasn't as ready to jump in the sack with her husband as she used to be.

She did not say if that were the case, and I didn't ask.

But all fires cool with time, even, presumably, for the director of the University of B.C.'s Sexual Health Laboratory. Those first years of intense sexual combustion fade to a slower burn for most of us.

"It's normal," Brotto said. "That lustful desire that really lives within the novelty of a new relationship in mystery and romance does wane for both men and women over time."

It wanes much more frequently, research shows, for women than it does for men. For some women, that lack of sexual desire is so great and so emotionally distressing it meets the clinical criteria for hypoactive sexual-desire disorder, or HSDD.

"We're not talking about the normal waning of desire that happens over time," Brotto said. "We're talking about disorders that are clinically significant, that interfere in a significant way in one's life."

The incidence of HSDD among women is startlingly high - anywhere from 15 to 20 per cent, according to a 2008 study, Brotto said.

"For men, it's much lower, probably around 10 per cent when you look at low desire specifically. And it's much more age-related in men than it is in women. Actually, in women, what you find is, even though desire decreases with age, the level of distress shows a U-shaped curve, so it seems to be slightly younger women who are more bothered by it than women in their 60s and 70s and beyond."

Why? It's a matter of debate. Menopause, evolutionary dynamics, gender differences in sexual drive, testosterone levels, the demands of modern womanhood, cultural indoctrination - there could be multiple reasons.

What Brotto is convinced of is the greater complexity of women's sexual drive.

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Igniting woman's sexual desire is more than popping pill