Wanting Sex Again: How to Rediscover Your Desire and Heal a Sexless Marriage by Watson Laurie

Author:Watson, Laurie [Watson, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781101613535
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

What to Do About It

Treating depression means getting to the root of loss and rejection. The therapeutic relationship can help someone repair the damage from earlier times that might have impaired current relationships. Often therapy alone can cure depression.

Sometimes, though, medications are used along with the talking cure. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of antidepressants that help prolong the circulation of your own serotonin in your body. Often these medications—Prozac (fluoxetine), Celexa (citalopram), Luvox (fluvoxamine), Zoloft (sertraline), Paxil (paroxetine), and Lexapro (escitalopram)—are an excellent choice. They alleviate both depressed and anxious feelings all in one pill. Sometimes, sexuality and desire can finally reemerge when the depression lifts. These drugs, however, are infamous for causing secondary sexual problems of low libido and difficulty with orgasm.1

Sometimes, clients are already on medication when they come to see me. And sometimes, that medication might be causing the low libido. But changing a medication can be problematic. Stopping a medication to help with sexual desire may not be right for a woman’s mental health. I try to work with clients to find every other issue that might be causing low desire before sending them back to a psychiatrist for a medication reevaluation. No one should make an independent decision to go off an existing medication without being under the careful supervision of their doctor.

Janet had been put on an SSRI when she was in her twenties and had been treated by therapy that emphasized positive thinking. It hadn’t helped much. Both Janet and Gary wanted to understand why the meds were interfering with her desire and ability to climax now but had not affected her during their dating years. A new love relationship is so exciting and so erotically charged that past difficulties and inhibitions are overcome. Even hormonal deficits can be conquered in both men and women when they experience expansive sexual feelings while falling in love. When a relationship becomes real, with conflicts and genuine needs, some of the high wears off and we have to work through physical or psychological stumbling blocks.

Janet’s individual therapy centered around her depression for a long time. When she came to see me, we talked about how her need for affection and touch went underground after she got married. At first, it just wasn’t important to her. But when a person denies physical love, there are often deep psychological roots strangling their natural longing for affection and love. Janet had been rejected and neglected as a child. Her mother was very young and hadn’t wanted a child. Her father wasn’t in the picture. Janet would sleep wherever her mother was partying for the night. Once, the school principal called her mom to say that unless Janet came to school with a bath and clean clothes, he’d call social services.

Janet managed the deep sadness she felt by being apathetic about her intimate life with her husband. Like many depressed people, she could not let others love her—love that would heal the depression. To someone suffering

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