All Night Yawn

I'm a 32-year-old woman with a pattern of getting into relationships and then not wanting to have sex. I'm really into sex when the relationship's new. But about a year in, I stop wanting to have sex, even when the emotional part of the relationship is good. Why does this happen, and is it preventable?

--Dismayed

Over time, everything gets old. Even men and women who are into the freakiest sex eventually look over at their partner all, "Ugh. Not another night of the same old-same old in the sex dungeon." Where men and women tend to differ is in their motivation for having sex once they're in a relationship. There's an assumption that, in relationships, women's sexual desire will work just like men's -- that is, rise up out of nowhere (like teenage boys' inappropriate erections). Sexual medicine specialist Rosemary Basson, M.D., finds that this "spontaneous hunger" to have sex is a thing for women in the initial dating stage and for some women in relationships, especially if they and their partner are apart for a few weeks. But many women in long-term romantic partnerships stop having the physical craving to get it on -- the urge for sexual "release." However, they might still be motivated to have sex for other reasons, like to feel close to their partner. Unfortunately, like you, they and their partners often assume their sexual desire is dead and gone. But Basson explains that a woman's desire is probably arousable, meaning triggerable. (It just needs waking up.) In practical terms, if a woman who wants to want sex starts making out with her partner, she's likely to get turned on. This becomes the springboard to her feeling that physical urge to have sex. However...this assumes she was seriously attracted to him to begin with and didn't just succumb to advice to be "open-minded" about a great guy she found sexually meh. Initially, excitement over what's new (new guy!) is often mistaken for the excitement of finding somebody hot. However, if actual attraction wasn't there at the start, there'll be nothing to revive once the early sexual disbelief -- "How do you even do that? Are you double-jointed? In Cirque du Soleil?" -- erodes into "Cirque du So Tired Of This." ... For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.