Why Womxn Talking About Sex Is The Most Feminist Thing We Can Do
Is It Normal to Not Want Sex Anymore?
There is a question that millions of women carry around quietly, often for years, rarely saying it out loud to anyone.
Is it normal to not want sex anymore? Or is something wrong with me?
If you are asking this question — in the quiet of your own mind, or finally, tentatively, in a search bar — the answer matters. Because the story most women tell themselves about low desire is one of the most damaging and most unnecessary sources of suffering in long-term relationships.
So let's be clear from the start: yes, it is normal. Profoundly, statistically, biologically normal. And the fact that you don't already know this is not your fault. It is the predictable result of growing up in a culture that has never honestly taught women how desire actually works.
The Shame That Arrives Before the Question
Most women who experience low desire don't just feel the absence of wanting. They feel something heavier alongside it — a creeping sense that the absence itself is evidence of something wrong with them. That they are broken. Deficient. Letting their partner down. Failing at something fundamental.
Dr. Brené Brown describes shame as the gut-wrenching belief that we are not enough, that we are unworthy of love and connection. And research shows that shame is not merely emotional — neuroscientists studying brain imaging have found that shame activates the same neural networks as physical pain. It is genuinely painful to carry.
When that shame attaches itself to desire — to something as personal and vulnerable as your relationship with your own wanting — it becomes one of the quietest and most isolating experiences a woman can have. Because it is almost unspeakable. Who do you tell? How do you say it? And what if saying it makes it more real, more permanent, more damning?
Here is what we know at Ferly: the shame almost always arrives before the understanding does. And once the understanding arrives — once a woman genuinely understands how female desire actually works — the shame tends to dissolve. Not instantly. But reliably.
What Nobody Ever Taught Us About Female Desire
Most of us were taught almost nothing useful about female desire. Sex education, where it existed at all, focused on biology and risk — reproduction, contraception, sexually transmitted infections. What it almost never covered was the actual experience of female wanting: how it works, what shapes it, why it changes, and what is genuinely normal across a lifetime.
Into that vacuum, culture stepped in. And what culture taught us — through film, television, advertising, and the general shape of every romantic narrative we absorbed — was that desire is spontaneous, that it arrives without prompting, that it burns brightest for the people we love most, and that its absence is a sign something has gone wrong.
Almost all of this is wrong. Or at the very least, profoundly incomplete.
Research by Dr. Rosemary Basson and Dr. Emily Nagoski has fundamentally changed how scientists understand female desire. Their work shows that many women — particularly in long-term relationships — primarily experience responsive desire rather than spontaneous desire. Responsive desire doesn't arrive unprompted. It emerges in response to the right conditions: emotional safety, physical closeness, a nervous system that is genuinely at rest, a context that feels inviting rather than demanding.
This means that the absence of spontaneous desire — that out-of-nowhere wanting that culture presents as the norm — is not evidence of a problem for many women. It is simply evidence that they experience desire differently. And understanding this difference is, for most women, the single most clarifying thing they can learn about their own sexuality.
[What responsive desire is and how it works](link to: what is responsive desire and why it changes everything) is worth understanding in depth. Because once you do, the question "is it normal to not want sex?" starts to look like the wrong question entirely. The more useful question becomes: what are the conditions under which I do experience desire — and are those conditions present in my life right now?
Why Desire Changes Over Time — Especially in Long-Term Relationships
Understanding that low desire is normal requires understanding why it happens — and in particular, why it happens so predictably in long-term relationships even when love remains strong.
Early in a relationship, desire tends to feel effortless. Novelty — the excitement of discovering someone new, the uncertainty of what might happen next, the heightened alertness of the nervous system in response to a new person — is one of desire's most powerful accelerators. The conditions for wanting exist naturally, and desire arrives without much effort.
Over time, as the relationship deepens and daily life becomes fuller and more demanding, those conditions change. The nervous system, which needs to feel genuinely safe and relaxed to be open to desire, spends more time managing stress, mental load, exhaustion, and the accumulated pressure of a shared life. Novelty decreases. Familiarity increases. The spontaneous wanting of early love gives way to something quieter.
For many women, this is the moment the shame arrives. The moment they look at their partner — someone they love, someone they chose, someone they are building a life with — and feel nothing in particular. And interpret that nothingness as failure.
It is not failure. It is biology. It is the entirely predictable consequence of a nervous system that is depleted and conditions that have changed — not of a relationship that has broken or a desire that has permanently left.
Research consistently shows that up to 1 in 2 women experience [low libido](link to: low libido women the complete guide) at some point in their lives. In long-term relationships, the figures are even higher. This is not a niche problem. It is one of the most common experiences in committed partnerships — and one of the least openly discussed.
The Weight of Performing Rather Than Feeling
There is another layer to this conversation that rarely gets named directly.
Many women grew up learning — not explicitly, but through a thousand cultural messages — that their sexuality existed primarily in relation to someone else's desire. That sex was something done for a partner rather than with one. That their own wanting was secondary, even irrelevant, compared to the obligation of being wanted and of being good at being wanted.
The result, for many women, was that sex became a performance rather than an experience. A thing to be done correctly rather than felt honestly. And in that performance, the genuine signal of their own desire — what they actually wanted, what actually felt good, what they were genuinely curious about — got buried under the question of whether they were doing it right.
This is not ancient history. It is the lived experience of a significant proportion of women currently in long-term relationships, trying to understand why [sex feels like a chore](link to: sex feels like a chore why it happens) rather than something they genuinely want.
When desire has been treated as a performance for long enough, it stops showing up at all. The body learns that this is not a space where genuine wanting is relevant. And so it stops producing genuine wanting.
Rebuilding desire — real desire, not performed desire — requires unlearning this. It requires getting curious about what you actually feel rather than what you think you should feel. It requires creating the conditions for honest experience rather than correct performance. And it requires understanding that your desire is not a service you provide. It belongs to you.
What Low Desire Is Actually Telling You
If you are experiencing low or absent desire, here is what it is most likely communicating.
Not that you have fallen out of love. Not that your relationship is failing. Not that something is permanently broken in you.
It is telling you that the conditions for desire — in your nervous system, in your relationship, in your daily life — are not currently in place. It is telling you that something needs attention. It is pointing toward something specific and addressable, not something catastrophic and fixed.
[Feeling disconnected from your partner](link to: how to bring back intimacy in a marriage) is one of the most common contributing factors. When emotional connection erodes — when the daily interactions become transactional, when conflict goes unresolved, when both partners are depleted and distracted — desire tends to follow it into absence. This is not a coincidence. For many women, emotional connection is not just a nice accompaniment to desire. It is a prerequisite.
Stress is another significant factor. Chronic stress activates the nervous system's alert state, which actively suppresses desire at a physiological level. This is not a metaphor. It is biology. A body that is in survival mode is not a body that is open to wanting.
And [loss of libido](link to: loss of libido women) can also be influenced by hormonal changes — perimenopause, postpartum recovery, the effects of certain medications — that are entirely outside a woman's control and entirely unrelated to how she feels about her partner or her relationship.
In almost every case, low desire is a signal. And signals are informative. They point toward something. The question is whether you are able to hear what this one is saying — and whether you have the understanding and support to respond to it.
The Most Important Thing to Know
You are not alone in this. You are not broken. You are not failing your partner or your relationship.
You are a woman who was never fully taught how her own desire works — and who is now living with the predictable consequences of that gap in knowledge. That is not a personal failure. It is a structural one. And it is entirely possible to close it.
Understanding desire — how it actually functions, what shapes it, what the research says about rebuilding it in long-term relationships — changes everything. Not because knowledge is a magic fix, but because shame cannot survive understanding. And it is the shame, far more than the low desire itself, that keeps most women stuck.
The desire to understand this, to ask the question, to want things to be different — that is already the beginning of something.
One Last Thing
The fact that you are asking this question — is it normal to not want sex anymore? — is itself meaningful. It means you care. About your relationship, about your own experience, about understanding rather than just enduring.
That caring is the beginning of something. Not a problem to be solved, but a conversation to be started — with yourself first, and then perhaps with your partner, and then with the right support.
You are not broken. You never were.
At Ferly, we help women in long-term relationships understand their desire, break the pressure cycle, and rebuild intimacy with their partner. Join thousands of women getting weekly science-backed insights — free, straight to your inbox.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes — completely. Research suggests that up to 1 in 2 women experience low desire at some point in their lives, and rates are even higher in long-term committed relationships. The spontaneous desire most associated with early love naturally changes as familiarity increases and the nervous system adapts to a shared life. This is normal, predictable, and — importantly — not permanent.
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Not necessarily. Low desire is often driven by factors that have little to do with the quality of the relationship — stress, nervous system depletion, hormonal changes, and the simple fact that the conditions for desire have shifted. Many women who experience significant periods of low desire go on to rebuild active, satisfying intimate lives with the same partner once they understand what desire actually requires.
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Why do women lose their sex drive in long-term relationships? Several factors contribute. Novelty — one of desire's most powerful accelerators — naturally decreases as familiarity increases. Chronic stress suppresses the nervous system's openness to desire. Mental and emotional load leave little space for wanting. And many women experience responsive rather than spontaneous desire, meaning desire requires the right conditions to emerge rather than arriving unprompted. Understanding these factors is the first step toward addressing them
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No. Research on female desire consistently demonstrates that low desire can be addressed and that desire can be rebuilt in long-term relationships. Dr. Lori Brotto's work on mindfulness-based approaches to female desire shows significant, sustained improvements in women who engage with evidence-based support. The path back to desire is not the same as the path that existed at the beginning of a relationship — but it exists.
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These are often confused but are quite different. Low libido is a generalised reduction in sexual desire — a quietening of wanting that tends to affect all contexts, not just one relationship. Loss of attraction to a specific partner is more targeted and may indicate relationship dynamics that need addressing directly. Many women who believe they have lost attraction to their partner discover, on closer examination, that what they are experiencing is low desire generally — and that desire for their partner returns as the conditions for it are restored.
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If low desire is causing you distress — if it is affecting your relationship, your sense of self, or your wellbeing — that is reason enough to seek support. You do not need to have reached a crisis point. Working with a coach, therapist, or evidence-based programme at any stage of the experience is likely to be more effective than waiting until the situation feels unmanageable.
