Libido

What is libido?

Libido is the strength of someone’s desire for sex. It isn’t a fixed trait but a quantity that fluctuates with health, hormones, medication, stress and the relationship someone is in. A low libido is not in itself a disorder; it becomes one only when someone is bothered by it.

How common low desire is

More common than almost anyone thinks, and that figure is Dutch.

Rutgers studied it together with the RIVM and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) in the Sexual Health Monitor 2023, among over 15,000 people aged 18 to 80. They asked which problems had lasted at least three months in the past year.

The result: over half of women had, in the past year, a period of at least three months with little or no desire for sex. For men that was three in ten. Measured more broadly, at least one of the listed problems occurred in three in five men and three quarters of women.

This is no fringe group. For women, a period of low desire is the rule more than the exception, and anyone who knows that starts looking at it differently.

When low desire is called a problem

On one condition, and the study states it explicitly.

Rutgers asked it in three steps: did the problem occur, how often, and were you bothered by it. Of the women with a period of low desire, the researchers write that only a small part of this group reports that it happened often and that it bothers them, and so meets the definition of a sexual dysfunction.

Those two conditions together are the whole distinction. Often. And being bothered by it. Someone who has low desire for half a year and feels perfectly fine about it has no disorder, just a phase.

Measured more narrowly, on the question of whether it happened often or always, one in six women was left. Thirteen percent of men and 30 percent of women had one or more sexual problems often or always in the past year.

Where the word libido comes from

From Latin, and it only took on its current charge around 1900.

Etymologiebank traces it back to the Latin libīdō, “desire, sexual craving”, derived from libet, “it pleases”, from the verb libēre, “to please, to want”. Dutch took the word in between 1901 and 1925, at first as a psychoanalytic term that came in via German. The earliest Dutch attestation is in De Groene Amsterdammer of 1911.

That psychoanalytic origin explains a misconception still going around. Sigmund Freud used the word in a narrow sense: the Psychoanalytisch Woordenboek quotes him saying that he called the energy of the sexual drives libido, “and only these”. He described it as a quantitatively variable force that could serve as a gauge for sexual processes.

It’s Carl Jung who later stretched the concept to general psychic energy. Anyone who says today that libido “is about more than sex” is saying something that holds for Jung and explicitly not for Freud.

Why libido fluctuates

Because a lot bears on it, and rarely just one thing at a time.

Thuisarts.nl, the patient information of the Dutch College of General Practitioners (Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap), keeps it short: it’s perfectly normal to have periods with less desire for sex. As common causes the site names busyness, stress and little attention to each other or to yourself.

On top of that, physical factors play a part: hormonal changes, medication, illness and fatigue. What role those play in your case isn’t something a glossary page can judge, and not something you should sit puzzling over yourself either.

What this page can say: a low libido is almost never one cause with one switch. Thuisarts therefore names as the first step something relational rather than something medical, namely giving more attention to your relationship and to sex.

What people get wrong about libido

“A low libido means something is wrong.” Not by the definition. There’s a dysfunction only when it happens often and it bothers you. Thuisarts even adds that it may simply be part of who you are and that you feel fine about it.

“If the desire isn’t there, nothing comes.” That’s the old drive model, and it’s out of date. Desire can also arise after arousal is already under way; how that works is on sexual response cycle.

“Libido is a fixed personal trait.” The word comes from a theory that saw it as a measurable, more or less constant force. The figures show something else: over half of women had a period of at least three months with low desire in the past year. That’s movement, not a trait.

“Libido is about more than sex.” That’s Jung, not Freud. Freud limited the word explicitly to the energy of the sexual drives.

What you can do with this

• Don’t measure yourself against an average. The figures say how common something is, not how much desire you’re supposed to have.
• Ask yourself the second question. Having low desire is the first; being bothered by it is the second, and that’s the one that makes the difference. That’s how the study measures it too.
• Look at circumstances first. Thuisarts names busyness, stress and little attention to each other as the usual suspects, and they’re at the top of the list for a reason.
• Don’t confuse desire with arousal. They can come in either order; that’s worked out on the sexual response cycle.
• Go to your GP if it does bother you, especially with new medication or a sudden change. This page explains a concept and is not medical advice.

More reading about libido

Within this glossary, the sexual response cycle explains why desire can also come after arousal, which is exactly what pulls the ground from under the assumption that a low libido is the end of the story.

Off this site, Thuisarts.nl is the place to start with complaints, because GPs use that information themselves. Anyone who wants to read up on the Dutch figures finds them in the Sexual Health Monitor 2023 by Rutgers, chapter 8.

Where this fits on my site

Some of the women who write to me do so because desire at home has dropped away and the conversation about it has stalled. What I can mean in that is limited, and it’s not a treatment. What an arrangement looks like when you’re mostly seeking time and attention is on the page about intimate togetherness.

Sources

• Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023. Hanneke de Graaf, Yolin Kraan, Anne Oldenhof & Fayaaz Joemmanbaks, Rutgers in collaboration with the RIVM and CBS, 2024. Questionnaire study among over 15,000 people aged 18 to 80, with a sample compiled and weighted by CBS. Supplies the finding that over half of women had, in the past year, a period of at least three months with little or no desire for sex, the figure of three in ten men, the finding that at least one listed problem occurred in three in five men and three quarters of women, the narrower figures of one in six women with often or always low desire and 13 percent of men against 30 percent of women with one or more problems often or always, and the key line that only a small part of this group reports that it happened often and that it bothers them, and so meets the definition of a sexual dysfunction.
• Minder zin in seks. Thuisarts.nl, Dutch College of General Practitioners (Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap). Supplies the finding that it’s perfectly normal to have periods with less desire for sex, the note that it may be part of who you are and that you feel fine about it, the common causes busyness, stress and little attention to each other or to yourself, the advice to give more attention to the relationship and to sex, and the option to talk about it with the GP.
• libido. Etymologiebank, with entries from among others Philippa et al., Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (2003–2009) and Van der Sijs, Chronologisch woordenboek (2001). Supplies the origin in Latin libīdō “desire, sexual craving”, derived from libet “it pleases” from libēre “to please, to want”, the entry into Dutch between 1901 and 1925 as a psychoanalytic term via German, and the earliest Dutch attestation from 1911 in De Groene Amsterdammer.
• Libido. Harry Stroeken, Psychoanalytisch Woordenboek, published by the Stichting Psychoanalytisch Woordenboek with support from Belgian and Dutch psychoanalytic associations. Supplies the quote in which Freud calls the energy of the sexual drives libido, “and only these”, his description of libido as a quantitatively variable force that can serve as a gauge for sexual processes, and the finding that in psychoanalysis the concept stayed, with Freud, explicitly limited to the sexual drives.

Related terms

Libido is about the strength of desire; the terms below are about how that desire arises and what happens with it.

• Sexual response cycle. The model of the phases, and why desire can also come after arousal.
• Edging. Stretching out arousal, which is something other than stirring up desire.
• Orgasm denial. The arrangement where the orgasm is deliberately withheld, and what that does to desire.
• Aftercare. What’s needed afterward, whatever way the desire began.
• Menopause. The life phase where hormonal change can touch desire, with the Dutch figures.
• Vaginismus. Losing desire because penetration hurts is something other than having low desire.
• Skin hunger. Craving touch without a desire for sex behind it, with a nerve pathway of its own.
• Sexual burnout. When low desire persists and bothers you, usually after a long period of stress or overload.
• Relationship therapy. Where a difference in desire most often ends up, and what the research says about it.