Do Men Have Higher Sex Drives? Libido MYTHS To Put To Rest!

Is it true that men have higher sex drives?

Is it true that you should spontaneously desire sex?

There are a lot of myths about sex drive. So today it is time to reveal the truth. But before we get to that, just want to take a quick second to introduce ourselves. Hello. We are Xander and Vanessa Marin. We are married, and we've been together since 2007. Yeah, a long time. Our mission is to equip you with the tools that you need to create an extraordinary relationship inside the bedroom and out. I am a licensed psychotherapist specializing in sex and relationships, and I've spent the last 15 years working with thousands of people and have served as a featured expert for the New York Times. Oh, the Oprah magazine, Real simple, and many more.

And I am none of those things. I'm Vanessa's husband. I used to work a pretty normal job, you could say, in the corporate world. But I started seeing how much of an impact Vanessa was making with her work, and I decided to join her so we could reach even more people. Plus, being married to a sex therapist has a few perks. I picked up some pretty good insight, I think, into what does and doesn't make relationships work. And I also just love sharing real stories from our own life to help you all.

You have an honorary degree now in sex and relationships.

I'll take it.

In this video, we're going to dismantle The Top Sex 6 Sex Drive Myths that we see people struggling with that we have actually struggled with ourselves too. And you're gonna discover the surprising truth behind each myth.

Believing these sex drive myths can cause some serious harm to your sex life. So once you know the truth, you'll be able to avoid all of that damage.

So the number of ways that we humans are able to make ourselves feel guilty, stuck, or embarrassed about our sex drives truly never ceases to amaze me.

Oh, yeah.

From judging ourselves to setting up unrealistic expect to sticking our heads in the sand and pretending everything's just fine, virtually all of us needlessly complicate our relationships with our own sex drives.

Sometimes these beliefs come from within. Sometimes they're a product of our simultaneously sex obsessed and sex negative culture.

It's quite a combination, isn't it?

Yeah.

I know as a professional sex therapist, I see my clients bumping up against the same sex myths over and over again. All this misinformation out there just leads to unrealistic expectations and a lot of disappointment in the bedroom. And we can speak to this from personal experience, too. We have each gone through our own ups and downs with our sex drives. And we have felt all of the fear, confusion, anxiety, and embarrassment that you may be feeling right in this very moment.

We love busting up these myths and just filling you in on the truth about sex, like what it's like for real people. So without further ado, here are the six main sex drive myths that could be ruining your sex life.

Myth number one, you should spontaneously want sex. So I can practically guarantee you that in every romantic comedy you've ever seen, there's this hot and heavy scene where the two main characters just rip each other's clothes off. There's this moment of spontaneous, pure passion. They just dash off into the bedroom together. But that is not how sex works in a long term relationship.

Almost never.

Almost never. Every once in a while.

But that's why it's spontaneous.

So there are a lot of deciding factors that affect whether or not you want to or even can have sex at any given time. So for example, what if you live with a roommate or you have kids? I don't think you're gonna be just spontaneously gone at it on the kitchen counter when there's someone else in the next room.

Yeah. You know, not to mention the mental aspect of desire as well. The sex drive is both physical and mental. And I think a lot of us forget about that second mental part. Most of us have a specific mental state that we need to be in to feel excited about having sex. So if you've had a long day and you're totally exhausted from work, sex is probably not going to be the first thing on your mind. And honestly, it might be the last thing on your mind. Oh, yeah, and good luck finding the perfect spontaneous moment when both you and your partner are magically in the mood and at the exact same time.

Yeah. Even if you have pretty similar sex drives, to both be really interested in sex spontaneously, out of nowhere, and to also have the time, space, and privacy to do it in that moment is very rare. So the truth here is that spontaneous sex can be an awful lot of fun if and when it happens. But I think that it's so much more rewarding to view our sex lives as something that we make happen, something that we prioritize and put effort and energy and creativity into. So I always like to talk about, remember at the beginning of your relationship how much effort and energy you used to put into your sex life when you first started dating your partner. And not only that, like, how much fun it used to be to put in all of this effort, like doing things like going to the gym, picking your perfect outfit, listening to all your favorite pump up jams. We put a lot of effort into getting ourselves excited and turned on and ready to spend time together. And the reality is that it can be the same way in a long term relationship too.

Plus, there's also an aspect of just how your sex drive works. Did you know that there are actually two different sex drive types and that it's super common for partners in a relationship to have different ones?

We do.

Most people don't know this. Not understanding that there's these two types can cause all kinds of friction around sex. So it's really important to be aware what type you are and what type your partner is. Fortunately, we have a free guide that's all about this to help you identify yours and your partner. So you can check out the link in the description below to identify your sex drive type and learn what you need to get fired up and turned on and what your partner needs.

All right. Myth number two if your partner doesn't want sex, it's because they aren't attracted to you. So if your partner doesn't want to have sex either in a particular moment or they generally just have a lower sex drive than you do, you it is so easy to take this personally. You might start worrying that your partner is turned off by this extra 10 pounds that you think you've gained, or that they're starting to see you as just their roommate but not their lover.

The truth is, there are tons and tons of different reasons why people don't feel interested in sex in a given moment. Only one of those reasons is not being attracted to your partner. And from my experience, I can say that's pretty much never the case.

Yeah, I can tell you that in my entire career of working with couples with mismatched sex drives, I have never once worked with a couple where attraction was the main problem. It is just not the central issue that so many of us fear that it is.

It's way more likely that your partner's had a long day and they're too tired or they're stressed about a family or friend issue and they just aren't in the right head space for sex. That's why it's so important to be able to talk about sex openly so that you can explain to your partner, I'm turning down sex in this moment for this reason, but I'm not turning down you.

You know what this reminds me of is how we talk about like we interpret other people's actions more negatively than we Interpret our own. So the classic example is always with people who are being jerks while driving. Like, if someone cuts us off, we think, what an asshole. I can't believe they're doing that. But if we cut someone, we're like, oh, my God, I just made a little mistake. I didn't mean to do that. Yeah, I wasn't thinking.

Oh, I was looking down. I was trying to grab my thing from over here.

I think the same sort of thing happens with sex drive. Like, when we turn our partner down, we're able to say to ourselves, I've had such a long day, or, I have this really bad headache, or, you know, whatever it is that's going on. But if our partner turns us down, we really put this negative meaning on it. Like, they're not attracted to me anymore. Our relationship's terrible.

Yeah, but the difference between the car example and this example is, in the car example, you can't just explain to the other driver, hey, I'm really sorry. Like, I was trying to grab my jacket. I just looked down for a second, and, you know, I had everything under control. I just, like, swerved slightly. But in real life, with your partner, you can talk about it, you can explain it. It's just that many people have never had those type of discussions. And so you got to get comfortable having those and feeling comfortable talking to your partner about.

Yeah. And just speaking from personal experience, the times that you've turned me down and explained, like, oh, I've got a really bad stomachache or whatever it is, that feels so much better than just hearing a no.

Yeah.

No is very easy to interpret and take very personally. All right, myth number three. If your partner wants sex, it's just because they're horny.

This is like, the exact opposite.

These two are pretty funny together, number two and number three. So we tend to take it personally when our partners don't want sex. But when they do want sex, we tend to depersonalize. So your partner tries to initiate with you, and you're thinking, oh, they just want to have an orgasm. They just want to get off. I'm just like a piece of meat to them. My partner's just being a guy. I know. I have definitely had this reaction. Sometimes when you've initiated sex, it's just, oh, he just wants to get off. We completely depersonalize it, and we make it just about the physical aspects of sex.

Yeah. You can't have it both ways. So the truth is, sure, it's nice to feel physical pleasure, and it's nice to have an orgasm. But that's just one of the many reasons why we have sex. I mean, the reality is, if we just wanted an orgasm, we don't. Yeah, we can do that ourselves. You know, sex is such an emotional experience for us. Having sex is a way for us to physically express our love and affection and attraction to our partner.

And I also want to speak a bit to gender dynamics, too. You know, as women, we are socialized, you know, in this culture to be in touch with our emotions. It's okay for us to talk about our emotions and express them. And men are socialized to believe that you're not supposed to. You're supposed to be a tough guy and, you know, be very stoic. And so in my practice, I've seen that a lot of men, when they're initiating sex, what they're really longing for is just experience some sort of emotional connection with their partner that they don't know how to initiate. An emotional connection for men, like, you're socialized to believe it's okay for you to want sex. You're supposed to want sex. You're supposed to be a guy. I want it all the time. So men initiate sex actually as a way to initiate emotional connection. And so sometimes when I explain that to the women I work with and I tell them, you know, when your partner initiates sex, imagine that he's actually coming to you and saying, like, I want to feel really close to you. I want to feel intimate to you. I want to connect with you. That can make it take on a totally different feeling in the moment.

So the bottom line is, if you and your partner have been battling with mismatched sex drives for a while, I can practically guarantee you that the higher sex drive partner genuinely misses feeling connected and playful and intimate way more than they miss just having orgasms.

Okay? Myth number four. Men always want it more. This myth is so dumb, but it just will not go away. In fact, we have an entire video dedicated to myths about men and their sex drive, which you can view right up here.

If you're in a heterosexual relationship where the woman wants sex more, this myth can cause so many problems. The man can feel emasculated, the woman feels unfeminine, and both partners just feel abnormal, and neither partner wants to initiate sex.

Now, the truth here is that we are all unique. There are some men who want sex more often than women, and some women who want sex more often than men. We have gone through this personally. There have been periods of our relationship where Xander's had the higher sex drive and periods of our relationship where I have had the higher sex drive. And I also had relationships in the past where I was the higher sex drive partner for the entire relationship. So I came into our relationship feeling extra sensitive about these dynamics. So even though I knew better, I still. It was so easy for me to feel embarrassed and ashamed for the times that I wanted sex more than Xander did.

Yeah. And that took a long time for me to get comfortable with because, yeah, as a man, like Vanessa mentioned, I was socialized to just believe that, you know, I should always want it and that I should always be initiating and that, you know, if I wasn't wanting it or I wasn't able to get it up, that something was wrong with me, my hormones must be off. You know, you think of all these reasons that don't have to do with reality to explain why it's happening, when in reality, it's just a matter of looking at what's going on in your life. Are you stressed out? Are you getting enough exercise? What do you need to actually feel turned on? And so it took us a long time of working through all this stuff for me to understand what I need in order to really want it.

And a big part of that was discovering your sex drive type.

Yes, it was a reason.

You should go check out that free guy.

Yeah, definitely. We've just had to remind ourselves that it's okay for both of us to have whatever sex drive we have. And we recognize that our sex drives change, too. So sometimes the dynamic is flipped, and I'm the one with the higher sex drive.

Which leads us straight into myth number five. You can't change your sex drive. So if you're like most people, you think of your sex drive like you think of your physical traits. It's just a part of you. You don't have any control over it. There's nothing you can do about it. So, for example, I can't make myself grow taller. You can't make yourself have smaller feet. We have this feeling that we just can't do anything to change our sex drives.

But here's the truth. You can absolutely have control over your sex drive. You can make active changes to create the sex drive that you want. And it's probably going to be way easier than you think it is, because we've both done it.

We could do a whole video on this topic. There's so much to go into, but we actually have an entire course dedicated to reconnecting with your sex drive and increasing it. It's called Rediscovering desire, which you can check out over@vmtherapy.com so myth number six.

You shouldn't have to put any effort into your sex life. If there's one myth that we think is the most pervasive and most dangerous than all the others, it's this one. In one way or another, almost everyone believes that having great sex, it should just happen naturally, spontaneously, like spontaneous, natural. You know, having to put any sort of effort in is seen as a sign that something is broken or wrong with you or you're not a good fit with your partner.

But the truth is, great sex does not just happen naturally. It doesn't fall out of the sky into your lap. Having a great sex life requires consistent effort, just like your relationship does. You know, it requires constant communication, growing over time. You know, our sex life requires us to work on it on a regular basis. If we didn't, things get boring pretty quickly. But the good news is that working on your sex life does not have to feel like a chore. It can be incredibly fun, fulfilling, and exhilarating. That is really the point of our entire business, to normalize. Working on your sex life to help people realize it's not a sign that anything is wrong or broken or bad about your relationship, a sign that you care. It's a sign that you care. And it's an opportunity to, you know, go deeper with each other, with yourself, and just create the sex life that you feel truly excited about and proud of. So when you approach your sex life from this kind of an attitude, working on it can be this really bonding experience for both of you instead of this sign that something is horribly wrong with your relationship.

Okay, so that wraps up our top six sex drive myths. If you like this video, please give it a like or hit the red subscribe button down below. Better yet, leave us a comment and let us know if this information helped you. Let us know which of these sex drive myths you've been falling for and what you're going to do to try to change it.

And we also have a gift for you that we've mentioned a few times. If you want to learn more about your sex drive, figure out which type you are. You're definitely going to want to download our free guide, what's your sex drive type? You'll learn about those two different sex drive types, as well as the number one thing that you can do if your partner is a different type than you are, which it's very likely that they are. So click the link in the description box. To download. Thanks for watching.

See you next time.

Bye.

Yeah. Wow.

You're excited for this one.