The Ultimate Guide To Increasing Your Libido

So I have a confession to make. Oh, boy. I have had periods of my life where I have had a really low sex drive.

Well, I have a confession to make, too. I've also had periods in my life where I've had low sex drive.

It really should not be this challenging to admit this, because the truth is that almost everyone will experience low sex drive at some point in their lives. Between stress, busy schedules, kids, relationship struggles, medications, health concerns. You should never feel ashamed for having a low sex drive, because it's pretty much inevitable. Yeah, I know from personal and from professional experience that it can be really scary to notice your sex drive decrease or even feel like it vanishes altogether. But do not worry. You are not doomed to a lifetime of low desire and lackluster sex. Increasing your sex drive is possible. So, hey, there we are. Vanessa and Xander Marin. If we have never met yet, we are married. We have been together since 2007, and our mission is to equip you with the tools that you need to create an extraordinary relationship inside of the bedroom and out. So 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, many more.

And I'm her 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 having on people's lives with her work, and I decided I needed to join in so that we could reach even more people. Being married to a sex therapist has its perks, and I picked up some pretty good insight into what does and doesn't work in relationships. And I also just like sharing real life stories from our own relationship that hopefully can have a positive impact on you. In this video, we're going to walk you through six steps to increase your libido starting today. Today, you're gonna walk away feeling ready and empowered to take your sex life into your own hands and get your libido to where you want it to be.

Okay, so before we get any further, I have to say that this video is not about, quote, quick fixes. I get asked so many questions about libido, and everyone wants to know what is the fastest way that I can increase my libido. Everyone wants a magic pill or a secret aphrodisiac or that one little trick to try in the bedroom that will give you a sky high sex drive immediately. And I totally understand that impulse myself, when I was going through my own sex drive struggles, I just wanted to be able to press a button and have my sex drive dramatically increase.

Who doesn't?

Of course. But unfortunately there is no magic pill for libido. There is no little secret bedroom trick aphrodisiacs. If you like eating them, eat them, but they're not going to increase your sex drive. So the truth is that while you definitely can increase your libido, it can take time. So in this video we're going to be sharing with you real and lasting solutions to your sex drive challenges that we have tried ourselves, that I have tried with thousands of clients. So yes, these techniques are gonna take a bit more time than popping a pill or eating an oyster, but they are going to work. So if you are looking for a quick fix, this video is not for you. But please don't waste your time on any of that BS and any of your money on something that says it's gonna give you an immediate sex drive boost.

But yeah, the good news is all these things you can start today.

Yes, absolutely.

So if you're like most people, you probably think of your sex drive like one of your physical traits. It's part of you, it's who you are. You don't have much control over of it. Just like you can't make yourself grow taller or have your feet shrink, you can't change your sex drive. Right? No.

Yeah, that's what most people think.

Yeah. The truth is that you have a natural range that your sex drive can fluctuate within. It's not a fixed value, especially not forever.

Yeah. I think a lot of people think of sex drive like as if you could give it a number on a 1 to 10 scale. Like my sex drive is an 8 or my sex drive is that from now to eternity I always will want sex through three times per week. But it's just not the case. Your sex drive is constantly changing.

Your sex drive is affected by so many different aspects of your life like your physical health, your mental state of mind, your emotional well being, your own relationship with sex and the status of your relationship.

So over the course of working with thousands of people on their sex drives, I actually created a model of sex drive that I call the five foundations. Model and the things that Sandra just listed are the five foundations. Physical, mental, emotional, sexual and relational. So these are the five categories of factors that are most likely to impact your sex drive. So where you are in your particular range of sex drive is a gauge of your well being. So if your sex drive is currently on the lower end of your range, that's a sign that something is going on in your life that's preventing you from feeling your full desire. Potential. Potential. It's a sign that your healthy body is having a healthy reaction to a potentially unhealthy situation. It's a sign that there's something going on in your life that you can and should take a look at. Your libido is really sensitive and it can get affected by so many different factors like we've said. But the interesting thing to notice is that almost all of these factors are within your control. So if you don't take charge, those other dynamics are going to jump in and steer your sex drive for you. But you can get in the driver's seat and take the wheel. You can control your sex drive. You can make conscious decisions and choices to create the sex drive that you want to have.

Alright, so let's get into those six steps. Step one for increasing your sex drive is to determine what your sex drive type is.

Yes. Did you know that there are actually two very different sex drive types?

I did. But you didn't look at the camera.

Most people have no idea that these two different types exist. Then finding out what your individual sex drive type is and what type your partner is is crucial in helping you understand your libido struggles, increase your sex drive and just have a more active and satisfying sex life. This is really important stuff. So we have created an entire guide called what's yous Sex Drive Type? That will help you identify your type, learn exactly what your type needs to get turned on. Because it's very different for the two types.

Oh yeah.

In the description box we've included a link to get this guide absolutely free. We think that you just might be surprised to find out what your type is and your partner's. But just to give you a quick sneak peek, the two types are spontaneous and responsive. So there are two ways that we get turned on in our heads, that's desire and in our bodies, that's arousal. So desire happens on a mental level. You're mentally interested in having sex, you're thinking about it, it just sounds good to you. Arousal happens on a physiological level. So it's when your body gets physically ready for sex. So for female bodied folks, that includes things like getting wet, your nipples getting hard, your heart rate increasing and your skin starting to flush. For male bodied people it means getting an erection, your nipples getting hard and your testicles actually move closer to your body. So desire and arousal Sound pretty similar, but they work independently of each other. And sometimes they can even work, in other words, opposite directions. So the two sex drive types boil down to where you feel arousal first in your head or in your body. You have to know how this works for you, which is why we really want you to go download that free guide.

Okay, so let's get into step two for increasing your sex drive. So that is, determine what puts you in reverse and what puts you into drive. So if you want to feel more desire on a regular basis, when one of the best things to do to boost your libido is to find out ways to bring more stimuli into your life, especially if you're a responsive type, this is great news because it's something specific that you can actually do. You don't have to sit around waiting and hoping that that desire is just gonna pop out of nowhere. Cause, hint, it's not.

Nope.

You get to focus on bringing more pleasure and sensation into your life.

So let's talk about that stimuli. We like to think of libido as having a drive mode and a reverse mode. And it's a pretty straightforward metaphor. Drive mode includes the things that actively get you going, and reverse mode includes the things that get in the way of you feeling desired. So first, let's talk about what can put you into reverse.

Wait, but I want to go into drive.

We'll get to that in a second. So, in general, anything that puts you into reverse are things that make it difficult to get aroused, prevent you from getting aroused, or even make you actively disinterested in sex. So, like Xander just hinted, when we talk about libido, most people want to know what they need to do to slam it right into drive. But in our experience, it's more important for you to focus on how you can get yourself out of reverse first. And that's because the things that put you in reverse actively prevent you from wanting sex. It's hard to feel desire if you have active blockages in your way. So you are going to have so much more success if you remove the barriers to getting turned on first and then focus on getting turned on second. It's just like the car metaphor that we're using here. You can't go into drive unless you get yourself out of reverse first.

So some of the things that typically put you into reverse are being tired. Full. I think everyone's experienced that one after a huge meal.

Yeah, especially if you go to a big, fancy date night and then you think you're supposed to be intimate afterwards.

Not Gonna happen. So worrying about your appearance, your partner. Initiating sex in a way that maybe you didn't like. Feeling stressed or pressured by whatever. Worrying about your performance in bed. Focusing on other things like chores or your to do list. Feeling guilty or ashamed about sex. And plenty of other things, too. Now let's address the things that might put you into drive. So some typical factors are having energy, feeling confident, being attracted to your partner, wanting to connect with your partner, the atmosphere, feeling sexy.

That's a really big one.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. If it just feels like the mood is right, you've got a good environment set up that tends to get people going.

Yeah, Messy room, not gonna do it. Having the time to have sex, that also helps. Feeling good about your body. You get the point. All these positive things, understanding all the potential factors that could be affecting your desire for sex in any given moment is a crucial part time to kickstart your libido journey.

Okay, so that brings us on to step three for increasing your sex drive, which is to decrease your stress levels. So did you know that stress is the number one killer of sex lives far and away? So let's think about what stress actually is. When you're stressed out, your body actually thinks that it is under attack. So you've heard the phrase fight or flight, right? That's your body preparing for some sort of imminent danger. Your body is deciding whether it's safer to stay and fight or to leave and take flight. So during stress, your body releases a hormone called cortisol. And cortisol slows down other functions in the body that are deemed unnecessary in the moment, so that your body can focus all of its energy and attention on protecting itself from this attack. So libido is one of those unnecessary functions if your body is in imminent danger. If you are under attack, there is no reason why you should also need to be wildly turned on. Right.

Or at the very least, we would not have survived as a species if that were the case.

No, you have to think about our caveman ancestors. If you're actually being chased by a woolly mammoth, having an erection would actually be a big impediment to running away quickly. So it just doesn't make any sense for us to be turned on when we actually are under attack. So the thing with cortisol is that it is great if you actually are in danger in that moment because your body is able to shut down all of these other functions and it focuses on being alert, prepared, and strong. It could save your life, literally. But when there is not an Actual danger. And when your body is constantly in that state of high tension, which is the case for most of us, those cortisol levels are extremely detrimental to your libido. Your libido stays turned off rather than just temporarily shut down.

Stress not only destroys our libidos, but also impacts our relationships, our health, our happiness, and you know, almost every aspect of our lives. Two thirds of doctors visits in the US are actually due to stress related complaints. Half of all Americans half say they've experienced extreme stress in the past year. And 25% 1 in 4Americans say they experienced extreme stress in the past month.

And the terrible part about these numbers is that these are pre Covid numbers. So it's likely that they are way higher right now.

Oh yeah. Stress can also manifest into other conditions as well, like anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, heart disease, ulcers, digestive issues, chronic pain, diabetes, weight gain.

List goes on.

Yeah, all of these things can throw a total wrench into your sex life.

And that's not even to mention the emotional impacts of stress. And being stressed is a horrible experience in and of itself. I have never met a person who enjoyed being stressed. When you're constantly under stress, it's like you can actually feel that sense of imminent danger all the time. Stress just feels like it sucks all of the life out of you. And those emotional impacts affect our sex lives too, of course. So when you're feeling stressed out, do you feel like having sex? Do you feel emotionally available to yourself, your partner, to intimacy? For most of us, the answer is no. Stress also has a way of making us feel very alone. So whenever I'm talking to couples who are both under a lot of stress, they almost always talk about feeling alone in that stress. Even if they're in the exact same situation trying to deal with it together, they tend to feel like they're going at it by themselves. And they'll nitpick about the subtle ways that stress is affecting them differently. It's just really hard to feel like a 10 team.

Okay, so we all know that stress is bad for us, but the reality is very few of us actually take steps to go reduce that stress. And the fact that stress has even been glamorized in society really does not help us Think about how often you meet up with a friend and they brag, oh my God, I've just been so busy with work this week, as if it's like a badge of pride. We've gotten so used to being constantly stressed that we think this is just the way it's Supposed to be, but it's not. You can make active efforts to decrease stress. And the odds are you probably already know the things that will decrease stress for you. You're probably just not doing them. Things like eating well, sleeping enough, spending time with loved ones, moving your body in a way that feels good, journaling, meditating, or praying. We know it can be hard to carve out time in your day for yourself, but understanding that this can also lead to having a higher sex drive just might give you a little extra motivation.

Just might be the motivation you need to actually take action on the things that you know you should be doing. All right, step four for increasing your sex drive is to get your head in the right place. Now, for so many people, it just feels like there's too much going on in your head to even think about sex in the first place. It might feel like sex never naturally comes to mind, or it might feel like you're constantly battling distracting thoughts in the moment when you're trying to be intimate with your partner. Sometimes it can feel like our brain is our sex life's worst enemy. Fortunately, it does not have to be that way. Your brain can be on your side. With boosting your sex drive, your brain can help you feel present, focused, and engaged with your partner.

One of our favorite tips for boosting sex drive is to make a commitment to actively think about sex. Throughout the day, you can think about past sexual experiences, fantasies, you have, steamy movie scenes, whatever feels exciting to you. Now, this is probably the point where you might be thinking to yourself about that word we've been using naturally. You may be thinking, but I just want it to happen naturally. Most of us want sex to just pop into our heads without any effort whatsoever. But here's the thing. Desire is not something that just happens naturally on a consistent basis. Desire is a choice. And if you've been struggling to feel desire, you're going to have to push yourself to think about sex even when you don't feel like it. We want you to choose to bring sex into your thoughts instead of just sitting around waiting for it to happen. So that's why we encourage you to make the choice to think about sex even when you have a million other things on your mind, even when it doesn't come to mind naturally.

So there's a special trick that you can use to take this technique a step further, and that is to anticipate great things. Sex. So to explain what I mean, I first have to tell you about dopamine. So I'm going to science Geek out on you for a second. Dopamine is a hormone that functions as a neurotransmitter. So basically it's a messenger that sends signals to other nerve cells. Dopamine is released when you experience pleasure. It's what makes us feel good. But dopamine doesn't just make you feel good after the fact, it's also involved in motivation. So research has found that the anticipation of pleasure increases the level of dopamine in the brain. You don't have to be feeling pleasure in the moment, you just have to be anticipating it. And actually, you release much more dopamine by anticipating pleasure than you do by actually experiencing pleasure. Research has found that the brain actually has more space dedicated to wanting something than to liking something. So. So anticipating that something is going to feel good often feels even better than the actual enjoyment of that thing. So in one of these studies, this was super interesting, the researchers worked with gamblers who were using slot machines. So you might think that the dopamine levels would be the highest when the person won some money. Like there's nothing more pleasurable than free money. Right? But dopamine was actually highest when the person was pulling the handle on the slot machine.

And probably most times, not winning.

Yes. So them antagonists anticipating winning money was more pleasurable to the brain than actually winning the money.

All right, all right, but how is this actually related to sex?

So all that anticipatory dopamine signals to the brain that an activity is worth doing, so it dramatically increases motivation to do that activity. So super simple language, anticipating something that will be enjoyable actually makes you feel more motivated to do it. So to tie this back to sex, simply by anticipating that you're going to have great sex, you will feel a dramatic increase in your desire to be intimate. So if you want to get in the mood, here's all you have to do. Visualize yourself having great sex with your partner. That is it. It takes just a few minutes, hardly any effort. Thank you. Dopamine. Now, the key with this trick is to be as detailed and specific as you can. So it can really help to spend some time beforehand thinking about what good sex really means to you. So some questions that you can think about include, what are your favorite parts of sex? What does it feel like in the middle of sex or after sex? What are the positive benefits of sex? What is it like for you to be truly intimate with your partner?

Alright, so moving on. Step number five for increasing your sex drive is to improve your relationship with your body. How you feel about your body has been directly tied to how much desire you feel for sexual how often you initiate sex, how much you enjoy sex when you do have it, and even how likely you are to have an orgasm. You can probably guess the direction of the relationship. The worse you feel about your body, the less likely you are to desire sex, enjoy it, or have orgasms. The better you feel about your body, the more likely.

Now, we are willing to bet that you don't have the greatest relationship with your body. And the reason that we say that is because most people, people, unfortunately don't. Most of us have really high standards for and expectations of our bodies. We tend to guilt or bully our bodies into losing or gaining weight, working more, going without sleep, and wanting sex. We're really, really tough on our bodies. Not only do we have all these expectations of our bodies to perform in the specific ways that we want them to perform, we also want them to do so without any support or care on our part. So I have a question to ask yourself right now. Can you think of something kind that you do for your body on an ongoing basis? Seriously, try to think of an answer right now. If you're like most people, it's really hard to come up with an answer now. The even more sad thing about all of this is that bullying your body just does not work. It's not effective, and it makes you feel absolutely miserable. I mean, think about it. When it comes to sexual have you ever successfully guilted or bullied your body into genuinely desiring sex? Just doesn't work that way.

Instead, you have to take the exact opposite approach. If you want to feel the desire for sex, it has to start with developing a better relationship with your body. And here's the interesting thing. How your body looks has no relation to your ability to desire sex or your ability to enjoy sex. Being 20 pounds heavier than you want to be or having thick thighs in and of itself is not going to lower your sex drive or make it difficult to enjoy sex. And it's certainly not going to affect the quality of your orgasm. But it's your feelings about your body that really matter. So that's great news, because you can change your feelings about your body without changing your body itself. You don't have to wait until you lose £20. You don't even need to lose £20 in order to feel more desire or more enjoyment. You just need to change your feelings about your body.

Okay, so we know that you might be thinking right now, easier said than done. So I just want to say I get It. I know Xander gets it too. We're just like every other person out there. We have hang ups about our bodies too. So I have parts of my body that I don't like looking at. I have days that I feel bloated, lumpy and flabby, just like everyone else. But the important thing to remember is that perfection is not the goal here. Just like your body doesn't need to look perfect, you don't need to have a perfect relationship with your body. So it's okay to have good days and bad days. The important thing is that you make a consistent effort to develop a healthier relationship with your body. So in step number three, we talked about decreasing your stress levels. The cool thing is that the things that you do to decrease stress also tend to help you feel more connected to your body. So things like walking on the beach, masturbating, taking a bath. So you can often kill two birds with one stone.

Convenient.

Very convenient.

Which brings us to step six for increasing your sex drive. And that is to get sensual. If you want to have a higher sex drive, you have to have sex that's worth desiring. So many people don't understand the connection between the quality of the sex that you're having and your desire for sex.

This is so important and so many people do not get this.

And that's such a crucial mistake because the connection between them is so strong. If you're having sex that's painful, routine, unenjoyable, disconnected, or just straight up boring, there is no way that you're gonna also crave sex. Who would? It just doesn't make any sense. But on the other hand, if you have sex that's pleasurable, exciting, connected, novel, you're definitely gonna crave it because it's something that's actually craveable.

So if you want to boost your sex drive, you have to work on having higher quality sex. Sex that is worthy of your desire, sex that is worthy of craving. So if you're in a relationship, a great starting place is simply to include more touch on a daily basis. It doesn't even need to be overtly sexual. But increasing the amount of touch that you have in any given day helps prepare your body and your brain for the possibility of intimacy later in the day. Another really good tip is to de emphasize intercourse and start thinking about sex as a menu of options. A whole variety of options that you get to choose from. So approaching sex in this way can make sex feel so much more accessible, especially when you're struggling to feel desire in the first place, the bar isn't set so high. A simple makeout session could be enough to fill all of your desires for connection and could make you start to want even more. You may also find that by not defaulting to your old reliable standard, you end up feeling like there's so much more room for exploration and pleasure.

So that wraps up our ultimate guide to increasing your sex drive. If you like this video, please give it a like or comment down below. If this information has helped you, we'd really love to know if it's something you've struggled with before. And please make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel for more free resources.

And we have a little gift for you. Like we mentioned earlier, if you want to figure out what your sex drive type is and what your partner's sex drive type is, seriously, you need to know this, make sure to download our free guide, what's your sex drive type? It includes a complete breakdown of both types with tips for how to navigate your sex life according to your type and how to fire up your sex drive. Make sure to click the link in the description box to download. Thanks for watching.

See you next time.

Bye. So make sure to clink the link.

You didn't look at the camera.