Understanding Sexual Boredom Without Making It Anyone’s Fault You’re Feeling Less Interested In Sex

11 minute read

Sexual boredom can feel like a death sentence to your sex life and relationship. But just because sex hasn’t been sizzling lately, doesn’t mean you’re doomed to boring sex forever or that your partnership is on the rocks. Because like most things in life – being bored by sex can be both a sign and a tool. 

It’s a sign something desperately needs to change in your sex life. And it’s a tool, that helps facilitate necessary changes and conversations with your partner. The kind that leads to “don’t stop, keep going” kinds of sex, as opposed to the “please just stop” kinds you might be having right now.  

In this piece, we’re talking all about sexual boredom and specifically, how it ties into your sex drive. We’ll also cover what things to avoid doing that actually make matters worse (even when that’s not your intention at all). And –  what you can do instead. 

Because you do deserve good sex – and so does your partner, too.

Let’s begin with the most obvious question – why do I feel bored?

As with everything – sexual boredom can occur for many different reasons. Interestingly,  research points to the fact that sexual boredom happens more often for people who get bored in general. 

In other words, people who experience boredom in life often have a lower threshold for things getting boring. This can therefore more easily lead to your sex life (and masturbation) getting boring over time.

This can also happen when you experience things that are related to the emotion of boredom, namely; depression. 

For instance, if you’re depressed in your general life, you may find that those emotions trickle into how you feel about sex and how exciting (or boring), it is. It can also negatively affect your desire for sex, leading you to not want to have sex at all.

Depression can also affect other things like arousal and erectile ability, and make it difficult to have an orgasm.

In essence, sexual boredom can both affect and be affected by many other areas in your life. 

This includes your communication about sex (or lack thereof). A lot of couples don’t talk about sex with their partner. This has many reasons, some of them might be that you don’t yet know how to turn yourself on. So how could you possibly share this with your partner?

Others might be the shame you feel surrounding sex or struggling to find the right words. And it makes sense, right? For a lot of us, sex is more of a wordless activity. One we’ve been taught we don’t need to talk about, because if we’ve found “our person”, sex should just be easy.

But in actual fact – talking about sex is healthy.

And if we don’t talk about sex with our partner – sex rarely changes on its own. 

Without conversations or discussions where sex is talked about openly and honestly, there isn’t much opportunity to explore your sexual preferences or new things that can bring more excitement into the bedroom.

 Sexual boredom can also occur when we believe that it’s inevitable; that once we’ve reached the stage of “boring sex” with our partner – it’s irreversible. 

The reality is that the way we think about things actually has a big impact on how we feel about them (which is why it’s crucial to work on your beliefs if you want to keep your relationship alive).

This means – if you walk around with a belief that once your sex life is boring you’re trapped and there’s nothing you can do about it – this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This belief further reinforces the feeling of boredom you have when it’s time to have sex with your partner. And over time, the more boring sex feels, the less exciting it becomes, and the less desire you feel to have sex with your partner again. 

That’s the way desire works. Because if you believe sex will be boring – there’s no motivation for your desire to show up, right? Why would it when it knows it’s not worth the effort?

My free resource The Desire Test helps you take that first step towards an increased sex drive, by understanding your decreased desire. 

Take the 10-page assessment quiz, get the answers you need to understand what’s standing in the way of your desire, and get free sex and relationship tips directly to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.

And our environment does very little to help

Sex and desire are often portrayed in the media and in TV series as something that fizzles out over time.

This causes us to romanticize that first initial meeting with a new partner. Where we’ve succumbed to that hormonal cocktail we’ve been doused in, and the butterflies and excitement that come with it. 

Compare this to sex and long-term relationships – and you’ll easily see how seldom they are romanticized in the same way. Even if evidence shows us that lots of people have incredibly satisfying sex lives after years and decades together. 

But because we don’t talk about it – we believe there’s nothing we can do about it. That we just have to accept the status quo.

Sexual boredom is also often related to overall relationship satisfaction. So while we tend to talk about sexual boredom as something that only affects our sex life – the truth is that it has a ripple-like effect on our relationship satisfaction as well. 

And this goes both ways – if sex is boring we might feel our relationship is boring, and if our relationship is lack-lustre, we might feel our sex life is lack-lustre too. 

Sexual boredom and ADHD

If you have ADHD and you’ve had an inkling that sexual boredom is something that happens to you more than other people – you’re probably on to something!

ADHD can, in general, make it difficult to concentrate on things in life – and this includes sex, too.

Because of this, you might feel like you need extra stimuli or “something extra” to feel turned on or excited.

In order to get out of your head during sex and be present in bed you might need new things and lots of different kinds of input to make the sex sizzling, in a way people without ADHD might not always need. 

What is sexual depression? 

Sexual depression can happen when you experience any kind of sexual challenge that is causing your sex life to be less fulfilling than you wish. 

It can stem from many areas including low desire, low arousal and inability to lubricate or get an erection or sustain one. But it could also include difficulties orgasming, either with your partner or when you masturbate. No matter what you try – a new sex toy, lubricant or gadget, nothing works. 

When this happens, it’s not uncommon for a sexual depression to occur (especially if you’re already feeling depressed in general). 

Depression like this can have a knock-on effect on your sexuality and your sex life, along with your general well-being. When this occurs, depressive symptoms are similar to what people experience when depression stems from other challenges in their life – only they often point the cause of their depression – to what’s going on in their sex life.

Is getting bored with sex normal?

Yes – it’s definitely normal. Most couples will feel it from time to time, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept a boring sex life.  There are lots of ways to keep your relationship exciting and ways to make your sex life more exciting too. 

If the challenge you’re facing comes from a lack of interest in sex – start a conversation with your partner about your sex life and things you might want to switch up. 

Remember to always do this from a non-blaming place. You could try saying something as simple as, “Hey, I’ve noticed that we’re not having sex as much as we used to, and I would love to talk about how we can change this.”

And, you don’t have to have all the answers when you broach the conversation about your sex life. But you do want to approach it from a perspective of, “Hey, how can we brainstorm this together?”. As opposed to saying things like, “I’m so bored when we have sex.” Or “You always do the same thing”.

Just because you’re bored – it doesn’t mean your partner is bored too. And hurt feelings aren’t a great place to start a productive conversation from. 

The point of this conversation is to both start feeling excited about the possibilities again. This will likely entail tearing up some of the sexual scripts you’ve become accustomed to following over time. Often, couples develop these sexual scripts subconsciously – but they very easily hinder any kind of experimentation, which is why they need to be torn up.

If you’re feeling bored, you likely need novelty

Newness. 

Just like a lot of us need to eat different foods and try new dishes, to make this thing we do three or more times a day enjoyable – we also need to mix things up in bed for it to be fun.

Because part of what keeps your sex life exciting – is trying new things.

Sometimes – even trying something that makes you feel slightly nervous. Important to note here though is that you shouldn’t feel anxious or unsafe. Just a slight sprinkling of nerves can make you feel vulnerable in a way where both you and your partner bond and feel closer as a result. 

When this vulnerability is brought into trying new things together – you’re both aware you’re playing around. That getting it perfect isn’t the goal. This way you invigorate a sex life that’s been boring for some time – and relish in that emotional intimacy at the same time. A true win-win!

What to avoid doing when you talk about sexual boredom 

As mentioned before, one of the most important things to avoid doing when talking about your sex life – is blaming your partner or hurting their feelings. Because the thing is – it’s not your partner’s sole responsibility to make sex exciting. 

Having sex together is a real “team effort” – which means you both bear responsibility for the quality of the sex that you’re having. 

By focusing your blame on your partner – you’re pushing them away. In effect leading them to not know what to do differently next time and to be less present during sex, leading to a lack-lustre experience for both. 

What to do: Tell them what you want 

Once you’ve both assumed 50-50 responsibility for turning things around – you’ll want to give your partner a clear signal for what you desire – so it’s unmistakable what you’re asking for.  

Be sure your communication is clear and your partner has a true understanding of what you’re saying and asking for. Because with vague communication, your partner may feel confused at best, and worried at worst. 

And these feelings kill creativity and excitement – especially during sex.

Sexual satisfaction is deeply personal and a lot of us feel some sort of insecurity surrounding sex as it is. Because of this, and the nature of the topic being so sensitive – it’s important to take that into consideration when talking about sex. Especially when it’s been challenging or tenuous in the past. 

If not – it’s easy for the conversation to go sideways. Especially when someone feels blamed, like they’re bad in bed, or that their desires are shameful. 

By both practising the principles of taking equal responsibility for your shared sexual pleasure during sex –  and brainstorming ways forward – you’re much more likely to have a conversation that leads to more desire and sizzling sex.

Sexual boredom and anxiety

If the idea of talking about sex makes you feel a pang of nervousness in the pit of your stomach – you’re not alone. It can be tricky to navigate a conversation about sex when it’s a loaded topic in your relationship. 

In essence, anxiety is a response to feeling feelings that are so overwhelming to our body – that they produce feelings of being unsafe.

The anxiety itself is much like our very own fire-alarm in our body – screeching that something is wrong. But sometimes, the alarm system is faulty. Because nothing is wrong per say, we’re simply unused to talking about sex this openly. 

So – just because you feel anxious talking about it – doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. And something that can be tremendously helpful, is sharing your anxiety about the topic with your partner.

Tell your partner you’re anxious

This can serve as a great ice-breaker as well as helping your partner understand they may need to support you during the conversation. 

Once they know it’s hard for you, it’s easier for them to help soothe you too. Perhaps you can: 

• Hold hands while talking about sex (so you both feel supported and like you’re a team)
• Talk about your sex life while going on a walk together (moving your body can help switch from anxious mode into a more relaxed mode)
• Create a nice ambience in the room with candle-light and relaxing music in the background

The most important thing to keep in mind when talking about things like; having sex after a long period of time or spicing things up in the bedroom – is to approach this as a team. No matter how cheesy that sounds! 

This will help combat any feelings of defensiveness and anger.

Because the last thing you want is to lash out at one another. Especially if you or your partner is feeling nervous or anxious about the conversation.

Getting angry when your partner tries to talk to you about something that’s important to them (and perhaps really vulnerable to them) – is essentially teaching them that talking about these things – isn’t safe.

And for a couple who’s in the midst of dealing with sexual boredom – this is a big problem. Because it means you likely won’t talk about sex soon again. Which further decreases the chances you’ll have sex that feels exciting to you both (or simply; have sex again).

The truth of the matter of sexual boredom is this

It’s not a death sentence for a relationship – or for your sex life. It’s perfectly normal for sex to get boring over time, especially if you don’t talk about it with your partner. And the boredom itself isn’t necessarily a sign something’s wrong. If you’re prone to getting bored in life in general, or if you’ve never really experimented with your partner after being together for years or decades – boredom is just a sign you need to switch things up. 

And when you do? Sex like the early days and your stomach somersaulting with pleasure – is waiting.

Found this piece helpful?

If you want more ways of looking at sex in your relationship that will have you wanting to want sex again – check out my audio training The Sex Fresh Start.

Here’s what one of my recent purchasers said about The Sex Fresh Start:

“When I bought The Sex Fresh Start I had no sex drive & felt anxious that my relationship would eventually end. It kick-started me into prioritising sex a little. While not over prioritising so that it becomes too big. It helped me see my partner is showing love through sex, not just meeting his own physical needs.”

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