Feeling Unsexy?

A Guide to Your Erotic Transformation in Midlife

For too long, menopause has been framed in our culture as a loss. A loss of youth and of menstrual cycles and of sexual allure. And let’s face it. It’s hard to feel sexy when there’s a face-off between hot flushes, weight gain, emotional turmoil, hormonal flux and the exhausting reality of oestrogen withdrawal.

I’m often struck at the number of women in midlife who come into my pelvic and sexual health clinic and report (usually quietly and sometimes tearfully) that their once highly charged libido has vanished. Losing interest in sex and physical intimacy is devastating for some women. Especially if sex bought great fulfilment and depth to their relationships. Or if being sexual was an important part of their identity. Coupled with the long term nature of some relationships, loss of libido can be one of the single biggest challenges that many couples face in midlife.

Their questions range from, ‘Is this normal?’ to, ‘Will my sex drive ever come back?’ and, ‘Will I ever feel sexy again?’

The fabulous news I have to share is a resounding yes, to all three of these questions. Midlife doesn’t have to mean less passion. It can mean a different kind of passion. Slower. Deeper. More intimate and honest. Experienced and skilful. Vulnerable and emotionally safe. Especially compared to youthful years, where inexperience can lead to dangerous, uncomfortable and risky situations and partners.

The secret is not in the hormone creams or the anti-aging vaginal serums. Although some extra support can go a long way in this arena. The secret is so often found, like many things, in perception.

How you view perimenopause and menopause often shapes how you live it.

This is why I am on a mission to reframe this potent rite of passage for women. As an opportunity to reinvent the notions of eroticism as an important and essential part of healthy ageing.

Because the truth is the complete opposite of the societal and cultural lies that tell us that sexuality and eroticism ceases in later life.

There is a reason why Chinese Medicine considers the pelvic floor muscles to be the ‘muscles of longevity.’

Regular orgasm, vaginal penetration and engaging intimately with oneself or a partner, is a great way to keep pelvic floor muscles strong, maintain vaginal canal patency, improve circulation to the pelvic organs and tissues and to support healthy continence in later life. These are just a few of the myriad of physical benefits of remaining sexually active.

Menopause, no matter how far from erotic it might feel at times, is not the end. It’s a portal into your most awakened, spiritually powerful, and sexually sovereign and erotic self. It requires being prepared to see some of the less sexy aspects, as essential markers of transformation. If this feels important to you, then please read on.

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Think about this. There are millions of women, globally, who are now post-menopausal. Who are currently enjoying the best sex of their lives. They have crossed the menopause bridge. It wasn’t a glamorous bridge. It often felt unsteady. The bridge was one which gave them repeated urinary tract infections. It changed the vaginal tissue and made it more vulnerable to friction. Hot flushes made it difficult to sleep in the same bed with a partner, due to restlessness and different temperature requirements. Hormonal changes made them question their identity and forced them to look at their shadows and traumas. Some women gained weight and lost bone and muscle mass. It made them wonder if these changes were all permanent. It made them wonder if they’d ever feel the same again.

The truth is, they would never feel the same as they did as a twenty-something-year-old. But they are pretty clear on one thing. Why would they want to feel like a twenty-something year-old again? To most women, that was an era of great insecurity, emotional turmoil and low confidence, far worse than this one. They might have looked great in the photos, but inside they were screaming. Intimacy hardly felt like a powerful expression of spiritual identity. It was more often a fumbling and embarrassing co-ordination act for many. With age, with crossing the midlife bridge, they are wise, experienced. They know their bodies and their pleasure triggers better than ever.

Now, it’s not so much about fast-paced, friction-heavy penetrative sex. It’s about awakening a desire inside them that has been quietly waiting to be unfurled under the right circumstances. Partnered or non-partnered, this desire, this erotic impulse, is their movement closer to spirit. It is a culmination of the soul’s journey. Sex is closely associated with the divine impulse that creates all of life. And with deepening life experience, these women, passionate, turned on and alive with this divine impulse, are powerful beyond measure.

Many women don’t realise how powerful they truly are because the dominant narratives have not provided many positive directions to navigate this stage. Underneath the surface, they are unsure whether to own their power or to keep pushing it down.

The thing is, spiritual power is designed to expand and rise and radiate, whether one is aware of it, or not. Depending upon what you believe, we are each made in the image of the Creator, with the Holy Spirit inhabiting the non physical spaces within us, urging creative and/or sexual expression. It might be called prana or chi or life-force in other languages. But it is undeniable for those who have sat for long enough in the expanse of silence.

Those unsexy symptoms I mentioned earlier, were important to unleash this holy power inside women.

The hot flushes burned away illusion, ego strong-holds and trauma bonds. They may have still needed oestrogen supplementation to support their rite of passage through the fire. But the fire had been present first. Instead of letting it burn them, they looked into it courageously and then walked through it like a phoenix.

The weight-gain gave them a new awareness of their bodies. It switched them on to the importance of nutrition, nourishment and movement as therapy not torture.

The emotional turmoil of hormone flux bought them face-to-face with the unresolved emotional baggage they had been carrying. It helped them to put down the baggage of comparison and performance. It helped them to pick up the liberating sense of surrender to what is, and that they no longer had any interest in buying into the opinions of others. It helped them to be more authentic, more attuned to their mission. It gave them clarity about who they were beyond the masks that society had asked them to wear. It sent them into therapy. It made them dig deeper for answers.

The exhaustion of oestrogen withdrawal made them retreat for introspection. Their interoceptive awareness improved. They celebrated rest. They no longer had tolerance for abuse or shady people. Toxic and chaotic partners were forced to retreat. Healthy boundaries were a repellant to emotionally unhealthy people.

They may have sought treatment in the form of hormone replacement therapy and vaginal oestrogen cream. They may have still needed to add extra nourishing lubricants to their intimacy with their vibrators or partners. There is no shame in this. But there is so much more to this story.

As all of these changes were being addressed, they contacted and connected with the eternal part of themselves that lives beyond this physical world. And this ‘descent of Inanna’ or ‘descent into the underworld’ as it is known in the heroine’s journey, has potential to bring forth untold riches and treasure. They literally mined for gold, and came back with a renewed sense of purpose, identity and a relationship with the eternal.

It made them powerful, alluring to healthy partners. It rallied some partners to step up. It made them intimidating to the ones that were resistant to do the work. But the rewards were there for those that stayed and got curious.

Deeper, more fulfilling and strengthening for relationship to self and others.

Awakening is independent of material status for many women. It does not bear relationship to materiality because it is an inside job. Something immeasurable by the world’s material standards. Something that can only be measured in the heavenly realms.

As Esther Perel said, ‘Eroticism is not sex per se, but the qualities of vitality, curiosity, and spontaneity that make us feel alive.’

Eroticism is not just about having sexual intercourse with another human. Just as yoga is not just asana practice, eroticism covers the entire spectrum of life’s desire (divinity’s desire) to express itself through us.

It is also independent of whether one is partnered or single. Single women in midlife are some of the most erotic creatures as they go about channeling their creative expression into breath-taking pieces of art. Or dancing their way through a contemporary dance class. Or dying their hair bright pink or wearing their unique outfits and choosing to wear their fabulous red shoes because life is short and ‘why not?’ Authentic expression of the creative life-force is the mainstay for eroticism to find its way into being.

Post-menopause, the intense signalling of the midlife transformation gently mutes into calm and quietude. For those who have done the work. A peace which passeth all understanding underpins the wise, creative and grace-filled life they have created. Women who have finally crossed the menopause bridge into their second spring and forest dwelling era could care less what others make of their lives. It’s between the wise woman, and her Creator. It’s really no-one else’s business. These women are compelling.

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Maya Angelou, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, Esther Perel, Brene Brown and Tererai Trent. All post-menopausal women, wise, powerful and unique expressions of an energetic shift from doing to being authentic. Ownership over their anointment.

If your libido feels flat or missing in midlife, it doesn’t mean that you’re broken. You’re likely unaroused by the old scripts. Or no longer feeling it for your current partner, who has been abusive for years. Perhaps you’re no longer well matched to your job or your lifestyle. Perhaps you have been placing certain dreams on hold for too long and they are waiting for you to put them in motion.

Midlife asks us to throw away the patriarchal narrative of ‘youthful hotness’ and instead ask:
What turns me on now?
What does my body desire, when nobody is watching?
Where is my energy flowing freely? Where is my energy still bound up in shame, silence, or self-abandonment?

5 Guidelines to Lift Your Libido and Lifeforce

1. Change the Narrative
   Instead of seeing menopause as an ending, try the mantra Menopause is an erotic reawakening.

2. Create Erotic Safety
   Your nervous system and pelvic floor hold stories, old traumas and truths. Touch, breath, counselling and bodywork can gently reopen the channels of communication to connect more deeply with your intimate self. When you feel emotionally safe, regulated and self-connected, the body is more likely to yield, soften and open.

3. Slow Everything Down
   Menopause is simply not a time to speed up and push through. It’s an invitation to savour the moment. Foreplay isn’t optional and sometimes it’s the whole point. Erotic energy blossoms in slowness, in rituals of intimacy with self and other. In communion with the divine, which could come through prayer, meditation, dance or stretching.

4. Stop Trying to Be Sexy. Feel Your Sensuality Instead
   Midlife sexiness is not about how you look. It’s about how much of your soul is present in your body when you speak, touch, and receive. It's the spark of a woman who knows herself so well she can live with authenticity, true to herself and whole and complete in herself.

5. Transmute Shame into Peaceful Power
   So many women carry inherited shame around ageing and desire. But eroticism is sacred. It doesn’t have to be a performance. It can be prayerful. Transformational. Healing. Meditative. The most important aspect about shame is being transparent about it to a Loving Cosmos much greater than oneself.

This time of wisdom is a distillation of all your life experiences into your richest and most potent form yet. This is Sexy Menopause. The reclamation of your life-force, unbound.

Photo by Matthew Moloney on Unsplash