Sex Q&A: Get Your Mojo Back

Tanya from Wyoming asks:

I’m married to my best friend, an amazing, kind, loving and supportive man. I couldn’t be luckier. I just can’t seem to feel my mojo anymore. Is it because I’m in my mid-forties or is there something my husband and I could be doing to help me get it back. I did have an affair that made me feel passionately alive, but I was guilt-ridden all the time, and finally this man had to end it—I’ve come out on the other side of my heartache, and I’m so grateful to still have my darling husband. I’m still left wishing for a boost to my libido, though.

Liam’s Response:

Greetings, Tanya. Our modern concept of marriage is an ideology fraught with delusion. Somehow we crazy, big-brained monkeys have made things more ridiculously complicated than they ever needed to be. Marriage is an institution not at all in sync with our natural inclinations. Pair bonds are natural. They’re utilized for survival and to maximize the chances of the progeny. However, in the case of the human primate, it’s doubtful they started out as long-term agreements. Our natural mating cycles run in direct opposition to marriage as a lifetime agreement for a few very instinctive reasons. Nature is a cruel and vicious Lady; a man’s primary drive is to conquer and impregnate. His genetic agenda IS his only real concern. In times long gone, the majority of a man’s conquests would die bearing his offspring. Just putting someone in that position suggests a definite sort of sadism at work. On the woman’s side, she seeks a mate capable of winning and subduing. Even today, she takes a huge risk for the sake of genetic expression. The dance is dangerous, and it’s essentially over as soon as consummation is complete. What reason is there for more? It can take as little as one night, though scientists put an upward spin of three years on the instinctive cycle of mating; enough to put out a few babies. After that, we naturally lose interest and seek diversity.

Considering all this, marriage is a fragile structure that often breaks apart in the face of very demanding evolutionary drives. The key to its survival is value placement. Realistically, it’s hard to maintain a primal passion for someone you live with day after day, year after year. We want to be seen as competent by our partner. We want to be respected. We need to be valued in friendship. Unfortunately, hot sex is all about consuming and devouring. It’s most fundamental component is fear and familiarity erodes that mystique. Trust and security are acquired at the expense of shadow and seduction.

Your affair was awesome, because you weren’t sleeping with your husband. By your own admission, he’s your best friend. You aren’t afraid of your best friend. He doesn’t make you shiver. He takes no risks, presents no challenge. He’s a great guy, a nice guy… And he’s the last thing on earth a woman really wants in bed. Reviving a passion gone cold is difficult, but it can be done. However, a word of warning: You have a stable, sane, respectable marriage with a good man. You think an injection of adrenalized lust will give you the perfect arrangement. But you’re wrong. Everything’s a trade-off. Anytime you move into passion, safety, security and respect will go right out the window. So prepare yourself. This isn’t for the faint of heart.

Any relationship can be fetishized, any person sexualized, if one is fluid and imaginative enough to manage it. You have to alter your perception of your husband. You have to see the predator within him and re-imagine yourself as prey. Dress the part and start playing the role. Make sex your daily bread in thought, and it will eventually become so in action. See what other women might very well see in him and become a jealous lover. Be his cheerleader. Let your guard down and get starry-eyed. Remember what it was to have a crush. Write his name in a heart with yours. Yes, it’s an act, but everything’s an act, and if you do it right, in time you’ll forget it’s an act. And don’t you dare become “offended” when he starts to treat you with less wifely respect. He sees you as a wife and mommy just as you see him as a sweet best friend and that’s the whole problem. You both need to be shaken out of this haze and awakened to your inner beasties. Tell him that you want to be his play thing. Make him tell you dirty stories, and then tell him a few. Study up on sex Goddesses, their roles and their ways. That’s a basic blueprint. You’re creative enough to figure out the rest. Most of all drop the marital restraints if you can. Let yourself be weak and honest and crazy and see where it leads.

Liam

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