How to Turn on an Older Woman Pt II

Hormones, Menopause, and Finding My Libido Again

You know that poem by Philip Larkin, the one that goes:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Well, recently it popped into my head, only it came out like this:

They fuck you up, your estrogen and progesterone.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They course through you with their own distinct tone
And screw up the mix especially for you.

OK, I’ll never compete with Philip Larkin, but you get the idea.

And while I’m not a doctor (for that I look to the amazing Kelly Casperson, MD and Lauren Streicher MD ), I have definitely felt how my feelings about sex changed at about the same time my estrogen levels went into free fall and my raging libido suddenly disappeared. I believe it was George Melly who said, on finding himself impotent at 70, “It’s wonderful, like being unchained from a lunatic.” But I grieved that loss for several years while enduring the hot flashes, the sleepless nights, and the brain fog. My raging libido had been such a part of my identity that it took nearly a decade to figure out who I was without it.

My mother, having had breast cancer, which thankfully turned out to be the slow-moving type due to her age, suggested that I wouldn’t be a good candidate for HRT, which I have since come to understand is almost certainly not true. So I spent the next ten years trying various natural supplements, none of which did very much. Eventually, the major symptoms gradually disappeared and I felt vaguely human again, albeit with expanded hips and a slightly thicker waistline.

But my libido? That took far longer to figure out how to recapture, and I wasn’t ready to let it go completely. Sex had always been too much fun for me to even contemplate never having it again.