A woman’s desire often dies outside the bedroom. It dies beside a sink full of dirty dishes, inside the grocery list, in messages from school, and under the burden of remembering every appointment, bill, meal, family obligation, and change in her husband’s mood. It begins to disappear when the man she once desired gradually becomes one more person she must organize, serve, soothe, and manage. Then he comes to her in the evening wanting sex. And he genuinely cannot understand what happened to the passionate woman he married.

I increasingly wonder whether the problem is actually her libido. She has simply stopped desiring the life she now inhabits. She remains capable of feeling, fantasizing, becoming aroused, falling in love, and experiencing desire. Her body simply no longer opens beside a man for whom she has become a familiar piece of household furniture: reliable, useful, and always expected to remain in its assigned place.

She has not lost desire. She has stopped desiring this man within this relationship. Within THIS pattern... Women are constantly told that their sexual desire inevitably declines with age. Hormones, childbirth, menopause, and exhaustion can certainly affect sexuality. Sleep deprivation, chronic stress, depression, pain, health conditions, and certain medications matter as well. But female sexuality is far too intricate and multilayered to explain its disappearance through a single hormone or a woman’s age. and it is in many cases - a very useful excuse which is filled with blame. Research increasingly suggests that we should examine not only what is happening inside the woman, but also how her relationship is structured.

One study examining sexual motivation and relationship duration found that sexual activity and satisfaction declined over time for both sexes, while sexual desire declined only among women. At the same time, women’s desire for tenderness increased. The study demonstrates an association rather than direct causation, but the pattern is revealing: the duration of a relationship may affect male and female desire differently.

A particularly important study was published in 2022. It included two groups of women with children who were partnered with men: 677 women in the first sample and 396 in the second. The greater the woman’s share of household labor, the lower her sexual desire for her partner. Two experiences helped explain this connection: she perceived the division of labor as unfair, and she began to view her partner as dependent on her.

In plain language, she no longer experienced him as an adult man. She saw another person who needed to be taken care of.

This is one of the most destructive transformations for eroticism: the lover becomes a mother figure, while the man becomes another child. It is difficult to desire someone whom you must remind to take out the garbage, buy groceries, call the doctor, collect the children, and clean up after himself. It is difficult to relax in his arms at night when you have spent the entire day managing his life.

Recent research continues to confirm the significance of invisible domestic labor. A 2026 study found that the mental load, the work of remembering, anticipating, planning, and emotionally managing family life, may matter even more to women’s satisfaction than the physical performance of household chores. Even women who believe in equality continue to carry a disproportionate share of this invisible labor. 

Another 2026 study found a particularly interesting pattern: the association between an unequal division of household labor and lower sexual desire was most consistent among women with more egalitarian beliefs. A woman who no longer accepts the role of serving a man may react especially strongly, including through her body, when her relationship continues to place her in that role.

Live separately if you want to preserve the novice and excitement! 

When sex becomes work too

Marriage has a dangerous capacity to transform access to a woman’s body from a gift into an assumed right.  

Before marriage, a man is in a relationship with a separate woman who can choose him, reject him, or leave. He notices her mood, tries to attract her, takes initiative, and creates an atmosphere between them. It matters to him that he remains the man she desires.

After marriage, an almost invisible assumption gradually appears in many couples: because she is his wife, sex is now included in the marital package. He may have to ask, negotiate, or wait for an appropriate evening, but access is still treated as something fundamentally available. He conquered her once, placed a ring on her finger, and now behaves as though he has acquired a permanent subscription to her body.

Sex then becomes another female obligation, alongside cooking, cleaning, raising children, and emotionally caring for the entire family. Researchers call this duty sex: sex motivated by a sense of obligation. Among women reporting significantly reduced sexual desire, two-thirds said that they had engaged in this kind of obligatory sex. It was associated with difficulty acknowledging their own sexual needs and with inadequate communication about what actually brought them pleasure.

In another study, women who had sex out of obligation reported lower sexual satisfaction and lower relationship satisfaction. Consenting to sex and desiring sex are entirely different states. A woman may say yes because she loves her husband, does not want to hurt him, wants to maintain peace, or believes that sex is her marital duty. But when her own desire is absent from the experience for too long, her body learns to interpret sexual attention as another request for service.

She cooked dinner. Checked the homework. Listened to her husband. Put the children to bed. Provided sex. The workday is over. Then society diagnoses her with low libido.

Female sexuality begins long before a touch

Women’s desire is often responsive. It may arise gradually rather than appearing in advance as a spontaneous urge. It can awaken in response to touch, attention, emotional connection, playfulness, admiration, and the right atmosphere. This model changed the assumption that a “normal” woman must regularly experience spontaneous desire without any context.

Yet responsive sexuality does not mean that a woman should be persuaded to begin sex in the hope that she will eventually become interested. Desire needs a context in which she can stop controlling, planning, and carrying responsibility for everyone around her. If her mind is holding twenty unfinished tasks, if touch already carries an expectation, and if refusal leads to resentment, her body has nowhere to open.

Female sexuality needs safety and trust, but safety alone is insufficient. Desire also needs separateness, mystery, movement, admiration, and the feeling that another complete adult is standing before her, not a familiar extension of domestic life. again - live separately! 

In interviews with married women who had lost sexual desire, researchers found three recurring themes: the institutionalization of the relationship, overfamiliarity, and the desexualization of roles. Lovers gradually turned into family functions. The woman stopped experiencing herself as a woman beside a man who had also stopped feeling like an erotic man to her.

Sexual boredom matters as well. A 2025 study involving 1,155 women in long-term monogamous relationships found that sexual boredom explained up to 32 percent of variation in sexual satisfaction and 27 percent of variation in relationship satisfaction. A woman’s attraction to other people did not, by itself, indicate that her relationship was unhappy. It became a problem primarily when accompanied by sexual boredom within the relationship.

This confirms something important: a woman may stop desiring her husband without losing her sexuality. Her desire has not disappeared. It simply no longer awakens in a space where everything is known, expected, guaranteed, and free from risk. Live separately and date each other... meet each other in parks and have spontaneous sex in the bushes! 

When women stopped being the ones who chose

I increasingly think about how far modern marriage has moved away from the natural dynamic between a woman and a man. In many ancient cultures, the feminine principle was understood as sacred. A woman capable of carrying, birthing, and nourishing new life was not regarded as a lesser being, a sinner, or the source of man’s downfall. Her body was not treated as something shameful that needed to be covered, subdued, and transferred into male control.

A woman chose whom to invite into her space. The man came to her. He entered her home, her lineage, and her world. His place beside her did not become his permanent property simply because a wedding had taken place.

Human history has never followed one universal pattern, yet real examples of societies organized around the maternal line have survived into the present. Among the Haudenosaunee, the Indigenous peoples of North America also known as the Iroquois, lineage passed through the mother, children belonged to their mother’s clan, and several generations of women from the same lineage lived together in a longhouse. A man entered the woman’s home. Her house, children, and social support did not depend upon whether one particular husband remained beside her.

When the union ended, the man left. The woman was not abandoned among the ruins of her life, wondering where she and her children would live. She did not have to choose between homelessness and remaining with a domestic tyrant for example. Her home, land, and lineage continued to support her.

Divorce among the Haudenosaunee was sufficiently more accessible than divorce in nineteenth-century Christian American society that early American women’s-rights advocates pointed to it as an alternative model. At the time, a white married woman was legally dependent upon her husband and often could not escape the marriage even when remaining placed her in danger.

Here I see one of history’s greatest substitutions. Women were moved from the center of their own world into the houses of men. They received their husbands’ names. Their children received their husbands’ names. Property, descent, and inheritance increasingly passed through the male line. Female sexuality became surrounded by shame, fear, and ideas of sin. The woman who chose became the woman who was chosen. The mistress of her own space became someone transferred from her father’s family into her husband’s family. The source of life became a potential sinner who had to be controlled. And every looser would be guaranteed a female body to f$ck.  Especially if this looser was rich and ugly...  

Marriage became extremely convenient for society and, especially, the state. It established paternity, identified legitimate heirs, transmitted names and property, allocated economic responsibilities, registered family units, and eventually allowed taxation to be organized around them. Anthropologists do indeed examine marriage as a structure that determines where children belong, what rights and status they receive, and which family resources they may access.

The convenience of the system has too often been purchased with women’s bodies and freedom.

The home that was supposed to protect her became the most dangerous place

We can speak endlessly about modern equality, yet the home remains the most dangerous place for an enormous number of women. According to the United Nations, approximately 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024. That is about 137 women and girls every day, one every ten minutes.

This is why the words “just leave” often sound appallingly naïve. Leave for where? With what money? Where will the children live? Who will pay the lawyer? What happens when the man discovers that she truly intends to go?

A modern woman may formally possess the right to leave a marriage, yet she must too often fight for her home, her safety, her children, and her right to continue living her own life. She may have to prove that her husband is dangerous, prove that she is a good mother, establish her right to shared property, and negotiate for years with the very person from whom she is trying to escape.

A maternal kinship system was wiser in this respect: the man could leave, while the woman and her children did not lose the ground beneath their feet.

Women choose... This is the movement of Life itself

In many animal species, the female chooses her mate while males compete for the opportunity to be selected. Female choice is one of the most significant forces in sexual selection. It has shaped male coloring, vocalizations, strength, behavior, and elaborate courtship rituals. Modern biology offers extensive evidence for the role of female choice in evolution.

There is a natural logic to this. The female body carries an enormous share of the reproductive cost: pregnancy, birth, physical recovery, breastfeeding, and years of caring for a dependent child. Female selectivity is therefore neither manipulation nor entitlement. It is a deeply rooted capacity to sense whom she can open to, beside whom she feels safe, who can carry responsibility, and from whom she may want to receive new life.

Yet what have we done with this natural order? Women are now expected to be colorful, beautiful, seductive, be publicly visible as beautiful (plastic surgeries, tons of make up etc.), entertaining: to dance around a man and convince him to choose them, dance to show off. In nature it is HE who must show off... but in our society she performs, pursues, and proves her value while he sits back, evaluates his options, and agonizes over whether he might make the wrong choice. She is pushed into the pursuing role, while he becomes passive, hesitant, and increasingly afraid... Do you see how profoundly confused this has made us? Men have been taught that the burden of choosing rests entirely upon them, so they become anxious, indecisive, and terrified of choosing incorrectly. Women exhaust themselves trying to be chosen, then wonder why they feel disconnected from their own bodies and desire.

Dear men, release yourselves from this obligation. You do not have to inspect women as though you were selecting the perfect product. Live fully. Build something. Become alive, grounded, interesting, and capable of carrying responsibility. Show the world who you are and allow a woman to decide whether she desires you.

Stop trying to possess the chooser. Become a man worth choosing.

When I use the word “worthy,” I do not mean the richest, most aggressive, or physically strongest male. I mean a man whom the woman herself considers worthy of access to her body: mature, alive, attentive, self-sufficient, and capable of respecting her freedom.

Yet modern marriage often reverses this natural movement of choice. The man pursues the woman until the wedding and then relaxes. He believes the essential event has already occurred: she chose him, bore his children, and became bound to him through a shared home, obligations, and a mortgage. She is unlikely to go anywhere now.

He can stop taking an interest in her inner world. Stop noticing how she is changing. Stop courting her, surprising her, or growing himself. He can treat her as a function throughout the day and still expect passion from her at night.

Even the most mediocre man, who stopped seeing the woman in his wife long ago, continues to expect regular sex simply because she once said yes. But a woman’s body does not submit to a marriage contract. It feels the truth of the relationship. When she experiences herself as part of the furniture, an unpaid family manager, and a mother to her own husband, desire begins to disappear. Sometimes gradually. Sometimes very suddenly.

The body closes where the woman is no longer seen.

What it means to keep winning a woman

Continuing to win a woman does not mean performing an endless courtship ritual, buying flowers on schedule, or competing with imaginary rivals. It means remembering that the person beside you is separate, free, and alive, not property acquired once and owned forever. Can you actually be your own adult? and do your own laundry and ironing? and your own cooking and cleaning? 

It means remaining interested in her. Seeing how she changes. Hearing her no without resentment or punishment. Taking full responsibility for an equal share of the family’s physical, mental, and emotional labor. Acting without waiting for instructions and without describing the fulfillment of your own responsibilities as “helping your wife.”

It means creating a space in which a woman can stop carrying everyone around her and feel sensual, unpredictable, and free again. When a man understands that a woman continues to choose him every day, he does not take her presence for granted. He remains attentive. He continues to grow. He understands that a ring does not grant him permanent rights to her body, desire, or care.

The woman also retains the right to stop choosing him. She may love a man without desiring him. She may feel grateful for their shared history and recognize that this history has ended. She may refuse the role of the convenient wife even when her refusal disrupts the established order.

Her body belongs to her. She alone decides whom to open to, whom to invite in, and beside whom to remain. Only a man she continues to consider worthy of her trust and desire may touch this immense power.

Maybe marriage really should be abolished

Sometimes I think that marriage should be abolished altogether. If marriage means turning a woman into a convenient servant, a dependable mother to everyone, and a sexually available feature of the household, that kind of marriage certainly deserves to disappear. If the man receives presumed access to a woman’s body while she receives a second work shift, the entire system that calls this a normal family should be dismantled.

Maybe the legal structure can remain. People still need ways to protect children, shared property, medical decision-making, and inheritance. But the idea that spouses own one another must be abolished completely.

It is time to abolish the belief that love guarantees access to another person’s body. That courtship can end after the wedding. That domestic life naturally belongs to women and a man’s participation is a generous form of assistance. That a wife must treat her “low libido” while the structure of her life remains untouched. That she must preserve the family at any cost, even when the price is her safety, dignity, vitality, and capacity for desire.

A woman is not obligated to desire a man for the rest of her life simply because she once chose him. A man who wants to remain desirable cannot win a woman once and then stop moving. He must continue meeting her as a free being, with her changing body, desires, boundaries, power, and mystery. Maybe this is the only honest form of union.

A man does not own a woman. A woman does not serve a man. She chooses him.

And he lives in a way that makes her want to keep choosing him.