Recent research published in Sex & Couple Therapy Journal More than half of adults worry about their sex drive, suggesting that most of their worries center around feeling like their sex drive is too low or doesn’t match their partner’s level of desire. The findings provide evidence that everyday stressors, mental health challenges, and relationship dynamics play a major role in how people perceive their sexual desires. This research helps explain the different ways in which individuals experience and interpret changes in sexual motivation.
Sexual desire is generally understood as a person’s internal motivation for seeking sexual experience and pleasure. This motivation may manifest as an interest in sexual activity with others, solo activities such as masturbation, or simply experiencing sexual fantasies. A person’s level of desire tends to fluctuate over time. These changes can occur on a daily basis or can vary widely across different life stages.
Psychology and medical experts have recognized that there are natural ebbs and flows in sexual desire and have recently pushed to normalize these fluctuations. They want to move away from treating fluctuating sex drive as a medical problem. Despite this push, concerns about sexual desire discrepancies remain one of the most common reasons couples seek therapy. Discrepancies in needs often lead to decreased relationship satisfaction and can cause significant tension between partners.
Previous research has focused on extremely low sexual desire or situations where partners’ sexual desires are incongruent. In doing so, this past research left a gap in our understanding of how everyday people personally view and worry about their own libido outside of clinical settings.
“Sexual desire concerns are one of the most common reasons people seek sex and couples therapy, but most research has focused on decreased desire itself, or differences in desire between partners,” said Caroline F. Pukall, professor of psychology and Canada Research Chair in Sexual Health at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. Pukal is the editor of a textbook on human sexuality and director of the Institute for Sexual Health.
“We wanted to better understand how people personally think and worry about their sexual desire, including what triggers their anxiety and how those concerns vary across different relationship statuses, genders, and sexual orientations,” Pukall said. “More broadly, we were interested in understanding the everyday experience of sexual desire beyond a purely clinical lens.”
Much of the existing literature also centers on heterosexual, cisgender individuals who are currently in relationships. Cisgender refers to people whose gender identity matches the sex assigned at birth. The authors of the current study wanted to look at a broader range of experiences to find out how people think about their sexual desires across different demographic groups.
To collect this information, the researchers conducted a mixed-methods online survey. A mixed methods approach means that the survey includes both multiple-choice questions with set answers and open-ended questions that allow participants to input their thoughts.
“One aspect of this study that I particularly value is the mixed methods approach,” Pukall said. “The quantitative data allowed us to identify broad patterns, and the participants’ written responses provided rich context about how people experience desire in their everyday lives.”
The team recruited participants by promoting the study on the social media platforms of the popular science podcast Science Vs. This approach yielded a total sample of 1,317 adults. The final sample included a variety of age groups, but most participants were under 40 years of age.
Approximately 55 percent of the sample identified as female and approximately 40 percent identified as male. The remaining participants identified as nonbinary or agender. Regarding sexual orientation, approximately 70 percent identify as straight, with the remainder identifying as bisexual, pansexual, queer, gay, lesbian, or asexual. Almost 80% of participants are currently in a committed relationship.
Participants answered a series of questions about their level of sexual desire. They also recorded how often they had sex in the past year on a scale from never to every day. They then answered how often they actually wanted to have sex during the same period.
The survey also asked whether participants had ever worried about their sexual desire. This section encouraged you to identify the reason for your anxiety and what specifically bothers you about your experience. The researchers found that 57.1 percent of the entire sample reported worrying about their level of sexual desire.
“One of the striking findings was that many of our participants were worried about their sexual desire,” Pukal told PsyPost. “More than half of the sample reported having concerns.”
The most common concern among the worried group was that their sex drive seemed too low, reported by 47.5 percent of the worried group. A further 42.4% were worried because their sexual desire did not match their partner’s level of desire. Only 7.6 percent of these participants reported worrying that their sex drive was too high.
When asked what bothered them most about their low sex drive, the most common answer was not being able to satisfy their partner. Almost half of the respondents also said they simply miss having sexual feelings in the past.
“We were also struck by how often people’s worries focused not just on themselves, but on how their desires affect their relationships, particularly concerns about satisfying their partner and dealing with differences in desire,” Pukall added. Participants commonly attributed low sex drive to mental health issues, with 44.3% citing this as a reason.
Other common reasons include being dissatisfied with your body and side effects from medications. “Another notable finding was the extent to which participants linked low sex drive to mental health, stress, fatigue, and parenting responsibilities, highlighting how sexual well-being is linked to overall well-being,” Pukall said.
The study also revealed some demographic differences in how people perceive their sexual desire. Gender was moderately associated with sexual desire ratings. Men were more likely to report high sex drive, and women were more likely to report low sex drive.
Women were also significantly more likely than men to report worrying about their sexual desire. Relationship status also influenced these concerns. Participants in romantic relationships, especially those in relationships lasting between 1 and 15 years, were more likely to report a decrease in sex drive and express concern about it.
Age didn’t seem to affect how people evaluated their sexual desire or how worried they were about it. Interestingly, although the researchers found no difference in actual levels of sexual desire between heterosexual and sexual minority participants, the minority group reported higher levels of anxiety about sexual desire.
“The biggest takeaway is that concerns about sexual desire are very common, and many people worry about whether their desire is ‘normal,'” Pukall said. “Participants frequently described concerns about wanting less than they would like, having desire change over time, or differences between their own desires and their partner’s desires.”
“Importantly, our findings confirm that changes in sexual desire are a typical part of the human experience, and that factors such as stress, mental health, relationship dynamics, major life changes, and parenting can all influence sexual desire,” she added. “Although some group differences were revealed, many of the statistical effects were relatively small, suggesting that individual experiences and life circumstances may be more important than broad demographic categories alone.”
In open-ended responses, a small number of participants detailed their personal struggles. Many described their sex drive as very erratic, disappearing for weeks at a time and then coming back. Some people describe pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding as significantly reducing their sex drive.
“These responses consistently emphasized themes of uncertainty, volatility, stress, mental health, parenting, and relationship dynamics, and served as a reminder that sexual desire is deeply embedded within the broader context of people’s lives and relationships,” Pucal said. Some participants pointed to extreme stress, hectic lifestyles, and chronic fatigue as the main factors ruining their intimate mood.
Some participants shared that low libido negatively affected their sexual self-esteem, making them feel undesirable or worthless to their partner. Some have confessed that because of their low sex drive, they worry that they will be forced into unwanted sex just to satisfy their partner. Others emphasized cultural factors, such as growing up in a religious environment that promoted celibacy, which made it difficult for them to enjoy intimate relationships later in life.
Although this study provides a useful examination of how people view their sexual desires, there are some limitations. Pukal cautioned that the findings do not necessarily accurately represent the prevalence of these problems in general society.
“One important caveat is that this study should not be interpreted as an indication of how common concerns about sexual desire are in the general population,” Pukall said. “The sample is not representative of all adults, as participants were recruited through podcast listeners and voluntarily chose to complete a survey regarding sexual desire.”
Pukal also emphasized that experiencing decreased sexual motivation is not necessarily a bad thing. “I also caution against interpreting low desire as inherently problematic,” she explained. “Our findings suggest that distress often stems from uncertainty, social expectations, relationship concerns, or life circumstances, rather than objective standards of how sexual desire ‘should’ be.”
The researchers used the terms sex drive and libido interchangeably, without providing strict definitions to participants. This means that participants may have interpreted the questions differently based on their personal definitions. The study also did not differentiate between spontaneous desire, which occurs out of nowhere, and reactive desire, which occurs in response to a sexual situation.
Another limitation involves the survey questions themselves. Rather than using established psychological questionnaires, the researchers created their own questions. Although this choice allowed us to tailor the study to our specific goals, it makes it difficult to directly compare these results with older studies.
Social expectations and pressures may also have influenced how people responded to the survey. For example, cultural norms often pressure men to report higher sexual desire in order to appear more masculine. These types of social pressures can create response bias in surveys where people self-report their behaviors and emotions.
The researchers hope to address these methodological limitations in the future. “An important next step is to use more comprehensive and validated measures to better capture different aspects of sexual desire,” Pukall said.
“We also hope to explore these experiences in larger, more diverse samples to better understand differences across specific gender identities, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds, and life stages.” The ultimate goal is to translate these insights into better support systems for individuals dealing with changes in sexual drive.
These efforts may help therapists and educators better support people experiencing distress. “Ultimately, we hope this study will contribute to educational and clinical approaches that normalize fluctuations in desire while helping people communicate more effectively about their sexual needs and expectations,” Pukall said.
The study, “Worried about low sexual desire: A mixed-method assessment of sexual desire across gender, sexual orientation, and relationship status,” was authored by Juliana T. Park, Samantha L. Levan, Melody Glass, Bryce Terrell, Wendy Zukerman, and Caroline F. Pucal.
