Laut einer neuen Studie wird das sexuelle Verlangen von Frauen stärker durch Stress beeinflusst. Höherer subjektiver Stress ist mit geringerem sexuellem Verlangen und geringerer Erregung verbunden. Sexuelle Aktivität war mit niedrigeren Spiegeln des Stresshormons Cortisol verbunden, was auf eine biologisch stressreduzierende Wirkung von Sex schließen lässt.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453025003063

From the linked article:

**Women’s sexual desire is more strongly affected by stress, new study suggests**

A study in Austria found that **higher subjective stress is linked to lower sexual desire and arousal in the moment. Furthermore, sexual activity was associated with lower subsequent levels of the stress hormone cortisol**. The paper was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

The results showed that when participants reported higher levels of subjective stress, they also tended to experience lower levels of sexual desire and arousal at the same time. While this was true for both genders, the reverse association—higher sexual desire and arousal being linked to lower stress—was only significant for women.

The study also found a key gender difference related to the biological stress response. Higher cortisol levels were significantly associated with lower concurrent sexual desire in women, but not in men. No significant time-lagged associations were found, meaning stress at one point in the day did not predict lower desire a few hours later. However, **previous sexual activity was significantly associated with lower cortisol levels later, suggesting a biological stress-reducing effect of sex** for both men and women.

So basically, while sex relieves stress, stressed women don’t want it.

I’m a dude and that happens to me. When I first moved in with my partner I was woefully unprepared for their needs in terms of housekeeping. I’m no saint, and I struggled a lot to manage their expectations of housekeeping with our financial struggles and the general stress of daily life, and our love life suffered because of it, compounding the issue until we broke up.

It makes sense. Women want to have sex and reproduce when conditions are good, if they are stressed out and don’t have necessary resources their body will signal them its not the right time. Even deer will stop reproducing and females stop going into estrus if food is scarce.

Could this link to declining fertility rates?

I find this concept extremely foreign. I don’t lose my sex drive. I have to purposely ignore it. Which I do I many cases. Sometimes priorities of life require sexual aspects be put on the back burner.

But since no one ever explained this to me, the only experience I had was my own. I assumed people who didn’t want sex decided to not have sex because of their own priorities.

I always want sex. But I’ve been this way since extremely young. I’ve adapted.

This is very validating. I’ve always experienced this.

Maybe now we can normalize this, so that therapists and partners aren’t constantly accusing us of „deliberately withholding“ to punish our partner when our partner is the source of the stress we are experiencing!

What were the subjects‘ dopamine and oxytocin levels like when exposed to those stresses?