Fear or need. When it comes to being pregnant, each these feelings is usually a spoilsport to your sex life.
Deeksha Setia (title modified) was 31 years previous when she began scaling the skilled ladder. She had been married for 2 years, the oh-so-typical ‘right time’ for beginning a household. But having youngsters was nowhere on her thoughts. Sex was; as was pleasure. But the worry of being pregnant stored her on tenterhooks between the sheets. It wasn’t nearly her profession, it was additionally an avalanche of apprehensions round childbirth and postpartum life. Soon sufficient, the main focus of sex turned from pleasure to the strain of protecting any probability of being pregnant away. Sex classes, she says, began ending earlier than her associate might end with a sperm splash into the condom. The slightest of doubt a few break would lead her to pop a morning-after tablet. And she began avoiding sex on her fertile days.
Cut to being 36 years previous, Deeksha is struggling to maintain the spark alive in her bed room life. Sex has become a calculated exercise, matched to the ovulation calendar as an alternative of being pushed by natural arousal. Why? Because now she desires a style of being pregnant.
Check out the Health Shots Period Tracker!
How overthinking impacts your sex life
The lesson to study right here is that overthinking can kill your sex life, explains Dr. Nimmi Mahajan, Lead Gynaecologist at Proactive For Her.
“Fear of pregnancy, and even the desire to get pregnant can directly affect how you approach sexual intercourse. If your focus during sexual intercourse is not pleasure, libido goes down time with time. Eventually, this can lead to lowered desire, disinterest in sex, and issues with the partner due to dissatisfied sex life. This can have a much larger impact on couples that are trying to get pregnant as well as those that are avoiding pregnancy,” Dr Mahajan tells Health Shots.
Stress or nervousness leads to elevated manufacturing of stress hormones within the physique, in flip affecting your hypothalamic pituitary ovarian (HPO) axis and reproductive features. It turns into a vicious chain.
Stress and Sex
Scientifically talking, if you end up overthinking the results of sexual activity, your physique releases stress-inducing or neuroendocrine hormones as an alternative of releasing endorphins. And because of this, you are feeling much less aroused.
“This can also lead to vaginal dryness and lack of adequate lubrication, which consequentially results in painful or un-enjoyable sexual intercourse. If you are stressed and not fully committed to enjoying the activity, your pelvic floor muscles can contract, making penetration difficult,” Dr Mahajan provides.
In excessive instances, this fixed worry of getting pregnant may also trigger a extra extreme situation known as vaginismus. As per layman phrases, it’s merely the involuntary contraction of muscle tissues across the vagina, making penetrative sex a painful expertise.
According to the Industrial Psychiatry Journal, a paralyzing worry of being pregnant known as tokophobia. And girls going by means of it have a tendency to keep away from childbirth.
The affect of an obsessive need for being pregnant
There are additionally those that maintain an obsessive tab on their ‘fertile window’ within the hope to get pregnant. If husbands of those girls had been to be requested, they’re seemingly to title interval and ovulation trackers for being their largest enemy in mattress!
Saurabh Singh (title modified), 38, is one. “When will we do it next? Today is the most fertile day! We have just 3 days left for our best chance this month! My calendar says chances are high.” These are among the statements he’s bored with listening to from his spouse month after month.
A preoccupation with a sure thought will at all times create an interference within the exercise round which the preoccupation is happening. And this holds true even when it comes to intimacy, says senior psychologist Dr Kamna Chhibber.
“If you’re keeping a specific goal in the mind, it will take spontaneity away from the experience. Instead of focusing on the joy, happiness and closeness of being with your partner, you are likely to focus more on ‘is this going to lead to the outcome that I want?’. And that in itself can take away from the goodness of the experience,” Dr Chhibber tells Health Shots.
So, strive to have higher sex extra typically.
How ought to {couples} improve their sex life:
1. Be spontaneous
Couples ought to strive to preserve spontaneity when it comes to intimacy. That might additionally lead to the sexual expertise to being adequate for every of them.
2. Live within the second
It is vital to attempt to be current in that have with a terrific sense of pleasure.
3. Try to discover options
Many instances it may be robust for {couples} if they’ve already gone by means of a state of affairs, are struggling to get pregnant due to fertility points, or are present process therapy for being pregnant. All of those create quite a lot of strain, which can be not helped by feedback and questions from folks round.
So, other than tackling your individual fears and wishes of sex, it’s possible you’ll find yourself making an attempt to make sense of the bigger thought processes that relate to your anxieties, experiences, compatibility, comparisons and commentary. The key, as Dr Chhibber says, is to discover options collectively as a pair.
4. Be on the identical web page
Being on the identical web page and having that assist in your associate will be very useful in tackling a few of these processes. “You may face disappointments, but you will be able to circumvent them better together,” provides the professional.
5. Speak up
If you are feeling that there are specific folks round who could also be creating strain in your thoughts, it is vital to share with them that their intervention or strategies aren’t being useful.
Besides, on the subject of worry of being pregnant, Dr Chhibber says that whereas mommyhood can proceed to be celebrated, one other fact wants a nod. “No matter how absurd it would be to the society’s conventional idea of a ‘complete woman’, not every woman wants to be a mom.”