Jill Blakeway - Sex Again: Recharging Your Libido

For my husband, Noah.

Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard on this book as well as the family, colleagues, and friends who have supported me as I completed it.

I am grateful to writer Colleen Kapklein, who worked tirelessly on this project and whose talent is evident on every page. Thank you also to Suzie Bolotin and Mary Ellen ONeill at Workman Publishing for wise advice and careful editing and the whole Workman team, who brought a wealth of experience and hard work to the finished book. I tell everyone wholl listen what a great literary agent I have, so once again thank you to Daniel Greenberg, who had faith in me when my confidence wavered.

My husband, Noah, is my rock. His strength has bolstered me during rough times and his humor has made the good times even better. Like many marriages, ours has been a long and complex journey that has taught me so much. Noah, you truly are my best friend and I thank God each day for your warmth and kindness. Emma, our daughter, has grown into a loving, quirky, funny, and smart woman and Im looking forward to seeing what she does next. Emma, I know its not easy when your Mum writes a book about sex, so thank you for being so patient and supportive.

The inspiration for this book came from my work as the founder of the YinOva Center in New York City. In my wildest dreams I never thought we would be able to assemble the team who currently work at the YinOva Center. It seems almost mystical that when the center grew and I could no longer run it on my own, some of the most capable, sensible people Ive ever met marched into my life. Our acupuncturists are not only a talented, experienced, and hard-working team but they are also some of the nicest people I know. You bring warmth, a sense of fun, and great compassion to our center, which make it a lovely place to work and a healing place to be a patient. All of our administrative staff are an essential part of our healing team and work tirelessly to ensure our center runs smoothly. We are a better practice because of each and every one of you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Nicole Kruck is our wonderful YinOva massage therapist and I drew heavily on her experience when writing the massage sections of this book. Thanks for sharing your knowledge so freely, Nicole.

Neale Donald Walsch was a source of wise counsel during the time I was working on this book. In fact, the title was Neales idea and I thank him for sharing his time and talent so generously. If you havent read Conversations with God, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Lastly Id like to thank my patients. Thousands of people have trusted me with their health care, which is an honor I take very seriously. Thank you for sharing your stories with me and for allowing me to support you. This book is for you.

Americans have sex eighty-five times a year, on average, or once every 4.3 days. Thats according to an extensive survey by condom maker Durex, which also reported that this is less sex than people have pretty much anywhere else in the world. As I read these results, all I could think was, where on earth did they find people having that much sex? Clearly Durex hadnt asked the women I treat or otherwise discuss such matters with. That is, women primarily in their thirties and forties, as well as moving into the menopausal years, in lasting primary relationships. If you talk to those womenor if you are one of those womenyou get a much different picture of Americans sex lives than you do from a peddler of prophylactics. But many of those women do indeed feel they are having less sex than anyone else in the world!

I am an acupuncturist and clinical herbalist, and what I hear in my office, as well as from my friends, is that a lot of couples can only dream of the weekly sex just over half of Durexs respondents report. And plenty dont even have the energy to dream it. So as much as Durexs numbers puzzled me, I was not surprised to find that, according to the American Medical Association (AMA), forty million adult Americans are not having sex with their partners at all. Nor was I startled by a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that documented that about one in three American women report a lack of interest in sex. In any survey of sexual problems, low libido always tops the listand by a wide margin.

It may seem almost inevitable that any sexual spark is so often muted in our fast-paced, highly competitive, multitasking, me-first, stressed-out world. Your friends probably agree that it seems as if everyone is not doing it, and thats just the way things are. Well, thats not the way it has to be. You may be out of touch with your own desire, but that doesnt mean its not there. The trick is to reconnect to it.

You may be out of touch with your own desire, but that doesnt mean its not there.

So although you may well be one of the women not much in the mood, Im betting you dont like it that way. Im betting you are like the women I see in my office every day who arent having much sexbut want to. Not women looking for someone to have sex withthats outside my purview as a health care practitioner, Im pleased to saybut women with long-term partners. Women, in other words, with plenty of opportunitybut little desire. Women who are too stressed for sex. Women who are too tired for sex. Women who somehow dont feel they are sexy enough for sex. (I hear these complaints from single women, too, whether or not they are in the market for a partner, and from women in newer or less formalized relationshipsthe ones we old-marrieds might imagine are in that honeymoon stage.)

This book is for those women. Women who arent having much sex, dont feel much like having sexbut want to want to. Those who may have gotten a bit out of practice but are ready for sex again.

Just Do It

If you want to want to have sex, but havent been really feeling it, my single best piece of advice is to do it anyway. Pretend you are in a sneaker commercial and just do it.

I dont mean to be flip about this. This is actually a piece of the ancient Chinese philosophy this program is built on. Which is why it sounds like a bit of a departure from how we are used to approaching things in the Western therapeutic mind-set, especially when it comes to psychological issues. Chinese medicine aims to get you back in your body; we are more used to living more in our heads. We are accustomed to working on issues ahead of time, and when it comes to sex advice, that plays out as strategies for fixing the relationship, improving communication, uncovering emotional issues, and so on. And often, talking, talking, talking about all of it. Chinese medicine doesnt make a distinction between issues of the body and issues of the mind, and takes on what Western medicine considers psychological all of a piece with what is physical. In Chinese medicine, too, you can improve sex by improving the relationship. But you can also improve the relationship by improving the sex. And the key way you improve the sex is by having sex. Not if it is truly damaging, of course, but in almost every other case, its highly recommended.

Still, I realize just do it may be easier said than done, and the rest of this book is about how you can feel like having sex again, including how and why and when you should (and sometimes shouldnt) just do it. One important part of the journey is making it for yourself. It may also be good for your partner, and for your relationship. But most of all, this is about you.