One of the most common causes of low sexual drive among seniors, for both men and women, is having trouble with your relationship with yourself. Especially if you are depressed, or feeling down on yourself.

Your depression may be a reaction to grieving about missed or lost opportunities, experiences, or loved ones. While regrets about these misses or losses are understandable, many people hold on to them so tight, for so long, they slip from grief, regret, and frustration into depression.

Once there, it is very difficult to “pull yourself together” and just get over it. In fact, just trying to tough it out and pretend you aren’t depressed is one sure way to continue being depressed, and feeling even worse. Ignoring depression, or pretending things are “just fine” is an understandable, but unproductive response.

Start to turn around your depression and your low sexual drive by understanding the connection between the two:

  • Being depressed decreases your libido (sexual desire)
  • Older women no longer have the hormones that promote sexual desire
  • Depression is increasingly common in men today
  • Depression meds often make both lack of desire worse for both men and women, as well as ED worse not better
  • Most men with ED have at least a low level of depression
  • Depression is common in older women who do not take supplemental hormones

The difficulty with depression is, it won’t go away by itself. Educate yourself and get some help if it continues to linger.

Learn more about depression by reading, especially Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy. It’s available on line and in many libraries. (There is an Amazon link for it in the resources section. Just click on Resources in the nav bar at the top of the page.) It focuses on simple, easy to take steps that can help you act your way into feeling better. It is also one of the most effective approaches to treating depression known.

Just be careful not to discount it’s efficacy. It seems too simple to make a difference. And, if you are really depressed, it’s hard to imagine just reading something will make a difference.

But, give it a try. A lot fo your resistance is just your depression working at keeping you down. Depression can be persistent and overwhelming…but it doesn’t have to run your life.

The bottom line: everyone gets something. You do, and so do I. However, it’s not just what’s happening, but how you feel about what’s happening that determines how you will live your life.

For most things, we can’t go back and change it…but we can change how we think and feel…and figure out what to do in the future to make sure we don’t get into the same situation again.