Tag: Libido

The More Things Stay the Same, the More They Change

(Title image: Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash)

Maybe it’s time to talk about impermanence.

This is something that I have to remind myself constantly: just because things are a certain way now, no matter how set-in-stone they appear, there’s a high likelihood they will change.

I wish more people understood this. I’m old enough to have experienced a litany of changes in my life, some of which completely blindsided me, like cancer, for example. I was not expecting my entire life to get flipped on its back by one little lump and a subsequent scan. And yet, here we are.

That diagnosis brought a whirlwind of changes as I was assaulted with more medications and procedures that I had ever imagined possible in my life. And they came at me fast, one after the other. Recovering from surgery, dealing with chemo side effects, tearing through loaded weeks of radiation…and then, several years of endocrine therapy, which in retrospect threw me into what felt like the longest-lasting changes.

Those, I consider negatives. I tried to maintain my “normal” through them all, which meant consistency with my workouts and nutrition, just so that I didn’t lose myself in the mess of it. It felt like I was barely holding on with my fingernails.

Just when I thought this was the way it would be from now on, the light broke through.
(Photo by Sharon Co Images on Unsplash)

But…there was a flipside to this. Another change that I didn’t expect, but was actually quite positive: the realization that establishing effective coping strategies like meditation and maintaining existing healthy behaviors were the keys to eventually getting a handle on the negatives.

So everything bad that I thought I was stuck with—decreasing strength and endurance, low libido, thinning hair—all those things that we associate with old age and the relentless march of time gradually started turning around.

Again, impermanence smacked me on the back of my head.

So, there’s a lot I can write about this. I added creatine to my diet and over time it has had a significant impact on my workouts, in particular my strength. After years of watching my “gains” decrease, I could confirm that I was building strength up again at age 60.

My hair, which had been falling out, slowed that regression. Springing for better quality hair products helped, but so did moving to a quieter, updated apartment. The reduction of environmental stress, even in the presence of existing stressors of work and finances, had a dramatic effect. On top of that, becoming aware of the cyclical nature of my hair loss relieved anxiety about it. As did bucking the trend of “embracing” my gray (in my case, white) and instead welcoming light blonde back into my life.

But one of the most striking changes was the return of my libido. This is so delicate and important a topic because I am convinced that many cancer survivors-slash-postmenopausal women suffer in silence about loss of libido, no doubt due to the potentially embarrassing nature of the issue. Many of us were raised to not talk about such sensitive topics, and particularly not with male oncologists.

And all the hype about hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women…ah, but breast cancer survivors get locked out of all the positives associated with that…

The topic of libido deserves a post of its own. I will indulge this in the future. Suffice it to say, for me it was one of the changes that had the greatest effect on the current trajectory of my life because it was the one that (I had read? I had been told?) was irreversable and expected and I should just shut up and deal with it.

I thought this was the way it was going to be from now on. And I was afraid of the effect that it would have on my marriage.

Ah, but that beautiful concept of impermanence reminded me that I should never settle into expectations based on what came before me or what happens to others, because everyone has their own individual set of conditions. What a lovely awakening to the rest of my life!

Invisible Effects: Libido, Where Art Thou?

I was warned about this. I mean, where do you want to start counting the reasons for libido to take a hike? Anxiety of a cancer diagnosis, fear of losing breasts (the societal hallmarks of femininity), chemotherapy (which pretty much kills everything), tamoxifen (blocks estrogen, so there go the hormones)…

Out of all the things touched by breast cancer and its treatment, this is one of the most personal that not only affects the patient but also the one you love, because it throws a monkey wrench into your relationship. As with many of these “invisible effects” of cancer, this one is not discussed enough, but really should be.

A marriage that is strong should survive this. A marriage that is new or rocky may take more damage. Married your wife mainly because she had long blonde hair, lovely breasts and looked good in your Porsche? Uh-oh. Stories circulate about the high percentage of divorces that result from lack of adherence to the “in sickness and in health” part of marriage vows. I’ve read that those statistics are inflated, and yet, it’s hard to ignore confirmed instances of, “he didn’t find me attractive anymore,” or “she no longer wanted to have sex with me.”

Emotional isolation is a real possibility following cancer treatment if you’re not communicating effectively with your significant other.

In my experience, all the effects of cancer dropped onto your libido won’t necessarily squash it into oblivion. But they do add a degree of difficulty in maintaining intimacy. There is nothing normal about having cancer, and so it’s not surprising that it wrings the “normal” out of a marriage. Communication is critical, and if things are going to break down, I think that’s where it’ll happen.

It’s not that there wasn’t desire throughout my cancer treatment. It’s that it was hard to Tetris sex into the chemo schedule, when I was dead tired and feeling like the lining of my GI tract had sloughed off. Hubby was taking care of the kids and I was lucky if I could make it to the toilet by myself. Perhaps desire was there, but any available energy was better utilized for self-care.

Chemotherapy left me feeling very “neuter”, in that gray area between female and male. Being scrawny and bald didn’t help. I didn’t look feminine and felt even less so. My reality was fuzzy, as if I had one foot in this world and one in the next, which wasn’t the greatest recipe for firing up desire. We went through about a year of unintentional celibacy and that took a lot of discussion to patch up.

Now in survivorship, sexual intimacy has taken a backseat to the rest of life. I mean, I’m still alive, so I’d better make the most of it, and languishing in bed is not where I want to be. I’ve spent enough time supine. Weekdays I need to get the kids ready for school and get myself to work. On weekend mornings, there are workouts to do, posts to write, meditations to finish, coffee to brew. If there are insufficient hormones to drive me into the arms of my beloved, then he’s left to get a few extra hours of sleep while I get on with life. Once in a while, we reconnect, but we’re behind the curve on this.

At the same time, intimacy is an inextricable part of a healthy long-term relationship. I am not giving up on finding my mojo again, but as with everything in cancer recovery, it’s going to take time.