“My friend is less aroused during sex; she doesn’t enjoy it and that leads to infrequent orgasms. She believes this is because of  a hormonal problem…could you help?” Read more to find out what relationship expert Josh Spurlock has to say about when orgasm is most likely affected by hormones.

CASSIE

Welcome to My Counselor Online. I’m Cassie and today one of our awesome counselors is going to answer your question. So let’s go find out what MyCounselor Says.

JOSH SPURLOCK ON HORMONE-RELATED AROUSAL DIFFICULTIES

Welcome to My Counselor Online. I’m Josh Spurlock and today we’re answering a question from Linda about orgasm and arousal.

So Linda says that she is feeling less or her friend is feeling less aroused and not enjoying sex. And that’s leading to some orgasm difficulties. Additionally, she thinks that maybe it’s hormonally related.

Is it Hormones?

Undoubtedly arousal difficulties, orgasm difficulties can be hormone related. So it’s always a good idea to get with an endocrinologist and have a hormone panel run. An OB/GYN can run that as well. But I find that endocrinologists tend to have more experience troubleshooting hormone difficulties than OB/GYNs do. Therefore, I always encourage my patients if they can to get in with an endocrinologist to run a hormone panel and just to make sure that levels are where they need to be. That way we can rule that out as being one of the inhibiting factors.

Additionally many other factors can cause us difficulty arousing, thus not enjoying the sexual experience enough, which certainly gets in the way of experiencing orgasm. Certainly the hormones are a good place to start.

You’ll want to take a look at whether or not hormones could be influencing the difficulty, especially if in the past you’ve not experienced any arousal difficulties or orgasm difficulties. For example, if the difficulty is something that has happened post-pregnancy or post-menopause. That you can link the onset of symptoms to one of these life seasons. If that’s the case, I would definitely look into those components.

Also Consider…

That being said, if the arousal difficulties and orgasm struggles have been persistent across your whole life, then there’s a real good chance that there may be some other things not related to hormones at play, and you’ll want to work with a sex therapist to try to figure that out, Linda. Hope that answers your question. And if anybody else has questions around this subject, feel free to use the Asking for a friend form.

CASSIE

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