Are you experiencing sexual difficulties in your relationship?

There are many reasons partners experience intimacy and sexual difficulties when the relationship is solid and good. Sexual problems can be influenced by various other factors, including physical health, hormonal imbalances, psychological factors, and relationship dynamics. Hormones play a significant role in regulating sexual function and desire, so any imbalance can lead to sexual problems. Here's an overview of how health and hormonal issues can affect sexuality:

Hormonal Imbalances and Their Impact

Hormones are chemical messengers that help regulate various bodily functions, including sexual desire, arousal, and response. Changes or imbalances in certain hormones can affect sexual health, and this is the case for men and women.

Common Hormones Involved in Sexual Health:

• Testosterone: This hormone is crucial for libido (sexual desire) and sexual arousal in both men and women. Low levels of testosterone can lead to a reduced interest in sex, erectile dysfunction in men, and vaginal dryness in women.

• Estrogen: This is the primary female sex hormone and is important for sexual function in women. Low estrogen levels (which can occur during menopause) can lead to vaginal dryness, pain during intercourse, and a decrease in sexual desire.

• Progesterone: This hormone works alongside estrogen in regulating menstrual cycles and pregnancy. Low levels can lead to irregular menstrual cycles, and, in some cases, low libido.

• Prolactin: Elevated levels of prolactin (often due to conditions like pituitary tumors) can interfere with sexual desire and arousal by inhibiting the effects of estrogen and testosterone.

• Oxytocin: Often referred to as the "love hormone," oxytocin is involved in bonding, orgasm, and sexual pleasure. Low levels of oxytocin may affect sexual satisfaction and emotional connection.

Causes of Hormonal Imbalances:

• Menopause (for women): As women approach menopause, estrogen and progesterone levels decline, which can lead to changes in sexual desire, vaginal dryness, and discomfort during sex.

• Testosterone deficiency (for men and women): A decline in testosterone levels can reduce sexual desire and energy levels.

• Thyroid issues: Both hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) and hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) can lead to sexual dysfunction, including low libido and erectile issues.

• Adrenal insufficiency: Conditions like Addison’s disease or chronic stress can affect cortisol and adrenaline, leading to fatigue, depression, and decreased sexual desire.

Common Sexual Problems Related to Hormonal Imbalances

• Low Libido (Sexual Desire): Low levels of testosterone in men and estrogen in women can decrease sexual interest and desire. This can be influenced by hormonal changes due to aging, medical conditions, or medications.

• Erectile Dysfunction (ED): While ED is often linked to physical factors like cardiovascular health, hormonal issues (especially low testosterone) can contribute. ED can also be associated with stress, anxiety, or depression, which can disrupt hormone balance.

• Vaginal Dryness: This is commonly caused by low estrogen levels, particularly during menopause or after childbirth. Dryness can make intercourse painful and reduce sexual pleasure.

• Painful Intercourse (Dyspareunia): Hormonal imbalances can contribute to vaginal atrophy (thinning and drying of the vaginal walls), which can make sex painful. This is common during menopause when estrogen levels decrease.

• Orgasmic Dysfunction: Hormonal changes, especially in estrogen and testosterone, can affect a person's ability to achieve orgasm. This can be linked to physical and psychological factors.

• Anorgasmia (Inability to Reach Orgasm): This may be associated with hormonal fluctuations, particularly in cases of thyroid issues, menopause, or the use of birth control pills.

Health Conditions That Affect Sexual Function

Several health conditions can disrupt sexual function, often through their effect on hormones or overall health:

• Diabetes: Poor blood sugar control can damage blood vessels and nerves, leading to erectile dysfunction, vaginal dryness, and reduced sexual sensitivity.

• Heart Disease: Cardiovascular health is closely related to sexual function, particularly for men. Poor circulation can hinder blood flow to sexual organs, causing erectile dysfunction.

• Obesity: Excess weight can lead to hormonal imbalances (e.g., increased estrogen levels in men) and is often linked to low libido and erectile dysfunction.

• Chronic Stress and Anxiety: Stress can lead to elevated cortisol levels, which can interfere with normal sexual function, causing reduced libido, erectile dysfunction, and difficulty reaching orgasm.

Medications That Affect Sexual Health

Certain medications can interfere with sexual desire, arousal, and performance, often by altering hormone levels or by having side effects that affect sexual health:

• Antidepressants: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can cause sexual side effects, including reduced libido, delayed orgasm, or anorgasmia.

• Birth Control Pills: Hormonal contraceptives that contain synthetic estrogen and progesterone can sometimes lead to reduced libido and vaginal dryness.

• Blood Pressure Medications: Some antihypertensive drugs, especially beta-blockers and diuretics, may contribute to sexual dysfunction.

• Anti-androgens: Medications used to treat prostate cancer or to manage gender transition (e.g., spironolactone, finasteride) may reduce testosterone levels, leading to reduced sexual desire and function.

Psychological and Emotional Factors

While hormonal and health factors are important, psychological factors also play a significant role in sexual health. Conditions like stress, depression, anxiety, or relationship issues can affect sexual desire and performance. Psychological factors may also affect the way hormones are produced or used by the body, creating a feedback loop that compounds sexual difficulties.

Treatment and Solutions

If hormonal imbalances are suspected to be causing sexual problems, it’s important to consult a healthcare provider who can help identify the underlying cause. Treatment options may include:

• Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT): For women experiencing menopause, HRT can help restore estrogen and progesterone levels, alleviating symptoms like vaginal dryness and low libido.

• Testosterone Replacement Therapy: In cases of low testosterone, either in men or women, testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) may help restore libido and sexual function.

• Medications for Erectile Dysfunction: Drugs like sildenafil (Viagra) or tadalafil (Cialis) can help improve blood flow to the penis, aiding in the management of erectile dysfunction.

• Psychotherapy or Counseling: Therapy can help address the psychological factors affecting sexual health, including anxiety, stress, depression, and relationship issues.

• Lifestyle Changes: Improving diet, exercise, stress management, and sleep can have a positive impact on hormone levels and sexual health.

• Fertility Treatments: If hormonal imbalances are affecting fertility, treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF) or medication to regulate ovulation may be necessary.

create Secure Love & Heal Intimacy

Intimacy counseling is offered to couples struggling with attachment concerns, sexual challenges, lack of desire, and an inability to communicate their needs and desires. My goal is to help clients who are craving more exploration, surprise, mystery, novelty, excitement, desire and passion in their erotic lives. Vibrant sexuality generalizes into many aspects of our lives, sparking renewed creativity and aliveness.

Intimacy counseling is offered to couples struggling with sexual concerns, lack of desire, and an inability to communicate their needs and desires. My goal is to help clients who are craving more exploration, surprise, mystery, novelty, excitement, desire, and passion in their erotic lives. Vibrant sexuality generalizes into many aspects of our lives, creating renewed creativity and aliveness.

It’s nearly impossible to feel love and connection when resentment has taken hold. Couples Sessions are designed to help clients work through relationship and communication problems and create or reconnect to love respect, and emotional closeness. I work with high-functioning couples helping them listen for and understand the emotional needs of the other. Effective couples coaching should provide support and guidance so that communication can feel safe and constructive.  Additionally, couples can learn tools to identify problems, and repetitive patterns, navigate difficult circumstances, work through conflicts, and increase the attachment bond, which results in deepened intimacy and trust.

We help couples and individuals connect or reconnect to their sexual selves. Sex is a healthy and natural form of human expression that deserves to be enjoyed and expressed. Sometimes, situations such as a painful childhood, or negative adult experiences have made it unsafe in the present to explore areas of sexuality and sensual expression. This creates shame and confusion, as well as fear and avoidance.

I provide a safe sex-positive therapy space to help couples experience and restore intimacy and pleasure. Together, we will work to help you discover the psychological, emotional, and physical factors contributing to your sexual problems or lack of fulfillment and how you can overcome them.  

When to consider sexual counseling:

• You desire passion, exploration, novelty, mystery, surprise, desire

• Sexual inexperience

• Problems related to a life-stage or aging

• Hormonal concerns (men and women), childbirth, menopause

• Problems related to medication or a medical diagnosis

• Sexual identity and gender concerns

• Religion or culture that was not sex positive

• Erectile dysfunction

• Painful sex that may include pelvic pain, vaginismus or vulvodynia

• Premature or delayed ejaculation

• Varying Libido (high or low) between partners

• Sex and porn addiction

• Infidelity

• Sexual trauma

Healing Betrayal In Intimate Relationships

Few things wound more than emotional and intimate betrayal. What can we learn from the meaning of an affair, and can we heal after an emotional or physical betrayal? Yes, it is possible to heal and even thrive after relationship betrayal.

Many couples will enter therapy having learned of a physical or emotional betrayal by their partner. The experience of infidelity is one of the most crushing events and deepest attachment wounds that couples face. Many react by leaving the relationship instead of taking the opportunity to understand the meaning behind the affair. Many fail to take responsibility for the betrayal and will continue to lie or gaslight their partner.

Seeking someone outside the relationship communicates something important about what one needs, or is trying to feel, capture, or experience. For couples who dare to seek therapy and learn more about the deeper meaning of the emotional or physical affair, it is possible to emerge stronger and experience a deeper understanding of your partner, their needs, and even your own needs.

Your relationship may be in trouble if you are experiencing the following:

• You have trouble talking and communicating in a healthy manner

• Your partner feels like the enemy to you

• You or your partner feel hurt much of the time

• You or your partner do not feel heard or seen in the relationship

• You now lead separate lives

• You have the same fights over and over without resolution

• You now experience resentment towards your partner

• Your sex life and intimacy have changed

• Your old trauma wounds have resurfaced and are now impacting your relationship

• You are struggling to manage a time of crisis, such as an injury, medical diagnosis, loss, or transition, as examples

• You or your partner are having an affair

If you’ve already decided on a separation…

Effective couples counseling can also assist couples who are considering ending. ip and want to do so in a constructive and supportive manner, particularly when going through a divorce or separation. This includes helping children to adapt and thrive during and after this significant change. While I value seeing couples work through their challenges, I am also experienced in supporting them through this difficult period, especially when children are part involved.

Remember these important things that lead to relationship destruction…

(From the Gottman Institute)

• Emotional distance can be as destructive to a relationship as conflict

• The way a couple fights, repairs and resolves problems is more important than what they fight about

• Attachment insecurity leads to conflict and or distance

• In distressed relationships, some partners shut down and withdraw as a way to manage intense emotions

• Couples must nurture fondness and respect for the other to thrive together

• Couples need shared meaning in their lives to remain connected

Explore Dynamics That lead to Confusion & Despair

Most couples cannot have the relationship they desire because they are too busy acting out old, familiar dynamics. These repetitions and distortions create the distance you now feel in your relationship. Let’s fix this so you can love again!

When feeling triggered by their partner, what follows is a near-constant dance of each member of the couple acting out familiar dynamics from their own past. This dance is largely unconscious but yields toxic, destructive effects on the relationship. An experienced relationship therapist can help couples see the situation more clearly and identify, understand, and work through these challenging dynamics that are recreated in the here and now.  

All partners enter the relationship with their own working model or relationship template that impacts the other. Both partners may engage in behaviors and patterns that provoke each other in ways that encourage the other to play out the other half of these old and familiar dynamics.

Relationships are confusing because each partner’s narrative feels very real to them, but as they continue to play this out, the relationships become distorted and not reality-based, hence the confusion.

This only serves to reinforce each partner’s working relational model, confirming what they already believed to be true about relationships. The good news is, we are not doomed to repeat the patterns of our past. We can change our model, but we have to pause and identify it first so we can challenge the narrative.

More helpful information about repeating problem dynamics in relationships…

Many couples suffer greatly because of the need to repeat familiar or traumatic experiences. Anyone who has had their therapy may have some insight into how this defensive pattern plays out in their everyday lives. These dynamics are often what brings couples into counseling and can be identified during couple therapy sessions. They are usually quite obvious to a trained professional. Together we can work to understand what belongs in the past and what is being recreated in the present. 

Why does this happen? Because we are wired to repeat familiar patterns and habits. On an unconscious level, we repeat what is familiar to us, even traumatizing events, in an attempt to “master” or gain control over the experience. These family dynamics and generational patterns are repeated and recreated, again and again. 

Examples of making the same relationship mistakes:

• You continually repeat the same dysfunctional dynamics and patterns with your current partner

• You find partners with similar qualities as the parent(s) that caused you distress, such as a distant, neglectful, alcoholic, or abusive parent

• You repeat what’s familiar to you and what you observed or experienced as a child which generalizes to many aspects of your life

• You repeat traumatic events in an unconscious attempt to master in the present the lack of control that you experienced during early traumatic experiences.

• You may feel you don’t deserve healthy partnerships, especially if you’re a trauma survivor, so you push the other away or sabotage the relationship

• You likely internalized your family of origin or generational traumas and experiences of shame which now impacts your self-esteem

   

is it time to seek Couple & relationship Therapy?

There Are Many Reasons To Begin Couples Therapy. Unfortunately, Most Couples Wait Until It’s Late In The Game, And They’ve Suffered Greatly. Couples Therapy Can Help You Improve Communication, Decrease Conflict, And Restore Feelings Of Connection And Harmony. If Both Of You Agree That Couple Counseling Is The Next Step, Odds Are In Your Favor.

If you’ve landed on the webpage of a New York licensed couple therapist, it’s probably a good time to seek counseling. Many couples struggle with feeling hurt, betrayed, resentful, confused, lonely, lacking physical contact, and feeling hopeless in their relationship. These issues can persist for years, with recurring patterns and dynamics. Some couples have been trying to handle these problems on their own and are now feeling hopeless and desperate. It's important to seek the help of an experienced relationship expert during a crisis, and it can also be beneficial to find a therapist before problems seem insurmountable. If you've noticed potential issues in your relationship and are unsure how to address them, couples counseling can provide guidance.

Are You Struggling In Your Relationship With These Common Couple Problems?

• You feel undervalued in your relationship

• You miss the emotional and physical closeness that you once shared

• You feel stuck in patterns of conflict and drama that never seem to get resolved

• You feel more like roommates than romantic partners

• You worry that unresolved trauma with one or both of you is interfering with the connection

• You aren’t sure if you and your partner have a future together

• Your goals and values are no longer aligned

• You feel disappointed and hopeless that things will never improve

• You can’t seem to recover from an emotional or physical betrayal

Would You Like To Thrive In Your Relationships?

Effective relationship therapy and coaching help you do more than repeat and endure, you can heal and thrive. What follows are some excellent couple counseling goals.

• Learn to listen for and understand the needs of the other

• Identify your own needs and express them clearly and effectively

• Learn to communicate in ways that allow the other to hear what is being said

• Identify and reduce defensiveness as a relational style in personal and professional relationships 

• Notice the often missed and less concrete ways a partner may be attempting to show love and affection

• Develop healthier problem-solving skills and learn to resolve conflict effectively

• Become aware of triggers and their source 

• Learn emotion regulation skills to manage intense feelings

• Create shared values, goals, and dreams for the future

• Express, disclose and resolve painful emotions, thoughts, and feelings in a safe place

• Repair destructive patterns and dynamics that have led to relational wounds in your current partnership

• Work through unhealed wounds from the past or family of origin complexities that surface now and are played out in current relationships

• Become more resilient to symptoms related to adjustments, life transitions, change, and challenges

• Gain support for parenting and co-parenting struggles 

• Help for repairing trust and healing from infidelity and betrayal

All of your relationships deserve to be satisfying…

And can benefit from effective marriage and relationship therapy and coaching

Relationship coaching can be a life-changing experience for many. We all have various relationships in our lives, whether they are with business partners, co-workers, friends, family, romantic partners, or even with ourselves. Relationship coaching equips clients with the tools needed to address disagreements, personality clashes, and other challenges that may arise within important relationships. Consider asking yourself these important questions:

• Which relationships are causing you stress and tension? Siblings, colleagues, parents, friends?

• Do you struggle with honesty in certain relationships?

• Do you struggle to have difficult conversations, communicate your needs, or maintain boundaries?

• Do you get flustered, come “undone” or lose your effectiveness in the face of conflict, negative feedback, or confrontation?

• Do you feel easily controlled in certain important relationships?

• Are power struggles or disagreements draining you or your company’s energy?

About Holistic Relationship Therapy NYC

This practice provides a range of psychological & wellness services in NYC and throughout NY state. The goal is to individualize treatment to your unique physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual needs. I have experience working with a broad range of symptoms and approaches in psychotherapy, including but not limited to EMDR Therapy, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Solution-Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and Holistic Mind-Body Medicine. Therapy begins with a therapeutic consultation, where you will gather a wealth of information about your difficulties. Many people feel better after the first session. The initial consultation also lays the groundwork for future treatment as we determine the best modalities to help you heal.

Holistic relationship & Couple Therapist With Nearly 20 Years Of Experience

This practice offers supportive, compassionate, and comprehensive care, staying current on research related to mental health. My goal is to use my expertise and extensive training to get you back to living your life as quickly as possible.

Book An Appointment For Holistic Psychotherapy, EMDR & wellness NYC Today

Book an appointment directly or text 212-529-8292 to get started. Integrative Psychotherapy & Wellness Manhattan can help you with your healing journey guiding you towards optimal mental health.