Bringing Sexy Back

Dear Coach Fabulous,

I have lost my mojo! I have no interest in men and zero sex drive.

I have, within the last year or two, got over depression and am fine and happy generally. The thing is, I haven’t had a sniff of a man in so long it’s beginning to worry me, mostly because I don’t miss it! I’ve had a few bad experiences with men and I suppose that might have put me off.

I used to feel a bit more confident and make more of an effort to look nice, but I have become a bit lazy now so I go out knowing I look a bit rough and thinking that all attractive men are out of my league.

I used to feel quite sexy and would happily flirt, but now I shy away from situations where I may have to interact with men and I cannot handle sexy conversations – I think I have become a bit of a prude, which is the last thing anyone would have said about me before.

My feeling is that I have attitude problems rather than sexual ones and I would love to hear if you have any ideas on how to change my outlook on this subject – I don’t want to end up an old spinster.

Please help!

Soon-To-Be Old Maid


Dear Soon-To-Be Old Maid

You’re right on the money with your own diagnosis – this is an attitude issue, rather than a sexual one. If you’ve watched enough of those dating makeover shows, you’ll know that people with far worse problems than yours can be turned into hunks of burning love almost overnight, simply by taking on board a new set of attitudes, with only the merest dash of re-styling. Let that inspire you to do your own little mojo makeover at home, knowing it can be a fabulous success. You’re just in the habit of thinking badly of yourself and that habit can be changed.

First, you’ve got to get into your body - you’re way too much in your head. That’s probably partially a result of having suffered from depression. The fastest way to start to reconnect is through massage or any form of slow exercise that requires you to put your attention firmly into your body, such as yoga, pilates or tai chi. What you need to be doing is reconnecting to your sensuality as a step to reconnecting to your sexuality. Make sure your senses are stimulated by massage, movement, aromatic bubble baths and sensual textures in clothing. If you’re not already a foodie, start feeding yourself very good quality meals and luxuriate in the tastes. Use every opportunity to notice and enjoy the sensual aspects of life – pay attention to the little things like how the wind feels on your face and how great it feels to be in front of a fire on a cold and rainy day. If this were summer, I’d be recommending that you get out on the grass in your bare feet, but given that we’re in the middle of winter, I’ll let you off on that one. Try noticing the texture of the carpet on your bare feet instead.

When you are in your head, make your thoughts work for you. Try doing an ‘inner smile’ meditation before you get out of bed in the morning, smiling and sending love to all the parts of your body, working from head to toe. If you find this hard to visualise, start off by getting a picture in your mind of something or someone you love and feel that love until you have a smile on your face, then imagine that love spreading throughout your own body. Walking meditation helps too – when your mind is spinning with unhelpful thoughts, place your attention on each step and how it feels in your body as your feet make contact with the ground. Soon you’ll be absorbed in that movement and whatever’s bothering you will fall away.

Now it’s time for some fresh material for that mind of yours. You’re already in the habit of using mantras – you just don’t call them that – but the problem is they’re all bad news. You keep reinforcing thoughts of unattractiveness, which creates a lack of self-confidence, which unsurprisingly results in a lack of interest from the opposite sex. Do you think you’d be attracted to a man who looked like he didn’t like himself that much? Absolutely not.

This is the fun bit – it doesn’t have to be hard work. You just need to come up with a mantra that you can say to yourself over and over, particularly when those negative thoughts of self-attack pop up. If you want your mojo back, you’re going to have to suspend disbelief on this one and just go for it. Try something like “I’m a hot, sexy, lovable babe – men adore me and want to be with me”. If that’s too much of a stretch initially, start with something like “I love being me and people love to be with me”. Make it your own – there are no magic words, just the ones that work for you.

While you’re restyling your mind, restyle your wardrobe while you’re at it. Super-comfy is out and girlie is in. Don’t make yourself feel awkward, but scrub up a bit, wherever you’re going, even if it’s just to the shops. The better you feel about yourself, the more attractive you become. Treat yourself well – buy flattering clothes, refresh your makeup, and get a new hairdo or colour. You don’t have to splash the cash too much – funky accessories can make even the most simple of outfits look individual and interesting. Try swapping clothes with a friend or getting their opinion on a new style that might suit you. If you have the wad to throw at it, get a personal stylist to revamp your wardrobe and a whole new you may well emerge.

It’s hard to create something you can’t even imagine, so when you daydream, start putting that to good work by seeing yourself feeling sexy, lovable and in a relationship. If athletes can use visualisation to improve their game, you can use the same techniques for the game of love – see yourself looking good and feeling relaxed in the company of men.

Now, in the immortal words of the Doobie Brothers, we need to be taking it to the streets. All that practicing on your own is setting the foundation, but you won’t know it’s working until you test it out. Start simply by inviting mixed company over for dinner or going out with a group of friends that includes men, not just women. Make an effort to talk to the guys in the office a bit more. Do a class in something you’re interested in that’s guaranteed to have some male participants. The aim of the game is not to hurl yourself into a dating situation, but to familiarise yourself with the company of men again.

You can up the ante a bit when you have more confidence and feel relaxed when socialising – that’s the time to consider all the new dating options, such as organised dinner parties for singles or online dating, but it’s too much pressure initially. Besides, you may not need a formal dating situation anyway – the better you feel about yourself, the more approachable you’ll be and the more likely you are to just run into someone in the normal course of your life. I once met a man in a road block in Spain – and another one in the Jacuzzi at the health club – so I figure you can meet someone pretty much anywhere if you’re open to it.

You’ve got quite a bit to be getting on with, but I want to leave you with a few resources to keep you fired up. You might want to consider taking St John’s Wort as a supplement, if you aren’t already. Apart from its anti-depressant aspects, it’s also reputed to boost the libido. To keep you feeling that sexy vibe, try listening to the self-hypnosis CD called Man Magnet from http://www.shootfromthehyp.com/. It’s a little over the top, so it might take some getting used to, but at the very least it’ll give you a laugh while you’re reprogramming your mind. To help you release issues from past relationships, a great book on the subject is Calling In The One, by Katherine Woodward Thomas. It’s a 7-week programme of exercises that will help you shift your attitudes and release painful feelings. Another excellent book to help you understand the power of positive self-regard in relationships is Secrets Of Attraction by Sandra Anne Taylor. Also http://www.therelationshipgym.com/ has a regular newsletter on relationships, as well as plenty of other free resources for dating advice, such as pre-recorded classes.

All of this has been a very long-winded way of saying that when you learn to love yourself, you open the door to allowing someone else to love you. Just work on liking who you are, feeling confident about your talents and gifts, getting comfortable in your body and enjoying life - your mojo will be back before you know it!

Coach Fabulous

If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2007 Alison Porter

Where Did The Fun Go?

Dear Coach Fabulous

I need your help! I am 27 years old and am in a total rut. My boyfriend and I have been together for four years now and bought a house a year ago. Ever since then I've felt trapped and like my life is all laid out for me – my family keep expecting a wedding announcement any day now! I love my boyfriend dearly but sometimes he winds me up so much! He's so negative about everything (not us, but just the world in general) whereas I try to see the good in everything. We've almost totally stopped having sex (3 times in the year since we bought the house!) and I feel like we're drifting apart. I don't want to leave him as I do still love him very much, but I feel like something’s got to give! On top of this he may be out of work next month (he's a junior doctor) and I think that will put a huge strain on our relationship. I keep blaming myself and trying to change things about me (losing weight, taking up exercise etc) but I give up on these things after a couple of weeks as they seem pointless. The lethargy that's infected our relationship is eating into my professional life too and I find it hard to concentrate for more than a couple of hours.Please help!

Bored Stiff


Dear Bored Stiff

Well, the first flush of love has definitely worn thin, but all is not lost. The big issue here is that the intimacy has gone out of your relationship – and I don’t just mean the sex. I mean that depth of interest that keeps you fascinated, loving their quirky ways and wanting to do thoughtful, caring things for each other. It’s natural that the heady days of new love turn into something more mundane, but that doesn’t mean you have to live without fun, thoughtfulness, affection or intimacy. You and your partner seem to have slipped into a habitual way of relating that’s sucked the fun and excitement out of your relationship. The good news, of course, is that a habit can always be changed. Sometimes, when the purpose of your being together has been exhausted, there may not be enough will on either side to resurrect the love you had, but in your case it sounds like there’s still plenty of love left, but it’s just getting lost in the dull details of how you’re living your life together day-to-day.

First of all, drop the habit of blame – it’s really not doing you any favours. You’re ricocheting between blaming him for being annoying – which just frustrates you as well as making it harder to see him in a loving light – and blaming yourself for not being able to fix it, which simply erodes your self-esteem. What’s going to help you heal this is an attitude of taking responsibility that doesn’t apportion blame. It’s about saying to yourself, “OK, I’m not happy with the way things are, so how can I do things differently?”

Take a look at what happened when you bought the house. If you’ve been feeling trapped since then, it’s probably an unconscious issue around marriage and long-term relationships that’s been triggered. Is there a part of you that’s afraid of either repeating the pattern of your parents’ marriage if it was a difficult one, or not living up to the same standard, if it was an enduring, happy partnership? Plenty of couples manage to sail along very happily until they make a form of commitment that triggers those unconscious patterns. Patterns like these wreak havoc in your life when they’re unconscious, so the best thing you can do is start paying attention to how you really feel about commitment, marriage and relationships. Be honest with yourself about what you’re afraid of, what you think making a commitment might mean for your own independence and what you really want from a relationship or marriage. Look into your beliefs about your parents’ marriage – did you want the same type of relationship or something completely different? However much you think you moved on, your parents’ way of relating with each other is your earliest model of a relationship and the most deeply ingrained, so you will find yourself repeating many of those behaviours unconsciously. When you bring them to light, you can start to act differently.

The next step is going to work equally well on your partner as it does on you – reward behaviour you like and ignore what you don’t. Let’s start with him: let’s say he’s annoying you by being very negative about something, so instead of getting annoyed with him, withdraw your attention. As soon as he moves on to something more positive, engage with him again. Don’t nag or tell him to do anything differently, just reward the things you like about him. At the same time, start remembering the things you liked about him when you fell in love with him and start noticing those more than the annoying stuff. Put your attention where it’s going to pay off – on the good stuff.

You really need to be doing this with yourself as well. You’ve been trying to fix yourself and your relationship by criticising and blaming yourself. That’s a very, very bad habit that’s only going to make you feel worse. So start using the same positive reinforcement on yourself: when self-attacking thoughts arise, focus on something good about you and when you’re feeling judgemental about how the relationship’s going, start focusing on what is working. It’ll be tough at first, but once you’ve cut a new groove it’s going to feel natural to think that way.

If you think your partner would be open to it, talk to him about how you want your relationship to be. Be gentle in your approach, because no-one reacts positively when they feel like they’re being taken to task. Maybe you could remind him how much you used to love doing something together that you’ve fallen out of the habit of doing, and suggest you make more time for each other. Whatever it is that you’d like to have happen, make sure he knows that it’s because you care for him and want to be closer to him. That can gently open the door to more intimate conversations where you can both safely express how you feel without anger or blame.

Even if your partner doesn’t seem to want to work on the relationship, you can still shake things up by changing your own attitude. By dropping the blame and appreciating small, positive things, your relationship will change. It might not seem fair that you’re doing all the work initially, but someone’s got to get the ball rolling. If you sit around hoping for things to get better of their own accord, you’re going to be in for a very long wait. To get some excitement into your life, start doing more spontaneous things. Get away somewhere different even for one day, try a different restaurant or a type of food that’s new, change your style of clothes – just shake it up a little. The changes you make individually will make you interesting to each other and the changes you try together will give you new things to share.

As for the sex life, that will re-ignite when you become more intimate with each other, sharing your thoughts, interests, hopes and dreams. It’s all gone a bit dull, but when you both begin to feel that you’re appreciated and desired, the passion will kick in again. Sex is never just about sex – it’s as much about feeling supported and cared for as it is about physical desire. Without the fuel of real intimacy, sexual attraction can’t be maintained over time.

You’ve got the love and the will to make this work, so don’t be discouraged. Be kind to yourself, notice how you’re relating to each other and make different choices. Honour the good things about yourself and your partner and forget the rest. Even just that is enough to bring about a miracle in your relationship and give you the strength of partnership to handle whatever life throws at you as a couple.

Coach Fabulous

If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2007 Alison Porter