The emotional and mental desire for sex is the basic definition of someone’s ‘sex drive.’ Libido varies widely between individuals. Some of us have a low sex drive, while others have a high sex drive. Several factors can influence sex drive as well, including age, hormone levels, stress, illness, medications, and more. If you have a high sex drive, it’s not generally a concern unless it hurts your life or relationship.
Let’s learn how to control a high sex drive.
1. Acknowledge When It’s a Problem
A high sex drive is only a problem when it begins to cause issues in your relationship or life. It is otherwise normal, even if your libido seems abnormally high. If there are no issues, consider your sex drive under control.
2. Distract Yourself with Something You Like
Do an activity. Sometimes, when a person is bored and has a high sex drive, they’re more inclined to masturbate. If you’ve noticed that this has become habitual or that you’re engaging in more sexual activity than you prefer, and it’s starting to become an issue, distract yourself with something you like.
Go outside. Listen to music. Go see a movie. Hang out with your friends. Do something that gets your mind on subjects or activities that are non-sexual and rewarding.
3. Regulate Your Sex Drive with Sex Toys
Hundreds of types of adult sex toys exist. They can be used to stimulate you in all sorts of ways and provide you with a way to get out some of your high sex drives without having to involve a partner.
Whatever you like, sex toys give it all to you, regardless of gender or sexual preference. Heighten your masturbation with sex toys. You may even want to include sex toys with partnered play for extra satisfaction.
4. Explore Your Sexual Interests with Porn
Some people’s natural inclination with a high sex drive is to ignore it. This may work sometimes, but you may want to lean into it a bit at other times.
Porn can be a safe, healthy way to explore different sides of one’s sexuality, identifying new interests and desires, and combined with masturbation can be very self-rewarding in helping to calm down a person’s high sex drive.
5. Speak to Your Partner About Having Sex
If you know your sex drive is high, talk to your partner about it. See if they’re willing to increase the frequency of sex in the relationship.
If that is not possible, there are dozens of other things two people can do in a sexual relationship to ensure everyone is satisfied, from sending naughty pictures back and forth to prolonged foreplay, masturbation, phone sex, or using sex toys.
6. Communicate Your Desires with a Partner
A high sex drive can stem, in part, from a lack of satisfaction from sex. Discuss openly with your partner what your desires are so that you work together to get satisfaction from them. A partner who may not share a similar sex drive can still participate in many ways via sex toys and consensual forms of sex play.
7. Write Down What You Want as It Happens
An exercise you can practice to help control a high sex drive and save it for those times when you’re with a partner is to use your partner as a sort of inbox for sex messages.
When you have a sexual thought, write the details down. Send it to your partner. You can do this by text or write it out on paper. This keeps them informed about your thoughts and will help them understand your sexuality.
8. Evaluate Your Medication Intake
If an increase in sex drive happened recently and you recently started on a new medication, those two events could be related. Some medications are associated with hyper-sexuality.
Discuss this with your doctor if you have concerns. They may remove you from the medication or provide a secondary medicine to help ease out the side effects of the first if a high sex drive is causing problems.
9. Talk to a Sex Therapist
If your high sex drive is causing relationship trouble in a big way, you may want to consult with a sex therapist. They can help you work through miscommunications, help you process feelings, and healthily explore dissatisfaction in the bedroom.
Sex therapy can be done in a couples format or individually and has proven highly effective in many cases of sexual dysfunction.
10. Alter Your Diet to Decrease Sex Drive
Some foods are known to decrease sex drive. The opposite of an aphrodisiac, anaphrodisiacs include licorice, soy and following a Mediterranean diet. While no definitive studies suggest these foods can lower sex drive, some anecdotal evidence suggests you can better regulate sexual functioning with a healthier diet overall.
