SELF-HELP-
Making the Most of Our Cognitive and Social Limitations.
What our shortcomings tell us about ourselves.
Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

KEY POINTS-
After studying our limitations, we often discover that the ways we compensate for these limitations constitute strengths in themselves.
Some limitations can be confronted directly, opening new opportunities and providing a new sense of mastery.
Understanding our limitations allows us to know ourselves better, while removing unnecessary barriers to a more fulfilling life.
Many of us are aware of our physical and artistic limitations, and we're able to acknowledge them and even make light of them. We readily admit that we will never play professional basketball or achieve greatness as sculptors or singers.

But how well do we know our cognitive and social limitations? We notice some of them because we can compare what we manage with difficulty to what others accomplish with ease and grace. There are also tests that measure specific cognitive and interpersonal abilities. But in general, we are more aware of limitations of the body than limitations of the mind.

Identifying cognitive and social limitations requires introspection, self-evaluation, and resolve. It means focusing on what we consistently have difficulty doing.

When asked to evaluate ourselves, we mostly list positive qualities–not because we’re boastful, but because we’re shaped into that favorable response by such influences as college applications, career counseling, job interviews, and online dating platforms. Our elevator pitch doesn’t emphasize the negative.

How Shortcomings Motivate Us
Alfred Adler, a psychotherapist and contemporary of Freud, said that the motivation to compensate for our shortcomings begins in childhood when we are physically and cognitively less skilled than the older people in our lives. As children, we mature out of being smaller, weaker, and less knowledgeable, but the motivation to overcome or compensate for our limitations stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Defining Our Abilities and Inabilities
Our natural limitations are probably subsets of Gardner’s nine categories of multiple intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal (knowing one’s self), interpersonal (knowing others), naturalistic, and existential.

We may have shortcomings in verbal fluency or math or finding our way around or holding a tune, or taking the perspective of others.

Working With Our Limitations
Confronting
Some limitations can be confronted directly. Early in his career, the noted psychotherapist, Albert Ellis, shed his awkwardness with public speaking by signing up to speak in public twice a week. By doing so, he learned to improve his verbal fluency while overcoming his fear.

Tom Dempsey was born without toes on his right foot, but with strong motivation and a special shoe, he became a placekicker in the NFL. For 43 years, he held the record for the longest field goal ever kicked in the NFL.

Other limitations can be placed in perspective and managed. I had a friend in college who stuttered.1 He worked on reducing his stuttering but also accepted it as a fact of his current life and did not allow it to limit him. He was a DJ on his own radio show and ran for student body president, with one of his slogans being, “No More Fast-Talking Politics.”

Compensating
We usually learn to live with our cognitive and social limitations by compensating.

One of my weaknesses, for example, is finding my way around. GPS has largely removed that problem, but before that, I pored over maps of unfamiliar places prior to visiting these places, committing the major roads to memory and making notes on specific choice points. (GPS still doesn’t help me navigate an unfamiliar building with multiple hallways.) Another of my weaknesses is translating verbal instructions into physical movements, such as dance moves. I compensate by practicing with YouTube videos before going public.

Avoiding
We can also try to avoid difficult activities. But, avoidance leaves us unprepared when called upon to engage in the very activity we’ve been avoiding, and it also hides associated abilities we do have.

An Exercise to Increase Awareness of Our Limitations
In my class on the Self, I ask students to describe an activity they have consistent difficulty with–something they’ve been dealing with most of their lives.

They focus on the activity itself, their difficulties with this activity, their strategies for compensating, and the possible sources of the difficulties. For many of them, this is the most focused thinking they’ve ever done about this specific limitation.

With every class, students present a diverse set of limitations: awkwardness talking to people they don’t know, problems with math, not feeling emotionally supportive with friends, an inability to spell, setbacks with standardized tests, clumsiness in flirting or small talk, a poor sense of direction, a lack of singing ability.

Personal Benefits
Many students discover that how they compensate for their limitations constitutes strengths in themselves. If they get others to help, they learn that graceful persuasion is a strength. If they memorize phrases to manage interpersonal awkwardness, they value their resourcefulness.

Some students discover that what they thought was a limitation is actually an activity they can do, but one that creates anxiety. They then work on ways to reduce their anxiety.

Other students learn that describing a limitation in detail circumscribes the problem. Someone with difficulty expressing himself said he realized the difficulty was not with good friends and family–or with strangers, but with acquaintances in between. Focusing specifically on our limitations can limit the limitations.

Sometimes, directly confronting a limitation vanquishes it while also opening opportunities.
One student joined the debate team to provide a structured setting for overcoming her unease with disagreement. She then became an accomplished collegiate debater, which brought about a feeling of mastery and new friendships and travel opportunities.

Professional Benefits
Most of us choose careers that draw on our strengths. But, sometimes, professional interests can overlap with natural limitations: actors who can’t remember lines, dental students unable to work in the mirror image world, and people devoted to helping animals but lacking the mathematical talent for veterinary medicine.

When professional aspirations overlap with persistent limitations, this assignment can encourage people to seek specific training in their area of difficulty or to consider shifting their academic studies to a related area that allows professional satisfaction without implacable struggle.

Continuing Efforts
If we choose, we can develop a comprehensive program for managing more pervasive limitations we want to compensate for.

One resonant example is David Finch’s collection of advice to himself for overcoming anti-social behaviors with his wife due to Asperger’s syndrome. He focused on specific matters (Don’t change the radio station when she’s singing along), more general rules (Apologies don’t count when you shout them), and larger advice (Be her friend, first and always).

His journal of best practices continues to guide him as a husband and father in ways large, small, and in between.

Thriving With Our Limitations
Literature provides countless examples of lives dramatically short-circuited by personal limitations: Othello's jealousy, Jon Snow's stubbornness, and Veruca Salt's selfishness. If these characters had identified their limitations and focused on how to compensate, they would have lived less troubled and more fulfilled fictional lives. Ebenezer Scrooge eventually managed to overcome his greed and miserliness, and he was happier for it.

Closely examining our limitations allows us to know ourselves better while removing unnecessary barriers to a more fulfilling life. More broadly, it encourages humility and can ultimately bestow wisdom.

PERSONALITY-
3 Rules to Power Through Your Turbulent Twenties.
Don’t just roll with the punches, take charge.
Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Being in your twenties and early thirties can be an intense experience for the toughest and most driven of individuals. Today, with the added pressures of social media, hustle culture, and a volatile mental health crisis, early and mid-adulthood can feel like a never-ending roller coaster. It may force you to question yourself:

“Am I the only one who feels so unprepared for this phase of my life?”
“I have never failed at so many things in my life. When will my self-confidence bounce back?”
“Everyone expects me to suddenly act like an adult but I’ve never felt further from adulthood. How will I learn to bridge the gap?”
Like any other challenging phase of your life, you have to simply ride certain parts of your 20s and early 30s out. However, this time does provide us with a unique opportunity to expand, grow, and embrace ourselves like no other time in our life.

If you find yourself or a loved one struggling to take charge of this important decade, here are three research-backed tips to get things on track.

1. Follow your gut
Being inexperienced and enthusiastic, young people are vulnerable to unsolicited advice and external influence. A study published in Personality and Individual Differences lists the ability to decline external influence as a key part of the maturational process. Young and callow adults are more likely to conform to other people’s expectations and standards for them.

To live a life aligned with your own cognitions, emotions, values, and beliefs, one first has to know what they are. You can follow these three steps to get in touch with your authentic self:

Be curious but not accepting of all opportunities. You learn little without making any mistakes. However, saying ‘yes’ to everything might have the opposite effect. The healthier middle path entails asking more questions, consulting multiple people, and indulging your spontaneity with caution.
Reflect on your decisions and their consequences. The pace of your life during your twenties can make reflection seem like an inconvenience but it might be the best investment of your time. Reflection builds self-awareness.
Establish boundaries. This will help you bring much-needed stability to your life. Having healthy boundaries with your partner, co-workers, friends, and family is probably the strongest indicator that you are living life on your own terms.

2. Play the field
For a lot of people, their twenties are the first time they experience a long-term relationship. Some may even begin to look for ‘the one’ (if they prefer monogamy). Therefore, developing the skill of dating and romantic experimentation can prove to be extremely helpful for this stretch of life.

Picking someone you want to spend the rest of your life with cannot be a split-second decision, no matter how much romcoms try to convince us otherwise. The courage to put yourself out there, being vulnerable with another person, and maybe even failing a few times can, at the end of the day, be an immensely enriching experience.

While the experience of dating is unique for everybody, there are a couple of science-backed tips you can keep in mind to hone your skills:

Date someone smarter than you. They don’t have to be an Ivy League graduate or have a Ph.D., however, they should challenge you on an intellectual level. Dating an intellectual match can help you grow, ensure better communication, and add longevity to your relationship.
Be a mindful partner. Even when you are exploring your options, being curious about and tuned in to your partner’s desires, emotions, and needs is essential. According to psychologist Tasha Seiter, focusing on how you love is more integral to your love life than who you pick.

3. Patience, grasshopper
There is no way to fast-forward or skip through your twenties. It might be helpful to remember though that the specific circumstances you encounter during this phase might never come back. Being a time of transition, however, it can still feel tumultuous and never-ending.

The biggest favor you can do yourself during your twenties and early thirties is to repeatedly reinforce to yourself that you are not ‘falling behind’ or ‘running out of time.’ According to psychotherapist Jennifer Coren, author of the book I Love Me More, you experience during this phase the caterpillar-to-butterfly effect. The things you go through during your twenties might solidify the pillars of your character.

“We’re not wasting time; we’re not losing time,” she advises to anyone struggling through their twenties. “We’re figuring out how to make peace with the time we have. When you validate the transitional experience itself and the process of life – of finding meaning right where you are as who you are – you will find yourself more secure, happy, and filled with abundance.”

ANXIETY-
Helping a Partner With Anxiety.
The more you know about their anxiety, the more helpful you can be.
Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

KEY POINTS-
It is important to engage your partner in a discussion about their anxiety, their potential triggers, and any symptoms they experience.
Be sure to actively listen to your partner so that you have a better understanding of their needs.
What works for you doesn’t necessarily work for your partner, as each person’s experiences are different.

If you notice that your partner is experiencing anxiety, whether it is slowly building over a period of time or occurs as an acute panic attack, it is likely that your instinct is to help and to make sure that they are OK. Psychotherapist Kate Thieda (2013) notes that it can be especially challenging to watch a loved one struggle with anxiety. Depending on the level of anxiety, it may also affect the way you and your partner live your lives, such as by avoiding certain situations or social gatherings. Additionally, the partner with anxiety may pull back at times as they try to navigate their feelings and emotional experience.

It is important for you to engage your partner in a discussion about their anxiety, such as potential triggers (if any are known), symptoms they experience, and ways in which they typically prefer to work through it. The more you know, the more helpful you can be. This, in turn, will make the two of you allies when your partner is experiencing a great deal of anxiety. Below are some useful tips for interacting with your partner when anxiety is at an all-time high.

Don’t: Offer up solutions.
What works for you doesn’t necessarily work for your partner, as each person’s experiences are different.
Do: Ask how you can help.

Asking your partner how you can help shows that you support them and want to assist in a way that works for them.
Don’t: Equate your experience to theirs.

Saying something such as, “I know exactly how you feel” or “I got over it, so you will too” diminishes your partner’s experience and shifts the focus to you.
Do: Actively listen.

Listening to your partner discuss what they are going through engages them as they process their emotions and thoughts. It also allows you to fully hear and understand their experience.

Don’t: Tell your partner to “calm down” or “just breathe.”

These statements can be patronizing and demonstrate that you don’t grasp the magnitude of your partner’s experience.
Do: Engage your partner in activities that they have identified as helpful to them and/or assist them in finding help.

If your partner has identified that breathing exercises or going for a walk helps them when anxious thoughts or feelings arise, then it is perfectly fine to reorient them to that practice. It would also be appropriate to ask your partner if they want your assistance in seeking out additional support, such as a therapist.
Beyond assisting your partner, it is important to focus on and protect yourself. Engaging in self-care is imperative as helping your partner cope with their anxiety can be emotionally challenging for you. Think of activities that you can engage in or outlets that you can use to channel your energy. Be kind to yourself as well.

"Manfulness" and Meditation.
Men must feel confident in using a heart-centered approach to present moments.
Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

KEY POINTS-
Being male is the single largest demographic factor for early death.
It’s well documented that men are their own worst enemies when it comes to health care.
Meditative practice builds bigger brains, and stronger immune systems, increases energy, improves memory, and increases libido.
“You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being complete with it and doing it just to do it.” —Alan Watts

Mindfulness meditation is one of the go-to tools in my psychological first aid (PFA) toolbelt to help people in the aftermath of a traumatic event. I have found that selling this practice to mitigate the symptoms associated with a crisis event is easier with the women I work with. Many of the men I meet in these situations will often resist the offer and explain that they need something more concrete than simply “being aware” or, God forbid, learning to breathe.

I must confess that this response has also been my experience in my psychotherapy practice. I have concluded that there appears to be a negative polarity between testosterone and anything that smacks of a New Age antidote. This has been the source of endless frustration as I have witnessed countless men trapped in the egoic brain fog of trying to think their way out of suffering.

Randolph Nesse, MD, professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Michigan and author of several books on evolutionary medicine, wrote, “Being male is now the single largest demographic factor for early death.” As a mental health professional with over 30 years of experience in the field, I not only second that thought; I would add that being male is also the primary obstacle to getting help to change that fact.

As a psychotherapist and carrier of the Y chromosome, I not only empathize with my brothers, but I, too, find that manliness often gets in the way of wellness. It’s well-documented that we are our own worst enemies when it comes to health. Our culture supports a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mentality regarding our struggles. However, it’s a misconception that men don’t ask for help—we ask for it all the time—you know it as anger, rage, and acting out behaviors.

It should come as no surprise that, given this locker room mentality, many men turn a blind eye to the benefits of mindfulness meditation—the intentional practice of observing the present moment with a heart-centered approach to life. Despite the growing body of research pointing to the multiple health benefits of this technique, most men prefer to argue about their right to be ill, rather than sit still and silently observe the workings of their minds.

Some of the reasons why men don’t meditate include the following:
It feels woo-woo, just one step up from cooties.
Sitting still only takes place while fishing and watching sports.
Being alone with one’s thoughts can feel like being alone with a crazy person.
Fear of getting it wrong or having to ask for directions on how to do it.

While the obvious approach to leading men toward a meditative practice would be to give these approaches a harder edge, this only perpetuates the problem. While it would be easy to market extreme meditation, we fall back into the man-pit and inflame an already swollen ego. This, by the way, was the downfall of the getting in touch with your “inner warrior” movement. We also know from past experiences that moving to the other end of the continuum, where real men eat quiche, was an overcorrection and had no staying power.

What is called for is the middle path that runs through the origins of meditative practices. Men cannot be scared into developing a heart-centered approach to the present moment, nor will they be enticed by the promises that they will discover their true selves. What will pique their interest are the studies showing meditation builds bigger brains, and stronger immune systems, increases energy, improves memory, and increases libido.

Since many men avoid wellness activities when they become trendy and seem geared toward the female species, I suggest we develop the concept of manfulness—the practice of being fully aware of the obstacles that being a man presents and the willingness to see these obstacles as the very path to liberation from the constraints of manhood. Simply put, let’s drop the need to figure out what it means to be a man and make it more meaningful.

In addition to formalized meditative moments—spending time intentionally focusing on one’s internal environment—practicing the art of manfulness includes:

No longer living in the shadows of our fathers: Whether they were heroes or villains, our fathers all suffered from the same sense of separation from heart and mind.
Stop pretending that the phrase “boys will be boys” should apply to grown men: Inhabiting an adult body with a child’s mind is what turns a workplace into a playground rife with bullies.
No longer confusing excitement for happiness: Too often, thrill-seeking represents a cry for help, or at the very least, an attempt to keep one’s life moving so fast that slowing down to look at the carnage is impossible.
Realizing that anger is not a normal response to pain: Anger is, at best, an artificial substitute for tears when it comes to pain—the emotional equivalent of Aspartame.
Understanding that choosing between intellect and emotion is a false choice: Not only can you have both, but connecting these two elements is primary to a healthy life.

Whether or not manfulness becomes part of the man code will rely heavily on the willingness of men of all stripes to make it a priority. To prevent the meditative lifestyle from retreating into our past's black-light, incense-infused rooms, men need to come out of the shadows and share in awakening a new consciousness. Ironically, this new state of mind is as old as time and was pointed to by wise men throughout the ages. This means it is our turn to “man up” and honor our sage forefathers, not by following in their footsteps, but by seeking what they sought.

What Really Makes Us Beautiful.
Inner qualities that create connection and engagement.
Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

KEY POINTS.
We're conditioned to believe that physical beauty is our ticket to a happy life.
It is really our inner beauty that draws mature people toward us.
Cultivating inner qualities—presence, kindness, receptivity, and a capacity to listen—create a safe climate for people to come toward us.

“Great beauty, great strength, and great riches are really and truly of no great use; a right heart exceeds all.” —Benjamin Franklin

Our society places a premium on physical beauty. Rules and preferences for how we should look are everywhere, and they do a great disservice to us. According to one study, Americans spend an average of over $722 each year on their appearance. One in ten Americans has tried to look like a celebrity.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to look our best, but comparing ourselves to models of beauty takes us far away from ourselves. Having a hyper-focus on our physical appearance misses the soulful aspects of what it means to be beautiful. Trying to look like the air-brushed magazine pictures and tv ads of “beautiful” people can take us on a long ride away from what beauty is really all about.

Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and money trying to polish an image of what we think will bring attention, love, and connection toward us. In the process, we may fail to attend to ourselves in a way that would move us toward deeper intimacy, fulfillment, and meaning.

Cultivating Inner Beauty
It may sound trite, but beauty really is only skin deep; it’s not the main thing that brings love toward us. Just read about the latest Hollywood starlets whose seeming love curdles into resentment, heartache, and bitter court battles.

Outer beauty can be as much of a curse as a blessing. We may develop a habit of being so focused on maintaining a stellar appearance, that we never cultivate the inner qualities necessary to sustain and deepen intimacy and connection. As I describe in my book, The Authentic Heart, it is the courage to be authentic that connects us in a deeper way.

While our initial attraction may be based, in part, on physical chemistry, it is the meeting of our inner worlds that creates the lasting intimacy and spiritual chemistry for which we long. If we redirect our attention toward cultivating inner qualities, we might find a magnetic attraction that moves us from something superficial to something that connects us to our depths.

Qualities That Foster Attraction
As a psychotherapist for over 40 years, I’ve often seen people who have shame around their physical appearance. That’s not surprising. Yet this conditioned body image is not based on reality. We can't expect ourselves to fit the images that the advertising industry touts.

An important part of self-love is accepting ourselves as we are—loving and appreciating our body as it is. We have control over caring for ourselves through radical self-acceptance. We also have control over developing soulful qualities that create a climate for people to take notice and experience a healthy, secure attachment and intimacy with us that can be deeply fulfilling.

A key to satisfying relationships and a creative life is to nurture inner qualities that create engagement with others. To be engaged begins by seeing people as they are, offering and receiving gentle eye contact that allows us to see into each other’s inner worlds. Piercing through the veil that separates us, our eyes offer a glimpse into the mysterious and soulful world of another person.

The key to connection is the capacity for presence with another, to listen not only to their words but also to the nuances of their being. Moving toward the precipice of this deeper connection means getting out of our heads and allowing our attention to settle into our bodies in a relaxed way. There is nothing we need to do or achieve in this engaging dance of intimacy. We simply need to be—to breathe, to allow our belly to soften, to listen with our third ear—the ear of our soul.

Our quiet presence with another—really showing up as the vulnerable human being we are—makes all the difference. As we bring qualities of courageous presence, tenderness, receptivity, authenticity, deep listening, and perhaps even a tender shyness, we open a secret doorway to love, intimacy, and connection. As we stop trying to be clever, trying to say something smart, trying to look good—and replace these futile efforts with simply being in our body in a gentle way—we might find that we become beautiful to another person—and more importantly—beautiful to ourselves.

The path toward cultivating inner beauty is really simple: We simply need to be ourselves. But what is simple is not always easy. Not everyone will see us and appreciate us as we take the courageous risk to be present and allow ourselves to be seen as we really are. But if they don’t, it is their loss, not ours. As we keep refreshing our sense of presence and openness to others, we’ll eventually find those compatible souls who appreciate us as we are—and, most importantly, appreciate ourselves for the beautiful person we are.

The Urgency for Love as a Healing Force.
How indifference is limiting the future of health care.
Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

KEY POINTS-
Most of us agree that love is important for healing, though it is largely ignored in scientific research.
Loneliness, isolation, and warfare are contributing to record levels of anxiety and depression worldwide.
An attitude of curiosity and urgency could explode the potential of love as a healing force.

Love. We all talk about it, but how much do we really understand this mysterious force field?

We refer to love frequently in poetry, religion, and mysticism. “The universe would disappear without the existence of the force [of love],” said Gandhi. When the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love,” more than 400 million people in 25 countries watched via live satellite and raised their glasses in a resounding “hell, yeah.” So there’s no disputing its fundamental importance.

Today's Experience of "Non-Love"
Yet, it’s also clear that "non-love" is a dominant experience today: Loneliness is more prevalent than connectedness, and the longer-term effects of global lockdowns and enforced isolation are only just starting to emerge. Take a look at the most recent statistics in PubMed where new cases of anxiety and depression are documented, and you’ll understand why psychotherapists' and psychiatrists’ schedules are fully booked. Consider the incline in suicide and divorce rates, not to mention warfare in recent years. Even the climate crisis may have its roots in a deficit of love.

It’s not that we don’t share a sense of collective urgency about resolving these situations. However, because we don't know how to measure love specifically, or diagnose “not-love” so that we can prescribe remedies, we don’t know how to get down to the originating cause. This leaves us shuffling the best cosmetic solutions we can find.

This is simply because we don't have an adequate understanding about the true nature of love as a healing force. Beyond romantic love and attraction, it gets left out of scientific and medical discourse. Apart from a few courageous explorers of love as a transformational field, it is generally overlooked by the experts. We don't pay attention to it; we don't try and measure it; in scientific research, we're not even curious about it.

What creates such indifference? By holding this question throughout recent years as we have been developing Heart Based Medicine, I have become aware of how much the disposition of being an expert gets in the way, particularly in a white male mind like mine. A part of all of us wants to be an expert, and leaning into things that we don't understand can make us uncomfortable. Yet, the capacity to explore and acknowledge things we don't know about opens the possibility of intelligent, creative, generative conversations.

Let’s look at an instructive example: The Black Death, which primarily affected Europe and the Middle East from 1346 to 1353, was the most fatal pandemic in human history. It killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million people, wiping out 30 to 60 percent of the European population and about a third of the Middle East. It reduced the world population from 475 million to about 350 million in just seven years, taking until 1500 to get back to the same pre-plague levels.

Faced with the magnitude of this health crisis, the world was gripped by a tremendous sense of urgency, but without having an accurate and comprehensive system to understand the origins and to address the catastrophe. There was an intuitive sense of the nature of infection, without yet understanding the mechanics. Transmission was attributed to smells, so gowns and masks were worn for protection. There was no microscope or other direct way to measure bacteria and no one had even considered antibiotics back then.

Open-Minded Curiosity
Centuries later, we now know that the plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This knowledge was the result of open-minded curiosity, and the willingness by scientists to acknowledge that there was something present that they didn’t yet fully understand. The enquiry took rigorous questioning of previously held assumptions. It then took decades of piecemeal science before we shifted from a medieval view of infectious disease to our modern scientific view that allows us to deal with bacterial infection.

This approach is the opposite of, and the antidote to, the arrogance of expertise. The expert leans into what she thinks she knows, while the inquisitive explorer has the humility to be curious about what she doesn’t know.

When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek came up with the first microscope in the 17th century, he amplified the capacity of our eyes in such a way that we could see things we had not seen before. That could be a useful clue here. To embrace love as a healing force, it may not be the eyes but the heart that you want to see through. Your heart has the capacity to experience and to know things. It may well be that, by learning to amplify the messages that come from the heart, we will be able to develop coherent diagnostic tests for not-love as well as a prescriptive attitude toward love.

Humility and an open-minded disposition may finally lead us beyond the limited view of seeing love as the byproduct of human thought, emotion, and action. Maybe one day we will come to recognize scientifically what most people already know intuitively: that love is a universal generative healing force available to us all.

I would suggest that what is needed today—more than anything else—is to bring the same open-minded curiosity to the nature of love that Pasteur and Koch brought to infection. If our greatest minds were fueled and funded by that same degree of urgency and tasked with discovering the potential of love as a transformational field, imagine what the effects might be on health care and society.

4 Contributors to Heterosexual Women’s Low Sexual Desire.
2. Having to be a partner’s mother dampens women’s sexual desire.
Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

KEY POINTS-
A recent study found that lower female libido can result from many societal norms, especially related to heterosexual couples.
Sex is often seen and related only to reproduction, placing women in a box of being a “mother” and a “caretaker.”
Objectification and inequitable gendered divisions of labor lead to inequitable gendered divisions of desire.
In a recent study titled “The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered With Men,” researchers Sari M. van Anders et al. found that lower female libido can result from many societal norms, especially related to heterosexual couples. This article is extremely important since low sexual desire is a common, though not-often-talked-about, sexual struggle for women and a frequent treatment goal of sex therapy clients and couples in therapy practice.

Sex is often seen and related only to reproduction (van Anders et al.), placing women in a box of being a “mother” and a “caretaker.” Studies have found that men do not share parenting and housekeeping responsibilities equally, which creates resentment from their female partners and decreases the desire for partnered sex. Although more recent studies show an increase in men’s domestic contributions in heterosexual marriages, women still do most of the chores and/or family organization leading to lower satisfaction with their marriage, as stated in the article “Perceived Housework Equity, Marital Happiness, and Divorce in Dual-Earner Households” by Michelle Frisco and Kristi Williams, which isn’t exactly an aphrodisiac in the desire department for women.

van Anders et al. found four predictions of how heterosexual relationships lead to low sexual desire:

1. Inequitable gendered divisions of labor lead to inequitable gendered divisions of desire.
Women are often responsible for relationship maintenance and family management. Women also often do recurring chores like cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, and laundry. These are all considered “low-schedule control” tasks.

Men often take care of “high-schedule control” chores like house and car maintenance and paying bills, which are performed less frequently and with more flexibility. These differences in chores and responsibilities can cause stress on the women in the relationship, leading to low sexual desire.

Women can often feel more like a mother than a partner, and society regularly desexualizes mothers and parenting. Men may have more time to spend on being a “partner.” Women are expected to achieve more in the house. Women have to ask men to share the responsibility or “nag” them to be equals in the house. Marginalized women often have a harder time asking for and receiving help, and women who rely on men financially often have a harder time standing up for themselves or feeling like they have a right to ask for more help with the house and kids.

These inequities between partners often have negative effects on the sexual aspects of a relationship. Tasks at home can add up to a lot of stress. With chores constantly being added to the to-do list, women feel like sex gets relegated to a lower priority. One woman stated she “would rather make sure the bills are paid, clean the house, do things that need to get done than participate in sexual activity.”

2. Having to be a partner’s mother dampens women’s sexual desire.
Heterosexual couples have traditionally thrust women into the role of nurturer and caregiver. Once children enter the picture, relationships can go from partner-partner to mother-child, with one partner becoming caregiver dependent. Women will do the same tasks for their husbands/partners that they do for their children, including:

Reminding/planning/organizing of chores and social events.
Buying clothes.
Planning/shopping/preparing dinner every night.
Heterosexual male partners/husbands sometimes still expect their partner/wives to care for them like their mom did, as it is what was modeled for them in their parents’ marriages. This is not usually a role women choose to have between them and their partners, which can frequently lessen their sexual desire.

3. Objectification of women downregulates women’s desire.
Heteronormativity focuses on women’s sexual appearance over their pleasure. Women are taught early on to appear sexy rather than feel their sexuality for themselves. Women are for men to get enjoyment from, making women’s wants and need a low priority. Men believe women’s bodies are offered to them as part of a marriage contract. They can have sex whenever they feel like it, and the women are expected to consent. Women’s desire is often based on whether men find them desirable, causing women to feel like they need to spend a lot of time on their appearance for the other.

The study found that women who have lower self-esteem tended to have lower sexual desire and lower sexual pleasure. In many cultures and families, children are taught that women’s genitals are “dirty” or nonsexual. This belief can distract women as adults during sex and lead to low self-esteem. Sex education focuses on the vagina as a reproductive organ rather than focusing on the clitoris, vulva, and labia, which are the pleasure centers of the female genitalia. The study observed that men view sex as a way to show off their technical skills, often viewing access to women’s sexuality as a trophy to be won rather than focusing on women’s enjoyment during sex.

4. Gender norms surrounding sexual initiation contribute to women’s low sexual desire.
Sex often starts when men initiate it, and some women feel uncomfortable making the first move. Women are taught to want to have sex when men are ready. They are shamed for having their own desire, having been called a “slut” if they initiate too directly. Yet when women turn down a sexual initiation, they have traditionally been labeled a “prude,” “stuck up,” or a “tease.”

The study shows that women reported feeling like masturbating might be seen as cheating by their partners, so they avoid solo sex even if they want to. Heterosexual sex is painted as real sex, traditionally shown as offering a low rate of orgasm without direct clitoral stimulation. When sex does not lead to sexual pleasure, it reduces one's sex drive. Women continuously say that they view sex as a “job requirement.” The study states that “Women may be unable to refuse sex because of justified fears of violence or resource withdrawal…” That is why “marital rape” needs to be discussed much more widely.

Stress, Future Research, and Treatment
Stress is a major contributing factor to low sexual desire. Women may feel stress from pregnancy, whether wanted or not, babies/children, physical pain from breastfeeding, carrying, rocking, lifting, and sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, most research on women's sexuality is still done with white, middle-class, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender, and monogamous women, so any women outside of these categories should and do feel like they cannot get evidence-based answers or care for their low desire or other sexual questions and needs. As sex therapists and general psychotherapists, we witness how individual cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic therapy, and couples counseling can improve concerns related to low female desire, decreased sex in relationships and marriages, as well as lower intimacy and attachment in relationships.

As a systemically oriented couples and certified sex therapist, I am also aware that sexual desire is an intersectional experience and has to be addressed by using thorough biopsychocultural-spiritual assessments and collaborative treatment goals.