Beyond “Low Desire”: What Women Really Need

5 Questions for a Sexologist with Natassia Miller

Cycladic marble female figure, Final Neolithic, 4500–4000 BCE. Met Museum, Open Access.

Natassia Miller is a Brazilian-American sexologist and the founder of Wonderlust, a practice devoted to helping women and couples reconnect with desire. After an early career in political science and finance, she shifted to intimacy education and coaching, where she now helps people rebuild connections from the inside out. In our conversation, we explore the deeper currents that shape women’s desire and the myths that so often keep us from accessing it.

For more about Natassia, visit Wonderlust, or subscribe to her Substack Lust In Translation where you’ll find, among many other things, a Literary Erotica Hit List.

If you could distill your entire practice into one guiding principle, what would it be?

When women reclaim their sexuality as their own, and not as a performance, everything shifts.

Feeling comfortable in your own skin creates the kind of confidence of communication, a sense of self and self worth that impacts how you show up not only for yourself, but for your partner, your kids, your community, and your work.

I always joke that communication in the bedroom translates into better communication in the boardroom. It’s about women overcoming that sense of shame or guilt or dismissal that they have about their own pleasure and what they deserve.

Most of my clients are straight couples who have been together for 15-plus years with kids, based in the United States. So, you know, very much rooted in American culture. And people come to me usually because they’re not having sex or because there’s a lot of sexual tension (in the negative sense) in their relationship. When I start uncovering what’s beneath the surface, I understand that it’s actually an emotional disconnect that’s creating the tension.

So, I want to understand, What is the root of the resentment? Is it that there is no non-sexual touch present in the relationship, and touch only happens when sex is initiated? Is it that when you’re having dinner, everybody’s on their phone and then suddenly, your partner initiates sex and it feels like it’s coming out of left field because you haven’t spoken all day? How are the household chores divided?

What I see is that for women, at the beginning of a relationship, it’s really easy for sex to happen spontaneously because it’s novel and they’re eager to please. But, I ask them to ask themselves, Were you really asking your partner for what was aligned for you? Or were you just going along because you were so enthralled with them.

What is a moment with a client that continues to challenge or inspire you?

The most beautiful part of what I do, what really inspires me, is when I see women giving themselves permission to explore—and how that reveals a whole new side of them.

When women or couples come to me, it’s generally because the woman in the relationship believes she has low desire, low libido. Or her partner is saying she does. Maybe low desire is there, but it’s usually a result of the context of the relationship.

Even one initial conversation with a woman, asking: What is communication in the relationship like? How is non-sexual touch present? Uncovering how she was brought up, what were the limitations she faced, and how sex happens in her life today—light bulbs start to go off. We can start to make sense of why she’s not feeling connected to her sexuality and desire. And I have clients come back from doing the exercises I assign, and I can see a light in their eyes because they’ve discovered a new part of themselves. And often they’re finally able to talk to their partners about something that never even crossed their minds to have a conversation about. And their partners are excited about it too. Because, while yes, it can be intimidating, it’s also exciting. So I start seeing that person blossom in new ways. And I’ve had so many different moments like this that are deeply inspiring. At the end of the day, what I do is give people permission through education.

It’s about not feeling connected, not feeling seen or heard, or being bored in bed. The research shows that women become more bored in monogamy than men do. And that shocks everybody. But men have been conditioned to seek adventure outside their primary romantic relationship, and women actually feel adventurous once they feel safe in that container. And so that’s where the opportunity lies.

From an early age, women are told they need to protect themselves, that men want to take advantage of them. And that we need to maintain purity. Or our vulvas and vaginas are stigmatized. The messages we get are that we should be desirable but not have desires of our own. That we should place others’ needs before ours.

So our ability to even consider what it is that we want dampens.

A lot of my work is really rooted in countering all that early messaging. It’s about giving my clients the education and the permission to explore what it is that they want. And usually it’s the first time they’ve ever asked themselves this.

I very much feel for women, obviously as a woman myself, I’m conditioned in the same ways.

What do you believe most people fear about their own expansion and how does that shape their choices?

Learning how to cultivate sexual connection, desire, and arousal are not a part of our education whatsoever. And because we’re taught that sex should be spontaneous and organic, when other priorities in our lives interfere with that spontaneity—when you move forward in your career, maybe you have kids, and other responsibilities—it’s easy for sex to fall by the wayside.

We’re juggling so much. You might be like, How important really is sex to my life? So there is a question of, How much of a pain point is sex in the relationship? Is it worth addressing?

Usually, there are two fears:

One is the fear of being looked at differently by your partner and being rejected as a consequence of your true desires. Maybe you’ve learned new things that you didn’t realize were options. Or maybe you’ve explored different fantasies. Some people might fear being too demanding, selfish. They fear that, after discovering a whole new side to themselves, they’re expecting too much from their partner.

The second, related fear is losing the relationship altogether. They worry that their partner might want to explore outside the marriage. Maybe the marriage is going to feel too confined for them if they want to shift their sex life in a new way. How is the partner going to take that? And the longer they’re together, the higher the stakes are.

So there’s a lot of fear in asking for what you want. Can the relationship withstand it? It’s not just about voicing what you want in bed—like, touch me here and do that. It’s very much about developing an overall sexual palette and that can shift your relationship to your partner.

What is the most misunderstood aspect of your work?

As a sexologist, I deal with a lot of unsexy stuff. People might think, Oh, she’s a sexologist, it’s probably all fun, spicy stuff. But it’s so much about what your relationship dynamic is, and what the power dynamics are. Also how is all of that being divided and shared, and where do you want to go from there?

And so I know people think it’s about sex, but really it’s about emotional connection and how that provides the space for you to be more vulnerable and more open with each other.

So I’ll give you an example of a specific couple. For seven years since they had kids, the wife did not work. Then she went back to work. She had to reestablish herself in her field, she had so much to learn and do. She was very overwhelmed.

The husband, because he worked from home, suddenly had to take on a lot more of the responsibilities at home. He felt suddenly thrust into all these things he wasn’t even aware of, like the emotional load she’d been carrying with the kids. And the couple was not communicating about all these changes. And they weren’t connecting. So when he initiates sex, she turns him down. So there’s all this built up resentment between them.

So you’re always looking at these power dynamics that happen in the relationship, and asking how can we bridge that gap? I have found that even the most seemingly vanilla couples find, in the exercises I give them, an opportunity to finally share what they actually want, how they want to play with power dynamics in bed. Somebody might want to be more dominant or more submissive. Some people want to role play. It can be a really fun, playful space for couples to break that usual dynamic that happens at home.

And another example I’ll give you is a woman who’s the primary breadwinner in her family. Her husband also works, but he takes care of the kids. And sometimes, when she gets into what he calls her “Mrs. Bossy pants” mode for too long, they have an agreement where he can just swoop in, put one hand on her neck and grab both of her hands behind her back, and like, throw her on the bed. And it’s their game: she submits to him. Right? And so that’s how they’re able to switch that power dynamic and create balance in a playful way. She says it really spices things up for them.

After all your years of practice, what still feels like an unanswered question or mystery in your field?

Why do we continue to pathologize women’s sexuality? We hear so much about low desire for women, about this dysfunction that we supposedly have. When often, what I have found is, it’s actually a rational response to poor context: inequality in relationships, lack of variety, absence of emotional safety.

If we switched the way in which we talk about this to something that doesn’t pathologize women, it would be so much more helpful. We need to look at how that’s rooted in the media and in the lack of education.

Sexual desire for women doesn’t happen spontaneously. That might be the experience for men, especially because of testosterone levels, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with women. This mindset shift would do so much to change how we approach sexuality and how we relate to ourselves.

So much of the research shows that more often than not, what people call “low libido” is not actually a hormone issue, it’s the context. Hormones can improve things, but if the context doesn’t improve they won’t have much of an impact.

The so-called pink Viagras essentially just increased dopamine. So you’re in a better mood and you’re more open to desire. But these drugs come with so many side effects and with one you can’t drink alcohol. So it’s not a great solution.

I introduced a client of mine to a mindfulness protocol to help her connect with sensation in her body. After five or six weeks she wrote to me and said it had completely shifted her relationship to her husband and to sex. It was beautiful. And it was simply a combination of meditation and body scans. A lot of exercises can be done on your own. I highly recommend Dr. Lori Brotto, who I studied with, and her book Better Sex Through Mindfulness.

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A quick tip: I use and recommend Natassia’s Mindful Intimacy Cards—they’re one of the easiest, most inviting ways to rediscover each other, with 138 prompts that make connection feel playful and genuinely intimate. Highly worth checking out. *Not sponsored, just something I love.

I love you.

Juliette