# Did anybody ever raise their wife's libido? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 16, 2010, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891 "2010-07-16T09:48:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/61 "2010-07-16T18:32:52Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Pineapple juice Good call. Five or six piña coladas and her “libido” won’t really be a factor. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/62 "2010-07-16T18:38:18Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > So when someone has the sort of hysterical reaction you did to the suggestion that maybe a guy could have a one-time 15-minute procedure that would alleviate those issues because of your precious, precious balls…we are not amused. Speaking of which, wasn’t there some sort of connection between vasectomy and developing dementia? What ever happened with that? ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/63 "2010-07-16T18:56:17Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Speaking of which, wasn’t there some sort of connection between vasectomy and developing dementia? What ever happened with that? Near as I can Google, not much. I’m only finding a couple of things after that one study was published in 2007, and they’re about how there’s no real evidence there’s any risk, just that one small preliminary study that showed some correlation. If they’ve continued studying it, there doesn’t appear to be anything published yet. There have apparently been a whole lot of health risks that showed some correlation with vasectomy in small studies, but none that have really panned out. ---
**Author:** ![Shark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Shark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shark)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/64 "2010-07-16T19:13:40Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Speaking of which, wasn’t there some sort of connection between vasectomy and developing dementia? What ever happened with that? What’s wrong, having trouble remembering things?🙂 ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/65 "2010-07-16T19:24:00Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > I find that incredibly creepy. “How can I get laid tonight? I know! I’ll get her to fantasize about someone else! Then she won’t have to think about me so much. Perfect!” I don’t have stats but I’ll guarantee you that tennis memberships go up immediately after the majors are televised. Why? Because watching great tennis puts people in the mood to play. That doesn’t mean that we’re envisioning one of us being Serena Williams when we play. Similarly, reading great love stories puts me in the mood to have sex. That doesn’t mean that I’m fantasizing that my husband is Mr. Darcy or Jamie Frasier, as that WOULD be rather odd. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/66 "2010-07-16T19:47:16Z")
> [@Shark](#): > > What’s wrong, having trouble remembering things?🙂 What? ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/67 "2010-07-16T19:52:29Z")
Two informative threads: [1.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=376508&highlight=virtuoso) [2.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=500982&highlight=virtuoso) ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/68 "2010-07-17T02:43:39Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > I don’t have stats but I’ll guarantee you that tennis memberships go up immediately after the majors are televised. Why? Because watching great tennis puts people in the mood to play. That doesn’t mean that we’re envisioning one of us being Serena Williams when we play. > > Similarly, reading great love stories puts me in the mood to have sex. That doesn’t mean that I’m fantasizing that my husband is Mr. Darcy or Jamie Frasier, as that WOULD be rather odd. Exactly! I don’t wish my hubby was anyone but who he is (well, not _most_ of the time, anyway; I probably wish he were Shemar Moore about as often as _he_ wishes I were Halle Berry or Charlize Theron!), but fantasizing ahead of time does allow me to get a ‘jump start’, which makes it more fun for both of us! ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/69 "2010-07-17T10:23:26Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > It’s not an issue very many women think is a joke or a game, just so you know. Hormonal birth control carries a _lot_ of side effects, most of which tend to suck. They don’t suck so much as having a kid you don’t want so you stay on the birth control, but the side effects still suck. And many of those side effects add to not wanting to have sex, from a direct drop in libido to retaining water (feeling fat and bloaty ain’t hot, y’all) to reduced energy (more prone to tiredness and stress related to managing housework and kids). The resulting lack of desire is often treated as a failing on our part, or something that needs to be “fixed.” (Being treated like you’re broken is also _not_ hot, btw.) > > So when someone has the sort of hysterical reaction you did to the suggestion that maybe a guy could have a one-time 15-minute procedure that would alleviate those issues because of your precious, precious balls…we are not amused. What I say is, when you’re having trouble convincing someone as to why they should have surgery performed on them to benefit someone else, there’s nothing wins over their hearts and minds like batting around the word “hysteria” and references to “precious, precious” genitals. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/70 "2010-07-17T11:31:50Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > What I say is, when you’re having trouble convincing someone as to why they should have surgery performed on them to benefit someone else, there’s nothing wins over their hearts and minds like batting around the word “hysteria” and references to “precious, precious” genitals. If the surgery is being suggested as a solution to something _you_ have a problem with, it’s not really to benefit someone else, is it? If the question at hand had been “how can I make my wife’s life better?” and vasectomy had been suggested purely to give her one less thing to worry about, you’d have a point. But the question was how a woman’s libido can be raised and surgery was suggested as a means to get the person in question what _he_ wants. **3D** responded to the suggestion in a way that was completely over the top, treating it as though it were totally unreasonable and completely unrelated to the issue at hand, a response he has defended as a “visceral reaction” to the idea of someone performing surgery on testicles. I mean, what would _you_ call that? ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/71 "2010-07-17T12:11:20Z")
Man all the snarkiness in this thread, someone needs to get laid! ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/72 "2010-07-17T13:28:00Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > **3D** responded to the suggestion in a way that was completely over the top, treating it as though it were totally unreasonable and completely unrelated to the issue at hand, a response he has defended as a “visceral reaction” to the idea of someone performing surgery on testicles. I mean, what would _you_ call that? If **3D** is supposed to be me, **Attack from the 3rd dimension** , I think you’ve screwed up your attributions. I suggested ‘_pineapple juice_’, riffing off a prior poster, and then asked about vasectomy and dementia, a related issue. I suspect you meant **Chessic** , but didn’t check far enough back in the thread. I figured I should straighten this out before we all went off to the pit. ---
**Author:** ![Electric\_Warrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@Electric\_Warrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electric_Warrior)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/73 "2010-07-17T13:36:00Z")
Isn’t “wear a condom” a slightly more acceptable answer than “permanently render yourself infertile”? Yes, I know there’s a slight discomfort to the male (and sometimes the female), and I know there’s something like a 8% chance of sperm finding its way through anyway\* - but it’s much more of a reasonable sacrifice to make, and unless you suddenly start having sex often enough that the Law of Large Numbers comes in to play, 8% isn’t that awful, especially if you’ve got Plan B on hand. I also want to humbly offer ‘talk dirty to her’. \*I googled and found ‘15%’ which seems excessively high based on what I remember from health classes. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/74 "2010-07-17T14:44:06Z")
My husband is a polite man with old-fashioned manners not seen since the turn of the century. It’s one of the things I love about him. If he all of a sudden decided to try to turn me on by ‘talking dirty’ (whatever that means - ‘oh, baby, I’m gonna fuck you till you scream, your tits make my dick hard as a rock, fuck me hard you beautiful bitch’) - ? - I would roll on the floor laughing!!! :D:D:D Can’t say as my libido would benefit, but I might be incapacitated with laughter and just lie there, spent. With LAUGHTER. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/75 "2010-07-17T14:55:44Z")
I do something manly around the house. If there’s no manly work that needs doing, I’ll go outside and move the pile of bricks the previous owners left to a different spot, or dig a big hole. It doesn’t matter if I’m doing something useful - as long as I’m sweaty and tired, she gets horny. This is, of course, irritating, because I want sex less when I’m sweaty and tired. So sometimes I just pour her three glasses of red wine. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/76 "2010-07-17T15:04:08Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > If the surgery is being suggested as a solution to something _you_ have a problem with, it’s not really to benefit someone else, is it? If the question at hand had been “how can I make my wife’s life better?” and vasectomy had been suggested purely to give her one less thing to worry about, you’d have a point. But the question was how a woman’s libido can be raised and surgery was suggested as a means to get the person in question what _he_ wants. > > **3D** responded to the suggestion in a way that was completely over the top, treating it as though it were totally unreasonable and completely unrelated to the issue at hand, a response he has defended as a “visceral reaction” to the idea of someone performing surgery on testicles. I mean, what would _you_ call that? I’d call it “scant excuse for ranting about hysteria and people’s ‘precious’ genitals”, given the unlikelihood of damping down any flames with an approach like that, but what do I know? Sometimes a good screech makes you feel better. To take a random example, I know a guy - we’ll call him Poster M - for whom fear of pregnancy or the inconvenience of hormonal BC barely registers on the signal-to-noise ratio of reasons why sex is going to happen twice a month, tops, for maybe twenty minutes a time. But it’s not up to me to dictate what Poster M’s wife does with her precious, precious vagina, is it? > [@salinqmind](#): > > My husband is a polite man with old-fashioned manners not seen since the turn of the century. Hey, that was only ten years ago… ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/77 "2010-07-17T15:09:40Z")
Could we not repost the bit where\*\* CrazyCatLady\*\* gets me confused with somebody else anymore? 'Cause it’s cutting into my action, if you know what I mean. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/78 "2010-07-17T15:29:00Z")
Condoms? Nah. Let’s just go straight to cutting up body parts. I think, instead of wearing some latex, he should permanently maim himself. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/79 "2010-07-17T15:42:12Z")
> [@Electric\_Warrior](#): > > Isn’t “wear a condom” a slightly more acceptable answer than “permanently render yourself infertile”? Yes, I know there’s a slight discomfort to the male (and sometimes the female), and I know there’s something like a 8% chance of sperm finding its way through anyway\* - but it’s much more of a reasonable sacrifice to make, and unless you suddenly start having sex often enough that the Law of Large Numbers comes in to play, 8% isn’t that awful, especially if you’ve got Plan B on hand. > > I also want to humbly offer ‘talk dirty to her’. > > \*I googled and found ‘15%’ which seems excessively high based on what I remember from health classes. I would never speak for anyone but myself, but I wouldn’t go off hormonal birth control for condoms. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891/80 "2010-07-17T15:59:20Z")
I seem to remember a thread about KY Intense being used to help someone who had decreased libido due to antidepressant use. It worked really, really well. And, while surgery may be a valid option, it was brought up a little too casually for my tastes. Something that permanent should only be brought up as a last resort. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anybody-ever-raise-their-wifes-libido/546891.md?page=5)