Understanding Your Sex Drive Based on Your Menstrual Cycle

Hormones play a huge role in not only your body functions but also in your mood and, most importantly, sex drive. It’s important to understand what is happening in your body to know how to make use and avoid being put in certain situations based on your sex drive according to your menstrual cycle.

How can understanding your hormones during your menstrual cycle affect your sex life?

Elizabeth Fernandez/Getty Images

During your cycle, the level of hormones fluctuates which can impact the way you feel, react, and enjoy your sex life. What feels good on Day 10 of your cycle may not be as enjoyable or comfortable on Day 26. The reproductive and sex hormones released into your body can help make certain positions and actions feel more enjoyable than others.

By understanding what each hormone is in charge of, how it can affect your sex life, and keeping track of what felt good at which part of your cycle, you can use all that information to make the most out of your sexual desires and understand what makes you feel good in different stages.

Here are four changes that can affect your sexual experience:

• Position of your cervix
• Lubrication
• Sex drive
• Tolerance to pain

In each of the above, your hormone levels can affect what position you enjoy the most, how lubricated you are, your sex drive, and tolerance to pain making your experience as a whole heavily dependent on your sex and reproductive hormones. During your cycle, the position of your cervix changes, making it easier to stimulate in parts of the cycle rather than others.

Stages of your menstrual cycle

Your menstrual cycle includes 4 phases:

• Menstruation
• The Follicular phase
• Ovulation
• Luteal Phase

It is important to understand that for each woman, her cycle, and hormone fluctuations are different and what works for one woman might not necessarily work for another.

Menstruation and The Follicular phase

Day 1 of your cycle is when you get your period. During the first few days, the sex hormones are low, your body is fatigued, and your tolerance to pain is pretty high.

The menstruation is part of your follicular phase with the whole phase lasting from day 1 up until ovulation which occurs roughly around Day 14 of your cycle.  During this phase, your body works on producing follicles by releasing follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in order to prepare one to be fertilized during ovulation if pregnancy occurs.

As your body prepares to release an egg, estrogen levels start to rise and are at its peak day 10-14 with progesterone levels also increasing. As this is the time when your body is getting ready to conceive, it is naturally normal to have a high libido and feel your sex drive heightened.

Ovulation and Luteal phase

Ovulation is part of the next phase of your menstrual cycle known as the Luteal phase. However, during ovulation, estrogen levels surge and rapidly decline in the following days if no pregnancy occurs. That’s why it is normal for most people to report feeling a low sex drive and can start experiencing PMS, irritability, fatigue due to the rapid drop in both estrogen and progesterone which also affect libido negatively.

Further reading:

• Best Sex Positions to Get Pregnant Fast
• Hottest Male Erogenous Zones to Stimulate During Sex
• Sex Ed Series: How to Orgasm During Sex

Sources used in this article:

• Menstrual cycle – better health
• Period affects libido – Blue Heart
• Here’s how the four phases of your menstrual cycle may affect your sex drive – Blood and milk
• Sex and your cycle – Flo Health