Episode 13. Testosterone Tango: The Dance of Male & Female Libido
In this exciting episode of Marriage IQ, join us as we dive into the fascinating science behind the hormone testosterone. We chat about how testosterone impacts libido, relationship satisfaction, and bonding from both the male and female perspective. Dr. Scott shares some clinical insights while Dr. Heidi adds thoughtful commentary about her personal experiences. Some highlights: - Testosterone's role in fueling "competition" for a mate - How lower testosterone levels may strengthen established relationships - The links between testosterone, oxytocin, and emotional intimacy - Natural ways to boost testosterone like exercise I hope this gives you a deeper appreciation for our biological drives and how they shape our relationships.
-
00:00:02
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse. I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. And I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed with a little fun.00:00:35
Hello, lovers. We're really glad that you joined us for our episode today. This is one we're really excited about and very happy that you've taken the time to be with us. Warning. The discussion you're about to hear by the hosts of marriage IQ is vulnerable, authentic, honest, and somewhat awkward.00:00:56
That is true. Listener discretion is advised. Do not listen to the rest of this podcast. If you feel anxious about hearing other people talk about very personal and private experiences, proceed with caution. But it's not that personal.00:01:14
Personal. Well, we'll let them decide. Might be. However, if you do want to get out of a rut and strive for a more scintillating life, listen on brave, intelligent spouse. Heidi, you look so beautiful today.00:01:30
Thanks, honey. I think you must have some of that hormone rush that's making you see me through rose colored glasses today. Yeah, well, I could be.00:01:43
All right, well, we're talking about hormones again. Wait, what? Yeah, this is going to build upon episode seven, where we talked about oxytocin. So some of you out there might be asking, wait a minute. I thought this was a marriage podcast.00:02:01
Why are you talking about hormones? What do hormones have to do with relationships? Well, actually, quite a bit. And that's part of the problem, why we have so many problems in relationships is we don't understand ourselves. We don't understand how we work, how we tick, like a little identity.00:02:24
Yeah. How men work, how women work. Why are they different? So there is confusion, too, about libido, about sex drive between men and women. Libido has been defined from a man's point of view.00:02:40
In research, pop culture, they try to shove this definition of libido that a man has upon a woman. I like that perspective. And the problem is, now you get a lot of women out there who think that they're broken. Right? Right.00:02:58
So, because they don't think like a man. Well, guess what? You're not supposed to. You can still have a libido. You can still have a sex drive, but it's different.00:03:10
And a big part of that difference is how testosterone works. And so we're out here to say we're on a mission to tell women that you're not broken. We just need to quit defining a woman's identity from a man's point of view. And I think maybe the reason that that has come to happen is in the earlier days of research on testosterone, almost all the researchers were mentioned and most of the research was being done on men. Now we're starting to get more women in research, and more research is just within the last few years starting to look at women's experiences.00:03:53
So that allows us to open up different perspectives, but that hasn't quite trickled down yet to the masses. Yeah. So we have a lot of good stuff here to talk about. I'm going to talk a little bit about testosterone as a hormone by itself. Great.00:04:09
Let's go. Let's hear what you have to teach us. Yeah. From a medical point of view, in my medical clinic, testosterone is one of the most sought after hormone supplements. People like it.00:04:22
They want it. Why do they want it? Well, men tend to seek it more than women. There is a growing number of women who are specifically seeking it as they gain more information on the web, Internet, other things more women are, but men are still leading the pack greatly because the effects of testosterone, it tends to increase lean muscle mass. So if you're working out, lifting weights, it's going to make that muscle leaner, more efficient.00:04:57
It increases libido in men. And when we talk about libido in men, we talk about thinking about sex. That's libido in men. Libido in women, it increases. However, libido in women is not necessarily thinking about sex, but it does create a heightened sexual awareness during sex and increases orgasm quality.00:05:20
It increases energy and stamina, bone density, muscle mass and red blood cell production. So that would seem to be important. Maybe during menopause then, is that what you're saying? Well, it can, yeah, that's a good point. With bum density.00:05:38
Now, we don't prescribe testosterone to women with osteoporosis per se. It's not been FDA approved for that, but it does do so. And that is just one other reason that a postmenopausal woman may consider taking it. Not that we're saying it does do that, but in reality it does somewhat. It's just not FDA approved.00:06:06
Now, developmentally, that's really important, too, because we got to kind of wrap our heads around this. Men typically have 14 times more circulating testosterone than women. A lot more. Why would that be? Well, in the developing male, during gestation, in the uteruse, the testosterone is largely responsible for triggering all the male characteristics of being a male.00:06:32
So it's going to initiate or trigger the genes to start producing a prostate that only men have, testicles, that only men have, a spermatic cord, a penis, semen, sperm production, all of that is really supervised by the level of testosterone, and it needs to be high enough in that developing fetus for that to take place. It's what makes the doctor say it's a boy. At the end of the day, the default is actually to make a girl. So if none of those things get triggered, the default is to make female characteristics. Unless that high level, a level of testosterone, turn on those genes to make a boy.00:07:21
So rarely, a genetic male may be insensitive to the effects of testosterone during fetal development. So genetically, they're a male. That's called xy chromosome, but physically, the doctor exclaims, it's a girl. And that's called androgen insensitivity syndrome. It affects about one out of about maybe 60,000 births.00:07:43
Okay, I've heard of that, but I didn't know that that's how that happened. Yeah. And that's the real thing. Genetically, they're a male. Phenotypically or physically, they look female.00:07:54
So that can happen in puberty. Testosterone surges in both males and females, which is why we all had to discover, all of us, good or for bad, acne, body odor. That all comes from testosterone. Yeah. Wow.00:08:12
Pubic hair. And no more cooties in the opposite sex. Okay. In menstruating female adolescents, they become more sexually aroused and or sexually responsive in the middle of her cycle when she's ovulating. That kind of makes sense, right?00:08:33
Increases your chance for conceiving. Right. In male adolescents, it means they just think about sex, like, all the time. Okay. I don't think I was an especially radical teenager, but I do remember starting around the age of twelve, I thought about sex a lot.00:08:56
Not something I had to work at. It just happened. It was really confusing to me. I bet. And exciting at the same time.00:09:06
I didn't know what to do. And basically, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I thought, am I just weird? I tried, but it was always there in the background. Now, conversely, Heidi, when you were back in those kind of geeky, awkward early years of puberty, did you.00:09:29
It was so hard to think about. Did you think about having sex with guys? I did not. But to be honest with you, I knew very little about sex. I'd heard the word.00:09:42
I knew a little bit about anatomy, but I don't know if that's the reason why I didn't think about it. But I did have these feelings of love and desire to be connected and to be loved and to be in a romantic relationship that's kind of more. Is that normal? That is very normal. Really?00:10:01
Most girls don't think about sex when they're teenagers. In fact, a study by Dennis Fortenberry 2013, 66% of boys admitted to having sexual fantasies. These are age 13 and 14. So pretty early on. And this is a kind of study, wherever there's going to be that social inhibition bias.00:10:27
Right. There are probably more boys who think about sexual fantasies than the 66%. It's just that they reported that they did not. I think that's really interesting. I think that number's higher than 66%.00:10:40
Well, and another reason that I would think it would be higher, this is 2013, when cell phones were not in the hand of every 13 and 14 year old young boy. Right. Now, first ages of exposure to pornography happen between the ages of eight and eleven. And so that may escalate or increase that number dramatically just because they've had visual exposure. Right.00:11:09
Possibly. So only 15% of girls the same age 13 to 14 experience sexual fantasies again in the year 2013. Right. And my guess here, I'm just guessing that they were far less steamy, more like cuddling romantic. Just a guess.00:11:27
That could be. But anyway, so we have studies that show, yes, boys will think about sex. Girls do not generally think. I'm not talking all girls, all boys. I'm saying the numbers are significant on one side versus the other.00:11:44
Okay. And when we look at then testosterone in romantic relationships, we can kind of see why that may feed into the way, maybe divine design of some sorts, because later that testosterone takes on a really significant role in helping form romantic relationships. Okay, so there's a study by Roni and Gettler in 2015 that talks about testosterone really amplifies aggression, dominance and competition. And this is really important when men are fighting over or competing for a spouse or a girlfriend that they consider really beautiful or really intelligent. Fighting for my girl.00:12:38
Yeah. Or really athletic, whatever your thing is, I'm going to fight you off, get rid of you, so I can have my girl. Right. And so that testosterone really helps with those things. It also increases sperm production and amplifies the ability to have courtship types of behaviors, being more tuned into a girl doing things for her.00:13:05
And actually, their study shows that investments in seeking out relationships with women come at the expense of other priorities. So they may put dating relationships above paying attention to their grades in school or calling home when they're at college. Or whatever. Once they find the girl of their dreams or enter committed relationships and they aren't trying to impress other potential partners anymore, their testosterone levels significantly drop. Okay, so they're like the La Z boy syndrome, right?00:13:45
Yeah. So early in marriage it may be a little higher or even early in cohabitation, but once they are in that committed relationship, especially after having children, when they're focused more on providing for the children, on caring for a family, those levels really drop. So this actually helps them maintain a strong bond with their partner and saves energy and time to not have to worry about the rivals, to fight off those other people. So less testosterone is needed and more oxytocin is needed to nurture the relationship. There's that o word again.00:14:26
Again, episode seven that we talked about. So this really makes me wonder if men, specifically in your practice and probably a lot of medical practices, are wanting, besides muscle tone, that increase in testosterone that they're missing. That's kind of tamped down a little bit after entering into that family mode. So I wondered, is it that they're missing kind of the excitement, the rush from those adolescent years, from premarital years? I would bet that's probably a good guess.00:15:06
Even though it really does protect the family, protect the marriage, to have those lower levels of testosterone? Yeah, well, sort of. It gets kind of mushy. Okay. That's just my interpretation of looking at it, trying to make sense of it.00:15:23
It makes me wonder if maybe that's why men are often seeking out pornography, because it still gets that testosterone amped up by looking at alternative people, mates, whatever, without having to have any commitment, they can still stay in that committed relationship, which we believe, or I believe, I think you do as well. You can speak for yourself that pornography is not good for relationships, but it may be one of the uninteined recognize explanations for seeking out that feeling that they'd had earlier. Yeah. There are factors that predict how long a relationship lasts, such as believing your relationship is going really well, having positive illusions about your relationship quality that may also influence testosterone levels. So in other words, how you perceive your relationship and your hormone levels might be connected, suggesting that relationship dynamics can affect biological responses.00:16:26
So if we're looking at our relationship with each other through rose colored glasses and seeing it as really good, that in and of itself can boost testosterone. On the other hand, if we are looking at our relationship, looking at all the negative in it through poop colored glasses, as we say, then that may result in negative effects to testosterone as well. Okay, so I think the takeaway from that study is really look for the good in your relationship to naturally increase testosterone levels. Right. All right.00:17:00
What else did you find? There's an interesting study that shows that motherhood is related to lower levels of testosterone. So moms with young children under the age of three had testosterone levels 14% lower than women without children and 19% lower than those with children over the age of three. So what are your thoughts on this? Why is their testosterone level diving?00:17:28
Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense that it goes down, and we probably need to do some more research on. Does oxytocin suppress testosterone? Does testosterone suppress oxytocin? That would be a great research subject.00:17:43
But with kids, you're definitely revving up that oxytocin. Right. Because you are connecting with your children, you're nurturing, you're teaching, and oxytocin does not turn you on. That's not a turn on hormone. That is a connection hormone, and that's really high with kids.00:18:05
So it makes sense to me that moms with young children are probably less likely to be thinking about sex or responsive to sexual stimuli as much. And so I think it's important to be aware of that. Would that be helpful for husbands, young husbands to understand? I think it would be important for both to understand that, yeah. And I think intentionally putting some things in the relationship to help to start increasing it.00:18:38
Right. And that feeds right into a series of studies by Doctor Robin Edelstein and Christy Chin at the University of Michigan. They have some groundbreaking research on hormones and romantic relationships. Higher testosterone levels were linked to lower relationship satisfaction and commitment in both men and women.00:19:01
What? That's crazy, huh? When one person had higher testosterone and the other person doesn't, their partner tended to report lower satisfaction and commitment. And this was most prevalent when the one with higher testosterone was the woman. Hmm.00:19:20
The man that had lower testosterone really viewed the relationship through a negative lens. Well, that's a bummer. We'll have to look at other research that can look at how to navigate. How to navigate. Yeah, because testosterone can.00:19:39
And again, it's back to this. Chicken or the egg. Does the testosterone that cause this, or is this an effect of that type of a relationship? It's important to know the difference. But what you're saying is high testosterone levels tended to have a more negative overall long term effect on the relationship.00:19:59
Right. And they're saying all is not lost in those in committed relationships. Lower testosterone is associated with higher romantic relationship quality for both partners. So as testosterone levels start to fall a little bit the romance has an ability to flourish more because it's not the race, it's now. Okay, we're maintaining this relationship.00:20:27
We want to put things in this relationship that can help with romance, with stability, with maintenance. So it's sounding to me like maybe oxytocin and testosterone are antagonistic toward each other. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps because you're saying so.00:20:43
Romantic quality, that's all about oxytocin, right? If you can have this oxytocin bursts, you are wanting to connect very deeply, and romance is part of that. Maybe it's like driving a car, like the gas pedal makes you go forward. When you're putting on the gas, that might be like the testosterone and then putting on the cruise control. Once you get where you're going, maybe that's a little bit more like the oxytocin maintaining the speed.00:21:15
So their study sheds light on how testosterone levels in one partner can influence the relationship quality for both people in the relationship. So Chin in 2021, conducted a really interesting study on 105 couples. They were given a task to discuss things based on questions that they gave them. One group, the questions were designed to really keep them to very shallow conversations, and the other, they went to deeper conversations, and at the end, they tested their testosterone levels. Both groups felt good talking about themselves, but the group that revealed more about themselves to their partner felt much better about it.00:22:02
But also their testosterone levels were much higher than the other groups, and they found their partner much more attractive. They had much better feelings towards their partner. All right, so maybe this is really weird. Like, I'm wondering if maybe oxytocin is antagonistic to testosterone, but it's also a precursor to testosterone, because when you get deep, that's oxytocin. Yeah.00:22:32
But now they understand. They measured their testosterone after, and so maybe it's a precursor for testosterone. They work together, yet they work in opposite. Very fascinating. Right.00:22:45
But one thing it does show is that the amount that they shared about themselves during the discussion really influenced these hormonal changes, which leads so much into what we've talked about with intimacy, emotional intimacy, especially by intentionally having those intimate conversations. I'm thinking perhaps you're learning new things about each other, which flares up the testosterone, because this is something new and exciting. I didn't know about you, honey. Yeah, that's a good point. So that's really important to take the time to put those kind of conversations in.00:23:24
Yeah. So it sounds like just putting all this together, just striking a balance between the oxytocin that really gets us to connect to cuddle, to drive deeper this intimacy, the romance, and how that works to stimulate testosterone, to keep it scintillating and new and fresh and novel and sexy. Right. We need to keep putting new things in our relationship, keep that going. I think maybe our bodies need that, first of all, to know it and to intentionally do things to make that happen.00:24:03
That's great point. I love that in the scientific literature, there's a diagnosis called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD. Do you know who that might be in? It's not men, it's only women. Hmm.00:24:21
Do you see the problem here? This is a diagnosis only for women. Okay, tell me about this diagnosis. So this going back to the beginning of our podcast. Everything is talked about through the lens of a man.00:24:36
Hypoactive sexual desire. Men think about sex, okay? Women don't necessarily until they've started engaging and they can still have a libido. It's just not thinking about sex. So right off the bat, we're defining things through a male centered perspective.00:24:57
Okay, so tell me what hypoactive sexual desires, they're not thinking about having sex. They're not like going out throughout their day going, I really want to have sex. But this disorder is only based on thinking about it. Largely, yes. Okay.00:25:13
It's thinking about sex. So when you diagnose this or a medical provider, they would be asking questions. If women are thinking about sex, and a lot of women don't. Wow, interesting. That doesn't mean they don't have a libido.00:25:26
It's defined differently. Part of that libido, again, not thinking about sex before it has started. But as Emily Ngowski, she's the author of come as you are, a fantastic book about women's sexuality, says that they can become more responsive to sex once it actually begins. Once penetration begins, sexual intercourse itself is more meaningful, erotic, and her orgasms are objectively bigger, deeper, longer, and gasp, louder. That is how you define a female libido, at least from another perspective.00:26:05
I'm not saying that we have all the answers, but look, have, well, I don't know, low normal levels for a man. And thought about it, I didn't want to take it because. Taking it, yeah, okay, but hair loss, that's the thing. I don't want to lose hair. It's hard enough being a man.00:26:26
You have beautiful hair. You know, I didn't want to stop my own testosterone production, because if you take it, it does lower your own testicular production of testosterone. Oh, really? And I didn't want it to cause other problems, crossing boundaries and things. So I think I'm probably good where I'm at.00:26:48
But you haven't had that experience of taking. I, on the other hand, have low dose, very low for women, much, much lower right for bone loss. I have to say I didn't really notice that I was missing anything. But you suggested that it might be something that would help with libido as I've gotten a little bit older. And did it make you think about sex more?00:27:11
No. I would say no. It didn't change that. But I did try it at one point in my thirties, and it made me severely depressed. It did not work well at that point in time, but as I gotten a little older, tried it again, and it did improve my sexual experience, the intensity of orgasm, and I.00:27:31
And pleasure was able to increase. So perhaps, at least for me, it's worked better later in the lifespan than it did earlier. All right, so let's talk about some solutions this week. Think about testosterone. You may have it medically prescribed if you're a candidate, but you got to know the risks, too, such as mood swings, acne, hair loss, changes in red blood cells.00:27:59
It might increase it. So that might help if you have anemia, a slight increase in the risk of prostate cancer. If you feel like testosterone is too risky, you may consider over the counter solutions. There's something called dhea, or dehydroxy epiendosterone. Just remember Dhea.00:28:18
Yeah, that's over the counter. That's like a precursor to testosterone and some androgenic hormone production. Testosterone can be prescribed by your doctor. It's typically going to be compounded at a local compounding pharmacy, but they do have it as injection or gels, sprays through the pharmacy. Okay.00:28:42
But just remember though, too, just like everything else in life, there's no one single panacea here. We're not trying to say this. Testosterone has good parts. It has negative parts. The important thing is to try to understand it and how it's working in your body and how you can better access it.00:29:04
That's good. I just have a question for you. Are there any natural ways to increase it besides, like I just talked about that you know of besides the study? I read on having deep conversations. Yeah.00:29:17
So, exercising. Oh, really? Yeah. So cut out your Netflix show and exercise for 15 to 20 minutes with a heart rate of at least 120 for most people under 70. And if you're in your thirties or forties, you really need to get it up to like to.00:29:35
As you said earlier, work on the romance, the cuddling part of that relationship, and become more intimate. Get deeper, dive deeper. I really like that. I think that's something actionable that people can work on. This week, let's bring it back now to our four cornerstones.00:29:54
So, identity, women. It's really important to realize that your identity includes that you're someone who doesn't need as much testosterone as your husband, vice versa, that they may need more than you or that they produce more than you. Also realize that you are not broken. If you're not thinking about sex all the time, you're not always the lower desire partner. There are 30% of women who are the higher desire partner.00:30:20
And over the lifespan, it changes who's the higher desire and who's the lower desire partner. So just know that things change. It's just that we do need to define libido differently for you than we do for your husband. A testosterone supplementation may help at some points during the lifespan. And both of you understand that these hormonal differences that we've been talking about allow you to complement each other in a scintillating way.00:30:48
Mmm. Scintillating. The next is intentionality. Schedule time for yourself this week to think about how these hormone changes affect your relationship. Find time to discuss with your partner, your spouse.00:31:02
If you'd be willing to look at new perspectives on hormones, that's a good one. So, insight. We hope that people will take the opportunity to be curious and think, how does my body work? This is really important insight. How am I like or different from other people of my same gender and alike, or different from my spouse?00:31:25
And just because we're different doesn't mean we're broken or something's wrong with us. It's just noticing, oh, this is a way that I'm different. Yeah. And then intimacy. Connecting deeply with your spouse about how this information you've learned today can bring more intimacy in your life.00:31:44
That's so important. All right, we're really excited to have our very first guest episode next week, and we think it will tie in really well to what we've talked about today. So we hope you'll join us. All right. Until next week.00:32:00
And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves. Thank you so much, all for tuning into marriage IQ. We hope today's episode has sparked some thoughts and brought you some valuable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't end here. Stay curious, keep exploring, and we'll catch you next time on another exciting episode of Marriage IQ.
