James was receiving silent treatment from his wife for two weeks in a row. He was at a breaking point.
“You seem to have rapport with women, maybe you can call my wife and find out what her problem is,” he pleaded, “If this does not stop I will look for a house and just move out.”
And so I called Monica, James’ wife, using his phone. It went unanswered. We then agreed to call her using my phone. Monica picked it at first ring.
“Tell him that I am tired of begging for sex,” she replied curtly after I introduced myself and the reason for the call, “It is even good he is in the Sexology clinic. Treat him so that he gets sexual feelings.”
I pleaded with Monica to join us at the clinic. After a long explanation of how she had lived a sexless marriage for three years, she finally accepted to accompany James to the clinic the next day.
This was a fairly affluent couple. Monica was an accountant in an international NGO while James was a businessman. They had been married for seven years and had two children.
“Life was good when James was employed like me,” Monica explained, “but that was four years ago, now his life rotates around his business, he sleeps for three hours and has no interest in me.”
James on the other hand said that he did his best to impress his wife but “she loved sex too much”. On further enquiry, it turned out that the couple had intimate moments once or not at all every month. That was for sure below par.
All medical tests on the couple were normal except for a marginally low testosterone in James. Testosterone is the hormone that enhances libido in both men and women. My diagnosis was loss of libido in James due to low testosterone secondary to exhaustion and inadequate sleep.
“But how long should one sleep then,” James interjected in disbelief, “and how do you sleep when you have no sleep in the first place.”
Well, studies have shown that even a six-hour sleep is not good enough. Men and women should strive to sleep for seven hours to sustain their libido. Anything less is a disaster waiting to happen in the bedroom.
In addition, it is not just the duration of sleep that matters; the quality of it is crucial. Take the example of people with a condition called sleep apnea; their breathing system blocks on and off as they sleep and they have to keep waking up to avoid suffocation. Although such people may dedicate long hours of sleep, their testosterone levels remain low until the condition is treated.
This may also be the case in couples having young babies. Their quality of sleep is not good as the baby keeps waking them up in the night. As a result testosterone levels go down and libido diminishes. Some homes are in environments that are noisy and it is difficult to have peaceful and quality sleep. This affects libido too.
Other than low libido, a sleep deprived person misjudges the sexual intentions of their partner; it has been found that they perceive their partners to always want sex.
Similar misjudgment is seen in alcoholics who because of their condition have low testosterone levels too. Hence, sleep deprivation is similar in many aspects to alcoholism when it comes to matters intimacy. The situation is much worse if a person is an alcoholic and at the same time sleep deprived.
Thinking about it, James and Monica are not alone in this situation. The trend in urban areas is increasingly worsening. You have to wake up early to beat the traffic jam.
Then you arrive home late after work and go to bed late. Sometimes the short sleep is interrupted by phone calls, barking dogs, etc. The average urbanite rarely gets six hours of quality sleep. It is no wonder that infidelity and divorce are increasing in urban populations.
“Well said doctor, but how do we treat my husband? I am fed up of his lifestyle and if this continues, I do not see this marriage going far,” Monica said sternly.
