For some women, sexual safety is an absolute turn-off and can feel like a real hindrance when trying to create a healthy long-term relationship.

Let me explain how some women get here through a little vignette.

Lena grew up in a family where love and closeness were fully present. I mean FULLY. And that love and closeness came with expectations.

Her parents were intensely involved in her life. They had strong opinions about what was appropriate, what was respectable, who she should spend time with and what kind of woman she ought to become.

If you come from a neglectful family, you might think that sounds like paradise.

But there was something complicated about this type of closeness. The psychological boundaries between parent and child weren't always clear. Her parents' worries could become hers to manage. Their expectations could feel inseparable from her own identity. Making independent choices sometimes meant risking their disappointment or disapproval... talk about carrying a heavy burden!

And so, despite being loved, Lena didn't feel free to be herself.

Then something happened.

As a young woman, she discovered her sexuality.

This wasn't the affectionate, tender, romantic kind of sexuality we're often encouraged to aspire to, but something far more rebellious.

She discovered the intoxicating experience of being sexually desired.

She loved being looked at. She loved being provocative. She loved knowing she could turn heads, attract attention and become somebody else's sexual fantasy.

And strangely enough, being treated like a sex object didn't make her feel less like herself. It made her feel MORE like herself.

Because for the first time, she was inhabiting an identity that didn't belong to her parents.

She wasn't the good daughter.

She wasn't the sensible girl.

She wasn't responsible for protecting anybody's feelings or preserving the family image.

She was sexual, daring, spontaneous and gloriously disobedient.

There was a cost to that, of course. Some of the men who desired her didn't respect her. And there were times when the freedom she experienced came with painful emotional consequences.

But that freedom was real to her. Precious and protected.

For Lena, being sexually desired had become a powerful expression of autonomy.

Sexuality was a tool for her to step outside the claustrophobic identity that had been created for her. It worked... until it didn't.

She entered a loving, committed relationship with a kind, dependable man who made her feel secure.

The sex was affectionate, tender and safe.

But it never quite had the electricity she'd experienced before.

She loved him, and she appreciated the security of their relationship, yet something about being somebody's beloved partner felt thwarting compared to being somebody's object of desire.

And as the years passed, the relationship began to carry responsibilities of its own that felt heavy, just like the responsibilities of managing a parent's emotions.

She became the supportive partner. The capable one. The person who helped make things happen, managed uncertainty and accommodated somebody else's ambitions.

Before long, the freedom she'd experienced as a young woman seemed like a distant memory.

And so did her libido.

Which raises a rather uncomfortable question.

And what if the answer is to do with the complicated psychological relationship between love, belonging and autonomy?

Lena is a fictionalised vignette illustrating one possible psychological pattern, not a diagnosis or an account of a particular client.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel has written extensively about the tension between our need for security and our need for erotic freedom.

In her discussion of Mating in Captivity, she explores how some people become so preoccupied with maintaining emotional connection that they struggle to remain connected to themselves.

And I think this is crucial.

For somebody whose childhood involved blurred emotional boundaries, closeness may have come to mean responsibility.

Love meant being available.

Love meant considering everybody else's feelings.

Love meant adjusting yourself so that the relationship could remain intact.

So imagine what happens when that same person enters a secure adult relationship.

How do the definitions of love get transferred over?

The relationship may be genuinely loving, yet it can also eventually activate familiar expectations of accommodation and emotional responsibility that may eventually feel deadening.

And it's difficult to feel erotically free when your attention is continually directed towards what somebody else needs.

This doesn't mean that all secure relationships inhibit desire. Nor does it prove that parental enmeshment and autonomy trauma cause particular sexual preferences.

It means we need to become curious about what emotional security actually represents to the individual.

Because sometimes being loved meant having to sacrifice being free.

Now here's where Lena's story becomes even more interesting.

Her tendency to take responsibility for others didn't necessarily feel burdensome at first.

Quite the opposite.

Helping people felt empowering.

She was capable, effective, decisive. She could make things happen.

And perhaps that was another way she experienced autonomy: by being the person who could influence outcomes.

But there is a peculiar paradox in rescuing.

The more successful you become at making yourself indispensable, the less freedom you may feel to stop.

An arrangement that began as an exciting choice can gradually become an obligation.

Research offers an interesting parallel. A 2022 study involving 1,073 women with children found that unequal household responsibilities were associated with lower sexual desire for a partner, partly through perceptions of unfairness and partner dependence.

That's not proof that rescuing causes low libido, but does raise an eyebrow (and a question).

How easy is it to experience somebody as an erotic partner when you've become responsible for holding so much of their life together?

And the bigger tragedy for Lena wasn't simply that she stopped wanting sex.

It was that, somewhere along the way, she stopped experiencing her own life as something she was free to choose.

Hypnotherapy isn't just used for smoking cessation or fear of flying (well, not when you have the right therapist!)

If I were working with Lena, I would want to understand what her sexual experiences have meant to her, what her present difficulties are telling us, and whether an old adaptation is still organising her life long after its original purpose has passed. I'd also want to enquire about who she feels she is becoming NOW, as a result of all of this.

My approach follows three principles.

Perhaps the ultimate goal isn't to stop enjoying being sexually desired.

Nor is it to become a perfectly secure, sensible woman who never needs excitement, rebellion or adventure.

Perhaps it's about no longer having to choose between belonging and autonomy.

Between being loved and being free.

Between intimacy and individuality.

Because sexual freedom is about the presence of choice.

And maybe that's what Lena was searching for all along.

Not danger.

Not objectification.

Not even sexual excitement in itself.

You can also read more about the different influences on sexual desire in my article on reviving your libido.

Because sometimes change isn't about becoming somebody new.

It's about discovering who you're becoming now, and creating a life in which that person finally has room to exist.