Lacking desire because your brain is too busy worrying about your mother and your kid's allergies and also because you've slept with the same guy for five-thousand days in row and you're in perimenopause?
Well, have I got a cure for you!
Write about sex from the point of view of the teenager you once were. You know, the first time you kissed someone really cute. The first time your boyfriend touched you just so, and your insides felt like you were jumping off a cliff even as you knew you would fly.
When I first wrote about my protagonist finally making out with the boy she'd had a crush on for years...Dudes! The husband was like, "What the--???" (In a good way.) It was the frickin' middle of the day.
When I mentioned to some friends that my book for/about teens contains sex, a few of them grimaced. To which I silently thought: Uh-oh. Not uh-oh for me, but for those friends. Peeps, your kids will soon be thinking about sex. If not doing it. A lot. (If they haven't started already.)
Like you did.
Here's a great quote from an article on Atlantic Wire:
To think that this whole major portion of life could be ignored by those who write for teens is silly and small-minded; part of the benefit and power of Y.A. fiction after all, along with sheer entertainment value, is to give teens the opportunity to consider and confront things happening in their own lives in the best way they can, and sexuality is one of those things.
In my own novel, the sex is, to borrow from the above article, "nuanced," more about the connection between two people, and the pleasures that connection can bring on many different levels. And that is-ta dum!-what makes it so damn titillating. We are not talking Shades of Grey here, people.
Anyway, my main character, Megan, eventually decides not to lose her virginity. But she's thinking she will soon, and she's looking forward to it.
Didn't we all?
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