Ups and downs of the libido

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We talk of young men with a high sex drive as stallions, yet older men with a similar libido are labelled randy old goats. Meanwhile, the young stallion — not to mention his wife — remembers libido with fondness as something that shut up shop and left the day the first child was born. Then there’s the rest of us, wondering why our sex drive is never quite on a par with what we see daily in films, the media and books.

The archetypal description of libido in fiction comes from Ted Hughes. His hero encounters Arcadian nymphette Callisto and his libido goes into overdrive: “Lust bristled up his thighs and poured into the roots of his teeth.”

And somehow lust in our teeth, frequently