Ellaise

I'm 44. The sex drive started slipping a couple of years ago and got bad enough that my boyfriend asked me about it gently a while back. That was the conversation that made me actually try to do something.

I bought two supplements. Took them as directed. Neither one did anything I could feel. After the second one I figured this was just how I was now and stopped looking. Didn't want to keep paying $40 a month to be disappointed.

Got Ellaise after I read about it somewhere.

The shift is small but it's real. I've started getting flickers of wanting again, mostly at night, sometimes when I'm not expecting it. Last week I actually reached for him first, which I haven't done in I can't even tell you how long. He didn't make a big deal out of it but I know he noticed.

So. Something's happening.

My libido came back like a tidal wave. My husband is still adjusting.

It was gone for about six years. Properly gone. The kind of gone where I'd accepted it and stopped looking. Started Ellaise last spring because a woman I know wouldn't drop it.

A few weeks in I had a thought about my husband in the middle of the afternoon and laughed out loud at my desk because I genuinely couldn't remember the last time my brain had done that on its own. Then it started happening more. Then it wasn't just thoughts, I'd actually look at him across the kitchen and feel something. His arms, mostly. I hadn't noticed his arms in maybe a decade.

The first time I reached for him at night I think I startled both of us. He's the one who used to initiate everything and I'd find a reason to be too tired. Now I'm the one waking him up in the morning. Last weekend I asked if we could do something on a Tuesday, which we never used to do, and he made the kind of face you make when something good is happening that you don't entirely trust yet.

The orgasms are sharper than they were even before all this started. I'm 54 and they're better than they were at 40. I don't really know what to do with that information except enjoy it.

The other thing I'll say is I'm getting wet without effort again. I'd forgotten that even used to happen on its own. I had to look up if that was a normal thing to come back because I genuinely couldn't remember.

My husband and I joke that menopause stole my personality and replaced it with a woman who really likes cardigans. The libido was the first thing to go. By like, a lot. I told my sister last year that if a Hemsworth showed up at my door I'd offer him a snack and send him on his way.

Tried the gummies. Tried the powders. Tried a thing my friend swore by that smelled like a barn. My GYN put me on testosterone cream which did help my body feel less like a sandbox but the wanting part was still on permanent vacation.

A friend mentioned Ellaise at brunch. I bought it from the parking lot before I even drove home, that's how desperate I am at this point. Took it for about three weeks before anything registered.

Then random sexy thoughts started showing up in my day. Standing at the sink, driving to work, whatever. Stuff I hadn't thought about in years. I caught myself actually looking at my husband in the kitchen one morning, like really looking. And I was getting wet again without it being a whole production.

Something switched back on.

Anyway. Buying another bottle.

I'm 49 and three years into peri. Somewhere in the first year of it I stopped feeling sexy. I'd catch myself in the mirror getting out of the shower and look away. I'd lost weight, gained different weight, my skin felt different, my body didn't seem to belong to me. I hated getting naked in front of my husband. When he tried to touch me I'd find a reason to be doing something else. It wasn't about him. I just didn't want to be seen.

I started Ellaise last March.

The sexual thoughts came back first, in small ways. Looking at my husband when he walked out of the shower, which I hadn't done in I don't know how long. Then I noticed I was looking at myself differently too.

I feel more confident. I'm wearing things I'd stopped wearing. I'm walking differently. I enjoy getting dressed now, watching how clothes fit on me, taking my time with it. I'm wearing perfume again. I'm catching my reflection in store windows when I walk past. I let my husband see me when I'm getting changed, and I let him look. I bought lingerie last month for the first time in I don't know how many years and I bought it more for me than for him. My body feels like mine again.

Sex has changed completely. I want it. I'm wet without trying and the orgasms are the real ones. Last month my husband told me I looked at him a certain way across the kitchen and he didn't know what to do with it. I knew exactly what way he meant.

I feel like a woman my husband would want to sleep with. More than that, I feel like a woman I'd want to sleep with.

I'm 56 and three years past my last period. Sex drive started winding down at maybe 51 and was effectively gone by 54. I am a person who knows what she wants, and I wanted that part of myself back. It wasn't about my husband. It was about me.

Tried a couple of supplements over the years. One was a mushroom blend, the other I genuinely don't remember. Neither did anything I could feel. By the time I got to Ellaise I was mostly out of patience.

Here's what's different. I think about sex now. Not all the time, but it crosses my mind during the day in a way it hasn't in years. I bought a new vibrator last month, which I'd given away to a friend at one point because I figured I was done. And the orgasms when I do have them are sharper, more like they used to be, instead of the watered-down version I'd resigned myself to.

That's worth what I'm paying for it.

For about four years before I tried Ellaise, my libido had been completely gone. Not low. Gone. The classic line about Jason Momoa walking into the bedroom and me yawning is basically what my husband and I joked about, except it wasn't really a joke. I'd genuinely lost the ability to feel sexual interest in any direction. It wasn't him, it wasn't anyone, it was a whole part of my brain that had gone dark.

I've been taking Ellaise for about eight months now.

The thing that's hardest to explain is how much of this lives in my head, not in my body. The desire is back. I mean really back. I'll be doing something completely unrelated, paying a bill or driving, and my brain will produce a sexual thought all on its own. That hadn't happened in years and I'd forgotten how much background noise it actually was when I was a normal-functioning person. I'd fantasize again sometimes when I was falling asleep. I'd notice attraction to actors I was watching on TV instead of the screen being just a screen.

The horny-teenager comparison feels too strong for me, I'm not climbing the walls, but I'm definitely a person who wants again. I think about sex during the day. I think about my husband specifically. I look at him sometimes and feel the kind of feeling I'd assumed was just over for me.

The sex is good too, the physical stuff works, the orgasms are real. But the part I'd been mourning was the wanting itself. I have it back.

I don't usually do this kind of thing. I'm writing it because something a stranger wrote a year ago is part of why I gave Ellaise a try, so I figure I owe somebody.

I'm 49. The libido went somewhere around 46 and never wrote back. I'm someone who used to like sex a lot. That part of my life closing without my permission was hard to make peace with, and after a while I stopped trying to and just got on with things.

I'd been on HRT for over a year. Estrogen patch, progesterone, the whole protocol. It helped my sleep, my joints, the brain fog. Did very little for the libido. My doctor floated testosterone and I didn't want to go down another road of bloodwork and adjustments.

Started Ellaise in late summer. I almost stopped after the first bottle because I wasn't sure anything was happening.

Then I noticed I was actually present during sex with my husband instead of mentally checking out. That was the first thing. The wanting didn't come back like a switch. It came back as me not leaving my own body when we were trying.

I'm still on it.

I'm 46 and peri started hitting me hard around 43. The libido thing was bad but the part that I really hated was the numbness. Sex stopped feeling like anything. My husband would touch me where it used to count and I'd just feel pressure, no signal. Trying to masturbate was pointless, like the wiring had been cut. I'd had a really good sexual relationship with my own body for over twenty years and then I didn't.

For a while it actually got worse than numb. His hands on me started to feel almost unpleasant, not because of him but because my body had stopped knowing what to do with the input. I'd find myself shifting away from his touch and then feeling guilty about shifting away. Sex was something I was doing to maintain the marriage, not something I was participating in. I'd lie there and wait for it to be over and try to figure out when it had become that.

Ellaise has been about ten months for me now.

I can feel things again. That's the simplest way to say it. My husband's hands, his mouth, my own hand, all of it registers. I'm wet without having to work at it, which I'd forgotten was even a thing that used to happen on its own. The orgasms come on their own too, and they're real, not the watery little versions I'd resigned myself to. Sex went from a thing I was performing to a thing I was actually inside of.

The libido part has caught up. I think about sex during the day. I want it instead of agreeing to it. I look at my husband across a room and feel something instead of nothing. Last week I initiated on a Tuesday afternoon when the kids were at school, which is a thing I would have called impossible a year ago.

I have my body back. The one I'd had a good twenty-year run with before peri took it from me.

I'm 46. Two kids, full time job, the whole thing. Peri started maybe two years ago and the sex drive went first. My husband and I have been together since college and we used to be good. Then I just stopped wanting it. Not because of him. I'd lay there at night and feel nothing where there used to be something.

What I tried before this: maca, two rounds of bioidentical pellets that cost a fortune, a gel from my doctor, more vitamin D than a person should take. The pellets did something for like six weeks then nothing. Everything else, nothing.

Ellaise is what's working for me.

A few sexual thoughts have come back. Not a lot. More than zero, which is where I was for a long time. And I stopped dreading bedtime. I don't exactly look forward to it but I don't mind anymore, and going from quietly bracing every night to just not minding is something for me.

I'll keep taking it.

The thing I want to tell other women about isn't really the libido itself. It's what came back to my marriage when the libido came back.

My husband and I had been together 24 years when peri hit me at 47. I went from a person who initiated sex to a person who flinched when he touched my shoulder. I'd cry afterward sometimes, in the bathroom, because I knew he could feel me pulling away and I didn't know how to stop doing it. He never made it a big thing. He was patient, which I'm grateful for, and also which made it harder because there was nothing to fight about. We were just slowly becoming roommates and we both knew it.

I started Ellaise just over a year ago.

The libido has come back in the ways I think you're hoping it would. I want sex again. I think about it during the day. The orgasms are real and the physical part works, all of that.

But here's what I actually want to say. We talk again. We touch each other in the kitchen for no reason. He puts his hand on my back when he walks past me and I lean into it instead of stiffening. We had a slow Sunday morning last month where we didn't even have sex, we just stayed in bed and talked for two hours, and I cried a little because I'd forgotten what that felt like. Sex with him isn't a transaction I'm performing anymore. It's something we do together because we both want to.

I got my marriage back.

I'm not really sure how to write this so I'll just try.

I'm 45 and I've probably been in peri since 42 or 43, looking back. The change in my libido was the part that scared me the most. Sex used to be something I really enjoyed and looked forward to. Then I started feeling almost nothing during it, and after a while I started avoiding it because the difference between how it used to feel and how it feels now was making me sad.

My husband has been kind about it. That somehow makes it worse. I'd rather be fighting about it than seeing him try to be okay with not being touched.

I tried a couple of things over the past year and a half. Some adaptogen blend, a pelvic floor program, an herbal thing my friend recommended. I think they all helped a little with general stress but nothing reached the actual problem. I'd already started telling myself this might just be permanent.

Ellaise was the next thing I tried. I'm not going to claim it's a miracle, I don't know what it is. What I can tell you is that I've started feeling something again during sex. Not full-on arousal but a sensation, a little warmth, where there had been nothing for a long time. The first time it happened I almost held my breath because I didn't want it to go away.

I haven't told my husband I'm taking anything. I want to see what happens for another month or two before I say anything to him.

For about five years in my early fifties I had no sensation in my clitoris. None. I'd try to masturbate and it was like rubbing nothing. My libido was gone, my orgasms when I could get there were faded little things that weren't worth the trouble. I'd been a person who used to enjoy sex very much, and that woman was just gone.

A little over a year on Ellaise has changed that.

I'll talk about the physical side first because that's what I notice most. I can feel things again. I can feel my husband's mouth, my own hand, the difference between fabric and skin, all of it. I'm not sure how to explain that to someone who hasn't lost it, but if you've lost it you'll know what I mean. I'm wet without working at it. Sex doesn't hurt anymore.

The orgasms are better than they were even before peri. I had one a few weeks ago that I'd describe as the kind I used to read about and assume other women were exaggerating. My husband asked if I was okay afterward. I had to laugh because what was I going to say, I'm great, I just had the orgasm of my fifties.

The libido is back too. I think about sex during the day. I want it. I initiate. But what I tell my friends about, when this comes up, is the sensation. That's the thing I had stopped believing would come back.

I'm 47, peri since 44. Libido didn't just drop, it ghosted me. Tried maca, ashwagandha, two different libido gummies, a $94 tincture from a naturopath that tasted like dirt. Nothing worked. I'd see ads for this stuff and laugh.

Bought Ellaise because my coworker wouldn't shut up about it. Took it for 10 days, felt nothing, was already drafting the "told you so."

Then last weekend we were watching a movie and I caught myself looking at my husband's hands. Just looking. And I had this little flicker. Like, oh. there she is. Not fireworks. Not jumping him. Just a thought that came from MY body for the first time in years.

I went to the bathroom and almost cried.

Idk if it's the supplement or placebo. I genuinely don't care anymore. Something is happening and I'm not scaring it away.