Oxytocin in Menopause
Supporting Intimacy and Desire
Oxytocin is often called the bonding hormone, but during menopause, it becomes something much more personal. It influences how connected you feel to others, how your body responds to touch, how stable your mood feels, and how satisfying intimacy can be.
When oxytocin shifts during menopause, it’s not just a hormone change—it can affect emotional closeness, physical comfort, and your sense of connection to yourself and others. Understanding oxytocin can help you make sense of what you’re feeling and provide a clearer path forward.
What Oxytocin Does
Oxytocin is made in the brain, but it works throughout the body. It helps you feel connected in your relationships. It calms your nervous system, supports your body’s recovery from stress, promotes deeper sleep, and plays a meaningful role in physical intimacy and pleasure.
Because oxytocin works closely with estrogen and progesterone, the hormonal shifts of menopause can change how it feels to be touched, how connected you feel during intimacy, and sex and intimacy as a whole. If closeness feels different now, it’s not a lack of effort, care, or desire—it’s your body adjusting to a new hormonal rhythm.
How Oxytocin Shifts Can Feel
When oxytocin changes, it can show up in small shifts that can feel huge, like:
- Feeling lonely or disconnected, even when you’re not physically alone
- Feeling less connected during touch
- Feeling easily overwhelmed
- Little or no desire for sex
- Pulling back from others, even when part of you wants closeness
- Sleep is easily disturbed
These effects can feel deeply personal, but they aren’t about effort, love, or the quality of your relationships. This is your body adjusting to changing hormone levels—and it can be supported.
Sex and Oxytocin
As estrogen shifts, vaginal dryness or vaginal atrophy can develop, which can make sex uncomfortable or even painful. Combined with lower oxytocin levels, pulling away is naturally going to happen, even in the best of relationships.
This is where you may start to think something is wrong with you or your relationship. It’s not. Your body is responding to hormonal change, not a lack of attraction, effort, or care. The key is support, not pressure — so sex can start to feel good again instead of something to avoid. It’s also time to talk to your partner about what is going on, so they don’t think there’s something wrong with them.
Supporting Oxytocin Naturally
Oxytocin responds to warmth and small moments of real connection. Think gentle and consistent:
Simple touch: holding hands, cozy cuddles (pets definitely count)
Being together: walking side-by-side, talking without screens
Movement that feels good: movement that lets your body relax, like yoga and stretching
Calming your system: warm baths, deep breathing, journaling, quiet mornings, sitting outside with your face in the sun
Comforting foods: warm meals, berries, avocado, herbal tea, and yes, dark chocolate can have its place
Connection with safe people: time with folks who feel steady, supportive, and easy to be around
The goal isn’t to “fix” anything. It’s to slow down, soften, and let your body feel safe again. Connection grows in safety—not pressure.
Medical Support
There isn’t a medication that directly “fixes” oxytocin levels, but there are adequate supports:
- Estrogen therapy can make the body more responsive to oxytocin again
- Vaginal estrogen can restore lubrication and comfort
- Counseling or supportive communication work can help re-strengthen emotional closeness
It’s not about replacing something you’ve lost. It’s about supporting what your body still naturally wants to do.
Closing Thoughts
Oxytocin is the reminder that we are built for connection, comfort, and closeness. Menopause may change how connected you feel, but it does not take it away. This stage of life is an invitation to understand your body more deeply and to support your relationships—both with others and with yourself—in a new way.
With awareness, compassion, and small daily practices, you can feel connected, grounded, and confident through this transition. You are not losing yourself. You are learning your body again—and you have more support available than you may realize.
If you found something useful here, click like, subscribe to Fabulous at Forty & Beyond, and check out more at INC’s Fabulous at Forty & Beyond – The Transition and Your Hormones page!
*Health and wellness coaches engage in evidence-based, client-centered processes that facilitate and empower clients to develop and achieve self-determined, health and wellness goals. We do not diagnose, interpret medical data, prescribe or de-prescribe, recommend supplements, provide nutrition consultation or create meal plans, provide exercise prescription or instruction, consult and advise, or provide psychological therapeutic interventions or treatment.
