For Luciana, desire is not something a woman should have to maintain for someone else. It is something she can learn to understand, nurture, and claim as her own. As a desire coach and host of Intimacy for Working Moms, she explores the complex relationship between sexuality, motherhood, long-term partnerships, and the expectations women carry. Her work addresses a question many women quietly ask: what happens when desire changes, even when love remains?

Luciana’s perspective is shaped by personal experience. Having experienced a loss of libido in both her first marriage and her current relationship, she understands how desire can evolve over time. The death of her father in 2024 prompted her to reconsider her purpose and inspired her to help women navigate these challenges, despite her initial fear of judgement.

Through conversations about responsive desire, sensuality, tantra, and conscious intimacy, Luciana encourages women to reconnect with their bodies without making pleasure another obligation. She also challenges couples to approach consent with curiosity, communicate openly, and recognise that intimacy can take many forms.

In this conversation, Luciana reflects on the stigma surrounding female pleasure, the realities of sustaining desire, and the importance of listening to what the body wants. Her message is a reminder that lasting connection begins not with the pressure to perform desire, but with the freedom to discover it for yourself.

A Calling to Help Women

Losing your father in 2024 inspired you to make a deeper impact through your work. How did that experience shape your decision to help women reconnect with their sexuality, despite the fear of being judged?

Luciana: After losing my father to an aggressive cancer in 2024, I got a shock of realization of “what the f*&k am I doing with my life?” And it’s not to say that anything else in my life was wrong. I had and still have a meaningful career, a beautiful child, and a fulfilling partnership with my husband, but I felt a greater calling for something more. One afternoon, while sitting on my back deck, I received what I can best describe as a whisper from the universe that I needed to help women with their sexuality.

And my first reaction to that was, “No Way! What will others think, what will my coworkers think, and mostly, what will my mom think?” But the calling was so clear that I wrote it down immediately. I marinated on it for a few days, and then I realized that given my journey, I actually did have something to say that could help high-achieving women and working moms with desire issues in their marriages or long-term relationships. 

When Desire Disappears

You experienced a loss of libido in both your first marriage and your current relationship. What did these experiences teach you about sexual desire, and why can it change even when love and attraction are still present?

Luciana: This question directly addresses the key to my approach as a desire coach. Let me start off by saying that what we all feel at the beginning of a romantic partnership is called NRE, or “new relationship energy.” Essentially, it’s a cocktail of dopamine and other chemicals in your brain that make you want to bond with (and have sex with) your partner ALL THE TIME when things are new. On average, NRE lasts between 3 months and 3 years. I’m lucky that my NRE usually lasts about 2 years. But after that, we get back into a steady state where stress, work, kids, and other responsibilities wear on us.

It doesn’t matter WHO our partner is; this will happen. And if you have kids within the NRE period, post-partum only makes the transition down from NRE even worse. So we need to have the knowledge, the tools, and awareness to navigate this transition so we can make the conscious choice to keep desire alive in our long-term relationships. It is not our partner’s job or responsibility to keep our desire, interest, or sexual energy up for them. That’s our job.

Much of the spontaneous desire we felt at the beginning needs to transition for most women into responsive desire, or desire that is achieved as a response to some stimulus, be it a relaxing massage, bath, or walk in nature, or erotic poetry, film, or other erotic scenarios. It is up to us to find, cultivate, and nurture our own sense of desire, and then we share that with our partner when and how we choose to.

The Pleasure Double Standard

Why is female sexual curiosity still judged differently from male sexual curiosity, and what would a genuinely sex-positive culture look like?

Luciana: This is a fantastic question, and first I think it is important to affirm that in our culture female sexual curiosity is still judged. So recognizing that this inequality still exists is important. Why does it exist? Broadly, it’s the historical root of the patriarchy in our society and the underlying belief that women’s sexuality should be suppressed, quieted, or not talked about. When we are moms, it is even worse. The societal view is that our sexuality, our desires, and our identity as a sexual being no longer exist because the identity of mom is not compatible with or supersedes this part of ourselves.

Here I want to say that this is absolutely not true. Too often, burdened with responsibilities of work and motherhood, it’s too easy for women to feel that their sexuality is not important and that their desires don’t matter. But I’m here to remind us that they do. Our sexuality, or erotic vitality, is our spark of joy, juiciness, and creativity. It energizes us. Sexual energy is life force energy. Losing it, feeling like we don’t have it, or not cultivating it can make life feel stale.

So a genuinely sex-positive culture would be one where women aren’t shamed for having sexual desires, interests, or curiosities at all. Women would also be more connected to their bodies and their pleasure and be free to communicate with their partner(s) about how they like to be touched or engaged sensually or sexually. Women’s pleasure and women’s desire should be seen as equally important as male pleasure and desire. We need a rebalancing of the societal narrative from one that is male-centered to one that is more woman-centered.

Motherhood and Sexual Identity

Between work, parenting, and everyday responsibilities, many women struggle to make space for pleasure. What practical changes can help busy mothers reconnect with their sexuality without feeling that it is another task on their to-do list?

Luciana: Much of my podcast, Intimacy for Working Moms, focuses on this issue. I share simple tools and techniques that I learned from my experience in tantra that women can bring to their partners to enhance intimacy and connection. Most of these tools are non-sexual and just focus on getting women out of their heads and into their bodies.

For example, one of my favorite techniques to teach is the touch for your own pleasure exercise. This is a simple technique that takes 10 minutes or less and is intended to decrease the pressure and anxiety around sex, allowing us to drop into our bodies and enjoy sensual touch. I teach several simple methods like this, but in order for it to not feel like another thing on the to-do list, there is some mental work involved. And that is having women take a realistic approach to how much sex or how often they want to be connecting with their partners. And once they find something that feels good for them, the techniques help them ease into that.

This is all a part of cultivating responsive desire and proactively making space for pleasure on our calendars. Even if sex doesn’t happen, doing a sensual touch activity or an eye-gazing exercise will help the couple to connect intimately and can enhance emotional connection and empathy. All of this is key because it is important for us to feel connected emotionally, physically, and spiritually, and it nurtures our relationship and connection in the long term.

It’s the best feeling to wake up next to your partner the next day knowing that you had a deeply connective night with them.

Consent and Feeling Safe

Consent is central to the conscious sexuality spaces you help create. How can couples become more comfortable discussing boundaries, desires, and uncertainty while making sure both partners feel safe and respected?

Luciana: Consent is so important. And when I say consent, it’s not what most of us learned in school or from our parents that “no means no.” When we take the broad definition of consent, we are looking for that feeling within ourselves that is a fully embodied ‘yes,” or hell yes! And how does that feel different from a “no” or a “maybe”? One of the enlightening things I’ve learned in my tantra journey that my husband and I use is that “a no is a yes to something else,” meaning that if I’m a “no” to something, then where can we find our yes and play within the boundaries of the yes space together? When we are clear on the yes and the no, then we can be fully free to play in that sexual playground of “yes.” Also, critical for long-term relationships is that consent changes daily.

An older couple once taught us that “all agreements are for today.” So in marriage, it can be easy to say something like, “Oh, my wife/husband likes it when I go down on them, so I’m going to do it tonight to get them in the mood so we can have sex.” That’s not how it works. Just because I enjoyed receiving oral sex last week or last night to get in the mood doesn’t mean that’s what I’ll want today. The key is to check in with each other. Communicate. How are you feeling today?

What is your body feeling today? Where is your mind, your spirit? And then you can come to that embodied yes or hell yes to enjoy intimate time with your partner. If today I just want to cuddle, then that’s where we’ll play today.

Tomorrow, let’s check in again to see where we are. That’s why it’s so important to expand our sexual and intimacy repertoires so we don’t just fall into limited options of  “let’s just have sex” or “oral sex.” There are so many more ways to be together physically and intimately, ranging from sensual to sexual. That’s why I encourage both non-sexual techniques and sexual exploration as a way to find new fun things to do with your partner. For example, it can be as simple as going to a burlesque show together or, for the very curious, adventurous, and open-minded, attending a full-on sex party or tantric temple party. There is such a broad range of activities, events, and spaces to explore to keep yourself and your relationship feeling fun and alive!

The Truth About Desire

After everything you have experienced, what is the one truth about desire you know today that you wish you had understood ten years ago?

Luciana: That my desire is mine to cultivate, nourish, and create. It doesn’t depend on my partner. Rather, I share it with my partner when, where, and how I choose.

I own and tend to my desire over time, monitor how it changes, and communicate this clearly to whoever my present partner may be.

Editor Note 

We are taught to associate intimacy with performance, to measure connection by frequency, and to interpret changing desire as a sign that something has gone wrong. But desire is not a contract, nor is it a fixed state we must work tirelessly to maintain. It shifts with our bodies, our responsibilities, our experiences, and the seasons of our lives.

What Luciana’s perspective invites us to consider is not simply how to keep desire alive, but how to make room for it without turning pleasure into another obligation. That distinction matters, particularly for women whose identities have become entangled with caring for everyone else. Intimacy becomes richer when curiosity replaces expectation and consent remains an ongoing conversation.

“Your desire is not a debt to be paid. It is a part of you worth coming home to.”