You’ve just had great sex with your boyfriend. You’ve been together for three years and you’re very much in love with each other. And even though you enjoy sex with him, there’s something you’ve noticed: sometimes you feel pretty low afterwards. It only lasts half an hour or so, but there’s no mistaking the wave of sadness that washes over you. And it can be pretty disconcerting for your boyfriend. Sex is supposed to make you happy – has he done something wrong?
The medical name for this scenario is ‘post-coital dysphoria’. It means you feel depressed, anxious, agitated or even tearful after sex.
‘FEELING HOLLOW’
But surely most women curl up in a fuzz of cosy bliss after sex, don’t they? Australian psychology researcher Dr Robert Schweitzer got curious when he kept hearing about women therapy clients who said they cried after making love. They’d describe the emotion as “feeling hollow” or having a “black hole open up inside”. Some compared the feeling to “homesickness” or a “yearning for something which was missing”.
So just how common is the post-sex blues? Few people had ever really asked, it seems. Dr Schweitzer decided he’d take it upon himself to learn more about what was going on. Along with two colleagues, he found 195 female university students who were willing to fill in online questionnaires about their sex lives and relationships. They were also asked if “inexplicable tearfulness or sadness” after intercourse had been a problem at some point in their lives or over the past four weeks.
“IT’S NOT YOU DARLING – IT’S THE POST-COITAL DYSPHORIA.
It turns out that nearly half the women in the study sometimes got the post-sex blues. No less than 46 per cent said they’d felt sad after intercourse at some point in their lives, Dr Schweitzer found. And for one in twenty it had been a problem in the past four weeks
When Dr Schweitzer took a closer look at the data he learned that the women who’d experienced sadness after sex were also a little more likely to have some sexual problems, like difficulty getting aroused or reaching orgasm. But more studies are needed before researchers know for sure if the post-sex blues is really related to sexual dysfunction.
The study also found that feeling bummed after sex didn’t seem to have much to do with the relationships these women were in – women with loving, long-term partners were just as likely to feel sad after sex as women who weren’t in a committed relationship.
GO TO THE NEXT PAGE FOR MORE
from Mpasho News » Lifestyle http://ift.tt/1Qmmkku
via Mpasho Lifestyle
No comments:
Post a Comment