Having Trouble Falling Asleep After Sex? You’re Not Alone
For some women, sex before bedtime paves the way for a night of restful sleep. For others, it triggers hours of tossing and turning. Here’s why – and what to do about it.
Watch a movie – any movie! – and you’ll see couples drifting off into deep, relaxing sleep right after sex. If that’s your postcoital experience, consider yourself lucky and enjoy the blissful combination of intimacy and quality sleep. But if you find yourself wide awake after nighttime sex – even if you were drowsy beforehand – you’re not alone. Here’s why it is hard for some women to fall asleep after sex KissRussianBeauty hack and what could be going on.
Women and sleep
While studies show that women sleep less per night than men, women’s sleep tends to be of poorer quality. One reason is hormone fluctuations, which can be triggered by menstruation, pregnancy, or menopause. Dips in estrogen lead women to spend less time in REM sleep, meaning they wake up feeling less rested. Women who are mothers are also two-and-a-half times more likely to lose sleep over helping others at night and report that their sleep satisfaction doesn’t return to normal after becoming a parent for at least six years (or way longer if you ask most moms, but hey, that’s how long the study was). Add in the fact that the amount of unpaid labor – such as decision-making, information tracking, and anticipating the needs of their families 24/7 – rose an unbelievable 153% between , and is it really any surprise that women are more likely to have a complicated relationship with sleep?
In fact, women are 40% more likely to develop insomnia than men. “Women are doing incredible amounts of nurturing, caregiving, and breadwinning,” says Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed, a board-certified sleep disorders specialist at NYU Langone Sleep Medicine Associates in Garden City, New York. “And they also want to perform to the best possible expectations of themselves and their partners.” However, problems arise, says Ahmed, when we watch the news, interact online, and help kids with homework until all hours. “There are expectations that sleep should be immediately attainable, but we have almost no room in our lives – no routine, no space – for unwinding.” In other words, our habits and daily routines aren’t doing us any favors when it comes to sleep.
Why falling asleep after sex is hard for some women
Given the challenges that many women experience trying to wind down ahead of sleep, there is great interest in the impact on sleep following the complex psychological and biochemical processes that occur during sex. A 2016 review of research concluded that sexual intercourse can improve sleep for women who suffer from insomnia because intimacy produces the hormone oxytocin (the “love hormone,” which is triggered by physical closeness and orgasm) and inhibits cortisol (the “stress hormone”), thereby setting the scene for sound sleep.
In another study, 59% of women reported sleeping better after having sex with a partner. However (and this is a big however), 11% reported the opposite, which maybe isn’t surprising since engaging in sexual activity before sleep can feel to some women almost like being “shaken awake,” according to Dr. Greg Marchand, a board-certified physician in obstetrics and gynecology in Arizona, who has researched women’s sexual satisfaction and dysfunction. “Orgasm involves both the sympathetic nervous system, which reacts to dangerous or exciting stimuli, and the parasympathetic system, which is associated with a relaxed, calm state,” says Marchand. And if women don’t orgasm during sex, the nervous system remains in a state of excitement, which could further contribute to a state of wakefulness. “It’s very interesting that [orgasms] use both the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system[s].They’re systems that get you excited, as if a dangerous stimul[us] like a wolf enters the room; [it’s] your fight-or-flight mechanism, but it also uses the opposite of that to achieve orgasm. So it’s, you know, it’s a very tricky nervous system chain of events that’s going on, and it makes total sense that it sometimes causes trouble for either waking you up or putting you to sleep when you want it to do the opposite,” Marchland explains.
