Sexuality
Over 40% Of People Cry After Sex — Here’s Why
Sex is always emotional, and it’s time to let it all out.
There are three phases of the sexual response: excitement, plateau, and orgasm. But, as some of us would admit, there’s also a fourth part where you can’t hold your emotions back.
Why do you feel like crying after sex? And what can you do about it? Those are the two questions we are going to be addressing today.
If you, like myself, have found yourself crying after an orgasm, you’ve probably experienced some confusion and perhaps shame for having such mixed emotions. After all, crying your eyes out after experiencing an orgasm isn’t expected, even when the sex was terrible.
Crying after sex is actually a thing:
When this becomes a repetitive pattern, it’s called Post-Coital Dysphoria, or PCD, and it’s characterized by having satisfactory sexual coitus, followed by an overwhelming feeling of sadness.
Maybe, you’re already aware of what’s triggering that physical response of sorrow. Trauma, abuse, feelings of guilt, and/or a negative relationship with sex can easily cause you to start crying for “no reason” after getting laid.
But, do you know this can happen to virtually everyone? Though women are more susceptible to having post-coital dysphoria, men can also experience the blues after peaking.
Has this happened to you? It has happened to me, and everything began after my idea of sex changed for good.
Why do I cry after making love:
I know it might sound like a cliche, but a highly traumatic experience caused me to start crying after sex. As I’ve written about before, I’m a survivor of sexual abuse.
When something like that happens to a person, no matter how much time has passed or how much help you’ve received, specific triggers can make you go back to that exact moment.
Healing from abuse requires a lot of patience, therapy, and self-care. Even so, a year later, when I felt “fully recovered,” I decided to start dating again.
Of course, I wasn’t taking things lightly. I took the time to measure the person I was with to prevent myself from being involved in a similar situation again.
Looking back, sexual abuse taught me to take care of myself in a way that I didn’t even consider necessary before because I didn’t feel the need to protect myself from abusers. I was oblivious to how naive I was for years.
Yet, this new person I was dating, who happens to be my husband now, checked all the boxes. Not only is he the most self-aware person I have ever met, but he is also caring, loving, and kind — three personality traits that I previously didn’t care too much about when dating someone.
As I was extra-careful, it’s no coincidence that our relationship started as a long-distance fling. What could go wrong with having sex over the phone? I thought at that time. The surprising thing was that every time we had virtual sex, I started crying after having an orgasm.
What the hell? The scenario was completely different, I was in control of everything that was happening, and yet every time I came, even by myself, I started weeping.
Could the abuse ruin my sexual mojo forever?
Time after time, I remember asking myself, “how could I be so stupid to put myself in such a vulnerable position?” Sexual abuse made me feel defeated, as I thought I should know better… But, I shouldn’t have. That wasn’t my fault, and It took me three years to accept that.
After every single orgasm, I found myself lying alone on my bed, crying in a fetal position, being comforted over the phone by a man I didn’t even know. Fortunately, he did have the tools and the patience to help me overcome that trauma.
The point of sharing my story with you is to tell you this:
If something like this has happened to you and you’re wondering if crying after sex is a response to trauma, the answer is a resounding yes. After sexual abuse, there are multiple feelings of guilt, shame, and insecurity that can represent an obstacle for you to reconnect with your sexual energy.
Nevertheless, that’s completely normal, it has a solution, and you’ll overcome this in due time. There’s nothing wrong with you, and you deserve to have a partner that can help you through this.
On the other hand, if your partner is crying after sex, you can make a tremendous difference by listening, paying attention, and not forcing anything on them. They need some time to heal and all the support they can get. Also, it has nothing to do with you or your sexual performance, so please don’t make it about yourself.
Is crying after sex a good thing?
We tend to associate sex with success and positive emotions. Usually, consensual sex fills us with satisfaction and excitement. That is why sex is socially considered an accomplishment.
In that sense, sobbing after climax can “ruin the mood,” especially when you’re dating someone new or having fun with a random stranger. So, what can you do to prevent this from happening again?
Well, there’s not an immediate solution. PCD is associated with depression, trauma and sometimes acts as a release of unrelated psychological stress.
That’s why you can find yourself crying after sex because of something random that’s dragging you down. The thing is, our brain is more than happy to trick us.
Think, for example, about the contradictory brain reaction that makes you want to bite into or squeeze something you find incredibly adorable.
That feeling is triggered by an overwhelming amount of dopamine released by our brains in the presence of something cute like a baby, a cat, or a chubby little puppy with cute smelly paws, the fluffiest belly, and a tiny, little pink nose… to each their own, right?
Anyhow, that momentary hormonal lack of balance pushes our brain to create a dimorphous expression in which our aggressiveness and protective instincts come to the rescue to pull us out of the cuteness vacuum.
So, why do I get emotional after sex:
In this study, more than 45% of the women surveyed claimed to have experienced PCD at some time during their active sexual life. Over 5% of them reported having cried after sex in the previous weeks. It is safe to say that PCD is prevalent in women.
However, boys cry too.
Focused only on the male population, another study on a sample population of more than 1,200 men found similar results to their female counterparts. With 41% affirmative answers, almost half of the male participants indicated they had cried after sex at least once in their lives.
Also, an impressive 20% indicated that their last episode of post-orgasm blues occurred less than a month ago. It is also noteworthy that 4% of the participants affirmed that PCD was a part of their regular sexual history.
Why do I cry after sex?
Multiple factors can cause a person to get emotional after sex. It is mainly due to psychological causes that can range from an unhealthy attachment style, bonding problems while growing up, and issues with your sex image or identity.
It can also be a symptom of a relationship’s crisis, or as I mentioned earlier, a response to trauma. In some way, PCD is an unstoppable release of tension that creeps up on you when you allow yourself to feel vulnerable around someone else.
The silver lining is that PCD reminds us that, after all, sex is very much emotional, whether we like it or not.
What to do the next time you cry after sex?
I am a firm believer in psychological therapy and the uncomfortable journey we all have to undertake to get to know ourselves. If PCD has become an unavoidable part of your sex life, try this:
- Make a thoughtful analysis of your relationship with sex: Be honest and try to track when it started to happen.
- Talk about your feelings with your partner: Explain what is going on inside your head when this sudden sadness overtakes you. If there is something that’s triggering you, let them know so you can avoid it together.
- Work on yourself: Whether it’s psychological therapy, perhaps with a sexologist, or a professional counselor can help you find the keys and possible solutions to cope with your emotions.
- Embrace your feelings: That sadness is there for a reason, and the best way to overcome it is to have an internal dialogue with those feelings to understand their origin and the role they’re fulfilling.
- Practice some rigorous self-care to reaffirm your sexual identity: You deserve to receive and give pleasure. Go ahead and have as much fun and masturbation as you need before jumping into bed with another person. Work on your self-confidence, and give yourself the time to process everything.
What does crying after sex mean?
The answer to that varies from person to person.
After learning about PCD, we can all agree that we are very focused on how to get laid, thus neglecting other aspects of sex. It is well accepted that making our sexual partners climax credits us as skillful lovers. Yet, we are emotionally disconnected as a whole.
Like it or not, sex is always connected with the emotional plane. Sometimes we sleep with a lot of people as if we had something to prove. We say to ourselves we do it just “for fun,” and in the end, we keep coming back to the idea of belonging to something bigger, something like a relationship.
Having a healthy attachment style will always push us to find a fulfilling relationship. PCD reminds us that there’s an underlying emotional world that we shouldn’t be so scared of diving into as adults.
Is crying after sex a good thing?
It probably is, and in fact, it’s pretty common. Now, if you feel like taking some time out of the singles market, you have every right to take control over your sexuality.
If this is happening to your partner, don’t freak out. It likely doesn’t have anything to do with you, and, yes, you can make a difference. An honest, emotional, and deep conversation can open the door for both of you to heal, perhaps in complementary ways.
Boys do cry.
But only when they’re mature enough to accept that not allowing themselves to do so is emotionally crippling BS.
