by We are not talking about biological fluids.
Emptiness is a state of inner emotional emptiness, lack of strength and ability for creative and active life. It would seem that sex cannot have anything to do with such feelings. Especially if intercourse was pleasant and satisfying for both partners.
However, bouts of bad mood, irritability and sadness after sex do occur. This condition is called post-coital dysphoria, or, in other words, the post-sex blues. And judging by the results of some surveys, many people experience it periodically.
Let’s figure out whether the risk of experiencing this really depends on gender .
Is it true that men suffer from post-sex emptiness more often than women?
In one study, scientists asked 1,208 men how often they felt sad and wanted to cry after sex. It turned out that 41% of respondents had ever experienced this, and 20.2% had experienced similar feelings in the past four weeks. Moreover, 3-4% of participants regularly felt sad after sex.
So, men can indeed feel empty after sex. But does this happen to women? It does, and not much less often.
In one small study of 222 young women, 32.9% of participants said they had ever experienced symptoms of postcoital dysphoria, and 10% said it had happened to them in the past month.
Another study with a similar sample found that 46% of participants had experienced a bad mood after sex at some point in their lives, and 5% had experienced it several times in the last four weeks.
An experiment involving 1,489 pairs of twins in the UK found that 3.7% of women had recently experienced postcoital dysphoria, and 7.7% of participants suffered from it constantly.
There is also one study that surveyed people of both sexes. The experiment involved 223 women and 76 men. It turned out that 91.9% of people experienced symptoms of postcoital dysphoria in the last month, and 94.3% had ever experienced this since they began to have sex .
Women were more likely to feel sad and suffer from mood swings, while men experienced decreased energy and dissatisfaction. The researchers also noted that the frequency of symptoms depended on gender: women were more likely to feel sad, mood swings, frustration, and worthlessness after sex than men.
Why do I feel empty after sex?
No one knows exactly why some people feel empty after sex. There are only a few theories.
For example, a bad mood is often associated with general psychological stress. A survey of 1,200 men showed that search-ital dysphoria was more common among participants experiencing psychological stress . This condition also more often haunted people suffering from sexual health problems.
Thus, a bad mood after sex can occur for many reasons, and in people of both sexes. Why did the myth that sex devastates men appear? In one scientific paper, scientists expressed an interesting idea that can at least partially explain this.
The authors of the study noted that in Western cultures there are stereotypes about how a man should behave during sex, what he should prefer and how he should feel during it.
A real alpha male always wants sex and gets pleasure from it. And real sex, in turn, is always penetration and orgasm. After he finishes, a man should feel that he has succeeded and achieved what he wanted, he must experience positive emotions and generally feel good.
Postcoital dysphoria breaks these rules. A man feels completely different from what he should, and this is confusing and makes him wonder if everything is normal.
Scientists have also suggested that postcoital dysphoria may be a normal variation of sexual experience. After all, there are few things in life that are absolutely and exclusively pleasant all the time. For example, socializing with friends or working out are often enjoyable, but can sometimes leave a feeling of disappointment, fatigue, and emptiness.
So if sad thoughts after sex do not happen to you very often and do not interfere with your sex life in general, you can leave everything as is. If this happens constantly, it may be due to psychological stress or lack of intimacy in the relationship. If this interferes with your life, contact a psychologist-sexologist – he will help you figure out what is the reason for the emptiness.
