The following article was written by Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow author Marnia Robinson and originally featured on PsychologyToday.com.
In 2011, UK researchers released an interesting survey of postcoital symptoms in women. It didn’t fit the standard script about how sex and orgasm transform women into glowing, satisfied beings or eager, contented lovers. Researchers noted,
“Despite a wealth of evidence from specific internet sites and forums suggesting that irritability, crying and mood swings after sex seem to be common in females and males, to date no scientific study has tried to explore the nature of the phenomenon. … Reports from female sufferers describing their condition suggest that [postcoital symptoms] can occur after sexual intercourse, both with and without orgasm.”
The research found that some ten percent of women had experienced “postcoital psychological symptoms,” or PPS. In 7.7 percent of women, the phenomenon was “persistent” (chronic). The researchers also pointed out that, “It is not unlikely that postcoital and/or postorgasmic endocrine alterations may cause symptoms of PPS in women, since a substantial amount of evidence exists proving effects of hormones on mood, depression, anxiety and so on.”
In fact, this month, a German pilot study revealed that sexual intercourse with orgasm induces a lingering cycle (“a ‘memory’—characterized by short-term neural activity resulting in long-term neuroendocrine response”) in women. Might these hormonal (prolactin) surges be one of the dominos behind the chronic mood swings reported in the UK study?
A closer look at the UK study
The UK researchers noted that “recent” PPS was strongly correlated with relationship imbalances or lack of trust, and emotional difficulties, such as stress or a history of sexual and physical abuse. Certainly, there’s no reason to doubt that relationship or other stressors indeed increase anxiety, tears and irritability.
However, for the chronic PPS sufferers, that is, the great majority of sufferers, the disatisfaction-abuse model didn’t hold up:
“While accounting for 70% of the variance in recent PPS, relationship satisfaction and previous events of physical abuse only explained 10% of the variability in persistent PPS, suggesting that there are other unknown factors that contribute to … persistent PPS.”
In our view, it’s the chronic PPS sufferers who potentially offer the most intriguing clues for understanding human sexuality. In light of the new German findings, these 7.7 percent of women could well be at one end of a bell curve in how they experience a natural neuro-endocrine postorgasm/copulation cycle (PCC).*
Cycles are normal in the body, which constantly restores homeostasis through rising and falling levels of hormones and neurotransmitters. Some cycles are programmed (sleep-wake, menstrual cycles); others occur in response to changing conditions (blood sugar levels, water levels).
A postcoital/postorgasmic cycle may be as common as a menstrual cycle, and the women’s distress merely the postcoital counterpart of severe pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). Keep in mind that PMS (once dismissed as fiction) affects up to 85 percent of women during their monthly cycles. Only some 5 percent have severe symptoms (irritability, depression, swelling). Others experience mild effects, which they may not associate with the cyclical cascade of hormonal events. Still others experience no symptoms.
Back to postcoital distress. Might the tearful, testy women be at one end of a spectrum, with symptom-free women at the other end? What if women in the middle simply haven’t correlated milder symptoms with sexual activity? What if the effects are so subtle in some women that they automatically project them onto a partner, and blame him for being irritating, insensitive, more selfish or less attentive? Or what if some women experience neurochemical ripples later in an extended cycle, such that they can’t easily make the connection?
The UK postcoital survey is the first research of its kind, so we simply don’t know the answers. As the lead researcher said privately, there’s “plenty more to discover.” Already, however, it may be time to stop assuming that mood swings during this postcoital cycle are automatically “psychological” (due to issues requiring counseling) or “pathological” (abnormal), and consider the possibility that they’re more often physiological and perfectly normal in many women because they are associated with a postcoital cycle.