QUEENSLAND, Australia — Having sex may feel like a badge of honor for many men, but for others, it’s an act that, once finished, brings about intense feelings of sadness. In a new study, researchers for the first time ever have identified that women aren’t the only ones who can suffer from this emotional tidal wave in the bedroom, better known as post coital dysphoria, or PCD.
PCD occurs when a person has, for all intents and purposes, enjoyable consensual sex with a partner, but is met with “inexplicable feelings of tearfulness, sadness, or irritability” afterwards.
Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology say PCD had only previously been recognized in women, but after a survey of 1,208 men from numerous countries — including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia — it’s clear that the condition is more common among males than one might expect. In fact, four in 10 participants recalled suffering from PCD symptoms at some point in their lives.
“Forty-one percent of the participants reported experiencing PCD in their lifetime with 20 percent reporting they had experienced it in the previous four weeks,” says co-author Joel Maczkowiack, a masters student at the university’s school of psychology, in a release.
As many as 4 percent of the individuals, who voluntarily participated in the online questionnaire via postings on social media and psychological research websites, said they battle PCD symptoms regularly. Men acknowledged that statements such as “I don’t want to be touched and want to be left alone,” or “I feel unsatisfied, annoyed and very fidgety. All I really want is to leave and distract myself from everything I participated in,” applied to them when thinking about times they’d made love. Others described feeling “emotionless and empty” even though the sex was otherwise satisfactory.
“It is commonly believed that males and females experience a range of positive emotions including contentment and relaxation immediately following consensual sexual activity,” says co-author Robert Schweitzer, a professor at the university.
Schweitzer says that research has shown that couples that continue engaging in acts of intimacy after sex, such as talking, kissing, or cuddling, feel more satisfied in their relationships and strengthen the bond they share. Conversely, the emotional rollercoaster that comes with PCD could magnify any conflict in a relationship and wind up causing a bond between two people to break even further.
“The first three phases of the human sexual response cycle – excitement, plateau, and orgasm – have been the focus of the majority of research to date,” Professor Schweitzer said. “Yet previous studies on the PCD experience of females showed that a similar proportion of females had experienced PCD on a regular basis. As with the men in this new study, it is not well understood. We would speculate that the reasons are multifactorial, including both biological and psychological factors.”
The authors say the findings show sexual experiences for men could be more diverse than believed, and are important for clinicians to consider when working with men who may experience such symptoms.
The full study was published July 24, 2018 in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy.
I just realized that the condom I pulled off had a big hole!
Not only sadness, but wrist soreness as well.
“I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of
love…Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness
followed. Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly.
Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women,
er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid
women, Mandrake…but I do deny them my essence.”
~General Jack D. Ripper
4 in 10 can’t believe they were so desperate they just nailed the pig lying next to them.
Because they just blew their loads. ????
Because it probably wasn’t that good and they know from their experience how the woman will make them pay emotionally.
Maybe they sobered up?
Because they realize how much bitching they are going to have to endure until next month’s ration of one uninspired sex event.
Could it be that too many women act like they are doing the man a favor by having sex? That’s very common, especially married women, and is not something that men ever do. After the lousy sex, the man says to himself “is that all there is?” and wishes he could escape. Also, if the man is married and the thrill is gone, the sex is pretty bad or at best pedestrian, and the man rightly feels terrible from being trapped, especially if he’s the main provider since he will get truly screwed over in a divorce. Of course a lot of women probably feel similar things. Frankly, I think marriage is an unnatural institution that has been used to strip men of their freedom and, in recent times, their masculinity. But there is some good news, since nowadays it is easy to find women, including “married” women, for sex. So why should a man get married and take on that emotional prison and the ridiculous financial burden of alimony when the divorce comes as it will in the vast majority of marriages?
Men feel sad after sex because, once again, the experience didn’t meet his expectations and he’s STUCK with this woman who’s a dreadfully bad lover…as women from western industrialized (feminist) countries ALWAYS ARE…miserable in bed. So he’s miserable, too. And she won’t go away. BTW you don’t pay a prostitute for sex…you pay her to go away and never come back. In a post-feminist world, a man’s sex drive is a curse. Women just aren’t worth all the trouble.
That’s because we’re all alone
with aged sex strat to be more enjoy by women than by men
so 4 out of 10 just realise “I SHOULD HAVE CHARGE HER!!!”
Is this typical of Aussies?
I have rarely seen such anger in a series of threads.
maybe men are depressed when they realize, again, that the sex act doesn’t mean much when all they did was use the woman as a receptacle because they have no feelings for her. They just wasted their time with someone they barely know and don’t particularly want to get to know.
That initial passion is an emotional deadend.
Imagine how the womaan must feel when she realizes she has to, once again, thoroughly cleanse herself of this stranger for whom she has no feelings apart from a sated lust.
If you love her out of bed as well as in bed, you will hold her closely all night. Not sad, but like a victory lap. It will be not dysphoria, but euphoria.
this happens every time I wack off to tranny porn!
I too sometimes feel bad after satisfying sex…thankfully there’s nobody else around to see it…
Lol! Thank you. I need that..
Maybe now because we call it “sex”, and no longer “love”,