Is there a biological reason for men to feel sleepy after orgasm? My girlfriend says there is some scientific basis for this. If so, is there any hypothesized rationale for this occurrence in terms of human evolution? –Chuck R., Chicago
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Before we drag Darwin into it, Chuck, we’d better make sure we have a genuine phenomenon on our hands. It’s true everybody thinks men get sleepy after sex. Pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey wrote, “A marked quiescence of the total body is the most widely recognized outcome of orgasm.” One might object that the most widely recognized outcome of orgasm is the one you have to put diapers on. Still, when Kinsey goes on about “a [postcoital] calm, a peace, a satisfaction with the world,” coupled in some quarters with a desire to set fire to tobacco, most men and, for that matter, most women know what he’s talking about. It’s just that whereas women see this tranquil state as a chance to cuddle and talk, guys tend to look at it as a cure for insomnia, sometimes literally. When a man over 40 talks about trying to sleep with women, he’s not necessarily using a figure of speech.
The researchers concede that the experimental design was open to criticism, e.g., on the grounds that it was incredibly stupid. Suppose you were one of the male subjects on night three. Having on the previous night been subjected to a severe case of cyanotic spheroids, you’re now lying there postejaculatively in a pool of … well, let’s say you’re in a state of disarray. In comes some guy in a white lab coat to roll you over and extract a hot-wired turkey baster from your sphincter ani. Does this put you in a state of mind conducive to sleep? On the contrary, you’re expecting them to tell your folks to come take you home from summer camp. So maybe these results shouldn’t be taken with 100 percent seriousness. But right now they’re all we’ve got.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
