Having post-coital blues? Psychiatrists say you’re not alone

Sex feels good, and sadness does not. Sometimes, however, the two experiences collide. The depression link was what New York-based psychiatrist Richard A Friedman ran with when he started prescribing anti-depressants to patients complaining of the post sex blues. “Prozac and its cousins, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly interfere with sexual functioning to some degree,” he wrote for the Times.

“I thought that if I could somehow modulate my patients’ sexual response, make it less intense, it might blunt the negative emotional state afterward,” he wrote, concluding, “Sex may be the most physical of acts, but depression can be physical, too.” Post-sex feelings of sadness, clinically known as post-coital dysphoria, is a largely unexplained phenomenon. In a 2015 study, researchers found that out of 230 college-aged participants, nearly half had experienced post-coital dysphoria at least once in their lifetimes.

Lead researcher Robert Schweitzer said that about 1 per cent of the female subject pool experienced some degree of post-sex sadness every time they had sex. Just over five per cent had experienced melancholy, depression, anxiety, agitation, tearfulness, or aggression after sex in the four weeks prior to taking the survey. Schweitzer explained, “We don’t know terribly much because it’s so counterintuitive to the dominant thinking about what sex should be like.” He added, “But it is more common than anyone expects.” One theory of why it may occur revolves around the idea of ‘ sexpectations’, or what happens when the realms of fantasy and reality fail to sync up.