“Why do women always want to cuddle after sex?” 

“Why do men just want to fall asleep after sex?”

Theses are two of the most common questions I get when people find out I’m a sexologist.   Many women do report a desire for cuddling and connection after sex, while many men do wish they could roll over and go to sleep without the chatter.   What’s going on?

It’s probably due to many factors, including culture, socialization, and biology.  Women have been socialized to pair sex with love and emotional connection.   As a result, many women need/want affirmation that their partners care about them.   So, a woman’s need to cuddle and connect may be a need to affirm there are feelings connected with the deed.  Men, on the other hand, have been socialized not to be sensitive and emotionally connected. This leads to a need to disconnect sex and emotions.  There are also some things going on biologically that contribute to these events.  For example, orgasm triggers a release of various neurotransmitters – and many of these work to connect partners (take Oxytocin for example, a chemical that is released during orgasm but also released during breastfeeding, which triggers a strong emotional connection between mother and child).   In fact, my advice has always been to never have sex with someone you don’t like since you may fall in love with them.

Other Freudian therapists propose the differences in post-coital connections come from our relationship with our mother.  Women connect sex with love because they feel unconsciously guilty about having more sexual pleasure than their mothers, while men separate sex and love so they won’t get too connected to women.  This allows them to keep distance between them and their original relationship with a woman - their mother.

While there are certainly differences in how men and women respond after sex, we have to be careful making broad generalizations here.   I’ve talked to plenty of women who just want to fall asleep after an orgasm and plenty of guys who do like to cuddle and talk.  It’s just important for us to know what our personal partners like so that we can understand their needs and wants during sex.