Why Some Men Feel Sad And Distant After Sex

Why do guys distance themselves after intimacy? For some, it may be because they’re not feeling great. What happens to a man after sex or ejaculation can be emotionally difficult. Nearly half of men report feeling sad, irritable, and distant after sex. These feelings are real and common, and together they’re referred to as post-coital dysphoria (PCD). Although there has long been evidence of this phenomenon in women, the afterglow of sex can be more of a dark cloud for men, too, leading many men to wonder, why do I feel empty after sex?

“We had conducted research on PCD in women, and the findings on the percentage of women who experience PCD seemed robust,” study author Robert Schweitzer, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Queensland University of Technology, told Newsweek. “And yet there were no similar studies relating to men.”

Schweitzer’s past research surveyed 230 college-aged women and found that 46% had experienced PCD symptoms such as irritability and crying after otherwise pleasant intercourse at some point in their lives. Another sample of 1,489 female twins in the UK indicated that nearly 8% of women experienced this issue chronically. And studies show that PCD could be connected to psychological stress or childhood sexual abuse.

Through his work with men and women as a clinical psychologist, Schweitzer noticed that men seemed to report similar feelings after sex. He began to suspect that PCD transcends gender barriers.

How Men Feel After Sex

To test this hypothesis, Schweitzer and his colleagues had 1,208 men in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the U.S., Russia, and Germany complete anonymous online questionnaires about their feelings after sex. Overall, 41% of men said they had experienced PCD symptoms at some point in their lives. Symptoms ranged from not wanting to be touched and the desire to leave the room, to feeling annoyed, fidgety, emotionless, and even empty. Up to 20% of men reported feeling some form of PCD within the past month, and 3% to 4% felt it on a regular basis. Similar to past research on women, PCD was linked with psychological distress, childhood sexual abuse, and sexual dysfunction.

But people don’t have to have childhood trauma or psychological distress to have PCD. It could simply be a rough comedown from a hormonal surge during sex.

“You go from absolute joy and pleasure to being separated. That, in its own way can cause women, and some men, to feel a bit sad. But it’s an organic biological function which happens to a greater or lesser extent to many people,” sex therapist Denise Knowles, who was not involved in the study, explained to The Independent. “It doesn’t have to mean anything sinister is going on.”

Schweitzer agrees that the cause of PCD in men is still unknown, and these preliminary findings are mostly meant to identify the condition for future study. However, he’s fairly certain that sadness, irritability, and restlessness after sex are not a reflection of any particular problem in a relationship.

“There seems to be a range of factors, including genetic susceptibility, possible hormonal factors and potentially, psychological factors which we do not understand at this time,” he said. “We don’t think it is about the relationship, but something more complex.”