A 38-year-old man repeatedly tries to force his wife to have sex in the middle of the night but has no memory of his actions when he wakes up.
A married woman in her mid-20s often tears off her clothing and masturbates but remembers nothing when her partner rouses her.
For a dozen years, a 31-year-old man masturbates while asleep, at times injuring his groin. Embarrassed due to his unconscious behavior, he avoids relationships for eight years.
These are all clinically documented cases of sleep sex, or sexsomnia, part of a family of sleep disorders called parasomnias that include sleepwalking, sleep talking, sleep eating and sleep terrors.
The level of jokes in this comment thread (circa 7:28PM PT Apr. 28) tells me that people really, really don’t have great frames of reference for mental disorders of any kind. The article subheadings literally go
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Sexsomnia can ruin lives
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What triggers sexsomnia?
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Behavioral treatments are also available
This shit ruins lives. Lost relationships, arrests, and a complete inability to find any amount of support because of the sensitive nature of the condition. I have ARFID, a condition I won’t even explain because it’s gonna attract trolls like flies. I have lived in fear because of how it is associated with kids. It dictates my entire life. I have to plan where I can and cannot go to all the time, every day, monitoring what I consume so I don’t fall into self destruction.
spoiler
And yes. I wrote this to spur your imagination wild. Don’t mention it. Let the kneejerkers respond.
There is no direct cure for ARFID, just like the article explains for sexsomnia. I have had immense help with my condition when I found the right doctor. The fact that they understood my diagnosis and approached me with extreme respect made me cry. That’s how deprived of support I was at 22 years old.
Love thy neighbor. Don’t assume anything because you don’t someone’s demons.
My defense mechanism for awkward situations is humor. Many of us make jokes because that’s how we operate for literally every other difficult scenario so why change? I’m still learning about something I had little knowledge of and the humor engages me more than sad tales of what could be construed as awkward and weird. No one is here saying that this is abominable behavior and shitting on people, but you sure seem intent on treating others like they are.
I’m sorry this subject is sensitive but that’s how tickling starts. I hope you feel comfortable enough to laugh someday.
Humor usually never ends up as a path towards solution unless the PERSON EXPERIENCING IT makes fun of it. It’s difference between laughing at someone and laughing with someone. It’s why there’s specific lemmy communities for ADHD and ADHD Women with their own specialized memes: They never accuse anyone of anything, and look at things from a kinder view. I have a boyfriend with ASD and the Autism memes fit to a T. It gives the self a sense of understanding.
But outsider humor? I see mentions of House and Zapp Brannigan and how it’s basically a setup for a joke involving the legal system. No mention of struggles or legitimate efforts to fix or understand the self. These are not jokes made from love. They are for the explicit purpose of othering. I’m not going to walk up to a tall black guy to call him a “Basketball American” anymore than you should call sexsomnia a “prewritten legal defense”.
As a spouse of someone who suffers from ARFID, I just wanted to pass along that there are those out there who understand the extreme suffering it can cause and recognize that the condition is not a choice you are making. She went most of her life undiagnosed and getting the diagnosis was so incredibly validating because it showed what she was experiencing was beyond her control. We wish you the best.
