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.
That sounds like something Zapp Brannigan would claim to have.
“I suffer from a very sexy sleeping disorder. Kif! Tell them what it’s called.”
Well, shit. I have this. It actually sucks.
From just this year, I can recall:
- My spouse smacking my arm when I was furiously masturbating right next to her. I woke up with my erection in my hand. I asked her if she recalled it in the morning but she didn’t even remember smacking my arm.
- My spouse informing me on two mornings last month about attempting to initiate during the night.
I can’t sleep next to anyone who doesn’t know about the condition and consents to the possibility of having to wake me to stop it. It caused friction in my early marriage (no other serious gfs) but once my spouse helped me realize what I was doing did i understand this occurred.
I believe you but this is identical to werewolf movie tropes.
Sleep in a cage with your arm handcuffed?
I woke up once in the middle of having sex with my then-girlfriend. After we finished I was like, “You could’ve woken me up at least before we started.” She was like, “What are you talking about? You started all that!” So I guess it’s a real thing, my body just wants to bang at all hours.
I have also done this, pretty much the same exact situation. I will say, there are far worse things to wake up to
Like hundreds of flesh-eating ants all over your body cutting of the soft parts - lips, eyelids, … - with their tiny but razor sharp mandibles?! 😳
that REALLY depends on the people involved. Not that I disagree with you, it can be nice
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.
I get it. I have like, life ruining levels of insomnia, which is like 90% because I have extreme nightmares every time I fall asleep. They’re so bad sometimes I wake up crying. Sometimes I don’t fall asleep because I know what’s waiting for me when I eventually lose consciousness. I’m so thankful when I have no dreams at all. I’ve talked to doctors and psychologists about it and they just shrug at me like, wow that sounds tough. Nobody has ever helped me with it. And really who would take it seriously? It’s just nightmares right? What adult is afraid to go to sleep? To dream about loved ones dying in gruesome ways right before their eyes? Or getting murdered in horrible ways, tortured to death, trampled, eaten alive by insects, being responsible for killing my whole family in a car crash, falling to death and remembering what the impact felt like, having my eyeballs plucked from my head, my stomach torn open and my guts devoured while I’m still alive. I’m not even close to the end of the list of what I’ve experienced over half of my life. Yeah they’re just nightmares. But I have to experience them. For the rest of my life.
The only fighting chance I’ve been given is to move to a state where weed is legal because it basically prevents me from dreaming at all.
Your last sentence was exactly what I was going to recommend. I also have bad dreams almost every night, although not as extreme as what you’re describing. But still, I don’t like sleeping and that’s probably why. I also have bad insomnia although mine isn’t related to the bad dreams, that’s just an additional nuisance.
With weed, I sleep peacefully every night. I didn’t start using weed regularly until my late 40’s and now I’m like… why not? Sure as fuck beats getting drunk almost every night to get to sleep which I did through a good chunk of my 30’s. Since I ‘discovered’ weed, I barely drink at all.
I’ve tried weed once when I had a migraine, as I’ve heard that statement from others. It’s hard to describe how it felt exactly, but it sure as hell didn’t help me. It felt as if I was locked up inside my head, which was filled with pain and agony. As if there was no world anymore, just pure pain. Definitely a hard ‘nope, never again’ for me.
I’ll just stick with popping a triptane and go to bed. The combination of migraine+triptane always gives me the weirdest dreams, it feels like insurance-covered tripping. 😋
Have you heard about lucid dreaming? It’s effective to learn it against nightmares. You will more often know that you are dreaming therefore making dreams less scary. Apart from that you might be able to take over a bad dream and form it as you wish.
Is something like delta 8 or delta 10 THC legal in your state? That might work for you. CBD might even work.
I OD’d on Benadryl once, it was like I was both asleep and awake at the same time. Dreaming and experiencing the horrors of what my mind could make worse. All while being nearly paralyzed in fear. That happened one time. It still messes with my head yesrs later.
What happened, do you take something or go to a doctor or therapist?
Sounds like the fever dream I had when I was a teenager and had mono and hep A at the same time (not uncommon apparently). I was both lying on the living room couch with the TV on and a soldier on a battlefield crawling through the mud. Also, unsurprisingly for me, occasionally I was on Star Trek (which wasn’t what was on TV).
Went looking for an answer to your question and found this which I did not know was a use for benadryl (well, the active ingredient anyway).
Usual Adult Dose for Insomnia
Diphenhydramine Citrate: 76 mg orally once a day at bedtime
Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride: 50 mg orally once a day at bedtime
Come to NJ, my dreams have largely gone away thanks to the weed store right down the street from my place.
I have the first half of this. When I’m disturbed out of my dreams, they’re usually quite violent or bizarre, but I don’t remember them unless someone wakes me up in the middle of them.
The time I dreamt I was remarrying my ex, on the other hand, i woke up on my own and quite distressed, and I couldn’t fall asleep after that for a good half hour.
It’s funny what counts as nightmares for different people.
