Few College Women Felt Lousy after Sex- Research

Maybe men should be asking their girlfriends after sex, “Was it bad for you?”

 

A new study reveals that 46% of college women surveyed felt lousy after sex — at least at one point in their lives, turning the after glow into an after glum.

It’s unclear what causes the copulation blues, which scientists call post-coital dysphoria, but the malaise could stem from anything emotional or physical.Or just that being in college they may have taken a risk they wish they had not.

“The findings confirm that PCD is under recognized and under researched,” according to Robert D. Schweitzer, lead author of the research paper in the current issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. “There appears to be no relationship between PCD and intimacy in close relationships.”

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His study was conducted online, over six months, and of the 300 women who initially responded, 231 completed it.The vast majority of the women, 90 percent, are white, and 33 percent of them were living with someone.

It’s unclear why the latest study found such a high rate of post-sex blues. An earlier study found that 7.7% of the women reported they persistently felt irritable after intercourse, and 3.7% had experienced this malaise recently.

The notion of such a survey and labeling women with post-coital dysphoria angered sexpert Marlene Wasserman, a San Francisco-trained sex therapist who writes under the name Dr. Eve. “Why do we need to find a new pathology for women?”

Wasserman finds this a load of nonsense.

“Why are we creating another dysfunction for women to have anxiety about?” she asks. “So what if a woman feels tearful and melancholy? There are so many variables. Maybe she did not enjoy it. Maybe she did not want to be having sex and it was just duty sex. There are a million reasons why a woman could feel melancholy afterwards, but to pathologize it is dreadful.”