Ireland’s relationship with sex has shifted almost beyond recognition in a generation. What was once barely mentioned is now talked about far more openly, and yet plenty of people still find it hard to raise a sexual worry with their GP, or even to name it to themselves. That silence is worth breaking, because sex is far more complex than most of us are ever taught.
The psychology of sex is where it gets interesting, shaped by hormones, memory, stress and the way each brain is wired. It’s also why sexual worries are so common and so rarely spoken about. If sex has quietly become a source of anxiety rather than pleasure, psychosexual difficulties can be worked through with the right support. To show you just how strange the subject can be, here are eight psychological facts about sex that might surprise you.
“Sex is obviously about far more than reproduction. It helps people relax, and it can bring tremendous amounts of pleasure.”
— Dr Becky Spelman
1. Post Sex Sadness is a Real Thing
Now, if you’ve ever cried after sex and thought something was wrong with you, don’t. It can be a very common occurrence, and there’s even an official name for it. Post-Coital Dysphoria (PCD) is characterised by feelings of sadness, and sometimes irritability or distress, after orgasm. It affects men and women alike. A 2024 study found it turns up after relationships, casual sex and even masturbation, and earlier research by Robert Schweitzer put the lifetime figure among men at around four in ten. There still isn’t a great deal known about why it happens. It’s possibly linked to the sudden shift in hormones that follows orgasm, and in some cases to earlier distress or trauma. If the low mood tends to linger well beyond the bedroom, it can be worth speaking to a psychiatrist, as what looks like a quirk of sex is sometimes tied to something more treatable. That isn’t always easy to arrange in Ireland, where the shortage of psychiatrists means public waiting lists can stretch on for months.
2. A Strong Sense of Smell Can Make You More Orgasmic
A 2018 study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that people with a more perceptive sense of smell reported better sexual experiences. Women who had a keener sense of smell reported more enjoyable orgasms than those whose noses weren’t as sharp. Interestingly, this wasn’t linked to sexual desire or performance in the bedroom. The effect sat in the pleasure itself, which suggests the heightened experience is tied to body odours, like a partner’s natural scent, that some people pick up more easily.
3. Sex Increases Your Immunity to Pain
Aside from the obvious physical pleasure, sex can be an aid in pain relief. During arousal and orgasm, the hypothalamus releases the feel-good hormone oxytocin, along with the body’s own natural opioids. Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey found this surge can help reduce the pain women feel, and many people say it eases period pain. One thing worth knowing is that a 2022 study found feeling aroused on its own didn’t dull pain, which points to orgasm, rather than arousal, as what actually raises the pain threshold. So the effect is real, just not quite as simple as feeling turned on.
4. Having Sex Can Help Trigger Your Creativity
The act of sex is already a creative one, and even when you’re not trying to conceive you’re still building a bond with your partner. There may be an added psychological effect too. That same chemical, oxytocin, has been linked in lab studies to more flexible, free-ranging thinking, the kind that helps with art, design, music, writing, or just working a problem loose. A 2014 study by Carsten De Dreu and colleagues found that raising oxytocin improved people’s performance on creative tasks. Whether ordinary sex reliably does the same in everyday life is still being studied, so it’s best treated as a promising link rather than a guarantee.
5. Orgasms: Use it or Lose it?
This one might worry you if you’ve not been sexually active for a while, though the popular version of it is overstated. You’ll often read that going without sex causes the clitoris to shrink, or that men face some equivalent. In reality, changes in sensation are driven mainly by hormones and blood flow rather than by a lack of sex in itself. The clearest example is the drop in oestrogen around menopause, which can reduce sensitivity regardless of how often someone is having sex. Desire works in a similar way. It rises and falls with mood, sleep, stress, medication and the way each brain is wired, which is why it varies so much from one person to the next. The way autistic adults experience sex and intimacy can differ too, particularly around sensory experience, and neurodivergence more broadly can shape desire in ways that are easy to miss.
6. Want an Orgasm? Leave Your Socks On
If you like to dress up, you might want to reconsider what you leave on. Research linked to the University of Groningen suggests that keeping your socks on can actually improve your chances of reaching orgasm. The theory is that to orgasm you need to feel relaxed and free of anxiety, and cold feet can be distracting enough to get in the way. It began as an incidental finding during brain-imaging studies of orgasm rather than a dedicated experiment, so it’s more of a charming footnote than a hard rule. What holds up is the point underneath it. Feeling warm, comfortable and unhurried makes a real difference.
7. The Egg Chooses the “Winning” Sperm
Men like to believe it’s the fastest sperm that wins the race, but that’s largely a myth. The old image reflects a cultural bias, one that casts men as competitive and the egg as passive, when the biology tells a different story. A 2020 study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that the fluid around a human egg releases chemical signals that draw some sperm in more strongly than others, and the pull depends on the particular pairing of man and woman. In some cases the egg was even more drawn to the sperm of a man who wasn’t the woman’s partner. Conception, it turns out, involves a quiet kind of selection that carries on long after sex is over.
8. People Who Have Less Sex Overcompensate in Their Jobs
This one might land uncomfortably if you’re a single workaholic. A large German survey from the University of Göttingen found that people with an unsatisfying sex life tended to throw themselves into work to make up for it. It asked around 32,000 people about their sex lives and work habits, and reported that just over a third of them worked longer hours or took on extra tasks. A note of caution is worth adding here. This was survey data reported in the press rather than a tightly controlled study, and it hasn’t been robustly replicated. Still, the loop it describes is a familiar one. The more work you take on, the more stress you carry, and the more stress you carry, the less room there tends to be for sex.
How The Private Therapy Clinic Can Help
Sex is fascinating in the abstract, but when it becomes a source of worry it’s a different matter, and a more common one than people tend to admit. Public provision for psychosexual and relationship support is thin on the ground in Ireland, and HSE waiting lists can be long, so many people end up looking privately for help that can’t easily wait. At the Private Therapy Clinic we work with people on the difficulties that sit behind these facts, from low or absent desire and painful sex to the anxiety and relationship strain that often come with them. Much of this responds well to psychosexual and relationship therapy, and where desire or focus has felt out of step for a long time, being assessed for ADHD can sometimes bring useful clarity.
If you’d like to talk something through, you can book a free 15-minute consultation to explore your options and find the right place to start.
