Sleep Deprivation Is Putting Intimacy to Sleep

Being too tired for sex is the reason women give for the loss of desire. If someone gets a good night’s sleep, the desire for sex will increase. Recently, a study discovered that the longer and deeper women sleep, the more interested they are in sex. An extra hour of sleep provides a 14% increase in having a sexual encounter the next day (the study was conducted with college women).

Women in other life stages have sleep and sex problems, like menopause, which causes both biological and psychological issues. A recent study discovered that menopausal women had sleep problems directly linked to their sexual problems.

Interrupted sleep and sexual issues are prevalent among moms. Moms of new babies get very little sleep, which causes sexual issues. Additionally, moms have too much to do, and the stress associated with mothering causes sleep and sex problems. Those moms who have school-aged children, married, and working full-time report increased incidents of insomnia and lack of sexual desire.

Fathers struggle with stress, but stress and sleepless nights cause a woman’s sexual desire to be impacted much more than a dad’s. Medically, stress and insufficient sleep cause cortisol to be released, which decreases testosterone. Testosterone is the foremost hormone involved in both men and women’s sex drive.

Think of testosterone like a gas tank. When cortisol is released into your body by stress and sleep deprivation, your testosterone “gas” tank empties. Stress only decreases a man’s gas tank to half full. So, while men still want to have sex, their partner is running on empty.