Diddly Drogba
Superstar
A 38-year-old man repeatedly tries to force his wife to have sëx 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 sëx, or sexsomnia, part of a family of sleep disorders called parasomnias that include sleepwalking, sleep talking, sleep eating and sleep terrors.
While it may seem as if people are acting out dreams, many parasomnias occur when the brain is not in a dream state, said Dr. Carlos Schenck, a professor and senior staff psychiatrist at the Hennepin County Medical Center at the University of Minnesota.
“These are disorders of arousal,” said Schenck, who has studied parasomnias for decades. “They most often occur during the slowest, deepest stage of sleep, called delta sleep. It’s like an alarm or trigger goes off in the central nervous system, and you go from your basement to your roof in no time flat.
“Your cognition is deeply asleep, and you’re not with the program, but your body is activated,” Schenck said. “That’s dangerous because then you start walking and running and doing all sorts of things without your mind being awake.”
It’s difficult to study sexsomnia, because unless people injure themselves many have no idea of their unconscious sexµal activity until a bed partner tells them about it.
A 2010 study quizzed 1,000 randomly selected adults in Norway and found about 7% had experienced sexsomnia at least once during their lives, while nearly 3% were currently living with the condition.
“There are some people who will engage in sexµal activity with their partner, and it’s not bothersome to either one of them. So it is possible that this could be consensual for some,” said Jennifer Mundt, assistant professor of sleep medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“There are definitely instances where it’s alarming to the partner and to the person who’s doing it once they realize what they’ve done.”
The episodes first began in 2005, according to one woman’s husband. About twice a month his wife would moan sexµally and engage in “dirty talk,” words she never used while awake, he told Schenck, who treated the woman and published her anonymous case in 2021.
At times the woman would fondle her husband during the night, and they would engage in sëx until she became conscious and accused her husband of forcing sëx upon her.
She also masturbated while calling out other men’s names, including that of a male coworker, leading her husband to believe she was cheating on him. However, partners should not assume people with sexsomnia are allowing a secret to escape from their subconscious, Schenck said.
“The sleeping brain is wired very differently from the waking brain,” he said. “You’re not conscious when you’re asleep, so you can’t reach any valid conclusion about so-called lying or truth-telling in your sleep.”
The woman refused to believe her husband’s descriptions of her behavior for years, finally seeking professional treatment in 2015 after her 9-year-old son heard her moaning sexµally while asleep.
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 sëx, or sexsomnia, part of a family of sleep disorders called parasomnias that include sleepwalking, sleep talking, sleep eating and sleep terrors.
While it may seem as if people are acting out dreams, many parasomnias occur when the brain is not in a dream state, said Dr. Carlos Schenck, a professor and senior staff psychiatrist at the Hennepin County Medical Center at the University of Minnesota.
“These are disorders of arousal,” said Schenck, who has studied parasomnias for decades. “They most often occur during the slowest, deepest stage of sleep, called delta sleep. It’s like an alarm or trigger goes off in the central nervous system, and you go from your basement to your roof in no time flat.
“Your cognition is deeply asleep, and you’re not with the program, but your body is activated,” Schenck said. “That’s dangerous because then you start walking and running and doing all sorts of things without your mind being awake.”
It’s difficult to study sexsomnia, because unless people injure themselves many have no idea of their unconscious sexµal activity until a bed partner tells them about it.
A 2010 study quizzed 1,000 randomly selected adults in Norway and found about 7% had experienced sexsomnia at least once during their lives, while nearly 3% were currently living with the condition.
“There are some people who will engage in sexµal activity with their partner, and it’s not bothersome to either one of them. So it is possible that this could be consensual for some,” said Jennifer Mundt, assistant professor of sleep medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“There are definitely instances where it’s alarming to the partner and to the person who’s doing it once they realize what they’ve done.”
The episodes first began in 2005, according to one woman’s husband. About twice a month his wife would moan sexµally and engage in “dirty talk,” words she never used while awake, he told Schenck, who treated the woman and published her anonymous case in 2021.
At times the woman would fondle her husband during the night, and they would engage in sëx until she became conscious and accused her husband of forcing sëx upon her.
She also masturbated while calling out other men’s names, including that of a male coworker, leading her husband to believe she was cheating on him. However, partners should not assume people with sexsomnia are allowing a secret to escape from their subconscious, Schenck said.
“The sleeping brain is wired very differently from the waking brain,” he said. “You’re not conscious when you’re asleep, so you can’t reach any valid conclusion about so-called lying or truth-telling in your sleep.”
The woman refused to believe her husband’s descriptions of her behavior for years, finally seeking professional treatment in 2015 after her 9-year-old son heard her moaning sexµally while asleep.
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