Sex: A Powerful Antidepressant
Depression and sex don't get along. When you're in the grip of chronic depression, desire fades, motivation drains away, and you stop seeing yourself as someone worth wanting. But flip the question around and something surprising turns up: sex itself may push back against depression's effects. Not just cope with it. Actually buffer against it.
A study out of the psychology department at the State University of New York at Oswego looked at what happens physiologically when the body is exposed to semen. The researchers were testing an idea that semen might function as a kind of natural antidepressant, and their findings pointed that way. Exposure appeared to trigger the release of mood-lifting hormones, and the effect showed up most clearly in women.
The participants were college-age women, and the variable the researchers tracked was condom use. Women who weren't using condoms turned out to be less likely to report depression. The pattern deepened with abstinence: the longer those same women went without sex, the more their depressive symptoms climbed.
Men were part of the data too, though the study was built around women. Sex lifted mood for men as well. When the researchers compared men who used condoms against men who didn't, however, the depression symptoms looked the same across both groups. What did stand out was abstinence. Men who weren't having sex at all showed real signs of depression. The researchers were careful to say plenty of questions remain open.
Two of those questions cut in opposite directions. For men: is the lack of sex driving the depression, or is the depression what's killing the sex drive in the first place? For women: if someone is clinically depressed, does unprotected sex amount to a healthy form of self-medication or a harmful one?
A possible mood benefit from semen does not erase the obvious hazards. Sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy are the first ones, and there's also the link between risky sex and low self-esteem. Worth keeping in mind too: orgasms lift mood for both partners whether or not a condom is involved, and the emotional closeness of an intimate relationship carries its own weight.
If depression has shut down your sex life and taken those benefits with it, there are ways to restart. Cut back on how much you drink. Consider medication for the depression, and raise any sexual side effects with whoever is treating you early rather than letting them fester. Put in some effort, both to enjoy sex and to reconnect with your partner. Light candles, dress for it, plan a date, play something that gets you in the mood. The deliberate part matters precisely because depression drains the motivation to try.
Stress and depression travel together, so aim for relaxed and playful. A good meal, music you both like, somewhere that feels nice, the two of you with no agenda. Anticipation does a lot of the work on its own; the waiting is practically its own aphrodisiac.
Food can help set the tone. Chili peppers heat up more than your dinner. Avocados and almonds carry the kind of energy that lifts mood, and chocolate's sweetness nudges the mind toward love and sex. Strawberries have a long association with Venus, the goddess of love, and the look and taste of them can wake up your appetite for more than fruit.
Talk about your fantasies with your partner. The brain is the largest sexual organ you've got, so don't lean only on physical touch; use the mental side of it. Exercise gets endorphins moving, which primes you for sex and helps you feel better about your own body. Working out together buys you time as a couple, and it's an easy excuse to look at your partner and get interested.
Sex doesn't have to be solemn. Get silly. Laughter breaks down stress, and you stand a far better shot at getting in the mood loose and giggling than tense and irritated. Even if you start out distracted and not into it, you may find yourself loosening up partway through. Sometimes diving in is what flips the switch. Stop overthinking, get in bed, and see what happens.
Jeff Stein
A reader named Bergen added his own view. Sexual desire, he wrote, is the strongest physiological driver either sex has, and it isn't only physical. It's emotional and mental, pulling at every part of who we are while staying strangely dependent on how the other person responds. In his own marriage he can tell when too much time has passed. He gets cranky and distant, turns inward, and starts doubting where he stands with his wife. She feels it too, he said, with the old anxious voices whispering that she's getting older, that he's lost interest, that she isn't as pretty as she was. Add the ordinary chaos of life and you get two worn-out people who have stopped tending the relationship, until they decide to intentionally show each other love and appreciation and plain physical wanting. However far apart they drift, he finds it striking how fast one morning or afternoon or night together closes the distance. For a while, at least, it seems to clear away the strain.
Source: Is Sex an Antidepressant? (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2014, from everydayhealth.com.