Female Sleep Orgasms Are Not a Tabu — You Can Have One!
By: Emma London
Tags: Sexuality, Life, Sex, Orgasm, Women

Female Sleep Orgasms Are Not a Tabu — You Can Have One!

I had a sleepgasm, and it was as intense as any other. Science explains why.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels

Women take longer to build up their orgasm than men. We require more stimulus and most of us — about 75% — don’t orgasm with penetration only (source); we need more than one way of stimulation.

Saying this, and knowing my body, orgasming during my sleep was the last thing I expected to happen to me. But it did, and it was incredible.

I’ve heard about men having sleep orgasms, especially during their teens. But women having them is not so common. Or so I thought…

This study concluded that 37% of the women in a sample of 245 have had a sleepgasm. Why aren’t we talking more about this?

When a man orgasms during his sleep, his semen is evidence of what happened. Women don’t have physical trails, even she wakes up immediately after the orgasm, being wet isn’t always a result of having had one.

Lots of women self-doubt if they actually orgasmed during their sleep.

Because I woke up the exact moment I was de-escalating from the orgasm, I didn’t doubt about what happened.

I don’t know if my sleep was interrupted because of the intense orgasm or because my partner moved. But I knew for sure I just had an impressive orgasm!

Facts about female sleep orgasms (sleepgasm)

Having a curious mind and being a sex blogger, I had to research more about the topic, of course. I learned very interesting facts, which I’m now sharing:

Erotic dreams are the usual trigger to sleepgasm

This makes sense: dreaming with sex will make you a “sleeping horny”.

I clearly remember I was dreaming about my partner going down on me while fingering me — which is always a way to give me intense, spectacular orgasms.

I can guarantee you, my sleepgasm was as intense as the ones I have when I’m having sex. How amazing is that? This has a scientific explanation:

In this study, medical doctor David Fisher concluded that while sleeping women have an increased vaginal blood flow. Associated with an erotic dream, this can make provoke arousal, culminating in orgasm.

Women who can’t orgasm can experience sleepgasm

The brain is our main sexual organ.

During sleep, our brain doesn’t stop working, it continues active — including with erotic mental activity, a search for pleasure.

Madeleine Castellanos, a psychiatrist specialised in sex therapy, in her book Wanting to Want: What Kills Your Sex Life and How to Keep It Alive, states that scientific research has given us enough evidence to conclude that women who struggle to orgasm “in real life” can, in fact, orgasm during their sleep.

She reinforces the largely known fact that the most common impediment to female orgasm is the brain. Anxiety, depression, worries; having difficulties in turning the mind off, etc are an orgasm-killer. When we are asleep, we have none of that.

Our daily experiences and thoughts might influence our dreams, but not how we react to them.

When having an erotic dream, our mind is free from external distractions — we are not in control of our mind.

In our dreams, we go with the flow; we allow our bodies to follow their desires. To the point of orgasm!

What are the predictors of sleepgasm?

It’s impossible to predict or control what you’re going to dream.

However, in her study Predictors of female nocturnal orgasms: A multivariate analysis, the researcher Barbara L. Wells concluded it’s possible to pinpoint some predictors for sleepgasm to happen:

Positive attitudes towards nocturnal orgasms;

Knowledge about the matter;

Sexual liberalism;

Waking sexually excited from sleep (without experiencing orgasm).

The results of this study suggested the position you sleep can also be a predictor for having erotic dreams (and, consequently, to have a sleepgasm.)

Researcher Yu, Calvin Kai-Ching, concluded that “sleeping in the prone position may promote dreaming of sexual (…) material.”