Sex and Grief: 5 Indicators when Sex is used to Cope with Grief
Sex and grief have a relationship that is rarely spoken about. Men and women have different ways of coping with grief and their stressors. While this is observable and common with grief, sex is also regularly used to cope with grief and the ravages of loss. Sexual desire, also known as libido, is affected by 3 factors: biological, social, and psychological.
Grief affects people differently through the devastation incurred from a loss, impacting emotional stability and social outreach. There’s an external loss that interacts with an instinctual desire that stimulates a craving to sexually act in ways that are not instinctual to the individual, rather, are evoked from a psychological emptiness and melancholia.
These are 5 signs indicating that sex may be used to cope with grief:
- Seeking out sexual pleasure as a distraction: Using sex to disappear from the pain of loss.
- Anonymous sexual partnering: Choosing sexual partners who are one-night stands allows the sexual act to occur without any emotional attachment. Often people think that men are the only ones who pull this off, however, women will often look for these types of hook-ups: they simply remain silent about it. This also allows for the sexual act to be in the control of the seeker. They may not control the intensity of the grief, however, they can control the sexual situation they are in to cope with grief.
- Danger Seeking: If the loss is sudden, through the shock and numbness there is often a desire to feel. When sex is used to cope with grief and the onslaught and intensity of the mourning process, dangerous or painful sex can be sought out. It is a way to feel when numbness embodies the soul.
- Desiring intense connections: When the world is experienced as brittle and the grief creates an empty hole in the soul, sexual urges can be intense and insistent. Obsessive thinking about the loss often abates when sexually involved.
- Craving to procreate: Often when a child dies the parents want to have another child if they are young enough and stable enough to do so. They believe all that new life will help them cope with grief.
Knowing the self is an aid to identify if sex is being used to counter the emotional toll of grief. Sex feels good and surely can act as a buffer to emotions that would rather not be experienced. Take a moment and determine if the 5 signs speak to the way in which the body and mind are coping with loss. If so, begin to untangle the sexual web by withholding urges as a means to discover and uncover the internal discord of grief.
When you stop using sex to avoid feelings, two results occur: you have the chance to learn about the emotions that you have been running from and when engaging in sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than escape you have better sex
Join me on March 23rd, 2020 for a fireside chat and discussion about sex at Baruch College in New York | Register here: https://edynathan.com/events/sex-in-the-dark-an-honest-discussion-and-fireside-chat-about-sex/
