Sex. Why does it seem we have to shag at night?
It is 3:45am and I am standing in my kitchen cooking a midnight snack.
During these moments, my active brain ponders what is the meaning of life. sometimes… Then I start asking myself, why do men feel like they need to prowl at night and try their luck.
It’s been a long night. Good food earlier. Lots of drinking. Tons of karaoke. Dancing. Then a good cycle home to sober up, which is why I am now making something rich in every nutrient you can think of instead of sleeping like a sensible person. And while I am standing here waiting on the pan, I am thinking about the same thing I have been confused about for over 20 years.
Why does sex have to be at night?
Genuinely. Think about when we schedule it. Night time is when we are the least sober… and the least energetic. So… why? Why is that the slot we all agreed on?
The bit that makes no sense
After a long day’s work, it is like fuck me (not literally), I am shattered. Probably my lowest energy point of the entire day, physically, mentally and emotionally.
So why do we still go out, drink, flirt, and hope to score a home run in the evening?!?
And the whole machinery around it points the same way. Nightclubs. The idea that horniness is a night thing. All of it aimed at the exact window where I have the least to give. I am not being clever here, I am just describing what the day actually feels like (and yes, I have clearly thought about this far too much).
My body has been telling me the opposite since puberty
I have paid attention to this since I hit puberty, and the answer has never changed. I am most energised in the morning. Not the evening. Morning, or afternoon at a push, and definitely not evening.
Which is why we have morning glory! There is even a vegetable named after it. (Ong choy, water spinach, whatever you grew up calling it. It sits in the morning glory family, and the family got that name because the flowers open in the morning. So there you go.)
Now, for clarity, that one does not actually hold up. Morning wood is not your body announcing it wants sex. It happens during REM sleep and it is a plumbing-and-nerves health check, not a horny signal. Slightly disappointing for my argument, I will admit.
But the hormone side does hold up. Testosterone peaks in the early morning, roughly between 7am and 10am, and drifts down through the rest of the day. In younger men the morning reading can sit about 25% to 30% above the evening one. It is such a reliable pattern that doctors are told to take the blood sample in the morning or the number is meaningless.
So the tank is fullest early. And the way I feel matches that exactly. All the best sex I have had has been in the morning, and it makes me feel great, and then consistently AMAZING for the rest of the day. Just try it!
Compare that to the evening version, where you have spent your whole day being drained by other people and then poured a few drinks on top. On the drinking, one glass is neither here nor there, but the amount you actually drink on a night out does measurably work against you.
Turns out someone has actually studied this
I have been chewing on this for two decades assuming it was just me being weird. And there is a real paper on it.
A study published in the Journal of Circadian Rhythms asked people when they usually had sex. Night came out at 65%. Morning 20%, evening 10%, afternoon 5%. So night wins, easily, no surprise there. But why!?!
Here is the part that made me sit up. I have pondered WHY for years, and they actually went and asked people that. The top answers were work and family schedule restrictions, and partner availability. Only about a quarter of people put their timing down to actually wanting sex at that hour. The author’s conclusion was that the pattern comes from what he calls environmental forcing. Not biology. Logistics.
Which is what I suspected all along. It is not that our bodies want it at night. It is that night is the only gap left in the diary. Thanks work 9 to 5, you fucked up our rhythm.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not going to oversell this. It was a small study, a few dozen people, all students in steady relationships. That is a hint, not a settled fact. But it lines up exactly with what my body has been shouting at me since I was a teenager.
And before anyone tells me I am just a morning person
This is the bit I find really really funny about myself.
I am not a morning lark. I have always been a night owl, and I got diagnosed with ADHD in recent years, which explains it, because delayed sleep timing shows up in something like three quarters of adults with ADHD. (More on the diagnosis itself over here.) My body clock runs late. It is genuinely wired that way. I am literally writing this at 3:45am, which should tell you everything!
And I still do not want sex in the evening.
So the easy explanation, “oh Hoi is just a morning person”, does not work on me. My sleep says night. My sex drive says morning. Those two things point in opposite directions and I have never been able to reconcile them.
Although I think the ADHD explains something else here, and it might be the actual root of this whole post. I guess with the ADHD I have always struggled with the norm. Which is probably why I question it constantly. What is the norm?! And why is it the norm? Sex at night is just one more thing on that list.
The first time I danced in the daytime
I did not want to turn this into a dance post. But it fits, so here it is.
Brazilian Zouk marathons. The whole appeal for me is the flexibility, you dance at the hours that suit you instead of the hours a timetable hands you. That is where I first danced right through the daytime instead of the night time, by choice, and I loved it. Mentally, emotionally, physically, I was awake for all of it, and the dances themselves did not tire me at all.
And then there is dancing until 6am or 9am in the morning, which I have done plenty of. By the end I am completely shattered. Despite being a night owl!
The one real downside
Dog breath.
That is it. That is the whole objection. Maybe we all need to brush our teeth before any snogging happens, and honestly, that seems like a very very small price to pay.
What I actually think we should do
Have sex in the morning.
Shag before the stressful morning meetings, not after the day has already flattened you. You are rested, you can go much longer, and you walk into whatever is coming recharged instead of running on fumes.
It’s like drinking wine. You always drink the best bottle first, after that, it’s downhill slide haha.
I would love to hear what other people think on this one, both the male and the female perspective, because I suspect I am missing something obvious. (And for what it is worth, that overnight REM response is not a men-only thing. It was documented in women back in 1970, in around 95% of REM phases.)
So is it just me? Or have we all been doing this at the wrong end of the day for our entire adult lives because nobody could find a better slot in the calendar?
Shagtastic hey.