Sex While Sleeping May Be More Common Than Thought: Study

Some people walk or talk in their sleep. Others even sing while off in the Land of Nod. But having sex while asleep?

It may seem hard to believe, but the occurrence of sexsomnia — making advances and performing sexual acts while in the grips of sleep — appears to be more common than once thought.

Researchers have found that almost eight per cent of patients at a Toronto sleep disorders clinic reported they initiated or engaged in sexual activity with a bed partner while asleep. The prevalence of sexsomnia was almost three times higher in men (11 per cent) than in women (four per cent).

“We don’t know what the numbers for sexsomnia are and now we think we’ve got some idea that, yes, it happens in a similar ratio to other parasomnias,” said Dr. Colin Shapiro, head of neurospsychiatry and the sleep clinic at the University Health Network.

Parasomnias are abnormal behaviours that occur during sleep and also include walking, talking, singing and eating.

“There have been no previous studies of how frequently sexsomnia occurs,” said co-investigator Sharon Chung, a staff scientist at the sleep lab. “While our finding of eight per cent of people reporting sexsomnia seems really a high number, it should be stressed that we only studied patients referred to a sleep clinic. So, we would expect the numbers to be much lower in the general population.”

To conduct the study, researchers reviewed the charts of 832 consecutive patients evaluated for a suspected sleep disorder, which included a questionnaire about sleep disorder symptoms, behaviours during sleep, fatigue and mood. In all, self-reported sleep behaviours for 428 men and 404 women were assessed.

Symptoms of insomnia, fatigue and depressed mood were similar among people reporting sexsomnia and other patients at the sleep centre, with both groups sharing similar rates of smoking and caffeine intake.

However, those with sexsomnia were twice as likely as those without the behaviour to report using illicit drugs (15.9 per cent versus 7.7 per cent), concluded the study, which will be presented Monday at a meeting of sleep experts in San Antonio, Texas.

Yet despite sexsomnia being reported by almost one in 10 people on the questionnaires, patients rarely mentioned the problem to their doctor, said Chung. Only four of the 832 patients complained about the behaviour during a face-to-face consultation with a sleep specialist.

“It seems that patients generally don’t discuss this with their doctors,” she said.

While the specific cause of sexsomnia has not been pinned down, Shapiro said sleepiness and sleep deprivation are factors, as are alcohol consumption and stress.

“There may be a trigger in terms of a partner’s touch or you rolling over onto the partner. There may be a physical contact,” he said. “In some couples, it’s fairly common.”

Shapiro said he was consulted by an Ontario couple, both nurses, because of sleep problems. The husband and wife told him one of their children had been conceived while the man was asleep.

“He was making overtures in sleep to his wife. And they knew that that happened, and it didn’t particularly bother them.”

Other couples have reported that the partner with sexsomnia acts differently while making sexual overtures than when awake.

One women said her husband “talks dirty, which he never does when he’s awake,” said Shapiro. “Another patient, the partner says he is much more amorous.”

“So there’s a possibility of almost a different persona in the behaviour.”

Sexsomnia can be dealt with by treating the underlying cause — for instance, eliminating shift work — or by taking certain medications.

Shapiro said that between many committed partners, one person unknowingly making sexual advances while getting their Zs can be a bit of a joke and not a big deal.

“But if it ends up outside of a marriage context or outside of a relationship context, then there’s big trouble.”

One of the most well-known cases of “sleep sex” involved landscaper Jan Luedecke, who was acquitted on a charge of sexually assaulting a woman at a 2003 house party in Toronto. The woman had fallen asleep on a couch and awakened to find Luedecke having sex with her. She pushed him off and called police.

The trial judge ruled he was not guilty because he had been asleep and unaware of his actions.

Court heard that Luedecke had engaged in sleep sex with four former girlfriends prior to the assault. The day before the party, he had taken magic mushrooms and had been drinking heavily in the hours leading up to the assault. He was also overworked, stressed and sleep-deprived — factors cited by experts as triggers of sexsomnia.

“In my mind, someone who does something in their sleep, if it’s legitimately in their sleep, is not responsible for it,” said Shapiro, who testified at the 2005 trial as an expert witness.

The findings of his group’s study are important, he said, because “it debunks the idea that this is some rare, esoteric behaviour. It happens in quite a lot of people, and in some relatively rare situations that leads to a legal conundrum.”