It seems like a "no-brainer" that more orgasms and more intense orgasms will satisfy more. However, the "I'm done!" feeling after orgasm delivers a powerful subconscious signal to the limbic brain, which can create restlessness down the road. Is it time to rethink our lovemaking strategy?
Both sensual Romans and sex-positive ancient Chinese Daoists recognized that sexual satiety shifts perception. Over two thousand years ago, Ovid, the elegantly earthy poet, wrote that the "cure for love" is to satiate oneself with orgasm. Want to stay in love? The earlier Chinese Classic of Su Nu states, "If one engages in sex without emission...exercising self-control and calming the passion, love actually increases." Could couples improve the harmony in their relationships, by learning to use sex as a bonding behavior while tiptoeing around sexual satiety when possible?
In Orgasm's Hidden Cycle, I suggested that orgasm kicks off a surprisingly long neurochemical cycle. Cycles are not unique to the experience of orgasm. The body constantly restores homeostasis through rising and falling levels of hormones and neurotransmitters. Some are programmed (sleep-wake, menstrual cycles), while some occur in response to changing conditions (blood sugar levels, water levels).
Scientists are beginning to turn up evidence (via MRIs, plasma hormone levels, and glimpses into the brains of rodents) of a "passion cycle" after orgasm. (Details in Cupid's Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships.) However, researchers don't always reflect on the psychological implications of their findings. What happens when subconscious shifts in our neurochemistry alter the emotional tone of our limbic brain well after orgasm? Might such shifts create feelings, which we unknowingly project outward, onto our mates?
A lot happens after orgasm—although there is still much to learn. It's easiest to envision what is known if you keep in mind that most of the neurochemical events appear to revolve around dopamine and the brain's reward circuitry.
As we become sexually aroused, dopamine (the "I gotta have it!" neurochemical) rises in our reward circuitry. It is also implicated in addictions. In fact, in 2003 Dutch scientist Gert Holstege announced in a press release pertaining to his research that brain scans of orgasm resembled brain scans of shooting heroin. What goes up must come down.
You might think that your dopamine levels would obediently return to baseline levels immediately after orgasm, and that you'd be good to go from where you began, neurochemically speaking. Alas, this is not how the reward circuitry of your limbic brain works. When a thunderstorm roles in, you close all the windows. Your brain does something similar following intense stimulation, except that it assumes another storm is coming, and keeps them closed for a while.
So, at climax, dopamine drops (and/or nerve cell receptors for dopamine decline, leaving your reward circuitry less sensitive to dopamine). At the same time, the neurohormone prolactin shoots up. Like most hormones, prolactin has many jobs in the body. After orgasm it acts as a "sexual satiation" substance, suppressing dopamine. Dopamine is the accelerator; prolactin is the brakes.
Research also shows that after orgasm androgen receptor density in the reward circuitry decreases, and the reduction is greater with each copulation. Lowered androgen receptor density means that key brain centers temporarily aren't responding as strongly to important sex hormones, such as testosterone (which influences dopamine, and thus mood and libido, in both men and women).
Oxytocin also surges briefly after climax (although prolactin is considered a more reliable marker of the Big O.) As oxytocin is known as the "bonding hormone," many people assume orgasm must be first-rate glue for lovers. However, like prolactin, oxytocin performs many different jobs in the body, and the orgasm surge may be related to the contractions of orgasm itself (oxytocin is also behind labor and lactation contractions). This surge also appears to trigger the rise of prolactin (the "sexual satiation" neurochemical) and penile flaccidity. Certainly, if orgasm tightly bonded lovers, we'd see very few one-night stands...and a lot more johns in love with their hookers.
Lovers who wish to strengthen their emotional bonds are likely to make more progress with daily skin-to-skin contact, gentle stroking, and gentle intercourse. This kind of affectionate, generous contact also produces oxytocin and soothes the regions of the brain that need to relax in order for us to bond. The occasional blast of oxytocin at orgasm, which drops soon afterward (along with dopamine), probably isn't as reliable a bonding mechanism. When dopamine drops your mate registers as less rewarding, even if you dowse your limbic brain with oxytocin. We need the right levels of both dopamine and oxytocin for that loving feeling.
In most mammals, these predictable post-orgasmic neurochemical events quiet sexual desire until the brain and libido recover naturally. A novel mate, however, can produce a jump start (dopamine surge). This explains how this "hangover" serves our genes.
We humans, of course, often don't wait. We find it easy to boost sagging dopamine after orgasm. Some options help restore balance without throwing us back onto the dopamine roller coaster: friendly interaction, time in nature, meditation, exercise, and so forth. But many of us reach for stronger "medication" (higher dopamine surges). We gamble, spend money, grab junk food, drugs or alcohol, or fantasize about, click to, or engage in, more sexual stimulation.
