In certain areas of psycho-analysis, experts assert that dreams are a window into our subconscious desires. That could be troubling if you have just had a saucy dream involving someone about whom you shouldn’t be having saucy dreams. Oddly enough, that seems to be happening a lot these days.
During a recent study, Michael Schredl, a sleep researcher at the University of Freiburg, Germany, found that sex figures in about 18 percent of most people’s dreams.
That’s under normal circumstances – and, while lockdowns and a deadly pandemic might feel increasingly normal to you, these aren’t normal times.
The question of whether “anyone else” has “been having” strange sex dreams has become a mainstay in certain online communities. So much so that scientists have begun to sit up and take notice.
The notion that people are undergoing the same weird experience at the same time can seem spooky, reassuring, or inevitable, depending on how you see things.
If you’re a science person interested in human sexuality, then it’s downright fascinating.
Strange Sex Dreams are a Sign of the Times
The strange-dream phenomenon came just as coronavirus-related restrictions became more widespread. At that time, popular media began reporting on claimed shifts in sexual behavior.
Several quick reports point to a recent spike in online pornography searches (Pornhub Insights, 2020), sex toy sales (Smothers, 2020), and erotic posts on social media.
Bored and lonely?
What might these behavioral changes and sex dreams mean? Are people just generally getting bored and hornier during lockdown?
“There are several things going on here,” says Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute in Indiana. “But yes, you have a lot of people at home who have more time on their hands than usual and are lacking their normal social outlet.”
Jane Teresa Anderson, a dream therapist with a private practice in Tasmania, Australia, shares Lehmiller’s opinion, saying sex must inevitably drift into the dreams of people in lockdown.
“Most people are saying to me that their dreams are not only vivid, but they’re movie length dramas,” Anderson says. “Often our dreams are more vivid when they’re more emotional.”
Because dreams are fleeting, however, their analysis is inherently based on incomplete information.
Dreaming takes place in short bursts roughly every 90 minutes during R.E.M. sleep. That’s a stage of rest characterized by rapid eye movements.
R.E.M. periods extend over the course of a night’s sleep and increase in so-called “R.E.M. density,” a measure that reflects higher brain activity during sleep.
“We don’t need any physical stimulation for it to happen.”
With some partners separated, and single people unable to date, Anderson says it’s only natural that people will dream about sex more than usual.
Some of those long, sexed-up somnambular journeys can be quite disturbing, too, she says.
The dream specialist says that the recent spate of bizarre sex dreams might be both a symbolic and a literal manifestation of people’s bottled-up sexual desires and aspirations. Your dreams might mean what you want in your life right now, she says.
“If you dream about having sex with a certain person, you have to think about what they mean to you,” says Anderson. “Perhaps they represent keeping a level head.”
With such a pronounced wave of sex dreams going on night after night, is it too far-fetched to assume that some dreams end in orgasms?
Wet dreams…
If you’ve never experienced the quivering, toe-curling, eyeball-rolling pleasure of a nocturnal orgasm, the concept of climaxing while you’re fast asleep may seem improbable. But it does happen.
In fact, a recent study out of the Kinsey Institute estimates that 80 percent of adult men and 40 percent of adult women have had at least one sleep orgasm.
“Although we experience the physical effects of having an orgasm in our body, orgasm is actually a process that happens in the brain,” says Vanessa Marin, a sex therapist who runs a private practice in San Francisco. “We don’t need any physical stimulation for it to happen.”
“Involuntary, Rhythmic Contractions”
While men who experience sleep orgasms wake up to semen on their pajamas or sheets, a woman is unlikely to find the same type of physical evidence, says Marin.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening, especially among women who are having particularly intense erotic dreams.
Tatyannah King, a writer and graduate student in sexology at Widener University, says that – for her, at least – intense sex dreams are a godsend right now.
King says her erotic dreams have become so vivid these days they frequently make her achieve orgasm while sleeping – a small pleasure that has made lockdown bearable.
“I would simply wake up amid sexually-charged dreams and immediately feel involuntary, rhythmic contractions tremble throughout,” says King. “And it felt like a rush of orgasmic euphoria.”
King attributes the involuntary auto-erotica and its attendant eruptions to a lower sex drive brought on by the on-going pandemic and social distancing guidelines.
“The lower my sex drive, the less sex that I have, making it more likely that my body needs some sort of subconscious liberation,” says King. “I have had sleep orgasms while in a relationship too, but they aren’t as common as when I’m single – or social distancing.”
King says her sexy lockdown dreams can be a tad weird, as well. One of her strangest to date involves the hottest contestants on the Hulu show, Love Island, feeding her grapes and licking her entire body.
“As I woke up, I felt my heart beating rapidly and my vulva start to pulsate vigorously,” she says. “It was one of the best dream-and-orgasm combinations I’ve ever had in my life.”
Be that as it may, Lehmiller says that – like King – many people are experiencing a lack of sex drive these days.
The death tolls are ratcheting up everywhere and scientists report spiking infection rates across the globe. In short, these aren’t the sexiest of times.
In fact, there are moments when it seems the whole world is in wild, catastrophic disarray – on the brink, as it were, of something even more devastating.
Given those circumstances, it’s understandable that many people would lose interest in sex, Lehmiller says.
But then that same apocalyptic scenario can conjure arousal, too, the sex researcher says.
The “Apocalyptic Hornies”
“There’s a whole body of research called Terror Management Theory,” Lehmiller says. “The idea behind it is that when we face the prospect of our own mortality, it leads us to cope, or it leads us to change our attitudes and behaviors in a way that it’s designed to cope with that existential threat.”
For some people, that might mean sex in all its full, strange, diverse glory – in dreams and while wide awake.
Yes, strange as the surge in weird sex dreams is, it’s apparently matched by an even stranger preoccupation in the waking dream-world of sexual fantasy.
Zachary Zane, a writer for Men’s Health, points to a bizarre new sex-infused fixation for the pandemic itself. People are dreaming up ways to make the chaos manageable by somehow making it sexy.
“I feel like there’s also a fascination, even slight fetishization with coronavirus being ‘the end,’” says Zane. “The ‘apocalyptic hornies,’ if you will.”
Lehmiller says he’s observed the same trend, pointing out that ‘coronavirus porn’ has actually become a popular search topic on Pornhub. True enough, the search query returns hundreds of pandemic porn videos.
As expected, the male-oriented vignettes are lush with smooth, voluptuous, hopefully COVID-free female flesh.
There are hot blonde women wearing gloves, ample-breasted brunettes in surgical masks, and one Asian woman on a gurney wearing a clear-plastic hazmat suit.
“I’m not surprised that this is out there …” says Lehmiller. “Humans are endlessly inventive when it comes to sex and have the ability to fetishize virtually anything.”
What’s your story? Have you been having strange sex dreams, too, lately? Why not tell us about them in the comment section below…
