Australians may have a new excuse for infidelity: "sleep sex."
That's the diagnosis given to an otherwise respectable Sydney-area woman who snuck out at night to have sex with random strangers while her live-in boyfriend slept at home.
"Incredulity is the first staging post for anyone involved in this," admitted Peter Buchanan, the diagnosing physician and a sleep specialist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (search). "One has to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism."
But, Buchanan told the Sydney Morning Herald, the woman wasn't covering up run-of-the-mill infidelity. She was genuinely unaware of her activities. Even her boyfriend took a while to catch on.
"He was aware of some sleepwalking and there was circumstantial evidence, including the unexplained presence of condoms around the house," Buchanan explained. "On one occasion he awoke to find her absent from the bedroom and searched until he found her — engaged in such activity."
Although "sleep sex" isn't listed in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (search), Buchanan said, the recently identified parasomnia — a sleep disorder involving wakeful behavior, such as walking or talking — was gaining recognition worldwide from specialists.
A Stanford University study published in 2002 related nearly a dozen cases of the disorder, some of which involved unconscious aggression or sexual violence towards regular partners.
None of those cases, however, involved active seeking out of new partners.
In the Sydney woman's case, Buchanan said tests showed she would often become active from a state of deep sleep without passing through the normal stages of gradually waking up, a common sign of parasomnia (search).
Buchanan told the newspaper the woman had been successfully treated through psychotherapy, and planned to relate the case to this weekend's annual conference of the Australasian Sleep Association (search).
But, Buchanan told the Sydney Morning Herald, the woman wasn't covering up run-of-the-mill infidelity. She was genuinely unaware of her activities. Even her boyfriend took a while to catch on.
"He was aware of some sleepwalking and there was circumstantial evidence, including the unexplained presence of condoms around the house," Buchanan explained. "On one occasion he awoke to find her absent from the bedroom and searched until he found her — engaged in such activity."
ok, wait a second here. She was either buying condoms b/c she knew she would be using them later and therefore was aware of her actions, or she was bringing the guys back to her house and had sex with them w/ her boyfriend in the next room.
Either way, the boyfriend is no Sherlock Holmes. "Oh look some condoms (used or not) that arent mine. I wonder what they are doing here..."
I heard this one on my local radio morning show today. Seriously, how could you not know you're having sex while you're sleeping...I think some whacko society is trying to justify their illegal sexual activities. They probably sneak into someone's house, dope them up while sleeping, do their "thing," and leave. Then the person wonders what happened and they attribute it to "sleep sex." Totally bogus.
It's just as bogus as that Sweetest Day holiday coming up. Man, does that one bug me. I'm glad I'm not attached because there's no way my g/f or wife is getting something for a holiday made up by card, candy, and flower companies to boost their sales in the "slow" season. They're just preying on women's fragile emotional psyches and hoping that they'll get their men to buy stuff for them.
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It's happened to my friend! At least according to him and his girlfriend. They were apparently very wasted, and in the middle of the night he just started having sex with her and she played along. He said he snapped out of it and it was like he woke up from a dream, and he said he wasn't even sure the next morning if the whole thing wasn't just a dream. But she comfirmed that it happened...hearing it was really funny.
Sleep-sex hasn't happened to me, but one night I slept over at my former girlfriend's apartment after staying up all night. We all had a bit to drink the night before, but my girlfriend got up to go to church like she always did. At some point after she left, her roommate went to the bathroom, came back, and for some reason got into bed with me (100% naked). I was not close to being fully awake, but I remember thinking it was my girlfriend and cuddling up with her. We kind of woke up at the same time, and she JUMPED out of bed when she saw it was me. We told my girlfriend then, and she surprisingly believed us. But then after she dumped me I ended up scoring with her roommate anyway so who knows if she still believes us.
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by Buckychudd » Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:22 pm 
