What Happens In Male And Female Brains During Sex (Yes, It’s Different)

Sex has led many an unassuming victim down a path of confusion. But why? If sex is such a good and unifying experience, how can it be so problematic at times? It seems like, even though we have been roaming around the earth together for millennia, we are still bewildered by the opposite gender. 

According to science, there is a reason for all this confusion and, at times, mutual frustration. It turns out men and women are biologically wired quite differently, so even while sharing a sexual encounter, each party is exposed to a unique hormonal cocktail that largely determines their own experience. We may be sharing the same sexual encounter, but physiologically and psychologically, we are experiencing different things. 

How Male and Female Brains Differ

Everything starts in the hypothalamus, a small portion of our brains in charge of maintaining our temperature, hormones, and appetite at optimal levels. In the male brain, the sexual pursuit region of the hypothalamus is twice as large as in the female brain, making the average male brain more sensitive to testosterone. In addition, the average man has “more than 10 times as much testosterone as women, and some even have up to 183 times more than women, which directly impacts their sex drive.” 

But the hypothalamus isn’t the only region of the brain to display sex differences. Deep inside our brain’s frontal lobes lies the amygdala. In this small almond-shaped region of our brains, we process emotions such as fear, anxiety, and aggression. It’s where our fight-or-flight responses originate. And much of our sex behavior is processed here. The average male amygdala is more than two times larger than the average female amygdala, and as a consequence, it’s more reactive to sexual stimuli. So, just as a matter of nature, a man's response to sexual stimuli is much greater on average than a woman's. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that men think about sex more frequently than women do or that they tend to struggle with porn addiction more than women do. 

Now here is where it gets interesting at a psychological level: One study found that when men are in an aroused state, they become more willing to go against their personal ethics and do everything from telling a woman they love her when they don’t to committing something as atrocious as rape. This explains (but doesn't justify) why men are also more likely to be deemed “players” and to commit sexual crimes than women are.

In contrast, the female amygdala is more reactive to food stimuli than sexual stimuli. This is accompanied by the fact that the hormonal cocktail women experience during sex does more for bonding than the male hormonal experience does. In particular, oxytocin and dopamine make the woman experience warm and loving feelings towards their partner even if they did not have those feelings beforehand. This is why women are more likely to bond with their sexual partner, even if they have just met.  

On the other hand, if a man has a high body count, he is “more likely to experience a decrease in his rating of the woman’s physical and sexual attractiveness after having sex with her.” Shockingly, this decrease can occur in only 10 seconds following his orgasm. This is scientific evidence of the old cautionary tale that men are likely to lose interest in a woman after sex.