Should I have an orgasm before going to sleep?

There are two people in this world: the people who like to orgasm before bed and the people who don’t. What divides them? More often than not, it’s the quality of sleep they get afterward.

Before you decide if an orgasm before bed is for you or not, let’s take a deeper look at O before Zzz’s.

Photo by Ivan Oboleninov on Pexels 

Why do we have sex & masturbate at night?

I’m going to be upfront here: I have no clue…but I can make some educated guesses:

• Convenience | I think this is especially true for people who sleep with partners, but sex and masturbation just seem more accessible when you’re already lying down next to the person who turns you on.
• Privacy | Whether you have roommates or a whole ass family at home with you, night time is a natural point in the day where privacy is more accessible, second to the shower of course.
• Pop Culture | Movies, TV shows, music, and more all influence us (whether we like it or not). With such prevalent representations of pleasure happening at night and in the dark in pop culture, it’s easy to just adopt this as the norm. Add in that sexual encounters in the daylight are often portrayed as taboo or “breaking a rule,” and, well, it’s easy to see why we might continue to believe that nighttime is sex time.

And that leaves us with the fourth reason: somewhere down the road, we were told orgasms make us sleep better.

But do orgasms actually improve sleep?

Like most other areas related to sexual pleasure and health, the correlation between orgasms and improved sleep are under researched. That said, there have been a few attempts to find an answer to this question.

Most recently, a 2024 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine observed “a 54% increase in minutes slept among women who experienced orgasm compared to those who did not…for nights with orgasm compared to the preceding night.”

Now, before we take this as The Word, it’s important to view this data through a critical lens. While this particular study did see an increase in sleep minutes, it fails to address whether sleep quality was impacted. Someone sleeping longer does not necessarily mean they are sleeping better.

As a sex nerd, I would be curious to see whether deep sleep, REM sleep, and resting heart rate were impacted by orgasm since these elements of the sleep cycle indicate more restful sleep overall.

Can an orgasm before bed make you sleep worse?

For some people, sex and orgasms before bed actually make their sleep worse — a phenomenon called “post-coital insomnia” — and those people tend to be people assigned female at birth.

Again (and to no surprise) the reason for this is under researched and under-represented in the media. Talking about it can feel uncomfortable and intimidating. If you feel like you’re the only one not falling asleep after your Os, broaching the subject with a partner, doctor, or community can feel like setting yourself up to be called broken or abnormal. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

If you cannot sleep after sex and orgasm, I implore you to remember that the sexual response cycle requires arousal. There’s a reason we call it “being turned on.” When you’re in the throes of sex and masturbation, your body is ON. Feeling restful but awake or even just awake after sex makes sense. (And may even be a good excuse to give another round a go!)

Give Yourself an Orgasm Before Bed

Perhaps the most beautiful part of sexual pleasure is being able to Sexperiment. Regardless of what any study, poll, or publication says, trying things for yourself remains the best way to definitively say what works for you.

So in the spirit of sexperimentation, we encourage you to grab your Lioness Smart Vibrator and have an orgasm before bed — at least three times! After all, the only way to truly know what an orgasm can do for you is to f**k around and find out for yourself. 

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