Can Having Sexual Intercourse Help Me Deal With Stress?

— -- Question: Can having sexual intercourse help me deal with stress?

Answer: Can sexual intercourse help you deal with stress? There's two ways you can approach it.

First is you have to separate the stressor from the stress reaction. So can sexual intercourse help you deal with stressors in life: conflicts at work, traffic jams? Absolutely not. But can sexual intercourse help you to feel less stressed? There's good evidence to suggest that is the case.

Now that being said, there's nothing magic about sexual intercourse per se to relieve stress. It actually seems to be a combination of other factors that we use to create stress relief in general. Things like deeper breathing, physical exertion, touch, the release of endorphins, social connectedness. All of which can be found in other arenas, but all of which seem to come together in a sexual encounter.

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