Sexual Dysfunction

You had a fight with your husband and are threatening to sleep on the couch. He, on the other hand, wants to get intimate.

“The main reasons for decreased sexual interest in women are stress and anger at their partners,” says Brizendine. Cortisol, the stress hormone, turns off a woman’s interest in sex. “The thinking now is that stress is a signal to the female brain that you don’t want to get pregnant, because the environment is too dangerous to have nine months of vulnerability,” says Louann Brizendine, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco.

Men, by contrast, often bond right after a stressful situation, whether it’s a fight with the wife or a power play won at work. During stressful situations, men release both cortisol and vasopressin, a hormone that stimulates social interaction.

Takeaway: If your partner wants to get cozy after an argument, don’t automatically hold it against him. Just as women sometimes get to say their hormones made them do it, this option might occasionally apply to men, too.