A Las Vegas woman has revealed that her 75-year-old father’s death had a surprising result: it made her horny.
Shanna Christmas, 41, said she doesn’t have sex for months, feels good about it and often struggles to get aroused. In her last relationship, she described time under the sheets as “standing still” at best.
So it came as a surprise that when Christmas’s dementia-stricken father died, she experienced a renaissance in her sexual appetite. – telling strangers she had new “panties,” asking male colleagues for hugs, and cooped up in public restrooms for hours taking pictures of her backside.
‘I was horny. Excited. Thirsty, as the children would say,’ she admitted. ‘[But] I couldn’t understand. This was not an appropriate response to the death of someone I loved.”
Experts say the death of a loved one can spark sexual desire in what’s known as the “liberation effect,” or a sudden sense of adventure or opportunity after a loss.
Shanna Christmas, 41, from Las Vegas, said after her dementia-stricken father Charles died, she had a sudden explosion of sexual desire
To fight the urge, she said she would tell strangers she was wearing new “panties,” hug male colleagues and spend hours in the bathroom taking pictures of her backside
The death of Mrs. Christmas’s father, Charles, did not come as a complete surprise.
He suffered from a form of rapid dementia, a rare form of the disease that rapidly escalates over weeks to months to rob patients of their memory, and rob patients of their memory and judgment.
Towards the end, he was described as forgetting how to eat and rarely opening his eyes.
When Ms. Christmas, a comedian, received the news that he was nearing the end, she was on tour in Los Angeles.
‘I had no family nearby. My college roommate, who I was staying with at the time, was at work, so I couldn’t even hug another human being when I got the call,” she wrote in the initiate.
“And I’d been single for 10 months, which meant there wasn’t a man of my own around either,” she said.
Despite the news, she decided to stay in Los Angeles and continued her shows.
But this was when, while dealing with the grief and loss, her sex drive suddenly increased.
At one of her shows, just two days after his death, she got the crowd going by yelling, “I’ve got new panties!” And my father is dead!’
On other shows, Christmas went to male colleagues to tell them the bad news and then ask for a hug.
She even admitted to spending nearly every night locked in a cubicle in public bathrooms taking pictures of her backside while wearing a pair of new panties that “exposed a good portion of my underside.”
“My level of thirst could only be explained by this new sense of emptiness. I just wanted to connect with someone,” she said.
‘Well, with a man. A big, strong man.’
?My ex was six feet tall and was the best at holding me and making me feel small. It’s what I wanted so badly.’
Little research has been done on why people might feel horny after the death of a loved one, although some experts say this is not uncommon. It has even been featured on popular TV shows such as ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.
Psychologists have said the phenomenon could be a “liberation effect,” or a feeling of relief after an expected death.
“There’s excitement about the unknown,” says Dr. Patti Britton, a clinical sexologist based in California.
“I think excitement is part of what ‘wakes someone up’.”
Her father, Charles, pictured, suffered from a form of rapid dementia that gradually robs people of their memory and the ability to live independently
Other theories suggest that the sudden burst of sexual desire could be due to the will to avoid grief and cover the void created by the loss.
Dr. Britton added, ?The grief journey is about a loss of closeness ? a loss of intimacy. That’s why our libido kicks in: to fill that void.’
Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute Indiana, added to VICE: ?The body is getting pretty broken [after a death] and having sex – decent sex – powers the dopamine system.
“Any stimulation of the genitals drives the dopamine system in the brain, which gives feelings of optimism, energy, focus and motivation.”
In her case, Ms. Christmas said that within a few weeks, the impulses to have sex started to wane. She had no sex during her renaissance period.
She then transitioned to a point where “no one” was attractive and said she couldn’t even get turned on enough to please herself.
“It’s like I’ve been flung back to who I used to be,” she said. ‘Alone again. Trying to sort out the feelings of emptiness and isolation.’
My dad’s death made me horny! Experts explain Las Vegas woman’s bizarre response