And after sex I'll cry, and also before sex I'll cry.
"It seems you're a bit of a two-pump chump. Also a crier afterwards."
— Lucifer Morningstar, Lucifer (2016)
Alright. It finally happened. You just had sex, and it felt so good. It felt so good you feel like you could just cry ...and you did.
There are various reasons for crying: sex can bring overwhelming passions, and many are positive. A character can weep blissed-out Tears of Joy after an amazing experience. Lovers can share Tender Tears as they lose themselves in intimacy. Sometimes, when all is said and done, the overload of neurotransmitters and hormones might make one of the participants (usually male) feel a sense of sadness or anxiety that brings on the tears for minutes or even a few hours afterwards, in a real medical phenomenon referred to as post-coital tristesse
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However, in fiction, this is commonly Played for Laughs: a character's crying is presented as shameful, unsexy, Inelegant Blubbering that utterly ruins the mood. The target of this mockery is almost Always Male, because Men Don't Cry. The reason for his distress is often shame or insecurity about inadequate sexual prowess. Maybe he can't get it up, at least not for long, and he (or his partner) is disappointed. Maybe he lacks experience. Maybe he is ashamed for other reasons, like Appearance Angst. Compare Lousy Lovers Are Losers — something that glaring, dissatisfied look on his partner's face may imply.
Can also be Played for Drama. The characters could be in emotional pain and seek Sex for Solace. Maybe they carry hidden trauma that intimacy or sex can awaken, especially trauma related to sex.
Compare Prone to Tears, a character who cries for many reasons. Contrast Smoking Hot Sex, where partners have a different post-coital reaction.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Berserk:
- Guts cries the first time he has sex with Casca because doing so triggers the memories of his childhood abuse. She gives him a Cooldown Hug and tells him that she feels closer to him, knowing his traumatic backstory and now they're finally open with each other.
- Casca is also seen crying after their first time, most profoundly in the movie adaptation Berserk: The Golden Age Arc.
- Griffith is so broken by Guts leaving the Hawks that he immediately seeks out Princess Charlotte for Sex for Solace, as well as taking her virginity. He is not into the experience at all compared to her as his mind is on Guts the whole time and afterwards while she sleeps from exhaustion he is shown sitting off by himself, clenching a scar Guts gave him and crying Broken Tears.
- In Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki breaks down in tears after he and Touka finally consummate their relationship, because he’s finally found someone he can be happy with after all the misery he’s been through over the course of the series.
Fan Works
- Advice and Trust: Asuka openly cries whenever she and Shinji have sex. Shinji gets worried that he's hurting her in some way, but Asuka reassures him that she's shedding Tears of Joy to the first person she's openly cried to, putting aside a promise to herself to never cry following her mother's suicide.
- In Coalescence, Hope cries after he and Lightning make love, having fulfilled a thousand years of longing for her that encompassed the destruction of the previous universe and centuries of torment.
- The separate (but written by the same author) Law & Order: UK fanfics "Deck The Halls and "Dreadlock Holiday have Alesha Philips crying as she and Matt Devlin consummate their relationship. He panics in the second instance, fearful that he's hurting her and/or causing her to have flashbacks of her rape, but she assures him that she's okay and is crying Tears of Joy, not sadness/pain.
- In the Harry Potter fic The Power of Seven, Demelza Robins does after her first full time with Harry. Harry is immediately concerned that something's wrong, but quite the opposite; the experience was so wonderful, so beautiful, so perfectly overwhelming for Demelza that she's weeping in joy.
- ER. Doug and Carol both do this—of the same Tears of Joy version—after they reunite and make love for the first time in over a year, though like the LOUK example, he's initially worried that she's in pain.
- Teru in Shigeko Kageyama AKA Mob cries after his first time with (female) Mob...and the second time...and the third....
- Edelgard in Heartbeats weeps into Byleth's chest after she loses her virginity to him. It comes from a combination of things, namely relief that sex with a man isn't like what her abusive captors indoctrinated her to believe, the weight of her anxiety over him seeing her naked, and finally her just taking in the sound of his heartbeat considering it did not use to beat before.
- This happens a couple times between Luz and Amity during There's No One Like You, with both participants experiencing it. The most notable instance happens after Luz lets Amity top. This is the first time Luz has given up control to someone since Camp Reality Check, and realizing that she's comfortable being vulnerable around Amity leads to her finally telling Amity she loves her.
Film
- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: The film opens with Andie comforting a friend who's just been dumped by her boyfriend. The friend admits that the first time she and the boyfriend had sex she cried afterwards.
Andie: Please tell me you mean, like, one glistening tear on your cheek, right?
Michelle: No, I was really emotional. I even told him I loved him.
Andie: After how many days?
Michelle: Five. (beat) Two. - Something's Gotta Give: While not full-blown crying, Harry gets choked up and says, "I had sex and I didn't die," the first time he does it after his heart attack. Fairly justified since the last time he started to have sex triggered said heart attack.
Literature
- The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Alexander complains to his wife Tatiana that she always seems to cry during sex. The reason she finds the experience so overwhelming is because her entire family died during the Siege of Leningrad, so her husband is now the only family she has left.
- My Sweet Audrina does this after finally letting go of her sexual fears (she was gang-raped at age nine and brainwashed to believe that this happened to a non-existent older sister) and being able to enjoy sex with her husband.
- Saving Max: After Danielle and Tony have sex, she starts crying because it's brought all her emotions about Max closer to the surface.
- Ariane, the heroine of the medieval Romance Novel Enchanted, does this after finally getting over her Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality and consummating her marriage.
Live-Action Television
- In the Arrested Development episode "Family Ties", G.O.B. and George Sr. both hook up (not at the same time) with the same prostitute (neither one realizes the other is seeing her) and go to bed with her multiple times (or maybe just skip straight to the crying) in the same hotel room. Both end up crouched at the foot of the bed, venting their inadequacies as she sits above them, looking bored.note
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): after discovering she is a humanoid Cylon, Tory Foster is ordered by her fellow Final Five Cylons to seduce burgeoning religious leader Gaius Baltar, hoping he will divulge anything he knows about the Final Five. She does so, but is not happy about it, and gently cries afterwards. When Baltar, concerned, asks her if she's okay, she claims it always happens to her after sex. It's left ambiguous if this is true, or if it's a symptom of her disgust with herself. Notable, she does not seem to have this problem after sex with Anders.
- Community: In "The Politics of Human Sexuality" Annie is worried about her sexual inexperience. She claims she's not a virgin, but the only encounter she mentions sounds very disappointing.
Annie: I had relations with my high school boyfriend. We did it to Madonna's "Erotica" on the floor of his walk-in closet. But he wouldn't let me look at it. [frowning] He cried after. And during. He's gay now.
Britta: I think he was gay then. - Conversations with Friends: Frances does this after having sex with Nick the first time, insisting it doesn't mean she's unhappy though, it's just a physical reaction she had with Bobbi too.
- Lucifer (2016): In "The Would-Be Prince of Darkness", a man named Justin went around claiming to be Lucifer Morningstar to get free drinks and pick up chicks. He ends up making Lucifer look bad in the process, one particular grievance being that he ends sex quickly and cries afterwards.
- In Orphan Black, Delphine quietly sheds tears after having sex with Cosima. It is her first sexual encounter with another woman, and Cosima gives a worried look. Delphine reassures that this is normal for her.
Delphine: It's okay, I cry after sex with boys too.
- In the Mexican telenovela, Sortilegio, the female lead, Maria José, who was virgin up to that point, cries in the shower after having sex for the first time with her husband, Alex. It's ambiguous if she cried because she regretted, was happy or just overwhelmed with emotions given how stressful her life was at that point.
- In season 7 of Sons of Anarchy Jax cries after having sex with Winsome. It's the first time he's had sex since his wife, Tara, was murdered and it's particularly poignant as Jax is generally a very aggressive, macho character.
- In Twin Peaks, one of Bobby Briggs' most humiliating secrets is that he cried after the first time he and Laura Palmer had sex and that Laura laughed at him for it. Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, who had been secretly counseling Laura for six months before she was murdered, uses his knowledge of this to press Bobby for information about what happened to Laura prior to her death.
Mythology
- Several Japanese fables work with the assumption that sex had for honest reasons will always produce tears. There is often a character who is dishonest and hides a container of water in their sleeve to create the illusion of tears.
Music
- "Why I Cry" by Ninja Sex Party is about Danny Sexbang trying to pick up a woman that "only dates nice guys." He goes on to explain how "sensitive" and "romantic" he is, culminating in the fact that he is so sensitive, that not only does he cry after sex, but he also cries during sex, before sex and even when something reminds him of sex.
- In The Lonely Island song "I Just Had Sex" the singers celebrate having sex for the first time. They don't seem to recognize (or just don't care) that the sex wasn't very good. Among other things, one singer admits he "cried the whole time! (Doesn't matter, had sex!)" His partner is clearly unimpressed.
- Referenced in Alan Jackson's "Remember When."
Video Games
- There's a Memetic Mutation about a hypothetic crossover duel between Dante and Bayonetta, one is about both having sex and Dante ending up crying like a baby◊.
- In Lamplight City, during the course of an investigation, Miles Fordham interrogates Ruby, a local prostitute, about her clients, and mentions Percival McDonaugh, a local politician. Ruby says that he indeed visited with her once, and she remembers him because he started crying afterwards and said something about his wife, but apparently he was so emotional that she could barely make out what he was saying.
Western Animation
- Castlevania (2017): In "The Harvest", Alucard cries as he is seduced by Sumi and Taka, apparently overwhelmed by raw emotion. After intense loneliness, this is the most intimate Alucard has been with anyone in a long time — or possibly ever.
- Family Guy: In "The Fat Guy Strangler", a Cutaway Gag features Peter just after having sex with a rhino. Peter asks the rhino "why wouldn't you look at me during?" The rhino just gets out of the bed and walks away, leaving Peter to cry by himself.
- In "Stu & Stewie's Excellent Adventure", Stewie tries to help Stu lose his virginity to his coworker Fran. He sort-of succeeds, but Stu is so pathetic that Fran leaves unsatisfied, Stu having cried for 40 minutes after intercourse (which itself lasted for 8 seconds.)
