Make Up Sex: What It Is, Benefits, & Drawbacks

What Is Make Up Sex?

Make up sex is having sex after an intense disagreement to reunify with your partner after the intensity of conflict and fighting have resolved. Making up in the relationship certainly can and needs to include resuming sexual intimacy, especially if that was withheld, denied or used as leverage in the conflict. These forms of sexual manipulation can be harmful since sexual intimacy is such a powerful component of relationships.

Fights and disagreements, even heated ones, are normal for a relationship and don’t even predict the relationship’s success or failure.¹ So the pressure to reunify via sex is less important than some may think. For most relationships, seeking to replace feelings of conflict, anger, resentment, and bitterness with sexual feelings is not as easy as it may seem. Sex and passion are separate feelings that aren’t replaced or interchangeable with other feelings, so when the pattern or disagreement reemerges, it can cause further re-wounding to the person and relationship simultaneously.

Why Do Fights Lead to Sex?

Intense disagreements can be a way that some couples typically engage with one another, so the disagreement feels more or less normal to the couple. This could be problematic since the baseline experience is negative and then the sex is the only experience (or the most powerful experience) that makes the relationship positive again as opposed to fun, intrigue, interest, connection bringing positivity after conflict.

The way that couples tend to routinely engage with one another is most easily repeated since it functions at some level. Fights become the normal way that some couples talk about their days, relate to each other about their hopes and dreams, and even engage in foreplay. The adage in sports is true in this area of life: “you will become what you practice”.

Certainly in sexual connection, tension and release bonding happens and creates a cycle of increased stress culminating in the relationship relying on sex to relieve that tension. Sex in the brain has powerful relaxation and calming effects.²

Is Make Up Sex More Intense Than Ordinary Sex?

Some people consider make up sex the best sex that happens in their relationship, which could to some degree be explained by excitation transfer. Excitation transfer in psychology is the phenomenon when arousal happens in the body, the energy that causes arousal can stay in the system longer than expected and cause further arousal to happen.³

In the context of a fight, the excitement of being at odds with your partner can roll into the sexual excitement after the fight, heightening the total arousal experienced. This is like carrying momentum and energy in the body that started with a fight and then continued on in sexual energy causing euphoric or heightened sexual experiences since the activated state was higher than the baseline norm for sexual arousal. This is what makes make up sex feel so powerful, because it is.

Benefits of Make Up Sex

Sex offers many health benefits.To be clear, make up sex is not bad for a relationship – but it could be. Making up with your partner can bring closure to the previous conflict and bring a sense of assurance to the relationship’s current state now that the fight is over. In fact, making up with sex can be used as a way that couples re-initiate emotional connection when verbally sharing emotions or connecting emotionally is difficult. Sex is certainly emotional and releases chemicals in the brain causing a strong relaxing sensation in the face of stressors.²

Some benefits of makeup sex include:

Restores Faith in the Relationship

Sexual intimacy is a bonding experience. Sex is important to most couples. Sex can rebuild trust and offer assurance in the relationship’s good future. Restored faith could also make sexual feelings rise as increased security could allow for further sexual intimacy to be accessible, but is not always this way, but can be.

Increases Dopamine & Oxytocin

During sex, the brain releases dopamine and oxytocin. These chemicals facilitate a rewarding, pleasurable, and relaxing experience.⁴ They’re not only released during orgasm but throughout the building, climaxing and relaxing phases of sex. The entire time sexual intimacy is happening, these chemicals are at work!

Helps Ease Tension Between Partners

The tension between partners could resolve or relax as both partners share a positive experience together. Documented effects for women with depression and anxiety have had positive changes on their mood with sex.⁵Sex can help with anxiety. At a much smaller scale, this is similar to when people take a break during conflict and do something that each person enjoys to reconnect, ground the intensity, and later resume managing their conflict. Sex can be a stronger, more efficient (chemically) way of relieving tensions than a walk would or taking time to research something you are interested in.

Clear Closure Of Past Fights

Similar to the attachment and bonding formation that can intensify during sex, the unspoken closure of past issues can happen throughout the bodily experiences of sexual intimacy, particularly in make up sex. Make up sex also brings a reminder to both partners that sex symbolizes a great part of their relationship and by experiencing sex together, they are experiencing the best parts of their relationship together.

Re-Establishes Safety

Safety in a psychological sense is the freedom to go to the depths of emotion or other experiences with yourself and your partner. Safety in sex first starts with consent and finishes with the inner acceptance and exploration of sensations, impulses and reactions. All of this exploration requires a level of safety in order to have meaningful and profound sexual experiences together.

Gives The Relationship A Fun Break

Having fun sexually is part of the enjoyment that comes from sex and sexual closeness. Sex is a great way to blow off some tension and do something that is spontaneous and enjoyable to the relationship. Major deposits into the relationship’s emotional bank account comes from sharing positive and fun experiences together. Some of these experiences can come from the bedroom by making the most of moments free from conflict.

Negative Disagreements Are Remembered More Positively

Imagine two scenarios, both involve you fighting with your partner and it not going well but you reach resolution in both situations. In one situation you end your evening by watching a show on Netflix and eventually making it to bed- to sleep. The other scenario involves make up sex and whatever your ritual is with your partner post-sex. Having meaningful sex after conflict can characterize the conflict as ending well as opposed to fizzling out.

Heightened Carryover Can Bring Stronger Orgasms

When speaking about orgasms, the strength of the orgasm varies for the situation. Using excitement transfer theory’s ideas and knowledge about orgasmic capacity, the more tension that is built into the sexual experience will increase the tension release that comes with orgasms.⁶ So if there is tension already building in the relationship it can be carried over into sexual release of tension through orgasms.

Improvements in Sleep & Mood

Sex is linked with decreasing depression and anxiety symptoms as well as helping the physical body respond in a more relaxed state.⁵ By having make up sex, the tension in the relationship that was once there resolves and brings fresh connection that was previously lost in the conflict. Sleep has also been demonstrated to benefit from sex, both in sleep quality and onset and when sex happens at bed time.⁷

Potential Drawbacks of Make Up Sex

Couples really should consider if they are stuck in a pattern where they have sex after fights consistently if they are relying on sex to reset their relationship. Couples could be using sex as a way to bring fight intensity down, which can be a positive but is not the entire intent of satisfying sexual connections. Signs that your relationship could be doing this includes: feeling hopeless, anxious and preoccupied about sex. If you notice that fights continue to escalate until a certain breaking point and sex is used to repair the breaking point, it could be problematic long term.

Potential problems of makeup sex include:

• Using sex instead of communication: when sex is used to fix the problems in the relationship, the problems will never completely go away. Words and connection are important in both sex and conflict management.
• Avoiding the main issue(s): When sex distracts the relationship from what is going wrong or needs fixing, the relationship could be blind to major issues ahead.
• You could believe problems are really over when they are not: If the relationship uses sex to resolve issues or get past them, but without talking about feelings, triggers and making plans for next time, the relationship is set up to fail again in the future.
• Sex could get associated with fights in the relationship: Having sex after fights could lead to associating sweeter times of connection to fights and not other parts of the relationship like late mornings together, date nights, special occasions, etc.
• Sex could be limited to happening only after fights: Having sex after fights could lead the relationship to have fights in order to have sex.

When to Seek Professional Support

Couples who have make up sex need to check in with themselves and the relationship to see if the sex is being used to manage conflict or bring connection. Couples or relationship counseling is a great place to address conflicts and issues that are happening in the relationship so sex can be more enjoyable and free from the context of conflict. For couples or relationships that are short on time and have a secure place to meet from, online therapy is a good option. Couples need to remember that sex and conflict both require good communication skills in order to keep things enjoyable and smooth in the relationship.

In My Experience

In my professional experience, some couples use make-up sex more often for bad reasons than for good ones. Things to be especially aware of or watch out for is if sex only happens in the context of regulating or avoiding conflict. This can be a major sign that something else in the relationship needs attention like: friendship, conflict management skills or shared meaning. If couples are able to talk about their needs, hopes and desires for each other, their future and the relationship, sex can be more satisfying than when used as a conflict resolution strategy.