Contrary to age-old, legendary tales of stiff breezes and brushed-against boners, men do not have the monopoly on spontaneously induced horniness. Women, too, “turn horny” or “get a horn on” or “horn it up,” for as many varied and random reasons as men do. Sure, we may generally be too repressed to express it like sports commentators narrating our own horny memoir, but that doesn’t mean we are immune to the horn-inducing moments of life.
Still, it appears to puzzle men when they witness a woman copping to her own horn identity. On one forum, a man said his girlfriend went from wanting sex a couple times a week during their 1.5 year relationship to wanting to bang “ALL THE TIME.” He said he wasn’t complaining, but it “makes me WTF though.”
Another man took to Yahoo! Answers, man’s definitive source for horny questions, to ask “Why is my girlfriend so horny all of the sudden?” Apparently, a month before when they had ample alone time, she wasn’t interested in sex. But now that he’s back at college for the semester and “super tired and stressed and not in the mood,” every day she “literally begs me for sex.” Could she be cheating, he wonders?
A commenter tries to explain it to him: “No she’s just at exact stage and age where girls get really horny.” Not true! No! There is no “exact stage and age” of prime horniness. It can strike at any time to any woman, and the peak-sexual-prime thing for women is bullshit. (More on this later).
Here’s a sampling of potential reasons:
You Did Something
You could’ve put on that one shirt she likes and rolled up the sleeves to expose your forearms. You could’ve run your hands through your hair, softened your eyes when you looked at her, been kind to someone, or, hell, simply handled some insane traffic in a commandingly smooth way. It could be anything related to a movement, a gesture, or an act of service of some kind that was desirable, or something you had no idea makes her splash.
Maybe you took care of something in an adult, caring way that anticipated her needs without having to be reminded, nagged, scolded or ignored. You picked up the dry cleaning on your own; you restocked the fridge. Now you’ve been paid back in horniness.
You Said Something
There are tons of guides on sexy things to say to women, but they’re mostly paint-by-numbers roundups of sex things that are meant to sound sexy. That in and of itself might not be sexy for your woman, so get to know her before dropping some line about her eyes, her ass or her general fuckability. That said, if your lady loves it when you are so moved by how lovely she looks that you can’t help but say it, never hold back, will ya?
Still, things a man can also say to suddenly make a lass horny may have nothing to do with sex but are titillating in other ways. Maybe you said some really insightful things about the show Gilmore Girls, or used the best Keanu Reeves line from Something’s Gotta Give, “How great is it that I’m not intimidated by your brilliance?”
Maybe you noticed something terrible or sexist and mentioned it all on your own, because you are intelligent and not threatened. Your reward? Horniness.
You Stopped Pestering Her for Sex
When men complain about not getting any, often they are turning every physical interaction into a potentially sexy one. It’s not that this can’t make women horny — it can. It’s just that if you would just leave her alone long enough to get horny on her own sometimes, she’d get horny enough to cross the living room and come over to you and initiate. Your gift: horny time.
She’s Reached Point Horny in Her Menstrual Cycle
It varies for every woman, but most women have a Point Horny in their menstrual cycle. Sometimes it’s before they ovulate. Sometimes it’s when they ovulate. Sometimes it’s after they ovulate. Sometimes it’s directly when they’re raggin’. Sometimes it’s just after. It’s your job to pay attention to when the horniness strikes in relation to her flow. For your emotional labor, you’ll receive horniness.
She Went Off Hormonal Contraception
Birth control, the kind with hormones in it, can wreak havoc on a woman’s libido because it ups the levels of progesterone in a woman’s body, which is linked to lower desire. As a result, when some women go off it, holy smokes in the loins.
That happened to a woman who wrote to Dan Savage recently because she wanted to suddenly fuck everything that moves, and many things that don’t, once she ditched the HC. An expert offered a few reasons why: 1) She may have been on some form of contraception so long she didn’t know her normal sex vibes anymore, and 2) that progesterone business.
Hers is an extreme case, but it’s pretty common to for Stella to go off the Pill or some such and get her horny back.
It’s Her Horny Season
There is a correlating season for peak horniness for everyone, and it varies depending on the person. While most people are what you’d call summer horny, some women say being under the blankets in the winter is their personal horny time. Spring blooms and with it blooms a’ horny. And let’s not ignore fall, which is for some people, the horniest time of all.
She’s in Her Second Trimester
During the first trimester of preggo time, a woman might have morning sickness and experience rapid expansion and other discomforts that make sex seem revolting. Then, one day, she wakes up in the second trimester so horny she could bend over and take a train. Why? The nausea is probably gone, her breasts feel like ripe melons ready to burst (and are likely gigantic) and the blood volume increase is also happening down below, which means more wetness and sensitivity.
People call it the magic trimester, the golden time, a perfectly ripe avocado. I think of it as involuntary horniness. Because for one thing, you can’t control what makes you horny, and it’s often shit your brain knows perfectly well is not horny at all but suddenly is to you. It’s being horny against your will, which is strangely hot but also confusing and scary.
When it happened to me, I was hijacked by horned-up thoughts about a co-worker I thought was gross, and also macaroni. It was the closest thing I could imagine to being an eighth-grade boy. Weirder still, I’d never been less physically comfortable in my life, and yet I was suddenly a monster horndog. Bizarre. Had a ton of sex, and it was never ever enough. Then I hit the trimester and it was if it had all been some kind of weird dream and sex was repulsive.
She’s Slightly Hungover
People get randy when they’re dragging ass with a hangover, mainly because of alcohol myopia. That means maybe you still have enough booze in your system to still be single-minded about your drunken desires. Other explanations involve simply craving things that soothe either the emotional hangover state (anxious/guilty) and the physical (endorphins from sex feelings and orgasm relieve hangover, temporarily). This happens to women, too.
She Consumed Horny Media
If a woman clicks off the TV, sets down her phone, comes over to you and straddles you, you can be sure she just read or saw a thing about a man doing a sexy thing or a sexy sex thing happening and wants that sexy thing with you. Go with it.
She Saw a Hot Guy
Just like men, seeing fantastic-looking, well-put together people of their preferred gender makes women horny too.
She Got Herself Some Feminism
Yes, feminism. Feminism has given women all manner of freedoms, but chief among them is the Right to Horniness. If men understood this, I believe they would all become feminists right away, or at least the equivalent of feminist ushers.
This is evidenced by the astonishing number of modern women’s media sites that have gotten super, boldly, openly horny. “Just 50 Horny Photos of Bruce Springsteen,” for instance, is a recent piece over at the Cut. This matter-of-fact horniness may seem like nothing to men, but this is groundbreakingly novel for women. Compare this to my teenage exposure to female horniness via media, Teen Bop and Sassy’s “Cute Band Alert.”
You Just Had Great Sex
Confusing as it may be, there is a thing that happens sometimes after you have an epic orgasm where you’re actually still horny for more of that shit. Not like in the you-need-to-go-masturbate-because-you-didn’t-actually-get-off sense, but in the you-want-to-do-it-again-with-him-real-bad way. Hope you’re up for round two, buddy.
She’s Old(er)
You’ve likely heard women reach their sexual peak at 35, compared to men hitting theirs at 18, but it’s a wildly misunderstood notion. Old research believed that women get extra horny at 35 because their fertility has declined and they are suddenly mega-thirsty for a baby. Being horny compels them to go get that seed.
We know now it’s not really the case: Peak horniness is about a lot of things, but a big one is the comfort level with her body and understanding of what turns her on, as well as the ability to actually seek it out or ask for it. These things lead to maximum horniness, and for many women, that doesn’t align until they are old enough to no longer be hung up on every single physical flaw. Or until they just stop giving a fuck.
For No Reason Whatsoever
And finally, women can just be horny and not know why. Random horniness is, again, a universal experience, and sometimes while sitting in a meeting or falling asleep at night, a woman will realize her entire clitoral situation is throbbing like a neon sign for no clear identifiable reason. She’s just… horny. Just like you.
But the good news is it’s not really necessary for you to know why she’s horny. Besides, if she told you why, you might try to recreate it all the time. And then it wouldn’t be horny anymore. So what is to be done? Sympathize. Offer horny support. And if it all possible, relieve it.
If there isn’t time to address it, you can always put her in Horny Jail until you can meet her needs at a later time. But don’t delay too much and don’t leave her hanging. Like the worst headache of your life, horniness can’t wait to be treated, and must be addressed sooner rather than later. Your move.
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
