A quickening heartbeat. Heavy breathing. That rush of adrenaline.
Our physiological responses to lust and fear are so strikingly similar, it's not surprising that we can sometimes confuse one for the other. Or feel both at the same time.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, single New Yorkers began to notice a behavioural trend among themselves and their peers.
An article written by Cole Kazdin for Salon not long after the attacks notes this observed increase in sexual hook-ups between friends, strangers and casual acquaintances. This phenom was dubbed "terror sex."
"It sounded so inappropriate," Kazdin wrote. "We are experiencing horror and disbelief at what happened. We are grieving for friends, family and even strangers, who were alive just last week. Thinking about sex in a time of crisis seemed cheap. It reeked of bad-movie cliché: Cue the majestic music. The sounds of war outside as the barrel-chested man comforts the weeping woman. She tells him she doesn't want to sleep alone tonight. 'Hold me,' she cries. And he does."
New Yorkers were feeling exceptionally vulnerable. Sex was their security blanket of choice.
It also provided escapism and a live-for-the-moment sense of vitality; another terror attack could conceivably wipe us out at any moment, and if these are our final hours on earth, then damn it, we are going to spend them in bed with someone attractive!
But our twin physiological responses to fear and sex means that "fight or flight" can sometimes get confused with "take it off right now!" So if you've ever felt frisky during a scary movie, a thunderstorm, a fender-bender or after any other type of moderately traumatizing event, know that you're not alone.
"When you're under pressure or under threat of danger, your whole system boots up," says Dr. Pepper Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and AARP love and relationships ambassador. "Your adrenaline races. And when you do that, it turns on all of your hormones and all of your nerve endings and for some people, this turns into an erotic response."
Jeffrey, who identifies as queer, was more than a little surprised when his supposedly straight male friend showed more than a friendly interest in him after the pair toured an Eastern European concentration camp together.
"He said it was really difficult for him," Jeffrey recalls. "He knew that much of his family had been (at that particular camp) during the Holocaust, and all but his father had died. His aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins (had not survived). I asked if he wanted to talk about it some more. He shook his head, said no, and kissed me."
As things escalated, Jeffrey tried to stop his friend, knowing full well that he was emotionally distraught and probably not thinking very clearly.
"He whispered, I kid you not, 'I need this.'"
The next morning, his straight friend pretended that the previous night had never happened.
"We said nothing about any of it, and he resumed his straight guy machismo," says Jeffrey. "For the rest of the trip, nothing was said and nothing happened. It was super bizarre."
Jeffrey suspects that his friend equated sex with comfort, and when the immediacy of his heightened emotions had passed, he was too embarrassed to acknowledge what had passed between them.
"People differentially respond to fear," explains Dr. Schwartz. "For some people, it immobilizes them. They can't think. They can't relate. They're too terrified. For other people, they're still operational and they're more likely to get sexually turned on as a life-affirming act."
And what could be more life-affirming than sex?
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