The Heat of Battle: For Some, Fighting--and Making Up--Help Sex

So familiar is the scene in movies that it instantly telegraphs “hot sex ahead.” The starring couple is in a heated argument. Just when it seems the union will crash and burn, there is a quick cut to passionate kissing and entwined bodies. Fade-out to music, signaling metaphorically that mind-blowing sex was had.

But that is kiss-and-make-up sex Hollywood-style, spun off the cliche that sex after a fight is the best sex. Make-up sex does have its fans, some of whom admit to doing whatever it takes to go straight to a reconciliation romp.

“Make-up sex implies that you risked losing this person forever and now you have them in your arms,” says a 38-year-old single Los Angeles art director, who was willing to dish only if given a grant of anonymity. “A guy wants to avoid conflict at all costs and a woman wants to resolve it. Guys want to make nice and they want to do it in a physical way. If I have gotten off the hook enough to where she will take me back, then let’s go straight to the make-up sex and work the details out later. Hopefully that means we won’t have to deal with it.”

A quick fix maybe, but unproductive in the long run, says psychologist Sandra Scantling, author of “Extraordinary Sex Now,” (Doubleday, 1998). “Make-up sex is temporary,” she says, adding that fighting cranks up our heart rates and blood pressure the same way sex does. “The issue will rear its ugly head again. Some people are connected through barbed wire. They feel something through arguments; they get to release frustration, sadness, hurt and love, and before you know it, there is a roll in the hay. That is OK unless arguments become a prerequisite to sex.”

But in a long-term relationship, says Scantling, sexual urges take second place to respect.

“My last two serious girlfriends were actually into sex without making up,” says a 35-year-old single actor who lives in Venice. “One girlfriend would be fighting with me, and it would be toward the end of the evening, and she would be in bed, smiling, like there was no problem and ready for sex. I would say, ‘I can’t have sex with you, we just had a big fight.’ I can’t open up in that way after having a fight if it isn’t cleared up.”

Vulnerability is the handmaiden of sexual intimacy. Trust, respect and safety are the forerunners of great sex. And adversarial feelings often trump sexual ones.

“I want an apology or to talk it through,” said a 23-year-old casting assistant. “It is easier for him to comfort in a physical way than an emotional way. And I have never once been denied sexually when he is angry. He could have an arm cut off and still want it.”

How a couple negotiates the tricky terrain back to intimacy after a fight has to do with the stability of the relationship, emotional styles, personalities, sex drive, peace-making tactics and the seriousness of the fight.

“When I first got married, I thought fighting was an aphrodisiac,” says a 40-year-old mother of two children who admits that her emotional volatility is cathartic for her but wounding to her husband. “I have a fight and poof! It is over. But he is still mulling it over. He would say, ‘You are screaming and yelling at me, how could you want to have sex?’ There can be no resolution right away because he is not over it.”

Getting over it may require an apology for the original insult, sincere groveling (by the person who is wrong, a point on which there may be further disagreement) and maybe even reparations (which, for some, may include sexual favors). Good things come to those who wait.

“My favorite is morning-after-a-fight-sex,” says the casting assistant, who has been with her boyfriend for a year. “Then it is not so gratuitous.”

*

Birds & Bees is a weekly column on relationships and sexuality. Kathleen Kelleher can be reached via e-mail at kellehr@gte.net.