You hear of men clutching their chest or simply dropping dead during the act-- or even of men getting warned to hold off on having sex when they’re diagnosed with heart problems-- but I’ve never heard of a woman “thinking she was coming, but was actually going.”
Do women’s hearts not get the same workout during sex that men’s do? Is this just not reported as much for women as it is for men? Does anyone know any stories of a woman dying of a heart attack or stroke during sex?
The Wiki page “Death during consensual sex” doesn’t offer much. Every example of a famous person dying of heart problems during the act were men. The women (incidentally, none of them were famous prior to their unfortunate demise) either fell of a balcony, were electrocuted or were mauled by lions.
Consider first that men are more prone to heart disease in general than women are. Then consider that the pairing of an old man with a young woman is much more common than the reverse.
In any given coupling, might the man also likely be engaging in more physical movement than the woman, placing a greater burden on his cardiovascular system?
Well, heart disease is still the leading cause of death for women. And I don’t think the numbers are that different between the sexes.
So is it that older men (who are more likely to have heart disease than younger men) are having more sex than older women (who are likewise more likely to have heart disease than younger women)? (In other words: The men more at-risk for heart disease are having sex with both younger partners AND older partners, while women more at-risk for heart disease are primarily only having sex with older partners? Therefore, most of the sex being had by people with heart problems is being done by men.)
Still, there have to be examples of women dying of a heart attack during sex, right? They’re still 50+% of the population and heart disease is still their leading cause of death. So why is the cliche to have the man croak while copulating?
The theory that the man is engaging in more physical movement may be a good one too.
I’m not sure that the bulk physical activity would be as relevant as the orgasm. And it’s a lot more common for a woman to have sex without orgasm than for a man.
The sexist in me thinks - “if she died during sex, would the man notice?”
Throw in to the logic about men and physical activity during sex the additional thought that presumably the extra shot of excitement of orgasm might push the guy over the edge (not of a balcony, that is) and that women have fewer orgasms than men.
There’s also the warning that women’s heart attacks are different from men’s. They have different symptoms, less likely to experience the classic chest-clutching shot of pain. And even many men also don’t immediately drop dead of heart attacks. (One of my acquaintances complained that her husband was alone while having a heart attack, so he drove himself to the hospital and checked in rather than call an ambulance. She let him know what she thought once he got better.)
They do? That’s not been my experience. For every one that I get, the woman gets three or four. I get to go down on her, then up on her, then down again, then up again…
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Lucky lass! Multiple orgasms just aren’t something I can manage, I’m afraid.
P.S.–
See man, that phrase must have come onto you in a spurt of inspiration. Rather spunky, I must say. Shoot, I gotta go now. I feel spent.
Two years ago I suffered unstable angina pain that, since it didn’t kill me (each episode was 5 - 10 minutes of agony) I presumed was GERD. At least one episode was an actual heart attack. As episodes increased in frequency, I eventually made an appointment with my PCP and had angioplasty a few days later.
I’ve seen at least two news reports (in weird news, so possibly repeated urban legends, in the days before Snopes and the internet) of a woman being trapped under a man for an extended period after he had a heart attack. I think she’d notice that he wasn’t snoring.
I don’t know for sure what the statistics say, but I suspect men are far more likely than women to keel over from a heart attack at a younger age. Yes, a lot of women die from heart attacks, but is that more due to age than lifestyle?